Keystone
Location: Deymin's Tower (1F)
Interacting With: His Flagging Sense Of Balance. Again. And Thomas.
Especially Thomas.
Keystone could see the outside. He could feel cool air on his face. The sight of fresh death aside, this was damned near a blessed moment. Or it would have been, except for the fact that for some ungodly reason, it seemed like every ounce of bad booze he had ever consumed in his life decided to pay him a visit unannounced. All he knew was that a hammerblow of dizziness and nausea reamed him from the stomach upward. He glanced to the side for an instant, hoping to throw a belch wide so as to spare himself the indignity of running through his own gastric vapors. Unfortunately, this is all it took for one massive boot to get caught upon another massive boot, both attached to the man.
He pitched forward, sailing a few feet into the remains of the centrally located table, or more appropriately, what was left of it. His bulky form continued the work of the ongoing battle and the collapse of the ruined tower.
Ruined seemed to be the word of the day. The trip ruined his attempt to escape just then. His fall ruined what was left of the table. And the dead centipede that was on the table's remains, well, it ruined plenty.
The massive bug, dead or dead enough at any rate, was a little too close for Keystone's comfort. While the big man did not know much about Giant Centipede Anatomy, he did receive a lesson in the digestive system thereof. No classes were necessary for this lesson, nor lecture, no stifled discussions about histories and theories, nor even the invasive procedures of dissection or vivisection. Nay, the lesson (like many of those in Keystone's inglorious background) came from the annals of brutal, painful experience.
The dead(ish) beast's innards relaxed and, jostled about by the commotion, vented a noxious and horrifying wind from what passed for bowels in the arthropodic form and issuing forth with a slipping, clicking, chitinous sound. It was the reek of old blood and spoiled meat, the rancid and alien stench of abyssal dietary habits mixed with corruptive rot. The smell of raw chicken left to decay in the sun, mixed with a funk spawned of the vigorous and sweaty mutual gratification of two homeless manure salesmen gyrating against each other in a sockfull of stale piss on a humid day. Pickled ass. Prehistoric cheese. A battle royale of turds fighting over a skunk carcass for breeding rights. To say that it was
merely unholy was a mockery of decent, self-respecting worshipers of legitimately recognized dark forces worldwide; and in that moment Keystone was glad he killed the son-of-a-bitch that summoned it. He only wished he had the time to defile the corpse with farming implements.
The experience keyed off something primal within Keystone. It was a revulsion so immediate and powerful as to lurch him to his feet without the aid of himself or others; as surely and wildly as water pushed through a hose far faster than he thought possible. His brain allowed himself to process the inevitable action which was to occur next, previewing the result of the sudden tightening, lifting feeling rising from his own entrails after getting a nose full of aerated insect expulsions. Oddly, the split second before his own horror hit free air, Keystone got the interesting mental image of Femnal, the tavern owner.
Well if he was going to hurl, then damnit, he was going to hurl with
purpose. Thomas, that insufferable user of magic, that insulting little buffoon that stood as a slave to his own power, the foolish, pantsless boy who might have gotten them killed by the enclave of Orcs a few days earlier and otherwise contributed little (in his eyes) to their as yet not fully determined success, who had just now slipped past him
yet againin their daring tower escape... Oh yes. Keystone might die, but he'd go with a smile in his heart. And obscene gestures on both hands.
Keystone raised both of his arms in front of him as best he could, considering the fact that his stomach was turning itself inside out, and extended the first two fingers of each hand skyward with his knuckles facing forward. He enhanced the rolling wave of juggernaut vomit by utilizing his lungs' remaining oxygen in a single, sustained
roar, a protesting battlecry that paired nicely with his reddened face and crossed, bloodshot eyes. The neutrally colored chunky semi-liquid contents of his stomach arched from his mouth in a manner most projectile, sailing haphazardly forward in an example of a hellworthy fluid fractal, changing and scintillating in the varying light of the collapsing tower while still retaining its identity of chewed up, partially digested eggs, steak, bread and gravy and local cheese, all undulating within a small fjord of gut-soured ale.
It splattered against Thomas forcefully, whipping his hair into a gooey blowback and cascading down his shoulders in hot, fermenting rivulets of disgustingness. The sound was a burbling, screaming slap repeating a thousandfold, as wet stew flung forcefully onto an irregularly mortared stone rampart. The fevered, gurgling cascade of used food continued bellowing out from Keystone until, his sense of revulsion satisfied, the broad Puglist's survival instinct kicked back in.
Gotta run.
