[s2—01-03] Dawn of the Second Day

[The Man in Red]

Mirooge​

After gorging itself on enough supplies to last a normal man a week, the green fiend sloshed its way out of the water of the far side of the lake. Crawling out onto the docks, Mirooge stretched his amplified bulk out and peered around momentarily. Something felt...off.

The fog seemed unnaturally thick and dense, the air grown still and bitingly cold. Frost seemed to cover everything within range, crackling and crunching as the puddles on the ground froze solid. The rain had let up entirely, the necrotic faux-legend's' mimicked breath fogging over in the air before him.

Brandishing his crowbar in one hand, he whirled around, leering into the mist all around. "Whatever's out there," he barked, voice gone uncharacteristically hoarse. "Show yourself!" The command left him breathless, the sudden chill robbing all the strength and air from him.

Then abruptly, the nearby streetlights began to burst and crack from the rapid change in temperature. Glass scattered and rained down upon the docks, only for dark red fire to begin flaring and roaring to life where each glass bulb had been, bathing the frigid scene in a withering screen of light and steam.

Mirooge desperately sucked in a breath, reeling in place and torn between freezing and boiling alive as he began to stumble away, trying to get out of the bizarre death trap.

Then it was there.

Looming dead ahead, reared up to a monstrous height — ten feet? fifteen? twenty? — and clad in a suit that was immaculately fitted to its stretched-out, lanky frame. Sickly gray flesh, stretched taut over a skull that gave only the barest impression of human features, stared down at the "legend". Slowly, almost mechanically, the thing lifted one impossibly long arm, fingers splayed in a clawing grasping motion...and reached out toward Mirooge.

The necrotic fiend sneered, and lurched forward, swinging his crowbar up to bat aside the clumsily groping limb. The metal tool hit the well-tailored sleeve with a resounding, sickening crunch...

...and a beat later, the face of its wielder twisted into an agonized grimace, his own arm bent at a crazy angle. He howled with pain, reeling and stumbling back and nearly dropping the crowbar as he clutched at his arm, teeth bared in an angry snarl. "What...did you do?![/i] he spat at the alien figure.

The slender figure simply leaned forward, its already stretched out physique seeming to ripple and stretch further, rising up and spreading forward as its suit came alive. Tendrils and tentacles burst from its back, rearing up and around it in some huge, monstrously writhing halo. A thin, black line formed on its featureless face, splitting the pallid gray flesh in two and forming into a huge, gaping maw.

From somewhere, a dull roaring noise like the ocean at the end of a long tunnel sounded. Pressure built up in Mirooge's head, as the sound rose to all-new heights, driving to a shrill, piercing tone....

...and then someone was screaming. Screaming in pain, terror, confusion; begging for it to stop, for something to make it go away.

The rain was back, and Mirooge suddenly realized he was the one screaming.

Blood ran down from his eyes, nose and ears, his entire body ached and spasmed with every attempted move, and his left wrist sat at a crazy, unnatural angle. It was all he could do to crawl away, taking shelter in the shadow of a loading dock to try and regain his bearings.

Mirooge encountered The Slender Man.
He has suffered a shattered wrist (minor injury) from its uncanny damage reflection, and severe internal and mental damage (major injury altogether) from the nightmarish being's mental assaults. His nerves have been racked and damaged by the alien being's sheer presence, resulting in unsteady movements and the equivalent of harsh tinnitus for all five senses for some time (minor injury).
He has contracted the first stage of the alien being's sickness, which will manifest as a steadily-worsening fever, chills and general aches and a growing feeling of paranoia or being constantly watched and followed.

 

[Amalia Eckern]

Okay, cool, they were definitely going into the totally not at all haunted house. Not that they had much of an option; the damn thing kept materializing right in front of them. They came to a wrought iron gate and behind said gate the house loomed down at them from a hill. It looked like an old man. Overgrown vines climbed along the gutters, giving it the appearance of having one angry-as-fuck unibrow. The jagged remains of railing surrounded an off-keel porch like shattered teeth. If they weren’t in the middle of a blood sport Amalia might’ve felt sorry for the poor thing. A terrible screech filled the air as Nico pried the gate open. Amalia gripped her lighter tight, surely every monster in the city was on their way now.

“This is a bad idea,” Amalia muttered as they slipped past the gate.

Nico shrugged, “Probably, but we need some rest.”

They made their way up to the house. Carefully Amalia tested her weight on the porch and the aging floorboards groaned in response. The fog had soaked into the moss-covered wood, giving the entire porch a sickly green sheen. Nico stepped past her and walked up to the door. Before she could stop him he pressed the doorbell.

DING-DONNNG DING-DONNNG DING-DONNNG

“Nico, what the fuck!?” Amalia half-whispered, “Why would you do that?”

“Don’t you think it’d be kinda rude to just walk into someone’s house unannounced?”

“No one lives here, Nico, look at this place,” She answered.

“You don’t know that.”

They both looked at the door and waited for a few seconds. When no one answered Nico reached for the doorbell again. Amalia grabbed his arm.

“Stop, just, just try the door okay?”

“Okay, fine,” He said, reaching for the doorknob, “But, for the record I still think this is pretty rude.”

Given the circumstances Amalia figured they could afford to be a little rude. As Nico opened the door, warm air rushed out past them. Inside the place appeared much nicer than Amalia expected. There were no cobwebs or dust bunnies, and the hardwood floor seemed in much better shape than the rotting porch. Still not exactly welcoming, but at least she didn’t have to worry about falling through the floor. On a table near the entrance sat a candelabra complete with a set of fresh blood-red candles. As Nico shut the door behind them she used her lighter to ignite the candles.

“This place is wild,” Nico said, “Not, like, just this house, I mean this whole place. Nothing like Dante’s Abyss.”

“You were in Dante’s Abyss?” Amalia asked.

“Yeah, it was absolutely bitchin’,” He explained, “All kinds of explosions and razzle and dazzle, the vibe was chaos and ya boy here loves him some good ol’ fashioned chaos. But, this place is all doom and gloom and general malaise, honestly it’s a drag.”

A drag was certainly one word for it. They made their way deeper into the house, guided only by candlelight. Normally such ambience would be creepy, but Amalia found the general tidiness of the place offset any bad vibes she might’ve felt. Of course her guard had yet to be completely dropped, but compared to the foggy hell outside this place was a tropical paradise. The main hallway opened up into a living room. Old-timey couches and chairs sat in a semi-circle around a central fireplace. Above the fireplace was one of those old-school portraits of some upper-crust stiff looking all elegant and shit. Books sat in a neat pile on the stand besides one of the chairs. The entire room smelled like hot breath, but so did the rest of the house.

“Hell yeah,” Nico said plopping down onto one of the couches, “A bit stuffy, but this place is pretty lit as far as haunted houses go.”

While Amalia didn’t share the sentiment she did agree that this could’ve ended up a lot worse. She made her way around the room, lighting candles and making sure there wasn’t, like, skeletons or something hiding in a corner. Once satisfied that there were, in fact, no skeletons or monsters or anything capable of swallowing them whole she sat down in one of the big chairs. Immediately she could feel just how worn out her body was. Muscles ached in places she was sure didn’t actually have any muscles and her feet throbbed like miniature hearts. Nico sat up and went through their duffle bags handing her an MRE and a bottle of water.

“Cheers,” He said, tipping his bottle towards her, “To new friendships, spooky vibes, and not getting eaten our first night on the island.”

“Uhm… cheers,” She said, tapping her bottle against his.

Amalia wasn’t entirely sure what her MRE was made of, but she ate it ravenously nonetheless. Nico followed suit, remarking at how strange it was that his meal could be both a liquid and a solid at the same time.

“So, Why’d you sign up for this?” Nico asked, swallowing a gelatinous bite, “You really don’t seem like the type that’d be interested in this sort of thing.”

“I, uhm, I didn’t…” She answered.

Nico nodded, “Ah, sorry to hear that… They didn’t give me much choice either, but hey, such is life right?”

“Yeah…” She had stopped eating, “They… they said that they could bring my sister back if I won. But… I'm not sure if that’s even possible.”

“Oh it totally is!” He said, “I mean after the Abyss, my boys did the classic profane blood ritual and traded an energy drink for my soul back, so I mean death is really just an inconvenience if you know what you’re doing.”

“That, uhm, no disrespect, but that seems awfully cheap for an entire soul.”

“Oh, yeah, no, see I’ve got this whole deal with the devil sort of thing going on, long story, but I kind of get the ‘friends and family’ discount when it comes to that sort of thing,” He explained, “I’d imagine normal people souls would cost quite a bit more.”

Good to know. They finished their meals and lounged about the living room for a while. After a spell Amalia fell into a half-sleep, only waking occasionally when Nico was fucking with the fireplace. He swore and said something about all of the logs being wet and how that was totally not ‘righteous’ and was a total ‘buzzkill’. Still, half sleep was sleep and she woke up in earnest a few hours later. The foggy night was still in full swing, but they had yet to be devoured by whatever was lurking out there. Nico was busy walking back and forth, staring at the painting above the fireplace. She yawned and reached for one of the books on the stand beside her. To her surprise the pages were completely blank. She reached for another book and found it to be the exact same as the first.

“Weird,” She remarked, looking over at Nico, “What are you doing?”

“Check this painting out,” He said, “it’s one of those paintings where the painter, like, makes it so that it’s eyes follow you around the room, it’s kind of wicked.”

Wicked wasn’t the word for it. It was downright fucking creepy. Amalia shivered thinking that the damn thing was watching her sleep. Something, however, seemed off. She scanned the painting and let out a soft gasp as she realized just what was up.

“Nico…” She said, “Those eyes… their, uhm, they’re not painted on…”

Nico paused and squinted. She was right, they were a bit too shiny and wet to just be acrylic. If he didn’t know better he’d say they were real human eyeballs. He shared a look with her before reaching up and grabbing the painting’s frame. The eyes shifted and stared directly at him, blinking once. He tugged at the painting, peeling it away from the wall with a wet squelch. Two long strands of pink and red viscera trailed from the wall behind it and connected to the back of a set of glistening and quite organic eyeballs. He yelped and dropped the painting, pulling the fleshy cables further out of the wall.

“What the fuck!” Amalia shouted, scrambling out of the chair.

The entire house groaned and shifted. Now was the time for getting the fuck out. She went to open the windows, but found them nailed shut. Nico grabbed the nightstand and jabbed it against the glass; only to find that the windows weren’t glass and were instead some sort of transparent fleshy membrane. They turned to run, but the hallway they had come in through contracted tightly like some sort of wallpapered esaphogus.

“Okay, okay,” Nico said, “Don’t panic… let’s just-”

He was interrupted by a low-pitch groan coming from the fireplace. They turned to find the fireplace had begun to convulse, stretching and closing like someone testing the muscles in their jaw. The room smelled like hot breath, because the fireplace was the house’s fucking mouth. The fireplace mouth slithered forward, stretching as if it were some sort of brick-covered snake emerging from the wall. It clicked its teeth together and lunged for Nico. It just barely missed his head as he dove out of the way.

“Okay, let’s panic,” He said, picking himself up off the ground.

 

[Mad Maggie]

The approach to the prison was both a positive and a negative, as it meant that there was only way way to extricate if the safety of my intended sanctuary were compromised. The bridge was littered with the flaming wreckage of cars, the overrun nature of the city becoming more and more apparent the further in I'd traveled. I had been able to avoid wading through the street level clusters of living dead by traversing the rooftops so far, but this was more of a gauntlet that led straight into a potential dead end. Scattered in some of the broken cars were zombified citizens that had turned still strapped to their seats. Dead limbs flailed weakly against broken glass, one of the managing to grab my sleeve as I shimmied past an overturned transport bus. The electrical club proved more useful now that I wasn't totally surrounded, breaking bones and pulping decayed meat in single hard strikes.

I'd traversed most of the bridge, one of the lanes having collapsed a couple hundred meters from the approach to the prison. The last vehicle to make it this far inward was a crashed patrol car, dangling precipitously over the broken section of road. Slowly balancing across a concrete support, I saw the patrol car's trunk had popped open, a variety of shiny black gears visible from my vantage point. I dropped off the narrow ledge and began to creep towards it, the asphalt under my boots creaking and crumbling. The sound of heavy stone straining on overextended metal kept scraping across my ears as I stood stock still and leaned over the teetering trunk as it slowly bobbed up and down. A black duffel bag of gear marked "ERAT" was the biggest thing of note, but taking it would most certainly unbalance the car and send it plummeting downwards, potentially taking me with it.

I didn't need to hear the soft moans on the wind coming from the prison, protruding on the water. My club was all well and good against living targets, but it's most impressive feature wouldn't be of use against the dead. I needed whatever was in that bag if I were to clear a path and hunker down to wait for the Arcadian, Aquarius. I'd seen him multiple times in the pre show, and during our sparring match we'd agreed to meet during the event, if only to increase our chances of survival. He was a useful tool, but the other individual he mentioned as working for our mutual employer concerned me slightly. I hadn't met her, but I'd heard of her name. She was directly above me on the galactic bounty boards, and what little I'd heard of her made me frown with distaste.

CREEEEEEEAAAAAK.......

I threw myself backwards, duffel in hand as the car pitched forward and fell into the sea. The asphalt where I'd been standing crumbled away as well, and I had to scramble upright and quickly jog away as the bridge became ever harder to traverse. Still, I'd seen Aquarius's acrobatics during the heist and was confident he could meet me for a rendezvous. Approaching the prison gates, I stopped and took in the scene. The gates were jammed open, held in place by makeshift barricades that had already been overrun. Rekilled corpses littered the yard as I passed through, staring up at the guard towers to see lifeless corpses slumped over lights or rifles. Speaking of firearms...my recovered treasure had proved beneficial. There was a light combat vest inside, which I slid on immediately, finding that the holster had come outfitted with a low caliber pistol and two magazines of ammunition. There was a thick combat knife inside the bag as well, and I gripped that in my left hand in tandem with the bludgeoning club in my right.

The entrance building was harder to find a way through, and it took me a moment before I found a broken open access door that led to a staircase. Leading with my weapons, I pushed open the door at the top and found myself staring down at the inner courtyard. Several buildings filled it, and zombies milled around the open spaces. This would take some killing, if I were serious about securing the area...I gripped my weapons and began the descent to the yard, heading towards the largest building in the complex.

 

[Karl Jak]

Piss, shit, and cordite.

The air was rife with that holy trinity of fetid stenches.

Through the haze of slowly dissipating fog, Karl Jak could see the telltale harbingers of those odors. These cultists, whoever they may have been in life, had been reduced to shattered shells stained where possible in their voided excrements and tinted with the telltale cologne of gunpowder. One of the ruined corpses had been so vain as to call out for his parents. His parents?

“Guess he didn’t know he signed up for the entire Saving Private Ryan experience when he signed on the dotted line,” Karl snickered as he mindlessly played with the rotating barrel of the grenade launcher. The man in the black coat and faded purple clothes knew that some people often cried out for one of their parents as they slipped into the precipice, but what for? Their father couldn’t help them. Their mother? Aside from being the pussy they’d slithered out of, what was she supposed to do? Offer absolution?

“Simpletons,” Karl whispered as slipped the grenade launcher into the holster behind his shoulder. Before he left, the wanderer knelt down next to one of the cultists and started to rifle through the makeshift pockets sewn into his robes. He didn’t know what he hoped to find, perhaps some painkillers or a few of those little bottles of wine you could raid from an airplane or a hotel minibar. Instead, he found what seemed to be a few pieces of chocolate wrapped in clear cellophane.

“Contraband? Scavenged prizes? Stolen goods?”

Whatever the case may have been, the food belonged to Karl, and while he’d more or less given up chocolate eight years ago, he thought he’d indulged himself in the here and now, given his own final destination lingered perpetually at some unspoken spot on the grim horizon.

Karl unwrapped one of the pieces and took a small bite. Did it taste like shit? Yes. Did that matter? Not necessarily, because it was an improvement over whatever meme this production company packaged into their MRE baggies.

“MREs and characters forcing themselves to eat them. Name a more iconic duo,” Karl sneered at his own dumb joke, because of course he fucking did. Just because he didn’t run a company, fuck in cabanas, or wear the finest threads anymore didn’t disqualify him from enjoy the finer nods to the unending theater that was the survival contest game.

As he took a second bite, Karl heard a soft grunt from a few feet away. His free hand instinctively moved toward the handle of his grenade launcher, but he caught himself halfway through the motion and simply shifted his body to face whoever was behind him. Amid the fracas, Karl had genuinely failed to commit the girl-thing into his memory. He recalled tossing the gun to her after the final cultist was killed, but beyond that, he’d immediately flushed her. Hadn’t she slithered off into the darkness? Had she just been standing there the entire fucking time and been watching and listening to another one of his inane soliloquies?

“I thought you left,” he replied with no real urgency. With nothing in need or killing nearby, Karl took a moment to look a little more intently at the oversized child. “You are … one of the actual contestants, are you not?”

The girl’s face crinkled in such a manner that led him to believe she didn’t understand. As he stared at her, Karl noticed she wasn’t focused on his face but instead… Karl lifted the candy bar a few inches above his head, and he caught the subtle motion of the girl’s head.

“You hungry or something?”

When she nodded, Karl pointed out the obvious. “You have a BDSM stick jammed in your mouth,” he leaned, and while she recoiled, she didn’t flee or lash out at him. While his callous fingers weren’t the best for child-sized latches, Karl managed to pop the snaps out of place, and the girl spit out what looked to be a piece of bamboo. Once that business was taken care of, he tossed the other bar of chocolate at the girl’s feet, and she started to eat it without bothering to remove the cellophane.

“Did you lose your bag?” Karl asked, which elicited a silent scowl from the girl, whose face was now smeared with a mixture of drying chocolate and dried blood. “You can’t speak, can you?”

A frown on that grotesque charicature of a child’s face she had. Then, moments later, a collection of increasingly frustrated grunts that at least gave phantom hints of what may have been in the distant past, before whatever textbook tragedy had turned this thing into a child that tried to eat people.

“Name is Karl,” the man in the coat remarked as he tossed the girl the other bar of candy. Truth be told, he didn’t want that shit on his hips (vanity is something that never dies, it just takes twisted shapes and unknown forms). As she ate, he noticed that she wore a collar that had a tag dangling from it.

“So you are one of the lucky few,” he spoke. His voice pulled her up from the remnants of the candy, and she stared at him long enough for him to pull out the card that bore his ‘number’ for these ghoulish proceedings. “See? I’m seven,” he tapped at his throat, where her collar and tag were, and she pantomimed his motion. Her grimy fingers found the metal, and she popped it off, lifting it up to her face. Once she’d looked at it, she turned it so he could see it as well, as if he hadn’t noticed it prior to this conversation. “You were the eighth, but I have to imagine our methods of ingress weren’t the same.”

The girl, understanding something in his words, nodded before jamming the remainder of the chocolate into her gnashing, nightmare mouth. Children didn’t have teeth and nails like that. At least this one didn’t have a frog tongue or an obsession with her own anatomy.

Karl stood up, causing the makeshift bench he’d sat upon to screech a little, which in turn caused the girl to recoil momentarily. “Well, I’m off. Nothing warms the old bones like a little violence on the vile,” he muttered as he gestured to one of the nearby corpses. “Take it easy.”

The man had barely made it half a mile when he heard the telltale sounds of someone trailing him along the street. This time, he drew the grenade launcher and twisted to confront his pursuer, but when his eyes didn’t spot anything, he lowered his gaze a little.

“Well, if it isn’t Number Eight,” he muttered as the monster child stared at him through the near dark of the unlight street. In her arms, she held the shotgun as if it were a teddy bear or some other childhood talisman. “Come on, we’ll walk together a little longer,” he finally muttered as he gestured with his hand for her to come closer. Her movements, more like those of a animal than a child, likely would have elicited a response in someone else, but Karl Jak had experienced literal orgies of blood. A feral child-monster wasn’t high up on the list of things that could still rattle him after all these years.

“Let me tell you a story about a bunch of fools who were punked by a clown and a golden jester.”

 

[Ezrihel]

The plittering rain bounced off of Sari al-Waheed’s clothes, beading up and rolling free from the hydrophobic fabric of his green saree and down the sandy tan of his sleeves, only to drip into the puddle he was standing in. By this point the man had long since adapted his saree into what amounted to a hooded cloak slung around his face and broad shoulders- if only to keep his well maintained azure hair from streaking down into his eyes. Only Yntaeus themself knew why it was seen fit to make ‘waterlogged’ the default experience.

The assassin found himself grinning like a jackass as he crouched down to fiddle with the locked, and rusty, metal grate blocking him from investigating the mausoleum before him.

If the gods of death and destiny were seeking to challenge him, he’d gladly take it on.

After all, he was here to put on a funny little stunt show for a very real and very live audience. A little bit of cold, miserably wet rain that drained the warmth from his hands was merely a grain of sand amidst a dune. Sari had experienced much worse weather on jobs prior to this.

The blue haired man just barely brushed his fingertips over the handle of his blade, giving a soft, damn near inaudible exhale as the katana’s presence filled him with a rush of reassurance. He’d found it fastened onto his belt when he had come-to in the warehouse, and had spent at least an entire hour of their trek simply flourishing and practicing with it, until the sword felt as natural an extension to his arm as it could. It had always made him feel better when he was armed, especially with a weapon he considered himself to have intimate skill and knowledge with.

This blade was fine, it was nothing like Aza’zayl’s Rose or that shimmering god-blade that his show-stopping boss, Ezrihel von Althaus, had obtained in his brilliance against Davy Jones. Sari popped the hilt up from the mouth of the sheath as he eyed the lock held between his fingers.

It would have to do.

He exhaled and drew the blade, smashing the pommel down across the rusted lock all in a single fluid motion. A shower of small sparks were swept along by the wind as the padlock broke and fell to the ground, the iron grate gate swinging open with an ominous creek. The dark, forbidden tunnel welcomed him down into its depths with a symphony of trickling water and wheezing drafts. He drew the short edge of the katana across the back of his hand and sheathed the steel as he stepped into the dark. Almost reflexively, he pulled his saree closer around his arms as he descended into the miniature crypt.

Sari traced his fingers along the murals decorating the tall, narrow hallway wall; stories of the interred family’s legacies and deeds. He couldn’t help but wonder if Shallan- (or, was it Radiant now?)- would get a kick out of the illustrations. She had a sharp tongue, and a sharper mind even still, so he figured the redhead would probably have at least a quip or two to make known if she spotted anything funny.

She reminded him a lot of the aristocratic Ruedlen von Saerhaus in that way, and the dry serious wit was what endeared him over Israphael. Now that he thought about it, Shallan might very well get along with either of those two... Well... That was if Isra could humor the idea of socializing with a sassy snarky youth for longer than half a heartbeat.


Truth be told, the doctor hadn’t been quite the same since Opealon, and he was being incredibly tight lipped about the depths of his issues. Constantly he threw out the excuse that he was just tired, just stressed from the normal duties of his profession, but the assassin was eagle-eyed and utterly unconvinced by the half-truths. He could see it in the doctor’s more-ragged body language, how Isra slouched as if a bit of his inner steam had escaped him and how the medic was spending more time drinking these days than since the start of the war.

The assassin shook his head gently. He'd known the doctor longer than not, and still found himself frustrated by his friend's near-total inability to open up about personal and emotional troubles.

And the baby-powder-blue Lan, hm. Sari idly thought over him. He had no real opinion of the meeker seeming man thus far, though that hadn’t meant that the assassin trusted him yet.

The dark operative peeked around a stony marble corner, hiding in the shadow of a carved pillar.

It would have been a massive cliché for him to believe that only the ‘quiet ones’ could be monsters and traitors, and Sari was far wiser than that. Truth be told, he didn’t trust either of his travel partners, not in any real, deeper sense. Humans were molded in the image of his people, and he knew how diabolical his people, the Andromedans, could be. He figured the disillusionment was just one of the many perks of being a government sanctioned professional assassin, especially one that walked along one of Ne'heia's many paths.

Now he stood alone, peering at the middle of the main burial chamber, surrounded by the painted relics of its decaying inhabitants’ accomplishments. His once sharp ears could hear this room just fine- but he found it oddly claustrophobic to have lost the sounds of the drizzle above ground. He could feel his hearts fluttering against his ribs over how unnatural the stillness felt down here, as if the skeletons and bodies held within were simply holding their breaths until he let his guard down and no less.

He had always found human graveyards just the smallest bit unsettling. The thought of his mortal vessel trapped in a box of metal or stone for eternity made him feel slimy, and the idea of his immortal soul wandering deep below down here, never to walk in the warm light again? Sari couldn’t help but shiver despite his warmth as he imagined cold dead hands cloying at him, begging him to save them from the non-transience of their afterlife.

The assassin would be much happier once he finished snooping around, and returned to the surface to find his companions.​

 

[Sigmund Vrell]

“Are you certain that we aren’t going the left way?” Klarion asked in a low hiss, his gaze darting from shadow to shadow in the dark forest.

“For the however-many’th-time, no, I have no idea where we are!” Sand Hawk ‘quietly’ declared in response, doing his best to peer at the map he had grasped between his hands in the light of Klarion’s lantern. “It’s just so dark out here, and this guy’s drawing is the worst!”

“Then take off your glasses.”

“Over my dead body!” The bandit announced, seemingly dead serious as he stubbornly raised a protective hand to his shades, shielding them in the off chance that the boy witch attempted to remove them. Klarion opened his mouth to say something, but the duo froze at the sound of the bushes rustling nearby. Their gazes shot in the direction of the disturbance, both contestants standing stock-still as they waited patiently for… anything, really.

After an agonizingly long minute, nothing came surging from the underbrush, and the two turned their gazes back to one another. With a silent nod, Sand Hawk raised his sunglasses to his forehead, doing his best not to hold them wide open in fear. Clearing his throat, he went back to examining the map, scowling again as soon as his focus shifted.

“See, he’s a total amateur at cartography, I would know, about five years ago I-”

“We can talk about carts later. Just figure out where we are.” Klarion grumbled. The witch boy was still a little shaken but the light of his lantern reassured him at least a tad, giving him a decent bit more composure than his companion.

“I’m trying, believe me, but as I keep saying, it’s almost unreadable, like, who draws a cave like…” Sand Hawk trailed off as he squinted at the map once more, bringing it a little closer to his eyes. A long pause hung in the air as the rogue stared at the map and, before Klarion could ask what he had realized, he slowly rotated it until it was facing upright. “I see where I have erred now!”

The youth facepalmed so hard that Sand Hawk briefly wondered if he was attempting to push all the way to the other side. Despite it all, Klarion almost wanted to laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation. Almost.

“So, you know where to go now right?”

The bandit pursed his lips, scanning his eyes over the map and scratching his chin. A few moments later, he began to slowly nod, increasing in speed as his confidence grew.

“Hmmyes, though the desert is my favored terrain, not the forest, I feel pretty confident that I can get us to that cave from here!” The great Sand Hawk proudly announced, flicking his sunglasses back down over his eyes with an eager grin.

“The same way that you were pretty confident that you could get use there in first place?” The witch boy asked skeptically, raising an eyebrow,

“Of course not, this time I know where I’m going!” The bandit cackled, quietly taking off into the woods back the way that they had come from. Stifling a chuckle of his own despite his annoyance, Klarion followed after him, hoping that they’d end up there in the next week or so.

 

[The Man in Red]

Shallan, Sari & Lan​

As was always the case with graveyards, the atmosphere within was...unsettling, at best.

The environment of the Death Game, specifically one of this sort, made it even worse. Every spooky old ghost story and tale about restless dead lurching up out of the ground suddenly seemed that much more real when you were wandering around the exact place they all happened, in the exact same sort of weather and scenario.

The church itself had seemed, from outside the graveyard fence, to be easy enough to find. But within, the rows of gravestones and crypts seemed endless in the fog, and more than once Shallan and Lan almost ended up running directly into each other, getting turned around and winding up back where they started, or even at the entrance gates again.

It felt like the work of hours for them to finally discover the sight of the church building, suddenly looming up out of the fog. The main doors were...not a welcoming sight, however. Barred over with heavy wooden planks and lashed shut with chains, the message "IT CAn'T GET iN. DOeSN't LIkE HoLY GrOUNd." scrawled on it in dark, faded red.

More searching and careful checking over the exterior eventually found another door, set d own into stairs leading below the church, which the key Shallan had found fit. The rusty old lock turned over with a heavy ch-kunk and the door creaked open on heavy, rusty hinges. There was light coming from within, at least, making it appear a far more welcoming prospect than staying out in the fog among the graves.

 

[The Man in Red]

Lilith​

Back through the city. Moving quickly and carefully now, to avoid the worst of the shambling, sprinting hordes of undeath roaming and packing the streets.

The once-safe shelter within the hospital the group had awoken in was now deserted, and it had slowly begun to attract the attention of the undead residents of the city. Not worth the trouble of digging around in.

Up on the roof, though...that was another story. Cleaving through half a dozen zombies, and punting a handful more off the edge of the building, she claimed her prize: the secured weapons trunk sat half-buried in a crater of its own making. The shiny silver and blue device inside was strange, but with only a moment to figure it out, quickly proved its usefulness as a laser of pure white light erupted from it, searing and incinerating the dead flesh of a zombie while leaving everything else in its path untouched.

Then she was off again, before the light show could draw every slavering ghoul in the city to her.

An old motorhome, half-run off the road, provided a momentary shelter to get out of sight of the incoming hordes. There were even several ways out, in case of an emergency, and the place was surprisingly well-stocked. Long out of power, so anything perishable tucked away in the fridge was well spoiled, but the amount of non-perishables and fresh water tucked into every available space was almost silly.

....as was the corpse of the driver, sat in the driver's seat with a shotgun clutched tightly in his flannel-clad arms. Lot of good it had done him in the end.

 

[The Man in Red]

Klarion & Sand Hawk​

Luckily, Sand Hawk's expert orienteering and navigational skills did eventually prove sound. After spending much of the night trekking and trudging around through the woods, the duo finally came across their destination. Yawning up in a rocky hillside just ahead, there was the mouth of a cave.

Just like the map noted, it went down steeply and at a crazy angle, littered with small traces of bones and dried blood, and slick from the fog and rain.

The old hunter seemed to have known better than to go exploring down there all willy nilly, but he knew there was something down there that would make it worth it. The only question became of how, exactly, Klarion and Sand Hawk were supposed to safely get down there themselves to dig around.

"This is far too abrupt to go climbing down by hand," Klarion sniffed, peering down the cave and kicking a loose pebble forward.

"It...is kind of precarious, isn't it?" the sandy rogue agreed hesitantly, shifting uncertainly and looking from the map to the cave again.

".....I swear to God if you two use anymore unnecessary synoynms I'm going to feed you your own pants." A surly voice suddenly spoke up from behind them, making the pair jump in alarm.

Sand Hawk produced the colt in a flourish, whirling around and leveling it at the perceived threat, while Klarion positively hissed and sprang up with startling suddenness, landing in a feral, cat-like crouch on a nearby rock, ready to unleash magical hell upon the—

....oh, it was just a kid in an obnoxious windsock.

"Shoot and do your magic shit or stop trying to scare the neighborhood kids already," he grumped. "I'm not the boogeyman. He's busy over at the docks right now, for the next couple hours."

"....what? The boogeyman?" Klarion was so bewildered, he momentarily forgot his aggression and caution. "But he's—"

"Actually a real fuckin' loser, don't worry about him." The disgruntled youth waved a hand dismissively, shifting his grip on the crutch under one arm. "You had a run-in with old Lucius and got his map. Thinkin' about going down in the cave?"

Sand Hawk slowly lowered the colt, tilting his head slightly to one side and mouthing the word 'Lucius?' before shaking his head. "Why, yes! As a matter of fact we were thinking about exactly that!"

"Cool. That's a really good idea, actually." He limped and thonked his way forward through the mud and up the rocky hill. "I was expecting I'd have to do it myself. And it's a job that's a lot easier with more than one hand."

"You mean one...set of hands, right?"

The pale youth just turned to flatly stare at Sand Hawk, before lifting his crutch up and bonking Klarion on the head.

"Oh! Right. You only have one hand...free." The rogue said sheepishly.

"Yes. You are hopeless." Rolling his eyes, the limping youth turned back toward the cave. "No. I'm not helpless. Yes, this cave is dark. No, it's not this steep the entire way down. I got here because I cheated. No I don't care about the rules. Yeah, this entire thing is really fucking stupid and weird." He paused, looking up slightly. "Any more questions? Yes? Too bad. Ask 'em while we go down."

And he hopped forward, landing butt-first on the slick stone and slid down into the dark out of sight.

 

[The Man in Red]

Doctor Caustic​

The primary advantage of the undead occupying the prison were their numbers. Individually they were only a nuisance, once you knew how to deal with them. But with so many of them at hand...sheer numbers outweighed the ammunition and usefulness of the weapons Caustic had on hand.

Regardless of his precision, there was no winning against that.

No sooner had the doctor frantically kicked open the door to the building he had set his sights on and rush inside, than everything seemed to go wrong immediately.

Something shrieked from somewhere above him, and then crashed into him with all the force of a runaway truck. With deceptive strength, the thing bore him down to the ground and began a relentless assault; spitting and biting and clubbing and clawing at him, spraying blood and spit with every hoarsely-shrieking snarl and threatening to tear his eyes out with every swipe of overgrown nails adorning its hands.

The thing was ragged and worn out, body lean and thin presumably from starvation, but had the strength of someone in the complete grasp of a psychotic break or utterly lost to an overpowering adrenaline haze. Every movement of those wispy arms was as good as a sledgehammer, and it was only the timely acquisition of the combat vest Caustic had found that prevented him from being utterly disemboweled within seconds.

The savagery was as relentless as it was mindless, however. And for someone as calculating as Caustic, all he needed was one single instant of opening...

CRACK

The lightning club whipped up and caught the spindly creature under its chin, jerking its head back and hurling it off of the scientist long enough for him to regain his feet and back away. Heaving breaths came through gritted teeth, fighting down the fresh waves of pain coming from the countless new lacerations and bruises decorating most of his front side.

With a threatening stomp forward, the doctor hefted the bludgeon again and activated the eletrical field, the crackling and flashing sparks throwing the room into stark relief and making the savage undead recoil and cover its eyes with both hands. Shrieking and spitting, it lunged forward, throwing its shoulder into Caustic and slamming them both clumsily into the wall before stumbling and staggering back outside.

A final spitting hiss, and it dropped to all fours and leaped directly up, clinging to the wall outside and rapidly scrambling up and into a shattered window several floors up.

Not wasting time to consider whether it was lucky or not, the doctor shoved himself off the wall and slammed the door shut, as the remaining horde outside started to draw close again. He could deal with them after a moment to regain his bearings.

Caustic has encountered the Hunter.
He has suffered a severe beating from hunger and adrenaline-driven fists and claws over most of his front side (Minor Injury altogether) but escaped mostly unharmed.
The Hunter has been mildly wounded and driven off, for now.

 

[Mad Maggie]

I coughed, clutching my chest and shaking off the shredded remains of the combat vest. The thing's claws had done a fair work of slicing through any sort of protection it could have provided, and I took a few minutes to steady my breathing and then listen in the gloom of the prison hallways. The courtyard had been far too choked with undead to make any sort of meaningful approach from outside, and with no easily accessible structures to leapfrog across I was denied my usual method of travel past things like this. In the dark gloom of the service hallways I picked my way forward.

It would seem that the prison complex went deeper than ground level, as I passed another door indicating access to a sub basement. Upon my arrival at the bottom of the steep staircase, I was greeted with the corpse of an individual that looked....out of place. In fact, it was dressed similarly to myself, lab coat and all. A laminated badge hung from its neck, the head twisted at an odd angle. I looked up at the spiraling staircase and surmised that whoever it was must have fallen...or jumped. In any case, I took the badge and pushed my way through another door.

The room I stepped into was larger than would be expected, and littered with more corpses, although these were naked and looked...inhuman. Upon closer inspection of the bodies, they all had small wounds blow out the back of their necks, where the brainstem would be. Interesting. I looked at the sealed clean lab door that served as the only other way forward, and then at the badge I'd just acquired. Pressing it up to the red lit panel, it flashed green and I heard a pneumatic seal hiss open, the door sliding forward to reveal a laboratory that was surprisingly undisturbed. I cannot say I was not more than a little intrigued at the prospect of getting to employ my true calling in this game about my other one. Swiping the badge against the inner panel, the lab door sealed shut behind me with another swooshing hiss.

Inside were a few computers, some test stations, and all sorts of scientific odds and ends. I set about studying the information left over, bringing a large pile of papers and a portable computer over to one of the desk. There was a monitor bank that showed security displays covering most of my approach to the sub basement. I could just see the entrance to the courtyard from which I'd come, corpses milling lazily about the entrance. Damn. I should have left signs for Aquarius to follow. Still...I had a feeling he would make it relatively unharmed, now that I'd driven off that lanky monster. Speaking of which...apparently it was the focus of some of the research that had been going on under the prison...

 

[Cho]

The Warehouse​

Bloodhound stepped into the building and surveyed their surroundings quickly. They stepped past the restrained man to inspect the altar. They sighed as it revealed very, very little about the creature they were intent on tracking and putting down. Bloodhound turned to face the restrained man and knelt before him. They brought their mask uncomfortably close to the man's face, raindrops dripping down their goggles and their respirator rasping ominously. The man barely whimpered, apparently less fearful of the Hunter than whatever monster stalked this town. They raised a solitary finger and rested it against the front of their respirator.

“Quiet. I will remove your bonds. Not a sound. Understood?”

The man nodded quickly. Bloodhound set about removing the restraints with haste. The man immediately crawled away from the hunter and came to rest with their back against the altar.

"I am Blóðhundur, you can call me Bloodhound." The Hunter spoke, their tone hushed, though the rain outside did a decent amount to hide their conversation. The man groaned and winced against the pain he’d been put through.

“You have my thanks, Bloodhound.”

“I have some questions, if you are in a condition to answer them.” Bloodhound enquired, giving the man a glance over. He nodded and gestured meekly for the Hunter to ask away.

“What is this? What does it mean?” Bloodhound asked as they held the bone-white mask up in front of him.

“Not sure what it means..” He started, shaking his head in between laboured, heavy breaths, “All I know is that it’s made to look like the Operator’s face… or lack of.”

“Have you seen this Operator.. Recently?”

“I’ve seen it..” He started again, his tone shifting to one of sheer fear. His expression shifted as an all encompassing wave of anxiety and dread consumed his very being. Bloodhound noticed the change in his demeanour and pressed the matter.

“How do you draw it out? Does it have a lair of sorts?”

“Lair? Dunno about that. Look, the more you look for it or keep on asking questions.. The more likely it'll come for you. It’s inevitable. It’ll find you eventually. And when it does..” He shuddered visibly, his voice cracking every now and then.

“The end is already decided, félagi fighter, trust it. My thanks for your answers. The Allfather graces you.” The Hunter pressed their balled fist to their chest and stood once more. The man gave Bloodhound an incredulous stare. Were they really trying to draw the Operator out? Madness.. He shook his head as the Hunter stepped back out into the rain, pausing to peer cautiously down either end of the docks to make sure they weren’t being followed… yet.

The Truck​

Strained as they might, they were unable to glean any indication of whether the Operator was still in the vicinity because of this damned fog. The Legend shuddered as a shiver ran down their spine and their heartbeat pounded away in their ears.

Goosebumps.

It had been some time since their quarry gave them such adrenaline. Such fear. They felt alive. The thrill of the hunt had kicked in and they were exhilarated. Their limbs felt restless, eager to get back on the trail but every fibre of their being screamed at them to crawl back under the truck and stay hidden.

But the Hunter was not so easily dissuaded. They would take the Operator down and bring glory and slatra to the Games, in the Allfathers’ name.

Heavy footfalls echoed out from the fog as the Legend started off in the direction they’d last seen the Operator drift in.

 

[Chara Dreemurr]

Lan took a deep breath as the door opened. a door underneath a graveyard. it brought him back to his school days, and that wasn't in particular a good thing. He'd been shaking as they went through the graveyard - even with his own experiences as an assassin, this was all a few steps past his norm, so he had been handling it by sticking to things he was more used to. as he was hoping to get along with these two, he started by trying to learn a bit more about them by how they moved.

Shallan was a curious, inquisitive spirit. Radiant was a rather more confident piece of her, and Lan could recognize that somewhere, something had broken for this person - despite a relatively thoughtless exchange he'd had with her earlier, one he wished he could have found a bit more tact with, he hoped this brutal game hadn't decided the next few days on the island would be spent torturing the entire group with their own personal problems...

though that would be fitting to bring an assassin to., Lan's inner voice had to admit.

Sari, on the other hand, had a level of confidence in every word and witticism, that showed in everything from his gaze to his footsteps. The man had confidence to spare despite the situation, and was at once very cheery and very distant. he held his katana with a casual grace that spoke to Lan that he'd have no problem using it on another human being, and was at least adept at seeming unshakeable so far.

Lan had high hopes that they could be friends and leave this godawful, miserable death-fest, and part of him was happy that the first two people he'd met at least seemed to be decent people.

The smaller part, the part Lan usually had off when thinking about 'friends', quietly reminded him of the horrors he'd seen on earlier DA's, and that he was just the sort of target to be betrayed.

The Assassin took a deep breath, before calling out for Sari. he'd learned plenty about his new friends, and was hopeful they could stay friends throughout their time together. If they weren't, though, the quiet part of lan had already figured out plenty of other things. it knew Sari was quite tall compared to lan, and that a slice to the jugular wouldn't do it if it came down to a fight. he'd likely need to keep low, and disembowel him in case some alien physiology Lan was unaware of made him sturdier than the average human being. it'd require him to close beneath that katana, which meant he'd likely need to take a low stance and stop the blade by entangling the arm somehow.

This part spoke to him of how Shallan could be second, because while she was unpredictable, it would also likely be less prompt. Tt told him how the low visibility combined with the looseness their group had chosen to operate with would probably make it easy to hide the first body, but to be careful if it came to it, as he lacked an understanding of how truly attentive they are, and it reminded him that for his own safety, and for the sake of making his targets suffer no more than they needed to, he'd need to strike as fast as possible if they chose to turn on him.

Lan certainly didn't like listening to the voice, particularly on the last part, because as silly as takesies-backsies on a murder attempt sounded, he still preferred the illusion that a confrontation like that could end without an unnecessary death. he was a hired assassin, not a gameshow mass murderer, and the fact these people seemed decent enough had already taken more than a bit off the edge of Lan's blade.

"...-hey, you okay in there?" Shallan's voice called out, snapping Lan back to reality.

"H-huh? uhh... yeah." Lan offered. "...Sorry, I'm just..." Lan looked back, then to the door as they waited for Sari. "...I wasn't supposed to be here, today. I was supposed to be enjoying some nice food with my cousin and probably getting yelled at for doing a sloppy job at work. It's not really the time, but... I'm doing my best to work through all of... this, you know?"

Shallan looked to Lan and opened her mouth a moment, before giving a slow nod, seeming to need a second to think before answering. "You didn't sign up of your own accord." She stated matter-of-factly.

Lan gave a smile and a slow nod. "...and I didn't come here with any sort of plan if I become... well, if I die. Guess I shouldn't sugar-coat that one." Lan would say after a moment.

Shallan would give a sigh. "...Well, that makes two of us on that front at least... Sorry."

Lan gave a slight nod and a soft smile. "Not your fault. But if I'm honest, I really don't want to kill anyone here. I know I'll probably have to, and I've accepted that, but..." Lan would continue, before realizing they were rambling in a doorway like cartoon characters, just as Sari came 'round the bend.

"Well, I hope we can survive long enough to have a real chat, but why don't we enjoy the relative safety of an indoor shelter first. You're totally right about the rain being a terrible place for this."
"

 

[Aquarius]

The lights began to dim from Aquarius’ eyes, the fear of shutting off imminent. He started to slump and nearly fell over. The clatter of the journal hitting the ground jolted him from his daze and he shot straight up into a standing position. The machine peered around to ensure the voices had just been in his head. No, they hadn’t been. They’d been thrust into his skull from the wicked words that breathed life into this nightmare journal. At least the voices weren’t tangible.

Yet.

The Arcadian antique knelt down and grabbed the journal once more. This things magic was capable of frying and rewriting his AI. That was troublesome to say the least. The images he’d been shown were not easily displayed in a mechanical mind, so whatever this was, it was not of any world he’d seen so far. Aquarius stashed the mystical tome into his robe and lifted his new weapon from the bench beside him.

Ah, yes, something he understood. Armaments. He swung the axe left and right and up and down to judge its weight, the newly affixed taser crackling from the hefty swings. He nodded approvingly before letting it fall in his hands, aiming now towards the ground.

Something was beginning to bother the machine. The silence. Weren’t there supposed to be monsters? Undead? Something? Yet in this particular slice of arena he couldn’t hear anything. Since the journals voice went dark he’d heard nothing but the wind outside and the creaking of hospital doors and windows. An unease overcame the bodyguard. He was beginning to grow tired of being on his lonesome.

Aquarius meandered throughout the psychiatric hospital without a word. His own footsteps becoming his only audible comfort as he moved forward towards where he remembered Caustic had landed. After several minutes of advancing he realized something.

He‘d been walking passed the same room several times. No, that was impossible. The mental damage he’d suffered must be making him see things. He pushed onward.

He watched the windows as he continued on. The smudges, the cracks, all of them were the same. This wasn’t making any sense. Aquarius turned into a nearby office conveniently a part of the loop. He swung open a drawer to find some paper and tried to copy the layout of the area.

This place would not keep him here, even if that meant he would have to break through the god forsaken walls.

 

[The Man in Red]

The wailing of an air raid siren once again grew loud and shrill throughout the town, announcing the passing of time.

"Everyone is doing remarkably well down there, I see. Make sure you keep your wits about you, now; things are only going to start getting worse from here on out!"


Bulletins, Updates and Notes

• Weather: The rain has begun to fade entirely. It remains dark, dreary and overcast but the rain will finally stop.
• Once again, if you sent in updates, moves or actions and I didn't respond in some way, then assume either nothing of note happened or I think you're in a good place to let your further shenanigans carry you into trouble on your own.
• IMPORTANT UPDATE: I apologize for this, but starting from here assume that every phase will be 2 days instead of 1. I need to slow the pace down a little so I can focus on college work.

 

[Aquarius]

F52
​

Aquarius’ own house of mirrors eventually fell apart. Perhaps there had been several rooms similar to the previous or a trick was truly being played on him. It was of no import any longer. He swung the hospital doors open and let the dim grey of the sky wash over him in its muted glory. He nearly matched the shade of it, the old and cranky machine. Aquarius himself did not make this comparison.

He stepped out into the dreary world and his ear was glad for it. Noise, once again, came to him. The wonderful sound of… Moaning? What was that awful slur of wordless ness? Glancing to his right, the Arcadian assailant was witness to an ugly sight. Shambling wretches of rotten flesh and decaying pieces, making their way towards the machine with some sort of ill intent.

“Ah, pitiful undeath.” It had been a long time since he’d seen this kind of evil. Foul magic. Anders knew of great magic. He would have to pick his brain about the topic of zombification. It could make for a stimulating conversation. Aquarius rose his axe over his shoulder and looked dead at the monstrosities approaching him.

When the first of the dozen or so zombies reached and lunged for him, Aquarius held a mocking hand forward to impede its path. It reached with one good arm and one missing arm just out of the reach of Aquarius’ skull. He rose the newfound axe high into the banal sky, glaring at the fiend with hatred in his one eye.

“You dare lay a hand on me, a protector of the Golden Era, with ill intent?”

He knew that it could not hear him let alone make out the meaning of his purpose. But it felt good to hear himself talk. This part would feel even better.

The machine brought the axe cursively into the things neck, for here, there was naught much mightier than the sword. The things head flew off its shoulders and still made to gnash at him with its decaptiated head. It’s body still approached him. Horrible, ugly, foul undeath.

Vanquish them.

Aquarius put his heel into the things chest and extended his leg with great force. It knocked the corpse backwards and he marched towards the hoard, but not before making a pit stop to crush the brain of the creature he’d guillotined. His pace picked up, and the dance began.

A pirouette. A deft and accurate swing into the skull of the next, not even giving the electricity time to course through the destroyed brain.

A shuffle. Easily maneuvering away from the several hands that grasped for him.

A two-step. Quick feet let him take out two monsters aligned next to each other with one horizontal slash.

An embrace. The blade of the axe shoved into the chin of the next, letting the pulsating energy take hold and explode its head outward.

The rest fell easily with similar movements. The meathead creatures stood no chance against the bodyguard, not with so few numbers. Where had they come from though? Were they run off from another, bigger incident?

Either way, it looked like things were beginning to get interesting.

 

[Klarion]

While climbing down into a dark cave was fun and all, what was way more fun was what the trio discovered at the bottom.

Standing up and dusting off mud from the seat of his pants, Klarion glanced around at their murky, damp surroundings. Glistening natural walls made of rock closed in around them on all sides, the condensation speckled across them flickering in the light of the witch boy’s lantern. When he craned his head back to look up, he could spot dozens of tapering stalactites hanging like icicles from above, jagged and foreboding in the nearly pitch black cave.

But there was more to this cave than its natural subterranean spookiness, for deeper inside the trio stumbled across the pitiful remnants of a campsite. A tattered and broken tent lay slumped across the cavern floor in a pile of ragged cloth, several tin cans of unidentifiable substances strewn about inside. There was even the blackened dregs of a small fire, nothing but ash and cold stones left behind. A distinct odor of burning woodsmoke hung in the air, faintly sweet with just a tinge of earthy warmth underneath.

There was also more of that cultist malarkey they’d run into several times before scattered about, the very same symbol that Klarion now wore around his neck scrawled on the walls in thick, black slashes of burnt charcoal. Various animal bones and pelts decorated the cave, tied up with thin strings of sinew that seemed a little too wet to be very old. An even stranger sight were the bunches of twiggy-looking sticks formed into strange, long-limbed effigies, hanging like paper lanterns from the ceiling of the gloomy little grotto.

Something in the mess caught Klarion’s eye— a book, rectangular and bound in cracked brown leather. Quirking an eyebrow, the witch kid stooped to pick it up, only dimly aware of the boy in the windsock hood brushing past him.

Klarion straightened up, the book’s spine settling into the palm of his hand. It was brittle with age, the pages visibly yellowed by time, but otherwise unremarkable. Turning it over in his hands, the witch kid could identify no title or author marked on the binding, no indication as to what the book might contain. With a little eye roll, he flicked it open to a random page and began reading.

“Well, there it is,” Adam grumbled, standing in the middle of the camp. He regarded something against the far wall with a frown, seeming thoroughly weary and pissed off all at once. “You see that altar over there? We need to destroy it, or else ol’ Slendy keeps getting more powerful.”

“Destroy?” Klarion immediately perked up, the cat-like slits of his eyes dilating. Now this sounded like fun, no matter that the name ‘Slendy’ wasn’t ringing any bells.

Scratching the back of his head, Sand Hawk decided to ask the important question in his young companion’s stead. “Slendy?”

Adam sighed heavily, clearly exasperated. “Yeah, you know, the guy all these cultists are buckwild about and one of the monsters wandering around spooking people. The Operator, Slender Man, the fucking boogeyman. Looks kinda like Dr. Octopus but stupidly formal. You’ll know him when you see him, and you’d best be hopin’ that you won’t.”

“I… see!” Sand Hawk said, nodding rapidly. “And the altars?”

“That thing,” the pajama-wearing time lad explained, lifting one crutch in the air to point at a pile of twigs and bone nestled just under a rocky overhang beside the campsite. It didn’t look like much, even if it was propped up by a pair of crossed tree branches like some kind of twisted crucifixion. “There are several more of these fucking things scattered around the map… we’ll need to trash all of ‘em if we want to have any chance of beating Mr. Tall, Dark, and Tentacle-y.”

“Oh, good. That’s what these writings say, too,” the witch boy murmured, seeming oddly subdued. Lowering the journal he’d been reading, Klarion moved closer to the altar, crouching down to inspect it.

It was another one of those effigies, and although this one was pitifully small, standing nearer to it gave off distinctly bad vibes. Like, bad with a capital B. The shadows in the room seemed to center around this one point, swirling, branching off like the roots of a tree to blanket the entire cavern in a eerie, silent darkness. What’s more, there was a kind of… pressure easily detectable in the air, humming between his ears and swelling awkwardly at the back of his throat. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck, made the witch boy’s lips pull back from his teeth in a fierce snarl.

Raising one leg in the air as he made to stamp it out, Klarion looked back at Adam, expression dubious. “And you’re sure destroying this won’t curse us?”

“Now, I didn’t say anything about that. But that ugly pile of twigs is doing a lot to ward off the same creature it’s meant to bind to this town,” the other boy huffed, reaching up to adjust the thick lenses of his glasses. He leaned more heavily on his crutch again, giving an exhausted shake of his head. “Trashing it might grab his attention. Soon as it’s destroyed, we’ll need to clear out.”

Klarion gave a short nod, then brought his foot down with extreme prejudice on the little effigy. Crunch.

 

[Nico Cinder]

A real panic requires the people panicking to be breaking anything breakable in their immediate surroundings, but so far the only breakable things seemed to be Nico and Amalia. The mawplace rattled and rolled, snapping across the room with all the grace and tact of a giant man-eating fireplace. The neck of the thing swings and slams into Nico's stomach, knocking him across the room and his breath from his chest. Somehow, he managed to at least roll to his feet, leaning against a nearby support beam. He heard Amalia cry out something, but couldn't hear it over the sounds of a house becoming hungry. The noises this thing was making were ungodly, all creaking wood and brickwork shivering. This movie sucked and scared him as a kid and the live action version sucked and scared him now. Out of sheer frustration, he kicked the wooden support beam or rib bone or whatever the fuck body part wood equated to on a house. A jagged mouth in the form of a crack in the bonewood splintered into view, and promptly shrieked at the young punk who just stubbed his toe. Nico fell to the ground and scrambled away, hissing like the wallpaper that was peeling around them. Crawling blindly around on the floor, he accidentally bumped his soft little head on a wrought iron basket full of wrought iron things.

"Metal," Nico said, and put a few holes in the drywall with his new toy for good measure.

Now that he was the one poking the fires in this joint, the mischievous rockstar is quickly reminded of another part of the panic dance - arson. He shouted over the din of the den something along the lines of, "Amalia! Light some shit on fire!" but alas, Amalia could not hear him. She was too busy lighting shit on fire. She was wielding a fully lit candelabra, as creepy old houses were just chock fucking full of them apparently. The pile of blank books she had found earlier had already been reduced to a campfire, and she seemed to be splitting her attention between eyeing the fancy drapery hanging over the windows and trying not to get eaten by a house. Hearthsnake cast a putrid orange glow from its fire mouth after wriggling its ass all over the room trying to catch its dinner. Smoke began to billow from its mortared throat, coalescing with the building haze from Amalia's budding infernos. As the curtains went up in flames, a hollow roar erupts from the depths of the house. The two of them gagged on the rank scent of burning hair and flesh, trying desperately to stay in sight and shouting distance of each other. The beam of dancing orange light cut through the smoke, the house searching for something to consume.

They were but melting silhouettes to each other at this point, melting into an oil painting that seemed to be pressing itself right up against their faces. Nico tried to stay low to the ground, searching for an even vaguely human shape. He swore under his breath and ducked as the neck of the fireplace swung around again, spotlight shining. Down on his hands and knees yet again, he searched for something, anything, when his fingers brushed against the sticky frame of the painting he had ripped off the wall. It was lying face down on the floor where he left it, eye meat tendons hanging loosely to it from the wall.

He had almost forgotten that he was still clutching onto the fireplace poker for dear life, wimpy little piece of iron though it was. It had a handy little hook on the side of the poker part for pulling and adjusting logs...or eyeball strings. Nico stomped on the back of the painting for leverage, hooked the hook around both tendons, and leeeeeaaaaned back with all his might. The meaty ripping and tearing as they came undone was accompanied by the screeching of timber and ancient stonework. Hot rotten smoke filled his lungs and smothered his eyes, but he still managed to catch the piercing sight of a candelabra floating toward him. Before Nico can finish the job, the painting shot out from underneath his feet, sending him sprawling to the ground. His fireplace poker clattered to the hardwood floor a ways away from him. Then came the skittering and the scraping abhorrent, as the monstrous house turned its old, ruined teeth on Nico. Behind it, a wall collapsed in flames, and fresh misty night spilled into the room. The smoke had somewhere to go now, and so did Amalia. Nico though, he's not so sure there's anywhere for him to go now. The last thing the boy saw as the fireplace swallowed him whole was a burning painting flying around behind the mouth, fluttering and screaming silently about like a moth that got too close.

When he finally woke up, the early pale glow of the morning greeted him. He sat up groggily, and found himself without a roof. Or walls. Charred wood and ash surrounded him, save for the perfect circle of wood he had woken up on, untouched by the flame. Not too far from him, Amalia was gathering her senses as well, in her own little circle of hardwood.

"Amalia," He croaked, his throat hoarse. "You alive and kicking over there?"

He didn't see the shiver that ran through her body, but he did see her flash a thumbs up. His limbs creaked into standing position and he stumbled his way over there.

"No, no. Like this," he said, collapsing onto the ground next to her before making the universally understood handsign for 'Metal as fuck'. Slowly, she extended her index and pinky into the devil horns, giving him one back.

"I-I thought I was gonna die," she murmured.

"That's metal as fuck," he said.

"The fireplace...it got me. It ate me, I really thought that was it, I thought I was about to be cooked alive, and eaten. Right before it got to me though, I uhm, I saw you ripping up the painting with a piece of metal or wood or something. Did that do it? Did it save us?" Nico scrunched up his face, and looked about the ruins.

"Uh...were there two fireplaces in that house? I dunno man, it didn't seem like that fancy of a place, to have two fireplaces in the same room. Feel like it makes more sense to just, y'know, have one big fireplace. And they did. And it definitely ate me, not you. I thought you set the painting on fire, I thought you were the one doin' the saving. That little fireplace poker I had wasn't enough to cut through any of that shit." Amalia pursed her lips, and said nothing for a moment.

"I managed to burn some of the things I could find around the room, but uh, none of it seemed like it was enough, or even spreading very far. I couldn't really tell what was happening, y'know, with all the...everything. I don't remember having a chance to burn the painting after you pulled it off the wall."

Nico looked around and only saw the remains of an old burned out house, where clearly something terrible must've happened. He dug around the ash with his foot. It was all cold, no hidden cinders or traces of the inferno that had happened hours before. There was some ash on his face and he could see some on Amalia's, but he saw no actual burns or tears in their clothing. The house was unrecognizable, the bare framework and layout now unfamiliar. Their knapsacks of supplies lie against each other in front of the rubble of a destroyed fireplace. This may have been perhaps be one of those weird cases where the house was burned down because it had a place to hold a fire. He looked down at the spot in the ash his foot happened to currently be at, and picked up something shiny. It was an old polaroid, impossible to make out now after sitting through a house burning down, but still somehow reflective all the same.

"Let's go," Nico said. And they went.

 

[The Man in Red]

Caustic​

"Subject Viridian" was the name they had given to the uniquely strange monster they'd had locked up here. Alternatively they called it "the hunter", on account of its uncanny predilection for stalking and ambushing its targets.

Unlike virtually every other case of exposure they'd witnessed, this one had retained some of its higher level brain functions. If anything, it still seemed to be...'alive', strictly speaking. Blinded by an almost all-consuming combination of hunger and anger, but still alive and at least slightly intelligent. Enough to do things like actually opening doors or windows, retreating to find another way around or to get at a target, laying simple and crude traps and ambushes. It was incredibly dangerous just for those facts alone, but there was more.

Physically, it was far more capable than its wiry frame would indicate. It had simply shrugged off the natural limits of the human body, and was constantly exerting everything it had, and the absurdly accelerated metabolism and mild regenerative abilities it was now sporting were keeping it from tearing itself apart under that much force. Of course, it wasn't actually any tougher than it had been, and still seemed perfectly susceptible to normal trauma to drive it off and wound it.

Its heightened senses had also rendered it more easily startled or repulsed by sudden environmental changes. Bright lights or sudden loud noises, rapid changes in temperature and other things could easily frighten and startle it, making it retreat temporarily.

The most curious thing they had found about it, however...was the rampant, unstable nature of the particular viral strain within it. Not only had it triggered unforeseen mutations, greatly exacerbating the already lean and athletic build of the subject, but also contributing to the rapid growth of its nails and teeth well beyond normal limits, splitting and tearing through the skin to form beast-like talons and gnashing fangs, but it was still active and mutating. Every time it was injured or driven off, it convulsed and changed, adapting and altering itself to better cope.

Usually this just resulted in accelerated healing, and a wariness to try the same tactics again. Once it had seen a sudden uptick in intelligence, and it had tried to mimic the code on a keypad to escape confinement. But they suspected that the worst, final mutation would come if it was ever struck down for good and 'killed'.

They had procured a sample of its blood and isolated the viral agents within it, shipping it out to the 'upper brass' for whatever they wanted to do with it, but still had copies of all the base sequences and notes they'd managed to make.

Distantly, in the facility above, the Hunter shrieked again and something banged and crashed about in the staircase outside. Several loud, electronic beeps and 'access denied' sounds came, and on the monitors Caustic could see the thing had found a keycard of its own somewhere, and was repeatedly trying it at the door, to no success. With a snarl, it stared up at the camera, its lips slowly spreading wider into an ever more gruesome expression before it shrieked again and flung the useless keycard away and bolted back into the darkness, crashing and thrashing its way back up the stairs.

 

[The Man in Red]

Lilith​

Making it to the island was a chore in and of itself. The narrow bridge-street was choked with wreckage and debris and half-broken off into the water below. What solid ground was left was by now positively swarming with the city's former residents, shambling and lurching about.

They were of a mostly inconsequential threat save for their numbers; the risk of the bridge collapsing underfoot if she got too careless with the massive slab of metal that was only generously called a 'knife' was more worrisome.

The bright flashes and precise laser fire of the PRL proved far safer, burning and incinerating the infected tissue of the undead in blasts that removed several of them from the picture in a single instant.

Reaching the grounds of the island proved to be a boon, however. Much more stable and open ground, and far easier to deal with the unwanted company. And after managing to break into one of the buildings within...plenty of shelter and supplies ripe for the taking, as well.