Private Tales I Follow the Danger Not the Other Way Around

[Garrod Arlette]

The slosh of the most foul potion splashed into his mouth, washed down his throat all oil and vinegar and ammonia, and it was as if a thin crust of sediment cracked across the surface of the hunter's limbs. His muscles flexed, bore his weight, and hefted him up off the ground, sword in hand.

But before he could thank the girl, she was skewered by a stone spear, carried off up into the air, and two more darted toward Cestus and pinned him against the wall. With vile spirits run down his chin, Garrod grit his teeth as the very floor began to shift and separate and come apart.

Do you see, oh bearer mine? His own demon whispered into the recess of his mind. Do you see what happens when you deprive me for so long?! Belephus' voice shook and scratched and screeched narrow in shrill whine within his psyche.

So much so that he could barely hear Otucaste's taunts. Small blessing that it was.

Through bleary eye, Garrod saw his allies pinned and skewered as they were. Took up his great sword, and hop stepped across the shifting stones as the mass of the serpent scraped across the floor.

The ambience.

The thought of the creature's vanity put a smile on his face. Even as he felt fatigue burn through the chords of his muscles, felt his legs strain with each stride and step and his lungs ache with each pull. The sound of crackling fire and the rumble of brimstone cracked and ground behind him. A stone spear cracked across his shoulder, sprayed stone splinters across his face, cutting his cheek and jaw and digging into the flesh of his neck where his armor did not cover.

Use me now. His own demon called. Use me now or die here, Garrod.

A growl came from Garrod's cracked lips, and he dug the gauntlet's nails into his own flesh. The narrowed points dug into the flesh of his neck. Blood welled about the tips, and the demon's jewel glowed white, flashed green and light swirled about its surface as the relic drew in sanguine power.

Red lines streaked sharply across the white carapace of the gauntlet, and Garrod felt stores of energy renewed as an ethereal part of him dried up. His physical being swelled with strength. Strength he would need to power through Otucaste's gaze. Strength he would need to hop toward the next break in the cave floor as he lead the beast away from his pinned allies, and toward the mouth of the cave, his own lungs swollen with air as he felt the fire and brimstone rushing behind him.

Why was he holding his breath?

Garrod leapt and turned, in that swirl of rock, felt stone crack against his plate, dent the thick armor that protected his vitals as blood ran down the side of his face, and he stared at the red eyes of the serpent, that gave him such heated and singular chase. Felt the searing hot wash of its fiery breath rushing towards him. And with a great exhalation, he jet back and away from the great beast. Propelled by a torrential gust born from his own mouth, the force of which ignited the fire and smoke of Otucaste in a violent explosion that shot him back in a streak.

Armor panged against stone, and Garrrod bounced hard off the cave walls and onto the floor. A crumpled heap. His sword, still somehow gripped in his unholy hand.

You'll die. He heard as the world grew dark around him. You have no choice now, oh bearer mine, not unless you wish this to be your end.

"Be-le...phus,"

A wicked green smile cracked before his dark existence.

TheDungeonMaster
(OOC: Had to think hard on this one xD, let me know if any edits are needed!)

 

[TheDungeonMaster]

Penny watched from her stone perch above the battle as Garrod made what was shaping to be his final valiant stand. His face and shoulder were wounded, and the stone floor was painted with his crimson ichor. In a rare moment of weakness? Compassion? Bravery? Maybe it was a mix of the three? It mattered not. Whatever Penny felt at that moment made her go against her code of ethics and leave a sentence unfinished before closing her journal. He was going to die, and she was too busy putting pen to paper to help him, or even herself! His life meant less to her than black marks on parchment! How disgusting is that!?

Blood pooling on her green shirt, Penny grabbed the spiked end of the stalactite and gritted her teeth as she resolved to break the sharpened edge and free herself. “Come on….” Penny was beginning to think a lifetime of training her fingers was a mistake when she felt a crack run across the stone. Years of hand cramps and clenching her pen so tightly that her knuckles ran white have prepared her for this very moment! A sharpened stone? That’s nothing against the writer of the greatest epic of all time! “I…” punch “...won’t…” punch “...be…” CRACK “...broken…”

“The only thing that’s going to break here is this stone!” A final strike with her bruised and bludgeoned hand, snapped the tip of the spike in two Penny’s weight doing the rest to snap the point and send the girl plummeting to the ground. The skin around her knuckles had been completely removed and her hip was bleeding profusely making her feel weak. But it’s nothing she hasn’t overcome before! What’s a good story without its conflict?

“I will NOT give in.”

Penny broke into a mad dash toward Garrod her hip in so much pain she half thought it was going to fall off. Now that she stopped to think about it, what was she planning on doing here? During this whole escapade, she’s been relying on other people to save her right from the beginning. She needed to be saved in the forest, saved from the wyrms and now she needed-NO! Screw that! Getting saved is for the ignorant, the neutral, and the bystanders.

“I’m no mere witness to this story! It’s MY turn to do some saving.” Penny stopped her sprint and took off in the other direction making her way over to Cestus still skewered on the wall. “Get your ass in gear!” Wincing and fighting her need to scream out, Penny pulled the slab of spike jammed in her leg out and held it in her hand like a chisel. “We’ve got serpents to slay and gold to pocket!!” Penny brought the chisel down on one of the spikes while Cestus got to work on the other. “We promised your brothers we wouldn’t die, so let’s not disappoint them!” Both spikes fell to pieces simultaneously setting the talon brother free. His wounds weren’t as deep as Penny’s but he had two of them and they were bleeding more than a fair amount.

All this spelunking would have been for naught if the three of them didn’t get medical attention but it didn’t seem as though Garrod would be needing it as the cavern shimmered with emerald light and howled with an energized wind.

I’m no wizard and I can’t say that I’m versed in sorcery but I’ve never heard of magic like this. It’s so cold and…malicious…like evil itself.

Otucaste coiled around the cavern furiously his eyes burning hotter than ever before as magic crashed out of them like a blown dam filled with water. Its magic was running on fumes its most extraordinary attacks endured and his enemy still rising to meet his lethal gaze. The connection Otucaste had to his power was waning and it was waning thinner the longer he stayed in this cursed world. But now at this pivotal moment while all their energies were at their highest and the resolve to win no matter the cost was chiseled on everyone’s mind it became clear just how lucky the demon truly was.

“Consuming a soul, a vessel as warped and corroded as you…might be all I need. It might be just what I’ve been looking for! Belephus!!”

The Serpent's eyes flashed green as the demon slithered across the jagged ground toward Garrod.

“I’ve suffered in this world too long, grown too weak, featuring only in this cave.”

Otucaste picked up in speed his mouth open, his jaw unhinged to swallow Garrod and his possessor whole. “My spirit, my essence will be FREE, and you will be the gateway.” The Basilisk’s eyes flashed emerald green as it charged up another ocean of ash. “Despair! Your soul is mine and your body too.”

(Apologies for the wait! New job hassles have been holding me up but I should be good now!)
Garrod Arlette

 

[Garrod Arlette]

From the ground, the cursed swordsman did rise. The bonewhite plate of his gauntlet, crept ever further across the plane of his mortal flesh. As if more armor was growing from the pale and chitinous relic, like a crab grown larger than its shell, freshly molted. A little larger. Raw. Potent.

Across Garrod's right eye, a vibrant green flame did burn. Its light there too across the black of the swordsman's eyepatch. A projection of ghostly fire, long toothed and gnashing, spread across his splayed teeth.

"Otucaste," the reverberant voice, two times played by human chords and demon's tone. "Your suffering," the voice of pale and bleached bone, a thing that took and never gave, color that renounced all that come forth, save a sickening thing. A sapping green. Almost white. "It is what shall sustain me!!!"

The thing that wore Garrod's skin and bones bent back, head thrown in raucous laughter, as joints popped and marrow strained. Both hands took the sword, great as it was, runed and enwreathed in the sickly green fire of that demon that did rest within the jewel. The weapon's point thrust forward. Hungry, consuming, a wicked wind whipped up and an ephemeral blade of gales sliced forward.

Not a moment's worth of worry did Belephus pay towards Penny or whatever the other wastes name had been. The demon, that played Garrod the puppet, grinned wide and proud as it sprang back with unnatural grace.

Come the ashe, come the fangs, the Old Hunger would be keen to the match.

TheDungeonMaster