Exalted: Out Of The Eater
- Thread starter TenfoldShields
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[X] Plan Urizen Zerban
Severing Hydra fulfills both Harrowers interest in killing Lookshyans and his interest in Necrotech. What's not to love?
Mail From the Marrow let's Harrower design his own outfit for when he's out for a good time.
Severing Hydra fulfills both Harrowers interest in killing Lookshyans and his interest in Necrotech. What's not to love?
Mail From the Marrow let's Harrower design his own outfit for when he's out for a good time.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
O, Deathknight. Teach them pain, suffering, the feeling of being utterly without power before the monster already in their midst. And before those lessons paid in blood are bitterly swallowed and transformed into wisdom, snatch their lives away. Let them never have the chance to learn from their arrogance and mistakes.
...Huh. Who knew. Writing in purple prose is actually fun. But yes. Lets become the antagonist we were always meant to be.
[X] PlanUrizen Zerban
...Huh. Who knew. Writing in purple prose is actually fun. But yes. Lets become the antagonist we were always meant to be.
[X] Plan
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Zerban already picked up on most of the stuff I was going to, particularly the falseness of Thalia, but...
[X] PlanUrizen Zerban
look
i can't say no to the biohorror okay
gimme that meat machine aesthetic
Smol Harrower doesn't get old, really. Tiny, but fierce. Well. He's learning to be fierce. It's a work in progress.
oh dear me yes how terrible would that be~
Oh baw she bought it.
Oooh. Ooh. I know this guy. I remember the discussion as Tenfold came up with him. He's gonna be fun.
[X] Plan
look
i can't say no to the biohorror okay
gimme that meat machine aesthetic
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You know, it occurs to me but Harrower is really the poster monsterboi for Death Metal Biopunk Horror Communism with his strong thread of "WITNESS! The Hero of the People! Also, I am A Meat Terminator!" Constantly blaring full blast across the fourth wall.
This is very fun to watch and I want to lean into it for Thematic Entertainment!
Something else I want to do is encounter fair monserbois and girls and build a gang of Fun and Murder with which to go on Enthusiastic Walks With. Harrower by himself is mmmmmmyes yes, so I can only giggle at the idea of more people thrown into the mix on his side.
We can even later on FLEX it into A Quirky Miniboss Squad for his fortress of doom while Harrower lounges on a Baddass Throne.
Speaking of said Fortress of Doom, how heavily can we lean into Dracula and Castlevania and Vampire Hunter D @TenfoldShields. I really would love for Harrower to have a Super Necrotech Fortress from which to have The Perfect Balcony to brood from.
This is very fun to watch and I want to lean into it for Thematic Entertainment!
Something else I want to do is encounter fair monserbois and girls and build a gang of Fun and Murder with which to go on Enthusiastic Walks With. Harrower by himself is mmmmmmyes yes, so I can only giggle at the idea of more people thrown into the mix on his side.
We can even later on FLEX it into A Quirky Miniboss Squad for his fortress of doom while Harrower lounges on a Baddass Throne.
Speaking of said Fortress of Doom, how heavily can we lean into Dracula and Castlevania and Vampire Hunter D @TenfoldShields. I really would love for Harrower to have a Super Necrotech Fortress from which to have The Perfect Balcony to brood from.
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Interlude Two: Abel In The Dark, Abel In The Night
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Lookshy is addicted to death.
There is an old matriarch in dusty finery, she sits at the head of an empty table, at the head of a feast set for many and served only to one. She sups upon the richest, fattiest cuts of meat, grease pooling, clotting in shallow bowls as she eats. Slick and shiny where it smears her lips, her grey tinged teeth; spilling down her trembling chin. A fly crawls across her cheek. It is like a kiss. There is a young prince reclining upon a lounge, tendrils of fragrant smoke spilling off his tongue and curling around a pipe of carved bone. A goblet in one hand swirling with wine so rich and so dark it could stain pure white imperial purple. He is half-nude, his skin pale and tinged with fever-flush; his robes smell of incense, of sex, of ash.
It is an infatuation. Do you understand?
All of Lookshy's heroes are dead. The bones of soldier-martyrs are recovered from far-flung battlefields, couriered with love and care to the City's great underground basilicas; draped in jade and framed by gleaming glass for the edification of the pious. Every household manse, every familial shrine, counts an ancestor as honored attendant and intercessory to the gods. In their crimson-draped armor the gunzosha's blood boils and writhes and squirms, each breath tinged with carrion sweetness; the sacred guardians of the democratic state.
It is an obsession, all-consuming and all-devouring.
The helot dead that underlay the foundations are innumerable. They are as unto an ocean, a vast Threshold sea. That the soil does not weep scarlet when you score it, that the banks of the Yanaze are not heaped high with white enamel teeth worn as smooth as river stones, is the greatest and most detestable lie of this Age. Falsity sung so loudly that it becomes truth in and of itself.
It is what one might call worship. It is what one may describe as faith.
What shape can salvation take for such a place? What divinity can deliver the people from themselves? How can one know the righteous when all are unclean, all are touched by the taint; filth and fever shared and shared alike.
Foolishness.
Lookshy has always been a land of dragons.
General Navona Afia Sarantankous shoves their way out of the wreckage of their command tent. Rug-draped floor littered with the smoking remnants of a collapsible table and shattered stools. Cloth walls, carefully sealed with wax against the wet and the chill now torn open through the sheer force of the blast. Billowing, snapping in the breeze; the cold Winter wind slipping through the slits, the great ragged rents. The whole structure half-listing, creaking alarmingly and bound to collapse. And that is trouble, perhaps, to Opiter (pretty, fragile in the way only precious, irreplaceable things can be Opiter) and to Thalia (complicated, her brain a stone labyrinth of sanctimony and self flagellation Thalia) and to Damianos (the drunken, useless hulk, the feckless, fuckabout progenitor blustering...something in the background). To the carcass loudly demanding answers, roaring in a guttural rumble for someone to tell him what just happened. The leaden weight, as always.
But it is nothing to them. The sky could fall on them and it would shatter over their shoulders.
The scrape of scarlet metal on cold earth and colder stone as they drag that slab, that monstrosity of a sword behind them. A molten crack in the ground beneath their feet, flames licking up, drowning as ice melts in their wake before they snap their arm and swing it upright. The flat striking a pauldron with a sound like a bell pealing. Some call to prayer, mingling with the shrill whistles rousing the camp, the distant shouts in the gloom. Someone's grabbed a cadet and from the swirling white, the rainy night a steady tempo sounds calling the wakeful and the resting to attention. Behind them the Wisteria Guard form wordless ranks and fall in silent step. Armor etched with violet glyphs and indigo designs; shedding a flickering amethyst glow like there's a bonfire trying to escape through the patterns of blossoms and boughs.
From every side-street and shadowed alley there is the thunder of boots, the clatter and clash of scale and mail. But they? They are as a statue, cloak billowing in their wake; fur trim glossy and wet as sleet sublimates to rain dissolves into wisps of steam. They are still and severe as all around them sentry fires flicker, crackle and spit and climb higher to claw at the sky. As all around them the camp fills with flesh and metal. The towering infernos captured and reflected in the naked steel of drawn swords, of leveled spearheads. A ragged semi-circle around the fallen figure, a cordon ten men deep with more arriving with every passing second.
"Wwwweeeeeeell," Opiter says as he slips out of the command tent behind them. Drawing the single syllable out into a lazy, dreamy drawl. Acting as if they can't see him still blinking away the wide-eyed shock and the faceful of smoke. He still has his cup, because of course he does. He hasn't spilled a drop, because of course he hasn't. "That was bracing. For a Xauman agent he did pretty well don't you think? Fumbled it a bit at the finish certainly but he made it all the way to your tent. That counts for something."
"Ironic admiration is still inappropriate," Thalia's near-monotone answers, her voice soft but the tension wound through it like so much wire. Navona can all but hear the set of her jaw, hear the creak of bone and the gritting teeth. "Did you see it's arm? Some new necrotic construct. A graft perhaps, or a specialized revenant. The Fox is getting craftier. Or maybe Xauma is simply surrendering desperation as the fleet approaches. Or both, potentially. We need Dia to-"
"Oh don't be like that, he's been dealt with. It's fine."
"We still need Dia to open the thing's chest."
"That really wasn't the point I was making..."
"Hnn, dealt with you say?" and this they can picture clearly too, feel it in the way the discussion, the not-quite-an-argument immediately dies. Damianos coming in the wake of it all, on the heels of everyone once he realized that nobody was actually answering him. The towering-tall giant of a man, once handsome and gone slightly to seed; the kind of person who still thinks of himself as dashing even as he downs half-a-keg of beer for breakfast and wonders where the softness in his gut came from. Once-human (only human) and gone to something crocodilian now; the kind of Dragon who could be confused for a more common river-beast with that long mane and saurian jaw, all lazy strength and reptilian sloth, back dappled in sapphire scutes and mouth thick with fangs. Armor somewhere between ornate and encrusted and- isn't it amusing really? He must imagine that makes him look dashing too. "Ah! Well done then grandchild! What a foul fucking thing to come crawling in out of the night eh? But if this is the best the dogborn bastards can do-"
He spits. Their eyelid twitches. But they say nothing. They don't move. They only watch the scarecrow of a young man laying still in the street; unable to shake the feeling of deep unease-
No. Not unease. Unease is inchoate and ill-formed, it is by definition undefined. This is a hole in the gut, something scraped away by leech mouths and lamprey teeth. A kind of slimy coiling in the stomach, a belly full of hungry grave-worms. And they cannot plead ignorance, even if they were that cowardly type. They've felt this before:
Four years ago, when the messenger arrived, sweating and shivering in the Summer heat, carrying the sealed message from the Southern garrison. Bearing news of what had become of Thorns, that old enemy. Eight years ago, when the rumors flew thick and lurid, an ever-present murmur that these bloody border raids had been lead by an Anathema, a moon-branded monster come from the North, from Dead Xauma. Fifteen years ago, when fire kissed them in that farflung border Excharate, when Hesiesh took their hand and together they and their Sworn Kinship burned away everything that wicked old man, that death-drunk General had done, secrets and sins to ash as one.
A feeling like the world shifting beneath their feet. As if for a moment there was a kind of grating, wet click, like tendons torqued too far before the limb crunches back home in the socket. A re-alignment. A new reality.
The young man's body is a wreckage. And then in the space between heartbeats that wreckage picks itself up from the dirt and stands back up.
The silence in the camp is thick enough to choke, to strangle and to smother. So deep and so horrified that even over the wind it's easy, it's oh so easy to hear his voice soft as it is, as quiet. A flat, almost emotionless mumble; betrayed by the few notes of petulance, of plaintive protest.
"All I wanted to do was kill him," the scarecrow says. One arm (ordinary now, dislocated and harmless now, as if the nightmare blade had been only that, some bad dream) dangles limp, he ignores it. Pushing back his stolen soldier's helm, hooking his fingers beneath the padded brim and pulling it away. The chain veil trailing behind as he drops the thing. Utterly uncaring of the charred black, bloodless wound that splits him open from hip to shoulder, a deep dark-red trench carved into the muscle and bone. Navona can see where naked ribs have cracked, the ivory splintered and fractured. They can see the wet gleam of viscera behind his laid-open navel, the young man cleaved almost in half but his body holding itself together in defiance of its own ruined anatomy. His hair is dark. His limbs are lean. His features pleasant if a little plain.
His face is torn, the shape of one socket exposed, the tanned flesh on one cheek ripped away where it ground on frozen earth and jagged ice. Teeth bared. The motion of a tongue visible behind pale gums.
"Can you really blame me for that?" He continues, rolling a wrist "We're siblings aren't we? You must hate him almost as much as I do. It must hurt to be so close to divinity and so...soiled. Spoiled. Because of him."
"What?" They reply, their voice hoarse and thick. The young man tilts his head, a broken-necked loll. His smile is a small thing, a quirk of ragged lips.
"You're a helot too aren't you? Just like me."
The question is almost innocent. Their fury is instant and magmatic, every scrap of moisture vaporizing, Thalia and Opiter recoiling behind them with muffled shouts, arms raised to shield eyes and noses from the searing wave. The air seethes with grease-smear distortion; heat lightning crackling down their blade, their arm in purple-pink coils. Ash billowing up, the ground beneath beginning to melt into thick, viscous orange. But they do not move. They do not move even as sparks catch between their teeth and the edges of their armor glows a rich cherry red. They do not move even as they spit their reply and the words all but sizzle in the space between the young man and they.
"Name yourself, thing so that I might describe the scraps I leave behind to my superiors."
"Hah. Don't you know me sibling? I'm your brother-"
"You are no brother of mine. Name yourself."
"Oh but I am dear sibling," the stranger whispers, and his eyes, his eyes, there's something in his eyes that seems to catch, to reflect that roiling pyre. Something sullen and shadowed and scarlet. His voice still soft. His tone still flat. "Don't you remember? You murdered me and left my body in the fields."
Broken bones shift in a sleeve of skin, shoulder rolling as sinews draw like rope, the click-crunch as his arm slides back in position audible. The sick crackle of cartilage. The visceral wetness of it.
"You worked me in the mines until dust filled my lungs and my fingers were worn down to nothing. Like nubs of chalk."
Another sound overlapping, a noise like a man cracking his knuckles, the pop-pop-pop of a woman rolling the heel of her hand across her fingers as ribs re-align. Pulling free from the pierced mincemeat of his innards, setting back in place to frame the darkly pulsing things. And between them, beneath them something darker skill. Something writhing and squirming: wrist-thick bodies slithering against each other. Something bloody red and clotted black emerging from impossible depths. His hair is plastered to his scalp by sleet. He does not shiver.
"You let your soldiers use me. You let the Encrypted hang me. You let the chanceries starve me. Your own kin...how could you?"
Eyes -and it is a kind of nauseous realization isn't it? That moment when comprehension hits- shining beneath the spars of bone: eyes like chips of topaz, eyes like sapphires and rubies and emeralds and amethyst. Slitted eyes in every color of the Maiden Stars in a curling band across his chest, like a obscene military sash. There is a sound behind them, a half-choked inhale. A horrified retch catching in Opiter's throat. Something, some words crawling up their own.
"Oh but don't worry dearest sibling," he whispers, his voice the softest hiss now, taken up again and again by a sibilant chorus. As he lifts his hand slowly, ever so slowly to his brow. Eyes gleaming behind a cage of fingers. "Because I died but then I got up. I came back and I did not come alone. You are right, General: I should dispense with pretense. You wanted my name, General? Then know that this is what I am called."
Ah. They understand now as the serpents unlace, spilling out from the wound.
It is a scream.
The light goes red.
Death has a texture. Death has a taste. Navona knows it well, how could they not? Any true Lookshyan general leads from the front lines, anchoring the center of the vast formations against the oncoming enemy, in the very thick of the fight. Exalted might and burning souls a light for the ten thousand behind. And they are nothing if not the very image of the Lookshyan general.
It's just that the fight isn't supposed to be the center of their camp.
Wings so vast they char buildings on either side of the street. Pinion-feathers in crimson and half-molten copper setting the air itself alight, every downbeat at furnace blast, every flare pulling dirt into superheated cylones, melting it into glass. A single breath of that inferno could scorch the lungs black. A single caress of those talons could render fat into sizzling grease. The titanic, twin-headed eagle's beaks are the size of wagons; it's eyes bright and avid and furious and cruel. This is the purest expression of Navona's soul, this is the purest expression of their self. The covenant and the crucible, Lookshy's battle standard given form in the flame. This is what it means to bear the brand of the Immaculate Monsters, and the anima banner of the Dragons themselves. They stand in the center of the crush, the clash. The very thickest part of the fight.
They stand alone. The side-streets and shadowed alleyways choked with dead ten ranks deep. Rivers of blood flowing in the darkness, in the night. Metal glowing where the beams scythed armor apart like paper. Eyes wide and staring, cloth matted and soaked. Behind them the Wisteria Guard, shields closed over the other Chosen, a few precious feet of ablative jadesteel and flesh. And that's all it is really.
A sacrificial wall as their soldiers pull the three back. Daring to lay hands on the divine. Daring because one is soft and fragile and unsuited for the fight, because one does not have her spear nor the element of surprise, and one is past his prime and so very, very afraid.
But then, deep down: aren't they all?
"I came here on a whim, did you know that? There was no strategy. No higher purpose. All I desired was some...sense of myself, some clarity in this fever-haze that's enveloped me. I've felt so lost and adrift since I was anointed. Exhausted and anxious and unsure. But this- fate turns filthy and blackened around me. My very existence is cancer and cumulative error. Yet what can this be but destiny?"
Navona kneels beneath those wings, half-supported by their slab of a sword. Watching as crimson trickles and flows down their gauntlet. Watching with a kind of faint fascination as trickles pass some invisible threshold and turn to airborn tendrils, thin red threads snaking out on alien gravities towards...him. Towards the thing that hangs suspended over the carnage. The cause of all this.
The one called Harrower.
Feet pointed down and arms loosely at his side, hair ruffled by the cold wind; his stolen armor shredded by the transformation. He floats above, stripped to the violet tinted skin. The better to see the half-flayed body, to see all the places the flesh tears open and the way the blood vessels bloat. To see how the serpents slither free from his wounds. A river of gore envelops him from the waist down. A bolt of crimson cloth wound up and around one ankle, crossing over his legs. Fraying, forking, burrowing into his hips, his flanks, his spine. They can hear the roar of it, like it was a river. Or maybe that is only the pounding in their own head.
"Ah. Don't tell me this is it. That you've given up already."
A polished stone on a necklace, it's all he wears. But there is something new now, they note with the numbness that comes from dreams, from the kind of conscious unmooring in a nightmare. Something like a pool of ink welling in the center of his chest, spreading from his sternum. Ivory white pieces, hard and organic oozing out of the deepening gloom. And it's funny, it's so very funny. That there should be so much darkness and so much light.
The seal on his brow burns in bruised shades. Vast blue veins and scarlet arteries burrow into his back only- it's like they're made of star stuff, of nebula and Maiden banners. Like someone took a blade to the night sky and draped him in its skin.
"Stand up, my sibling, stand up..." Harrower whispers as he raises his hand, black serpents slowly, lovingly twining around the outstretched arm. Mouths parting in fanged yawns, hinged jaws spreading wide as the carrion-constellation burns itself into being, a faint hum rising to an inevitable scream. Another butcher-barrage. "I'm not done with you yet."
"Good," they grunt as over the rooftops and the ruins cerulean gleams. As they brace themselves against their beam scorched blade and rise. "Because neither are we."
Navona's sworn sister is coming to their aid. But they've already learned something. Something important. Something that might be the key to their victory here.
Something about you.
What is it?
[ ] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
[ ] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
[ ] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
There is an old matriarch in dusty finery, she sits at the head of an empty table, at the head of a feast set for many and served only to one. She sups upon the richest, fattiest cuts of meat, grease pooling, clotting in shallow bowls as she eats. Slick and shiny where it smears her lips, her grey tinged teeth; spilling down her trembling chin. A fly crawls across her cheek. It is like a kiss. There is a young prince reclining upon a lounge, tendrils of fragrant smoke spilling off his tongue and curling around a pipe of carved bone. A goblet in one hand swirling with wine so rich and so dark it could stain pure white imperial purple. He is half-nude, his skin pale and tinged with fever-flush; his robes smell of incense, of sex, of ash.
It is an infatuation. Do you understand?
All of Lookshy's heroes are dead. The bones of soldier-martyrs are recovered from far-flung battlefields, couriered with love and care to the City's great underground basilicas; draped in jade and framed by gleaming glass for the edification of the pious. Every household manse, every familial shrine, counts an ancestor as honored attendant and intercessory to the gods. In their crimson-draped armor the gunzosha's blood boils and writhes and squirms, each breath tinged with carrion sweetness; the sacred guardians of the democratic state.
It is an obsession, all-consuming and all-devouring.
The helot dead that underlay the foundations are innumerable. They are as unto an ocean, a vast Threshold sea. That the soil does not weep scarlet when you score it, that the banks of the Yanaze are not heaped high with white enamel teeth worn as smooth as river stones, is the greatest and most detestable lie of this Age. Falsity sung so loudly that it becomes truth in and of itself.
It is what one might call worship. It is what one may describe as faith.
What shape can salvation take for such a place? What divinity can deliver the people from themselves? How can one know the righteous when all are unclean, all are touched by the taint; filth and fever shared and shared alike.
Foolishness.
Lookshy has always been a land of dragons.
General Navona Afia Sarantankous shoves their way out of the wreckage of their command tent. Rug-draped floor littered with the smoking remnants of a collapsible table and shattered stools. Cloth walls, carefully sealed with wax against the wet and the chill now torn open through the sheer force of the blast. Billowing, snapping in the breeze; the cold Winter wind slipping through the slits, the great ragged rents. The whole structure half-listing, creaking alarmingly and bound to collapse. And that is trouble, perhaps, to Opiter (pretty, fragile in the way only precious, irreplaceable things can be Opiter) and to Thalia (complicated, her brain a stone labyrinth of sanctimony and self flagellation Thalia) and to Damianos (the drunken, useless hulk, the feckless, fuckabout progenitor blustering...something in the background). To the carcass loudly demanding answers, roaring in a guttural rumble for someone to tell him what just happened. The leaden weight, as always.
But it is nothing to them. The sky could fall on them and it would shatter over their shoulders.
The scrape of scarlet metal on cold earth and colder stone as they drag that slab, that monstrosity of a sword behind them. A molten crack in the ground beneath their feet, flames licking up, drowning as ice melts in their wake before they snap their arm and swing it upright. The flat striking a pauldron with a sound like a bell pealing. Some call to prayer, mingling with the shrill whistles rousing the camp, the distant shouts in the gloom. Someone's grabbed a cadet and from the swirling white, the rainy night a steady tempo sounds calling the wakeful and the resting to attention. Behind them the Wisteria Guard form wordless ranks and fall in silent step. Armor etched with violet glyphs and indigo designs; shedding a flickering amethyst glow like there's a bonfire trying to escape through the patterns of blossoms and boughs.
From every side-street and shadowed alley there is the thunder of boots, the clatter and clash of scale and mail. But they? They are as a statue, cloak billowing in their wake; fur trim glossy and wet as sleet sublimates to rain dissolves into wisps of steam. They are still and severe as all around them sentry fires flicker, crackle and spit and climb higher to claw at the sky. As all around them the camp fills with flesh and metal. The towering infernos captured and reflected in the naked steel of drawn swords, of leveled spearheads. A ragged semi-circle around the fallen figure, a cordon ten men deep with more arriving with every passing second.
"Wwwweeeeeeell," Opiter says as he slips out of the command tent behind them. Drawing the single syllable out into a lazy, dreamy drawl. Acting as if they can't see him still blinking away the wide-eyed shock and the faceful of smoke. He still has his cup, because of course he does. He hasn't spilled a drop, because of course he hasn't. "That was bracing. For a Xauman agent he did pretty well don't you think? Fumbled it a bit at the finish certainly but he made it all the way to your tent. That counts for something."
"Ironic admiration is still inappropriate," Thalia's near-monotone answers, her voice soft but the tension wound through it like so much wire. Navona can all but hear the set of her jaw, hear the creak of bone and the gritting teeth. "Did you see it's arm? Some new necrotic construct. A graft perhaps, or a specialized revenant. The Fox is getting craftier. Or maybe Xauma is simply surrendering desperation as the fleet approaches. Or both, potentially. We need Dia to-"
"Oh don't be like that, he's been dealt with. It's fine."
"We still need Dia to open the thing's chest."
"That really wasn't the point I was making..."
"Hnn, dealt with you say?" and this they can picture clearly too, feel it in the way the discussion, the not-quite-an-argument immediately dies. Damianos coming in the wake of it all, on the heels of everyone once he realized that nobody was actually answering him. The towering-tall giant of a man, once handsome and gone slightly to seed; the kind of person who still thinks of himself as dashing even as he downs half-a-keg of beer for breakfast and wonders where the softness in his gut came from. Once-human (only human) and gone to something crocodilian now; the kind of Dragon who could be confused for a more common river-beast with that long mane and saurian jaw, all lazy strength and reptilian sloth, back dappled in sapphire scutes and mouth thick with fangs. Armor somewhere between ornate and encrusted and- isn't it amusing really? He must imagine that makes him look dashing too. "Ah! Well done then grandchild! What a foul fucking thing to come crawling in out of the night eh? But if this is the best the dogborn bastards can do-"
He spits. Their eyelid twitches. But they say nothing. They don't move. They only watch the scarecrow of a young man laying still in the street; unable to shake the feeling of deep unease-
No. Not unease. Unease is inchoate and ill-formed, it is by definition undefined. This is a hole in the gut, something scraped away by leech mouths and lamprey teeth. A kind of slimy coiling in the stomach, a belly full of hungry grave-worms. And they cannot plead ignorance, even if they were that cowardly type. They've felt this before:
Four years ago, when the messenger arrived, sweating and shivering in the Summer heat, carrying the sealed message from the Southern garrison. Bearing news of what had become of Thorns, that old enemy. Eight years ago, when the rumors flew thick and lurid, an ever-present murmur that these bloody border raids had been lead by an Anathema, a moon-branded monster come from the North, from Dead Xauma. Fifteen years ago, when fire kissed them in that farflung border Excharate, when Hesiesh took their hand and together they and their Sworn Kinship burned away everything that wicked old man, that death-drunk General had done, secrets and sins to ash as one.
A feeling like the world shifting beneath their feet. As if for a moment there was a kind of grating, wet click, like tendons torqued too far before the limb crunches back home in the socket. A re-alignment. A new reality.
The young man's body is a wreckage. And then in the space between heartbeats that wreckage picks itself up from the dirt and stands back up.
The silence in the camp is thick enough to choke, to strangle and to smother. So deep and so horrified that even over the wind it's easy, it's oh so easy to hear his voice soft as it is, as quiet. A flat, almost emotionless mumble; betrayed by the few notes of petulance, of plaintive protest.
"All I wanted to do was kill him," the scarecrow says. One arm (ordinary now, dislocated and harmless now, as if the nightmare blade had been only that, some bad dream) dangles limp, he ignores it. Pushing back his stolen soldier's helm, hooking his fingers beneath the padded brim and pulling it away. The chain veil trailing behind as he drops the thing. Utterly uncaring of the charred black, bloodless wound that splits him open from hip to shoulder, a deep dark-red trench carved into the muscle and bone. Navona can see where naked ribs have cracked, the ivory splintered and fractured. They can see the wet gleam of viscera behind his laid-open navel, the young man cleaved almost in half but his body holding itself together in defiance of its own ruined anatomy. His hair is dark. His limbs are lean. His features pleasant if a little plain.
His face is torn, the shape of one socket exposed, the tanned flesh on one cheek ripped away where it ground on frozen earth and jagged ice. Teeth bared. The motion of a tongue visible behind pale gums.
"Can you really blame me for that?" He continues, rolling a wrist "We're siblings aren't we? You must hate him almost as much as I do. It must hurt to be so close to divinity and so...soiled. Spoiled. Because of him."
"What?" They reply, their voice hoarse and thick. The young man tilts his head, a broken-necked loll. His smile is a small thing, a quirk of ragged lips.
"You're a helot too aren't you? Just like me."
The question is almost innocent. Their fury is instant and magmatic, every scrap of moisture vaporizing, Thalia and Opiter recoiling behind them with muffled shouts, arms raised to shield eyes and noses from the searing wave. The air seethes with grease-smear distortion; heat lightning crackling down their blade, their arm in purple-pink coils. Ash billowing up, the ground beneath beginning to melt into thick, viscous orange. But they do not move. They do not move even as sparks catch between their teeth and the edges of their armor glows a rich cherry red. They do not move even as they spit their reply and the words all but sizzle in the space between the young man and they.
"Name yourself, thing so that I might describe the scraps I leave behind to my superiors."
"Hah. Don't you know me sibling? I'm your brother-"
"You are no brother of mine. Name yourself."
"Oh but I am dear sibling," the stranger whispers, and his eyes, his eyes, there's something in his eyes that seems to catch, to reflect that roiling pyre. Something sullen and shadowed and scarlet. His voice still soft. His tone still flat. "Don't you remember? You murdered me and left my body in the fields."
Broken bones shift in a sleeve of skin, shoulder rolling as sinews draw like rope, the click-crunch as his arm slides back in position audible. The sick crackle of cartilage. The visceral wetness of it.
"You worked me in the mines until dust filled my lungs and my fingers were worn down to nothing. Like nubs of chalk."
Another sound overlapping, a noise like a man cracking his knuckles, the pop-pop-pop of a woman rolling the heel of her hand across her fingers as ribs re-align. Pulling free from the pierced mincemeat of his innards, setting back in place to frame the darkly pulsing things. And between them, beneath them something darker skill. Something writhing and squirming: wrist-thick bodies slithering against each other. Something bloody red and clotted black emerging from impossible depths. His hair is plastered to his scalp by sleet. He does not shiver.
"You let your soldiers use me. You let the Encrypted hang me. You let the chanceries starve me. Your own kin...how could you?"
Eyes -and it is a kind of nauseous realization isn't it? That moment when comprehension hits- shining beneath the spars of bone: eyes like chips of topaz, eyes like sapphires and rubies and emeralds and amethyst. Slitted eyes in every color of the Maiden Stars in a curling band across his chest, like a obscene military sash. There is a sound behind them, a half-choked inhale. A horrified retch catching in Opiter's throat. Something, some words crawling up their own.
"Oh but don't worry dearest sibling," he whispers, his voice the softest hiss now, taken up again and again by a sibilant chorus. As he lifts his hand slowly, ever so slowly to his brow. Eyes gleaming behind a cage of fingers. "Because I died but then I got up. I came back and I did not come alone. You are right, General: I should dispense with pretense. You wanted my name, General? Then know that this is what I am called."
Ah. They understand now as the serpents unlace, spilling out from the wound.
It is a scream.
The light goes red.
I am the Serpent, your Salvation.
I am the Destroyer,
Who is called Apollyon
And also Abaddon
And the Angel of the Abyss.
I am Harrower of the Celestial Skein.
Your brother, lost in the night.
Your brother, found again.
I am the Destroyer,
Who is called Apollyon
And also Abaddon
And the Angel of the Abyss.
I am Harrower of the Celestial Skein.
Your brother, lost in the night.
Your brother, found again.
Death has a texture. Death has a taste. Navona knows it well, how could they not? Any true Lookshyan general leads from the front lines, anchoring the center of the vast formations against the oncoming enemy, in the very thick of the fight. Exalted might and burning souls a light for the ten thousand behind. And they are nothing if not the very image of the Lookshyan general.
It's just that the fight isn't supposed to be the center of their camp.
Wings so vast they char buildings on either side of the street. Pinion-feathers in crimson and half-molten copper setting the air itself alight, every downbeat at furnace blast, every flare pulling dirt into superheated cylones, melting it into glass. A single breath of that inferno could scorch the lungs black. A single caress of those talons could render fat into sizzling grease. The titanic, twin-headed eagle's beaks are the size of wagons; it's eyes bright and avid and furious and cruel. This is the purest expression of Navona's soul, this is the purest expression of their self. The covenant and the crucible, Lookshy's battle standard given form in the flame. This is what it means to bear the brand of the Immaculate Monsters, and the anima banner of the Dragons themselves. They stand in the center of the crush, the clash. The very thickest part of the fight.
They stand alone. The side-streets and shadowed alleyways choked with dead ten ranks deep. Rivers of blood flowing in the darkness, in the night. Metal glowing where the beams scythed armor apart like paper. Eyes wide and staring, cloth matted and soaked. Behind them the Wisteria Guard, shields closed over the other Chosen, a few precious feet of ablative jadesteel and flesh. And that's all it is really.
A sacrificial wall as their soldiers pull the three back. Daring to lay hands on the divine. Daring because one is soft and fragile and unsuited for the fight, because one does not have her spear nor the element of surprise, and one is past his prime and so very, very afraid.
But then, deep down: aren't they all?
"I came here on a whim, did you know that? There was no strategy. No higher purpose. All I desired was some...sense of myself, some clarity in this fever-haze that's enveloped me. I've felt so lost and adrift since I was anointed. Exhausted and anxious and unsure. But this- fate turns filthy and blackened around me. My very existence is cancer and cumulative error. Yet what can this be but destiny?"
Navona kneels beneath those wings, half-supported by their slab of a sword. Watching as crimson trickles and flows down their gauntlet. Watching with a kind of faint fascination as trickles pass some invisible threshold and turn to airborn tendrils, thin red threads snaking out on alien gravities towards...him. Towards the thing that hangs suspended over the carnage. The cause of all this.
The one called Harrower.
Feet pointed down and arms loosely at his side, hair ruffled by the cold wind; his stolen armor shredded by the transformation. He floats above, stripped to the violet tinted skin. The better to see the half-flayed body, to see all the places the flesh tears open and the way the blood vessels bloat. To see how the serpents slither free from his wounds. A river of gore envelops him from the waist down. A bolt of crimson cloth wound up and around one ankle, crossing over his legs. Fraying, forking, burrowing into his hips, his flanks, his spine. They can hear the roar of it, like it was a river. Or maybe that is only the pounding in their own head.
"Ah. Don't tell me this is it. That you've given up already."
A polished stone on a necklace, it's all he wears. But there is something new now, they note with the numbness that comes from dreams, from the kind of conscious unmooring in a nightmare. Something like a pool of ink welling in the center of his chest, spreading from his sternum. Ivory white pieces, hard and organic oozing out of the deepening gloom. And it's funny, it's so very funny. That there should be so much darkness and so much light.
The seal on his brow burns in bruised shades. Vast blue veins and scarlet arteries burrow into his back only- it's like they're made of star stuff, of nebula and Maiden banners. Like someone took a blade to the night sky and draped him in its skin.
"Stand up, my sibling, stand up..." Harrower whispers as he raises his hand, black serpents slowly, lovingly twining around the outstretched arm. Mouths parting in fanged yawns, hinged jaws spreading wide as the carrion-constellation burns itself into being, a faint hum rising to an inevitable scream. Another butcher-barrage. "I'm not done with you yet."
"Good," they grunt as over the rooftops and the ruins cerulean gleams. As they brace themselves against their beam scorched blade and rise. "Because neither are we."
Navona's sworn sister is coming to their aid. But they've already learned something. Something important. Something that might be the key to their victory here.
Something about you.
What is it?
[ ] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
[ ] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
[ ] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
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- Pronouns
- They/It
[x] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
Definitely able to see it being easy to get a little caught up in the moment!
Glad to see you back again! I was just thinking about this the other day haha.
Definitely able to see it being easy to get a little caught up in the moment!
Glad to see you back again! I was just thinking about this the other day haha.
[x] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
- Location
- Singapore
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
More stamina is always good. The other two options are lacking and will turn us into a moron who has not read the Evil Overlord List.
More stamina is always good. The other two options are lacking and will turn us into a moron who has not read the Evil Overlord List.
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
I'm sorry, what vote won again?
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
- Location
- Virginia
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
Those were some amazing descriptions.
Those were some amazing descriptions.
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was so hyped I started yelling out loud. I loved it so much.
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
[X] It's more than just spite. It's more than just vengeance. You came here to hurt them purely for the sake of hurting them. The pain is the point. So is the power, the rush. You're enjoying yourself.
What are we but a shadow of a slave, burned to ash and beyond that, sacrificed for the numbers, for the cause we never had a choice in, for the teeth of our hungry masters who gnawed us raw and sucked the marrow and left nothing, not even scraps for the lowliest beast starving in the dust ridden fields of which we toiled?
This is not for a higher purpose, this is not for something as fragile as freedom, nor can it be called just or righteous or our duty. All those would be lies in the highest.
This is a hunger that goes beyond words, beyond flesh, beyond years. This is a hunger nurtured by generations of starvation, finally, finally, given a mouth to scream and teeth to chew and a tongue to taste and a gullet to fill and fill and fill until it bursts and can be filled again and again until there is nothing but the sensation of eating, of chewing, of choking down blood and flesh and dust and bones and bile and metal again and again and again.
Forever.
We are the harvest come to glorious ripeness, choke on our fruits ye mighty and rot.
What are we but a shadow of a slave, burned to ash and beyond that, sacrificed for the numbers, for the cause we never had a choice in, for the teeth of our hungry masters who gnawed us raw and sucked the marrow and left nothing, not even scraps for the lowliest beast starving in the dust ridden fields of which we toiled?
This is not for a higher purpose, this is not for something as fragile as freedom, nor can it be called just or righteous or our duty. All those would be lies in the highest.
This is a hunger that goes beyond words, beyond flesh, beyond years. This is a hunger nurtured by generations of starvation, finally, finally, given a mouth to scream and teeth to chew and a tongue to taste and a gullet to fill and fill and fill until it bursts and can be filled again and again until there is nothing but the sensation of eating, of chewing, of choking down blood and flesh and dust and bones and bile and metal again and again and again.
Forever.
We are the harvest come to glorious ripeness, choke on our fruits ye mighty and rot.
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
Argidoll
And hast thou slain the Jabberwocky?
- Location
- Dreamland
[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
All around me are familiar faces...
All around me are familiar faces...
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Quick guest spot by the Ancestor here. God damn, talk about evocative. You always have such a turn of phrase it astounds me, every time I have to read something of yours. It's something I've tried to take inspiration from but never quite been able to replicate.
One-Winged Angel menacingly fades into the audio mix.
Holy shit. Some real 'blue-fanged demon shittalks the bishop in Netflix Castlevania' energy here. It's horrific and visceral and spooky and awful and I love it. Not to mention some heavy, heavy dipping into the ol' past life here. It's like some terrifying eldritch thing is about to hatch out of Harrower's body like a creepy undead egg and it's the best.
Also he did the chuunibyou pose, I see you bitch, you can't hide that from me.
He just owned like every single conventional soldier within a half-mile radius with lasers and he barely seems to have noticed, he's just keeping on going with that speech and honestly you go for it king.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas queen. He's going full JRPG Villain Formchange and I am all about that. Especially since he's at nowhere near max capacity and his armour charm still seems to be growing in. But on the upside, laser snakes! We'll make you a glorious winged undead Urizen yet my lad, and you'll get to kill so many Lookshy soldiers, yes you will, who's a good Abyssal.
I highly doubt that Harrower's going to score a lot of Exalted kills here even if he's getting fuelled by killing all the normal troops since these are pretty strong and experienced DBs ready to work together, but I at least hope he gives Damianos something to think about because from the sounds of it even Navona thinks he's kind of a douchebag.
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
SHOW ME THAT PAST LIFE
There's a nonzero chance of an Apollyon Stand.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
[X] The genius at work is definite, diabolical, but it's not a thing of stricture. Of clean structure. There are jagged edges to your mind, dark arcades and deep idiosyncrasies. It is something almost like madness.
We are the monster that they deserve.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
AND SO IT SPOKE!
IT SCREAMED IN THE AGONY OF ITS UNWANTED BIRTH!
HARROWER!
AND SO IT SPOKE!
IT SCREAMED IN THE AGONY OF ITS UNWANTED BIRTH!
HARROWER!
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Fuck me, that's an incredibly strong opening.
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.
[X] Your body is fueled by death, an engine of destruction. But as profane as it is your power is far from limitless and your control far from absolute. And within you there is...something else. Some darker shadow.