What lay beneath

The City of the Great North
Killraven
GM of Battlemages
Posts: 328
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2014 2:09 pm
Guild: Battlemages

What lay beneath

Post by Killraven »

For a century he had existed, crawling through the lowest of the low under circumstances that would make the hardest stomach turn. Subsisting on what few cold blobs of slime, rat corpses, and worse could be discovered by his remaining questing hand. Day by day, year by year he had diminished, until he had become little more than the vermin he stalked: blind, stinking, emaciated. His senses were either taken from him in the case of his sight, or overwhelmed to the point of failure by pain, stench, and the constant dripping and rushing of what sounded like water but most assuredly...wasn't.

The beast that had felled him had not returned as it had threatened to, but that threat had served it's purpose: even though Killraven could have returned to the surface, he refused to. The combination of fear and embarrassment and shame was too much for him to overcome. He had lain there for what felt like weeks hoping to just....die. Only he hadn't. And that upset him.

And eventually, since death would not take him, his instincts did. The Hunter within him rose, only it was as diminished as the rest of him. Crippled, blinded, and with no ability to use magic, he was more a scavenger than a hunter, truth be told, and in the quieter moments between excursions of crawling through filth, his anger rose up to match his shame.

But it was as impotent and useless as the rest of him.

He wasn't able to see it, but the tunnels around him deteriorated as he did. And with barely functioning senses, he was unable to see the cracking of the stones around him. The flow of substance he half-floated in gave no clue that what was beneath was unsteady. There was a barely audible cracking sound, and suddenly he was falling, the volume of flow increasing as he was drug by the current to the south.

Then suddenly he was falling, being carried down towards the sea, trapped within the sewer runoff from the city of Frostfall. And high above, though he could not see it, was the sewer opening. There was no way to climb back into it. It was as if the city had pushed him out, birthing him back into the world like the excrement he believed himself to be. He tumbled end over end until he slammed into the frozen bay, the impact of his descent causing crack-

ATHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM He winced and flinched uncontrollably.

-s to form in the ice, and soon he was floating away on a tiny icy island, adrift on the Northern Sea.
Killraven
GM of Battlemages
Posts: 328
Joined: Sat Apr 26, 2014 2:09 pm
Guild: Battlemages

Re: What lay beneath

Post by Killraven »

Just because it was cold did not mean that the sun didn't shine brightly upon him. There were a few things to address:

Number one, it was cold. The wind and the wet made it colder.

Number two, that cold did nothing to protect him from the blazing sun that had not seen him in an age. Already he felt the burning of his flesh if he moved.

Number three, he moved. He couldn't help it. He shivered slightly from the cold, but moreso from the terror of being so exposed. He couldn't see the open sky or the sun, but he knew they were there. That they could see him. And if they could see him....

Then so could the beast that had laid him low.

So he lay there, quaking in fear and cold, burning in the unforgiving, all-seeing sun on his tiny island of ice. The fear tore at him worse than anything the cold or sun could do. He had periods of respite from the sun, he supposed that it was the passage of the days and nights as he drifted along and alone. He tried to count them, but failed.

One respite came, and it seemed to come sooner than expected. Then the wind picked up, and it began to rain. For a brief moment, as it began to wash the filth from him, he felt the slightest bit of relief, opening his mouth and drinking the freshest water he felt he'd ever tasted.

KRAKATHOOOOOOOOOOM

His heart stopped. "-e's found me, 's gonna get me, 's found me, 's gonna get me....." It repeated in his head like a terror mantra, echoing off the insides of his skull, paralyzing him with fear. He held his hand and stump to the sides of his head, and curled up in the fetal position, weeping in fear, repeating his mantra for what felt like an eternity. He began to wish his foe would return, and end his misery.

But it was only a storm. And it took him three days of thunder and lightning and rocking atop the waves on his tiny island to realize that.

But it only took one more to realize his tiny island was shrinking, leaving more of him in the water than out of it. He had been a strong swimmer once, but missing half an arm and half a leg...his time was running out.

He felt relieved. Maybe when it melted completely, he would just slide below. He'd heard that it was one of the more peaceful ways to slip the mortal coil. He began to look forward to it. Smaller and smaller it got, until it was little more than a log beneath him, melting from what little heat his body put off. He got colder, and colder. Stiffer, and stiffer. Finally, he slid below, and after he coughed the last of the air from his lung, he felt the peace he'd read about.




Killraven has been slain!




Mists swirled around him, and even without eyes he could see a glowing light in front of him. As he smiled and started to make his way towards it, he saw the form of DEORI, who raised his hand and started to speak:

'You can not enter my kingdom Killraven," he said. "I have work for you on the mortal plane, return now and continue your good work."

With that the deity smiled and Killraven felt himself rushing back to Terris, screaming all the way down.

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