NewSun

Desert Island

Sounds kind of fun, i'll throw some interest here because SyrianHamster.

Betwixt the Eternal Light

༒

"We all serve perfection, warrior. That you see this land as empty proves that you are the empty one."

Empty. He had to be empty. To walk amongst the creatures unharmed. Empty. Fool.
The Turncloak King mumbled a few, nonsenical words in an attempt to postpone the inevitable, but his strength was drained, and his voice would not carry over the agitated growling of the Golems.

"And I am Perfect"

Then the feeling of cold metal sliding between his shoulder blades. Searing pain. Unable to move.

Darkness.

---

Perfect has acquired the false memory of Kinghood.

---

The Golems did not attack as they had done with Perfect's quarry. Instead they stood upright, far from the bestial and feral pose they had assumed during the fight. They were not scared, nor were they angry. They seemed to sniff Perfect, lowering their heads to his level for a moment before they shot back up to their full height. They circled him. Nothing. No more death. No more killing. They would not kill something so remorseful, so empty of compassion. Even they saw him as Empty.

"Blood!" There was a voice in the distance. "Blood!"

"Blood!"

Cried something that looked human, but was not quite what it once was. The sound was without origin, bouncing from the valley walls, disorienting any who would listen in.

"Blood!

It came from the sky, the ground, the rocks, the slopes. The Golems responded not to the voice, instead evidently seeing it as a warcry, a calling card of their own. And Perfect was now one of their own; like a pup that would grow to lead the pack, a man with potential without limits. Perhaps even to the remorseless killer, it would have been a sinister and menacing situation, but in mere moments the owner of the voice came into sight, leaping with inhuman strength from the top of the valley walls. The thing soared through the air before landing between the Golems with a deafening thud. "Blood! Blood! Bloodbloodblood! He's dead he's dead he's dead," it continued to bluster, seemingly completely unaware of Perfect's presence. He scrambled on all fours - like a rancid, foul beggar - towards the body of the Turncloak King before it melted into the ground once more. Touching it here and there, all over, manhandling the corpse like a bag of loot.

...But what manner of creature was this? Small. Grey skinned. Rotted. face vacant of all features. Eyes absent from sunken sockets. Ragged patches of hair flailing with its every motion.

It continued to rummage, uncaring of the presence of the Man who killed the Turncloak. Sniffing the body, licking the body. Touching the wound. Lapping up the blood...

"Blood!"

---

E m p t y D i s c o v e r e d

Blinded Men

The Fires of Anuria

Not a problem, just checking in :) Take as much time as you need, we'll hold the fort until you're good to go.

Betwixt the Eternal Light

@OneEyedChurroHeh, yes. Some Hard metal covers ;)

@DJAtomika We'll get him one day soon ;)

The Fires of Anuria

@Isotope!!!!

Betwixt the Eternal Light

@DJAtomika@Shienvien@OneEyedChurro@Laue

Here is the general overview of the area you are about to enter. Feel free to use this description as you like to describe the new area as you see fit. I will be along in due time to guide you further with a new NPC, but do use this time for character development and interaction.

---

༒

As you run from the desolate valley, as you will leave behind the rage of searing stars and bitterly cold anti-stars of black, the world will change and shift. It will still be a land as desolate and unforgiving as it always had been, but as you approach the Shaded Forest and the Mountain, it will simply become more enigmatic. More puzzling. The dry sands will give way to monotone rocks of grey underneath a sky that will fade to gunmetal as the light comes around once more. You will notice patches of grasses not quite green littering the slick rocks. You will notice a river now flows along your path, but you do not know where it came from. One may not drink from such a source, as the water will burn those who still retain precious memories. You will go thirsty. You will go hungry. Despite this land being more verdant and moist than the one you just left, there will be little, if anything, to sustain you.
The land will open, and the confines of a valley prison will no longer hold you, but greater dangers lurk. Beware your venture into this Land betwixt all others, for your trials have only just begun.

The Fires of Anuria

Just a small note: the amount of willpower it took to not have my sergeant say "Don't touch my privates" was immense.

Immense.

The Fires of Anuria

The Anuriite Basin

Jungle Depths

-Pvt. Areffon Warder-

---

They fired back.

They fired back.

He did not expect them to fire back. But they always did. His squad would have fired back, too. Perhaps Aref was just not expecting them to live long enough. Perhaps he was expecting them to all just drop dead, and then he wouldn't have to feel guilty for long. But they fought back like caged animals - that is what everybody on Anuria was, anyway - and cornering them in a jungle after a had landing? After evidently losing one of their own? Fighting them whilst grief overtook them?

Stupid. Stupid!

He didn't even realise they had fought back to start with. He assumed that all the gunfire came from them, and that the enemy was being torn apart. He didn't dare to look for the first few moments. He didn't want to see the killing. He finally looked through tear-flooded eyes and saw that the Venusians were not the only ones shooting; he only realised after Fords took a bullet to the head, blood splashing out on the tree behind him and his body falling limp to the ground. It was strange to see such a strong man suddenly become so... lifeless. Aref had screamed his name after his death, but he could barely hear his own voice over the ambience of the combat. Beric was next. Took a shot to the leg and screamed bloody murder as he fell to his other leg, gripping the wound tight; but he couldn't stop the bleeding. He tried to get into cover but was just shot to ribbons by the enemy when they saw he was limping through the undergrowth. There was zero fucking remorse. Aref could see the bullets going right through him, each one siphoning his life further and further. Eventually he just slumped to the floor and lay there. He never got back up.

Aref darted behind a tree, not wishing to succumb to the same fate. He was a coward and he knew it. Couldn't even muster the courage to fire his own weapon even after seeing two of his close friends die in the dirt. He was shaking too hard anyway. Shaking from fear, shaking from tears. He could barely stand; his knees knocked too hard. He just wanted to fall to the ground too, to die, to be free from this life. What would it take to get sent back hom? A serious battlefield injury? No. The medics would patch him up and he'd be back out there in a week. Promotion? No. Just meant he would be out there more than he already was.
He had to face the fact that the only way he was getting back to everything he loved was in a box. Draped in a Venusian flag.

"Incoming!" he could hear behind the cacophony. "Fuck!" he heard from another of his own. "Why won't he die?" he heard another call.

Aref poked his head from the tree, and immediately shot it back behind cover. He kept it there long enough to see the cause of distress: an enemy soldier charging through the killing field, soaking up bullets like a tank. He was heading right for them. For him.

Fuck.

Fuck!

His mind raced, his eyes filling up with tears once more. His entire body fell into a blind panic. He was heading right for him. He was going to kill him. How could he contend with that? he poked his head out again. The soldier was close, so fucking close. Too close. Aref tried to duck to avoid being seen by the charging man, but before he could he felt a strong hand grip tight around his neck, slamming his head into the tree, concussing Aref badly. He could barely see as his assailant as he swerved around him, beating him senseless with nothing but his hands. Aref would try to fight back but was far too weak, outclassed by his opponent in every way. His rifle had been knocked from his hands long ago, and his knife had been batted away almost immediately. This was it. The end. he thought to himself as he was body-slammed against the dirt. This is where it ends. He closed his eyes.

But he did not die. There was no finishing move. No painful stomp. Instead the face of his Sergeant peering over the shoulder of his attacker, knife protruding from his chest, blood pouring from the wound. Aref could have sworn he heard the Sergeant whisper to the charging soldier.

"Don't lay your fucking hands on my men..."

But he couldn't be sure.

Then was a call for retreat by his saviour, calling from all of the remaining squad members to fall back. This was not their battle to win. They were outnumbered and outgunned, and there were surely more hostiles lurking in the forest. So they left the bodies of their own, they left the body of the charging soldier and they sprinted back into the forest depths. Their next move would have to be decided quickly, for nobody was sure if they would be pursued or not...

Kol'Kora

Sector 47

-Pvt. Toeny Keegan-

---

Gas.

Gas?

"GAS!"

He could not believe it. Why would they gas the outskirts of the city? What possible reason could they have for doing that? The Höllefeuer Empire truly were some venegeful bastards. At least that is the way that Toeny Keegan saw it. Especially now. Now that they had dropped gas on him and his squad. All they were doing was holding a recon post as to keep tabs on what was happening in Kol'Kora. They weren't attacking anybody. Sure, they were spying but they were doing it for the saftey of others. And now they were being gassed for it. He didn't even realise until one of his superiors had shouted bloody murder about it. And this superior had been fighting the Höllefeuer Empire for longer than some soldiers had been alive. He sure as hell didn't expect to be hit with chemical weapons this far from the battlefield, so if he didn't expect it, who would have?

Oh. And they didn't have any protective gear for chemical attacks. That stuff was expensive, and the way command saw it, he and his squad were expendable. Wasn't worth the money to protect them from chemicals in such a low-risk zone. And now they were fucked. The stuff began to seep in through the cracks in the walls, first. The small boarded room in an abandoned building on the outskirts wasn't built to be gas-proof. It started coming through the windows and the stairwell next. Floating in like some ominous green ghost, silent and seething with murderous rage. At first it just made its way into the room, moving at a crawl across the floor, and he and the others thought that maybe they could get out of this one alive. One man ripped the boards off of the window so that he could jump out and live to fight another day, but outside was saturated with the chemical agent and nobody had even seen it coming. It was then that they started to panic. It was an uproar, a writhing room of chaos as they realised they were going to die, backing into a corner away from the encroaching chemical.

God that stuff smelled bad.

Looking around him, Keegan could see the horror of the Höllefeuer's Agent 437. He could have sworn one man's eyes had melted out. Another vomited something the colour of blood and shit without end, barfing up his literal guts before flopping down into the pool of his own refuse. Others went crazy with the pain it caused them, tearing out hair which fell to ashes as it was removed. The gas enveloped them completely. Skin flaked and burned away, bubbling and melting from the gaseous flames all around.

He had never felt a pain like this one. but Keegan ddi not move. He just stood there, unwilling and unable to accept such a fate. He lifted a hand to his face to scratch the itch that had covered his body. Swathes of rotting flesh were pulled away under his fingernails as he went. Looking around now yielded not the lively, unruly soldiers he had sat with only minutes ago, but mangled, deformed, burned, dead effigies of those he used to know. They had choked in the sea of green gas, burned and melted.

"Chhh---" he tried to choke out a word. But instead his tongue had shrivelled from too much exposure to the gas. His throat had all but melted away. He couldn't even breathe. Next he felt the pain in his eyes, the burning, itching pain as his vision faded. His eyes swiftly turned to sludge and he too fell to the floor with a creaky thud, never to awaken again.

Betwixt the Eternal Light

༒

They had taken heed of his voice, shown initiative. They had turned and run. Run far from those things that had shown themselves in the dead of night, snarling and hungering for their flesh; creatures that discriminated not the might of a single man, rather showing equality in the moment that they would kill. What foul Empty Men had conjured such beasts from mere piles of ragged flesh, torn from an innumerable and uncountable myriad of hapless wanderers of a land that was beyond the hellish conditions of even Hell itself. Truly, this place was the end of all things.

Yet he stood defiant in the hope that maybe they, hopeful and together, would break the cycle of endless sorrows.

The bell-wearer had yet to turn and leave like the others had done. The Turncloak King did not immediately understand why until, behind his back, the unusual looking man fastened one of his own jingling bells to the length of the Turncloak's weapon. It was a sign understood by all, especially in the wake of the Jester's last words to him. The Turncloak King nodded, staring the Blood Golems once again as they approached in their animalistic fury.

"Listen for the tolling of bells," he whispered to the bell-wearer. "I will see you again when the night is darkest and the black sun breaks over the mountain. Do not let them go astray, and trust not the wandering man."

One of the Blood Golems began to charge, kicking up clouds of hazy dust in its wake, and the canyon shaking with the reverberating echo of its running hoofsteps. It screamed with the voice of a thousand men all amalgamated together, bound by the force of foul magic that tortured their very souls - their very beings - with every passing moment.

"Go! You must leave!" he urged the Jester, shoving him backwards, setting him on a running path with the others toward the Shaded Forest, the first step in their journey.

Crash. Was the next audible sound in the valley. The deafening connection of Golem and raised shield. The Turncloak King was forced backwards as he struggled to maintain his stance under the strength of the beast, who latched onto his aegis with a grip of iron. The King was a large man by any standard, but the Golems stood at twice his height, if not taller, and were augmented with inhuman, magical strength that the Turncloak dared not test. He steeled himself, gathering his strength and beating the Golem from his shield with a single push, feeling the sickening crunch of bones before it. The Golem stumbled back, shaking its head in animalistic confusion before regaining its composure. The Turncloak King had already lowered his body, taking to a single knee and striking with the stabbing point of his Halberd behind his guard, puncturing the Golem's mid-body. He drove the weapon hard into the beast, driving it deep, turning with his wrist, tearing the insides of the creature to pulp. It screeched again, its mouth like a gaping gateway to some realm of torturous screams.

For a single, fleeting moment, the Turncloak King thought that he stood a chance to be free from the beasts, that he could find the others in due time, and they would all be free of the Land Betwixt together. But as the second Golem circled behind and drove its bony claw into his back, burying it just as deep as the halberd in its brother, the King's briefly hopeful thoughts had been shattered. The first Golem collapsed, but it mattered little as the Turncloak was thrown to the dirt by the wound in his back by the second.
The pain was unbearable, indescribable. It was every time he died.

He looked up through blurry, bloodfilled vision, past the prowling legs of the third Golem - and remembered that the fleeting souls behind him had spoken of somebody lurking behind in the rotted shrubbery.

And he thought that, from this angle, he could see the stalker too.

Betwixt the Eternal Light

@Ink BloodBrilliant!

Seeing as Ink is back in the game @SirBeowulf@Ashgan i'll consider your arc effectively resumed. I'll allow you guys to set the scene (since it has been a while since your last ones) either individually or collaboratively, I don't mind. After that i'll get to work throwing an assigned monster your way. We will continue from there with shenanigans.

@bobert778@goodmorrowtou How we continue your arc from here is up to you guys. I can either lead the way via Hermit posts or I can PM you guys several prompts for you to continue the path without the need of direct action from me.

@Dark Jack I expect Perfect will be in a great position in not too long at all >:)