Project: Dark Angel
OH GOD THEIR FOLLOWING ME!
A frightened human, a male in his early teens rides his horse through the woods surrounding what was once, his home. Making his way away from 'them'. It's midnight, so he can't tell were he's going
The cloak the boy is wearing is black, but is torn severely and drenched in blood. The boy spots several people on the dirt road, travellers by the looks of them, heading towards his former home. They were un-aware of the fate that awaited them
"NO, TURN BACK, RUN AWAY! HURRY!"
The boy attempts to warn them as he speeds past them, not daring to stop even for a moment. He knew they were right behind him.
"Huh? What did that lad say?"
One of the traders; an elderly man with grey hair and a short beard, asks, more confused them frightened
"And why was he in such a hurry?"
The other says, an elderly woman. Next to her, a few young men and woman. They all look at the boy until their vision is obscured by something; a dark claw, and dozens of them to be precise.
The boy can only squeeze his eyes shut and attempt to block the screaming from his ears, but to no avail
"I'm sor-sorry!"
The boy shouts back as his horse continues its mad dash away from the sounds of screaming humans and tearing flesh and them hissing.
"HELP! SOMONE! ANYONE! PLEASE!"
The boy begins frantically shouting in the hopes that perhaps someone nearby would hear him, someone armed with a weapon of any kind, perhaps a group of bandits, even a YOMA would be better than getting caught by them
The horse carrying the boy continues its mindless running until it is knocked to the ground by a black, skeleton-like blur.
The boy wastes no time, before he would wonder what It was that hit him, but he knows it's one of them. He quickly scrambles away from the horse's prone form as it begins screaming as one of them tears it apart. Loud hisses coming from seemingly everywhere, he looks up at the peaceful night sky through the clearing, wishing he had wings so he could fly away. But he can't stop here, especially with so many of them coming. He quickly gets to his feet and runs in the only direction that the hissing wasn't coming from, he nearly trips over a tree stump. And it is apparent that it saved his life as one of them flies past him, tearing his cloak even further and leaving a large claw-cut on his back. Despite the pain; the boy regains his footing and continues his mad dash through the woods, despite being blind as to where he was running.
His chest was on fire with pain, his lungs had been in overdrive since the ordeal started and he was pushing them even harder now that he was once again, running for his life, despite his fear helping to somewhat ease it; he was getting tired, but he couldn't slow down. If he did, he was dead: just like his family.
He boy uses his hands to knock the larger branches out of his way, letting the smaller ones smack him on the face and to cut him on his checks and neck. His attire was barely still clinging to his body. His brown shirt was torn in more places than it was intact, same for his pants. His shoes were covered in mud, dirt, sweat tears and blood but mainly mud and blood. His face was also partially covered in slowly caking blood. His usually heavenly light blue eyes were stricken with fear, his brown hair was torn, messy and also drenched in blood. But it wasn't HIS blood he was covered from head to toe in, it was the blood of his little brother, his big brother; his littler sisters, his mom and dad, his friends and neighbours. Even the blood of people he didn't know. He was a walking (or in this case, running) mixture of human and even yoma blood. His cloak was nothing more than a piece of blood sacked cloth hanging around the back of his neck.
He had been running for hours, since the sun had down and the horrible nightmare had started, he had been running for his life, but it wasn't enough, those things were still keeping up with him, and they were quickly gaining on him, the only reason they hadn't caught him yet was because he kept running around sharp corners, but the things would easily, if not, more effectively cut around the corner and be back on his tail. These creatures, WHATEVER they were, WHEREVER they came from; they must have been specifically built for hunting down fleeing prey.
The boys only salvation came when at last, after running none stop since the horse, he fell down into a fast travelling stream. The creatures, however, where not going to let him get away that easily and jumped into the water. They quickly began swimming after him. Their black-exoskeleton seeming almost graceful as they travelled through the water towards the helpless human boy who was panicking and attempting to swim away. Just as the creatures almost had him again. The boy went over the edge of a large water fall. But not before one of them lunged its bladed tail towards him, cutting him down the middle from the top of his chest to his stomach, luckily for him it wasn't deep enough to spill his intestines. Unluckily for him, it would cause continuous bleeding, if he didn't have it closed eventually, he'd bleed to death. Which could be considered a mercy compared to what the creatures were going to do with him.
The boy lands in the water below and quickly swims ashore to a nearby shoreline.
I am NOT. Going to die. In the middle of the woods. Not by those things. Not until I warn someone
The boy quickly climbs out of the water and beings running through the woods, looking back momentarily, he sees the creatures shoot out of the water after him. He was moving slower now though, holding his bleeding chest with his left hand and his bleeding stomach with his right. He slowly went from running to limping. The creatures would catch him at this rate.
But just as he thought he was going to die, just as he felt he was losing consciousness. He saw a city on the horizon. A large city. What was it? How long had he been running?
The boy begins making his way towards the city, but he trips over another tree stump and tumbles out onto a dirt road, he looks back at the Creatures and sees them, they weren't even tired. But the boy didn't have any strength leg, he couldn't even stand back up, he couldn't even lift any of his limbs. He could see the creatures in the clearing, but they didn't come after him, instead, one of them was hissing at the others, they were looking at something off beyond the boys view. The creature then retreat back into the clearing. Despite possibly being spared the horror that had happened to his family, the boy's body is gripped by an overwhelming sense of agony, his vision begins to blur and the world around him turns to darkness just as he hears a gentle, old but soft voice calling out to him
"-LOOK, A KID! CHILD ARE YOU ALRI-"
Before giving into his injuries, the boy could swear he saw a priest. What a pleasant wake up that would be from the nightmare.
Several hours earlier
It was only just after the sun had gone down that the small, normal, almost boring human settlement would find its place in the spotlight as: the first human settlement to fall to the Xenomorph hive…
The Xenomorph who made the escape possible was among her siblings as if she was just another normal Xenomorph. But the Xenomorphs don't have desires to be acknowledge for feats in their hive, in short: the Xenomorphs task is thankless, but is necessary, and despite being the one who had been born from something the humans called a 'claymore' it was still fairly normal in its design. Though it had a few things that its siblings didn't, for one, it had the ability to grow new limbs should it lose any. And at an alarming rate too.
The humans that held them in captivity, before they were killed; had given this particular breed a nickname: 'Clay-morph'
It was a terrifying adversary to face in combat; it could attack and severe the heads of several foes at once in the blink of an eye. Its exo-skeleton would evolve and mutate to suite a new combatant until it was unstoppable. It had a strange power emitting from it, which the claymores referred to as 'Yoki'. That was the only warning they'd have before it struck.
The clay-morph and its siblings were speeding along the trees above and the ground below with such precision and speed that; one would almost say they were swimming through the air and ground as they sped towards their first targets: two humans and a few sheep.
The humans were unaware as they went about their business as usual, but when the sheep began to panic and attempted to flee all flee in the opposite direction, the humans knew something was up
"o'i! What's gotten into the sheep?"
One of the humans holding a sheer shouts as he barely avoids being knocked down by the panicking sheep
"Not a c–"
One of the other humans was cut off mid-sentence: dragged into the darkness without so much as a sound
"What the fu-"
The human with the sheer is also cut off mid-sentence as a tail, almost as dark as the night sky itself, knocks him unconscious with a sickening crack from his neck. His limp body falls to the ground as the Xenomorph and its sibling walk over his prone form, chasing after the sheep that had since made it halfway to the small human settlement.
Meanwhile in the human settlement the humans were all gathered in the centre of the small town, seven large Yoma, keeping them in the centre as if they were cattle being herded.
None of the humans dared not try to fight the yoma, those that did were killed and had their entrails eaten in front of the rest of the humans to keep them in line. The settlement had fallen to the yoma in under an hour, it would fall to the hive in a matter of minutes.
The Yoma were different from most others, they worked together as a team. One would almost say they were like a family.
*BAAAA-*
The sound of the sheep's dying call for help signals the rest of the town that there might be something there beside the Yoma
"What the?"
One Yoma grabs a torch and heads to investigate the noise
"Remember, come straight back if it's a Claymore or something you can't handle!"
Another yoma shouts
"Pheh, I doubt it, the humans couldn't have gotten a message out and there's not much in these woods that we can't handle"
Another Yoma replies with a cocky grin. However, after the sheep had stopped screaming and the yoma had disappeared from sight and the torch from its light was the only thing visible in the dense tree lines through the darkness of the night-sky. The light stopped moving
"Think the humans are giving him any trouble?"
One of the yoma asks with a mix of curiosity and concern
"Like I said, I dou-what the hell?"
The other Yoma stops midsentence as the light from the Yoma's torch suddenly falls and disappears from sight. Six Yoma left
"Think it's a human trap? Those two humans have been gone for quite some time, they could well have warned someone, could even be a claymore"
One yoma asks
"What do you think boss?"
Another yoma asks the largest being of their group.
"Hmm…I doubt it…..but get ready just in ca-"
The other yoma wait for their leader to finish, but he doesn't, instead, his head rolls past the other yoma. Five Yoma left
"WHAT THE-"
One yoma shouts but is cut off as a pitch black tail erupts from his chest.
Four Yoma left.
The creature at the end of the tail brings the yoma up so they are face to face, peels back its lips and in the blink of an eye, its inner jaw shoots out and passes through the Yoma's face, leaving an ugly hole in the back of its head. It then tosses the yoma aside and leaps at a nearby Yoma that was still confused as to what was going on.
The two remaining yoma rush to assist their ally as the Xenomorph clearly had it pinned and was quickly tearing it apart. But just as the first yoma is within range, another Xenomorph leaps from atop a nearby building from seemingly thin-air and impales the yoma with its Bladed tail. Lifting it into the air, the Xenomorph examines the yoma for a moment, and satisfied that it was dead, tosses it aside.
The last remaining Yoma, the skinniest of the late group, turns and rushes into the woods, afraid that it would suffer the same fate as its allies. When the Yoma, blind with fear, runs straight into the tail of the waiting Clay-morph.
"w-what are you?!"
The yoma shouts at the creature, not knowing if it could reply or not. The Clay-morph hisses and tears off the Yoma's head with one hand.
After only a few seconds of silence, the humans begin screaming and panicking, running in all directions, with a wave of the Xenomorphs chasing each individual down.
A few minutes later. The Clay-morph was stalking the streets of the besieged human settlement, crawling along the walls of human buildings and tree's alike as it scanned the streets for another victim. At first it didn't spot anything that its siblings didn't already have under control, a few humans here and there but they were quickly caught by the perusing Xenomorphs.
It was only when it came to a certain building, one at the edge of the human settlement when it spotted what it was looking for; two humans attempting to flee. A male human adult and a male human child.
The Clay-morph quickly leaped off the wall, flying through the air with its front claws at the ready in an almost graceful way. Due to the darkness of night the humans didn't spot the Clay-morph until it was upon the elder human
"RUN!"
The elder human shouts before being knocked unconscious by the clay-morph, it then grabbed the boy who tried to escape its grasp by any means, he tried to pull himself free and the clay-morph simply increased the power of its grip, it then knocked the boy unconscious as well, it had the boy in one hand and the adult in the other, it then began dragging them back to the queen to be used as hosts. The queen had set up a hive in the place where they were originally kept in captivity, but the hive had begun to spread to this human settlement, there were Xenomorph drones bringing in eggs to the building most covered with the Xenomorphs hive webbing. It would serve as a type of out-post for the hive, the building was at least four levels tall and twice as long, it would be more accurate to call it a villa or a small mansion, but it was were the drones had placed the heaviest concentration of hive nodes so the building was essentially a hive without a queen: the eggs would be brought in, hosts would be webbed to the walls and face huggers would impregnate the host, the chest burster would erupt and grow into a fully grown alien. The cycle would repeat itself, while the queen was safely in the 'main' hive, this settlement was but the first of many to turn into an 'outpost hive'.
It was a few minutes after the humans had all be either killed or rounded up and brought to the outpost. The drones had finished laying down the hive nodes and the hive had spread and killed even microscopic bacteria. The hive webbing was essentially destroying the very earth itself on a molecular level in this area, and it would spread until the entire planet was covered. That's the aliens–the queens-plan.
The Clay-morph had given the two humans she had captured to the drones to be cocooned on the wall and impregnated to birth more siblings for even more conquests. But during the procedure of cocooning, the adult had awoken and managed to free a captured yoma, both were instantly face hugged. But the small human boy had since escaped during the events and a few Xenomorphs, three drones to be precise, had given chase. Though, in the long run, whether or not they were able to capture him didn't matter, they would all follow suite eventually.
The clay-morph would have went after the boy as well, but the queen had ordered her, and other trans-breed Xenomorphs like her (only ones born from Claymores or Yoma's) to lead a group of Xenomorphs to hunt down and bring back a certain life form. The humans called them 'awakened beings', soon there would be an 'Awakened Xenomorph' among their ranks.
The clay-morph quietly departed the newly set up hive and began her journey to join her siblings and hunt down this 'Awakened Being'
