With no idea as to do otherwise, he has decided upon the name 'John Cleaver' to both keep it simple and because of the bloody weapon he carries.
Appearance
While his face might be appealing, Cleaver isn't the strapping young lad most would hope for. He's rather short, only topping around 5'7" on a good day, and only weighs about a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. There's nary a bit of muscle to be seen on him either. 'Lanky' would be a good term to describe him as. The only good thing about his physique is his ability to run. And he's done a lot of it since arriving in the hell that he inhabits.
Still, his face is pretty good looking. The dirty blonde hair covering his face could use a trim, as could the specks of facial hair starting to sprout up on him. His eyes are a pleasant chestnut brown, and whatever gods had decided to toss him into purgatory gave him an appealing set of clothing, a black overcoat with a white undershirt, both made of simple cloth along with pants. The time spent has frayed it, but its quality is still good.
Equipment
The first thing John realized as he woke was that he was holding a ridiculous meat cleaver. The weapon was huge compared to its counterpart, roughly the size of a short sword if you held the two up together. The other thing he realized was that the weapon was soaked in blood. It still proudly displays a good portion of rust, even after the rough scrubbing he tried to give it.
Other than the mockery of a sword, he doesn't own much in this world. One of his most important and useful items is the small lantern he found laying around him. The only beacon of light in the dark world he has. To go with it, a small iron and flint striker to light anything he requires. A completely useless compass that doesn't seem to go along with the laws of physics in this world. A few weeks worth of rations he has mostly gone through. What's left is smoked meats and dried fruits that he usually saves and goes for whatever scraps he can find in the world. Don't forget an assortment of other stuff for basic living.
His last item is a large leather bound journal that has been his only sense of comfort in this strange land. The quill that goes with it seemingly does not run out of ink, no matter how many times he has used it. Within' the old parchment are recollections of his previous days. Each log usually is spread out by a few days, and usually is accompanied by drawings and descriptions of important places. Not like it matters too much, the world is similar to that of a maze, any attempts to map the world have failed.
Memories
John Cleaver doesn't remember much. But he holds the memories tight and tries to keep hold of them. The first and most easily remembered one is of a crisp autumn day. A young John watches in curiosity as an older man goes through the process of butchering a pig. Guts and visceral cover the wooden workstation set up under the birch tree. The stench of blood is fresh and overbearing as the old man yells at John and then goes after John, his belt coming off.
His second memory is during the same autumn. John lingers over a hastily constructed easel with a sheet of parchment hanging over it. On the easel is a finely done painting of a grassy plain with a blue river running through it. There are apple trees and in the distance stands a beautiful woman.
His third memory is that of the portrait, shredded and lying on the ground while the sharpening of a knife is heard. John cries.
The fourth memory is during a cold winter. Hunger is the most recognizable feeling as an older version of John sits, a huge cavalcade of bruises cover him as he cowers in the small cramped attic that is his room.
The last memory is of John holding a cleaver in his hands, blood splattered over him and shock in his eyes.
Awakening
A rendition of the area according to John's journal.
That day was probably the worst day of many to come in this horrible place. Only now after a few days can I finally sit down and write about it. The ground was sopping and as I sat there for a few moments, perplexed as to where in Gods Earth I was, my coat was getting soaked in mud. Nothing came to mind as the gears in my brain racked themselves to try and think of something. Anything. Of course, I couldn't think of anything at all.
It was horrible as I sat there, staring at the roof inside the remnants of... a mine? Even after exploring that place I still have no idea of its purpose. As I peered around the great pillars, something red caught my eye and I looked towards my left hand. In its place was a brutal weapon. A huge cleaver that could have cleaved a cow's head right off of its neck. And the blood covering my hand and the weapon seemed to confirm something like that happened. I threw the weapon away and it clattered against a pillar as I pushed myself up, my hands sloshing through the mud as I sat up.
The sick feeling seemed to triple in size as I stood up, the backside of my clothing now splattered with brown goop. Its hard to remember what happened next. I think I may have panicked, or something similar to that. Only through some bit of wisdom did I remember to grab the large leather bag... and the cleaver. Something about the place just screamed dangerous to me.
I ran, and ran, and ran and ran until my lungs screamed and my legs finally gave up. I collapsed to my knees in what seemed to be the remains of a dead castle overlooking the 'mine'. As I gasped for air, I noticed the bones. Down inside the mine, covered in mud, were the remains of hundreds of people. Bones ranging from those of men to women, to even small children.
It was then I realized, I was in hell.
He bit his bottom lip as he finished reading back through the first page of his journal. Even now after so long, he still barely knew anything. John Cleaver sighed as he sat back in the decaying remains of a wooden chair, alongside similarly fashioned furniture inside of a small cabin in the middle of a decrepit forest.
It was home, or at least, the closest thing to home he could hope for. Outside the window, the trees loomed over him. Great giants in their own right, though they seemed to be either long dead or in a deep slumber. No leaves grew from their blackened branches and the ground was simply dried soil. The house was in a similar state as well, its timber slightly rotting, the shingles over the roof falling off. Hell, the damn door fell off when John first entered.
It was home for the few nights he would stay there. He had already raided the cabinets and the pantry and the cellar. Now he sat at an old table, his cleaver resting against it and his bag set nearby. It had been weeks since he had first woken up, and still nothing came to him other than the sparse memories he had. Any knowledge he had of this place was limited. There were no people, other than the dead at least. No animals, other than the dead at least. There were no remnants of society, other than the dead at least.
The only living thing here was himself, and the monsters, of course.
Given Name: Has given herself no name; why choose a nomenclature when there is nobody to call you? I’ll let the other characters pick a name for her as would be appropriate to the impression she makes. Gender: Female Class: Vagrant Warrior
Appearance, Equipment and Abilities Physical Description: A frightened animal. A cornered wolf. The dirt caked face of someone who has outlived their luck. Where her left eye should be is only a hardened, faded bandage with dark brown smears that continue besmirching her unwashed cheek down to the chin. The other eye, amber in color and encircled by a dark coloration, stares nervously from one blackened corner to another, always watchful. Her weather-beaten face bears numerous incisions old and new; wounds from battles both won and lost.
A coarsely-knit hood covers her head and the greasy, unkempt black mane on it most of the time. Her haggard body, average of height and athletic in build, is covered in dark, primitive animal furs and hard boiled leathers. Where her attire has failed, openings have been patched up with wrappings of simple cloth; rough, beige linen bands. A compact knapsack with most of her supplies is strapped to her back, hidden underneath the cape of black wolf fur that she knows is supposed to be very dear to her – but cannot remember why. Additional pouches and bags can be found along her belt, containing base necessities like food, bandages, rope, a whetstone and more. A necklace made from animal sinew and teeth hangs around her neck and can be seen lying over her vest, a reminder of a world that was lost.
Armaments:
• Iron Sword A weathered, simple sword made from solid iron. Has a double-edged blade roughly 60 centimeters in length (about 23.5 inches) with a plain cross guard and a hilt made from horn, wrapped in leather to provide superior grip. Used as a backup weapon in close combat scenarios, preferably in conjunction with a shield due to its poor reach.
• Broken Round Shield A common round shield, often seen employed by warriors hailing from the wooded mountains. It is made from linden wood, has been reinforced with leather around the rim, and measures 95 centimeters in diameter (37.5 inches). An unfortunate encounter has chipped off around a quarter of the shield, making is less useful. On the front side, faded paintings of a deer crest can be barely seen.
• Glaive Uncomplicated and effective, this weapon features a 45 centimeter (17.7 inches) long, double-edged blade, affixed on a 2 meter (6.5 feet) long, wooden pole. Typically used similarly to a spear, but can also cut and chop in certain situations, granting the glaive a great amount of flexibility.
Other Equipment:
• Flint and Steel A chunk of flint stone and a small, irregular block of steel to start fires.
• Knife A small, iron knife not intended for combat.
• Whetstone A worn whetstone to keep all of her weapons sharp.
• Oil Roughly half a liter of oil contained in an iron flask. Used to prevent rust on the blades and create torches.
• Rope About 9 meters (30 feet) of hemp rope.
• Blankets Two rolls of wool cloth that can be used as sleeping mats and blankets.
• Bandages A few old rolls of coarse linen cloth that can be used to cover wounds.
• Food Assorted fruits and fungi picked from forgotten places where dark waters run, as well as a handful of strips of dried meat with a sickening texture to them. Enough to last one person with a sparse diet for a week. Also included is a skin with a liter of clean water.
Skills:
• A Stranger No More This weathered vagrant has spent a significant amount of time in this dark realm; long enough to have died multiple times, to have lost an eye to it, and to have lost the initial fear of the unknown. It is still there, but it has become a friend on lonely journeys, not an enemy to be dreaded.
• Heartless Warrior While the memories have faded, the lessons learned amongst the woodland tribes have remained in her blood – more than that, they have been tempered by the harsh world of the land betwixt. When backed into a corner, she fights like there is no tomorrow, because she knows that death is not the end; only another painful memory. But sometimes, gratuitous violence is enough to save her from adding another memory to the list.
Inner Workings Memories:
• Memory of the Hunt Rustling leaves, the baying of hounds. Coordinating shouts across the thick woodland. A feeling of unity and hunger.
• Memory of the Rite Exhilaration. Anger. Hatred. A ring of fire, naked, bleeding bodies. No shame, only a feeling of triumph.
• Memory of the Old Adage The road north always leads home. You’d do well to remember this on your journey; and never trust the sun, for it does not shine our way. Follow the great star instead. -The voice of an elderly man to a naïve, young soldier
• Memory of the Ill-Fated Voyage The screams of seagulls, the smell of the ocean, the sound of cresting waves. Dozens of men, a handful of women, singing songs of voyage and victory. Anticipation. Worry.
• Memory of the Misshapen Limbs restrained, vision milky. Tall, ghastly figures, impossible to be human, congregating around mineself. Terror. Panic. The searing pain of tools, conceived in fevered dreams, sinking into the flesh. And then they brought the mask – a hideous invention of cold iron, placed upon the skinless head. Screws dig into the bone. Agony. Emptiness. Hunger… and then the restraints burst apart.
Awakening: Sand. Sand filled her mouth and nostrils, a material as alien to her as the world she awoke to. It happened with a startle as her body sprung to life, gripped by spasms of violent coughs to try and expel that damnable sand. She rolled over on her elbows and puked dust and digested remains onto the shifting ground underneath her, while the unnaturally hot evening sun descended red hot over the distant dunes, where large fragments of bone jutted out from beneath the soil. After long, exhausting moments her body finally stopped being shaken by her now-cleansed lungs, and she collapsed back onto the ground, panting, eyes skyward.
There was a looming sense of regret and nostalgia in the air that she felt long before even the first questions began to form themselves. The first of these was ‘Where?’ – without even realizing that she had been transported to another world, she could not explain her whereabout, for indeed her eyes had never seen a desert before. Where in the world was she? Where was home? Confused and frightened, she sat up and peered about the lifeless dunes surrounding her. It was hopeless, her sense of orientation utterly defeated – the most she could garner by the sun’s position were the cardinal directions, but little did she know that even that would prove to be of little help. Lying next to her, half-buried in the sand, she found her old weapons: her trusty glaive, a simple short sword, and a large, round shield with a crest that looked vaguely familiar. It was then, her fingers stroking across the shield’s surface, that her state of amnesia began to dawn upon her. The moment she had laid eyes upon these objects, she had assumed they were hers, but could not remember ever having fought with them, could not even tell to which clan the crest belonged. And what clan did she call home? How did she even get here? Where – who was her family? What even was her name?!
Questions upon questions, and no answers in sight; only endless dust, washing over the dunes. As desperation set in, the color began to fade from her already pale visage that became torn in a grimace of dread. What catastrophe had brought her to this moment? Had the world ended in the great, purgatory flame as foreseen by the elders? If so, how could her own flesh have been spared by the apocalyptic fire? Or was this the underworld, the ethereal beyond so often called upon by brave warriors who stared in the eyes of death? Then she must have died. Somewhere, somehow. Perhaps on a distant battlefield. Perhaps in the purging inferno. It made no difference now. She accepted the assumption that she was dead with no regrets, but the theft of her memories, that stung deep. Her mind failed to even conjure the name of the deity presiding over death, so that she might curse them for their wickedness. Unspent hatred against oblivion.
She reluctantly rose to her feet, legs shaky on the uncertain, sandy ground. In her eyes, the very soil beneath her boots was made of betrayal. She gathered up her weapons and her shield, and set her eyes northwards. A wizened elder once said that every northward road leads home – she remembered, and for the first time a defiant smile crept upon her thin lips. Her journey had just begun, and in the distance, hooded figures camouflaged in the sand watched a lone warrior brave the perilous dunes against the backdrop of a setting sun.
-the Prince does not know his former name, nor if "Prince" was even his former title. Rather, "Prince of Lies" was what he was called by a mysterious being he encountered in this world that he's taken to since calling Tomb; a being that seemed to know more about Prince than he did, himself. While the Prince of Lies uses the long moniker as something of a name, he will oft simply introduce himself as Prince.
Appearance
The Prince is a handsome and young looking man- another facet of his that has led him to believe that he was royalty in his previous life, or something close. His ragged robes still have an air of grandiose to their faded purple color, and his thin breastplate seems to have a more aesthetics or ceremonial intended purpose rather than anything practical.
His hair is long and blonde, and seems to have been styled many times in whatever previous era he came from. While it has since been muddled and messed many times, it still retains its princely look. Deep set brown eyes and an arrow-like face complete his prim and charismatic complexion, complementing the lean a toned muscle the Prince has garnered both in past life and new.
Equipment
- a blade, much longer than it seems it was supposed to be, for it is weighted rather oddly and the Prince sometimes has trouble handling it. Its hilt is as imposing as its wielder, charred and golden and turning at various angles. Other than this, it is a fairly mundane weapon.
- the Prince's pack contains his various other items that he has needed to survive- a small journal and pen, some basic foodstuffs (That often don't sit well in his stomach), and oil for his lantern. There are various other bits and bobbles that he has gathered during his travels more as keepsakes than anything that could be useful.
- an oil lantern, heavy and seemingly made of iron. The Prince has to keep it filled with oil to keep its light bright, but even burning on the residual oils when relatively empty it emits a very faint glow.
Memories
Of another land
I am kneeling in front of a throne, on which there is no one seated. A man is in front of me; he looks like me, though his hair and beard are grey. He wears a crown, and looks displeased. A beautiful dark-haired woman is beside me, and she is crying.
I stand on a stage, feelings of accomplishment and glory being eaten at by fear and dread. An astonished looking crowd stands before me. My hands are shaking. A dark haired woman is on stage next to me, and tears are in her eyes.
I am running- armed men follow me, their uniforms are bright and colorful. They shout obscenities at me. I am afraid. The dark haired woman runs with me.
I am in a small cabin- a forest looks to be outside the lone window. A burly bearded man is wrapping a cut on my arm, and is talking about something. It sounds like blood is rushing in my ears- I can barley understand him. Something about innocence. The dark haired woman is teeming with tears, and holds my hand.
Again, I am kneeling, though this time over a chopping block. Someone is speaking, but I cannot understand them; like the other memory, it sounds like blood is rushing in my ears. The dark haired woman is on the block next to mine, her tears and sadness replaced with stoicism and confidence.
In this land
I am in a stone castle room with an armored man. A Tomb-like being appears, its face shining a blinding light. I feel a great pain throughout my body, and darkness begins to encroach upon my vision.
Awakening
A cool breeze brushed the shoulders of the young man, sending his tousled blonde hair in all directions and opening crusted brown eyes. The young man rose to a knee and wiped his face with a glove hand- Where was he? Who was he? He glanced down at himself, and at his robes. They were purple- or at least used to be purple. It was only when he stood did he realize the oddly heavy sword strapped to his hip. Its weight seemed strange, for it certainly did not appear to be as heavy as it was. It had a golden hilt, now charred, but still oddly pretty.
The young man tucked his hair behind his ears and pulled his robes tighter around him. It was cold, and very barren. The ground was black as ash, and left a crusty residue on his boots when he took a step. It certainly seemed like he was outside, but glancing up he could almost make out something above him akin to a ceiling, as if he was at the bottom of some magnificently big chasm. Perhaps he was at the bottom of a great canyon, or in the maws of a massive cave? Whatever the case, he continued moving- unsure of exactly where he was going.
Eventually, he saw it. On the horizon, a massive blackened castle, as dark as the ground beneath him. It seemed to be made of stone, but reflected what light there was like metal. The man continued on a journey towards this complex- only to make an odd discovery. No matter how far he walked, how hard he tried to reach it, the castle was always on the horizon. Regardless, the young man continued to move towards it. It gave him purpose. It gave him cause.
A typical ginger, Maldron is simply average. A guy you would pass on the street and pay him no attention. On a closer look, people always remember his amber eyes and freckles.
Equipment:
Mark of The Red Queen - Not equipment in literal sense, this distinctive brand on his hand resembles a beating human heart. There is something special about this brand, but Maldron can't remember what.
Black Leather Armor: A full set of studded black leather. Comfortable, sturdy and absolutely maddening during hot weather or after lot's of physical activity.
Grey linen robe: A simple, unassuming hooded robe with a single button in front. It hides Maldron's collection of venom and throwing daggers. It also doubles as a blanket, and is very useful at remaining unassuming.
Small cloth pouch: A small pouch where Maldron keeps small amounts of food. The bag reeks of metal, indicating it was once used to carry something else.
Dagger: A simple, yet reliable dagger hidden in his right sleeve.
Throwing Knives: Various buckles and straps on the front of his leather armor hold around 12 daggers meant for throwing, as well as several glass vials with unknown substances. His small arsenal is usually hidden from view by the robe.
Memories:
A group of people in black leather have him cornered. Maldron is still a kid, one of their money pouches in his hand. The men are grinning, and one of them is reaching his hand out to Maldron.
Maldron is sparring with kids similar to him, as men in black watch from the distance. Bruised, beaten and tired, they know they are not allowed to stop until they can no longer stand. He feels deep fear and respect for those people.
Maldron is a black room, kneeling, his hand held forward. Corpses and fresh blood surround him, blood dripping from his blade. The men in black approach him grinning, carrying a brand. Searing pain courses through his hand, as he hears their words: "From now on, you are Maldron, a weapon of unparalleled lethality".
Maldron, now in his black armor, is in front of a fountain. A fountain of blood. In the middle of this fountain is a throne, in it sits a pale woman, with a hole where her heart is supposed to be. The blood, defying all logic, is slowly moving towards where the woman's heart should be. The woman, an beauty beyond compare, with long, black hair. Maldron feels immense respect for her.
Maldron is in front of a throne. A man with long grey hair sits on it, with a grand, golden grown, expensive and colorful clothes. His throat is cut wide open, and he gurgles as blood gushes out. Around him are bodies of the King's guard. The throne room's floor is full of warm, red blood. Maldron feels absolutely nothing.
Maldron is running through a crowd. Behind him could be heard the clanging of metal and various shouts, like "Stop the assassin!. He still feels nothing. No fear, no excitement. He knows the path to safety, it is not the first time he took the guards for a chase.
Awakening: Maldron finds himself in a grey wasteland, with massive, grey, stone-like trees towering above him. He could not remember how he got here, or who he actually was. Yet he felt nothing. As he stood up, he probed his mind for memories, but they were hard to find. What was left indicated him being an assassin named Maldron. Was he drugged? Was this another of their tests? Does it even matter? From the very few memories that were left, Maldron knew that he flirted with death way too many times to worry about it now. Just another mission, he reassured himself. That's all there was to it. Maldron is a weapon, and a weapon should not concern itself with the concept of self, nor ask the question "why". Whatever happened, whatever was ahead, it is not for him to wonder. His only reason to live is to end other lives, and this lifeless landscape must contain his next target.
Here is a Man who shows not his face as he walks, and walk long and far does he. His armour is heavy and stifling, yet it phases him not. Few are graced with conversation with the Turncloak Blade, and fewer still are given the honour of traveling alongside him. He seems to have come from no place, and his memories are all but faded. Some say he is a wandering husk, ready to strike out against those who approach on a whim. Others disagree and say he is a gentle heart contained within an irremovable clad of cold steel. His halberd seems to be coated fresh with the blood of a new creature every day, whether the blood is of human or otherwise origin is not known to many. Perhaps you have caught the glimpse of his footsteps amidst the dust, or perhaps you have even seen his suit glistening in the horizon, befallen by the thin, wintery light. He seems to have purpose and direction. Those wise souls who have been granted the chance to trace his steps would do well to take the opportunity. But do not anger this hulk of a Man, and do not push him. His blade hungers for the kill, and he is only so inclined to disregard that desire.
The Jester. "But it's just Jester to you, wise guy."
Appearance
By all means, the Jester is a scrawny looking chap. Standing five feet ten, with more lean muscle than meat, clad in dirty clown clothes and a mask that hides his scarred features and a face that never smiles, he is the very definition of an out-of-work clown. "I ain't outta work, it's just a phase."
The bells on his worn hat, though tarnished and old, still ring clearly, each and every movement making the bells dance and jingle softly, its notes haunting in the black, for friends and foes alike. "Ey, these things are a warning, y'know. T'let people know I'm comin'."
Equipment
- A dagger, old and rusty but sharp as a point, it's actually more like a broken long sword than anything else, judging by how the blade isn't whole and the hilt is longer than a regular dagger. "It hurts people just fine. No fixing needed. 'Cept to keep the blade sharp."
- A sickle. Originally a farmer's implement, the Jester, some time in his past, made one his own. It's sharp and stained with dried blood. "But most importantly it's sharp."
- A waterskin. Being a former entertainer meant keeping his throat healthy.
-A leather sling bag. It holds a few days worth of rations, a whetstone, a flint and tinderbox and a broken compass. "The compass helps me navigate. Don't think of it as broken, it's just leadin' me where I'm supposed to be."
- A lute. Made of a light oak wood, stained a deep brown, the lute is still perfectly tuned. "Maybe it's because I've been tuning it, stupid."
Memories
The Beat "Pleasure's all mine. Now, what am I supposed to do? Okay, so I'll be playing for the king, yeah? Alright. Is the coin good? Good enough? No it has to be perfect, man, I swear. This is my life we're talking about here, and I'm not gonna take "good enough" for an answer. Alright fine. Look, I'll sort things out on my end, you do so with yours. In two weeks, I'll be outta here and no longer your problem. Just... Get it done, alright? I'll owe you a big one. Once I'm settled, you find me and I'll see how I can repay you."
Razor's Out "Look, boss, I swear it's true. Yeah, everythin' went according to plan; guy's dead, body's fed to the pigs. No trace, I swear. Yeah, I know. No I don't know who this other douchebag is. No he wasn't part of the plan. Yes, I-...I know, I know, but he showed up without any warning! Yes I took care of him too. Yes, yes I know. *sigh* I got my reasons. Yeah, a dame, love of my life, but listen boss, I want out. What d'you mean, there's no outs?! You distinctly told me there was always an out! Well okay then, what sorta job is it? ...fine, alright I'll do it, but listen, this is the last job, alright? I do this, I split, forever, I won't see you ever again and I won't be a massive pain in the ass."
I Won't Stop "Gotta keep goin'. We can't stop, not now, not ever. Got to get outta the city, find someplace safe to rest. Yes dear I know, it'll be fine. We're not gonna die, don't worry, I'll kill all the bastards that try. Don't you look at me like that, you know where I come from, you know what you were gettin' yourself into. Look, ugh, I'm workin' things out, alright? I'm going through some stuff, cuttin' all my ties with that place, don't you worry. We'll be untouched where we're goin', I'll make sure of it. Now take the horse 'n go! I'll catch up with you! Leave these bastards to me! Don't you worry, I'll find you! Now go! GO!"
A dirt road. It's night time. Foggy. I hear horses. Frenzied hoofbeats on dirt and mud and stone. A woman screaming in fear. I remember following behind the lady. She is with child. I am riding a horse. The men behind me are similarly armed. Weary of the chase, I stop and dismount. The lady screams my name. I pay her no mind and confront my pursuants. Then I remember blood.
The Road to Redemption "Ah don't worry kid. It'll only be until we get a better place to stay, alright? Daddy's gotta work to get coin, and this is the only way daddy knows how to. Besides, it'll be in the palace! Daddy can tell you all about how the king and the queen! Now lemme see you smile. Lemme see. Smile fer me kiddo, else you ain't gettin' a good night kiss. There ya go. Prettiest gal in the whole neighbourhood, you are. My sunshine. Now get to sleep, you got a long day ahead a' you tomorrow, 'n daddy's gotta work for you n' mommy, alright? Relax, sweet cheeks, I'll be fine. I promise."
Sunlight streaming through a window. A young girl sits on a chair at a table, eating oats. I sit next to her, a hand gently stroking through her thick, brown hair. The room is homely. Small, but comfortable.
She's so pretty.
That's my girl. My baby.
My sweet, sweet child.
Heaven "Daddy's home! Oh hey kiddo, c'mere give daddy a big ol' hug! Thaaat's right! Now you're squeezin' the life outta me, leggo! Hehe, how was your day today, sunshine? You met a whole buncha new kids eh? Didja make any new friends? That's great! You'll settle in just fine, sunshine, no sweat. Who, me? I ain't silly, sweet cheeks. Well, today was a good day. I got to meet the king today! How was he? Well he's this old guy, like daddy, but his hair's all grey, and he wears this loooong cape and a crown with shiny jewels in it. Yeah, he's the king baby! The biggest fish in the sea, and daddy gets to play to him for coins! Yeah, sunshine! You couldn't ask for better, right? Where's mommy? She's sleeping? Alright, let's you and me give her a surprise, shall we?"
A Job "Yeah, I'm the king's jester, so what? You got anything against that? I make the funnies and make people laugh for coins. It's my job. So sue me. No you can't pull that on me no more, wise guy, I left that life behind. I left it behind, dammit! I swore an oath! I went on one last fuckin' job! I gave it all up! And now you're wantin' me back in?! No way! I have a wife and daughter I have to upkeep! What d'you mean the coin's not enough? I get paid well enough to enjoy life, wise guy, so keep yer money comments to yourself! Look, I made her a promise that I'd stay away from you forever. Yeah, I know I made a promise to you too, but I am not gonna repay you by offing the person I work for! Maybe a drink or something, yeah, but not like this! You want to kill the king, fine, I'll have to work at the tavern again, but I am not the one to kill him. Go find someone else. I'm done with you."
No one ever told me about the prices one pays for freedom. In hindsight, I guess I was foolish enough not to pay attention to his words. There I stood, blood soaking into my boots. Bodies all around. Everyone was dead. There was nothing else to do, so I ran.
I hid.
But I swore one thing.
I'd make him pay.
Awakening
Shit...my head. Hurts.
I was surrounded by darkness. Enclosing. Trapping me in its embrace. I shook it off and stood. I was disoriented, confused, head was spinning, nothing was making sense, but as I got right with myself things started being more and more coherent. I wasn't on a road no more. I was in this...place. Smelled damp, moldy. Like the inside of someone's old sock drawer. Unfamiliar terrain. Felt like dirt beneath my feet. I could see in front of my face but the dark around me was thick, heavy, like a fog someone had dyed black. Pea soup. Hell, I couldn't have asked for a worse place to wake up from...whatever had knocked me out. At least I still had my things with me, else I'd have tracked the damn cutpurse that took my gear and made him pay. Now, I had to get out of here. There was...somethin' that needed doin'.
But what?
Wait, where am I? That, my friend, is the million gold question.
The hell? Who're you? I'm you.
You're me? Wait...who am I? You're you, and I'm you.
Wait that doesn't make any sense. I'm me. See? That makes perfect sense.
I shook my head. What in the world?! I tried to think, to focus on my name, but nothing came up. Absolutely nothing. Then, as I was trying to calm myself, memories drifted up from my unconscious like a wellspring. A woman. A young girl. Blades, knives. A king. Blood.
Death.
Shit. This didn't make any sense at all. I didn't even remember what I was doing before I woke up! This was stupid! The wrong man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.
Shut up! I'm trying to think here!
Okay, focus.
I took to examining my surroundings a bit more. At my feet, there was a torch, still damp with, as I sniffed my fingers, oil. Slung on my shoulders there was a pack. Inside there was food (thankfully, something right in the world), a waterskin, some other assorted junk, but what I saw was two pieces of flint. A striker, excellent. I fished the stones out of my bag and picked up the torch. Holding the thing between my knees, I struck a spark with the flint and poof, it went up instantly. Light. More things going right for me today, whatever today was. I kept the stones back in the bag and held up my light. It cut through the black like a knife it did, and I saw more than I wanted to.
Irregular stone obelisks jutted out of the ground around me. Some were broken, the rubble scattered out on the dirt, while others extended high, way high into the black sky, farther than I could see. There were no trees, no paths, just the obelisks. They weren't even evenly spaced apart, more like someone had just tossed stone seeds out on the dirt and let them grow into these...things, without caring for organisation or something. Typical. Pfft.
The light also, well, lit myself, and for the first time I could gauge myself. I felt like myself, after all. I reached up to touch my head (I must've hit the back of it when I went down), and found myself touching fabric. Cotton, in long spindles that tapered off to a point ended by a...bell.
A bell?
Okay, I was wearing a hat of some sort. Fine. I took it off and held it in front of me without burning it. The thing looked like some sort of strange, otherworldly beast in the flickering torch light, with its long spindles of fabric and slightly reassuring bells and their soft jingles. The colour on the fabric was faded, yes, but I made out colour. There was patches of red, green, yellow, blue, orange, every other colour in the rainbow, and as I looked down I saw the same sort of attire, faded coloured tunic, pants and soft leather boots. I put the hat back on my head and went to touch my face, but a cold plate got in the way.
The hell?
I was wearing a mask?
My mask. Our mask.
I tried to make out the features of it in the light, but apart from the two holes for eyes, I didn't see anything else on it. It was as pale white as the whites of my eyes. Funny. I looked like a fuckin' joke, like some sort of clown.
Clown...was I one? Was I a jester
a jester? That sounded about right. I didn't even know my own fuckin' name, what a joke, but I guess I could call myself Jester until then. Yeah, that would work. Fuckin' Jester the...jester, make you laugh, make you cry, make you bleed your fuckin' bones dry. Har de har har.
Well whatever the case, I didn't feel safe here, not at all. I had to get moving. With one foot into the black, the other soon followed. I didn't know where I was going, or where I was gonna go, but I had to find answers.
I had to. Or else one of us is going to get very, very
MAD.
Ding dong The king is dead Someone stabbed him in the head Floor is bloody Floor is red The king is fuckin' dead
Appearance: Rook is by no means a large man only standing at an average height for his age with a medium frame with toned muscles gained from years of hunting game. He’s gained many scars calluses over his arms and hands from the same practice. His hair is a light brown color with tinges of red and hangs down to his shoulders when he chooses not to tie it back out of his face. His broad chin and cheekbones are covered in a short, brown-red beard. Beneath thick eyebrows the same color as his hair, Rook has a set of mismatched eyes; one is a light golden brown while the other is a mossy green color. His wide-nostrilled nose is slightly off center and looks as though it was broken at some point in his life. He looks to be in his early twenties. Rook awoke in this unknown land wearing a plain, longsleeved linen shirt dyed a faded grey, a set of dark trousers with a few patches sewn on here and there, a pair of durable boots made of a cracked leather, a pair of thick leather gloves, an animal call made of a light-colored wood hanging by a leather thong, and a cloak dyed a slate grey color on the outside and a deep crimson on the insider.
Equipment: Rook awoke with a crossbow made of a dark wood with a lever attachment, a dirk with a handle made of stag horn and a blade measuring about half a foot in length, an axe measuring about two feet in total, a pouch containing roughly thirty crossbow bolts, an animal call, and knapsack filled with: snares for trapping, a bedroll, spare string for his crossbow, a needle and thread, a whetstone, a few pieces of dried meat, and a half full waterskin.
Memories: A Broken Flight: He was running through a forest, a shrill laugh coming from him. Branches snapped back from the force of his body as he ran, the wind blowing through his hair and over his face. His footfalls were not heavy, and his strides did not take him far; he must be young, very young. He ran his hands along a large tree he skidded to a halt in front of. His hand was small, round, and slightly plump. The bark was old, like the loose skin of old men. Keeping his hand firmly on the trunk of the grandfather tree, he ran around it with more shrill laughs escaping his tiny mouth. He soon grew dizzy and decided to collapse where he started, landing in a soft bed of dirt and twigs. The world spun overhead, the leave soon becoming a green wheel. He continued watching the world spin until it came to a slow halt. Then, very suddenly something came crashing through the branches overhead and landed in a pile of bramble to his left. Getting up slowly to regain his balance, he stumbled toward the brambles to see what had fallen. At the bramble bush, he stepped through it gingerly, doing his best not to get stuck, but his clothes inevitably got caught on the brambles. Pulling them loose from the clutches, he continued on to find the thing that had came tumbling down to the earth. When he found it, he bent and scooped it up as carefully as he could. He set it on the bed of dirt and twigs he had fallen in himself; it was a bird. It sat shaking and terrified where he laid it; its right wing was broken and bloody. It wasn’t very old at all, like him. He stroked the bird’s head softly in an attempt to comfort it. Once it had settled down, he gathered two twigs and tore off a strip of cloth from his shirt and then bound the bird’s wing in the makeshift splint. He picked the bird back up easily and made his way back to the cottage. There, he showed it to the man there, his image blurred and distorted. He spoke, but he could not hear it; though, somehow he felt the man approved of the injured hawk.
The Painted Forest: He was in a bright forest, surrounded by trees with leaves of vermillion, but everything was blurred like a painting dipped in water before it had a chance to dry and set into the canvas. He hefted the same crossbow he awoke with up to his shoulder; it was so heavy his arms shook slightly as he held it up. Turning his head to the left, he saw someone standing there, but their face and image were blurred like the rest of the painted forest. The man, he wasn’t sure how he knew it was man, said something to him. Something about looking down the crossbow. Obeying the words he felt more than heard, he turned back to look down the crossbow at what he had raised it to. Off in the distance was stag so much more in focus than the forest that he could count all six antlers atop its head and see the rich brown fur covering its body. He took aim at this stag and then squeezed the trigger of the crossbow, sending a bolt flying from the crossbow and through the air to embed itself in the heart of the animal.
The Blurred Man’s Gift: He was in a field behind a small cottage, and everything was blurred just like the forest. Everything except for a stack of hay painted with a large target in the center. He hefted the crossbow up to his shoulder like he did in the forest and took aim at the hay target. He squeezed the trigger and sent a bolt sailing into the hay a ring from the center circle. He shot three more bolts into the hay, all landing in a small grouping around the first. A noise behind him caused him to lower the crossbow and turn to see the blurred man from the forest walking toward him. He felt the smile beneath the blurred image that was his face and saw the thin box he carried in better focus than his surroundings. The man held the box out to him as he neared. He took the box and opened it to see it held a knife with a newly forged blade and a handle made from the antler of the stag he killed in the forest. He lifted the knife from the box tentatively and examined it, feeling a smile spread over his face. Then, he dropped the knife back in the box and jumped into the blurred man’s arms, wrapping his own around him in a hug. The man smelled of the forest.
The Pyre: He was standing before an inferno, the smell of smoke and burning flesh reaching his nostrils and causing them to flare up. Everything but the inferno was blurred and distorted. He stared at the flames intently, watching the body in the midst of the pyre slowly disappearing as tongues of fire flicked up and consumed it more and more. His eyes were wet, and his nose was running. An overwhelming feeling of sadness swept over him and refused to let go. So he stood and watched the pyre for hours until it completely consumed the body and the entire pyre crumbled to ash.
The Final Hunt: He sat crouched in the midst of a close grouping of trees and bushes, his crossbow held toward the ground but ready to aim if he spotted his quarry. With a whistle he summoned Artimus to him; she came swooping down from the trees and landed on his outstretched arm. He stroked her head softly, causing her to closer her eyes and rub his finger a little. With a command he could not hear leave his lips, the red tailed hawk took back to the skies. He stood from his crouching position and followed under the bird back to the camp he had made. There was another man there chopping wood for a fire, his features just as blurred and distorted as The Blurred Man’s. The Woodcutter said something to him, but his voice did not escape the man’s mouth, but he somehow understood what he asked and replied with a shake of his head. He continued on to his own tent in the small camp, leaning his crossbow against the side of the tent and went inside to collapse on his bedroll. Some time later there was a noise from outside. He leapt up and ran out of his tent to see the camp ablaze. The flames and smoke limited his vision. He saw a dark shape moved toward him.
Awakening: He awoke to a soft pecking on his cheek. He opened his eyes slowly to see Artimus perched on his shoulder and pecking him to wake him up. He sat up with a groan and looked around; he was what looked like a forest made of stone and ruins with moss and vines creeping up the stones. His head pounded as he tried to remember coming to this place, but it was no use. Artimus flew up to one of the stones and looked around. He couldn’t recall anything about himself really, but he remembered the bird as clear as day. With a whistle he used on instinct alone, the bird fluttered down to perch on his arm. He stroked her head and peered around the stone forest himself. He and his familiar were the only ones present at the moment. He directed his gaze back to the bird and watched her for some time, trying to remember anything, but it was useless. He could not even remember his own name, but the bird caused a word to surface in his mind; “Rook”.
”Rook? It’s as good a name as any,” he thought to himself.
Rook lifted his arm up slightly, and Artimus took flight once more, this time circling overhead several times. He looked down at his own body, examining it; he was wearing the knife with the handle made of antler, the dark wooden crossbow, and an axe. He pulled the knife up to look at it, hoping it would bring back more memories, but alas his hopes were in vain. He sheathed the knife and turned his head skyward toward his feathery companion. With another whistle, Rook began walking with Artimus following him overhead and keeping watch for anything he could not see. He pulled his crossbow up but kept it pointed down instead of fully in front of him. He ran his gloved finger along the wood, barely feeling the old notches there.
He walked through the stone forest until his body began to protest going any further without nourishment. Rook chose to obey his body’s protests and found a smaller stone to sit on while he pulled his knapsack off and rummaged through it to see what all he had. Within the leather bag, Rook found a few pieces of dried meat and a waterskin half full. Taking these out, he ate one of the pieces of dried meat and threw half of another one to Artimus. He washed the salt from his mouth with a small mouthful of water. Somehow he knew to ration what he had and what to do to find more food, at least he would know what to do if he were in a normal forest in a location he knew of, but he didn’t know much of anything anymore other than the memories he awoke with and the name of the red tailed hawk with him in this strange land.
Appearance Forgotten is a young adult female, tall and thin and of slender features. Her skin is white and pale, her eyes a piercing green, and her hair jet black, long and straight, falling just below her waist. She wears a plain white gown that would be very familiar to anyone who has visited a modern hospital, a little torn and sordid near the bottom. The sleeves of this gown have been torn away and wrapped around her hands and lower arms, concealing a series of scars.
Equipment A single, small knife, a plastic tray with a single meal on it, a woolen blanket, and a small wooden puzzle-box, its contents unknown as she has forgotten how to open it and refuses to destroy it.
Memories -The knife she arrived with was used to inflict the injuries she bears on her arms -The day before she died she attempted to kill herself, but failed -She had three older sisters, and each of them was better than her at everything -She can remember a storybook that her mother used to read her as a child, the story of a girl named Forgotten -She can remember lying on the ground and sobbing after having been punched in the face -She used to practice archery, and was pretty good at it
Awakening In a moment of epiphany, the young woman made a sudden realization that filled her with warmth and love. Knowing that she had to tell her family, she quickly sat up in her bed and opened her eyes- except she wasn't in her bed, and her eyes showed her a far different place than that hospital in which she had fallen asleep. This place was grey and flat, the twilight landscape interrupted only by a few solemn spires of worn stone. Where was her- her- who was she looking for just now? She strained her mind but just couldn't remember who it was that she wanted to tell about... about what? It had just come to her, and she had already forgotten, she had forgotten so much, almost everything, just like the girl in the story book... Why could she still remember that? She could not remember her mother, but she could remember that. Was she the girl in the storybook? Was she Forgotten? "I am Forgotten." She said it aloud, and it seemed to... click. Even if that wasn't her name before, it certainly would be now.
~~~ Given Name: Shimmer ~~~ Appearance: Sharp blue eyes rippled in the reflection of the dirty pool; they hide behind matted bangs of gold falling to frame a dirt smeared face thin in size and pale in comparison to the lite ruins around them. The reflection was rippled and distorted as a slender hand dipped into the cool murky water cupping it, caressing it, as the pale specter brought the water hungrily up to her cracked lips, once full and decorated by dimples in bright smiles now turned into a decrepit smile, twisted by the despair of this hell. The rest of the small figure was a dirty and pale as it's face, a lacy tattered dress gracing its frames, the end of it thick and heavy with grime and sludge of various things, it was hard to tell if the girl child was as frail as she seemed. ~~~
Equipment: Shimmer carries little on her person, and woke up with even less. Her once gilded heels now tattered and worn attached to her feet with bindings and cloth, scavenged from her own clothes and corpses alike. Dangling slightly from her slender wrist is a small pouch, crudely sown and formed together of shoes and twine. Shoved into it were small berries and scraps of meat; little things she had scavenged. Her namesake and only true possession she awoke with was glittering around her neck; a softly shimmering ring, silver worked into the form of entwining branches and flowers, dotted lightly with little gems and precious stones. It was secured by a simple throng of leather and thread. Her right hand dripped red pearls of liquid as they raced down from the handle of an ax, it looked well crafted and maintained, a gift from a dying man so to speak. She kept a whet stone and small amount of oil tucked in the bindings around her wrist, having spent many a days destroying her once delicate hands as she learned to care and clean for the pretty blade. It too shimmered in the low light. ~~~
Memories:
Her golden hair whipped over her face, her cheeks flushed and glistening in the summer sun. The sky was blue, and wide, and went on until it hit the line of endless grass waving gently in the wind. The pounding sound of hoof beats, whirring bees, and whistling grass assaulted her ears. A rushing feeling of warmth bubbled up through her body, and exited as a rich, full laugh. The feel of the powerful beast under her thrilled her, but not as much as the sight of the bright smile on the face of the man riding beside her, sharing in her liberation.
Her eyes were closed, as feelings of trepidation shot through her, the light bouncing of her feet, him taking her hand sliding something cold and foreign on to it, the weight of it unfamiliar yet not uncomfortable, a well of emotions clouding her eyes as he whispered for her to open them. The ring sat on her hand, shimmering happily in the sun light breaking through the trees. His soft embrace and subtle smell of leather and iron, words of love and adoration being whispered over and over again in her ear, as she felt his shirt moisten beneath her face, still unaware that she was crying. Forever. Those were the only words she could whisper back, and she had meant them.
Her heart pounded solidly in her chest, a heavy thumping as time seemed to slow. Her beloved lay in the bed, her hair mussed and strands sticking with sweat to her forehead and cheeks. Her face was ruddy, her breathing quick, but her eyes were bright and clear. She smiled the smile that only a woman completing the greatest task of her life could smile. The sheets and nightgown formed a soft background, offsetting her almost barbaric appearance. Maybe it was the sense of creatures having completed such an act since the beginning our race. Time slowed to impossibly small increments as she leaned to take the small babe out of her wife's hands. The sharp tangy smell of blood didn't seem out of place as her son twisted and resettled it's tiny body in her arms. She looked up in wonder to see the contented gaze of the mother resting on her. Her, and her son.
The light summer rain kissed her cheek as she stood on the shipping dock, the gentle waves rocked against the stead fast structure as she watched her brother wave as the creaking ship sailed further and further from her view. If the dock was longer she would have run along it to keep his bright happy smile in her eyes for just a little longer. Dropping her hand back down to her side she sighed wistfully, wondering just what it would be like to venture out into the vast ocean. Turning, she continued to walk, stepping down, lightly feeling the warm sand squish beneath her toes and dragging her heels lightly as she left a pattern behind her. So this what it meant to be a shipmaster's daughter, to be bound to the land; stuck on shore as the ocean beckoned, whispering to her with promises of glory and praise. But she was stuck on land, destined to wander the sands of land and not those of the oceans, sighing she picked up a stone holding it up to glimmer in the sun before casting it out into the waters watching it skip lightly on the surface hopefully before sinking.
The arid sands swept across the dunes in torrents and waves summoning and creating a massive sandstorm. The cloth around her face fluttered in the oncoming winds, the spy glass pressed in against her scrunched, wind burnt cheek. The caravan was close, but so was the storm. The soft snort and neigh of beast behind her gave her pause; she herself was seated upon a white washed creature, its soft mane whipping around them, mounted behind her was a band of sand riders, waiting on a signal or word from their leader. The threatening storm, the unsuspecting caravan, the change for gold and goods, the thought of the challenge made her mouth water in suspense. This what what she lived for, the glory of the chase, the building thrill as it drove her to shivers of pleasure, a wild howl escaping her lips as she urged her charge forward the rest of them following her in a wave of colors and wild yelps and calls.
~~~
She laughs politely behind a daintily gloved hand, and takes a sip of the well-watered wine in her glass. The gentleman currently addressing her was soft, portly, with deep creases in his face, a scattering of white hair across his scalp, and generous laugh lines at the edge of his eyes. These she knew, were more from the drink so often consumed by the retired cavalry general, rather than the grandfatherly nature they seemed to portray. She felt the disdain and irritation of wasting her time on this man build up in her and she forced it down without a flicker of disgust marring her perfectly polished expression. He made another slurred joke, this time about the gentlemanly sport of fox hunting. She paid him a vague compliment, accompanied by one of her most dazzling smiles, and he preened visibly, his chest and stomach puffing out like some red-ribbon rooster. She had to become acquainted with the man, she was to live in his household within the year. She steeled herself under the pressure of responsibility and propriety, and prepared to make another exaggerated word of praise. She adjusted her gaze over his shoulder so she wouldn't have to look at him, the bulbous nosed drunkard wouldn't notice either way, and got caught with her mouth ajar. There, dressed in an ill-fitted servers uniform, among the sea of colorful gowns and somber suits, was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen. The jacket was stretched tight across his chest and shoulders, and the sleeves were a bit too short, but she barely noted it. He was here. He turned with the drink tray being held idly in his hand, their eyes met. She fell into pools of woody brown and gold, and brushed past her future husband.
A dark laughter echoing through the barren hallway, as a scrapping sound followed it by a soft ticking sound, the ticking of a clock? Far off in the house the sounds of screaming could be heard as an accompaniment to the soft ticking and scrap, scrap, scrap. Another pearl of laughter snaked through the shadowed space. Farther and farther down the hall did the carpet begin to squish, squish, squish, the white walls did start to turn red, red, red as if someone decided them too mundane and droll to be left alone.
The soft touch of his hand gently brushing a wisp of hair back into place, the tittering of laughter as it escaped her, the halo of light around him as he hung over her. The smell of flowers as they crushed the bed beneath them, the blissful feelings as he whispered sweet nothings in her ears, kissing her softly over and over again. The chirping of birds, as they continued to welcome the spring season, their special clearing for them and only them. The nativity of it all, that this would last forever, just her and him in their field of flowers.
~~~~
Awakening: The warm taste of honey lingered on her lips as her eyelids flickered open, a nagging feeling at the back of her mind as she started absentmindedly at the cavernous spikes above her. A slight tilt of her head letting it fall towards the right showed the same never ending scenery, skeleton remains scattered around her; a pleasant smile on her lips as if this was all just a bad dream.
Surely she wouldn't wake up in this place, she was..she was...she was...who was she?
The question hit her like a ton of bricks dragging a hollow ragged breath from her chest as she scrambled to her feet, her heels teetering dangerously on the uneven ground. The soft clanking of metal drew her attention, to the shimmering object on the ground. A ring. A ring of flowers and branches. One that drew out sadness and longing, but oh how it shimmered even in this darkened place. The only sound she could hear was her shaky breath as she reached out tentatively to reclaim the ring, her head screaming in pain as her voice whispered Forever in her ear. In fear she dropped the ring with a shoot as memories flooded back to her in broken fragments, feeling as if something was ripping apart her mind.
"Shimmer. Shimmer. Oh how it Shimmers~"
She hummed softly fascinated by the object of such pain and yet happiness, picking it back up afraid to slip it back on her dirtied hands. A feeling of disgust at the sight of her skin being marred, a pity she couldn't see her dress till much later, after any thoughts of keeping it clean were soon lost. There was little around her, and everything echoed. Whimpering slightly she clutched the ring to her chest backing away slowly from the small circle of light. Perhaps she could find someone to take her home, home? Where was home? So many questions, and every time she thought she had something figured out, it seemed like the walls would laugh at her.
Perhaps she was one of the fortunate ones for in the first day, she was alone, no whisper of dark creatures, or whimpers of frightened souls, it was just her and her thoughts driving her further and further. There were times she would scream and cry, anything to break the silence. Perhaps this was her hell, to exist in this state of nothingness.
But that was wishful thinking, for in the months that followed she would wish for that simple hell once more.
Long, Raven Black hair frames a face with primarily sharp features: a pointed nose, sharp eyebrows, and an often contemplative frown or curious purse upon her lips. Her skin is smooth and pale but overall healthy beneath the grime of the darkness, and her physical features hint at a trained athleticism rather than one of experienced hardship, though examination would show that her palms and fingers are rough like one who has worked before, and a few looks upon her body would betray that she has died perhaps twice in her travels already.
Despite her morose epithet, the Oblivion Songstress’ eyes are round in contrast to her otherwise sharp features, carrying a hopeful, perseverant glow from her hazel pupils. In stature, she stands at about the height of the average male, with even proportions and a balanced poise. It appears to most observers that the wastelands have yet to break Oblivion’s spirit, as there is still a slight spring to her step, a straightness to her back and a tightness to her grip that shows she is not yet ready to resign anything further than her name to oblivion.
Or perhaps… Perhaps she has resigned herself to oblivion and thinks this is her own personal hell of atonement.
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Equipment
Her Dress is a tattered, grimy set of layered cloth in faded blue, black, and white with golden trim. It appears that it was once quite pleasant to look at and the material that is left is of durable weave and material. There are steel fasteners at the waist and shoulders that appear to have once held plates. Perhaps armored dresses were something of a necessity where she lived?
A single flower festooned in her hair, a white lily with gold speckles. It appears to have some significance to her as it is the cleanest item on her person. Touching it reveals that the flower is, in fact, real. How it has not withered is anyone’s guess, but is definitely the work of some kind of life preserving magic unrelated to the timelessness of this oblivion.
A leather messenger bag of fine craft, with solid stitching but little ornamentation. Within is several pieces of beef jerky that have yet to be eaten due to their absolute rarity, a folded burlap sack with blood stains just big enough to fit a beef leg… or perhaps a human head, a large flask filled with dirty water of the wastes, a flint and steel set, twine and a spool of particularly strong string and perhaps most importantly:
A leather bound tome filled with songs, hymns and chants in a foreign language. It appears to be waterproof and is singularly clean despite everything else, but Oblivion herself does not know or dare to consider if it is fireproof.
Sheathed at her waist and fastened with a pair of chains, is a sheathed dagger. Inspection of the blade reveals it to be of magical origin as the blade is not of mortal manufacture and is made of clear crystal. It seems to hum slightly in tune with sound.
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Memories
♦ Distance. She was alone and training was everything. Her t̶̴̤̦̭͎̰̟͈͓̗͓̮̘̬͎̖͘͟ẹ̡͓̲͙̱͎̙̹̳̹̟̰̫̕͠a̻͎͢ͅc̛̼̥̜̗̝͕͈̪̣͝͞h̶̭̥̞͖̮̝̹̫͞͞e̡̘̪̘̻̜͉̳̮͈̭̝̠̘͉͓̝̝̕͝͠ͅͅŕ̤̫̟̲͔̳̯̖̠͟s̖͈̼̠͚̙͎͕͘͞ ̵̶̷̪̯͎͎͉̘͔̠̣ͅá̡͖͇͎͉̻̼͎̤̘͇̤̯̮̫͘͘n̵̡̢̧̘͕̟̗̝̲͝d̴̘̻͓͙̮̹͎͖̘̭̱̹͔̺̫͟ͅͅ tut͢҉̨҉̬͙͇̜͚̗̘͔̻̞̟̥̱͓͕̩͙͓o͡҉̭͍̙̲̩̞̟̞̗͇̘̮̜̞̞̟r̤̯͉̘͙͡͞s̶̶̜̮̭̤ͅ ͢҉҉̡̻̞͚̥̩͘ẁ̴̗̬̯̙̭̩̣̦͚͙͚͇̩͇̲̩̕͜͞e̶̡̳̞̱͉̝̖͡r̵̶̢̛̯̤̗͔̱̺̼̳̜̭̝̝͖̟̖̟̱͜e͏ wh̴̵͇̣͓̖͢a̡̹̻̞͎̯̜̺̲̝̲͖͇͡͡ͅͅt̵̡͈̣̠͓̻̝͚͍̺̀ͅ ͏̸̶͍͔̦͇̳̱͕̜̝͘͘s̸̡̙̹͚̠̘̮̦̠̼͢͡͡h̷̥̖̙͖̫́͢͡͞é̵̡̯̟͙̱̻̮͎͠͠ ̴̯̳̰̯̹̲̰̥̤̱̥͇̥̫̳͍͢ͅc̸͈̯̮̝̹̳̬̫̟̪̫͕͞ǫ̬̪͙̙̯̬͔͙̝̺̳͉̞͉̟͜n̤̭̼̦͈̺̞̟̭̝̱͎̞͘͠ş̷̛̬͇̦͍͈̳͖̩̭̪̫̝̫͟͞ì̡͏҉̼̦͉͞d̷̛̕͞҉̠͉͖̱͖̰̘̹̱̩̤̹̙̥̙̻̠ͅe̢͇̙̞̞̭͇̣͔͎̳̯̞̩͕̠̦̲͔͟ŕ̷̨̳̟̬̘̣̳̯̬̻͝ȩ̴̦͉̤̞̺͖̩͎̲̼͍d͏̘̪̰̤̘̖̭̜̝ͅ ̨͕͇̗̩̼͉̗͇̜̝̗͎͕͍̼̀h̸̛҉͙͍͓͍̣̦͚͕͖̙̱̩̞͖͠é͓̖̠͍͜͜͡ŗ̶̻͕̙̹͖͚͚̦̩̙͔̺͍̀ parents. There were no other students, no other contacts. It was a cold place, hidden away. But all the training had a purpose. What was that purpose again…? Oblivion remembered politics and history, basic sword fighting and the use of a bow. But most importantly, there was training in the song magic of h̡̨͕͍̫̭̬̪̫͕̘̙͜͞e̵̸̵̡̛̪̻͓̙̭͖̟̱ŗ̫̜͓̯͘ ̛́͞҉͈̼͎̻̟̫͓̤̥̱̙ͅͅn̵̴̯̜̯̯̬͈a̸̸̡͇̜̣̺̲̘̤̯ṱ̸̢͓͚͕͕͚͙͈̰̻͉͇̹̼́͠i̧̡̨̲̝̺̝̪͓͍͢ơ̩̗̫̘̳͕̗̭̬̬̲̗̹̟͢͟͡n̶̨̼̟̯̰̮͖̪̳͉̱̱͉̣͈. ♦
♦ A nation of great white spires that rose up high into the sky. To the people, justice and equality were everything. They could not forgive the neighboring nation for the injustices that they placed upon everyone around them and to themselves. It was a battle of ideologies, and also one of science versus magic. She remembered being told that hatred is the surest of weapons. For this, s҉̭̲͍̞̹͘͟͟h̸̢̯̜̝̮̱͖̯̩̫̙͖̯e҉̫̺̣͈̗̜̣̹̜͉͉͟ ̧͎̩̯̠͓̖̠̰̀́͟ț̨͉͎̖͙͚̪͕̲̣̭̦̲̦͕̤̥́̕͢͞r̬̰̙̙̰̯͕̖̲̱͖͍͓̘̀͟a̴̴̖̭̪͇̞͈̳̬̘̹͈̤̤̝i̩͓̪̙̝̪͘͠n̶̟̳̠̫͖̜̬̝͖̪̭͚̗̲͢͠ͅę̵̨̠̥͔͔̦̜̹̲̰̜̟͢ͅd҉̺̝̟̫͎͖̙̥̤͔́ ha҉͎̪͉̺̯̘̼̜̼̻̫͎̬̥̼̰̬̕͟͟r̷҉̗̤̜͕̬͕̙̠̞̜̦̳͉͙͖̙̗͓̗d̴̨̢̞͉̙̪͎̻͡,̵̸̷͚̤̯̫̫̠̘̺̣̥͖̣̭̖͓̻̀͘ͅ ̛͠͏̷̪͚͖͉̳̹̮̙f͏̢̭̺̯̮̼͎͈͍͓͘͢o̸̶̳̱̦͔̯̦̠̖̜̼̱̤̪̟̯͔͠͡r҉̴̰̟̭̗͎̘̮̥̕͠ ͏̴̬͓̬̬̗̻̤͓͍̯̭̻̳͓̺͔̮͜͟͠į̛̹̻̩̗̻͕̣̮̜̯̻̦͙͙̪̞̩͢͝ṭ̸̷̛̖̹̟͓͓̟̱͝ ͟͟͏̷̰͇̭̲̤͖͖̫̣̙͎͎̟͡w҉͏̢͚̘͙͙͎̠͍̙̭̣͚̝̠̜̺̕a͔̯̖͙͕̠̜͚̩͓̰̼͚͚̠̯̦̕͡͞ͅs̛̳̦̞̺̟͉̝͇̣̤͕̱̝͚̰̗̠͈̝͢͞ ҉͝͏̯̱̝̝̰̣̖̗͎͠ḩ̡̢͏̼͕̳͓̠ͅe̢̢̖̜̠̰̺̲͇̙̖̦̳̬̘͍͟ͅŗ̢̮̲͈̦̩̥͙̺͙̻͔̭̲̻̀ ̨̟̼̜̹̙͓̖̠̟̲͕̜̩̣̗͉͎͘͞o҉̶̢̳̗̬̫̮̝̮̲̜͈̰̯̗̝͞n̵̘͚̯̮̭͎̗̱̤̩̝̬̲͈͉͢l̶̠̘͕̺̟̣̘̬̀ỳ̶̬͔̞̗̪̘̩͔̞̥̰̀ pù͓̩͇̜̯̳̫̹̼͇̣̰͔̼̮̰͙̕͜r̺̘̭͇͙̪̼̳̠͕̟̣̰͍̜̺̙͘͢͠͞p̨͏̳̳̻̞̺͉̩̘̻̭̮́͢͡ͅo͏̴̛̦̖͓̝̦̘̳̜̫͚̣̳͚̠̥͎̠̣̜ş̧̡̟͚͎̙̮͈̗̻ͅe͙͙̭̞͘̕ͅ ̨̨̝̘̖̫̥͉͔̲d̡̳͖̟̭̞̱͝é̞͙͙̯̜͉̪̮͈̥̠̳̦͘͠ͅs̡͕͎͕̩͓̯͈̥͕̫̙̪̻͟͝͡͝p̴̴̢̙̞̘͖̝̖̲͓̺̙̙̳̞ͅi̡̧̮̲̭̼̳̠̲̟̣͍͓̳̠̳̗̭͚͔̘͢t̢̢̻̝͖̲͎͘ȩ̩̺͔͍̭͎̫͔̩̟̫͍̟̲̥̱̕͢͝ ̢̟̣̤̲͕̠̲̠͓̜͉̱͇͚͚̻̜̀͜h͏̛̘͓̳̪̬̝͎̩̯̜͎̺̞̬͙̹͜͠e̴̞̭̠̲ŕ̸̸̡̬͙̖̳̬̙̟̘ ̶̷̤͙̣̣̩̪͍͞ļ̸̸͎͙̟̩ͅͅi̸̡̙̞̣̭̠̯̘͎͖̹͙̤̯̝͘ͅn͔̘͔͉̠̮̯̪̻̗̹͖̖͟͢͠͝ͅè̴̤͉̖̰͇̳̼̕͢͜a̷̢͢҉̮͔͉̣͈̹̳̻͎̟̹̘͔̰̙͚g҉̡̖͍̠̱̪̯͈̱̭͘e͇̫̣̯̹̖͔̙͈͓̟̩̪͠.̼̹͈͇̘̥̗̺̪͎̤͍͚̼̤̕͢͢ͅ ♦
♦ A chance meeting, at the time it couldn’t have been anything but a false start. At least that’s what she convinced herself. Why had the ò̴̵͓̥̮̞͜t̴̴͖̰̩̗̞̘͈͙̟͎̪͈̩̝͕͖̫̖̮͘͟͞h҉̨̛͍͙̟͓̫̗̙̤͓͙̤̖̟̣͍͓̀͜ę̀͏͇̭̣̰̳̠͢r̵̠̤̫͖͚̦̳͕̬̦̦̩̬̘͖͜ ̼̫̩̲̯̫̼́́͡ṕ̧̨͍̘͈͕̳͎̻̜̮̫͇̱̪̟̘̘͡ͅr̷̴̛͔͇̤͓̘̦̩̹̟̯̱̥̜͓͇̥͕͢i͚̞̻͚̻͡n̶̶̢͇͖̼̜̥̝̹͈̭͓̖̬̙̰̫̠̕͜c̢͏̦̥̼̥̩̼̰è̸̴̹̠̪͖͈̬͇̗̺̬̞̳̘̝̦̺̤͝ͅs̷̡̝̣͔̹̤̫̱̬͈̦͢͞͡s͏͕͈̝͕̘͕̫̥͓̟̘̻̝̤͓̩̕͡ spared her life? ♦
♦ Perhaps it was love? S̴͡҉̧̬̜̗̺͕̙̥͙̮i҉̼̲̝̞̰̩̙̲͎̣͙̹̼̠͢͝͠ĺ͙̤͙̦͞ͅk̸̨̺͍̞͚̦̜̟͉̮̩̕͝ͅe̸͞͏͙̪̦̺̹̱̬͎̞ņ̴̶͇̖̭͙̻̮̩͔̞̕ ̢͜҉̸̞̩̩̟͕̙͔̥̠̺̱b̨̳̠̗̲̠̼̺͘l̛͓̱̯̞̜̙͎̺̩̙̪͉̥͞ò̷̺̣͍̙̳̹̼̣̥͚͍͙̬͙̪͇̖͡n͏̥̞̩̤̕͜͢͠d҉͎̝̼͙͔̞̩̯͍̣͚̲͍̞͘͜ͅe̙̫̙̜̞͇̼̤͘͜͞ ̷͚̩̩̱̮̜̯̩̭̦̳̤̭̯͔̥͇̱̰͢h̛̕͏̲̲̙̼̗̱̖̱̬̥̟̰a̶͓̩̗̰̥͉̟͇͈͉̝͈͔̺͞i̵̢̺̣̠̞̺̰̗͍̰͢͜r̴̢̛͔͙͙̬̟̲͔̞̦̠̦͇͉̹̱,̼̞̗̼̩̰̩͍̘̕͘ ̵̤̰͍͎̫̪̖̬̺͇̬͖̬̩͔͢͝͡g̷̴̛̞̫̬̲̣̝̮̠̲̻̤͔̟̤̹̟͜͝ͅr̶̨҉͘͏̩̹̬͉͉̰ͅę̸͕̳̭͔̪͕̖̩̲͕̱͇̀͝e̵̖̘̼̫͘͟n̩̭̭̬͙̦̹̣̳̦̞͖̰̦̭̠͡ͅͅ ̢̥͔̱͎͎̘̘̹͖͙̮̞͉̕e͏͠͏̮͙̭̬͎͉̮̭͘y̸̶̢̝͉͎͚͔̙͖̫̘̫̥̣̱̺̝͢͟e͏̗̦̥̞̫͔̳̗̭̠̼͕̖̞́s͕͈̬͇̪̹̗̲̰̥͍̭̰̦͝͡ͅ ̸̸̭̦͖̮͇̗̝͙͎̬̹͈͜͠ͅà̡̞̥̰͔̪͕̘̜̯͢͞n̵͜҉̝̗͚̰̀d̵̛̪̣̩̞̙ ̧͕̭̜̼̱͙͉͠͠a̷̜͔̜͇̙̮̜̺̣̙͍͎͞ ̴̬̗̝͚̞̦͓͉͖͚͉̤́̕͘͢ͅv̧҉̧̨̘͔͖̜̙̺̹͚̠̤̻̫̀o҉̵̼̹̬̲͟í͕͎̩̹͓̦͙͖̹̘̘̲͚͎̕c̷̶̱͚͖͍̱e҉̘̝̝̠̪͞ͅ ̷̛̖̪̹͎̤̩̰͚̹͖͇̭̼͕̟̺̼̘̠͜͟͠l̴̶̢̖̺͈͓̣͓͔̜͔̼̣͠i̛̜̝̘̺͔̳̺̲̠̠̭̥̳̗̗̼͎̩̕ḱ̀̀̕҉̙̖͙̻̥̣̹̗̣̥ę̸̴̷͙̞̺̲̜̯̣̭̜̥̙͝ ̨̞͈͈͚͓̙̜̦̞͓͔͙͓̗͘͢͜à̵̧̞̲̝̲̣͖̙̣̮̜̞̻̩̜̣̭̺̥̕ņ͎͇̗͙̼̼̮͙̹́͟͝ͅg̶̡̮͚̟̼̤̪̩̫̖e̡̨̳͚̜͕͍͉̖̥l̛̘̼̦͕̞̙̻͚̼̱̯̯͍̲͢s̵̛̬̮̺̰̻͚̯̯͈̞̭̺͚̹̘͞ͅ.̴̷̶̶̟̰̗̱̺̖̱̦̖͟ Wa̵̷͇͓̥͕̰̳̙͉̼̩̜s̶̬̲͍͇̺͔͇̕͠͞ ̪̣̳͇̘̟̲̤̬̣͢͞h̵͡͏̼̱̬̦̰͕͕͎͖͓̳͙̪͔͍͓͔̬̕͟ͅe̕̕҉͚͚̼̤̳̳̠̫̲̦r̷̕͢҉̜̼̩̲̺̺̞͓̠͓̣̬̻̻͍̳̗ ̛̛͎̱̫̠̫̰̠̱̳̖͝n̨҉̬̞̮͖̬͉͉̰̦̞̪̻̠͈̤̘̙͚á̡̼͚̜̭̻̟̗͎̜̗̲͈̳̬͔̕ͅͅţ̵͓̦̱͎̘͝í̸̵̵̮̩̦͚͕̼͍̬̫̙̣̦̲͔̜͘ͅo̴̵̜̫̥̥̻̖̫͍̪̯̲͖̼̤͖̣̩̠̮͝n̵͏͚̙̹̣̠̦̹̦̲̪̠̤͘͡ ̹̖̝̹͉̪͓̫͎̠̘̝͉͡͡w̙̠̳̞̮̬̝̟̻͕͟͟͠r̷̢̢̩͉̖̰͙̻̝͠ͅo̶̢̳̳̕͝ͅͅn͏̴͕̬͉̖̺̰͖̼̼̰͉̭̻̙͘ͅg̛͉͍̣̗̯͘?̸̨̛̠̟͕́ͅ ̗̹̖̼̻͇͚̲̥̜̟͚̦̯̕ͅW̸͜͢͜͏͈̰̫̮̠̬̘̯̰̼̝͔̞̯̖̺ͅe̛͖̲̟̮͉͔͓͉͉̬̹̣̖̕͡ͅr͢͏̛̭̩͔̲̜̻̦͇̦̬̳̹̯̬͙̮͟͝ͅe̷͘҉͟҉̯̗̹̝̭̥ ̴͢͠҉̠̼̻̟̻͍͈̪̞̳̞̺͕̼̤͚t̻̫͍̪̫̺͕̖͘̕ͅḩ̺̞̦̟͈̱͓̰͍̙e̶͢͠͏̮̝̳̰̝̠͎y̥͔̞̞̠̰̻̲̝̼̫͍̯͠ ̶̷̫͇̺̦̫͎̠̣̀͘ͅǹ̛̲̞͓̪͙̱̫̝̼̦̪͘o̴̫͔̺̜̗̫̹̱̙͙̮̕͟͠͡ͅt̯͓̳͇̻̞̤̼͘͟ ̡̢̢͕̘̯̯̠͍̮͓̖͙̹͕͉̰̩̥̗̦ͅa̷̢̛̠̹̘̠̮̟͎̮̠͍͍̘̥̲̫͖̮̺͜͝l҉͔̘̫͚̥̼͓̺̞̝͍͉͖̥̭̩̳̕͡l͝͏̤͈̹͔̬̱̲̘͎̳̹monsters? She turned her head to her servant and asked a question. The servant could not fathom an answer, but instead gave a glowering glare at her master. Was it truly such a malign idea? ♦
♦ A happy scene. In that i̖̠n͉͉̘͍̦̗̮̙͜͡n̠̥͝ ̵̩͎b̡̪͔ȩ̛͍͎͍̲̟t͔̝͕̥̻͚̟͎́w̨͕͙̩͇͚̝͇̮͟e͔̰̖͉̦̮͕͞e҉̙̘̹̜n̳̪̞̤̫͖̫̰͢ ͜҉̰̞͎̖͚͜t͏̫̣̣̳̝͓h̗͓̤̜͇̺̜̕e̵̜̼̞͖̘̪ ͉̖̪̟̻̙͍n̨̝̤̻̻͇̹̝a̸̸̪̣̙̙̦̦̺t͓̗͓̞̱͉̘͟͜i͓̬̰̙͚̱̻ͅó̟n̶̙̝̘̭̞̺͇͜͠s̸͇̟̲̳̞̬̜̞ there was no nationality, no war. That was the unbreakable rule enforced by both science and magic. There was a dance. Oblivion could smile here, and sing along with the innocent hymns. ♦
♦ L͚̮̗̖̹̠͕o͘r̗i̸̫͚a̪c҉̮͉̬e̲̦̺͎̪ was smothered by the suffocating fog. Originally, they had been winning the war, that nation of white spires and equality. Where had it all gone wrong? How could they not see this coming? Was their side not just, or their hatred not sufficient? The time of troubles was quickly approaching for them. But which of the nations did she belong to...? ♦
♦ A victory parade. At its head was t͏̩h͓̟̪e̞̬̗̰͖̹͇ ò̸̷̦͚̣̱̖̝̳̳̭͙͡t̷̩̩̠͎̼̰̺̣̥͉̭̼͎͇̞̲͈̪͇͠͝h̡̺͉̯͙̜̹̮͙͓͎͕̺̬̹̹͔͜͟͠ͅę͔̥̗̞̱̹̦̰͢͠͞͡r̴̛̫̮̻̘̮̺̟̜̘͔̼͎̞̙̲͎͖̣͝ ̬̜͕̬̪̀̕͝͡p̷̖̳̩̬͕͓̮͉r̷̪̖̹͎̻̙̫͕̰͓͚͎̝͇̣̼̳̩̤ì̥̟̳̫̙̭̱̝̬̭̜͜͠ń̪͓̜̗͇̫̬̹̱͎͟͡c̷̨̨̩͓̬̥̘͝ȩ̶̨̛̠͙͕͙̣̭͍̬̙̻͍̙̬͙̰̻̬̻̪͟s̷̥͎͚̠͖̻̱̳͈̀͟ș̛̲̺͎̝͔̯͎̭̞͍̪͇̰͈̬͜͜,̨̭̝͈̖͉̖ ҉͉n҉̟̦͓͚̜̟̦o̼w̗̤̙͡ t͎͙h̩̟̫̗̙̳e̗̫ ͕͇̺Q̧͙̬̮̮ue͇͈̪͜e̜̳̟̠͈̦n̜̲̳̥̪̩ ͈͉͟o̭͉̱̬ͅf̗̱ ̪͚h͇̭̪̗̯͠e̺̱̪̮̣̫ŗ̫̺̭ ̣͕̬ǹ͖̼̜̪̞̼a̴̞͚t̵̥i̥̩̪͚̰ò͇̮͍̟̼n̘.̵̥̭̙̣̱. But the losing nation had not yet capitulated, it was not over. Among the weeping crowd, attackers unveiled themselves and besieged the parading victors, forcing them into the very castle they used to protect. ♦
♦ They arrived. It mattered not what nation, the slaughter began. ♦
♦ Finally… The last memory… ♦
- - – – – — — — ——— ♦ ——— — — — – – – - -
Awakening
In retrospect, it was probably all a dream. But at the same time, what other proof of self is there other than these fragments?
♦♦♦
The Knights of the Guard assembled, their great tower shields bared forward, spears held steadfastly. They poised themselves, prepared in all forms to protect the princess. They were the last line of defense, their assurance of victory stood behind them...
And so she began to sing...
To any bystander, her voice was clear through all the commotion, destruction and other sound. Accompanying her was an invisible chorus of varied voices that chanted along. It was simply something that could not be ignored. Verse by verse, a litany of words incomprehensible to the average mortal ear. To those who could comprehend, each verse alternated between the languages of the realm above, and that below. To those that understood, it was an impossible tale of foretelling. A dark future where chaos reigned and the world stood at the brink of certain destruction. An end time where judgement was passed upon living and dead alike. Rather than an end to an era, it was the end of all things.
Importantly, the battlefield ritual required that a certain degree of 'chaos' be met. It was a time of war, and the condition was complete.
Importantly, the ritual's purpose was to summon forth just a fraction of that time. It was something that important, that part of the world's end needed to be summoned.
Its name translated to 'The End', its outcome was to purge. The range was infinite, and when both chant and conditions were complete, there was no escape. Instead of calling it a move for certain victory, it would be best called 'greatest desperation', as the caster too would not be spared. Her soul would be torn asunder, destroyed and cast into oblivion for upsetting the balance. Her body would be ripped apart, obliterated in a way that no trace could be found. The End struck both ways, for both parties.
But, it was not to be. In a flash, in a violent booming of sound, the world seemed to shake and the seemingly invulnerable Guardsmen in front of the princess crumbled into dust.
In her final moments, the princess did not flinch, but only stood still, continuing her chanting as if she could finish the impossibly lengthy ritual. It was impossible.
As the Knights before her, she too was reduced to dust, with one exception: before her destruction, an arrow pierced her throat, a glaring, red crystal at its tip. As it happened, she was unable to speak and unable to move, and when she crumbled, so too did the arrow. Except for the Crystal. The once red Crystal turned completely clear, and sat atop her ashen dust.
♦♦♦
She woke up, mind dazzled and the numbness of a long stupor still gripping her body.
Victim or Perpetrator? She could no longer remember. Perhaps it was all a dream, those memories were all of dreams of another time.
Time? Time no longer had any meaning. Time was to be dashed from the dictionary, not to be spoken of again.
To and fro. Up, down, left, right. No matter where she looked was darkness. Timeless, formless, meaningless. In the darkness she had awoken to, there are no mirrors, no buildings, nothing but what she can see with her eyes and grope at with her hands. It was a vast expanse of mud, dead trees, and vague shadows in pale light. In this place with little form, she had but one word emblazoned upon her memories:
Oblivion.
Oblivion is where she was. Oblivious is what she was. Oblivion was all that remained.
She could not recall which of the caricatures she was in that final memory—if she was even one of them. Touching her grime covered hands to her face would not ensconce even the vaguest of clues. She knew she was female, she could see her dark hair and feel the weariness within her tiny limbs, she could only manage a whisper of a voice for fear of alerting that which lurked just beyond her vision.
Her clothes were tatters of what was likely once a functional yet beautiful dress. Fasteners in strategic places hinted that there may once have been steel to supplement the cloth. Beyond that was a single book filled with songs in a language and script she could hardly remember the methods of reading.
But that was all.
Truly, beyond that she only knew Oblivion, and so that was to be her name in this world where the shadows themselves sought to snatch sanity from her already beleaguered psyche.
Sanity is the Surety of the Soul. For reasons she couldn't understand, she was convinced that she absolutely must stay sane, and to do so would keep her soul from fading away. Her memories were her final sense of self, and the only source of sanity. So she moved forward into the abyss of oblivion.
Jasper is a young man that appears to be in his early twenties that stands an inch or so under six feet. His face is fairly good looking, with his square jaw and high cheekbones and a pair of rust brown eyes look out into the world. His skin still holds a tan, olive tone to it but with time it is steadily fading; but his dark brown hair, shaved close to his head, still retains it’s full color. Jasper is decently muscled, but his lean body is better equipped for speed.
Equipment
-Clothing; he wears a simple grey tunic and pants and a cloak that appears to be made of scraps of fur from different animals. He has no shoes, and a weathered pack made of hard leather that holds his supplies. Around his wrists, neck and ankles appear to be iron shackles but with no visible chain.
-Weapons; a round shield made of steel with no coat of arms or other discernible marks and a shepherd’s sling.
-Other; in the center of his chest, over his heart and visible through a tear in his tunic is a smooth jasper stone with a crack in the center that appears to be fused into his skin. It is a stone very similar to the one in the chest of the small, demonic creature that scornfully follows him around. (*Ignore the human figure in the picture! The creature is not that big! It’s the size of a house cat!)
Memories
-A small shack at the edge of a sprawling village with only a small garden on the land and a few sheep. There are only two rooms inside of the shack, the main room and a bedroom where a teenage girl lays sleeping or coughing.
-On a sunny day he was fishing in a small clear pond, contemplating jumping in for a swim if he could catch a few more fish.
-A grim faced old man sat with him at his kitchen table, the words he was saying sounding as though there were a million miles away. All he could hear was the haggard coughing from the next room.
-He was kneeling in the garden outside of the small shack, pulling weeds from the soil when he felt eyes on him. Looking up he saw a group of men in hooded cloaks standing on his property. They approached and the vision begins to jump around, one moment they were talking and the next he was yelling and pointing for them to get off his property. In a blur of color he was inside of the bedroom, assuring the worried girl with a forced smile that everything was okay.
-Being awoken from a dead sleep with hands roughly grabbing him and a high pitched scream from the other room.
-His home on fire as iron shackles were placed on his wrists.
-Darkness and pain.
A sharp, burning pain flashed across his face and he jerked awake. Blinking he found himself staring into the glowing eyes of a creature that appeared to be on fire. On instinct he sat up and knocked the demon off his chest, sending it far away from him and into a cracked wall. It twisted it’s body in the air so it’s feet landed against the wall, it’s claws sinking into the stone to keep it in place.
It glared and growled at him, it’s body appearing to grow even brighter.
For a moment he only stared at the horned, flaming creature, his chest heaving as he panted for breath. His hand move around behind him until it gripped a rock and he grew still. After a few tense, silent seconds he threw the rock as hard as he could; hitting the creature on the head.
A splitting pain hit him in the center of his forehead and he cried out, bringing up his hands to the spot. “Son of a whore!” He gritted out, lowering his hands and forcing his eyes to crack open. There was the creature sitting on the floor now, it’s wispy tail flicking behind it and looking at him. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the thing was laughing at him.
Grinding his teeth he reached behind him and picked up another loose rock, chucking it at the creature again. His aim was slightly off because of the pain in his head, but to his confusion the creature moved into the path of the rock.
The rock hit it’s head and more pain struck through his skull like lightning. He fell onto his back, cradling his head and breathing heavily through his nose.
This time the creature was making a hacking sound that definitely sounded like laughing.
Growing frustrated he stood up to his bare feet, about to storm off when he felt weight on him. Pausing he turned to look behind him and saw a metal shield on his back with a pack underneath it. Shaking his head he looked back over to the creature, still sitting in place before taking off at a sprint through what appeared to be catacombs. His feet splashed in ice cold water but he ignored it as he ran through the pitch darkness. Splashing sounded behind him and he turned his head to see the creature running after him, it’s strange body lighting the area around it like a lantern.
“Away with you demon!” He shouted. A searing pain exploded over his face as though he had slammed into a wall and he knew very well he had not. He stumbled to a stop, his head spinning like a top. He leaned his hand against a cold, slimy wall to wait until the spinning ceased.
Steadily the area around him grew lighter and lighter until he could feel a warm presence by his feet. The demon. If he weren’t so disoriented he would kick the damned thing. He shut his eyes and tried to ignore it since it didn’t seem to be interested in attacking him.
Suddenly warmth spread across his chest as light slipped in from his closed eyelids. Opening them with a start he looked down to see the light coming from under his tunic. Pulling the collar away the light grew dim until he saw the red stone with dark black veins in his chest. A jasper stone?
Something thumped against his leg and he looked down to see the small demon sitting proud with it’s chest out and displaying a similar stone in it’s chest.
...What was her name? She did not know, nor had it been relevant until now. She had, after all, been referring to herself as, well, simply 'I' in her head, and in the relative solitude of this place, it had thus far sufficed. There had been no one to call her by her name ... or by any other name. She ... was a human, right? A human woman? What would a human woman be named? 'Alice' came to mind, but that probably was not her actual name; in fact, she was quite certain it had not been her name at any point in time. It did not quite have the right feel to it. But no other name - actual name, not some random silly word or noun as these folks seemed to be so fond of labeling themselves with - came to mind, either. Alice. Whatever she had been before, in some other time and place, for now and to those people she would be Alice. Until she came up with something that would feel more appropriate, anyway...
Appearance
She is still discernibly a human, yet the time spent in this realm has been slowly changing her form, altering her appearance accordingly as she becomes further removed from her old life and self. Decay ... or adaption? This is a world for beasts rather than humans as she sees it, entities much more formidable than feeble humanoids, and all signs point to her old life - the one she still carries some sparse memories of - being gone for good. This is her home now, and taking the best of it is all that is left for her. She stands at roughly six feet tall (~1.83 meters), weighs around a hundred and fifty eight pounds (72 kilograms), might come across as being in her mid-thirties if one does not know any better, and appears to have a fairly robust bone structure. She appears wide-shouldered, but also wide-hipped - the kind of build that in another time and place, before the rest of her features began to slowly take after this hellish place, might have been described as fit for "a good hard-working country girl". - The type that can give birth to a dozen children and still take care of all the hard farm-work on her own. She also has a waist that appears narrow compared to her hips, and a decently-sized bosom, both of which rather accentuate her femininity despite the overall strong build. Her skin, however, is ghastly pale - no proper midday sun has fallen on it for a long time, not in this realm -, her features an odd mix of muscle and almost malnourished gauntness. Her lean-muscled arms and bony hands and fingers with well-defined tendons appear just a notch too long for her body, her fingernails sturdier than they should be; it might just be the result a bit poor posture, but her shoulders tend to slouch slightly forward as she sits or runs. More disconcertingly, her spine seems to be far more defined than it should be, almost forming a ridge on her back, and her shoulder-blades protrude more than they ought to the same - and it just might be that the same odd elongation that has been affecting her arms has added an inch or two to her back, too. As another distinct feature, her right hand is scarred and lacks some of its flexibility; the scar-tissue covers the appendage like a stiff glove. Her gaunt face is semi-oval, elongated, with a finely defined jawline and a round chin, but underpronounced cheekbones. Her eyebrows are straight, a bit thicker than they should be, and pale brown in color, her eyes hazel-green and fairly round - to the point where she can easily leave a slightly surprised, clueless, concerned or scared impression even when she is presently not experiencing those emotions. The nose under the eyes is average-sized, if a bit too flat and round-tipped for her liking, her lips surprisingly full, if only very pale pink in color. Her teeth appear to have survived this place surprisingly well, though the lower incisors appear to have been filed a third shorter after a life of having a mild underbite. Last but not least, her light blonde hair is in a surprisingly good condition, hip-length and thick, even if the ends are broken rather than cut. It still does flow... She likes her hair.
Belongings
* An axe - one of the heftier ones meant to be used as a wood-cutting and splitting tool. It has a shaft made of polished oak that is a bit over two feet long, and an iron head, over a handful of pounds heavy. Slight traces of rust where the head connects to the shaft left aside, it appears to be in a good condition. Someone has been taking care of it - sharpening it, and it seems also oiling it a bit. She feels a connection with this axe... Perhaps because it is one of the very few things that actually followed her here. Often carried in hand, sometimes awkwardly fitted into her bag. * A knife, a tool more so than cutlery piece. Has a blade about eight inches (a bit over twenty centimeters) long and a carved wooden handle with leather wrapping around the grip. May in fact be made of steel - surprising enough, given that steel is more expensive than iron. Much like the axe, it seems to have been well cared for, but the very tip has dulled a bit more than the last sharpening could undo, and the guard-equivalent of the handle right next to the blade has seen some contact with rougher surfaces. Another item of the distant past. It comes with a worn leather sheathe from which some decorative elements appear to have fled in the past. *A simple longsword along with a reinforced scabbard and belt. She tends to actually wear the belt - and has managed to attach her knife's sheathe to it, too, but doesn't actually have notable skill using the sword itself. It is made of steel, but not of the finest quality. About an inch of the three-foot-long blade's tip has broken off, and its blade has several notches in it even after she attempted to sharpen it. It has a cross-guard, round pommel and a handle which probably used to be wrapped in leather, but is now simply a metal piece. It associates with regret, and Regret she calls it. * Flint and steel, a whetstone. Standard tools for starting fires and sharpening blades. The steel is not from this world, but the flint and whetstone appear to have been harvested from some local region. * A small glass bottle - some nine centimeters or around three and a half inches tall - in which there is about sixteen milliliters of some kind of impure oily liquid. The fluid is dark yellow and perpetually has some manner of black flakes floating near the bottom. The bottle has a piece of cork or similar woodlike material for, well, a cork. She has the feeling that it is valuable - the bottle itself, that is, not its contents. * Two flasks of water, containing up to a liter an a half each. Water is important, and she knows it deeply. Typically in her backpack. Currently full and half-full. * A simple backpack of heavy rough fabric. For carrying things, what else? * Worn pair of leather boots. She fears that the sole of the right one might soon become loose altogether. * Two pairs of socks. * Five shirts. Two are typical long linen women's summer-shirts, three were probably meant for a man, and are in fact too big for even her broad-shouldered six-foot-tall frame... * A very torn woolen striped skirt. It is eerily familiar. * Two pairs of trousers. A bit too long for her, and not quite fitting at her hips, but she can make them work if she rolls up the legs a bit and is wearing the belt. * A pair of thick mittens. * A thick winter-coat. She sometimes wears it thrown over her shoulders since it is too cold for a shirt, but she has no jacket or sweater to speak of. Also used for mattress and blanket. * A few rags. * Two dozen pieces of string ... look like shoestrings more than anything. * Some things that can pass as food - dried mushrooms, questionable meat, some odd roots... About three pounds in total at the given time, which amounts to far too little. Also seven coconut-sized and very, very spiky (though the spikes have been bent and broken) fruits from what looked like some kind of bizarre semi-wooden cacti. She somehow knows the latter are edible and juicy, but also mildly corrosive. Eat too much, and your mouth would bleed...
Memories
Alas, but two of them were but vivid nightmares to begin with; what good do the terrors conjured by one's own mind do amongst the brief images from a perfectly mundane - if not to say boring - life?
It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, a bit longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.
Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, and the land was covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.
She was looking down, at the toes of her shoes peeking out from under her skirt. Said shoes were white, but covered in dust. Dust, dust, dust... So much dust; dusty was also the gravel road under her feet, and to a small extent also her light skirt. It had not rained for a while ... from there the dust. And the carriage that had rolled past her earlier had brought a whole cloud of it with it. Sun was blazing, and a blonde strand of hair had fallen in front of her face. She was still too embarrassed to look up. She could not look up ... and now she had probably been quiet for so long that it was probably uncomfortable and awkward for the person standing before her, too. She probably looked incredibly stupid...
Cold water sloshed over the edge of the bucket she was carrying, dripping over her feet and the wooden floorboards. It was a large bucket, cumbersome and heavy, but it was the only way she could get water to the large metal container at the end of the back room. Arms slightly shaking from the effort, she set the container she had been carrying down right where she stood, in the middle of the room, and stretched; her shoulders and back ached from the last handful of buckets. The room was dim; two tiny windows with four little panels of uneven dirty glass each did not let in much light. Glass was expensive; many people only had holes with shutters in their walls, if that...
It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the background of it? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt, as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and through. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her...
She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.
Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, fatalism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.
The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her long blonde hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.
She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor next to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.
Her throat ... it felt like no air could pass through it, as though it were contracting closing down on itself. There were painful stabs in her chest, her heart hurt - also much like someone were squeezing it just a notch too hard. Her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was emitted. Her voice simply did not comply. Neither did her eyes. She kept blinking as they stung and her sight kept blurring. Finally, something wet and warm ran over her face, dragged down by gravity. It could not be, could it? It could not be! At last, she could get a word from her mouth, though her voice sounded distant and detached, numb even. "What ... what do you mean?" It could not be... She had misheard. She had definitely misheard. Or misunderstood. In any case, it was wrong! It had to be...
There was a glint of light and an unearthly glow. Something rumbled, the ground was wrong, it tilted, and she fell ... fell, fell, fell... Something snapped, and she hit a near-vertical surface; reflexively, she dug her fingers in. They had talons, and they rent the metal of the surface. She was only very slowly sliding down the surface she clung to, but yet she still felt like falling, falling, falling... The surface was hard, but it lacked temperature. She knew she had been injured, but she could not feel the pain, only the blood running down her back. Falling, falling, falling, but yet the surface before her eyes was still. She was no longer sliding down; her taloned fingers had dug in deep enough to carry her weight. The combination of falling and utter motionlessness made her nauseous and disoriented. She must not slip and fall again; that would be the end. There was not one thing more certain than that.
The axe was hefty - a bit over two feet of hard polished wooden shaft and a solid iron head. Her legs were rooted to ground, spread a bit wider than her shoulders. The axe she raised overhead, only to bring it down on the tree-trunk-segment before her, as thick as her waist and with a line through its heart already riddled with cuts from unsuccessful attempts of splitting it. The momentum the axe-head had gained from its own weight and her arms' strength was significant - it bit two inches deep, but this time, the trunk's fibres were torn apart as a crack began to crawl towards its base. The axe-head was stuck, but it was good. With a breath let out in a huff, she allowed herself a blink of an eye's worth of rest, before she raised the axe overhead again - with the entirety of the section of tree-trunk being lifted with it. Up in the air, she flipped the axe around, and then she brought it down again, the back of the axe-head hitting the surface of the base first. With its own weight, the tree-trunk pressed further onto the axe-blade upon impact, and the crack spread deeper. Another raise of the axe, another flip, another swing downwards, and the trunk-segment split open fully, halves falling to two sides. The ground was dry hard dirt, covered in pieces of bark and wooden chips. To the right, there was a log wall, to the left grass; in the distance loomed a dark forest.
The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen ones stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, necks stretching impossibly long, and, as was the case with this one, apparently a disapproving chicken. Yet she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only had to fetch the eggs...
The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky. "My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often." His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day, and it was incredibly relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon... "Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned. "Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..."
One dear memory was lost to this hellish world, none were twisted, none but one lone new experience took root...
It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.
Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, and the land was covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.
Cold water sloshed over the edge of the bucket she was carrying, dripping over her feet and the wooden floorboards. It was a large bucket, cumbersome and heavy, but it was the only way she could get water to the large metal container at the end of the back room. Arms slightly shaking from the effort, she set the container she had been carrying down right where she stood, in the middle of the room, and stretched; her shoulders and back ached from the last handful of buckets. The room was dim; two tiny windows with four little panels of uneven dirty glass each did not let in much light. Glass was expensive; many people only had holes with shutters in their walls, if that...
It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the background of it? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and through. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her...
She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.
Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, fatalism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.
The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.
She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.
Her throat ... it felt like no air could pass through it, as though it were contracting closing down on itself. There were painful stabs in her chest, her heart hurt - also much like someone were squeezing it just a notch too hard. Her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was emitted. Her voice simply did not comply. Neither did her eyes. She kept blinking as they stung and her sight kept blurring. Finally, something wet and warm ran over her face, dragged down by gravity and leaving behind a moist trail. It could not be, could it? It could not be! At last, she could get a word from her mouth, though her voice sounded distant and detached, numb even. "What ... what do you mean?" It could not be... She had misheard. She had definitely misheard. Or misunderstood. In any case, it was wrong! It had to be...
There was a glint of light and an unearthly glow. Something rumbled, the ground was wrong, it tilted, and she fell ... fell, fell, fell... Something snapped, and she hit a near-vertical surface; reflexively, she dug her fingers in. They had talons, and they rent the metal of the surface. She was only very slowly sliding down the surface she clung to, but yet she still felt like falling, falling, falling... The surface was hard, but it lacked temperature. She knew she had been injured, but she could not feel the pain, only the blood running down her back. Falling, falling, falling, but yet the surface before her eyes was still. She was no longer sliding down; her taloned fingers had dug in deep enough to carry her weight. The combination of falling and utter motionlessness made her nauseous and disoriented. She must not slip and fall again; that would be the end. There was not one thing more certain than that.
The axe was hefty - a bit over two feet of hard polished wooden shaft and a solid iron head. Her legs were rooted to ground, spread a bit wider than her shoulders. The axe she raised overhead, only to bring it down on the tree-trunk-segment before her, as thick as her waist and with a line through its heart already riddled with cuts from unsuccessful attempts of splitting it. The momentum the axe-head had gained from its own weight and her arms' strength was significant - it bit two inches deep, but this time, the trunk's fibres were torn apart as a crack began to crawl towards its base. The axe-head was stuck, but it was good. With a breath let out in a huff, she allowed herself a blink of an eye's worth of rest, before she raised the axe overhead again - with the entirety of the section of tree-trunk being lifted with it. Up in the air, she flipped the axe around, and then she brought it down again, the back of the axe-head hitting the surface of the base first. With its own weight, the tree-trunk pressed further onto the axe-blade upon impact, and the crack spread deeper. Another raise of the axe, another flip, another swing downwards, and the trunk-segment split open fully, halves falling to two sides. The ground was dry hard dirt, covered in pieces of bark and wooden chips. To the right, there was a log wall, to the left grass; in the distance loomed a dark forest.
The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen ones stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, and, as was the case with this one, apparently a disapproving chicken. Yet, she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only had to fetch the eggs...
The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky. "My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often." His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day and it was relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon... "Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned. "Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..."
Did this sun never raise nor truly set? Always with this twilight, always, no change, no life, no nothing but her. It was a rocky field she was clambering over, rocky and unforgiving, merciless. Jagged edges and hard corners, from pebbles to massive boulders as tall as she was, all loose, spanning as far as the eye could see... There! A figure, motion, someone! At long last! She tried to hasten her clumsy clambering crawl over the unfeeling sharp rocks, pale as bleached slate but with edges as sharp as those of obsidian. "Hey!?" Her voice was rasped and shrill, she felt thirst. The air was too dry, too riddled with dust; inhaling for the single shout nearly sent her into a coughing fit. She must catch up with them, if they did not hear her shouting... As she tried to speed up her chase, she slipped and fell, skinned elbow leaving a bloody trail onto the rock before her face, her knee emanating white hot pain as it smack met the ground. Her eyes swelled with tears, not those of only plain, but also those of hopelessness and desperation. She must not lose this person, whoever this was... This figure who appeared and disappeared on the horizon, becoming obscured by a larger rock as they hopped down one and appearing again as they were climbing over the next.
Death takes a cruel toll; three memories it robbed, two were twisted and bent, but even on this darkest hour, two brief scenes were brought along, if bleak in nature...
It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.
Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, and the land was covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.
The liquid was incredibly viscous, but yet fully transparent and clear ... like the purest water of a crystal spring, but only until you noticed the lazy, sluggish way it reacted to her steps, barely more liquid than jelly. There was the vague feeling that she should move on and bring the bucket to some place, but perhaps from simple morbid curiosity, she carefully lowered the bucket to the ground, its weight making her hands tremble, and knelt by its side. She saw her one hand gripping the edge of the bucket, and the other plunging deep into the viscous fluid. It was cold. Very cold, as she realized after a second. Piercing, bone-shattering cold. As soon as the knowledge sunk in, she drew her hand out, but the fluid clung to her hand and wrist in a layer nigh an inch thick, cold globs of it dripping off and falling on her feet and the wooden floor. The cold, it hurt now, hurt so much... She tried to shake it off her hand, but that only lead to more of it falling off and onto her feet. Pain, so much pain... She blinked to combat her vision blurring from the sheer intensity of the pain, but nevertheless something made her raise her hand before her eyes and observe it in the faint grayish light falling from somewhere to the right; the fluid seemed still transparent for the most part, now barely a fifth of an inch thick after most had been shaken or fallen off, but nearing her skin, she could see it becoming faintly yellowish, then orange, then red. Blood. Her blood. It was seeping into the liquid through her skin...
It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the background of it? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt, as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and through. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her...
She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.
Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, fatalism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.
The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough nevertheless glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.
She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.
The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen ones stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, and, as was the case with this one, apparently a disapproving chicken. Yet, she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only had to fetch the eggs...
She was starving. She had been starving once before, had she not? ...But it had been a different time and a different place, if not a different world altogether. It was a cave, or at least she thought so; it was utterly and completely dark, damp, and filled with rocks. A hiding place. No place for the sighted; she moved by hand. Each of her motions was almost startlingly loud - the pebbles she slipped on, the rustle of her garments, the metallic scrape of an axehead against some calcified mineral deposit. The air was cool, stale, and there was no sound but those made by her and water dripping, constantly, endlessly. It was maddening. There was this odd smell, smell that was not wet rock, not quite that of mold, but... But... She could not recall? Why could she not recall? Her hands happened onto something that was not rock, something softer and more yielding. It crumbled when she touched it; it was fragile. Edible? Without much thought, she tried to scoop it up, stuff it into her mouth even if it tasted bland and felt textureless, even if some nagging feeling kept insisting it could be poisonous. Anything was better than the continued pangs of hunger ... right?
The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky. "My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often." His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day and it was relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon... "Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned. "Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..."
The land was bathed in an eternal sourceless light. It was a rocky field she was clambering over, rocky and unforgiving, merciless, everlasting, endless. Jagged edges and hard corners, from pebbles to massive boulders as tall as she was, all loose, spanning as far as the eye could see... Unfeeling sharp rocks, pale as bleached slate but with edges as sharp as those of obsidian. There was motion, she was sure of it, motion that should not be there. No! That was just the haze of heat playing tricks on her eyes, for rocks could not move, no. They ... those were but lifeless things, objects. And there she was wrong. There was a rumble, like that of a landslide, and the rocks, big and small alike, went in for the kill. They went for her, rushing together, and there, in the middle of the endless field, the jagged edges tore her to pieces and ground up her bones.
Was it still there? She was breathing heavily, as if from physical exertion, and her body was covered in a light layer of sweat. Was there any use in running at all, or would it just find her by smell? The surface behind her back was cold and hard and sturdy - it would not let it through. But the sides ... it was all open, it was a canyon, she could not get out or hide but for in some small crevice, and surely it would be ... patient. It was to the left, she knew, thus she will have to go to the right. But how long till the canyon spits or she comes to an obstacle she cannot cross? Would it not be better to fight instead? The axe was ... heavy.
Three memories were lost in the last demise, two were twisted and bent, and three remained from the last brief pseudo-life...
There was no way someone could survive anything like that; she dropped herself down the last ledge and turned to look at the corpse. He had fallen, from high above - from where she had been before she had made her own much more slower and more meticulous descent down here herself. The man's head was hanging limply to the side, a trickle of drying blood running down the rock beneath his skull, his one arm was out to the side at an odd angle, but otherwise he almost looked normal, save for the fact that bare sharp rocks made for a very peculiar resting place. Two sensations were stronger than others: an oddly biting deep regret and the lingering realization that there ... were others? Also the feeling that she should take what could be taken; the dead had no use for anything.
It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.
Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, and the land was covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.
He was standing before someone he could not see, since his head was bowed. He was kneeling, and there was a distinct sense of it being an important event of some description - especially for him personally. There were words being spoken, words of his deeds and recounting of his duties, but he could not decipher them. The time for him to speak his oath would be soon.
The liquid was incredibly viscous, but yet fully transparent and clear ... like the purest water of a crystal spring, but only until you noticed the lazy, sluggish way it reacted to her steps, barely more liquid than jelly. There was the vague feeling that she should move on and bring the bucket to some place, but perhaps from simple morbid curiosity, she carefully lowered the bucket to the ground, its weight making her hands tremble, and knelt by its side. She saw her one hand gripping the edge of the bucket, and the other plunging deep into the viscous fluid. It was cold. Very cold, as she realized after a second. Piercing, bone-shattering cold. As soon as the realization sunk in, she drew her hand out, but the fluid clung to her hand and wrist in a layer nigh an inch thick, cold globs of it dripping off and falling on her feet and the wooden panels beneath her feet. The cold, it hurt now, hurt so much... She tried to shake it off her hand, but that only lead to more of it falling off and onto her feet. Pain, so much pain. She blinked to combat her vision blurring from the sheer intensity of the pain, but nevertheless something made her raise her hand before her eyes and observe it in the faint grayish light falling from somewhere to the right; the fluid seemed still transparent for the most part, now barely a fifth of an inch thick after most had been shaken or fallen off, but nearing her skin, she could see it becoming faintly yellowish, then orange, then red. Blood. Her blood. It was seeping into the liquid through her skin...
She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.
Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, nay, fatalism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.
The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough nevertheless glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.
She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.
The woman's eyes were flickering from side to side, then fixing on her again, wide and ... terrified. She looked malnourished, starving, and her clothes were but tattered rags. Terrified ... of her? "I am not like these things," she insisted, a pale, muscled arm stretching out in front of herself, fingers just a notch too long and nails sturdy, grown-out and dirty. She held her palm towards the woman, and in her hand there was nothing. It was an universally reassuring gesture: See? No weapon. She was armed herself, but her weapons were remained put away; the woman had none she could see on her. "I am not like them, I won't be a danger to you, I won't take anything from you..." This time, it was almost a plea. There was indeed nothing she could potentially desired that the woman had. In many a sense, she was poorer than her. There was nothing to take from her ... save from her flesh and bones. "...Not like them." She did not know who she was trying to convince - herself, or the woman.
She was starving. She had been starving at least once before, had she not? ...But it had been a different time and a different place, if not a different world altogether. It was a cave, or at least she thought so; it was utterly and completely dark, damp, and filled with rocks. A hiding place. No place for the sighted; she moved by hand. Each of her motions was almost startlingly loud - the pebbles she slipped on, the rustle of her garments, the metallic crape of an axehead against some calcified mineral deposit. The air was cool, stale, and there was no sound but those made by her and water dripping, constantly, endlessly. It was maddening. There was this odd smell, smell that was not wet rock, not quite that of mold, but... But... She could not recall? Why could she not recall? Her hands happened onto something that was not rock, something softer and more yielding. It crumbled when she touched it; it was fragile. Edible? Without much thought, she tried to scoop it up, stuff it into her mouth even if it tasted bland and felt textureless, even if some nagging feeling kept insisting it could be poisonous. Anything was better than the continued pangs of hunger ... right?
The land was bathed in an eternal sourceless light. It was a rocky field she was clambering over, rocky and unforgiving, merciless, everlasting, endless. Jagged edges and hard corners, from pebbles to massive boulders as tall as she was, all loose, spanning as far as the eye could see... Unfeeling sharp rocks, pale as bleached slate but with edges as sharp as those of obsidian. There was motion, she was sure of it, motion that should not be there. No! That was just the haze of heat playing tricks on her eyes, for rocks could not move, no. They ... those were but lifeless things, objects. And there she was wrong.
She was breathing heavily, as if from physical exertion, and her body was covered in a light layer of sweat. The surface behind her back was cold and hard and sturdy; roughly the same adjectives could be said to characterize the axe in her hands, too. Why axe, and not sword? The axe was heftier than Regret; it simply had more weight behind it, and thus it just seemed that it would hurt more if she were to bash the something's face in with it. And ... she had had the axe for far longer. The axe followed her. It was meant for chopping wood, not combat, but she knew how to use it. Clutching the axe's more than two feet long oak shaft tightly in two, she stepped out to face her foe. If you had nowhere to flee, then you fought.
The Fourth Awakening
Her eyes flickered open, blinked, focused on the rocky drop before her, and then blinked again. The rocky drop was turned sideways ... nay, she herself was lying on the side. Her sense of balance was trying to readjust itself; there was a sense of vertigo. Her left shoulder hurt, as did her left hip and thigh - she was lying on something hard, naught but a thin shirt and common pants covering her body. Slowly, she tried to move her right hand in front of herself, looking at the pale appendage in an almost childlike wide-eyed wonder, flexing it tryingly - it could not quite be rolled into hard fist, not quite... Its pale skin was thick, hardened scar-tissue, its nails almost like talons. Human? She blinked again.
Something was missing.
The realization was startling, and suddenly her heart was pounding - there was a sense of urgency, and she sprung to a seated position, her hands grasping first blindly, and then darting for the objects the could glimpse from the corner of her eye - objects that had ever so conveniently been as if laid out behind her back. A bag, a coat and ... an axe. There, the things were there. She would not be searching in vain, as she once had. She pulled the bag and the coat into her lap, and clutched the axe with her two hands, hugging it close. That was better. It was a familiar thing. She also remembered holding something different like that, in a dark room, something warm and heavy that was also part her... But that was a different world. Here, she only had the axe, and that was a good enough substitute. The axe followed her; it did not abandon her. For a while she was just sitting there, swaying slightly from side to side. It was oddly comforting, and her heart slowed down its pounding and the anxious shaking that had come with it slowly subdued. The cold sweat that had broken out on her skin soon evaporated, or seeped into her clothes. The air felt colder now.
It was home now. She did not know where in it she was, but this world was her home now.
After a time she began to stir again, dropping the axe to her lap and meticulously drawing the coat loosely over her shoulders. It would not have fit in the bag. Far from it. And it was cold. The packpack, she peered into it, then pulled its strap over her shoulder. The axe, she held onto. With the same contemplativeness she had been displaying ever since she had found her things, she drew her axe close, dragged herself up to one knee, then stood. Indeed, she was still holding the axe almost like one might a child. Her eyes, however, moved from to rocky drop she had first seen when she awoke to the sides, and then she spun around, looking at ... another rocky drop. It was a canyon. The walls did not look scalable, meaning only two ways were left. It was dry, but all rivers did lead to a sea... The question was - which way was the ground inclined? She blinked again. There was a belt on her waist, attached to it a familiar knife and a sword -lying on top of its scabbard was probably partly why her hip hurt - that did not belong to her.
There had been a dead man. And regret. And need.
The sword was Regret. It was a dry creek at the bottom of a canyon that she was in. Not a good place - no food, no water, no nothing. No cover from rain, should it ever fall again, no hiding place from beasts. Home was where water and food and shelter were. She remembered hunger, and it had not been a good feeling. It was painful and gnawing. With it came desperation. Desperation was not a good feeling, either. Both of those were things she wanted to avoid. Fighting, she wanted to avoid, too, unless she had to. But sometimes she had to, and the axe was reliable...
"I am not like these things," she had insisted, but she had also had the feeling that she was not being believed.
The Life
TBA.
The Memories
Status: Lost. The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen them stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, necks stretching impossibly long, and, as was the case with this one, apparently she was seeing a disapproving chicken. Yet she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only wanted to get the eggs - she had to fetch the eggs... - Sarah Lindain, 6. She had been tasked to fetch the fresh chicken eggs by her mother, but one that was currently sitting on nest did not approve of her trying to reach for those she was warming.
Status: Lost. It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the far distance? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt, as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and through. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her... - Sarah Lindain, 10. When returning from the village eight kilometers from her home, she was caught in the rain. The package she was carrying was composed of everyday specialty items.
Status: Lost. She was looking down, at the toes of her shoes peeking out from under her skirt. Said shoes were white, but covered in dust. Dust, dust, dust... So much dust; dusty was also the gravel road under her feet, and to a small extent also her light skirt. It had not rained for a while ... from there the dust. And the carriage that had rolled past her earlier had brought a whole cloud of it with it. Sun was blazing, and a blonde strand of hair had fallen in front of her face. She was still too embarrassed to look up. She could not look up ... and now she had probably been quiet for so long that it was probably uncomfortable and awkward for the person standing before her, too. She probably looked incredibly stupid... - Sarah Lindain, 14. Standing before the first person she had ever had actual crush-like feelings for, and being oh so embarrassed.
Status: Lost. The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky. "My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often." His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day, and it was incredibly relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon... "Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned. "Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..." - Sarah Lindain, 16. A summer night with the first person she was beginning to feel actual love towards. The same person later became her first husband.
Status: Intact. She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well. - Sarah Sadler, 19. The night after the birth of her first child, a boy.
Status: Intact. Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, and the land was covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger. - Sarah Sadler, 24. A winter day after a summer of severe crop dearth. The same winter cost her second- and third-born their lives.
Status: Lost. Her throat ... it felt like no air could pass through it, as though it were contracting closing down on itself. There were painful stabs in her chest, her heart hurt - also much like someone were squeezing it just a notch too hard. Her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was emitted. Her voice simply did not comply. Neither did her eyes. She kept blinking as they stung and her sight kept blurring. Finally, something wet and warm ran over her face, dragged down by gravity. It could not be, could it? It could not be! At last, she could get a word from her mouth, though her voice sounded distant and detached, numb even. "What ... what do you mean?" It could not be... She had misheard. She had definitely misheard. Or misunderstood. In any case, it was wrong! It had to be... - Sarah Sadler, 27. Receiving news of her first husband's death in an accident. It left her living with her aging parents and her eight-year-old and toddler a year and a half old. Her father passed away a year later.
Status: Intact. She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor next to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time. - Sarah Sadler, 28. Losing a small intricate wooden box gifted to her for her sixteenth birthday that she had used to store memorabilia. She never found it again.
Status: Intact. The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her long blonde hair was held back by some manner of linen hat. - Sarah Downwell, 30. Making pretzels, soon after the beginning of her second marriage. Her second husband's wife had died in childbirth, as had the newborn. She was now living with her mother, second husband, her own two children and second husband's second child (his first had fallen victim by the same year of starvation and epidemic that had killed two of hers - his family had been better off in terms of food, but the illness did not care).
Status: Distorted. Cold water sloshed over the edge of the bucket she was carrying, dripping over her feet and the wooden floorboards. It was a large bucket, cumbersome and heavy, but it was the only way she could get water to the large metal container at the end of the back room. Arms slightly shaking from the effort, she set the container she had been carrying down right where she stood, in the middle of the room, and stretched; her shoulders and back ached from the last handful of buckets. The room was dim; two tiny windows with four little panels of uneven dirty glass each did not let in much light. Glass was expensive; many people only had holes with shutters in their walls, if that... - Sarah Downwell, 36. Carrying water soon after the house was partially rebuilt to be bigger and in all ways better. Including, indeed, the somewhat expensive small glass windows.
Status: Lost. The axe was hefty - a bit over two feet of hard polished wooden shaft and a solid iron head. Her legs were rooted to ground, spread a bit wider than her shoulders. The axe she raised overhead, only to bring it down on the tree-trunk-segment before her, as thick as her waist and with a line through its heart already riddled with cuts from unsuccessful attempts of splitting it. The momentum the axe-head had gained from its own weight and her arms' strength was significant - it bit two inches deep, but this time, the trunk's fibres were torn apart as a crack began to crawl towards its base. The axe-head was stuck, but it was good. With a breath let out in a huff, she allowed herself a blink of an eye's worth of rest, before she raised the axe overhead again - with the entirety of the section of tree-trunk being lifted with it. Up in the air, she flipped the axe around, and then she brought it down again, the back of the axe-head hitting the surface of the base first. With its own weight, the tree-trunk pressed further onto the axe-blade upon impact, and the crack spread deeper. Another raise of the axe, another flip, another swing downwards, and the trunk-segment split open fully, halves falling to two sides. The ground was dry hard dirt, covered in pieces of bark and wooden chips. To the right, there was a log wall, to the left grass; in the distance loomed a dark forest. - Sarah Downwell, 41. Log splitting on a seemingly average day.
Status: Intact. It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, a bit longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light. - Sarah Downwell, 57. Winter evening. Doing what work she still could to help her firstborn's family and spend her time during the darker part of the year.
He was a man once, wasn’t he? Possibly even a knight, but maybe he had just been a brigand who stole the now rusted armor and claymore. He was a man amongst the living with a life and a story… right? He resembled a man at the very least, although his skin was discolored and drawn tight over his bones from starvation, dehydration, and the many deaths he has suffered. Surely he could have not just been born to this land of death and misery, but there was nothing left of his life if there was a life before this land. Nothing… except for her and the bastard that had stolen her from him. She was his… she was his.HIS.
No… no, she wasn’t. Not anymore. He had stolen her from him, but how? How had he stolen her? Did he kill her or woo her? It was impossible to tell anymore. All he remembered was this land now, the blurred face of a woman and another man, but that bastard was in this land with him. He had reawakened him from his slumber slumped up against one of the petrified trees. He killed him, but his body vanished from beneath his boot. The bastard had returned though and managed to escape with only a gash on his side. Now he must stalk the bastard and make him suffer like he has suffered.
Given Name Lost without his memories, he instinctively knew, almost on a primal level that he had to keep himself together. To keep what little he could remember in the forefront. So he named himself, in hopes that he'd never forget or feel any less than his namesake: Important.
Appearance Underneath the decrepit, foreign armor lays the angular, sharp features of a dark skinned youth. He appears to be at least twenty or more seasons old, with obsidian--always calm--eyes. A striking scar rests near his jugular stretching across the entirety of his neck, he often finds himself rubbing it in irritation. He has sandy blonde hair that's shaved to a buzz, along with cut-thin sideburns. His body is rather lean and muscular.
Equipment
Standard Shortsword & Sheathe - Iron blade and sheathe for what seems to be combat.
Two White Roses - One has been spoiled with red and the other remains pristine and immaculate.
Full Set of Armor - Decrepit and ancient armor, terrifying in appearance and horrid to look at. It however, feels, if only a little, familiar.
Neck Device - Rusty and crude, the pain of the needles are pin-pricks on his neck. They are attached by seemingly melded bolts.
Memories A small voice calls out to me but I ignore it. Looking at the sun and sky from atop a steed, I notice its gray with foreboding clouds. The voice is a urgent cry and barks out to me again, a call for help from a apprehensive girl. "W-Warrior! M'lady is trapped!"
I remove the helm of my armor and with moonlight gleaming through the large--green and blue mosaic--window, lay eyes on a pale, ethereal visage. A woman who's colorless lips strikes me with envious desire and ropes my heart tight with a noose.
With her hand in mines, we rush through the murky swamplands, mud slipping from under our feet as the firelight dance behind us and swords clamor against shields. A declaration of my murder is shouted through the darkness and her whimpers grows louder. Her tight grasp loosens around my hand as branch snags her dress. I rip the snag portion from the rest of her dress without hesitation. "Leave me!" she begs of me. "Never." I reply.
Awakening
A whine and giggle had begun to rouse him, shaking him from a slumber that wasn't quite sleep. Oddly enough he staid the infantile noise from his consciousness and for some unknown reason begged for sleep to take him for all of eternity. But apparently the child that made such a noise did not care, for soon not only was its whines stark but so was its deep and powerful echoes. Footsteps the likes of giants rumbled what little surroundings he could grasp, the concept of child being near here jolted him into waking.
He peer out of twin holes at another being. This being's armor was sable as charcoal, its cloak swimming crimson as it battled a creature unlike anything he'd seen. The beast held the head of a infant with large distorted green eyes and a forehead that bulged with underdevelopment. It even whined like one as the man slashed away at it with white-bladed staff in hand.
He cringed from the cry, backing away until he felt himself submerge unexpectedly. In this body of clear liquid, he could still see the gorilla like arms of the child-monster as it guarded itself from a bright azure light. He narrowed his eyes for a moment, not knowing what to do in the situation he was in. He wondered if he'd eventually pop back out or if he'd just fall for all eternity. Pressure was building in his chest for some reason. He rubbed his chest with curiosity, the urge to intake was growing stronger and stronger but he got the feeling that was the wrong thing to do, so he held his breath.
When the pressure grew too much he was ripped from the waters by the armored being and left on the craggy soil, only to watch this vagrant drift away... When he awoke, he peered the orange disk frozen beneath the skyline with interest yet he had refused to speak. He traveled the confines of his environment, keeping close to the shadowy husk of trees and studying the creatures that lurked within it. Luck had proved on his side for a time as he spotted three headed turtles with wings the shapes of flat, human bodies. Fully developed goats with needles for eyes and mouth-less faces and crazy looking men with ashen skin.
As he put the pieces together he found himself making one important discovery. And that was, regardless of the conditions, he was still alive. He was thinking and conscious, he held a instinct to survive and even more so, even if his memories were shattered, hazy, and just fogged-up broken pieces, he still wanted to find them. So in this pretense revelation, he decided to give himself a name that would keep the memory fresh. So from that point on, he would be known as Important.
"A name? I once had a name, I think. I loved the sound of it, I loved to make people say it; it was the best name, because it was mine and mine alone. What was it, though? For some reason, I cannot recall it, even if my heart aches at its loss. I need a new name, a name for myself, a name that is only mine and which others will speak, a name that will be music to my ears. I must have a name, I must take a name, I must own a name. My name. Me. I am Perfect."
Standing 6' 1" and weighing over two hundred pounds, Perfect is a man for whom it is in the nature of which to be big, and who has a passive biological tendency to grow larger with very little effort on his part. This is supposed to be interpreted in a very general sense, though, for while Perfect is very strong and quite muscular, his belly also juts out, not obscenely large but just big enough for it to be noticeable that he is a bit on the overweight side of things. He has narrow hips and broad shoulders, and is prone to appear somewhat bulky. His skin is tanned and fair, however, and his body is remarkably void of scars, making it evident that his physical strength did not come from honest toil, but came simply by the will of genetics and Perfect himself. He is rather hairy, particularly on his forearms and shins, and has a thin mat of Titian hair on his chest that trails down his stomach, around his navel and connects into his pubic region. Similarly to the structure of his body, Perfects skull boasts predominantly squarish and masculine properties such as a wide, strong jaw and chin, the latter of which is short and slightly flat rather than rounded. He has tall, pronounced cheekbones over healthily full cheeks, a broad, strong brow and a large, prominent forehead that serves to balance his slightly large but sharp nose. His lips are dark by nature and tends to purse slightly without Perfect meaning for them to do so, and his eyes are large, bright and display a combination of brown and green colors. His eyebrows are bushy, and he likes to wear his facial hair trimmed so that his moustache does not grow past the upper border of his lips and the rest of his beard at less than one inch's length. He wears his hair short and preferably smoothened back, and all of his hair naturally matches the same Titian color. Judging by his appearance, it would be reasonable to estimate his age in the late twenties. The skin on his throat, just on his rather pronounced Adam's apple, is oddly coarse and reddened in a broad band across it, but otherwise his skin seems (for the moment) untarnished.
For whatever reason, recently awakened as he is, Perfect finds himself with very few possessions and regrettably with rather limited options in regards to surviving on his own. His only clothes are those he awoke in, and consist of a pair of light-gray socks, a pair of brown leather loafers, loose drawers and green woolen trousers, and a brown tunic that extends to his mid-thigh over which he wears a black woolen jacket. Aside from his clothes also has a rather large and nice hunting knife, with a polished dark-reddish wooden handle, and blade of bronze with a straight spine and softly rounded edge, being with a six-inch handle and a fourteen-inch blade, with a fitting leather sheath. Finally, he is also in possession of what appears to be an old pair of bunny-ears, tied together with a string to allow for them to function as a pendant. He has since acquired a water-containing pig-skin, a shield and a halberd from the Turncloak King.
"I remember the well better than anything else; a dilapidated old stone-lined well, caked with moss, found under a heavy cover of trees. There must have been an abandoned farm there or something, because there wouldn't just be a well in the middle of nowhere. I sit on the edge of the well - my well - with a white bunny beside me. I pet it, and like the feel of its ears against my hand. I break its neck and tear them off, and drop the rest of the carcass into the well. I don't remember why, but I remember feeling annoyed that I had to do it. But I wanted the ears.
Then I remember a girl crying; I'm holding the bunny's ears in my hand. She annoys me, being unnecessarily loud like that, so I hit her with my fist. She cries louder, so I hit her again. A pair of adults, a man and a woman, appear, and start yelling at me. It is mainly the woman yelling, with the man just growling occasionally from behind. They are loud, and I get irritated. Why were they being so difficult? The man hits me in my face with an open hand. Three times. It hurts. I'm angry.
I stand over the bed of the man and woman, staring, feeling pleased as my anger bleeds out of me at the same pace as the blood flows from their open throats. I smile as they lie there, staring at me, making desperate little sounds before growing still. I slap the man once he is still. Four times. I laugh. Undress the woman. Why not? They were my parents, just as it was my bunny. I feel strong. In control. Powerful.
The well again; I am out of breath, a small and weak child, as I tip over the naked woman into the well. The man is already down there, I know. The woman is no longer entertaining, and I have started to realize that others are not like me. They are different, somehow. Don't respect my ownership, my authority. Would likely think that what I had done was wrong, so I have to hide it. I am angry, having to get rid of my toys. Then I turn, and pick up the nerveless naked little girl to add to the well. Mine. People do not understand. I do not understand them. But I will learn, because I am smart. And I have a well.
A lot of faces occupy my memory, some distinct and others diffuse; faces of women, mainly, but also a lot of smaller girls and a few men. And the well is always there, in the background. I am smart, smarter than them, stronger than them; have to put them in the well, because they won't acknowledge that I own them. They are mine.
The well again; I look down into it, and it is too deep, too dark to see very far. There are people around me, loud, frantic people. They yell at me, like the man and woman did. I hurt, and I am angry. They are touching my well; soon they will be touching the things I have hidden away down there. But they are dangerous, because they refuse to understand. I try to explain it to them; I am smarter and stronger, it all belonged to me. They were mine to do with as I pleased. They are quiet, then loud, then very dangerous. My throat and neck hurts. They do not understand. I am perfect."
Turncloak's memory of kinghood A cloak flapping in the wind of some highland plain... At a sunset. Darkness falling. Beside another. "I give myself to you... until the end of time." "Are you sure," the woman asked, "T-t-" "There is no going back." "Do you renounce your kinghood for me?" ͔͍̤"̘͕͚͈͠Never!"̺̳ Delusion of kinghood has gripped Perfect.
Animating with a start, the man rolled over where he lay, from his stomach to his side, and heaved in an urgent breath, desperate to fill his lungs with air. The inhalation caused him to immediately lurch over, even lying down as he was, and cough violently, as the air he had drawn in had been hot and full of dust; his lungs hurt and his throat felt irritated, triggering the fit of coughing he found himself in now. It took almost a full minute to recover before he could breathe somewhat normally again, albeit only if he placed his hand over his mouth and nose and breathed through the fingers. It was a poor filter that did little to ease his breathing, but it was better than to drink the air straight from the source. Still breathing heavily as he recovered from his coughing-fit, the man opened his eyes and gazed upon the terrain around him without recognition. Sand and rocks, crags and canyons... and a whole lot of nothing but faintly visible fine dust, carried upon a hot wind, dancing before his eyes like ephemeral specters before dispersing anew, fading back into the twilight. He stared, looking around, trying to recognize something, anything... but everything that came into view, even after he had looked in every direction, seemed bleak, barren and alien. What was this place? Was... this was not where he had been before. He remembered trees, and his well, and other people. He remembered... very little. But he was sure that this place, this land, this world was not right. It was not his world. Where was this? Where had he been before? Who was he? Who had he been before?
Groaning, he started rising to his knees, his breath still ragged and painful, though he began to realize that his discomfort was no longer caused by the hostile environment he found himself in. Wincing, he raised his right hand to his sore throat, but immediately withdrew his fingers as contact with the skin there stung painfully. The pain was quickly fading, however, and it was getting easier to breathe; was his pain real, or just another memory? Where is this? Who am I? Taking in a deep breath, he slammed his fists into the thin, soft padding of sand atop the rocky ground beneath him, barking: "Why can't I remember?!" Those bastards, those... people, he could not remember who they were or what had happened, but they had taken his things away! All of his things! All of what he owned, even his memories and his precious, darling name. How could they do that? I'll figure it out; I'm smart and strong. Better than all of them. I will have it, all that was mine and all that is theirs; it shall all be mine. I'll kill them. Who were they, though? And how was he going to find them, let alone reach them from... wherever this place was? I'll figure it out, he thought again, this time even more certain, growing bolder as he grew more aware of the fact that he had to act, or he was in trouble. He had no idea where this place was, but it was obvious that it was a hostile place. He could see far in all directions from here, where he had awoken, and despite of this he could not spot as much as a single blotch of life-affirming green or a hint of the twilight playing in water's surface. He was not hungry or thirsty now, but he would be, eventually. Soon, in this heat. He did not have time to wallow in his own misery; he would survive. He was Perfect, after all.
Given Title: Riley Dempsey- ~ "I 'spose I'm lucky fer tha'. Most discarded babes woul' nary be dubbed some kinda worthy of receivin' a full title. Well, one they ha' not given 'imselves anyway."
Appearance: He stands at a stocky 5'8", weighs in at 164 lbs. His pupils are a dull mixture of green and blue. Fairly broad shoulders that are indicative of an active life style. His hair, a dirty-blond that leans towards dirty on the surface, is kept short in the front and on the sides, and is pulled back into a short/sloppy ponytail in the rear end of his head. While two symmetric sideburns run down his face to his jawline where they have been prevented from further expanding. His face usually carries a stern and vigilant look, furrowed brows, squinted lids, a mouth bent in a subtle downward arch. His skin is fair with few portions darkened by the sun, as his career has little use for daylight or any revealing illumination, but it's probably just in his genes to look pale anyway. His physique serves a fairly robust life suited, namely, for endurance (Getting to and fro/running away.), agility (Climbing around/jumping about/running away.), and dexterity (Stabbing or slicing others/running away.), all attributing to a lanky yet lean/wiry build.~ "I rarely cross the though' of me own looks...nah alot ah people are really 'spose tah see me anyhow, yah know?"
Equipment: In terms of weaponry he holsters a slightly dull short sword, forged of a crude steel, and two much sharper gnarly looking daggers, sheathed and placed criss-crossing one another on the small of his back.~"Aye, daggers are nice whe' no ones paid yah mind, buh when yer on ah one tah one tussle an' bein' able tah reach 'is veins is all that'll really concern. Always pack an alternative."~Clothing wise he wears a dark-green long-sleeved lace up padded over by a tunic made out of a dark-brown hard leather. His gauntlets hold the same consitency as the tunic and match its hue, reaching about three-fourths the way up his arm and are secured snugly against the skin. The trousers are a somewhat baggy pair of thick, dull milky-white fabrics. They drop halfway past the knees until being tucked away into a pair of ragged and scuffed black leather boots. Topping it all off an equally dull dark-brown cloak which droops over the shoulders, enveloping most his entirety save for his head.~"Ah-gain. The worry is in NOT bein' seen."~Has a tiny gourd with half a pint of fresh water in it.
Memories:~"Aye uhhh...it uh...by the Good Lords it was something else. Whatever sorts of fields I was in they where of another kind. All dead and quiet out there save fer some infernal scratching...far off in the back of the head it felt like. Dead was the word for it, all gravel and ashes. The sky blotted out making the daylight faint. Was something burning off in the distance, far far away but it was coming I knew it in me gut. The thing sat in front of me and I in front of it, was...was a real tall and long boy. He was tan, and was wearing real nice and fancy stuffs, all smudged and stained in soot, didn't fit him proper...all too small. He was looking at me, didn't have no brows but had a bushy black mess of hair, and an equally messy beard...his face tense, tan like the rest, is eyes huge and full of black with a little red dot dancing about in each. He had his mouth real odd like, for my life I wouldn't be able to tell if he was grinning or snarling, his mouth was open real wide. He didn't breathe or nothing nah really make a sound. The both of us just sat there...wasn't afraid nah, just sad I-I guess, but soon the scratching felt deeper an' harder, I couldn't breathe it all just slipped away as everything burned...it was all just real sad."
~"My first time out amongst other warriors...the sargeant at arms held me back. Our troop was held at the small bridge of St. Elienees, crossing the Murky Water Stream. We had about forty of us in count, a quarter slewn upon that wood. We where chasing down the raiding tribes come off the northern mountains, we gotten 'em past the bridge. It was there they held out with five and ten on the opposing side, and sent out a champion amongst them to greet us. He was to hold us there so they could regroup and overtake us in full force, we had to get by otherwise the small towns within the valley would be torn asunder...burned and pillaged. Ten of our group he had cut down, a massive beast who held a tower shield left and a heavy hatchet right. The sargeant, pressed by time and necessity, besmirched his honor and sent me under the bridge spear in hand. I clambered up the supports till I found myself right below the gap in the wood exposing the monster of the man in full to me. Our sargeant met the man there and gave him two choices; stand down and allow us passage or face certain death. In response the beast jeered and mocked, two stomps from the sargeant and I thrust my spear upwards through one gap and into another. Four drops of blood scraped onto my cheek, I pushed the lance and twisted a bit...more blood dripped down. The tribe's men cheering died away, and my sargeant apologized to the fearsome warrior before sliding steel into his collarbone. Overhead an angry charge burst across, our troop fueled by rage and vengeance, trailed over tracking down and slaughtering the remaining tribesmen. A show of blood and sorrow it was, and I only ever struck one man that day. He never even knew I was there."
~"A few years into my life, I had experienced bloodshed and killed a handful of the Lord's children. I thought myself steely, hollow, empty, I thought it was my calling, and I would never be right for anything else. In my naivety I began a career as a cloak and dagger. Within the capital I struck my first and only contract with the ruling church. Within these city walls I was told of a whore, the church deemed her a heretic, a gross smudge upon its character. She had come from the east and held a different set of beliefs and values. That was unacceptable; she was to die bleeding upon the cold ground. It was my duty to uphold this fate...in all honesty I considered this just and proper at the time. The night was starless and the moon was obscured behind a curtain of clouds, the only source of light within the back-end walkways where the few torches and lanterns that where occasionally donned upon the walls. It was well past final prayer and the blackness pervaded and masked all the evils of that time. I stepped behind her, one level above on a parallel rise looking down upon the woman, silently and without notice. She had full black and curly hair, a mess tied back in a large bun, her dress a short cut red, she walked cautiously and purposefully. I stepped without a sound down to her level. She noted my presence far too late, I spun her around and pressed my gloved arm to her mouth, throwing her against a wall back first. The iron dagger, I was provided, slid under her rib cage, and then I looked to her face. The fear and sickness was instantaneous, her eyes were squezed in pain as tears poured out, sliding down to my hand. The fear in those eyes...brown pupils distorted by water. Muffled and shaky breathes tried to escape, blocked by my grasp. She was pleading silently with me for forgiveness, mercy. Bile rose and was promptly swallowed back down my gullet. The adrenaline died away, turning to a shaky sick kind of despair. I rose again putting my hands out almost grasping her, as the dagger slipped away to the ground, iron ringing out. There was nothing I could do for her...I almost said begged for forgiveness. This was not the killing I had known, I hadn't realized what it meant till now. The few I had struck down were in the heat and confusion of battle, it was survival. This was murder, I stole away her life, her story, her precious memories. I was sweating now, looking about frantically from her back to my surroundings. She had slid to the ground sobbing and holding herself as blood streamed freely to the Earth. I ran away, my legs were shaky as my head grew dizzy. I thought all the windows to be looking right at me silently judging me as I took off into the night. A short time later I found myself within the safe house, a kind of barren and abandoned building, there for the first time in what seemed a decade about, I wept silently like a babe newborn. I wept for the woman, I wept in the vain of innocence lost. I was no killer, just a boy of nine and ten who had let silver speak for him. That next morning, after first prayer, I left the city with my payment already in hand. I had done the job and there was no need for further talk, the business was done."~
Awakening: Riley Dempsey, a knife for hire, found him self planted on the ground midst a field of ash and gravel. He was upright hugging his legs to his chest the cloak splayed about him. Eyes met eyes, a silent conversation of sweet nothings was underway, the man across from him didn't let a breath get away, but told him everything he should know. The being in question was quite tall, long, and had well tanned skin, he sported what had been a very nice blue and gold dress ware befitting royalty, but here it was much too small for the person it cloaked, covered by soot, black smudges streaked across the fibers. The mans face was adorned my a mess of pitch black hair, it jutted away from the cranium and face in a jagged fashion. The expression worn was something feral, showing anger and fear, his mouth stretched end to end pressing his gums and teeth out, creating a small ravine between the upper and lower lips. Eyes, black holes that seemed to take in everything as both the little flames fidgeted around inside. Riley didn't really mind, he just felt sad, but he wouldn't dare break the silence, that'd be rude. The scratching...the grating got louder, the flames on the horizon burned higher. Smoke billowed out of the odd mans openings as the end came. A pressure squeezed around Riley's torso letting the air out, it was really such a sad affair he thought, and than it all just seemed to just get away from him as he fell back into the heat.
A panicked awakening, frantically feeling around, eyes darting to take in everything, grabbing for a sword. Stop...slow down. He takes a moment to calm down and get a grip, this isn't his first nor will it be his last time getting lost. Slowly but silently he coaxes out the steel from its sheathe, as he does this he finds footing and rises, keeping an eye out. All senses are working overtime now, eyes continue to adjust, ears listen closely for any sound whatsoever. Nothing. But his skin tells him it's humid, his nose informs him that water is nearby. He takes a few steps and his boots respond with the clack of wood, some sort of wetland. "Smells like rot...", his hoarse voice croaks out.
Though he himself does not understand why, the one other person he's met thus far has referred to him as 'Pick'. When he asked about it he was met only with a laugh before the two of them were ripped to shreds.
Appearance
Pick is a man who appears to be in his late twenties, his features having an almost forced ruggedness to him. Should he shave and clean himself up he'd appear to be quite handsome with a soft looking face and light complexion, though instead he keeps his moderately sized beard unkempt and his thick black hair stays only just short enough to keep out of his deep brown eyes. He's not fairly clean either, nor is anything he owns as most of it is covered in dirt or dust.
Pick is an around average man, though a little on the large side standing an inch or two over six feet with a fairly solid build giving him a 'sturdy' appearance. His physique is an odd mix between lean and big boned, making him appear a little less fit than he actually is.
This is sort of hidden by his clothing, which is designed to cover and meant for labour work as the materials seem fairly tough. Heavy work boots, faded black work pants, a light beige tunic covered in dirt, and on top of that a heavy looking, brown leather jacket with several pockets meant for functionality over style. Atop his head Pick wears a miners helmet, with a still functional but extinguished head lamp on the front. Finally, dug through his jacket and lodged in his upper back just beneath his right shoulder blade is a rusted iron pickaxe, the tool stuck where it is with Pick himself unaware of it's existence.
Equipment
- A heavy looking shovel. The edges are a little dented but otherwise it's in fairly good condition with a reinforced neck to keep the spade from breaking off the handle.
- Headlamp. While the plain grey helmet itself has clearly seen better days the lamp attached to the front looks fairly new aside from the small crack in the lens on the front.
- Matches. Just a tin of matches, and while it's obviously been opened before there are still plenty of matches inside (Around thirty)
- Oil. A few tin flasks of lantern oil occupies two of the pockets inside Pick's jacket; each tin holding enough to refill the head lamp twice from empty.
- Canteen. While the outside is caked in dirt and covered in dents the inside remains clean and unpunctured. Currently about half full and held over the shoulder underneath Pick's jack.
- Map. Less a map than it is a tattered and dirty crumple of paper. Barely readable anymore though you can still make out a few parts of the legend and some of the things written on it.
Memories
Work...
"I'm sorry, but there isn't really anything else to say. I expect your things gone by the end of the day. It's been nice working with you."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~"It's not going to work anymore. You've changed, and I can't look at you the same. Goodbye."~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~"Let me make you an offer..."
Journey
This memory is clearer. Not blurred like the others. We were traveling. Who they were, I can't remember- their faces are always turned away from me. "I promise you, mate. We're all going to be rich after the end of this."
"And we'll split the finds even? A share to each man?"
"O'course we will. Many hands make light work but too many and they get tangled. The ten of us will do just fine out there- how you holdin' up?"
"This pack is heavy. I don't see why I need to carry all this."
"Cuz you're the biggest guy here. You got good legs-"
"How much farther?"
"Duno. Lemme check the map..."
Camp
It's cold. I can't remember. We were digging. Why were we digging? We're running out of food. They're dead. Not them, the others. He's always alive though- he's alright. Why haven't we found it yet? Seven head left; two crushed and one just gone. We need to build supports for the tunnels...
Nobody sings like they used to. We're out of drink- only water now. We just eat in silence, looking at the fire. Still nothing, nothing but dirt and rock. It's cold...
Discovery
"HERE it is!"
We're digging. Always digging. We found it- digging, always digging. Digging faster. Digging farther. We found- digging...
Did we find it? We found it- digging. Why are we digging? One of them had me help them haul it out. Was it why? I- I can't see. Are we going home? Where is home...
Games
We're digging, me and him. He's still alright; it's dark. We found it, why are we still digging? More? We don't need more, we have enou-
It's cold. This is colder though- a spike of ice- no, him; a thorn in my side now something worse. It hurts, I can't breathe- crimson- choking- cold ground, cold hands. Why would they do this? What did I do? Hurts- the cold hurts. No light...
Awakening
Through the blackness, a gasp is heard- strangled and raw as whomever it came from scrambles to their feet in a panic. The sound of metal clanging against stone echo's out into the emptiness, and a shocked cry escapes the lone figure's cold lips. He gasps again, his breathing irregular and shallow as the sound of a match being struck blends with the distant scrape of claws.
The wick lights, the flame piercing the shadows as a filthy hand moves to put the glass cover in place. A beam of light shines forward, the metal helmet back on the head of it's owner.
"Well fuck," a voice mutters, not belonging to the man with the light. In a panic the beam flashes all around, coming to rest on another man dressed similarly to the first but looking far dirtier. "Now we're both done for mate," he grumbles, his eyes glazed over as he stared towards the high cavern ceiling.
"What do you mea- ARGHHH!" the man with the headlamp screams, overtaken by a sudden pain in his chest. Slowly he drops to his knees, lamp falling off his head and onto the ground as he leaned forward.
"That looks nasty," the other man commented, now covered in shadow as the light had fallen upon the first man. "Pick in the back- how'd that happen?"
The first man's only response is another pained groan, prompting a sigh from the other before he spoke louder. "Oy, Pick! How'd that happen?" he shouted, his voice forcing the cavern into momentary silence.
"What pick, what? Where am I?" the first man asked, trying to push himself upright as the pain began to subside.
"Wish I could tell you, Pick," the second man replied regretfully, a hint of sadness in his tone as a distant screech sent shivers through the inky blackness. "Grab that hat of yours. You might need it when you wake up again."
Again the screech sounded, closer and accompanied by a rapid clicking which echoed through the cavern. Panic overtaking him, the first man grabbed his helmet and groped through the darkness, his hand coming to rest on what he recognized quickly as a shovel. "Won't do you any good, Pick," was the last thing he heard, right before a scythe like claw rended him in two.
An old man sometimes shows himself to the intrepid wanderers and those oftentimes considered lucky travellers of the poison lands. His name is known to very few, if any at all still remember it; instead he simply goes by an uncomplicated moniker such as 'The Hermit' or 'The Old Wanderer'. But it is an undoubted and unanimous understanding between all those he makes company with that he is not a man to be trifled with. Whether this is derived from the kindness he shows to his fellow lost souls, or from some other, more esoteric phenomena is unknown. His eyes are incredibly alive for a man of his age - he hobbles instead of walking - which some infer as the clarity of his mind after what one can only assume is a lifetime of being caged in a land such as this.
