12-17-2016, 07:07 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-17-2016, 11:50 PM by Kelly MacAryn.
Edit Reason: Continuity error in the final fight, sentence structure and stylistic flubs.
)
The well-dressed stranger spoke first, his tone coolly aristocratic.
"Well met on the road, traveler. You look as though you've had some misfortune. Have you lost your horse? Where are your companions? Surely, you haven't been walking the Moors alone on the night of a blood-moon."
Kelly shook his head, raising his lantern higher so as to better light the stranger's face. It cast them both in tones of firelight and flickering shadow, emphasizing the wounds that marred the traveler's athletic form, and giving the blackened, bloody grime that covered him a sickly sheen.
The stranger seemed to grow slightly, the lengthening shadows complementing his slender build. His eyes blazed as they caught the light.
"I'm a perimeter scout for a caravan," Kelly lied. "You'll forgive me if I don't tell you where we're camped. However, before I go answering any questions there's something I'd like ask you."
"Is there? By all means."
"Are we going to have a problem, you and I?"
The stranger paused, amusement dancing in his eyes, and a slow smile crept across his face.
"On the contrary, sir, on the contrary. I was simply wondering if you required assistance, but I can see now that you have the situation firmly in hand."
Kelly nodded, not really believing it. "Good. In that case, if you'll excuse me, I should be on my way."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Why don't you stay awhile? Good conversation is so hard to find on the Moors, and as you have clearly discovered, the night is dangerous for a man alone."
The traveler frowned. The stranger's voice had a cloying, eminently reasonable quality to it that made you want to agree with him. It helped, of course, that nothing he'd just said was actually wrong, but Kelly was surprised by how persuasive the man was. He had to remind himself that he was on a schedule.
I've already been here for twenty minutes. The whole purpose of crossing the Moors at night was to arrive in Darkshire as soon as possible - I can't afford to lose any more time.
"Thank you all the same," he said, giving a slight bow and beginning to walk away, "but I need to finish my rounds. I'm already late."
"STOP."
Kelly stumbled to a halt. The imperious command rang in his ears, silencing the wind, and the rustlings in the dark. The traveler could feel it battering against the castle-walls of his ego, trying to dictate his priorities.
This isn't just charisma. It's some kind of hypnotic suggestion!
Mind control...
An icy calm stole over the traveler, tingling and brittle, capping a well of volcanic anger. This wasn't some half-mad spirit trying to dumpster-dive in his head - the well-dressed stranger was attempting something far more sinister and infinitely more offensive.
Kelly performed a psychological action akin to mental judo, and the powerful, unnatural suggestion imploded.
Slowly, he turned around to look at the other man, saw him smiling, opening his mouth to issue another command in the erroneous belief that his first one had taken hold.
"I don't know if you're a vampire, or a ghost or what. And I don't care - I've been fighting all night," Kelly said, cutting him off. The traveler spoke low and quick, unable to completely contain his swelling outrage. "I'm wearing the blood of half the stupid-looking creatures in this antediluvian fucking 'verse, not to mention a fair amount of my own. My flesh is weak, and my energy levels are dangerously low. But so help me absent gods and omnipotent, smiling assholes, if you say one more word to me, if you so much as breathe in my direction again, I will rain hell down upon you from such mind-boggling heights of righteous anger that you will expire believing Omni himself was shitting molten iron."
The stranger's green eyes lost their luster, and his jaw hung open in shock, though whether from the failure of his hypnotic powers or from Kelly's graphic promise it was hard to tell.
"Do we understand each other?" Kelly asked.
The stranger nodded, still staring at him as though he were some mythical beast.
"Good." Kelly said, failing to keep a jagged tremor out of his voice, and he left the crossroads without looking back.
As he resumed his hike towards Darkshire, the traveler couldn't help but notice differences. The road here was more well-traveled, free of weeds and potholes, and the nearby vegetation was less out of control, the fields still receiving some attention from their human caretakers. Overall, the going was easier - but that wasn't what bothered him.
The issue was that despite his return to the open road, nothing was attacking him. Kelly made it almost half the remaining distance without being jumped by so much as a confused badger, let alone the horrors that had plagued his journey up until now. The single time his haunt warned him of danger, it came to nothing. A werewolf, two hundred pounds of fur and teeth and snarling muscle, caught itself mid-leap, yelping as though it had been struck, and scrambled back into the murk.
Something was scaring away the monsters, and Kelly was certain it wasn't him.
I'm being followed, and whatever it is, it must be nasty.
He stopped, and looked behind him, then up at the night sky, and to either side for good measure.
Nothing. The red moon was turning orange, starting to dip below the horizon, and the sky was beginning to show the first signs of lightening towards a pre-dawn gloom. Clouds loomed, gathering over the hills and valleys, and the air smelled like rain.
Kelly made it to within two-hundred meters of the Darkshire gates, the silhouettes of the fortified town's stone walls and wooden palisades looming large as his goal grew tantalizing close, before the attack finally came.
The traveler's haunt shouted a grim prophecy, an image of man-sized wings with claws and teeth, behind and above and closing fast. He pivoted, swinging his lantern, but the plunging chiropteran blur swiftly batted it aside, sending it crashing to the road, spreading a slick of burning oil. The winged shape bore Kelly to the ground, and he barely managed to grip his staff in both hands and wedge it in the monsters jaws as they plunged towards his throat.
It was amazingly strong. Too fatigued to trigger his vector-sketch power-up, he could only hold it back by bracing his elbows against the road.
Green eyes bored into Kelly's, powerful legs straddled him, and a canine snout snorted angrily. Massive, wickedly curved fangs struck sparks off his iron-shod weapon, and a pair of very-nearly human hands grabbed for his face and neck, razor-sharp claw filling his vision.
He didn't need his haunt to know that in a moment they'd put out his eyes, tear out his throat, but it gave him the extra fraction of a second he needed to make a plan.
Kelly wrenched his head forward and to the side, the claws opening great rents in his face, clipping off the top of one of his ears. He bit off one of his attacker's pinky-fingers, lacerating his cheek and breaking two teeth in the process. The finger tasted like burned meat and old paper.
The beast reared back and howled, giving Kelly a good look at it for the first time.
His attacker was some kind of human-bat hybrid, with the head of a wolf[/size], and the eyes of the stranger at the crossroads. Two massive, leathery wings drooped from its arms like a folded cape. It's flesh was gray, rubbery, and bald from head to toe.
It's identity wasn't in question. It was also still wearing the stranger's pants and boots.
Kelly took advantage of its momentary distraction to charge a psychokinetic force-bolt, gritting his teeth as little black dots swam in his vision. He took one hand off his staff and blasted the monster in the chest. The impact of the little orb of fish-eye distortion lifted its target off of Kelly, knocking it on its back.
It's lighter than it looks. That blast was less than half-strength.
Hollow bones?
The traveler spat out the finger, pulled his legs under him and sprang to his feet. His lower body was awkward and half-numb from the demands that had already been placed on it over the course of this awful night. Purple ichor congealed on his face where he'd been mauled, and his psychic senses screamed.
The ghastly super-predator was already back on the attack. It slashed with its claws, shockingly fast, high, then low, dodging left and right, circling as it tried to get around his guard. It was going for the neck and the stomach, trying to disembowel him and open his jugular. Kelly kept it at bay with his staff, countering the beast's superior speed with the split-second early warnings provided by his haunt. He turned blows aside with the ends of his weapon rather than blocking them directly, sidestepping and preparing his next defense - the few times when he was forced to clash force-on-force, the shock nearly popped his shoulders out of joint.
The stalemate continued for several minutes, but the traveler was beginning to flag.
[size=small]I'm too tired for this. No vector-sketch, can't accelerate, one more force-bolt and I'll probably have an aneurysm - and I'm not quick enough to counter-attack effectively. If I don't do something fast, I'm going to lose.
Kelly missed a parry. The beast slashed open his left his side as it passed, scoring a deep wound, spraying violet gore across the moors. It changed its tactics, circling wide, looking for its opportunity to pounce, anticipating wounded prey and an easy kill.
The traveler saw his chance. He nursed his wounded side, pretending he couldn't ignore the injury.
The beast rushed in, wings spread, claws raised, jaws open wide - and screamed in pain.
Kelly forced his battered body to drop swiftly to one knee, forced his arms to move as though they were fresh and well-rested, and whipped the staff up into the monster's armpit, where the wing-joint met the shoulder, with every ounce of his remaining strength.
The sound of ripping tendons and the crackle of hollow bones breaking was like snapping a thousand sticks of celery, all at the same time.
The half-man chiropteran flapped and flailed frantically as it sailed over Kelly and rolled across the road, lit by the last flames of the broken lantern and a rapidly brightening sky. It was a victim of its own momentum as much as anything else. Leaning on his staff, Kelly hobbled grimly towards it.
The creature began to rise, but was stymied by the mind-searing pain in its ruined shoulder, brought on by even the slightest motion, the slightest shift in position of its arm. Kelly kicked it in the face. It roared, and lurched toward him, but the movement caused such monumental, uncompromising agony that it fell back, whimpering.
"I told you," said Kelly, pausing to indulge a rattling cough. "Molten Iron."
He jammed his staff in the crippled beast's fanged maw, pinning its head to the ground by the back of the throat, and stomped on its neck with the steel-re-enforced heel of his boot until there was little under his foot but black mud and shards of bone.
The body turned to ash as the head rolled free, and began to scatter in the winds of the dawn as the sun peaked above the horizon, little more than a pale spot in the clouds, turning the overcast sky a brighter shade of gray.
Kelly wanted to sleep. He hadn't slept since he'd arrived in the Omniverse, and he was certain he didn't usually need to, but he'd very nearly wiped himself out.
On the walls of Darkshire, men were pointing and shouting. The guards had seen the fight.
The traveler turned, and picked his way towards the town as the gates began to open.
"Well met on the road, traveler. You look as though you've had some misfortune. Have you lost your horse? Where are your companions? Surely, you haven't been walking the Moors alone on the night of a blood-moon."
Kelly shook his head, raising his lantern higher so as to better light the stranger's face. It cast them both in tones of firelight and flickering shadow, emphasizing the wounds that marred the traveler's athletic form, and giving the blackened, bloody grime that covered him a sickly sheen.
The stranger seemed to grow slightly, the lengthening shadows complementing his slender build. His eyes blazed as they caught the light.
"I'm a perimeter scout for a caravan," Kelly lied. "You'll forgive me if I don't tell you where we're camped. However, before I go answering any questions there's something I'd like ask you."
"Is there? By all means."
"Are we going to have a problem, you and I?"
The stranger paused, amusement dancing in his eyes, and a slow smile crept across his face.
"On the contrary, sir, on the contrary. I was simply wondering if you required assistance, but I can see now that you have the situation firmly in hand."
Kelly nodded, not really believing it. "Good. In that case, if you'll excuse me, I should be on my way."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Why don't you stay awhile? Good conversation is so hard to find on the Moors, and as you have clearly discovered, the night is dangerous for a man alone."
The traveler frowned. The stranger's voice had a cloying, eminently reasonable quality to it that made you want to agree with him. It helped, of course, that nothing he'd just said was actually wrong, but Kelly was surprised by how persuasive the man was. He had to remind himself that he was on a schedule.
I've already been here for twenty minutes. The whole purpose of crossing the Moors at night was to arrive in Darkshire as soon as possible - I can't afford to lose any more time.
"Thank you all the same," he said, giving a slight bow and beginning to walk away, "but I need to finish my rounds. I'm already late."
"STOP."
Kelly stumbled to a halt. The imperious command rang in his ears, silencing the wind, and the rustlings in the dark. The traveler could feel it battering against the castle-walls of his ego, trying to dictate his priorities.
This isn't just charisma. It's some kind of hypnotic suggestion!
Mind control...
An icy calm stole over the traveler, tingling and brittle, capping a well of volcanic anger. This wasn't some half-mad spirit trying to dumpster-dive in his head - the well-dressed stranger was attempting something far more sinister and infinitely more offensive.
Kelly performed a psychological action akin to mental judo, and the powerful, unnatural suggestion imploded.
Slowly, he turned around to look at the other man, saw him smiling, opening his mouth to issue another command in the erroneous belief that his first one had taken hold.
"I don't know if you're a vampire, or a ghost or what. And I don't care - I've been fighting all night," Kelly said, cutting him off. The traveler spoke low and quick, unable to completely contain his swelling outrage. "I'm wearing the blood of half the stupid-looking creatures in this antediluvian fucking 'verse, not to mention a fair amount of my own. My flesh is weak, and my energy levels are dangerously low. But so help me absent gods and omnipotent, smiling assholes, if you say one more word to me, if you so much as breathe in my direction again, I will rain hell down upon you from such mind-boggling heights of righteous anger that you will expire believing Omni himself was shitting molten iron."
The stranger's green eyes lost their luster, and his jaw hung open in shock, though whether from the failure of his hypnotic powers or from Kelly's graphic promise it was hard to tell.
"Do we understand each other?" Kelly asked.
The stranger nodded, still staring at him as though he were some mythical beast.
"Good." Kelly said, failing to keep a jagged tremor out of his voice, and he left the crossroads without looking back.
As he resumed his hike towards Darkshire, the traveler couldn't help but notice differences. The road here was more well-traveled, free of weeds and potholes, and the nearby vegetation was less out of control, the fields still receiving some attention from their human caretakers. Overall, the going was easier - but that wasn't what bothered him.
The issue was that despite his return to the open road, nothing was attacking him. Kelly made it almost half the remaining distance without being jumped by so much as a confused badger, let alone the horrors that had plagued his journey up until now. The single time his haunt warned him of danger, it came to nothing. A werewolf, two hundred pounds of fur and teeth and snarling muscle, caught itself mid-leap, yelping as though it had been struck, and scrambled back into the murk.
Something was scaring away the monsters, and Kelly was certain it wasn't him.
I'm being followed, and whatever it is, it must be nasty.
He stopped, and looked behind him, then up at the night sky, and to either side for good measure.
Nothing. The red moon was turning orange, starting to dip below the horizon, and the sky was beginning to show the first signs of lightening towards a pre-dawn gloom. Clouds loomed, gathering over the hills and valleys, and the air smelled like rain.
Kelly made it to within two-hundred meters of the Darkshire gates, the silhouettes of the fortified town's stone walls and wooden palisades looming large as his goal grew tantalizing close, before the attack finally came.
The traveler's haunt shouted a grim prophecy, an image of man-sized wings with claws and teeth, behind and above and closing fast. He pivoted, swinging his lantern, but the plunging chiropteran blur swiftly batted it aside, sending it crashing to the road, spreading a slick of burning oil. The winged shape bore Kelly to the ground, and he barely managed to grip his staff in both hands and wedge it in the monsters jaws as they plunged towards his throat.
It was amazingly strong. Too fatigued to trigger his vector-sketch power-up, he could only hold it back by bracing his elbows against the road.
Green eyes bored into Kelly's, powerful legs straddled him, and a canine snout snorted angrily. Massive, wickedly curved fangs struck sparks off his iron-shod weapon, and a pair of very-nearly human hands grabbed for his face and neck, razor-sharp claw filling his vision.
He didn't need his haunt to know that in a moment they'd put out his eyes, tear out his throat, but it gave him the extra fraction of a second he needed to make a plan.
Kelly wrenched his head forward and to the side, the claws opening great rents in his face, clipping off the top of one of his ears. He bit off one of his attacker's pinky-fingers, lacerating his cheek and breaking two teeth in the process. The finger tasted like burned meat and old paper.
The beast reared back and howled, giving Kelly a good look at it for the first time.
His attacker was some kind of human-bat hybrid, with the head of a wolf[/size], and the eyes of the stranger at the crossroads. Two massive, leathery wings drooped from its arms like a folded cape. It's flesh was gray, rubbery, and bald from head to toe.
It's identity wasn't in question. It was also still wearing the stranger's pants and boots.
Kelly took advantage of its momentary distraction to charge a psychokinetic force-bolt, gritting his teeth as little black dots swam in his vision. He took one hand off his staff and blasted the monster in the chest. The impact of the little orb of fish-eye distortion lifted its target off of Kelly, knocking it on its back.
It's lighter than it looks. That blast was less than half-strength.
Hollow bones?
The traveler spat out the finger, pulled his legs under him and sprang to his feet. His lower body was awkward and half-numb from the demands that had already been placed on it over the course of this awful night. Purple ichor congealed on his face where he'd been mauled, and his psychic senses screamed.
The ghastly super-predator was already back on the attack. It slashed with its claws, shockingly fast, high, then low, dodging left and right, circling as it tried to get around his guard. It was going for the neck and the stomach, trying to disembowel him and open his jugular. Kelly kept it at bay with his staff, countering the beast's superior speed with the split-second early warnings provided by his haunt. He turned blows aside with the ends of his weapon rather than blocking them directly, sidestepping and preparing his next defense - the few times when he was forced to clash force-on-force, the shock nearly popped his shoulders out of joint.
The stalemate continued for several minutes, but the traveler was beginning to flag.
[size=small]I'm too tired for this. No vector-sketch, can't accelerate, one more force-bolt and I'll probably have an aneurysm - and I'm not quick enough to counter-attack effectively. If I don't do something fast, I'm going to lose.
Kelly missed a parry. The beast slashed open his left his side as it passed, scoring a deep wound, spraying violet gore across the moors. It changed its tactics, circling wide, looking for its opportunity to pounce, anticipating wounded prey and an easy kill.
The traveler saw his chance. He nursed his wounded side, pretending he couldn't ignore the injury.
The beast rushed in, wings spread, claws raised, jaws open wide - and screamed in pain.
Kelly forced his battered body to drop swiftly to one knee, forced his arms to move as though they were fresh and well-rested, and whipped the staff up into the monster's armpit, where the wing-joint met the shoulder, with every ounce of his remaining strength.
The sound of ripping tendons and the crackle of hollow bones breaking was like snapping a thousand sticks of celery, all at the same time.
The half-man chiropteran flapped and flailed frantically as it sailed over Kelly and rolled across the road, lit by the last flames of the broken lantern and a rapidly brightening sky. It was a victim of its own momentum as much as anything else. Leaning on his staff, Kelly hobbled grimly towards it.
The creature began to rise, but was stymied by the mind-searing pain in its ruined shoulder, brought on by even the slightest motion, the slightest shift in position of its arm. Kelly kicked it in the face. It roared, and lurched toward him, but the movement caused such monumental, uncompromising agony that it fell back, whimpering.
"I told you," said Kelly, pausing to indulge a rattling cough. "Molten Iron."
He jammed his staff in the crippled beast's fanged maw, pinning its head to the ground by the back of the throat, and stomped on its neck with the steel-re-enforced heel of his boot until there was little under his foot but black mud and shards of bone.
The body turned to ash as the head rolled free, and began to scatter in the winds of the dawn as the sun peaked above the horizon, little more than a pale spot in the clouds, turning the overcast sky a brighter shade of gray.
Kelly wanted to sleep. He hadn't slept since he'd arrived in the Omniverse, and he was certain he didn't usually need to, but he'd very nearly wiped himself out.
On the walls of Darkshire, men were pointing and shouting. The guards had seen the fight.
The traveler turned, and picked his way towards the town as the gates began to open.
Quote:Fact: The shoulder-joint is one of the most complicated joints in the body, containing a dozen tendons and several huge nerves. Dislocating or breaking it is one of the most painful things you can do to a person, resulting in near-complete inability to rise from a prone position.
Don't be like Kelly. Don't attack people's shoulders.
This has been a PSA from the society for the prevention of cruelty to shoulders.
Also, Kelly has arrived in Darkshire!