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6th of Cylus 725

Any area not within one of the major cities. Most of The Eternal Empire.

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Woe
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Posts: 2644
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 6:46 am
Race: Mortal Born
Profession: Unemployed
Renown: 1640
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The Beast

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Being in the deep forest of the Empire stirred something in Woe, as she strode along, her booted feet treading the snow-caked forest floor. Even here, beneath a voluminous canopy, some snow found its way to the floor, which obscured some of the herbal specimens, many of which had long gone dormant. However there were some winter samples that persisted well into Cylus, even in the dearth of light, in utter darkness. They even thrived. Ice mushrooms, and other such fungal growths loved to grow in the dark, and thrived during these trials, subsisting on the plentiful condensation of the icy surroundings.

It was a few mushrooms that Woe had been sent after, to retrieve in exchange for some research that the good doctor in the Imperial Medical Headquarters held over her head.

Yet the further Woe trod from those civilized and paved pathways, the longer her shadow grew, the more she turned to introspection. The past few cycles had taught her much about the nature of civilized life. It was a life that at one point in her life she thought was all encompassing, never appreciating that there was a wild world of natural laws. A world bereft of authority other than the rule of tooth and claw, and bloodied brambles. The past few cycles had taught her that there was a savagery underpinning the machine of civilization. A thin protective layer that concealed corruption that was every bit as savage as the lawless wilds, but had been left to fester beneath the skin.

She wished to experience the wildness of nature, and thought for once to take the form of the mirror wolf, but no. Even the wolves were too close to the social hierarchy she'd just experienced in Yaralon, where slaves were drained of their emotional tangles and made into willing slaves.

She had something else in mind, as she wandered farther into the woods.

Eventually Woe found a cave, where the cold air didn't touch. There she knelt over the softened earth, and produced the totem items of the Oh'deer stag, and the longknife that had been produced of her experience against the ascended mantis. She knew it was possible to alter and mix forms. Llyr had mentioned it off hand a few times, so Woe remembered. Although her memory was fuzzy of the instance where he told her. Perhaps it'd been in a dream that had been forgotten. Perhaps she'd imagined it. Yet deep in her bones she knew it possible.

So she knelt over these totem objects, and dwelt on the image of the creature she wished to produce for her totems. The form, a spindly humanoid covered in thick, ascended chitin from its head to its hind legs. A pair of large antlers, sharp as the ascended chitin and Oh'deer antler, crowing its long visage. Its hands forming knife-like protrusions that were otherwise resembling fingers. and long blade-like feet, covered in thick hide over the chitin. And finally, a pair of eyes, sunken deep beneath a mask of ascended chitin, behind sockets. Almost appearing to be without eyes.

This was the image of the creature she envisioned, a betrayal and rebuke against the civilized.

Why was she doing this? She wanted to feel, if only for a few moments, the newness of brand new life, introduced to the wilds. To hunt, and be hunted.

Woe didn't know why she did it, but as she disrobed, and accomplished that mental metamorphosis of the shadow between the stag and the ascended mantis, she felt a sudden jolt, as the form took hold. She melted into the ground. Bones snapped, skin split and hardened as the form of the Beast was crafted lovingly from her imagination.

Then after long bits of exhausting and painful metamorphosis, he arose. Leaving the clothing of Woe behind, he strode into the wider wilds, to seek and to hunt. To be spotted and hunted.

Trials after the fact, Woe's clothing was found torn and bloodied in the cave, and they were presumed missing or dead by search parties sent after them. Only the mushrooms they'd gathered had been snatched up for the apothecary that had sent her along. It'd be a shame to waste their efforts, afterall.

word count: 719
Words Like Violence, Break the Silence
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Merged Shadow
Poison Blood
Strong Shadow
Horned Shadow
Winged Shadow
Shadowscar
Ignorance Domain
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Jinyel
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Posts: 66
Joined: Fri Jul 26, 2024 2:23 pm
Race: Human
Profession: Hunter
Renown: 20
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Re: The Beast

Jinyel was no stranger to odd contracts. If he had a small reputation within the hunting office, it was for providing odd solutions to odd problems. He’d heard about the missing gatherer ― everyone in the office was talking about it ― and because everyone else had assumed that she was dead and eaten, he found no reason to question.

Until the doctor asked him to find evidence of the corpse.

Perhaps it was sentimental on the doctor’s part, or perhaps there was some deeper suspicion. Jinyel didn’t know, and didn’t ask; he had never been good with people. But he was good with tracks and wilderness, and that was what the job required: a body, a limb, or even a bag of bones if that was the only thing left. Anything more conclusive than bloody rags.

Jinyel set off in the early morning, three trials after the woman had disappeared and one trial after the search parties had presumed her dead. He carried with him a map to the cave, along with a torch. He didn’t usually hunt with torches, but he wasn’t exactly hunting an animal. Yet. In the dark of Cylus, deep investigation required light.

The map brought Jinyel to a cave tucked in the hollow between two hills, sheltered from the wind and cold. Just outside its mouth, the ground had been flattened by the many feet of the search party. Luckily, only a few of those footprints had made it to the cave and back.

The cave had been left in pristine condition. The blood on the rags had dried, but only two members of the search party had walked in ― and even then, they had turned around as soon as they found the clothes. As long as Jinyel stood directly on top of those prints, he could assume the rest of the evidence belonged to the missing woman and whatever had done this to her.

Jinyel lit the torch and held it as close to the rags as he dared. He found the clothes of a common gatherer torn to shreds, with blood dried brown upon them. A small, human set of footprints led from the mouth of the cave to this pile of rags. A second set of footprints led away from the rags and back out. Those prints were… inhuman. They were much larger than the first, and the toes seemed to end in talons unlike anything Jinyel had ever seen. The stride had an odd angle to it, as if the creature had walked slanted and along the top of the cave, there were several parallel lines gouged into the stone. Jinyel would have thought an elk scraped its antlers against the ceiling, but there were no elk prints here.

There were just these two. One toward the rags, and one away from them. That in itself didn’t make sense. A woman had walked in, been reduced to bloody rags, and then something else had walked out. Even more baffling, there weren’t any other signs of a struggle. If something had eaten her, she would have surely had a single second to run. If it had ambushed her, why would it take the body somewhere else? This cave was protected, and the clothes had been discovered trials after the fact. This was the perfect place to eat someone, except there were no bones, no gristle or offal. Eating a creature was usually a messy affair.

Jinyel took two careful steps toward the rags. He couldn’t afford a third, because the evidence was too bizarre to step on. Only one thing was certain: the creature had not left the woman’s body in this cave. Jinyel didn’t know how it had even gotten in here, since there were no entry footprints, but the trail out was clear enough. Perhaps it had crawled on the ceiling? He would have to keep his eyes upward to track it.

Before he followed the trail, Jinyel took out his notebook and charcoal. In rough letters he wrote:

Jinyel. Contracted to find physical remains of missing person.

Evidence unclear. Woman enters, monster walks out, and in between those is bloody rags. No evidence of dismemberment, just blood. Body was removed from this cave, presumably by monster. Monster can crawl on the ceiling? Exercise caution. I am going to follow monster’s trail, going southeast from cave entrance.

Date: 6 Cylus 725


He folded the paper, set it on top of the rags, and weighed it down with a rock. Then he blew out the torch and took to the trail, waiting a few moments to let his vision adjust. A torch would betray his presence from miles away, and he didn’t want to invite undue attention from any ceiling-crawler monsters. He would hunt in the dark, at least for now. If anyone else came looking for the woman, or for him, they would at least have his conclusions and a direction to follow.
word count: 836
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