Zombiedude101

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

Luca @FernStone, Adora, Doggo, Greenwood @Mixtape Ghost N & LaylAlizee, Aislin @Estylwen

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Clancy shrugged off Adora's dismissal. She hadn't asked for his opinion nor demonstrate anything to suggest she'd follow it, and for all his efforts at trying to keep some of them alive, he wasn't her keeper.

For his part, he’d try and keep the pressing danger in front of them at arm’s length-

ambience

-too soon.

Alizee and Layla, the bound girls, rushed forward before the rest were ready, the dog's stone form grinding into motion.

What happened to the plan?!

It was too late for that now.

Before the boy could press forward on the offensive, Luca and a few others slipped past the corner of his gaze, too close for comfort as the dog snapped and bucked until it was crashing across the floor, threatening to bowl over them and Layla. Clancy's first instinct was to offer a layer of separation between them and the dog.

As he moved alongside the beast, a loose strand of chain dangled from its side, and for a half-second the boy grasped at the link and pulled in hoping to steer the dog in the opposite direction, only to feel the burning,hains flensing away at his strength.

As quickly as he'd grasped the white-hotmetal link, he let it slip through his grasp, the dog still flailing, and now moving ever-closer to Layla with each gesture to buck off the chains. Stupid girl. The only other instinct that came to him was a stupid idea, but it was likely no less idiotic than what he’d seen already.

Changing direction, the boy shifted back into a sprint - circling around as Layla was just narrowly pulled out of harm’s way by her new guest, then dropped to the floor, sliding along the marble floor so he could get around the creature’s bucking hindquarters as it kicked into the air, and then leaped onto the outcrop that counted for its neck and shoulders.

Clancy’s legs swung over the dog’s upper back as it rotated again to an upright position, heels digging in hard as the flailing creature shifted position in presumed response to his presence. The boy pressed his form downwards, one arm reaching to coil under the dog’s chin, while the other free hand temporarily grasped onto the stone facade of an ear for grip, uncertain of whether the strength and sheer force being exerted would just outright snap it off.

Whatever the dog’s intentions, whatever its strength, he intended to drag its attention onto him, force it to deal with him, if it could.

Buy them time.

”Meat!” he growled, an ancient, primal energy amplifying his voice, barely audible over the din of barking, snapping, snarling and stone crunching against stone.

Fingers dug into the marble with equal strength, raking through the stone facade like nails to chalkboard. As Aisilin moved to make her play, with the chains falling away and giving him a window to force a movie, Clancy jammed a third of his forearm into the creature’s jaws, again to force its attention on him, only him, the wretched flea atop its back.

”MEEaAt!” he snarled, his voice distorted in its repetition of the word, as the ceiling collapsed atop them both. Along with the dog, the boy disappeared beneath a cascade of darkness, dust and debris.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

Declassified.

Clancy Patrick

obligatory theme

_______________________________________________ Clarence Patrick He & Him | 12 ½ | Irish-American | 4'9 | 84lbs _______________________________________________ Lonely _______________________________________________ Skills & Talents ___________________________________ [+] Lockpicking ⫻ Surprisingly, Clancy has some nimble fingers and can pick through some of the more basic locks out there. Outdoorsman ⫻ Hitchhiking hundreds of miles from home, and being raised by a military man with some hard old-fashioned values has taught Clancy a ways of how to behave in the wilderness. If you left him out in the woods, odds are he wouldn't struggle too much. Clancy's hiked his way far enough to at least have a rough idea of what's safe and sane. Grift ⫻ Clancy has a natural grift for getting a hold of items & getting into places he shouldn't. Lifting stuff off shelves, climbing into locked buildings, slipping under a gap in the fence to get into private property.

Appearance ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ Clancy carries the frame of a pubescent boy, no older than twelve or thirteen, with a voice that just about veers on the cusp of breaking. His features are smooth, with not even a wisp of body hair apart from that found on his head - an unkempt mass of charcoal fuzz. His eyes possess a dull, ice blue tone, resembling flinty chips of ice - and his skin is a pasty white, more likely to burn than tan. A length of puckered skin runs along the underside of his left arm, from the elbow to halfway up the sleeve; a consequence of a bicycle mishap when he was a little younger. Some time on the road had taught him to dress sensibly; Clancy wore a mottled-green flannel lumberjack hoodie over a khaki-tone undershirt, with navy cargo pants & a laced pair of sneakers. Sometimes with a pair of gloves, if the weather wascold. Among his possessions was a denim knapsack which he was often seen lugging about, containing whatever goods he can snag off store counters when nobody's looking. Since the incident at the strip club, he's been forced to undergo a change of clothes, wearing a green hoodie bearing the likeness of a state sports mascot best described as a poor man's Donald Duck, and a pair of oversized denim pants with sleeves that have been obviously torn at the edges in an amateur attempt to adjust them to the wearer's shorter height. When not containing his inner-self, Clancy's monstrous form hides within his body aa a skeletal shadow, oily black, with sharp and angular features. Fingers and toes become claws. His face a featureless oval that opens to form a jagged maw.

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MAIN GOAL ⫻ Clancy had sought out one of thw few family connections he had left in Ashley, only to lose her. His upbringing and background has left him missing out on the much needed familial ties and friendships. Now? He wants the person who killed her, and to make sure they pay for what they did. Once Father Wolf is dead, he wants the Apparition Killer in hopes of finally ending the entity which forced this 'life' upon him, and then find a way to end his own perpetual existence once and for all.

PHILOSOPHY ⫻ Self-reliance is something Clancy has come to depend on as a consequence of his upbringing, even to a fault. Trust is something he struggles with, as his own family situation made it difficult to make connections, and the only person he really connected to - his sister - died after a long battle with a terminal illness. He's still going through the grief of losing a sister and working it out in his own complex way. Authority figures aren't something which carry an automatic respect.

SECRETS ⫻ Clancy isn't just a child, not anymore. He looks like a child, but his mind is far older than what anyone would guess. Some time in the sixties, he was taken, subsumed and spat out to serve as the puppet of a greater predatory entity. His family died out over the years, starting with his brother in Vietnam, his parents in the nineties, and his elderly sister a year ago.

SEXUALITY ⫻ Not something Clancy even considers.

FEARS ⫻ Failing to find the person who murdered Ashley, and by extension failing to find a way to end his own perpetual existence and the entity which made him what he is.

REPUTATION IN OLD COVEN ⫻ He's an unknown to the Coven, having never been around during the fight with the Stygian Snake.

ROLE IN THE BATTLE AGAINST THE STYGIAN SNAKE ⫻ N/A

FLAWS ⫻ Despite his age, in many respects Clancy is still very childlike, approaching the world from a perspective that was twisted and contorted at a key developmental stage in his life. Emotional baggage stemming from a loss of his childhood, family and the tiring perpetual existence of predation also weighs upon him to the extent that he forces himself to project an emotionless facade, but the truth is that he is a 12 year old boy who was subjected to a nightmare beyond human understanding and never had much of an opportunity to grow past it.

_{Backstory
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Clancy's upbringing wasn't anything outstanding, as the youngest of a brood of three. His parents were old fashioned, but not outright abusive - having undergone their own formative trials in Europe during WWII. His father, an Irish-American serviceman, was present at European theater, present at the discovery and liberation of a concentration camp , while his mother was a Polish Jew who lost most of her family to the Holocaust.The family they raised consisted of three children; their eldest son, Frank, their daughter Judith, and their youngest - Clancy.

Self-reliance was a simple fact of life for the time, although Clancy's relationship with his family was healthy, and normal by the standard of the times - the sixties. He got roped into stupid stunts by his brother. His sister looked out for him. He had friends, and did things that most children did, like riding through a suburban forest trail on his bike, and it was on such a normal occasion that he happened to stumble across an entity that far outlived the European settlement of the Americas.

This entity, itself a powerful being in its own right, consumed Clancy in a tortorous, agonising experience, feeding on body and soul. As part of its 'lifecycle', this entity would periodically use the memories and consciousness of those it consumed to dispatch puppet hosts that, while not directly under its control, were driven by an instinct to hunt, kill and feed, which would in turn nourish the host. This was a matter of pragmatism, not kindness; the homonculi it released would return to their communities to predate upon their fellows, and in truth that was the origin for many of the local folklore in the Americas around wendigo and other monstrosities.

Clancy was selected as one such example, essentially spat back out into the wilderness as a hollowed out instance of his former self, with memories and consciousness the only true thing remaining, his maker buried at the base of his mind. He looked like a child - that was the point - but he was in truth a hollow shell, timeless, cold to the touch, and driven by base instincts. At first, he stumbled through the wilderness in a state of disorientation, cold, hungry, alone. Desperately trying to return home, the first thing that he stumbled upon was another family on the trail, and the imperatives branded upon him drove him to tear them apart and feed on their fresh corpses.

Terrified, the thoughts of his family came to him as just meat - he purposely exiled himself into the wilderness, slowly losing himself into a devolved, half-feral state, driven by instinct and automated function. His conscience and other thoughts remained repressed, months stretched into years, the body count extending past the double digits. Hikers, hunters, the odd family - it didn't matter. He tried to die, several times, throwing himself in front of cars, off bridges, under trains, each time coming back with worse consequences for anyone close enough at the time For periods, Clancy found a part of himself, but without any ability to control the urge to feed, the cycle would repeat - and the only thing he knew was that he would not inflict himself upon his own family. H

What truly broke this cycle was a chance event. As another hiker fell victim to his imperatives to feed and nourish the ancient entity which had forced this existence upon him, the sound of music from the cassette player his victim had been carrying. A song he and his brother had listened to together, enough to bring him back from the brink. It formed a window which allowed Clancy to claw his psyche back from the repressed, feral abomination he had become. He sought to try and impose limitations upon himself, with some initial failures.

He could not refuse to eat - that would invoke the imperatives to feed, and he would have no control over that part of his self. He could choose his victims. Not always - sometimes desperation forced his hand, but he tried desperately not to slaughter random people en-masse. He shifted tack to the cities, wandering the streets as a homeless child amidst the crack epidemic. Sometimes it was a drug pusher or a gangbanger. Sometimes it was a homeless person.

Through trial and error, he selected those targets he felt were more acceptable - less likely to be missed. Criminals. Scummy people. Sexual predators became a favourite target, if for nothing else then because it felt as close as he could find to hitting back at the entity that had targeted him. He had rules and a working system. He didn't stay in one place for long. He shifted, town to town, city to city, carefully quieting his appetite for temporary periods.

It was a lonely existence, but he had no other choice - kill a few people, or kill many people. It was the lesser of two evils.

Over time, he tracked his family. He learned that Frank had been drafted and died in Vietnam, just over a year after he disappeared. His parents, grief-stricken, would spend their last days in nursing homes, perishing in the mid and late nineties respectively. His sister - the last real connection he had, would eventually suffer from alzheimers that would rob her of her mind, and later a terminal cancer that would rob her of her body. Though he had forced himself apart from his family, both for fear of traumatising and harming them, he broke the rule just the once for Judith's sake, visiting her on her deathbed.

Several months after Judith's death, he learned that she had surviving family - a granddaughter, his great-niece, Ashley Stone. Clancy did his homework, and broke another rule. He reached out to her, and with slow progress, a trust of sorts formed between them.

As it happened, Ashley herself had experienced a lifetime of horror in her hometown of St. Portwell through the Stygian Snake, and the shared struggle was a bonding point of sorts, although neither explicitly spelled out the step-by-step details of their lives. Clancy knew Ashley had wielded power, and been involved with a group of similar people. Ashley came to realise that Clancy was not the anonymous cousin he had claimed, and that he himself was cursed with some affliction that could not be cured by conventional means.

Clancy, through Ashley, learned of the Apparition Killer. Learned of a possible means to end the entity which forced this malformed existence upon him, finally end the tiresome existence he'd suffered.

Except, Ashley was murdered. Clancy found out the hard way, losing contact until he stumbled upon an obituary about the murder.

Seeking answers, he travelled to St. Portwell, learning of the Father Wolf case. Learning of Ashly's old friend circle being picked apart. His arrival in St. Portwell was not without noise. Within 48 hours of arriving, he'd proven himself to be far different to the expectations of any onlookers, with a trail of blood and broken bodies following him. He was present at the death of the Wolfpack's Club "President", Judas, and subsequently evaded the PRA raid on the Reformed Coven's hideout. A week in, and still, very little is known about him - save that he isn't just a kid. Surving gunshot wounds and a wooden cane through the eye was proof enough of that.

More encounters with Ashley's old coven led to him inserting himself into their ongoing investigation, willing or not. He was present at the church raid, at the decimation of Kari Wilson's house by 8th Street, and later formed some connections of his own, perhaps for the first time in decades.

That also brought him into conflict with St. Portwell's less svaoury denizens. His investigation into the Dollhouse lead, prompted by Judas, put him in conflict with Shayton, and later incurred the wrath of their agent Shaquita - spearing him with a crystalline shard that invoked pain and neutralised his strength. Were it not for the intervention of Luca, he might have been incapacitated.

Clancy's motives remained unchanged, but as he joined the group on a raid, he found himself questioning whether it was just retribution he sought.

His accent is hard to place, save that he comes from same place north of the Ohio River - possibly Chicago or Cincinatti? Maybe even further out west, like Bellevue

_{Abstraction
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ABSTRACTION ⫻ Cannibal



ABSTRACTION DESCRIPTION ⫻ A long time ago, Clancy took a wrong turn on his way home and fell into the awareness of an old, predatory entity of inhuman origin. Strigoi, Jiangshi, Wendigo - different cultures would've named it thus. The entity devoured Clancy, and salvaged his consciousness and memories to create a 'puppet' of sorts - a shell with the memories and appearance of a 12 year old boy, the Cannibal entity sat somewhere.deep within as a core imperative.

If you wanted to be coy, he's perhaps as close to the urban legends as you can get. He doesn't age. He doesn't change. In a somewhat uncanny sense, any damage or change afflicted to his body gradually shifts back into the form he had when he was subsumed in the wilderness - an effect which works to a fault. That scar on his arm would've probably faded if he'd aged out naturally, but instead he's stuck with a personal reminder that he is frozen in time. He doesn't sleep, he doesn't need to breathe, and his skin is cool to the touch. A few half-hearted attempts at dying over several decades have proven that he can't naturally die; falling off a bridge into a frozen river and being hit by a train among the two that stand out, with the only thing to remember either being his own scathing memories of the experience. That, and a distant vestigial view of the Void are generally not good for one's mental health.

Uncharacteristically, while his form is that of a child, his actual capacity is... more so. He can handle heftier burdens than a boy of his age and height should, and has a stamina and dexterity that would put an athlete to shame, able to run, vault and climb into spaces. But the true power, or whatever one would call it - Clancy's core self is a vaguely humanoid shape of skeletal shadow that alternates between bipedal and quadrupedal movement, buried beneath the facade of a child. It's faster, stronger and hungers - projecting a form of around five feet, depending on Clancy's hunger and stress levels. While Clancy in his original body is strong enough that, bare handed and with some effort, he can crack bones to get at the marrow, his exposed-self can uproot trees, bisect mammals and twist an adult human being's head clean off. It can scale trees and buildings, and slip through grating and fences due to its somewhat intangiable nature.

LIMITS ⫻ Clancy has to feed on others. If you wanted to get into the science, or specifically, the Lux behind it - the material isn't so much the physical matter as the essence behind it. Fresh blood and meat, it's all part of a living creature's experience. Who they were, where they want, their memories - it feeds the entity which malformed him. Gutting a rabbit is some base sustenance - like eating a cracker, or stale brea, but people are inherently nourishing - even to the point that for a moment, he retains a brief glimpse into the mindset & warm sense of self of those he consumes. A cooked meal, or a candy bar, on the other hand, is about as nourishing as eating flavoured sand

Additionally, longer he remains in this form, the more Clancy's sense of self-control and identity begins to loosen, and if he doesn't feed, then the point that the smoky shadow projection that uses him as a sheath starts to manifest without regard for autonomous control in an effort to sate his appetite. The hunger doesn't discriminate either - animals, children, decent people and otherwise are all just prey - so the less he manages it, the more likely he is to start indiscriminately lashing out and feeding on others. It's happened before, and at this point, he has a body count to rival the combined figures of some of the world's worst serial killers.

WEAKNESSES ⫻

^{Other
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Clancy knows.

PRA casefile

Anecodtal commentary on Case 74-00184 from an unknown PRA official.



For as long as records last, the PRA and its preceding agencies & organisations have been aware of paranormal activity stretching from the Midwest to the Great Lakes. Among these, a range of perculiar sightings and events have occured, poorly documented due to the vast expanse of wilderness between developed urban sprawl. One such case that has arisen from this region, with sightings said to go back almost fifty years, is that of C74-00184, where victims have been found dead. In each instance, the victim(s) were mauled, dismembered and partially consumed, with injuries comparable to wolf & bear attacks. Although one could easily dismiss these as a consequence of animal attacks in the wilderness, evidence tampering and eye-witness accounts of a humanoid presence close to the scene suggest otherwise.

A key example is that of a party of four hunters, of whom three were found dead in late November 1968. The sole surviving member of the party reported that one of his companions had encountered a child who fled upon being sighted. Although a description of the child has not been consistently captured, the second-hand description suggests they were a caucasian male aged somewhere between nine and thirteen years old, wearing torn and bloody clothing and in a state of apparent distress.

Although the survivor was not present during the attack, having remained at camp while their companions formed a search party, they reported hearing' panicked screams for help and arrived on-scene to find the rest of the party dead, exhibiting injuries consistent with being violently mauled and partially consumed.

Although the sighting of this child was among the earliest sightings, other sightings have been recorded in the following decades, most prevalent between 1968 - 1982, with the last known sighting being recorded by a Wisconsin park ranger in 1987. Although the number of deaths in the wilderness matching this profile have decreased rapidly since this period, the agency has now linked a spate of murders along the Great Lakes region within developed areas of urban sprawl, most of which span from Erie to Duluth.

In each instance, the attack profile remained similar; violent dismemberment, remains partially consumed. While the victim profile seems to make no discernment between age, occupation or race, most if not all victims documented since 1982 have been identified as adult males, with approximately 42% of subjects holding some form of criminal record tied to organised crime, gang-affiliation, or sex crime. Subsequent review of witness accounts, surveillance footage and the implausability of animals in such a location (as per the case of C74-00184-69, where the victim's remains were found on-scene in the bathroom of a Detroit gas station) indicate a clear link to C74-00184.

Strigoi, Jiangshi, Wendigo - different cultures would've named them thus, but the latter of the three is perhaps the best match for this case. Such instances have historically been documented among the Algonquian peoples in the form of oral storytelling and cultural mythology, and it is expected that C74-00184 is a direct manifestation of one such regional myth.

The concern here is - contrary to the theory that victim numbers are decreasing since the 1980s - the subject of C74-00184 may be simply getting better at covering their tracks. For this reason, I would like to make the case for the agency increasing resources towards addressing this issue. We are dealing with a body count that dwarves that of some of North America's worst serial killers and have nothing to show for it, nor any counter to prevent further deaths occuring. In the absence of reliable intelligence, the agency should shift investigation towards urban sprawl and co-operate with local law enforcement wherever possible.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

Luca @FernStone, Sloane @Atrophy, Britney, Adora @Mixtape Ghost N & Everyone Else

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”... Sorry about that, Clance.”

Britney

Was that sarcasm?

Britney had earned herself another half-assed clap from the boy's grimy palms, payment in kind for the equally half-assed comment, although Clancy avoided giving in to the temptation to suggest where Britney could aim her [i]next[i] spear - he left that unspoken.

”Sure.”

Faint green light spilled from the other Greenwood girl - Kashmira - washing over him with no effect, Clancy chose not to join the brief huddle that formed, instead setting his attention on their supposed destination as Autumn stepped up to lead them on. He kept an eye on Luca and, to a lesser extent, Adora. They weren't in their best shape, and he had considered they were already in bad shape with unfriendly eyes on them, and this was all before they'd reached the vault.

That soon changed at least. Greenwood girl led them out of the tunnel and into something out of an art gallery.

The others probably had their eye on the vault, the overengineered mechanical system that would've looked old by his grandparents' standards, never mind the people in the room. Whatever its workings, it would be difficult to get through.

Probably.

The vault was their problem.

Clancy's gaze, on the other hand, was set on the statue of the dog. The Starving Dog, although to look at it, the model from which its likeness had been sculpted was probably better fed than most dogs he'd met. What it was really made of was a question present in mind. Marble, maybe? He wasn't a rock expert, but he knew that the stuff was heavy, but also easier to crack open than something like granite.

Then again, this was a magical statue that didn't follow logical rules or reason. Sounds familiar, right? The irony wasn't lost there, either.

”I'm the only one who can give Luca or Sloane an opening.”

Adora

Clancy rolled his eyes as they considered their plan of attack. Why wait for Father Wolf when you can just get eaten by his cousin? For Adora's sake, he cut in.

”Nice try, but you weren't there when some of the stupor friends met me at the biker club. They had dogs that size, too.” Or something like that. ”And maybe you hit your head a little too hard back there and forgot which one of us is still walking around without some glowing green bullshit to fix things.”

It wasn't intended to be mean spirited, but being blunt and direct came across as subtly as a lead balloon.

”How much can you handle like this, Clancy?”

Luca

He looked at Luca, shrugged, then glanced downwards at the shadowy abyss yawning through his torso. It was starting to close up, pale flesh gradually edging back over the underlying skeletal shadow, not unlike watercolour spilling across a canvas. It would take a while before it cleared up, and would probably not make it in time before they had their next punch-up.

”If you’re less hurt than Adora then… you’ll be able to hold it back best.”

Luca

The boy realised, perhaps a few seconds slow, that Luca was asking if he was capable of stepping up so Adora wouldn't have to. That she was in far worse a shape than he was or would ever be.

"I'm not hurt." It was easy to forget how bad things looked, sometimes.

Irritated was a better description, present company accounted for. The damage was superficial, an interruption at best. Outside, it meant people asked questions, but in this circle there was no illusion to keep up with. Perhaps in part that was a relief, what made it easy. Not that he wanted to go through the experience of peeling himself off the end of a large wooden tree-trunk again, "But I think you're right, he gestured back to Luca, then nodded over at Adora, "Could say a lot of stuff about you both. You're not okay, and you still have getting out of herle to worry about when this is done."

”If Layla, Alizée, Aislin and Britney can immobilize the statue… I could also destroy it. It’ll erode like any other stone I bet. Then we won’t have to deal with it on the way back out. Unless we’re hoping for a secret passage inside the vault, or a perfectly timed teleporter?”

Luca

"How long would it take you to get through stone?" It was a rhetorical question, mostly.

Too long, too much risk. Clancy shook his head, giving voice to his feelings on the matter, "Not worth it."

When the biker had set the deer-goat-dog things on them at the club, he'd slowed them down, hurt at least one of them bad enough it didn't get up, They weren't too different in size to the statue either, either, but they had still been living things, made of meat, blood, bone.

Could he stop it? Of all of them, he probably had some of the best chances, and had nothing to lose. Could he break it? 'Maybe' was his best answer.

[b]"Here's a better idea. Sloane was right about trying to hold it down, immobilise it. While that's happening, I'll try and hold it, hit it, break pieces off if I can. I don't know if it's smart enough to know it can't hurt me. Doesn't feel like it's really ‘alive’ like that, but I'll keep it busy.”[b]

Like a big cat sizing up prey, the boy pivoted a wide berth around the stone canine, easily dwarved by its size, a puppy by comparison. The only thing it was missing was a coat of red paint Funny, he considered, without betraying a sense of humour to the others.

Thinking back to Sloane's suggestion, he added onto the strategy. ”Adora and Luca should save it for the way back unless they don't have a choice. You'll just get in my way.” A half truth, equally blunt as before.

”l can still do as much damage as I can. If you've got anything for me, like a stick to play fetch, now's your chance. Otherwise, do what you need to open the vault and slow Clifford here down. Get what you need and run. If it doesn't stay down, I'll catch up when you're too far to be outrun.”

Then, after another seconds pause, he shot a comment in someone's general direction, ”Try not hitting me this time."

Clancy, for his part, was as ready as one could be.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

King Corpse, Aislin@Estylwen, Luca @FernStone & Everyone

---

For all its power, the corpse-king was still just that. A corpse. Dead, rotting meat and old bones.

Useless, the instinct at the base of Clancy's consciousness reminded him. There was no sustenance to find here, only a problem to be dealt with.

While it appeared to remain unaware of him, the boy had made to maul the towering creature, small hands grasping and tearing at exposed bone and the residual tissues contained around it. He meant to bisect the royal skeleton, one hand plunged elbow deep in an effort to grasp at what passed for backbone. Fingers grazed against vertebrae, then-

Snap.

The boy's limbs seemed to drop, dangling limp at one side as the two of them were speared through by a great wooden length, the skeleton through its ribcage and the boy from waist to sternum. Clancy's gaze shot downwards, trying to make the scale of it.

It looked bad, horrifying even. The stake as thick as a tree tunk, more as like to be just as strong. Thick enough that it seemed less the case it had speared through him, than he'd been smeared around it, like a human donut.

The only times he could recall things looking worse than this were oout on the train tracks, a long time ago. He could only guesd how it looked to the others, even if he felt nothing of it save for the presence of something that didn't belong there.

The corpse-king wasn't down yet either; impaled through the ribcage, and pinned to the wall a few feet abead of his own position, uust narrowly out of his reach, Clancy could see the glow forming in its twitching, bony digits as it invoked another surge of elemental wrath, fire and storm bound into one Although he didn't have enough room to twist around, or even glance backwards, the boy could hear the panicked voices, urgent shouting.

Getting free was a good idea, except he was suspended midair, far enough of the ground that his feet were dangling in the air, no floor or wall to kick off, and the corpse-king still a few inches too far away for him to properly grapple with or pull loose. One hand clutched at the wooden length drigen through him, palm barely wide enough to curl around a fraction of its circumference, and dug in.

Definitely a tree trunk.

Legs swung out, fingers dug into the wood, cracks and fissures forming where they bedded in, and then, before he or the corpse-king had a chance to lash out at the other, darkness enshrouded the both of them as the roof came crashing down, a shroud of dust and detritus swallowed up half of the tunnel with them.

---

=-”...Let's get outta here. I dont think it's dead.”

Aislin

Aislin's relief appeared premature when another hand burst through the mound of debris. Smaller, paler than the last, it appeared to reach backwards, pulling free a looser section of the rubble, exposing the still-impaled Clancy, skewered upon the visible length of wood.

Perhaps by some stroke of luck, the debris wall had given him something to kick off. Knees brought as high as they could, he kicked off against the debris wall while fingers dug into the wood, pushing himself backwards until he slid off the blunted end of the stake, landing backwards on his rear with both palms splayed across the ground.

When the boy stood, the foot-wide tear in his abdominal cavity was near-imppssible to miss, ligHt dimly spilling through the great puncture for a few seconds before a shadowy, skeltal layer filled in the space, underlying the pale facade of flesh that had been displaced. Human donut wasn't too far from the truth, complete with a coating of grey-brown dust that smeared his charred and tattered clothes. The only part of him that seemed to retain any dustinct colour was the crooked, yellow sneer of the torn cartoon mask, now smeared with blood.

”Great work.” Clancy clapped both palms together with a sarcastic cheer, nodding downwards at the shadowy hole in his torso, ”Thanks."

Although his expression betrayed nothing of his sort, his gaze searched for the others out of concern for their potential losses. Adora and Luca were definitely on rough shape, but they were alive at least, judging by the latter's suggestion they move forward, ”Yeah, before I run out of stuff that fits."

Then, he shot a look at Britney and the Greenwood girl, "Unless you think the dog can fetch me another shirt.” His voice was bristling, laced with venom, but lacking most of the guttural rumble that had characterised his other imhuman backslides into instinct.

For now, anyway.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Estylwen edited my post slightly to reflect that Clancy is also going to get Van Helsing'd by Britney's stake

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

King Corpse@Estylwen

---

Sirens, shouting, the faint crackle of gunfire and artillery seemed to perforate his surroundings. Then, the taste of warm blood and fresh meat arrived among those senses, nourishing a programmed demand that poisoned his consciousness for every waking hour it was denied. Clancy’s jaws sank into the mobster’s sleeve, fingers tightening a little more around the elbow joint, coming close to outright snapping off the man’s forearm like a brittle branch. The boy had meant to tear the arm off, to let him bleed out, to crack bones beneath his teeth and gorge on the marrow-

Had being the key word. Someone else, a man wielding a chainsaw, had distracted him - momentary enough for the mobster to pull his remaining hand free and make a gesture.

A surge of energy coursed through the boy’s body, the black electricity dancing across him; the man was far from done, and the brief spasm induced by an electrical jolt brought the boy to his knees as the ground yawned open beneath them into a stygian abyss, threatening to swallow both in its black embrace.

But Clancy for his part was deceptively strong, far from weak, even as patches of clothing smoked from where the lightning had seared the fabrics enough to burn away at the facade of flesh beneath and leave pockmarks of missing skin. The boy proved unwilling to descend, one foot, a free palm and sheer strength pressed into the lip of ground surrounding the portal, preventing either from immediately escaping, for a moment.

Had the man thought he'd pull him through? Maybe, if he were just a kid, but not him. Instinct told him to pursue, chase, devour. But the others-

Adora was winded, facing down the corpse-king, The others were still occupied with the lizard-thing, or recovering yet from other blows sustained.

In other words, not good.

In his periphery, Clancy felt more power surging forth from the steepled figure ahead while the others continued to wane, cold winds gusting down the tunnel. Frost formed across every surface, and for a moment he was almost half-convinced that the wisps of fog rising from his body were a sign he was breathing for the first time in decades, until he realised it was a product of the frigid air making contact with his smouldering clothes and the mobster’s warm blood smeared across his jaw.

In the wake of those pressing matters, Clancy relinquished what little grip he’d maintained on the mobster’s shattered wrist and pulled free, leaving the dark-haired man to sink into the depths.

The boy was left to survey the damage left behind. Luca was dissolving the lizard-thing, the others at his side in enough strength to keep him from getting killed, but the corpse-king remained the greatest danger here, slowing them down, keeping them from getting where they needed to be and, he realised almost too late, rendering the tunnel uninhabitable. Clancy pushed the mobster out of mind, pulling himself past the portal, moving past the chainsaw-wielder, his gaze set on the towering carcass as it wrought icy storms upon the tunnel.

Cold had no hold over him, no pain it could enact on his senses, nor the shivering that would induce most into a stupoured huddle. Too long in the woods. His sleeves grew encrusted with frost, each movement giving forth a crunching sound as ice formed, dissipated and reformed with each motion.

Sluggish steps became paces, the boy driving fingers into a section of wall coated in ice, raking gouges in the surface, and pushing off against that surface for more leverage.

Half-charred and spattered with blood, the boy looked half a revenant himself as he burst through and vaulted over a layer of ice to lunge for the undead monarch’s lower torso, hands clamouring to grasp, tear and smash at whatever exposed bone and rotting tissues he could find.

If nothing else, it would pull attention away from the others long enough to do some damage. His only error, as he'd realised moments later, was that Britney's stake was primed to punch through him on the way to its target.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Estylwen

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

@Mixtape Ghost N Sloane @Atrophy Luca @FernStone Alexander@Estylwen

---

It hadn't taken long for the others to catch up, even if they were doubtful of why he'd dealt with the not-corpses The Greenwood girl had expressed mild disapproval in her need to remind him of what they didn’t need.

"... And we don't need to kill every zombie we come across,"

Autumn

To that, Clancy had thrown up his hands in a half-shrug, thumb and forefinger tapping together to silently puppeteer her commentary. Need was a strong word, and particularly from someone who had probably been shitting her diapers while he was dealing with a different kind of monster. Her chastisement was a familiar talk-down he'd learned to suppress over years in half-doses.

He doubted she'd have appreciated it if he'd left one of the rotting carcasses to grab at their ankles and do what things that should be dead... did to the people that weren’t yet dead. Whatever that was. And he'd broken through enough of them in the sodden yard of Kari Wilson to know it was safer than leaving to chance.

“Personally, I’d feel more comfortable knowing there were less ghouls to potentially block our only known exit,”

Sloane

Sloane blunted the edge of his irritation, gratitude enough for now. He tilted his head slightly upward in response, perhaps not so subtly exaggerating the nod in the process.

They came towards the supposed access point to the compound, a side-entrance with a loose door. He wanted to question whether it should’ve been that simple, but he’d seen plenty of smart people who still forgot the basics. A light here, a door there.

The Greenwood girls’ warnings echoed in his mind. No lights, no loud noises, and most importantly, no magic. Stick to shadows. All of those he could check easily enough, except for maybe the fact that he wasn’t functioning by natural means. His existence was unnatural. Did that mean being there would qualify?

Either way, there was something they needed here, and he doubted the others were any less noise than he was with their collective magic and parasites.

Soon, as foretold, the first of many cameras cropped up, the faint blinking LED indicating its presence as it slowly pivoted from left to right. It took maybe a quarter-minute to get the timings of the search pattern down, but then he had never really had to worry so much about them before now.

The others, on the other hand... Luca volunteered to go first, looking in his direction.

”I guess you could come with me?”

Luca

Without hesitation, Clancy had bobbed his head in agreement, then moved in lock-step with Luca, expressing a quiet contempt for the corrosive presence probing at his facade of a body as he escorted the skinny latino across the camera's blind spot like a good samaritan walking an old lady across the street.

Even as the others passed through, he chose to keep pace with Luca while some of the others moved ahead, letting them slip past him as though he was no different a fixture than any of the ornate decor of the place. Further in they pressed, keeping to narrow alcoves, blind spots and the like until they came to what he guessed was the security gate that had been mentioned earlier in the plan. While his intent was to keep an eye out for Luca, he warily glanced towards the others.

Layla and Alizee, bound as they were, were as unknown a quantity as he was to the rest of them; Britney and Sloane had been whispering to each other a moment before, about what he had no idea, while Adora and Aislin seemed to be keeping quiet for now, as were the Greenwood girls and Amara’s phantom.

Well, they were, until something at the periphery of his senses seemed to close in, off one blind corner away from the security gate.

Clancy was late to notice it, in light of the distant cacophony of sounds and smells pulsing across the island as the other groups made their play, but now he could distinguish it from the background noise, the large presence he felt was too close to ignore, footsteps that closed ahead and smells accompanying them. ”Something big, close-”

Gurgling, stinking mound of meat, the lizard-thing had been sighted by the Greenwood girl before rearing its ugly head, a toothy maw not unlike the books he’d seen when he had been a lot younger, still growing.

The same Greenwood girl was hollering a warning of an incoming adept, which he had figured by now meant magic-user, though ‘red’ and ‘purple’ were distinctions that meant nothing to him, and to one side he could hear the rumblings of Adora, ready to leave. Britney seemed a little more resilient.

"Came here so we could find the asshole who murdered my n-.." Clancy sharply reminded them, then changed trajectory mid-sentence "Your friends." Like the biker’s pet ‘dogs’, the lizard-thing was not something that gave him pause. If it came to it, like he’d guessed it could with the stone dog, he favoured his own chances of dealing with it.

At least, he had until a rush of air pushed out from behind, too close to ignore.

Prompted to turn, Clancy caught it just barely in time to catch two figures emerging from a distortion in the tunnel, for one to just as quickly disappear as some hulking corpse-king took their place, wreathing either exit in green fire.

The man that remained pointed at them, raving about Luna - the white-haired girl who’d been spying on them?

No, not raving. Revenge.

Manifest in power, surging forward. Clancy stepped out, trying to put something between Luca and the bolt spearing at them..

That something was himself.

The arc crackled over him, manifesting in the form of half a dozen obsidian fingers which seared at his clothes and gnawed at his instincts. One licked at the open mouthed, buck-toothed grin of the cartoon character portrayed on his mask, blackening it into a charred, hollow scream. Beneath the fabric, he could sense the recession of what accounted for his lower jaw, where the pale white expression of cold skin was peeled back to expose bare teeth and the black void yawning behind.

Another black kiss made his knee give out for a moment, not pain as he could describe it, but something that counted for discomfort, stalling him. Then, it stopped.

Vines and roots emerged to close off one mouth of the tunnel, binding the dark-haired mobster in a cocoon of tangled overgrowth, but Clancy’s eyes were dark, flinty chips of ice, set on the gaps where skin and clothing remained to showcase the outline of a body.

And the boy felt that malevolent instinct surging at the back of his mind, the hunger, the need for meat from some stupid asshole that tried to kill him.

All that worthless flesh.

Clancy threw himself forward and drove a hand through the overgrowth that bound the mobster, small fingers raking through plant matter to grasp at his entangled arm, still pointed outwards, at the point where the elbow connected to the upper arm.

His other hand grasped at the gnarled growth that stretched out from the mobster's trapped fingertips, intending to wrench the limb away. Noises were abuzz around him, his s senses fixated.

Clothing. Meat. Bone.

The boy, bathed in an iridescent green glow, crunched down at either end, the moment washing over them.

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

---

Clancy had quietly listened as they finalised and formulated their plan for the job, studying the map that had been set before them, the warnings of the obstacles and dangers they would face, and the division of the groups.

He was no stranger to getting into places where he wasn't welcome, but could not have said he'd ever pulled off a heist on purpose. Like it or not, his vice was prey.

Stumbling into poison and loose change were sometimes a consequence of what he did - especially in the cities, but he never hung onto them, usually holding onto a few spare bills as his allowance, while tossing baggies and bricks were thrown in the furnace or, given the former's scarcity, into the nearest body of water, more often than not. No doubt the fish had probably not thanked him for that, but it was better than leaving it for other assholes to find.

Whatever their mutual doubt of one another, he could recognise that Britney was right about the plan - or specifically, the lack of a backup. If the Greenwood people weren't around to get them off, what was the plan?

Swim for the shore? Clancy, for his part, was not so bothered about getting off the island this way.

He had forded streams, rivers, even lakes. Why did an ocean matter?

The first time, when he had refused to accept his situation, when he was in denial, had been the worst. A dark, cold plunge that he thought - hoped could've stopped him, except it didn't, as he found himself tearing at the entrails of a fresh carcass less than an hour later, his clothes sodden, his face and fingers caked in mud, grit and blood.

When you didn't need to breath or worry about the stuff flooding down your airway, water was just another environmental presence, like thicker air that moved over and around you. When you didn't need to care about the cold washing over your body, weighing down your clothes and holding you back from surfacing for air, or worry about feeling any pain from where the water would normally sting at your eyes and burn through your lungs, it was just another aspect to the world, like the difference between walking over snow, ice, grass, asphalt.

Clancy could swim, but often times he found himself sinking like a stone, walking or wading close to the solid ground beneath, clawing at the silty bed for a better foothold here and a lunge there. It was how he'd left the Halloween Festival when the old man had driven the cane through his eye.

But there were others here, and they were a mixed bag. Britney didn't like him, nor he her. Enough said. Sloane and Adora were okay. Aislan, he knew less of, but he had no problms with her at this point. The Greenwood people were strangers, and probably saw him the same. Layla and Alizee had made their bed, and would now have to lay in it.

That left Luca, probably the only one of them, apart from Adora, who he could trust to the furthest point he had trusted anyone in his unnatural existence. Although they were all - Clancy aside - technically adults, he suspected Luca would benefit from a helping hand. He knew how fragile the skinny latino was, and how he was more at risk than most of the others on those benefits. The rest could, as far as he understood, look after themselves.

For that he hoped they wouldn't need another way out, because he didn't rate his chances of trying to drag their fragile bodies back to shore in the middle of the fall - hypothermia would do a faster job of killing most of them than any parasite could.

The others were dressed for the occasion. The Greenwood Maidens in their sports gear, the others similarly garbed in caps, hoodies and masks. Some were armed for the occasion, like the Ghost Woman - Amara - in her riot gear, complete with phantom figures stood beside her. Where had she got that? He put it out of mind, that didn't matter - only that two of the phantoms were going to accompany them.

As far as disguises went, Clancy's had worked for him. There was no cutting or styling the hair, but he could hide his face and make it less obvious who he was. He'd traded the grey hoodie for a navy one, this time with some dull faded sports branding across the side, and slipped on a yellow balaclava with the likeness of some stupid kid's character called Jimbob Squareshorts or something stupid like that, swiped from the post-Halloween bargain bin of a thrift store. The only part of him he didn't cover were his hands or eyes, and that because amything he did was likely to be torn off if they got into a scuffle.

Even if he didn't particularly care if some saw his face, he didn't want to make it so obvious by association. He'd spent a long time keeping under the radar, avoiding the supposed magic feds and their like, even after surveillance cameras started showing up on every other street corner. He didn't want to risk that now, or the slim chance of the same people they were taking these magic items from would make the connection between him, Luca and the others who'd hosted him

Not to mention the hitwoman the old man had probably sent after him. For all he knew, these people might have had connections to her, as everyone in this town seemed to have with one another. A few fleeting words and thoughts passed through his mind, thinking back to what he'd learned at the club what must've been over a month back.

Dollhouse. Judas' connections to them. Who were Shayton's bosses? He put the thoughts out of his mind for the moment, focused on the matter of artifacts.

By his understanding, the axe he'd taken from the nazi had been such a thing. It had felt powerful, in its way, although the only thing he'd found it good for was cutting things in two a little more efficiently than with a butter knife. Perhaps it was the source of the tattooed nazi's strength, but for him - his existence a different kind of strength - it seemed only to serve as a sharp tool, and even then it had been lost to him when the 8th Street assholes had turned the scene outside the cabin to mud.

Still, the axe would've been helpful for the stone dog, for the eventuality that it turned up. For now, he'd have to manage without. The artifact group were going with minimal baggage, and he was about as best as they could get for-

The veil fell. His train of thought interrupted, their assembled groups were moving. Within moments, he found old ground disappearing beneath him in one moment and new ground apparating in the next.

Teleportation? They were here. No time to think on it.

---

Elysium Island - Artifact Group
Luca @FernStone, Sloane @Atrophy, Artifact Group

---

As they progressed, gunfire and other panicked noises crackled in the background. He was no stranger to such things, although perhaps not on this scale. Usually it was closer, directed at, above or beneath him, rather than being on the score of half an island away. It was rare to run into assholes with the kind of power on display here. A distant thunderclap underpinned that musing.

And not usually with explosions.

Clancy wondered if this was what his old man and Uncle Gerry had been through in their wars of long ago. What Frank had been unable to escape. Except there was a clear difference; Clancy didn't care so much about getting through it alive. He wasn't living, had nothing to lose except the prospect of failing, and while they were still trying to get back home, the only thing that he could hope for was the end of the line.

There wasn't a home left to which he could return, either way.

Luca had volunteered to demolish whatever doors sat between them, but Clancy was inclined to agree with Sloane on letting her or one of the others try it first. Using the Rot was a double-ended sword, with no safe way to use it.

As for the 'Starving Dog'...

"If the dog comes, I'll buy you time," he put the notion forward, then continued, "Focus on getting whatever you'll need to find Father Wolf. It can't hurt me."

Unless it happened to have teeth that were made from the same crystalline material that had pained him so. [i]Nothing[i] would've surprised him at this stage, and it was a chance he was willing to take if would get them a shot at Father Wolf. For Ashley.

Perhap to undermine the point about something being unlikely to hurt him, there was a blinding light off somewhere on the horizon, as though the sun itself were bearing down on the island, centered on the mansion. Clancy's attention had been directed towards Luca and Sloane, but even so the light had briefly flashed through the fabric of his hoodie and mask.

He stopped in his tracks, almost blinded for a few seconds, fingers tightening into half-fists as he raised one to shield the half of his face until he could adjust. Off in the distance, he could smell what could've only been described as ozone and charcoal mingled together, along with something else closer.

Meat he thought at first.

No, he corrected himself. It was rotting.

Dead.

Clancy threw a hand up in a silent gesture to the others, still half-balled into a fist, then approached a clearing amidst the trees they'd pushed through. There, where the daylight bored down, he spotted a pair of silhouettes lurching over tree roots, barely avoiding getting thei footing tangled in some of the oversized root systems that cut through the ground.

The boy veered off to the left, leaning against one tree, then pounced, slamming a foot into the hamstring of one undead guard that had been faced away from him to break their footing, and brusquely grasping and mashing their head into the tree trunk aside in a mangled smear of dark viscera.

.
The other wight, half-turned, was subsequently shoved at waist-height over a thick patch of moss and overgrowth, and the boy soon concluded its existence by driving his knee into the undead creature's skull before it could wheeze out another strangled roar.

Useless, rotting meat. The base instinct at the back of his consciousness would've recoiled more out of disappointment than disgust.

The others no doubt were catching up, as fast as they could go given their limitations. There was no time to be annoyed or disoriented. "Few more nearby. Can smell them."

Recollections: Under The Sycamore Tree Part. 1

---

Clancy had little to say on the matter of the conjoined girls. Both victims of a parasite, and now...

Layla claimed there was no force in the matter, but Clancy had been for long enough to know that force went beyond the physical. Sweetened words, promises, threats... some had tried it on him while out foraging, and come to regret their tastes shortly afterwards. Leon, now back to normal form, had a literal devil on his shoulder, whispering poison into their ears.

Clancy knew that he himself was proof they couldn’t be trusted, and both Luca and Lila’s circumstances had only reaffirmed that view. Parasites, through and through.

But it was done, and there was no separating the two now. He could only think over the names being bandied about.

Scott Reese. That meant nothing to him, as far as names go, other than he seemed to be difficult to deal with. Monstrous or not, raw strength by itself did not make him pause.

Be, Todd.... he hadn't known much of them.

Auri, the flower girl. She had meant more - had been closer to Ashley at one stage - but even so, Clancy hadn't much to make of her. She'd tried to organise them, and by all accounts had struggled doing so, given the divisions between the old coven. Much of his attention and subsequent suspicion had been reserved for Britney. Even now, even after the cautious agreement that he'd proposed. The only thing he could trust was that she didn't particularly trust him.

The dangers they spoke of carried weight.

None of it particularly frightened him. Even the prospect of facing the hitwoman and associated agony did not stir fear in him, not like that. It was failure that made him wary. The prospect of failing to end Father Wolf. That he would kill the rest of Ashley's friends.

Some of them weren't assholes, and didn't deserve to die that way.

That gave rise to another thought, buried at the base of his consciousness, for in truth there was a selfish element to keeping close to Luca, Lila and the others.

Whether he wanted it or not, as long as they were alive, if not well, they served as bait, the prospect of an attack dangling over their heads. While Clancy was with them, there was the hope he could stop the killing once and for all. Part of him might have even hoped Father Wolf would try, if only so he could gnaw on the murderer's bones for what they had done to Ashley. For taking that last vestige of family away from him.

"You're serious." Clancy finally noted, and there was no sarcasm or incredulity masking his tone. It was an acknowledgement that they had something of a plan. "I want Father Wolf. Some of you probably do, too." He didn't clarify his meaning, and left that open to interpretation. "You've... seen what I can handle. Some of you, anyway. I don't know if they'll smell me from a mile away, but if Sh-... if the old man's hired woman knew, these people probably will too. What's the plan for getting in?"

Clancy leaned in, ready to ask a few more probing questions. "Elite. Heard a little but not much. Who are they? Names, faces?” For a moment, he considered the matter. ”Same for House of Cards. Names and faces.”

He was, after all, still a stranger in this town, even if he’d found a shade of trust in some people here.

"What's the dog supposed to be, big?" Clancy's mind thought back to the dog-like creations that asshole biker boss had sicced on him, a chimera of dog, deer and sheep. "If it gets in the way, I'll deal with it."

If it was anything like those creatures, it would take a beating, throw him around, gnaw through the facade, but he didn't tire, and he didn't hurt in most instances, it would be a matter of breaking it down until he was the only thing left intact.

Layla's question about who would make it home had reminded him of another concern, perhaps a little more urgent to him. "How do you make sure the things we need to find him make it off? Who takes them?"