Randolph stepped into the hallway, corrupting a somewhat pristine environment with an aura of decay again. Silence and misery are normally heard through the halls, but there is something else now. Distant and quiet, but audible enough for Randolph’s senses, a fight is ongoing. Order has given way to entropy once again as a wicked grin made its way across Randolph’s face.
’So I see their gambit has succeeded in causing a ruckus. Let humans fight amongst themselves while I make things a little less even…’ Randolph thought. But first must come his prior obligation, he must await the
Ve’Throk. Marina.
He remembers his…. transformation. The change from Human to Ghoul. The pain, the confusion, being branded an aberration. It is the one thing all Ghouls share, and all Ghouls remember. Something, Randolph believes, Marina would be experiencing. It’s the one thing that makes him see her as a peer and not cattle like the others. The one thing that inspires sympathy in an otherwise nihilistic heart.
“Oh, shit it’s that creepy fuck.” Someone whispered down the hall
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a trio of guards approaching, shaking him from his thoughts.
“Uhh, Get back in your cell prisoner. That’s an order!” One said, taking a moment to hide his fear.
They all knew Randolph, what he ate, how he is usually compliant. But they won’t know what to do with a non-compliant Randolph. Randolph is playing his hand, there is no going back. Not at this moment, but he could sense fear in them. Good, he still holds sway, there is no need for blood now.
“No. No I don’t think I will.” Randolph said, challenging them. He walked closer to intimidate them, making sure to stand fully upright. Uncomfortable, but it lets him tower over the humans.
“Y-You are the prisoner. You go-got to do what w-we say. There are three of us a-and o-one of you.”
”You do not get it do you, human? You three are guards without nametags against some of the vilest and strongest people on the planet. In the unlikely event you somehow kill me, I assure you that you won’t be feeling so hot, you think you can withstand the others, nevermind them in numbers? The best you can hope for is a quick death. Alternatively, you all die by my hand, at which point you become dinner. Also, not ideal. Since I do not care of your fates, I am allowing you the opportunity to just…walk away. Run as far and as fast as your human legs will take you, I will not be an obstacle. Then, maybe then, you can live to tomorrow. So I ask you three, what will it be? Life? Or offer yourself as a meal?” Randolph emphasized his words with threatening gestures, bearing his teeth at the end. He found Humans tended to fear the fangs of beasts that he shares, an evolutionary imprint from their ancestors.
After looking amongst each other, two of the three bolted away.
”Seems your comrades have abandoned you, I highly suggest you join them.”“You make a good point, uh sir.” The Human said, doing well to hide the fear in his voice, but his body movements betrayed him. The guard then speed walked away, clearly trying to maintain some semblance of bravery, but Randolph knew his words took hold.
”Much prefer dead humans.” Randolph grumbled.
As the guard turned the corner, he nearly tripped over one of his fleeing teammates lying in a heap on the floor as Marina was midway through tugging the jacket off of his arms. The two froze as they stared down one another, before the guard deliberately looked away and gingerly stepped around the scene to keep walking. Marina, confused, narrowed her eyes for a moment, then shrugged as she finished stealing the jacket and dashed to where the ghoul was no longer caged. “I take it that’s your doing?” she asked, glancing back at the fleeing guard.
Randolph shrugged
” I offered them some advice, they were wise enough to consider the consequences of ignoring it.” “Not bad. Saves you the trouble of...ahhh…” Marina stumbled slightly, her skin turning paler than usual as she wiped sweat from her brow. “...must be..wearing off.”
“What’s wearing off?” Randolph asked, growing concerned.
“...the shackles of alchemy which binds your form? Do you require assistance?”“No just…the initial hit is always the worst,“ Marina said shakily. “Just give me a moment and I’ll-”
Marina was suddenly violently jerked off her feet, her glasses shattering as her face smacked into the cold concrete. Something wrapped tightly around her leg and started to drag her into the darkened corridor at a frightening speed as blood trailed from her nose.
“By the sun and by the sky, it’s Miss Montressor, come to die!”Marina struggled to escape until she was dragged to the entrance of another cell, where ugly brown roots stretched out to snare her around the chest and lift her up, face to face with a gnarled mass of roots and leaves in the shape of a humanoid squeezed into an orange jumpsuit, its face carved with two blank eyes and a gaping smile.
“Hogweed, what an unpleasant surprise,” Marina said bitterly, spitting blood from her mouth. “What do you want?” Of course, right when she finally got a chance at freedom, seconds before her powers kicked in, out comes a deranged plant monster with an axe to grind. If she could think through the pounding headache she had she’d be cursing whatever and whoever she could think of for such rotten luck.
“Oh Miss Marina’s not too bright,” the wooden monster sang, its roots traveling down Marina’s arms as she tried to pull herself free.
“To think I forgot her loathsome blight.”“You have a problem with it? Talk to the heroes, they’re the ones who used that chemical I made on you!” Marina insisted, teeth clenched and eyes shut tight as her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Hogweed let out a shrill sound that might have been laughter in his reedy voice as the brown roots tightened around Marina’s throat. “I…aaagh…”
“Do not beg, do not shout,” Hogweed sang at her again.
“It’s over now…”Marina drew one last agonizing breath before the vines tightened one last time, her eyes suddenly opening wide. She looked down on Hogweed, her mouth curving into a bloody smile.
Her eyes were a sharp shade of golden yellow.
“Uh…” Hogweed said, forgetting his rhyme as his prey suddenly tore her arm away and pulled away the roots choking her. Tossing them aside, Marina pondered the claws growing on her nails as she turned to look at the plant man again. Under any other circumstance, this loathsome weed would be reduced to kindling under her claws, but…well, she wanted to enjoy what was about to happen.
“Fuck off,” she ordered, her voice pitching lower into a sinister growl.
“...of course ma’am, right away ma’am.” Hogweed scurried past her in an undignified shuffle as Marina strained and stretched, the vines pulling free as she started to grow, her muscles bulging underneath her jumpsuit as she started growing taller.
“Finally, about…aaah…”
Her already tousled hair started growing shaggier and longer as white fur sprouted along her skin. She opened her mouth in a low rumbling growl, showing off her sharpening teeth before her jaw started elongating into a snout.
“Aagh….
grrrrh….”
Marina jerked backwards and slammed herself into the wall, the concrete crumbling from the blow. Metal bolts popped free of her skin as the damned device keeping her contained for so long finally detached from her back.
“...
grrrr….
raaaagh….”
The vines finally snapped free, falling to the ground alongside the loud clatter of the device on her back. Still growing bigger, her jumpsuit shredding to reveal muscle and fur beneath as the WARWICK compound took hold at last, she flailed around in ecstatic gouging deep claw marks in the walls and smashing through steel bars before dropping to her knees, smashing her fists on the ground, and lifting her head to let out a howl. A loud, piercing howl that echoed clearly through the blaring alarms and the sounds of the riot.
Randolph tensed a little at Marina howling, a taboo among Ghouls, for a brief moment as instinct took command before regaining his senses. Hopefully Marina did not notice his brief shift in demeanor.
Getting to her feet again and leaving the vines and the scraps of her clothes behind, save the remains of the jumpsuit covering her lower half down to her knees, Marina paced back to Randolph again, ducking under a low-hanging beam and grabbing the jacket she stole earlier and putting it on. A tight fit for a more than seven foot tall werewolf but it did the job.
“Sorry about that,” she said, her voice pitched lower and with a distinctive growl. “But I’m back now, better than ever.”
” Hmm, much cleaner and faster than my transition. My skin festered and rotted over a year as it fractured and was torn here and there like the wrapping of a present hiding what was hiding just below the surface. Was painful and itchy, would not recommend.” Randolph noted at Marina’s metamorphosis.
“You wouldn’t have liked my initial experiments then. There were some pretty nasty side effects before I got it right,” Marina pondered, remembering that one instance with an excessive amount of teeth.
”It is grand that your situation has improved, though I must request, in the event we interact with other Ghouls, you do not howl… Randolph trailed off as he was thinking.
“Ah, good to know,” Marina said, leaning against the wall.
”Actually, remind me to give everyone a crash course on how to behave near Ghouls later, in the event they come in proximity to one. Ghouls are very defensive and naturally wary of others, and it would be better to inform everyone of what a Ghoul considers hostile behavior before they find themselves gracing a dinner, and not as a guest. Though we are reasoning beings now, we still bear the instincts from our feral past… You can still howl around me if you so wish, but around younger Ghouls or Ghouls who have yet to interact with anyone but another Ghoul, they likely won’t understand that you do not mean to threaten them and I’d….I’d hate to see you get hurt.” Randolph lowered to a whisper at the end, as if to hide the words from himself. Did he really say that? To someone not of his ilk? Sure, he expresses concern over her previously but he always thought it more like a carpenter expressing concern over his favored tools, but is he consciously regarding her as a peer? For a moment something flitted across Marina’s face as well before she resumed her confident, tooth-filled smirk.
“Good to know you care,” she said, pausing to shake her head and scratch herself behind the neck. “If we meet anyone else from your neck of the woods, I’ll resist the urge.”
’Yeah, I am just learning that I care too…. Randolph thought to himself,
”Well, we are not so much from the woods, more like an alternative dimension. Though there are woods there, we typically dwell far away from them.”“You learn something new every day. In any case, we should perhaps make ourselves scarce, before some braver guards show up.”
Finding the spot where he wanted to dig, Randolph inspected it to be sure. He ran a claw clean through the inside of the wall, finding a layer of plaster, a wooden wall, an empty space, and another wooden wall to hold the Earth back. Excellent, He can get through no problem. It was not too long before he made a hole large enough for him and Marina and the ground, while compact, was little of an obstacle for him.
After barely more than a minute, Randolph was making massive progress, digging straight up so any guards that may stumble upon this makeshift passenger will find it difficult, and a small hill of dirt and rocks was starting to form in the hallway.
” I hope you can climb… Randolph called out to Marina.
”… because I do not intend to be followed by anyone else. The earth is soft enough here so you can dig your claws in to grip if you need to.”“Not a problem, I’d dig through steel to get out of this place,” Marina growled eagerly, extending her claws in preparation. Pausing for a moment though, she darted back to the cell from earlier, returning with the gnarled remains of the injection device. She promised Kaliani a snack after all. “Lead the way,” she declared.
Shin Ghost Note
Creative Chaos
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Fetzen
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Quest Abandoner
Musoka
