Hullo!

I want to thank all you who leave me notes and ideas, I do seriously consider each of them, even if I don't use them. They do effect the story even if I don't take your suggestion directly :) And yes- The village certainly isn't going to survive this haha.

Just because somebody looks like a monster, doesn't mean she is one. :0

Armour: Brimflame

Weapon: Winter's Fury, Undine's Retribution, Stormfront Razor

Acc(11/11): The Bee, Celestial cuffs, Mana Flower, Sorcerer Emblem, Cryo Wings, Ankh Shield, Deific Amulet, FrostSpark Boots, Grand Gelatin, Permafrost's Concotion, Evasion Scarf. (Unlimited Buffs)

Health: (500/500)

The air pricks at me.

Like stinging nettles, it seeps beneath my skin - irritating and itching, stabbing like razor wire. I can hear my own breath billowing in my lungs. The rushing of blood. The rapid thump of my heartbeat. Everything is silent. The tremulous, tense silence of a taut string before it snaps. A familiar sinking feeling writhes through my guts as I watch the beaming lights draw near. The slow drip of organic dread twists up my throat. I swallow, but it wells up anyways.

*rumble*

Three massive creatures approach, emerging from the velvet black - bellowing and rumbling like beasts with foul smelling smoke for breath. Their armour is of steel and although they seem entirely artificial, they move and roll smoothly on black rubber wheels. From their faces, bright beams of light shine forth, blinding me with a glaring lamplight. I can see the forms of men moving around from within.

Automobiles...

Automobiles. A curiosity. In any other situation, I would have scrambled right into one - demanding whoever was riding it to tell me everything about it. I'd be taking the machine to pieces, looking over the wheels and the doors, the engines and the seats... but not today. Because I'm wound tight as a spring. Something is screaming at me. Something filled with longing and wrath and of deep, deep malevolence. It causes my spine to curl in in itself as I stare down the trucks with such intensity, I hardly notice when the constable's leering face turn and scrambles away - his beady eyes glinting in the blackness.

*rumble...tap...tap*

The soldiers scramble out of The Trucks, their footsteps panicked, their breaths terrified. They are armed, but they scarcely look at me before they begin fleeing into the blackness - into the alleyways. Into the caves. Into the narrow cracks between field and forest. What have they come here for? Why do they reek of fear and of sweat, of panic and dread? Have they not come here to hunt me? No - I grit my teeth and stir myself to action. One of the soldiers, in his haste to dismount the truck, trips and lands teeth-first into the dirt path. I make haste to leap upon him and pin him to the ground as his fellows rush past. I make my voice a mocking hiss, I feign confidence I do not have.

"How disappointing... Had I been more naive, I'd say I was beginning to trust in the goodwill of men... but alas, I was expecting an ambush. Is that why you lot are so terrified?"

Truth be told, I expected The Soldier to be terrified... but not until after I thrashed them. I expected a certain amount of screaming and shouting, and perhaps some pathetic show of defiance and a desperate lashing violence... but The Soldier went straight to begging. His eyes are wide in unabashed terror and he weeps hysterically as he scrabbles at the dirt. He barely glances at me as he thrashes about, instead - his eyes are fixed on the largest of the three carriages.

"Let me go! Oh, please let me go! I need to run! I don't want to die, not yet! Not yet! Please, please!"

"... ah-"

I'm momentarily stunned, but shake my head and seize The Soldier by the back of his vest to give him a solid knock in the skull. He turns to look at me, sniveling and trembling like a rat afore a lion. I snarl as I pepper him with questions.

"What are you here for, soldier? Did Yharim send you? Are you here to capture me or to kill me? I have to say, either way, you're doing a sorry job! You've got something up your sleeves, don't you?!"

I draw my weapon, the same Infernal Rift I've used countless times in the past to rain fiery daggers upon armies. I've learned to use the brutish weapon with far more precision now and raise the glowing pitchfork over my head. I make my voice gentle.

"Why don't you tell me? What's in the back of the Truck?"

The Soldier stutters and pales as hellish daggers rain suddenly from the sky - so fast they sizzle the air like crimson lightning. Each missing him by a millimeter, but I do allow one to snip into his forearm; he howls and starts sobbing anew. He speaks through panic and tears.

"A weapon! A wea- A gift, yes a gift. Here!" shaking hands pull a key from his pocket, which he haphazardly tosses at me. He resumes trying his best to crawl away, but the foot I've planted on the base of his neck keeps him pinned. I huff and glance anxiously at The Truck. Should I flee? Or do I face my enemy?

It's not a gift... Nobody would send me a gift... But If it's a weapon, perhaps I can wield it against my enemies...

There's that miasma in the air, whirling and swirling. I can hear slow, slurping movements from within the carriage, something organic, yet reeking of death and decay. The Soldier has heard the noises as well and resigned himself to death. He weeps and sputters, clinging to the ground and groaning in despair. The sight causes my stomach to turn, first in disgust, but then in utter self-loathing. Am I about to kill a man begging me for his life? Yes, I am. For this... is no time for sentiment. This man has come to do me harm. I would truly be a fool to release him and let him live.

"Please please... Hero. Hero have mercy. I have a family, I have childre-"

A quick strike. As swift and as painless as I can manage - and his head rolls free from his body. Quickly I snatch up the keys and turn away; I no longer take pleasure in seeing a body thrash in it's death throes. This man... he knew I was 'The Hero'. He is from either The Resistance Remnants or The Empire, both of which are my enemies. His children will mourn him as I mourned The Archmage. I accept the fact like a thorn in my flesh. My fingers tingle as I clutch the key in my hand and look to the carriage. Something within is banging and thrashing. It reeks of bile and groans and shrieks emit from within. What is it? What could it be? If it's a weapon I can use, I must obtain it. If I cannot use it, I must destroy it - lest it be used against me in more dire circumstances.

*Thud... thud.*

Silence.

Whatever it is, it just sensed me.

I can feel flat, dead eyes gazing blindly in my direction. A coo. A shriek. A cackle. A sob. A shockwave.

*booom*

And all the grass lays flat.

The Truck's hardened steel bows outwards and bursts like a balloon.

And from within, something dreadful rises, encased in baleful red light.

My vision flutters. My stomach flips. I rankle my nose, for the smell is not merely that of decay, but of Despair. A Monster. It's figure is grotesque and lumbering, a horrid welding of corpses, grafted together with stitches and wax, of crude staples and pulsing electrical wires. With a morbid fixation, I stare at its hideous form. I see the head of a tremendous ram, the tails of devils, the claws of jackels... but this thing is mostly made of men.

Many bodies, attached at odd angles, sewn and crushed and twisted into place. Emaciated arms hang from it's floating figure, grasping and clutching blindly at anything they can lay hold of. Each of those skinless heads - each adorned with a small set of white horns - cling to one another, gnashing their teeth and thrashing about. The ones that still have eyes glare at me, not in rage - but in craven, trembling fear. They mutter and babble, drawing bravery from one another to shriek at me in ragged voices. Oh, how dreadful they are! How horrid! How desperate those pained cries - ringing out as if existence itself were torture. Each of the melded figures is slightly different, yet are overwhelmingly similar - as if each corpse, whilst alive, was a sibling to the others.

(Agghhhhh)

But sewn in atop the pile of horrid, screaming bodies is the bust of a woman.

Had she not been so dreadfully maimed, she might have been beautiful.

She is slumped over, the exaggerated vertebrae of her spine jutting out through her skin before melting down into the mess of bodies beneath. Her hair, ashen white, floats about her head like lace underwater. She had no eyes, they had been torn out and hollowed so mechanical contraptions could be fastened into her skull - yet despite the blinking lights that replaced her eyes, tears - as black as pitch, spilled down her cheeks. She groans and sways back and forth as if in mourning, covering and clutching at her face, as if filled with a deep shame. She gags and screams as a pulse of incredibly powerful brimstone magic burst from her, turning the air as red as blood and the ground a black as deep night.

And I...

Perhaps I might be losing my mind entirely.

But my heart aches.

I'm staring down a monster - a weapon which was sent to kill me, yet my heart burns within me like a hot iron. My hands are trembling as I clutch my blade and I whisper as I gaze upon my foe. My writhing... tragic foe.

...a horrid gift indeed.

The night of the Autumn Festival was to be a time of peace and plenty. A time of joy, of good food and ale, pumpkin pies and roaring fireplaces. Yet... this night, every man huddled in his bed, cradling his sobbing children as tremendous scarlet skulls shrieked down from the heavens like macabre hail. There was to be no rest this night. Some families fled into the streets to rush away from the burning town, their little ones held aloft, and their elderly dragged by the wrists. Others huddled in their homes, begging and praying that their house might not be struck by those unquenchable bloody flames.

*crack*

For each skull burst when it hit the ground. Bursting in howls and shrieks - in burning flames that reduced everything around it to ash. That craven, horrid screaming rang forth in the night, ringing from that amalgamation of corpses which floated over the little mountainside town like a dreadful deity. A god of death. A machine of war. Surely... the death of them all.

Yharim's agents... why have they visited calamity upon us?

The Man gritted his teeth and peeked out the window of his shop, staring at the pitch black sky from which crimson flames spewed. Fighting to keep his nerve as the ground beneath him shuddered and rumbled - the very air pulsing in burning heat. In the cellar, he heard his wife and children weeping quietly as they huddled between the vats of indigo and blue. What was he to do? He was a man, he must protect his family. Out there - he could see a scrap of glowing blue weaving between the flaming skulls like a feather dodging raindrops. Who was that, with wings of icy blue? The darkness was too consuming for him to see - yet, The Dye Trader could not allow this stranger to be the only one to defend his town... his people.

For in the past, he had been a mighty warrior of the sands.

And although he was old, his bones never forgot the taste of the battlefield.

And so, with trembling hands, the man set his face like flint - and snatched his scimitar from his mantlepiece.

I've gone mad.

I must be. Perhaps it's the heat. Perhaps it's the dark. Perhaps it was the horrific state my mind has dwelled in since The Archmage died... but I've lost my mind completely.

This... thing, it is mindless. It's a pile of dangerous dead flesh. It's nothing but an enemy -an object - that I must cut down with all prejudice and impunity. Yet each strike I levy against it is like a strike against my own body. Each blast of magic it absorbs wracks my own soul. Is this... it's power? No. The pain is not physical. Is this the influence of that pathetic guilty side of me that was borne of my deep despair? I do not know. I cannot know. My mind is a mess, stuffed full of cotton and aching. I dodge and fight as bile creeps up my throat and my nerves tremble. My breath is erratic and tears at the base of my lungs.

Because... I hear it.

I hear her.

No words, just grief. A story told in her wails and her roars. Pain pain pain. She's a great ball of pain and despair, suffering and suffering from the day she was born without even the hope of relief or respite. All about her, her clones cling to her form. They wrap around to protect her, gnarled hands clutching and shielding with their torn flesh and meagre bones. She spews forth magic to protect them - flames and magical orbs, pillars and sheets of crimson flame. There is no finesse in her magic. She hurls it with sheer, untrained desperation. Has nobody taught her to use her massive power? Has nobody tended to this pitiable creature?

She's trying to kill you... what are you thinking?!

I shake my head and curl my lip. This sappy sentiment is utterly ridiculous! I make my heart stony as I wrap my fists in power - drawing from one of the innumerable spellbooks I've voraciously consumed whilst lounging in The Archmage's library. 'The Abbot's fist' turned out to be shamefully simple, but nevertheless a powerful tool. I flap my wings and lunge at my adversary - whirling through the shower of bursting magic and closing the distance between us. I've never learned boxing, but I've read of it - and with several strikes - I crush the skulls of many of those pitiable clones. The blows are devastating and precise, the heads cave in like eggshells and and my fists come away coated in blackened brain matter.

(Uuuuooooaaaahhhh!)

A terrified howl pierces my soul. My stomach drops as that the scream pricks my heart. The pressure of my enemy's magic increases ever more and her behavior shifts. No longer does she chase after me like a bloodthirsty beast - no. She's terrified. She's terrified of me.

Shit.

I leap away as I shield myself from that great burst of power, even needing to burn my own life-force to defend against it. Yet the strength did not come without consequence. I can see it causes her pain. I see the pulsing red lights in those electric veins straining and beating - the stitches holding her body together were coming loose, fraying with her great exertion. Some of the many clones are shaken free, their crudely twisted bodies peeling off of the main form and falling away. One - just a torso - is suspended by a single rusty staple. The hands of its fellows reach down to draw it near - hugging and carressing it until it's weakly stuttering form suffocates and goes still.

She howls again. The inky tears run afresh.

Rage burns in those eyes.

A burning rage borne of great injustice.

and...

*rumble*

The ground rattles.

Houses and their occupants are flattened.

The two remaining carriages burst.

Great lumps and dirt and mud are dislodged from the ground...

And all that debris - metal and stone, wood and flesh - both alive and dead - is drawn up through the air and coalesced. A mess of material is twisted clumsily together into two figures vaguely human shaped - yet they are not golems. No, their origin is far more sinister. I can feel the beat of a soul from within those lumbering figures. That steel and dirt, splattered in blood and weakly flailing limbs... This is...

Necromancy.

Faze facing down Abomination Clone Calamitas:

Faze: I can fix her!

Her: (uuuoooaaaaahhhh) - *dribbles liquid corpse on the ground*

LC: Child... your taste in women is...

F: ?

LC: horrible.

Clone cal is a lil scary, ngl but I promise she's a sweetheart 3