Armour: Aerospec Armour (Ranger)

Weapon: Galeforce (Ichor Arrows); Arkhalis

Acc(11/11): Charm of Myths, Ankh Shield, Terraspark Boots, Luxor's Gift, Deific Amulet, Counter Scarf, Crown Jewel, MOAB, Harpy Ring, Aero Stone, Skyline Wings

Health: (250/400)

The air screams.

Heavy. Painful.

Roars and shrieks, so loud that the earth trembles with their echoes. They are terrible noises - the noises of beasts torn from the throats of man, a chorus of shouts sung by a thousand slobbering tongue. There are great drums pounding, off beat, dissonant - massive beating hearts pumping filthy mixed blood through brittle veins. The space warps - expanding and contracting, collapsing. Crumbling.

...

Magma boils beneath, bubbling up like a great glowing cauldron, spewing flames in bursts and staining the ashen ceiling ever blacker with infernal coals. Sparks and flames, churning stone, melting flesh. The air chokes of heat and smoke, distorting into dizzying, mind numbing waves. Acrid and bright, ichor glows hot on the stones as it sizzles and eats into the jagged rock with voracious appetite. The cavern shakes as if the very fabric of reality is straining - bursting - at the seams, all to herald the awakening of a monster.

It isn't large.

Indeed, there is little of the creature to be seen. Just a small figure, dripping in lava and covered in ash - so pale and deathly, he looks to be dead already. Is it a man? Perhaps not, for although he had the shape of a man, the longer one watched, the more convinced they'd be that he... that it, was not human at all. An imitation, perhaps - or some ruthless monstrosity masquerading as a human.

For no man roars like this...thing does. No man reeks of such bloodlust that even the demons of The Underworld flee. It is crying for blood. Violence burgeons in its veins. What is it's motivation? Anguish? Betrayal? Rage? Instinct? Perhaps it is merely a mindless machine of destruction. Perhaps it has no reasons at all -its current appearance does not indicate it possessed any sort of mind.

It's a mercy the thing wears a knight's helm, for whatever expression plastered on that face must certainly be horrid. Wide, fevered eyes flash to and fro from beneath the slatted visor. Flashes of white teeth, bared to the base of the gums. The Monster Knight is driven to frenzy. It screams and cries as it pierced its enemy through with a million ichor bolts. Rage lifts off its billowing cloak. Adrenaline shines in its tiny, wild eyes. It gnashes its teeth as it tears into its enemy like a wild animal - but its strength is far greater than what flesh and blood can sustain. Far more terrifying than a rabid titan, it plunges forward as it hurls itself at its vast enemy - it's movements alien-like in their gracefulness, yet so utterly inclined to violence they could not be called refined nor beautiful. bolts chase from behind it, hundreds - thousands fly from that thrumming bowstring at such a rate - one could scarcely count them. That flashing blade flickers - almost invisible - as it carves great grooves wheresoever it falls.

*kzzzt...kzzzt*

But for as powerful as The Monster Knight might appear to be, its opponent is far more terrifying.

Vast and looming. A massive wall of squirming flesh, of needle teeth and lolling tongues, of rolling eyes and shrieking mouths. It is covered in globby fat and heaving muscle, in slurping organs and trembling nerves. Some look as if they'd been pilfered off the corpses of giants, others off dwarves and gnomes. But each piece has been welded together in this cauldron of stewing souls, each bound together in hatred and pain. It stretches from one end of the cavern to the other. It reaches from deep in the lava pool to the top of the cavern. Each of its eyes glare maliciously, hungrily, as it hems The Monster Knight in on all sides, and although it's lower half is being charred and lit aflame by the heat of the magma, it heeds not the damage to its own form.

It has no mind with which to consider these things.

For The Wall is merely a container for souls... the hundreds of thousands of souls that had been captured in The Crimson over the millennia. Souls of light - dryads, hallowed creatures, Old Heroes and Paladins. The Dark Souls of the night - ghouls and dragons and the great rumbling dead. A wall made of beasts. A wall that shrieks with a million laughing voices. Bared teeth gnashing as they holler nonsense. Heads bursting out on tendrils, with no hair nor eyes - but only gaping mouths with razors for teeth. They reached out towards The Monster Knight - their appearance odd - with wan skin and sandy brown hair, speaking in the voice of the one who had died to summon it - repeating his last words in overlapping chorus.

"Stay Back! Stay Back! Stay Back!"

"..."

There was none to witness this battle. None but the glowing snails and the cowering bats. Two Monsters tearing into each other, one of massive size and one of tremendous potency. Until this very moment, they were at a stalemate. Two mindless titans battling and fighting with none gaining a foothold over the other... until those odd heads began to chant and wail and cackle.

"Stay Back! Stay Back! Stay Back!"

Perhaps these strange outgrowths triggered something in The Knight. Did they mean something to him? Did they resemble somebody he knew? Perhaps their words reminded him of something dreadful... the bats and the snails didn't know. But the change was immediate.

He screamed no more.

The tears no longer sparkled on his cheeks. The fever died in his eyes. They became cold, hard and beady. Like that of an unfeeling insect's. If The Knight had been mourning, he mourned no longer. If he'd been drowned in despair, he killed his heart. If he were feeling the heat of betrayal, he threw away the emotion entirely... He became a pit.

Everything was swallowed in that gaze, a gaze like that of a deep hole. The rage became silent. The Adrenaline sank down and embedded itself into the creature's brain.

*snick-snick-snick-snick*

And the movements became cold and ruthless

The tongues were cut out.

Then the eyes were blinded.

And The Screams grew ever louder...

Until they finally faded to nothing.