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Dinh AaronMk
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Lunamaria Hawke
Taeryn
Nallore
Sigma
RolePlayerGuilt
Andreyich
Lord Zee
King of RatsThe Blood Swarm
The Scream of a Billion Wings
Winter in the Striped Lands hardly sunk to freezing temperatures. It was a land of plenty, nuzzled in the warm tear duct of the Eye of the World, where storms were scarce and earthquakes, rare. Neither volcanoes nor hurricanes were anything more than anomalies, and the blazing heat of Itzal was tough, but oddly fair. Climate-wise, the Striped Lands proved to be a haven for all mortal life that settled. Instead, the land had been cursed with a disease as stubborn as the climate itself: resources. Some of the most fertile land in the world was most of the time inaccessible because of the rampant parasitism of the locals. Whenever anyone would try to plant themselves a home, ten others would storm over to root it out of the ground. The lands were a buffer between thousands of souls, each too jealous to let others have it better off and each too greedy to abandon the fight.
Some, however, would inevitably try, but lucky were the few to escape - and for others, the promise of untold riches, bursting bellies and eternal glory called and called like echoes in the hills.
A gut-wrenching stench oozed through a hastily erected tent, trapped ever more tightly by the blazing heat from the fireplace. The winters were normally calm, yes, but as though sent by the Black Sun itself, a storm unlike any that had struck the Striped Lands before brought with it a layer of frost over the endless meadows. The small camp surrounded itself with a wall of whatever its inhabitants had brought with them: sleds, sticks, sacks and pottery. The wall would scarcely hold back a fly. Yet they could not go on. Not yet.
“Greatmother?”
Draznokh held the old sow’s wrinkled hand in his with quivering emotion. The rasp of the old crone’s breath was the only sound in the tent, despite the presence of eight other snouters. Occasionally, the rasp received company in a quiet sob from the attendees. Otherwise, only the wind from the outside came to dance with the dying gurgle.
Cataracts clouded the crone’s small eyes as crusted lids slowly parted. They saw nothing, but the bond between family, honed for decades and then some, guided them to settle perfectly on the face of her grandson.
“Draz… nokh…” she droned, her grip tightening ever so slightly. Those present leaned in, breaths held as though a mere sigh could kill her. The grandson swallowed.
“Y-yes, Greatmother - I’m here.”
“... Draz… Oh… My little boy…” whispered the crone, the last of her moisture welling up like yellow bile in her eyes. “... Are, are we… home?”
Draznokh’s back began to buckle - the onset of grief made his shoulders too heavy to bear. A crack split his voice briefly as he replied, “Yes… Yes, we are…” Behind him, the silence, too, began to shatter as more and more snouters failed to maintain their stony faces.
The crone snickered weakly. “... Did I… Ever tell you…” There was a long pause as her lungs grasped for air. Gurgling slime suggested they were already drowned. “... Did… I ever tell you… what home is?”
The grandson’s focus was briefly reconquered out of sheer puzzlement. He tightened his grip and roped his other hand into it. “I… am not sure I follow, Greatmother.”
The old crone coughed, but managed a weak, but very evident smile. “... Home, my dear boy… is everything. For as long… as there have been snouters, we’ve… We’ve fought for our homes.” KHA-hoh-KHA-hoh… Urgh…. “... A homeless snouter… Has two choices…” With her nigh final strength, she flexed two fingers on her opposite hand. “... When home is gone… So is… The curse… The Bull’s fury dissipates… Thus, the snouter is… Free to wander in search of… A new home…”
Draznokh blinked and opened his mouth to respond, but the crone cut him off.
“... Or... One lets the fury… consume them…” The crone’s eyes grew stern and wide, anger boiling behind her pale pupils. “... One choses to slay… To kill… To undo those that took… the home away…” She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “... And upon the fields now sown with their guts; upon foundations laid with their bones, their skulls in the soil, forced to forever stare up into the sky they took from us…” KAAAAAAH-huh-hegh-egh…
“G-Greatmother, calm your–” started the grandson, but he silenced himself when the crone turned her head and stared through him, through his flesh and deep into his flaming soul: the ember of Anat’aa stirred.
“... Flee, or retake the home - cost what it may, take what it may. This land is yours, and for as long as you and your kin are alive, it shall remain yours.”
Draznokh swallowed again and watched the eyes of the old crone roll back. Adrenaline pumped through him and he leaned in. “Greatmother?! Greatmother, please!”
“... Home… Carrots in the garden… The knock… of little trotters…” The muscles in her hand softened, and a gentle sigh escaped her. The gurgling had stopped, and so the wind once again danced alone on the soundscape.
As tears and wails of grief assaulted his ears, Draznokh felt a small sensation in his hand which kept him from completely choking on his tears: a ring, bejeweled like none he had seen before.
Years later…
SMACK!
A palm soaked with sweat caught a bloodfly square in the centre, its black mush staining Draznokh’s bark-brown skin. He snarled and wiped it off on his tunic, his glare scouting the horizon. Swarms like a mahogany fog stalked the wetlands around the Lick far below, leaving behind trails of yellow soil and clean-picked corpses. Acres of soils, ploughed and overgrown, and none of it filled any mortal bellies. Draznokh would have cursed, but it was high noon and their prospects looked poor enough already. A gravely shuffle on the air revealed approaching steps and Draznokh turned to see his cousin Zlot, a wildheart many years his junior. He offered the youth a nod and clapped him on his shoulder. “Come to see the sights, have you?”
Zlot flattened himself in the grass and wormed his way to the brink of the hill, eyes glancing over into the wasteland below. He propped his head up on his crossed forearms and snorted. “So these at the Vootlands, huh?”
Draznokh nodded. “Aye… These are the Vootlands.”
Silence. The youth eventually let out a sigh. “Eeeh… Not what I’d hoped, to be honest.”
Draznokh rolled his eyes. “You’re seeing it at its worst, cousin. Think–” The hesnouter cast his arm in a wide arc. “–houses, farms, lumbermills, piers! Villages and walls, cousin! An acre for every Voot!”
Zlot snickered. “Better not say that too loudly. Krang’s gonna hear it.”
“Bah, he knows already,” Draznokh muttered and spat. The sun suddenly burned a little hotter and he breathed deeply to calm himself. He squatted down next to the prone youth. “Bet you someone like Krang’s had a hundred small clans in his tribes, each with a dream of retaking whatever corner of the world was theirs one time and declare independence.” SMACK! cracked his hand and he wiped another speck of goo on his tunic. “... There aren’t many of us left now. Noz and Yolder will be too old to haul the chieftain’s baggage soon. Once their backs give in, Krang will toss them aside like he did with Rustan and Loik.”
Zlot’s humour had soured. “That piece of–”
SMACK! went the palm again, but this time against Zlot’s head. Draznokh snorted sharply. “Not at noon, cousin.”
Zlot grit his teeth. “You– I–! UGH!” He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going to Jura!” As he stomped off, Draznokh groaned quietly and then felt the sun’s rays worsen. He straightened his legs back to a standing position and slouched over. As he shuffled back, he reminded himself that he had forgotten in the moment that Itzal cackled at violence, too.
Few sowed more fear in a soul like the visage of Grand Agricultist Krang Half-Head. A terrible fight with a giant had brought him a grievous wound to the neck and skull, and both had healed at uncanny angles. His head was permanently titled to the left and one eye sat higher than the other, as though seen through a broken mirror where the lines in the shattered glass were made of scar tissue. Neither of the pupils looked straight ahead, but that only made any conversation with him that much more uncertain. A true and tested servant of the Vile Three–the Horned, the Crazed and the Killer–he had a short patience and shorter fuse. As Draznokh came back, the Black Sun’s position revealed that it was time for the afternoon sacrifice, and this time, it seemed that the Grand Agricultist had a special guest.
An old giant hill, cleared and cleansed of the mandibled menace, had been converted into a fortified cave village, tunnels dug by wolf-sized ants spewing out smoke from the many fireplaces inside. Palisades covered up many of the openings, and small, but densely grown fields surrounded the hill on almost all sides in a radius of a tenth of an acre. Fruit trees, nuts, berry bushes, legumes, winter roots, cereals–the field had variety, but not enough. He- and shesnouters were picking pests off of the plants and eating them; some had great swatters fashioned from a fan of branches and smacked aggressively at clouds of locusts that stalked the plants like a miasma. A dance of war practiced through months and years of suffering with this terrible blood swarm, wherein the farmer sought only to strike the insects and never the plant. The insects could dance too, and so the war continued.
Atop the great giant hill, an temple of stone and wood had been fashioned, a great altar to the Vile Three and the Black Sun–a testament to the depths of wicked desperation that the snouters had sunk to. A line of villagers snaked its way up the hill, traveling into tunnels and out a different opening like a worm through an apple. Villages carried baskets and pots of their most valuable possessions: bone jewelry, fresh vegetables, family heirlooms, and odd bits and pieces of metal and paper from the cities in the East. They were meagre offerings, but surely whoever was visiting would see reason given the circumstances.
Draznokh walked over to one of the shesnouters in line and asked, “Sister, who graces the Grand Agricultist with their presence?”
The snesnouter faced him and swallowed, gingerly lifting a hand to shield her face from the sun as she spoke as though it was a curse to just mention him: “It’s the Horned One.”
Draznokh pressed his eyes and lips together in frustration. There would be no reason to be had, then. It was then that his eyes blinked open again. Perhaps…
Atop the pyramid, the bull eyed cruelly the little snouters who skittishly presented him “gifts”, the pile before him barely reaching him to the knee. His throne of lumber creaked under his weight and he bluffed a torrent of rage, which sent the Grand Agricultust at his side into a jump.
“Evidently, the tribe of Pate is not fond of guests,” he remarked in a voice that could curdle dairy.
Krang wheezed in fear. “Now, now, magnificent overlord! Th-this is only a quarter–nay, a FIFTH of the gifts!” The bull sneered and Krang swallowed. “I-if this pile doesn’t reach up to His Hoovedness’s belly button by the end of today, why, then I’ll, I’ll…” In a panic, he grabbed one of the agricultist novices next to him and drew a bone dagger. “I’ll spill the blood of this boney twig!” The novice squealed and the train of offerings stopped briefly. Krang stabbed the dagger in the direction of the onlookers. “DON’T YOU DARE STOP! MORE! MORE SACRIFICES FOR HIS MAGNANIMOUSNESS!”
The bull rolled his eyes and planted his cheek on a propped-up fist. “Very well… Proceed with the gifts. You may ready the sacrifice right away–I think I can see the end of the line over there.”
Krang blinked and hurried over to the edge of the pyramid. “O-over where?”
The bull’s voice deepened. “... Did you just check to see if I was wrong?”
Krang spun around and prostrated himself. “No! NO! Not at all, Your Delightfulness! Oh please. Oh please, punish me if I have been naughty, oh pl–”
“Shut up.”
“Eep! Yes, alright, yes. Hey. HEY! WHAT’RE YOU LOOKING AAAAT?! KEEP THE OFFERINGS COMING, DAMN YOU! MOOOOVE!” From a belt under his bulging stomach, he rolled out a whip fashioned from scraps of goblin skin and started whipping the bypassers. The bull seemed pleased, every lash tightening the small smile on his greasy muzzle. The bypassers whimpered under the lash, but it was not an uncommon sensation under Krang. The stiff green strips lefts pocks and bruises, but even the skinniest snouters largely shrugged off the pain after the initial strike. After whipping for a good while, the Grand Agricultist hung the whip from his belt once again and shuffled back over to the bull’s side.
“S-say, Your Most Obscene Overlord?”
The bull afforded him less than acknowledgement–in the same way one might freeze for a millisecond to listen for a possible gnat in the room, he too lifted his eyes slightly and held a stiff pose for a mere blink. The agricultist seized the moment.
“S-since you have graced us with you presence… P-perhaps th-there is a reason for your visit?”
The bull maintained eye-contact with the growing pile of offerings. “And what would that be, little flea?”
“C-c-c-could it have something to do w-w-with the swarm, perhaps?”
There came no response. Krang swallowed.
“Th-th-then perhaps the wicked sh-shadow beasts?”
Still nothing.
“G-giants, then?”
The bull sighed. “Such ingratitude…” The snouters all froze. The bull pushed himself to his hooves with some effort and gestured widely. “To think–I offer you land, resources, skills to work them both. And pray tell: what do I get in return?” With a solid kick, he sprayed the pile of offerings out across the fields below. Many who were unfortunate to be caught in the blast were knocked onto their backs. “Mouldy carrots and rusty coins…”
Krang and the other agricultists huddled around him. “NO! No, no, no, there, there is so much more,” he pleaded. “You want blood, yes? How many jugs?! Sweat?! We can get you sweat! Oh, we’ll wipe every brow in the land and jar it good for you, lord, just you–”
“SILENCE!”
The snouters curled up like frightened snails. The bull reached out and Hoepebreaker manifested in his hand. As he clapped the head of the hoe into his free palm, whimpering prayers began to seep out from many of those present. The bull patrolled slowly from left to right, surveying the snouters. His nostrils flared with such rage that steam seemed to ooze out of them. “Requests upon requests upon requests… First you want me to deal with the swarm… Then the beasts… And finally, ridiculously enough, the giants.” He spat, and as the phlegm struck the ground it left a crater. Many in the crowd were crying. The bull sneered so that every tooth was visible. “Perhaps it is finally time that I return you all to the soil from whence you came…”
Just as he raised the Hoepebreaker, however, a hesnouter rose up. “STOP!”
Silence. For the blink of an eye, the world seemed to freeze, and neither the snouters nor the bull knew quite how to react. A mortal had just commanded a god. In the moment, Draznokh lifted forth a ring–the very same ring given onto him by his Greatmother on her deathbed. Everybody held their breaths. The wind, too, seemed to briefly stop. The incessant buzz of blood flies, as natural a part of the soundscape as running water and rustling leaves after all these years, seemed comfortable in comparison to the silence–too bad it was missing, too. Draznokh held his pose despite the atmosphere, but the beads of sweat on his face quickly became streams. The air seemed to boil like a geyser before eruption. Hardly more than eight seconds could have passed, but it felt like hours had passed before the bull lowered the Hoepebreaker and reached for the ring. A pair of timber-thick fingers clutched the metal with surprising care and brought up to the bull’s face. Draznokh let his arm fall and slap against his hip. Then he closed his eyes, ready for salvation or the Afterworld.
“... I accept.”
Draznokh’s eyes blinked back open. The others too dared to hope. Krang was quick to follow up: “Y-you accept what, sire?”
“The swarm. The beasts. I will get rid of them for you.”
The snouters exchanged looks. “And the gi–”
“THE GIANTS STAY!” thundered the bull and the snouters cowered again. Then he calmed and returned to a tranquil inspection of the ring. “... I made them to till the soil, after all,” he said absent-mindedly. “Scum.”
It took Draznokh a moment to understand that he had been addressed. He took a knee and lowered his head. “Yes, Great Horned One?”
“How did you happen upon this ring?” He turned it in his enormous hands for a few moments more.
“It-it was my Greatmother’s. She bequeathed it to me upon her deathbed. I-... I do not know its story from there.”
The bull turned the ring one final time in his hand and then shot Draznokh a perusing glance.
“Hmph.”
Then he pocketed the ring, picked up Hoepebreaker and thundered towards the staircase down from the temple, forcing the snouters to dive out of the way. They all stood there dumbfounded, watching the giant minotaur cross over the fields below without squashing a single plant, his direction seemingly heading for the hive of the blood swarm. As he faded out of view, their eyes turned to Draznokh, and the whole tribe broke into a massive cheer. The hesnouter was lifted up as a celebrated hero, and Draznokh could barely absorb what was happening.
“Draznokh, Draznokh, Draznokh!” they cheered. The hesnouter recollected himself and eased his tense muscles for a little bit, allowing himself some self-appreciation. Behind him, Krang and the agricultists stood slack-jawed, dumbfounded by what had just transpired. Draznokh realised the golden opportunity he had been given and shouted, “The bull has given us his blessings! Waste no time reaping his bounty!” The snouters sat him down and offered him a respectful silence snouters rarely offered anyone. Draznokh pointed out across the fields below. “His harvests is still assailed by the wicked swarms! Do we expect His Gruesomeness to hand us everything on a platter?! Go! Go out there! Reap, plow and sow–retake what the swarm has taken! Lay the fields fallow and prune every orchard! Next year, we will eat until our bellies burst!”
“YEEEEAAAAH!” The Anat’aan spark within every snouter burst to life and a fiery passion sent everyone present down the hill to till, swat and harvest.
The bull stuck a hand in his pocket and fished out the ring again. As his form collided with and broke down all the trees in his path, he chuckled bemusingly to himself. To think, of all the places this thing could have ended up, it had been in the hands of some old wrinkly sow. He caressed the grimy, filth-ridden beard under his chin, his dirty fingers sliding across pockmarks, no, scars–misshapen scars that seemed to dent and bend in inorganic ways. With a playful movement, he brought the ring up to his chin and slotted it partially into one of the scars. It fit like a glove. His chuckle became a mouth-wide guffaw and he stopped upon the hill that was overlooking the hives of the blood swarm below. He planted one foot in front of the other and raised the hand with the ring triumphantly towards the sky.
“GALAXOR! I HAVE A PIECE OF YOOOOUUU!” He raised both arms in a victorious cackle, cereals, corn and leafy greens sprouting from the ground with heroic speed all around his feet. The setting sun painted the horizon blood red, and the ground began to shake. Cracks in the ground spiraled out from his filthy hooves as roots and mycelium began to crawl out of the earth. The forests behind him quivered and howled; the leaves rustled with rage and bloodthirst. Out between the woods came demonic beasts of burden: huge oxen with six horns and glaring red eyes, black horses with eight legs and barbs for manes, elephants with four tusks and curving horns, muscular donkeys covered in thick veins. Giants oozed out of the forest like an oil spill; mangy, rabid dogs came sprinting and ran in circles around the bull as though they were part of the ritual. Roosters and hens nearly two metres tall and armed to the beak with thick talons and feathers hissed a furious oath of vengeance. The clouds coalesced and sunk to the ground, forming a dense fog that conjured crackles of lightning and fire. The bull lowered his hand and swiped the Hoepebreaker slowly from the left to the right. The fog snaked down to fill the valley below, and sparks of light blasted the hives of the swarm. Piles of rotting flesh, ready to be brought south for gods-knew-not-what-purposes, exploded with shock and sent an unspeakable, putrid rank oozing over the fields. The black bile and decaying tissue rained down upon the bare-picked soil, and there it decomposed in a flash and became feed for new plants, which sprouted immediately. Bulbous little roots squeezed small postules of yellowy sap out of the ground, accompanying the retching decay with a grimy musk. The bull pocketed the ring and grabbed Hoepebreaker with two hands.
“Slash…”
He swung horizontally with all his might, and starting from the right edge of the horizon, the fog was pushed ever leftwards, like a hand brushing sand off of a table. A thousand blades of wind cut across the field of fresh plants, oozing corpses and panicking blood flies, slicing every living thing into strips. Wherever the blade cut, crimson soil followed–many flies were so fat on mortal blood that they popped like giant zits. Their hives, structures of flesh and dirt hardened after years of exploitation of local life, cascaded like grass before the scythe. Larvae which had enjoyed the safety of the hive, poured out of the shattered tunnels like the insides of a crushed egg. The bull stabbed the long end of Hoepebreaker into the soil, spearing one of his soldiers with it, and clapped his hands together. The oily dirt on his palms began to smoke and smoulder, and as the squeal of the blood flies were at their loudest, he pulled his palms apart like a match over a strip.
“... and burn.”
The fog, the bulbs, the blood upon the soil–in an instant, the entire horizon blasted into a terrible inferno. The shockwave sent many of his minions soaring back into the forest, and the heat and noxious fumes made many others buckle. The wildfire rose higher than the hill they were on, and the cacophony of popping exoskeletons and sizzling flesh within was only complemented by screams of those among the piles of flesh who were still alive or were being fed as living flesh to the blood fly maggots. The bull grinned from ear to ear, the suffering entering his ears like the most wonderful symphony. The flames died down quickly–they did not need to stay around for long as no living thing could survive that heat for longer than a single breath. Before them laid a scorched hellscape, but only for a moment: Where there had for years now been a beige wasteland of locusts, flies, gnats and corpses, a veritable eden of greens, yellows, reds, blues and purples shifted into the landscape like a mirage. Only it was not a mirage, but a miracle. In the blink of an eye, the blood swarm in the Vootlands was no more, and all memory of its terrors was securely locked within the traumatic experiences of mortalkind. The bull slowly turned to his minions, all of whom had resisted their flight response out of fear that whatever the bull could do to them, was worse than what they had witnessed. The bull snorted quietly and spat on the ground.
“Go out into the wilderness. Find these shadow beasts and destroy them. Let none survive.” Whether it was out of relief that they were allowed to leave or out of genuine bloodthirst, the army of beasts and plants rampaged back into the woods and out across the Striped Lands. The bull then turned around and surveyed the land beneath. He descended from the hill and and strolled through the newly sown fields, letting his hands caress the tall reeds as he walked by. He knelt down and scooped up a handful of soil: despite outward appearances, the soil quality was poor. The swarm had done obscene damage to the life here which would take generations to recover. He thought for a bit, and then a rumble gurgled in his stomach. He winced ever so slightly, a squint betraying a sensation of pain. He positioned himself a little better, squatted down and went, “HNNG!”
The children of Egrioth who for months had ravaged the Abundant Fields, would soon find their continued killing spree to be a much harder affair. Whenever they would set foot on cultivated land, the ground would split and tendrils of roots and mycelium shot out like the tentacles of an octopus and attempt to drag the beast into the depths of the earth. Beasts of burden split into two groups: those who chose the hunt and those who chose the post. The hunters roamed the land in search of beasts, traveling in packs and hosts and grazing on the bounty of the land. Mortals previously terrorised by the shadows could always pray that in the final moments before their deaths, they would be miraculously saved by an oncoming charge of horned elephants. Those who chose the post, settled in with the mortals, forsaking the plight of foraging in favour of feeding by mortalkind. In exchange, they offered protection, carrying capacity and, for any non-snouter, help to pull the plow. In doing so, the mortals domesticated them and they domesticated the mortals, ensuring that neither could live the same life without the other ever again.
And upon the ember-cleansed fields of the Vootlands, a towering pile of manure offered copious nutrients for the surrounding soils, distributed by an army of flies, dung beetles and worms. It would remain there for ages to come, so impossibly dense and massive that farmers for miles would have compost for generations. Bits and pieces of the mound would be distributed further, seeding compost and fields with rich bacterial flora which produced quality soil of the highest fertility. It was honked and reeked to high heavens, torturing those not accustomed to it with gut-wrenching nausea, and was the first holy site of the bull: the Stain.
