pugbutter

ᚠᚨᚱᛋᛁᚷᛚᛁᛝᛋᚨᚷᚨ

"Returning to the world what stuffs I've taken from her," said the Rat-eater. He could not help but let his eyes, softly grey, to percolate upward like from a chimney. Were he nearer to the water, one could imagine him dipping his hand into it, cupping it in his spindly fingers; yes, some day he would return to the sea and to the soil. Even if he only fed worms, those worms would feed birds later, and on it went. Where would he go as a pyre, a pile of smoldering ashes? He would be useless then, except as an ingredient in soapmaking.

Anyway, perhaps it was a shout, or the silence which followed, but something helped Hrífa to realize that Hralding had ended his lesson. The witch blinked back to consciousness, and guided the shaft of the oar gently away from his lap, dipping the blade back into the boiling waves.

"If anyone needs a pair of mittens, I've brought a spare pair. Let's go," said Hralding, who took his place at the rudder. Besides the fact that Hrífa had brought his own, a thick and well-loved pair that was yellow with the mother sheep's lanolins, he felt like their captain was testing them: the first person to ask for the gloves surely was the weakest on deck, and the one on whom Hralding thenceforth would keep the closest eye. Damn his cleverness! He would have warned Ásdís, if he only knew how nervous she was. Her façade of intrepid bravery had fooled the witch.

𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕊𝔸𝔾𝔸 𝕆𝔽 𝕍𝕀ℕ𝔻𝔼ℝ𝕍𝔸𝕃𝕃

Gûshruk

---

Even through the nearsighted and blurry eyesight of his breed, the captain Orc knew that what scurried and skittered before him was neither man nor animal, but one of those detestable breeds lying between the two. He straightened his legs, stepping down from the boulder whereon he had squatted. Indeed, his goblin had returned, crawling along with filth crept up under its fingernails, and grease on its belly.

It knelt to him—not because he was particularly morbid and awe-striking as Orcs went—because it already was cultivated to be subservient, pitiful, cowardly, and to any noble creature which stood tall and proud, detestable. Its wide saucer-eyes and its long, bent nose and its huge wrinkled ears all were better-suited to dark and clammy places, drenched in shadows, where it could sneak and steal with all the better likelihood of skulking away intact thereafter. It sported gaunt, gangling limbs, but slithered nonetheless on its belly, which glistened, like the rest of it, with lanolin and all the grime which mingled with it as it was dragged along. And it wore its leathery rags with the same nonchalance as an emperor in velvet and sables.

"See? See?" said the goblin, clasping together its palms, interlocking its spindly digits. "Golgash has returned, master. He hasn't run away!" But Gûshruk's beady eyes watched, instead, the space behind Golgash, where the trees grew nearer and nearer and formed ahead a great brittle curtain. For he knew that the goblin, weak and obsequious, was clever only in the matter of its own survival, and that it easily may have been followed as its cowardice threw it back toward the safety of the camp.

Reared on human values within a human city, Gûshruk's instinct was to pity his Golgash terribly; nonetheless he knew to keep him in line, and appeal to the sensibilities of his race. Gûshruk beat Golgash, but rarely, and only because he knew that if he did not, he would be deserted and betrayed. He had learned quickly as a bandit king that so many of his lessers responded not to mercy, kindness, rhetoric or logic, but rather, simply, to guttural, visceral fears; the fears of pain and of death. So the Orc kept up his façade of being a wild and irreconcilable force of violent rage, satiated only by obedience and by loyalty.

"Good," he snarled. He began a slow, trodding march toward the camp, which the goblin took as his cue, predictably, to follow close behind. "Now tell me what we're up against."

[+]

@Fyre Unholy

Cyaиide Suиs

Very nice, I as well was just giving others a chance to respond before continuing with mine.

@TemplarKnight07

Definitely not an issue to worry about right now!

I hope people will be more excited to post once things start to happen IC, which I'm definitely working on setting up in my reply posts.

Cyaиide Suиs

[+]

@Oxenfree@SilverFallen@Skepic@Xandrya@TemplarKnight07@DepressedSoviet@Hostile@The Spectre

Finals end tomorrow (Tuesday). Yee haw.

Cyaиide Suиs

(Edit: wrong subforum. I'm dumb.)

ᚠᚨᚱᛋᛁᚷᛚᛁᛝᛋᚨᚷᚨ

Probably can't reply til Tuesday. I have two more finals to study for. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Cyaиide Suиs

@SilverFallen Welcome. 🤘

Cyaиide Suиs

Concerning:

@Xandrya

"Are you sure that's what happened?" Marcel asked, seemingly playfully as he bounced a box up and down in the grip of his meaty hand, weighing its contents. And anyone who had ever spent time in the military, or the police forces of his mother country, would have known immediately what sinister forces lied within that question: it was precisely like the drill sergeant who knew a trooper had lied to him, and was giving this idiot a chance to come clean and save himself. If he doubled down on his own stupidity, then he deserved the beating he was about to get. Thus it was with Amelia. The idea that she was lying to him had percolated through Marcel's dense skull, and instead of souring against her, he turned gentle, and even outright soft. The inflections of his voice seemed to mark his understanding of her dilemma, although his thick, leathery lips twisted up into a scowl; and his whole body looked lax and lazy, although he stood tall and straight, towering both over her and all his thuggish cronies.

Though his pale, eerie eyes fell downward toward the box of bullets, all lined up in their columns and rows like parading soldiers, Marcel felt a keen awareness prickling at the hairs on his neck, both of the snipers on the roof and of the distance from the parking lot to the treeline. He didn't like being ripped off, it was true; but more dangerous than the act itself was the fallout. What consequences should he suffer if word of this got round: that "Magpie" Marcel had allowed this transgression to take place? If he had gone soft on people who swindled his guys and made away with their due merchandise? No. He had a reputation to uphold, no less among his subordinates than those who feared him, and he knew he had to learn who was responsible for this growing shitstorm.

So he gave the courier her opportunity to come clean; to make amends for whatever she was trying to pull. If they were already short on bullets then he didn't want to waste one on her; not until it came to that.

---

---

---

Meanwhile...

---

---

---

Concerning:

@Fyre Unholy@TemplarKnight07

The first thing to spook any Zone newbie was just how loud guns could be; no amount of action movies prepared them for the tinnitus which lead into silence, leading thence into panic and dread.

The barkeeper heard Andrew's nine-millimeter from those hundreds of meters away, through the concrete and the soil dividing the beer-cellar from the outside world. Gideon heard it too, bouncing sharply off the village's walls and doorways, just down the road from the biergarten. The entire community seemed stirred by the violent cacophony; they felt their bodies coiling up, paying attention just to the air which whistled around them, waiting to hear it a second time as a foretelling of danger.

The fat Teuton sighed. He didn't have many customers as it was, and now he was going to lose more to a spook. As he kept his wary eyes on the steps leading up to the surface (after all, he wasn't going to let them escape with their money just yet), he crawled his sausagey fingers along his countertop, til he felt them wrap round the familiar molded plastic.

"What the hell was that?" he asked into the walkie-talkie.

"Small arms fire, boss," the black rectangle said back. "Some kind of pistol."

"From the village?"

"No. West."

Thank God. Blood spoiled people's appetites. Sighing with relief, the barman said loudly enough for the whole room to hear, "Good! Keep your eye open, and don't let trouble slip past you."

"No problem, Max. Out."

With that, the barman set the radio down again, and folded his arms, satisfied. He watched his customers as they decided what to do about the menacing noise; he dared them to leave. He didn't even have to bribe them with free beer; he could be clever when he wanted to be, when money was on the line.

Cyaиide Suиs

He has a French name but he looks like he has a Slav's squattin' glutes.

I'm so, so conflicted.

Cyaиide Suиs

Reply coming tomorrow, so you who have already posted can just sit tight if no one else jumps in immediately to interact with you.