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Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
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Alone No Longer

Post by Zan » Sun Jul 10, 2005 7:18 am

The books lay in disheveled piles about the desk, a few choice bores tossed to the floor, halfhazardly rejected by the college student who so vigorously scanned their pages. Too many words, too much ink, too much senseless babble filled his head as he looked for something significant, something real; a tangibility one could only hope to come across in the piles of crap they passed for arcane books these days. Light hazel orbs dashed across bits of useless information after bits of useless information. Sounds of jubilant laughter and the thuds of sliding bodies crept under the crack of his dorm door, distractions that annoyed him even now, even after several weeks of attendance at the damned culinary school.

Conner’s search seemed fruitless, lacking any true substance, just an obsessive would-be adult looking to pinpoint the true place of his intrigue. After what had to have been hours, pointless hours of gibberish, one book drew his attentions, one book offered a promise that had his lips twitching with an anticipating smile. The leather-bound cover was in near-tatters, an ancient feel radiating from its surface. Conner half expected there to be a layer of dust he had to blow off but, finding no such thing, he nudged a few books from the desk to make room for the exceptionally large tome, the seemingly-distant thuds of those pushed aside reaching his ears like some far off echo. His mind had found something it could wrap itself in. Only partly aware of the fact that he shouldn’t be getting his hopes up, the persistent man unbuckled the belt-like contraption that held its pages so firmly in place.

The cover itself, besides looking rather poorly handled, held a light auburn to its color. A texture of vividly displaced fuzz spread over the hairless, smooth exterior. Inside of a small white circle centered on the cover was the sketch of man’s head, half of it quite obviously human, the other half wrought over by what looked like a dog or, perhaps, a wolf. Right above the sketch was the word Cordis and below it was the word Lupinus, something Conner noted he would go to translate later. Musty, canary pages spoke of an atroxlupus time and time again, pumped so full of Latin that it had culled a growing frustration in Conner, a small headache pulsing its way along his temples and, eventually, his forehead. Rough drawings were scattered here and there, things that looked like the evolution of a wolf into a man, obscure displays of the moon, some notations added in under certain phases of the moon’s cycle. The only picture that truly caught his eye, that truly coaxed him to focus, was a single necklace; a metallic looking chain that sported a flat replica of the moon. Unlike the rest of the book which seemed to be supremely focused on wolves, this page was decorated with the half and half faces of several creatures; a hyena, a spider, a rat, a serpent, a tiger, a raven, and a bear. Whoever had been in ownership of the book before Conner had scribbled in ‘Manyskins Lycanthropy’ under the necklace, yet another thing the college student would have to look up.

His door came to a creaking open, his dorm roommate and best friend, Leo, grinning so broadly it looked halfway painful. What looked like shaving cream started to filter onto the room’s carpet.

“Conner! Come on! Zack and the guys stole crates of whipped cream from the big dessert freezer! We’re making our own homemade slip n’ slide!” The end of his mini-speech was met with the ring of laughter through the hall as someone zipped passed him, sliding on some plastic sheet that had been just below all the cream.

“Alright, alright. I can’t focus with you jackasses making so much damn noise anyway.” A small smile starting to spread to his lips as well, Conner pushed his friend out of his way, shutting the door behind them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Toned, nostalgic fingers clutched at the moon of Zan’s necklace, the memory playing back like some reminiscent tape recording. Even with his minor dabblings in the occult, college was a much a simpler time. It was something the Heavy Blade had come to realize as of late, a fact that was becoming harder and harder to swallow. This was his reality now. There was no college. There was no Leo. There was only him and the continuous gusts that made light hearted sweeps through his hair, ruffling the brown threads like some annoying sibling. Zan’s frame, still adorned with clothes from the real world (something that had him hiding whenever he went into the Root Towns), was obscured by the uneven column of rock he had himself huddled behind, only his head having eased itself around the ‘corner’ of the structure. Gold fog outlined his heightened vision, auburn, wolven eyes indulging themselves in the hustle and bustle of fellow players in the distance.

The jealousy was a blatant ghost in his irises, a lingering fact that had him always gazing at what he no longer had. Even being in a coma as he was, Zan wished he could simple traverse amongst the rest of them instead of being stuck behind some rock, waiting for the next time he’d have to bolt past the crowd and charge to the Chaos Gate. There was always the fear that someone would hear his keywords and either tell some eager administrator or try and take him down. It was amazing how many players wanted to PK anybody they considered ‘h4ck3d’. It had never been, at least in his experiences, someone who was stuck in The World, but usually the mild character design hacks instead. Such a thing seemed to make those people feel powerful, valiant, fighting for some ridiculous justice that simply didn’t exist. Though Zan was in fact one of the unfortunates who were, in fact, comatose, all they saw was some street clothes bearing Heavy Blade. So, here he was, a conflicted individual forced on the outside, staring in.

With the small pity party dismissed, Zan turned from the mass of people and called his vision back into normality, the sheen of the wolf dying from his eyes, leaving only the dull remains of deadened azure in its wake. The never ending, chaotically rhythmatic gales continued to whip through the air, a classic trait of Dun Loireag. It was soothing in its own right, tales carried on the wings of its flight to caress along the back of his neck, a whisper in his ears. It had its own edge of comfort, of course, but even that grew to annoy Zan, even that became a pestering itch in the back of his head. The familiar, unnatural anger came swimming to the surface then, a red hot scald beneath his skin, causing his blood to boil and his brain to swim in some inhumanly humid soup. Ever sense his first change he had been abnormally irritable, anger flaring up from time to time at extremely inappropriate moments. It was Nighthand who had realized this and Nighthand who had sent him away, sent him to go and control whatever the hell was making Zan tick before it became a real problem.

There hadn't been a discussion, not really. The Heavy Blade didn't even offer up any sort of argument when Nighthand had made his decision, when the Blademage had temporarily booted him from the so called 'Freedom Fighters.' Zan couldn't think of anything to say. The fact was, when all of the smoke screens of what the former college student would have liked to think of as ill-placed faults were sifted through, Nighthand and himself were right. Zan was, in essence, a danger to himself and those around him. Though he had no real connections with any of the other coma victims, he didn't want to hurt them just the same. Who knows what a scratch or a rake of his teeth could do to another person. Could he spread the lycanthropy? Was it like those low budget films that always 'graced' the horror movie genre? There were so many questions, questions he couldn't answer. With so much tossed up in the air without a proper net to catch them on their way back, Zan needed to put himself as far away from his would-be friends as possible.

There was a loneliness to that realization, a dwelling knot in his stomach that he couldn't quite identify. The logical explanation would be the fact that Zan was lingering on the outskirts of a Root Town with the knowledge that he could have no real human interaction without drawing unwarranted attention to himself. Hell, it should have been from the fact that a group he wanted to one day call his family had simply dropped him to figure this out on his own. Sadly, as was the Heavy Blade's way, things were never that simple. The harsh, desolate loneliness originated from somewhere deeper, darker. No, not darker, but older. Older? Even that seemed the wrong choice. Primal. There it was. Whatever was tugging at him so mercilessly came from the animal that curled inside of him, waiting for the most inopportune moment to spill from his skin. As much as Zan had embraced the Beast, his Beast, the thoughts that propelled it, the instincts that drove it were still a mystery to him. Again he found himself considering that part of him as some separate identity, a case of harshly achieved schizophrenia. He knew better. He was the Beast. Perhaps the sooner he realized that, the sooner he could truly unlock and understand it. No, no. Understand himself.

Had Nighthand understood that this was the task the Heavy Blade needed to accomplish? Zan hadn't pegged the guy as one of those cryptically wise individuals, but in truth he didn't know the man at all. Hell, he could be lofted somewhere staring down at Zan, watching the inner confliction ride over his expression like some silent movie. The thought had alone had his nose suddenly lifted to the catching breeze, sniffing its edges for a hint of Nighthand, for a hint of that power that stung like some acrid cologne inside of his nose. Smelling nothing of the sort, he began to shut down the suddenly lashed out sense. It was during those last few seconds of drawing the world back to human normality that he smelt it. It was the subtlest of aromas, a diluted whiff that spoke of things distant but oh so present. The newfound instinct that came with his....gift....informed him that he was indeed being watched. Someone, somewhere, had their eyes on him. One word sprang to the surface of his thoughts as he caught the last touch of their presence on his nose before his sense of smell was human once more.

Pack.

That one word had energy racing in prickling waves up from his toes to the top of his head, an almost nauseating excitement overtaking the calm, intelligent side he usually sported. It was the Beast, no doubt of that, but it was the Beast in a mood Zan had never experienced before. Such joy, such completion. In an instant all of that sadness, all of that loneliness had dissipated and become the fuel that launched his feet forward and towards the Chaos Gate. Instinct drove him to that swirl of gold and the pool of sapphire at its center. Shoes smothered the grass in crushing footprints as he sprung from earth to the creaking planks of wood that made up most of the main paths of Dun Loireag. The Heavy Blade was careening through crowds of protesting players before he knew it, protests that turned into exasperations of confusion, confusion over his real world appearance in comparison to the sword and sorcery wardrobe everyone in The World seemed to sport so relentlessly.

Wild brown hair whipped in the winds as he tore through the Root Town and towards the culling twirl of his goal not too far off. He was moving with an energy, with a rapture he had never felt in the entirety of his life; real world or otherwise. It was an experienced that was riveting to say the least, his brain swimming in a swishing bowl of endorphins and other elating chemicals. There was such a smile plastered on his face as he knocked a Wavemaster and a handful of other nameless (in his focused eyes, at least) players into the recorder NPC's 'booth'. Apparently, the part of him that was so driven to run hadn't thought human speed was fast enough, his body having swelled and toned the muscles of his body into his Clabro form. The strength that form offered him had the knocked players thudding into the wall, thudding into the hard packed earth that held the recorder NPC's position. Growls of frustration, growls of anger thinned out behind him as he never once stopped, thoughts clouded with the need to go there. Go...where? What the hell was he doing? Zan came to a stumbling halt at the face of the Chaos Gate, the enhanced muscles of his physique toning down and leaving him as he once was; human. A facade, a masquerade at best, but he could think. Without the Beast so close to his thoughts, he could think. Turning on his heels, Zan thought to go back the way he came, only to find his view obstructed with the sight of those he had so recklessly tossed aside. They were nearing closer, words whispered to each other, their lips moving in subtle fractions. Perking ears honed his hearing to their muffled words, informed him of what was to come.

"....contacted an Admin...."

"....have to get him before he logs off...."

"....hacker...."


Wherever he was going, back wasn't one of the options any longer. Zan turned to face the lulling hum of the Chaos Gate once more and couldn't for the life of him (literally, he supposed) think of a proper set of key words that could throw the goons at his back. They weren't too close, but there were players lingering around the gate that could inform the zealous group of his whereabouts. Wherever he was going, it had to be a place they couldn't follow. Where? Where the hell was that going to be? The thought spurned his smell into focus involuntarily, the sweet musk of wolf filling his nostrils, confusing him with illogical stimuli. Wolf? Why did he smell wolf? Zan's smell suddenly shut itself down, only to flare his hearing to life, throw it out to the reaches of Dun Loireag. Underneath all the mindless banter, underneath the hustle and bustle of players shuffling about was the whispering of three words.

"Sand's.....Soulless.....Graveyard....."

The voice was gone almost as soon as it had sounded, a fading femininity. The same words spilled from his lips in a rushed effort as the players continued their careful approach. What had the Administrators told them? Shaking off that would-be stream of thoughts, Zan turned to face the bolded red letters 'Protected Area' and a rather harshly played sound effect. Faced with another string of confliction, the Heavy Blade couldn't help but feel as if someone was toying with him. The information was obviously the opposite of helpful and, had it not been for the eerie green glow his full moon necklace had taken on, he would have said the first three key words that came to mind. It was as if the leather string it had been previously bound to never existed, the small circle of silver metal hovering away from his neck to toss out ghastly, pale lime pulsations to the Chaos Gate. Nearly translucent images of the moon's five phases (the new moon showing up as some dark circle outlined by a green linger of light, much like an eclipse) seemed to form from the iridescent waves of light. Each phase, made up of the same phantom green light, made a circular formation in front of the hovering necklace piece and, for a moment, nothing seemed to happen.

"It'll take a moment...defend yourself."

The phases turned clockwise and counterclockwise, the images spinning this way and that. Zan couldn't help but feel as if he was watching a locker combination being turned before him, a magnified phase flashing in the center of the images from time to time in changing succession; sometimes appearing slowly, languidly, while other times the center image seemed to blink from one random phase to another. Zan tore his eyes from the sight for the moment, adhering to the voices suggestion to defend himself. He turned to see the advancing players undaunted by the sight of his necklace's activity. Whoever was behind the voice seemed to sense his confusion and once again the voice flared to life. It carried the same daunting, confusing lilt to it. Though there was tenderness to it, a maternal lift, it held such potential for harm, as if each syllable had an underlying growl burrowed at its center.

"The light is playing to your eyes, your data. All they can see is you. Even your necklace has shifted to a photosensitive level for your retina. What's happening here isn't meant to be seen by players."

Again the voice left him and again he was left with the decision as to how to handle the players. It was obvious they meant to bind him and they had violence burning through their eyes. Apparently people didn't like to be tossed aside like rag dolls. Who knew? The closest player was a Heavy Blade with a rather basic weapon, a weapon that took long enough to swing that Zan had plenty of time to duck and push his body back into the Clabro form it had achieved so many times before. Though he still looked like him, the sudden fit, bulked tone of his muscles was hard to miss. It made the first attacker blink for a moment, obviously caught off guard. Zan took that moment and used it against the assailant, driving the Absorber in an upwards arch through the player's digital heart. Data spilled from the wound in blue streams of code; they, unlike Zan, didn't seem to bleed blood. Bully for them. Removing his weapon from the man's chest, he watched the grayed corpse fall forward and lofted his attention to the remaining trio of angered players. Gripping the ivory saturation of the Absorber's handle, he charged the nearby Blademaster and met the coming overhead arch with an uprising tilt of his own blade. The sound of metal hitting metal sung around them and stung his heightened hearing.

Shutting it down would mean shutting down any tips the ominous voice might have to give, but it would be necessary. Though a static ring still echoed in his head, he could hear. The strength of Zan's repose had the Blademaster stumbling backwards, arms winmilling about. The lycanthrope's blade wasted no time driving through the player's gut and out the digital flesh of his lower back. The Blademaster's eyes narrowed with the attack, frustration dawning over his expression as a Heavy Axewoman charged from behind him. A battle stained look creased over Zan's face as he smiled, a firm kick to the Blademaster's sternum dislodging the player from the Absorber and sending him fumbling against the Heavy Axewoman. With a shout that promised more blood and more violence, Zan slammed himself up against the Blademaster, shoulder meeting shoulder as the Absorber pressed its blade horizontally against the man's gut, crossing over the wound he had already made. A cry hissing through his lips, Zan jerked to the side, using every ounce of his strength to drag that blade in a harsh slash across the Blademaster's stomach, dropping him in a grayed silhouette of his former self. The sound of severing flesh graced his ears and only drew his blood lust on forward as he eyed the Heavy Axewoman.

There was such arrogance in her eyes, such assurance that Zan found himself laughing at her ignorance. That was his own brand of arrogance and, with his guard down, he didn't even register the wicked looking axe as the blunt pole end (the end he hadn't thought to watch) drove itself into Zan's belly, doubling him over as all the wind emptied from his lungs. Coughing, Zan staggered back, the grip on his sword having been loose enough to drop the weapon after the assault. It became more and more obvious that Zan's brand of thinking wasn't going to cut it against this opponent and, with an edge of regret, he let the Beast ride over him. One pair of gleaming, sharp fangs stretched from his upper row of teeth and another stretched from the bottom row; both pairs being teeth meant for nothing but tearing and shredding meat. Zan revealed those teeth in a snarl that curled his lips and paused the Heavy Axewoman mid swing. Again he used surprise to his advantage, all of his strength thrown forward as he barreled into her. Her grip was much more determined on her weapon and he knew he had but a few moments to rid himself of the threat.

The Wavemaster, the last of his attackers, smelled no longer of anger but of fear as those teeth ripped into exposed neck of the woman time after time, blue data splashing over his form, trickling in odd rivulets down his chin as he lifted his gaze to the remaining threat. Threat? Ha. The Beast couldn’t help but laugh at that. The laughter faded from his throat as he took control once more, but the echo of it remained in his head. As if on cue, something resembling the sounding of a gong rung behind him, capturing his attentions as the last phase of the sequence seemed to play in the center. Lifting himself from the Heavy Axewoman's dead body and approaching the Chaos Gate, he watched the symbols flash an array of various colors until each moon phase had its own hue. A high pitched whistle bothered even his human-level hearing as ribbons of code flowed in the colors of those phases and collided in the center of the spinning gate. Zan had one last chance to eye the three grayed figures before the necklace swung back around his throat on an appearing leather string and fractured, golden rings descended upon him. The Administrators couldn't have been too far off and wherever the voice was leading him to, it had to be better than where he was.
Last edited by Zan on Thu Feb 02, 2006 1:16 am, edited 5 times in total.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Post by Zan » Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:55 am

Zan, for one misguided reason or another, expected a smooth transition, a quick shift to another field. What occurred was anything but smooth; the descending, splintered rings making a very irking whirring noise as they reaches his feet. The Heavy Blade's form seemed to blink for a while, an almost seizure-inducing flash of his character image in a rather rapid succession. In an attempt to look around and absorb the reactions from the root town's inhabitants, Zan sought to swerve his body back around, only find he was really and truly paralyzed. His eyes refused to blink, his arm refused to twitch, the smallest fiber remained stubborn and in place. That familiar, bestial anger stirred in his gut once more, growled silently in the cage the stillness has forced upon it. Agitation was a subtle, unseen rash upon his skin, an itch he couldn't for the life of him scratch. For a while Zan thought himself permanently placed this way, reduced to a still (though blinking) image of his digital self. It wasn't until the words played in a small, luminescent print that he knew he was wrong.

Fear was an electric jolt through his bones, a shock that animated his marrow and gave his limbs life again. Making a harsh one-eighty, his eyes took in the world around him as a distilling blur until his form came to settle in place, at ease the best it could manage. Where he had once stood upon a lifted city, a lofted community of rock and wood and flesh, he now found himself in a decrepit whirl of earth and gravel. Merciless winds whipped his coat in all possible directions, bringing the material to slap against his body in a continuous assault, nigh-bruising him where it touched. Never once had Zan experienced a sand storm in the real world, but he could almost guarantee this was what it was like. Any attempt at opening his eyes to pierce with the wall of sand with the bleeding amber of his wolven eyes proved futile, terra biting him with every try. The sheer force of the wind made smelling anything laughable (not to mention taking it anything short of a shallow breath left him gagging and coughing for a set of discomforting moments) and hearing anything through the moaning cry of the wind was simply impossible.

Zan was a blinded, deafened, senseless predator that found himself trapped by a danger he saw no escape from. Helpless wavers, hissing stumbles still left him encased, chewed at by the attacking bits of sand. Then, as if it had never been there, the storm suddenly faded and left the Heavy Blade blinking and thoroughly confused. Perking ears told him of the sand storm's continued existence several miles off, its movements sporadic and unpredictable at its mildest. Not wishing to be caught in its grip again without proper knowledge of where the hell he was, Zan gave a glance about him, taking it whatever he could as fast he could. Luckily, there just wasn't much to take it. The soil was a cracked memory at his feet, lightly coated with remnants of the dust storm. The sun beat down through a lingering haze of dust, lancing rays of light along the malnourished ground. Miles and miles showed nothing but a blistering heat; not a cactus, not a shrub, not a single sign of life to call to notice. The only things that caught his eyes (as they were rather hard to ignore) were the corpses. A half a dozen decayed, leathery sacks of withered skin and viscera hung tied in a less biblical crucifixion upon the sort of crosses one would tie scarecrows to. Jagged tooth-filled mouths gaped open at him, as if his sudden presence had disturbed, surprised them from their slumber.

Though the figures remained unmoved, remained the morbid decorations that they were, Zan could not help but sense a hum of life through their bodies. The Heavy Blade had come to believe they were nothing but some twisted scenery even with this unshakeable unease and it wasn't until the few eyes that hadn't simply shriveled into ash turned him that he realized that he was wrong. The lycanthrope was only partially aware that he had stepped onto the magic portal symbol that lay etched into the earth beneath the skeletal figures, most of his mind floored to the scene unfolding before him. The rope that bound their wrists and their ankles to the planks of wood suddenly snapped and spilled them onto the ground. Tattered rags clung to their husks in some undefined desperation, the bones of their ribs and curved juts of their hips grossly apparent. Boney digits clawed at the crackled soil as they pulled themselves closer to Zan, scratch by shiver-inducing scratch. Though he was indeed disturbed by what his eyes fed him, he couldn't help but fear secure next to the weak remains that slithered humorously slow in his general direction.

One thing he hadn't expected, however, was the wings that exploded from their backs, shards of bone flung this way and that as the motes shook dust from shriveled feathers. The first signs of panic showed in the thud that accompanied his pulse, the thin drip of adrenaline that had made its way into his bloodstream. Wings that seemed impossible to fly with lifted the creatures into the air until they wavered several feet above him, screeching with a sound that was too akin to a harpy to settle his nerves. A quick check on their names revealed them as 'Fahmor', beasts with a tolerance to the Earth element. Seeing as his strongest skill was a Gan spell, that simply wasn't adding to the good news he already seemed to be lacking. Whatever he was going to do, he was going to have to do it now. There was nothing friendly about the way they balled and unballed their fists, fingers ending in pain-promising nail points. How he had missed such nails in the first place was beyond him, but such a thing seemed small and juvenile at that point in time. Zan did the only thing he could think to do as they began a dive-bombing like decent; toss out his hand and throw himself forward.

"Dek Ganz!" The words were hurried, shaky as he spoke them.

The furthest would-be attacker's image rippled for a moment and the skill seemed to pause him in curiosity, playing out the general reaction Zan had been looking for. Turning his leap into a roll that he supported with his forearms, the Heavy Blade tensed as the wave of Fahmor swept passed him and came to a spinning halt a yard or two away. Wasting no time if he could help, Zan shouted 'Gan' and 'Zot' in a rather broken spit of speech, his vocabulary seemingly distorted by the rage his need to survive had inspired in the Beast. Such self-preservation seemed one of the many ways to make his skin boil and beg the creature he was to shed the hindrance of its human suit. The thought came to him then that perhaps know would be just a dandy time to transform, but his hold on his humanity and the sudden rise of granite seemed to stall the Beast. Whatever control he had once had over it had been taken away with the acclamation of his Garou form (a name he simply knew, as if his infection had a language all its own). A wistful look glazing over his eyes for a moment, he clutched the Absorber in his palms and leaped towards the Fahmor that had become momentarily impaled by one of several columns of jagged rock.

Its thrashings might have been amusing in a different situation, but now they simply posed an obstacle for any real, critical strike. Doing the first thing that came to his mind, Zan heaved his weapon forward, watching it slice through the air to come at a dead stop through the monster's skull. The attack didn't kill the Fahmor, but only made its cries louder, more ear-piercing. Snarling his frustrations in a manner that was far more animal than human, Zan watched the slab of rock drag the creature back to the ground before it disappeared, leaving the thing flailing a few inches from him. Remembering its friends, the lycanthrope turned to face what he expected to be another dive of the monsters, but watched as the edge of the sandstorm engulfed them, temporarily binding them in its insanity. Knowing it didn't last forever, Zan cupped his hand on the handle of his weapon and yanked it from the Fahmor's head, bringing it back down in a grunted swing to its neck as it attempted to rise up. The former college student expected a flash of blood or at the very least an appearance of data pouring from it, but found its death rather unique. It simply blinked as he had before, its image spasmodically flashing for a few seconds before it simply ceased to be. Odd.

Again Zan found himself facing the not-so-distant thrash of the sandstorm, though this time he didn't wish it to end knowing full well he'd have little chance of survival against five more of those things. The Heavy Blade was once again urged by his need to survive, begged to transform, pleaded with to fight just a little harder. Zan simply couldn't bring himself to go that extra mile. It would cost him too much if he began to rely on that side of himself. The Beast was powerful, but it was wild. Power without control isn't power at all, but chaos masquerading as such. The former college student had come to realize that with the gifting burden of his ability; light shining through a different set of blinds. All of that consideration, all of that resistance to the inevitable was torn asunder in a mere moment, the dissipating storm revealing the rest of the Fahmor in a more agitated state than he had left them. Nails clicked together and heads drooped in an awkward tilt, shriveled sockets seeming to toss voids of horror in Zan's direction.

Whether it was the fear of the death itself or the continuing need to be, Zan felt the change ride over him like a wave of pain incarnate; agony given shape. Bones snapped and reshaped, muscle tore and swelled in a tone of steel that promised damage. The muzzle that began to jut out from his face muffled his screams into yelps and whimpers, like a dog being kicked time after time after time. The Fahmor seemed unphazed by the onslaught of changes that continued to take hold of Zan, as if such a show of power was not something new to them. That was the last intelligent thought that managed to cross his synapses before he was all Beast, all rage, and all power without control. The creatures were in a sweeping dive by the time the fur rippled over his form in a cascading wave of the darkest of browns. The mirrored moment of completion was met with the scramble of claws and screeches around him, wails of revenge for their fallen brethren as red lacerations split over Zan's physique. The relentless attacks only fueled his anger, only tossed in more kindling to the pit of fury that had become his mind. A flailing scramble brought him away from his attackers, all fours hitting the ground in an almost ape-like run (the Garou form being half human, half wolf as it was).

The distance he had set between them with the agility that raced through his fibers was barely enough, their claws only inches away from dicing into his back yet again. Most of the scratches they had made had sealed up and left no trace of their existence, only the deeper wounds lingering for a handful of seconds or so before they too became but a fading memory. They hadn't swarmed him long enough to do any real damage, but the moment they caught him again, he knew he wouldn't be so lucky. Their maneuvers were so practiced, so twin to his own that it seemed as if they had chased him for years, known the Beast that raptured him so easily. Zan found himself a hovering thought above the action, his mind forced out of his own head, the Beast having taken a more mastered control over his actions than normal. Even pushed out as he was, he could still sense the terror that hung around the fleeing wolf. Something about the Fahmor irked it, brought it more senseless than it usually was.

A howl boomed through the field, vibrated the very earth that the Beast bound across. It commanded attention, sung of power and warning of its use. All of the Fahmor stopped at the exact same moment, as if becoming as paralyzed as Zan was enraptured. Again the smell of pack filtered into his nose, the sweet musk of wolf almost intoxicating in its entirety. As distracted as he felt, he didn't waste the distraction, nine feet and hundreds of pounds of muscle motioning in a harsh turnabout that brought him facing the one at the head of the others. Mostly eyeless heads canted off to the right, as if searching, sensing the origin of the noise. Even when Zan's wickedly clawed, furred hand tore through the corpse's chest and crushed its heart in his palm the rest of the group seemed hypnotized, boggled. A combination of what Zan surmised as the leader's cries and a second howl broke them free of their chance. Instead of continuing their assault as the Beast-diluted Zan expected, they gave him one last banshee call and flew away, horrid wings flapping against the humid thermals.

With the danger gone and the fear, the rage slowly losing its ground, Zan was able to call his shape back into humanity, leaving him a panting Heavy Blade on knees that dug into the dry, cracked earth. Zan dare not focus his hearing, the Beast still idly nipping at his proverbial heels. All he could do was kneel there, trying to hear past his own harsh breathing with his all too human ears. Fatigue was a dead weight on his thoughts, a crippling injury all its own. The fight itself hadn't been very strenuous and the short run had been all but. It was the quick dash from form to form that him feeling so damn dead. It was the wooziness that had him forgetting about the traveling sandstorm, a distant thought in the crowd of screaming decisions in his head. Thoughts clashed, adrenaline continued to pump into his panic drive, pressing his anxiety further as he wondered who had come to his rescue. Had they meant to? Did they simply want Zan to themselves? The paranoia was a chuckling voice that whispered tension along his shoulders, bunched him up in anticipation. Be it the growing confliction of what to do, the stress of the situation itself, or the simple need to black out, it wasn't long before Zan was in a sleepless state of unconsciousness.

-------------------------------------------------

The Heavy Blade awoke to find himself laying face forward into the group, his breath remaining shallow and careful even as he stirred. When the blur of his sleep-racked eyes came to clarity, he immediately grew rigid, terrified into metaphorical stone. Black shoes filled his initial vision and a glance up revealed to him the rest of the individual that loomed above him. Charcoal pants matched the tone of her shirt, a dulled shade of red enveloping the saturation of her waist-length leather coat. Raven tresses filtered in shadowy wisps around her shoulders, hair so dark it distracted it from the potential danger of the person before him. She seemed amused by his situation, lips curled back in a growing sprout of humor as Zan quickly rose to a sit and crab-walked away. There were no words between them, just a simple, primal understanding of superiority. She was stronger. She was faster. Her reflexes could match him even in the form she held now. Form she held now? Where the hell did that thought come from? She seemed to read the quirk of his brow as easily as one would read a child's book, laughter trembling from her lips.

“Relax, relax. I’m not going to hurt you. No need to scurry away like some frightened little mouse. Mice are prey. You are a predator. Act like it, okay?” The last word was lilted with an almost tender tone, as if she had recognized the dark edge her other words had captured.

“Who…who are you? Why did you call me here?” Zan had recognized the lazy, sultry coat her syllables had worn, a subtle seduction.

The woman seemed to really take his words into consideration, as if not only did she have to take care in absorbing them, but replying to them. She was being eerily careful of him, like he was a child handling a handgun or some psycho with dynamite strapped to his chest. She didn’t smell of fear, but of curiosity (Zan having given in to using his senses once more, feeling himself completely dwarfed in her presence). Above all else, above what emotions he was able to identify by scent, was the steadily familiar smell of wolf. The Heavy Blade had no explanation for it, had no way to elaborate on what his brain was telling him. Was she another coma victim? Had she someone ‘inherited’ the same ability he had? Such questions were squashed by the lob of fear that swelled in his chest as she took a step forward, a step she quickly retraced in light of his reaction. Both palms stretched out to him as if to show she wasn’t carrying any weapons. Zan knew damn well she was the weapon, but that was neither here nor there. Hell, who was he kidding, it was here, there, and every damn place she moved.

“I’m Lowen. I brought you here to protect you, to protect those around you. Your control is nonexistent. If you were just a player hanging out with other players, I wouldn’t give a damn. But you and those you socialize with aren’t simply players. You can hurt people. Literally.” Lowen’s words were like a recording in his head, taken from his very thoughts.

“The name’s Zan. Well, Conner, depending on where and when you’re asking.” It was meant to be a joke, but it came out as dead serious as Zan felt.

“Well, Zan, take my hand and we’ll go someplace safe. Well, safer than here, anyway. We need to have a chat.” With those foreboding words she outstretched her hand towards him, a soft smile painting her lips. Taking the offer, Zan clasped his hand in her own and knew then and there that she was another person to deface his experiances in The World. One small change this time around, however.

She was beautiful.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Post by Zan » Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:49 pm

For a while the pair simply walked through the expanse of desolation, not a word passing between them. Lowen's eyes wandered around, looking for any of the tell-tale signs of roaming monsters. One basic fact of the game; you didn't have to unlock a monster portal to come across creatures in the World, some simply found you. Though not always the case, such wanderers in that particular field were the ones that even she wasn't eager to confront. Though her gaze was constantly shifting, her nose lofted to the wind from time to time to catch any approaching Fahmore's scent. Zan's was pinned forward; transfixed. It wasn't just her beauty that had him enthralled, but the way she carried herself, the waves of confidence that echoed proudly from her shoulders. It was something to strive for, a state of being that Zan so longed to obtain. Beyond all of the confidence she had, beyond the looks, was something even more precious. Control. Complete and utter control. She knew what she was. She glorified it. Her and her Beast had accepted their singular unity. Even with that little pea of knowledge nudged into Zan's brain he couldn't bring himself to call him and the Beast one. Couldn't. Wouldn't. Something that wanted to consume his friends and use their fear as some spice to his t-bone wasn't exactly the something you wanted to accept as part of your own mentality.

The walking soon became a jog and even that fell into a run soon after, Lowen no longer looking about, but poised relentlessly forward. The Heavy Blade didn't stop to question her, knowing full well that whatever had her in this honed panic wasn't something you'd want to give time to catch up. Catching up was a problem for Zan, however. Lowen's speed was unnatural, uncannily like his own when he lingered in the Clabro form. Unlike him, though, she seemed perfectly human at the moment. No heightened muscle tone, mass, or even the beginning hints of claws. If this woman even had a Clabro form, Zan most definitely didn't want to be the one on the receiving end of it, let alone the full transformation. So, as embarrassing as it felt to result to such, the former college student found himself in Clabro's thrall; his form tweaked, speed hefted up just enough to bring him to her. Even then, even with the thrill of boosted strength, speed, and agility coursing through him, he could barely manage to stay at her heals. Such a thing would have brought a smile to his face, would have made awe splay over his features, had it not been for the rattling growl that thundered behind them. A quick glance behind him revealed nothing but the seemingly endless emptiness of the field. The moment he brought his head forward once more, the sound boomed a second time.

The growl didn't belong to a wolf, his ears, his Instinct told him that much. Whatever it was wasn't any animal Zan was aware of and that could very much be so. The World was a place of many grotesque wonders. Why not just add another to the mix? Chaos always enjoys company. Well, to be more precise, Zan thought, Chaos inspires company. His own thoughts began swimming in such a direction, panic finally beginning to settle in as the lycanthrope began to finally feel the entity, sense whatever it was. The silence that had been entrenched around them after the second growl wasn't comforting, but simply more terrifying. It was as if the being, the monster, whatever the hell it was, was steadily closing in on them; from the flanks, the back, and any other minor angle Zan's immediate vision wasn't able to cover. It was a presence more than a bodied existence in the field, something that made Zan feel as if running was beyond pointless. He opened his mouth to mention this to his sprinting companion ahead, but the sudden onslaught of rot proved distracting. Senses heightened as they were, Zan couldn't help but cough, half-gag as he ran, entropy curling through his nostrils, settling in.

"Almost there! Keep up!" Her voice was minorly muffled by her own panting, Lowen seeming to have a stamina limit as much as he did.

"Almost where damn it?! There's nothing within miles of where we are!" Frustration, exhaustion, and fear were getting the best of him, his weakness bringing a spark of hope to his Beast; another chance for control.

Lowen said nothing, continuing the silence she had started several minutes ago, only adding to the deafening silence the creature seemed to bring with it. Not a single grind of gravel against his footsteps made a sound, everything but their voices seeming to be hushed by whatever was following them, whatever was around them. In another life Zan would have found such a thing exciting, being an overly brazen and foolishly courageous youth, but with the knowledge of this games capabilities for horror and true pain, the Heavy Blade had no such aspirations of thrill. When his legs began to burn, when the additional muscle granted to him by the Clabro form begin to whine and boil with pain, he knew they had run quite far enough. Again he opened his mouth to say something and again he was halted by surprise, Lowen's image suddenly rippling and disappearing altogether. The question that immediately sprung to the front of his head was answered by the sudden absence of the field. Instead of a decrepit desert about him, he found himself in a blackness so thick it was like walking through ink. The only thing that threw off the metaphor was the fact that he could see both himself and the lovely creature with her blood-red leather coat. The blackness of her hair, the shadowed hue of her pants and her shirt, all of it seemed offset against the background that now consumed them.

She was remaining silent, remaining the enticingly irking creature she had been several minutes back. Her eyes seemed to pierce his, to read the very contents of his soul, who he was; fears, doubts, worries, elations, all of it. There was a significance to her noiselessness, as if a message was being played all around him and he simply wasn't tuned into the right frequency. Once the feeling of vertigo began to settle in, rock against his gut, struggle with his cranium, he began to realize where he was. He had been here before. He had been here several times before. It was the place his mind escaped to during his infection. It was the place his mind had run to during his first transformation. It was the place his mind had continued to force itself too when things were far past stressful. His copy, the configuration of Zan data, had revealed the origin of this place; deleted fields, lost parts of the World. Is that where that field had been? Is that why the monsters' data simply poofed from existence when he had killed them? Is that why he had felt off balance the moment he had arrived upon the dead surface of that field? Sick of asking his brain questions it couldn't answer, Zan chose to break the silence.

"That field, that place, this place....they're all locked fields, right? Forgotten? Deleted?" Zan's eyes now searched her own for the same knowledge she had plucked from his, but found such impossible.

"Locked? Forgotten? Deleted? Yes and no. They're locked in the since of people being unable to get in, but aren't the locked fields you're thinking of. As for forgotten, well, you can't forget what was never known to you. Only a select few Administrators of the World know that these places existed once. They, along with the designer of this place and its inhabitants, believe it to be gone. For all intents and purposes they are. Gone, that is. Where you are right now is sort of a...cookie file, if you will. It's a shadow of a place that once was. A memory, I suppose, that all computers seem to have. So yes, deleted is the most accurate. The CyberConnect Corporation thought Michael Graham's, the designer's, ideas were too adult, too unsettling for children. Though the World isn’t limited to children or even has a child majority, C.C. Corp wanted it to be 'age friendly.' As you could tell from the creatures you fought, this place doesn't exactly scream 'come one, come all.'" Her response seemed to settle at that, an odd edge of caution seeming to filter from her. Though Zan had receded back into human form, her body language was more than enough to cue him in.

It was Zan's turn to choose silence over immediate response, his eyes shifting away from her own to glance about the nothingness that now homed them. It wasn't necessarily a lot of information to take in, nor was the information anything unsettling. He simply didn't feel himself fit for this conversation. As much as he was told that he was playing a game, as much as he knew that to be true, he still felt it safer to assume himself engrossed in reality. All this talk of CyberConnect and cookie files was forcing him to face the reality that somewhere, in some hospital, he was lying down, lost to the world. Having known some of the Freedom Fighters to have been trapped in the game for a few years now, hope of waking up, of opening his eyes to the sterile prison of the hospital was nonexistent. Preferring the cold embrace of a hospital over a video game was a sad point of Zan's life, something that would have been humorous in a completely different situation.

"Alright, as little sense as that made, I'll take it for what it was. Now, let's get more specific. Who are you exactly and what the hell was chasing us?" There was a sudden maturity to his voice, Zan beginning to adapt to his current situation.

"There's no time to go over both. We have to get moving, and soon. So for now I'll answer the latter. The presence that was following us is called the Dread, the Beast." Lowen seemed to read his mind, or the contortion in his facial expression, and she paused.

"The Beast? That's sort of instinctively what I've been calling the animal drive I've had since I've been infected. Is there any sort of--" His voice was cut off by the quick lash of her response.

"Connection? Of course. The Dread appears in a different form for each of us, each of the Garou, the Shifters. It appears in the form of what you see your Beast as. To conquer it is to conquer your Beast. Defeating it won't destroy the urges you have, but will give you the reins to the crazy sled in your head." Again she paused because, like last time, Zan was about to interrupt with another question.

"If it's something you've already beaten, then why do you run from it?" A simple question, but a necessary one.

"I run from it because if it catches up, if your mind thinks it has caught up to you, than you're forced to fight it again. As you grow stronger, so does it. To lose to the Dread is to fall prey to your Beast once more. I won't go back there. Not again. Never again." Her voice signaled conclusion, as if that were to be the end of the conversation.

Zan wasn't in the proper mood to absorb any further fun facts, so he let it be at that. She seemed stalling for the proper moment to say whatever it was she was keeping from him. There was an intrigue she clung to her as tight as the crimson leather her jacket displayed, something she was unwilling to expose. The Heavy Blade was sure there would come a point when that one thing, the one thing that had her so withdrawn into the privacy of her shell, would be cracked a touch to give him some insight. Zan wasn't entirely sure why the thought was so firmly planted into his thoughts, but it was something he was learning to trust. Around her his instinct was heightened, throttled into an almost pristine condition. It was as if her scent underpaid her thoughts and even human as he was now, he was more wolf than ever. That thought made him take a small step away from her, and, as he had suspected, he felt a step of humanity returned to him. It was an odd feeling, as if a fog was partially lifted, just a millimeter further; a fog he wasn't even aware of in the first place.

The former college student didn't feel the need to question her about it, for he already seemed to have collected the explanation. She was the epitaph of lycanthropy; she was its purest embodiment. Her instincts were her own, her urges were under the weight of her own jurisdiction, and Zan didn't doubt that she could bring even the mightiest warriors to their knees when she wore the Garou form. The certainty her eyes held was belittling to say the least, as if being around her suddenly made you smaller, less important. Oddly enough, it seemed perfectly okay. Perhaps it was the control she had over his Beast or the complete exhausting he swung himself around with. The lycan was sick of being so paranoid all the time, of having to look over his shoulder every free moment offered to him, of having to second guess his own thoughts. Zan wouldn’t let himself walk around in blind faith around the woman, but he would allow himself some blanket of idiotic trust. If it came back to bite him in the ass, fine, but it just didn't seem like that was in the cards for him. Already she was teaching him more about himself than he could have ever expected back with the Freedom Fighters. That's when the thought slithered its way into his ignorant relaxation; did he need to go back? Did they really need him that badly? If he could let the Beast run wild around her without worry of oppression in any shape or form, than why couldn't he stay? If he was to be stuck in this God damn game for a long time, there was no reason it couldn't be here, wherever he was going to be.

That confirmation made him smile, made his lips curl upward with such a wave of released tension that his body seemed to melt without collapse. Lowen was in the process of turning from him when she caught the look, when her senses whispered his little secret. Excusing her moments of humor or superiority, she had been rather stoic through their little interactions. Now, however, she seemed to take on a grayed hum of sadness. If she saw what his face had almost definitely exposed, than his clasp to the easy side of life didn't please her. Sure, Zan wasn't the most social human being on the planet, but was he that repulsive to think as a staying figure? The confusion that flooded the previously happy expression seemed to be read as well, a look of annoyance replacing the small exposure of sadness. It all seemed to be a story, a calculated story, taking place between them. It was a story without words, without gestures. It was simply a tale of eyes and twitching lips, something that seemed natural to him. Again he was provided with knowledge and again it didn't seem out of the ordinary; this was how animals had their conversations, how wolves communicated with the pack. A good, consuming part of him wanted to turn tail and run at that, but again he chose to embrace it instead.

It was odd to have such a clear view of her in the pitch nothingness, as if the darkness should have eaten them both away minutes ago. Yet there they stood. Not obscured, but so wholly alone. It was in that moment that he was able to see past the veil of her emotion-dulled exterior and see the fragile child that lay beneath. They had more in common than the ability to change themselves. No matter how many people she surrounded herself with (and, by the almost overwhelming presence of pack she seemed to give off, she most definitely surrounded herself) she felt lost, a dimming star in the towering shadow of the rest of the universe. For a fraction of a second, for a crack in time, he saw just how vulnerable she was. It made something in his eyes soften, something that made her wince and turn from him, as if the Heavy Blade had dealt some stammering blow. The moment her fists began to shake, the moment her knuckles seemed to lose all color from the grip she exacted, he felt utterly compelled to apologize. For what exactly, he couldn't muster, but he felt it necessary just the same. The tension in the air was as thick as the ink that enveloped them so entirely, a tension that threatened to strangle them if not removed and removed soon.

"Lowen...I'm s--" His voice was interrupted by the quick and oddly steady voice of the beauty before him.

"Don't, Conner. Just don't." As against speaking as she seemed to be, the interruption of words seemed to wash away the clench of her fists and patch up the holes in her mask.

It took a little while for the contents of her own mini-sentence to sink in. Conner? Had she just called him Conner? It wasn't that he hadn't told her his real name, he had, it was simply that no one but one person referred to him by that name in The World. It was oddly unsettling and he knew it shouldn't have been. If anything, it was vaguely respectful in its own right. Yet...something about it made his instincts stir and, if Zan had learned anything lately, it was that his new instincts were something he had to trust. So, following that path of inquisition, Zan began to put together the pieces in his head. The way she studied him, the way she talked to him, her general mannerisms weren't of someone getting used to the company of a stranger. No, they were all the gestures, the knowing movements, of getting to know someone you've heard a lot about. Almost like a celebrity, one could say, though Zan knew he was anything but that, especially with her. It could be that, as she had almost definitely been tracking his movements and activities for quite some time, that she had simply listened to people talk about him (did they even do that?). However, even that seemed to be off. Someone had been conversing with her about the former college student, but who? Who could know him so well? Who would call him Conner even in this place? The first person to come to mind was Leo, but (with the exception of flashmails) they referred to each other by their character names when on the game. It heightened the experience. If not him, then who? The moment he deciphered his own question, the answer appeared before him; arms crossed, head shaking, a mockery.

"I told you he wasn't ready for this, Lowen. He's too desperate to belong somewhere. Bringing him to some place with people exactly like him this early in the game is dangerous." The Zan replica's appearance made Conner take on his real world persona's visage, an odd trick that the data clone seemed to pull each time they met. Ignoring the fact that he was talking like Conner wasn't in the vicinity, they usually got along.

"They aren't exactly like him, Zan. He can handle it. Conner is stronger than you give him credit." If there was anything Conner could have at that moment, it would have been to see her eyes.

"Oh? Really? Well than, why don't you just leave him to explore the Umbra by himself? I mean, if he's so strong and all." Though Conner felt obligated to be offended by his words, the tone seemed almost protective. How exactly, Conner couldn't identify. As if to defy Zan's words, Lowen spun to face Conner, determination furrowed in her brow.

"Conner, I'm going to leave you for a little while. All you have to do is find your way to us. Trust your instincts. That's all you have to do." Her face was stern and her words were strong, but indifferent.

Conner couldn't help but feel like the pawn in some childish game of who's right and who's wrong. He wanted to question Zan for being there in the first place, for being a part of why he was brought here, but couldn't find the right words. Anything he had to say, any protest he might have had about being abandoned in such a place was dispersed by her approach. It wasn't the walk that distracted him, but the embrace that followed. It was bleak, lacking any emotion at all, but surprising nonetheless. Just when he thought he had reached his confusion potential, she set a single, fading breath against his ear. Though Conner was unaware of the wisp of black that curled into his head, he was all to conscious of the sudden shift in his code, as if a bundle of yarn had been partially unraveled to give him a view of the thing it contained. The Umbra, new knowledge she had instilled. Before he could thank her, the world seemed to shoot upward, as if the Heavy Blade was suddenly inside an elevator that had begun to drop several floors at once. He did the manliest thing he could think of; he screamed.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Post by Zan » Mon Oct 03, 2005 5:38 am

There was no clarity, there was only confusion. A world of draining pixels like upturning sand became Zan's surroundings, a whir of noise akin to some obscure but continuous blast of wind becoming his lullaby. The Heavy Blade had no time to digest the new installation of knowledge in his brain, his mind too suddenly bombarded with the fierce scarcity of order. Soon even the upward rush of shadow (eyes bleeding to amber, offering him some clarity) and the merciless tempest of air became but a memory, leaving him once again to drift in the nothingness. Though Zan was some solidity away from calling this place familiar, the continued feeling of a free fall changed his assumption a touch. It wasn't long before he began to miss the lash of lifting ink and relentless gales. The blank drop was eerie, disturbing even in removal of the impending knowledge that he'd hit the bottom of this nameless pit. Ignorance soon became nostalgia as, seconds becoming an unbearable handful of minutes; all sense of direction was lost to him. It was a departing necessity that had him crying out a noiseless below, a desperate gape of his jaw. Vertigo was unavoidable, Zan unable to determine whether he was floating, dropping, or rising through the void.

There was an absurdity to this ride, a rollercoaster Zan had been reluctant to pay for in the first place. When his desperate, hastened sentences became exhausted mumbles and nausea had made a permanent home in his gut, the wistful train came to a halt. No impact shattered his bones like porcelain and the ground was free from some offset destiny of a canvas to his blood. It was simply as if he had been there the entire time, the rest some perturbed daydream cast off by the molding remnants of his subconscious. Concrete was a cold, chalky reassurance against his face and the one palm that curled above his head, the other laying limp but not lifeless at his side. The twitch of digits and the pang of nausea brought him to the balls of his feet, one palm continuing to remain planted on the sterile stone while the other clutched frantically at his stomach. A few seconds of dry heaving later and the distilled disturbance in his gut had receded to a pale reminder of his experience. His form still periodically wracked with tremors, Zan rose in completion to his feet, a whispered sway commenting on his condition. Forcing his eye sight away from the amber of the wolf and back into the pale blue of normality, he gave his surroundings a glimpse. All that met his needy pupils was the thick blanket of fog that lay in a lingering swirl, like the normal water clear air had been unsettled with the spill of milk.

It was then the peace of position and calmed nerves brought him knowledge, the gift Lowen had bestowed upon him before his departure. He was in the Umbra, as the replica had indirectly told him he would be; a place that offered solitude, social uproar, truth, doubt, denial, deceit, peace of mind, every synapse and chemical response the brain could offer to those who possessed the Gift, the ability to become more. This revelation told him something important, something he had been wondering quite fiercely about upon meeting Lowen; there were more of him, many more. Dozens lived with their Beast, dozens struggled with its anxieties. There were some blatant differences between them and the Heavy Blade, however. Whereas Zan was a mid-way surf to his Beast, most of them had conquered theirs. Whereas Zan had free travel between The World and the cookied remains of their world, they were stuck to dwell in this collection of deletions. They themselves were deleted. Some remained in loops of action they had been in the middle of performing upon their deletion, some acted with the general intelligence of an NPC, while still others had awakened to a state of artificial intelligence. Awakened...Lowen. She had mentioned a waking of sorts, but Zan had disregarded the significance of the statement at the time.

Ignoring the fact that the person he had begun to grow an idle affection for was nothing but ones and zeroes tossed together in some intricate pattern, Zan moved his thoughts along to next window of information that appeared in front of him. Though the server he was on now was the Umbra, the "Root Town" of fog and lifeless concrete he found himself in was referred to as the Gauntlet. It was the world in between the worlds, a transitional place that was devoid of any real attentions. Closing the pop up with a dismiss of his wrist, Zan began to tread the baron region with no sight to greet him but the plumes of fog that danced about. A few pointless streams of thought later and a creak akin to the sway of a rusted swing set welcomed his ears. It was eerie in combination with the current scenery, a sort of ominous tone set above his head like a pestering pet. With his fear subsiding and the drive to free himself from this place, Zan soon began to follow the rusted notes until, finally, he came upon its source. A Chaos Gate swung in a gloomy rendition of what it wished to be. No complete circles were ever made by the corroded collection of gold, red and orange oxidation splitting like veins across its surface. Instead of a looping turn of the shape, the Gate simply would stop at half spin and redirect itself the other way until, upon another half turn, it would continue its previous journey. The pool of crystal azure that usually receded in its center was muddied with a metallic twang, an accent of discoloration that intrigued a brow to rise.

Though Zan was more than aware of the variety offered on this server, the caution-inducing potential, Lowen had given him the path to her position, to the place he'd find her and the answers she had wordlessly promised him. Who knows how long he would have been walking the fields of the Umbra looking for the proper threshold. Unable to fight the smile that crept subtly upon his lips at the knowledge that he wouldn't have to be an aimless wonderer, Zan let his thoughts dwell on the woman he had come to know only recently. Every detail of her seemed reflexively burnt into his thoughts, a scar he knew he'd cherish when their paths separated from the double helix they currently resided in. With a nigh-blissful sigh pressing past his tiers, he focused on the task at hand. There was one field, one obstacle between him and his destination. It was one of those moments when a stranded individual realizes everything is coming to him far too easy. The puzzle was too easily pasted together. What was he missing? What awaited Zan in the place had been aimed toward? An oh-so-familiar, almost brotherly feeling of tension caressed itself along Zan's muscles, clenching his fists into anxious curls that promised to bleed crescent moons into his palm if the pressure got a touch too harsh. Popping free a kink that had embedded itself in his neck with a brief rotation of his head, he spoke the keyword. One word all that was required. Again...too easy.

"...Blights." Careful syllables crawled from the former college student, ever hesitant.

There were no rings, cracked, rotted, or otherwise, that fell upon him. Instead, while his form remained still and unmoved, the Gauntlet around him took on a hostile vibration. It was as if an earthquake of an unfathomable magnitude had taken home in the crust beneath the concrete. No cracks echoed across the surface, however, and the fog seemed remotely undisturbed. Code shredded away in bright orange symbols along black paint, fluttering into nothingness like a feather in flames. When the effect ended and Zan was delivered to his requested site, a rash grip took hold of his heart. Somewhere in the back of his thoughts the information on the Blights was being read off, a deliverance of knowledge he didn't give half a damn about at the moment. The Blights were a parallel signature of fields that shifted based on user. Never the same for any two people, it was a place of personal reflection and dawning sorrow that pressed to your chest like a weight that sought to drown you in the waters of your own regrets. Blighted indeed was this place, no other word fitting for the severity of condition. Conner, now stripped of his digital face, stood frozen to the area before him. He was home. His real home, back in the real world. A digital recreation, sure, but uncanny nonetheless.

Though there were a few tell-tale signs of its false nature, he couldn't help but be overwhelmed by it. Everything seemed grayed, a monotonous hue that was just this side of color. Things hinted at being red, blue, green, etc, but never quite tapped into that mark. A blanket of one amassed cloud, unable to break into portions, stretched over the expanse of the sky in a single yawn. Thunder growled within its threads, but never left the nest of grayed cushion. A place that lacked emotion or life in any flavor, the tone of the "field" was all too similar to the Gauntlet that haunted his footsteps in a mild lick of memory. Buildings of concrete, steel, and jagged panes of glass made up the buildings of his past. Things were indiscriminately placed, his house but a few steps from the pharmacy where Conner first broke his arm and only a block's walk from the department store his father had once owned. In between each landmark was a mesh of apartments and various buildings forced into compact shapes that made them seem like funhouses. Across from such delicately placed madness was the construction yard that always seemed to be building something, but never quite finished. Leo and him used to run amongst the framework at night as children, laughing out games and taunts that signaled innocence.

The construction site, unlike the mesh of buildings not far from it, was in perfect proportion, a flawless replica. A blink brought his eyes closed for one precious moment and, upon opening them, Conner found the houses and the shops boarded up, abandoned, a farce, but one that made his heart beat that much faster. The construction site continued its ambience of stability, staying the same, but placing a figure in its midst. A man clad in a grey business suit, complete with a pristine white tie and split-middle hat, walked the street it lay on. The hat cast a nonchalant shadow upon the man's face, hiding his features, his eyes dulling white fires in their sockets. Even when his head would offer just the right angle under the hat, all that one would find would be a flat plane, devoid of anything with the exception of his eyes; eyes that didn't shine but remained somehow prominent in this institute of monotony. Another blink brought two more men, identical to the last, following a step behind the stranger’s gait. And so the catch to the easy way out was revealed.

Instinct drew him into a defensive state, one leg sliding back from the other, hips turning to adjust to the motion. Both hands wrapped a firm grip about the base of the Absorber, knuckles whitening along its surface with the sheer intensity of pressure he was applying. Something about them had him irked more than usual, something that had his cells burning to mutate. What made this all the more confusing was that the men posed no outward threat. With the exception of their steady walk towards them, they seemed rather miniscule on the danger spectrum. Even their movements (the swing of their arms as they walked, the perfect posture) were gentlemanly in function. Etiquette seemed to breathe along the fine cloth of their suits like a lingering spirit, a tame poltergeist. If it wasn't for the unnerving gleam of their pupils, Conner would have positioned himself back into normality and offered out a friendly hand to shake. The one who lead the other two, a step or so in front of them, seemed to be a shade more refined than the others. It wasn't that he was lighter or even darker than his companions, he simply seemed to possess a more palpable aura. Like Lowen, he exuded confidence, the brand of arrogance that comes with knowledge. For the second time since his stay in The World's cookie files, he felt like a stranger knew more about him than he knew about himself.

A twitch of light, a shriek of sound, and everything was different. Facial features fell into the Zan category once again and an echo of fog breached a passive level about him. Though he knew he no longer resided in the Gauntlet, his surroundings whispered at similarities. The only difference to the usually unbreakable vision of thick air were the three figures whose mere presence caused the fog to slink away from them, only to seal up later when they no longer waltzed that place. Unlike the previous version of the Blights, the beings now held differences, stood apart from one another. The one that had led them in their brief journey to Zan, stood a few feet in front of the Heavy Blade, sporting a look that screamed caution to the former college student's already over-attentive cerebrum. Grey plates of metal lined with edges of silver made up the knight-like armor that hung around his frame. Spots of rust and noticeable dents told stories of rain-ridden treks and fiercesome bouts of combat; a battle hardened foe. A helmet of identical hue and make up sat on top of his head, hiding his features once again in a shroud of darkness. Metallic ram horns curled from the top of the helmet and around his shoulders, giving him an odd lilt of intimidation. Arms coming to fold in front of his chest with a creak and grind of metal on metal, the gesture seemed to signal a completed formation with the remaining two.

One came to stand a few paces in front of Zan's left flank, passing the one Zan assumed to be their leader. Reminding Zan of a knight from the days of Arthur (though much more sinister) just like the grey-encompassed figure did, this one seemed to have a particular fascination with black. Plates of obsidian metal that seemed more like scales then armor covered his physique in a wash of protection. Crimson paint outlined the pieces of armor in a rather artistic fashion, pieces of armor that, instead of rusted and pressed in, were riddled with cracks every other piece. He seemed outwardly fragile, like Zan could have blown a harsh wind his way and send him scattered into fragments of ash and ruby dust. The helmet that hung to his shoulders also offered no hint of his expression, save the dull red gleam of its irises. Charcoal horns curved in a harsh, sharp angle upwards, promising damage if one stood too close. Drawing a blade that seemed to sheen in whatever light breached the heavy atmosphere of fog, a blade of a metal he couldn't quite identify, the black knight plunged the weapon through what had been concrete and was now a dense, dark soil. Asking clasping firmly on the grip of the sword, he stood statue still.

The remaining knight-like creature came to stand equidistant from the black knight to his right flank. Unlike the other two who had armors either bleak or disquieting, this one had an armor of pearl, white outline with streaks of prominent gold. His helmet lacked any horns and the armor possessed no disfigurements of any sort. A visor riddled with intended holes clung to the bottom of the helmet, assisting the piece of armor in obscuring his features in blackness as well. His figure seemed polished, professional, like a knight out of a story book. The only thing he lacked to complete the look was a white steed with a main of iridescent silver. The thought brought a smile to Zan's lips, a smile that was soon quelled as he watched the white knight clasp his hands behind his back; formal, polite. None of them made a motion of attack and none of them seemed driven to continue forward. Again he was reminded of statues, figures both lifeless and eerily still. A harsh screech rung in his ears for the second time and, once again, his face had become that of his real world self, Conner. With the surroundings returning to "normal", the knights had become the grey-suited persons once more. All there positions remained the same, however, the once black night clasping his hands around the top of what had become a black cane. The shift in scenery brought words to his lips before he even remembered thinking them.

"Who are you? All of you?" There was a hint of accusation in his voice. Accusation of what he wasn't sure.

"I am Truth, Conner. I am the one who will either break you here, now, or break past the wall of lies you have convinced yourself of and help you to her, to them. The fellow with the cane, the sword, is Decadence. Through pain, he will force your mind to come to terms with its own fallacies or kill you trying. The other is Salvation, he will heal the wounds Decadence causes you in exchange for your mental cooperation. You will hate us. All of us. But we will make you the man they need." With no mouth to speak those words, syllables reverberated around Conner in an echo of pitch and tone.

"They? Who's they? And how exactly do you plan on teaching me this lesson? Do you really believe I'm going to waste my time killing the medieval trio when I have more important places to be?" Though Conner's comment was meant to insult the being's strength, no offence seemed to register with 'Truth.'

"They is Lowen, they is the true Zan whom you consider a replica. You speak of this 'lesson' like it's meant to exact some torture upon you. Quite the opposite, we are here to help you, Conner. You'll lead us. Soon. We must make you the man we need to hold such a title. Only when you've learned about the lies you've told yourself will you be able to function as a leader. As for how we plan to work this lesson...." His words trailed off, dispersing into the air around them in but a moment; not an echo at all.

Two cracks split into a rather birthed opening on either side of Conner, heavy shackles erupting up from the surface to slam shut around his wrists. Try as he might, they wouldn't budge but an inch, limiting any would-be movements to his immediate proximity. Sadly, none of the beings were in such a range. A human snarl of frustration became a low, guttural growl of rage as the world shifted once more, suits exchanged for armor, buildings traded for fog. The more significant change, however, was the Garou who stood shackled to the ground. Another change of scenery (a change that lasted but a few hairs of a second, bringing him back to the fog land once more) showed him that only in this side of the Blights did he wear the form of the lycanthrope. Muscles rippled in fury as he fought to break free of his bindings, saliva flailing in viscous strings as he tossed his head this way and that. Claws dug bloody pits into his palms as he clenched them ever tighter in an attempt to call enough strength into his arms. All such attempts failed until his fury gave way to exhaustion, the half man, half wolf falling to his knees. Nine and a half feet and a couple hundred pounds of muscle did nothing to assist his escape and the Beast, in control as much as he was, had given in to defeat. It wasn't the flailing that fatigued him, but the pain caused by the shackles. How exactly the shackles managed this was a mystery, a mystery that was soon absolved by a moment of thought. The shackles burned, literally. Silver. The tint of the bindings matched that of Decadence's blade, giving Zan a hint of what was to come. The shackles and his flailing within them had bore bloody, blistered rings around his wrists. Oddly enough, his flesh only seemed to smoke when he struggled.

"Those became silver the moment they sense tension, Zan. Do not waste your energy. We engineered those in special preparation for yourself. Now, to begin the process. The more you cooperate the quicker this will go." There wasn't a smug edge to his words, but rather an almost regretful line of consonants and vowels.

With that as a departing remark, the grey knight made his way across the dirt, the nature of his armor clanking lightly with each stride made. No more than a moment or two passed and he stood quietly behind the shuddering lycanthrope. Even with Zan at his knees, Truth was only an inch or so taller than him. This didn't seem to bother the grey knight in the least. Several minutes seem to pass, dragged on by the pain that screamed around his wrists, until finally a move was made. Zan could feel the metal mail of his palm press to the back of his head, pressing fur against bone.

"Alright, Zan. Show me where your lie exists. Show me the wall that you built to protect your own sanity. Show me." With those fleeting words, a flash of light erupted from the being's palm, careening through Zan's skull to spill from his forehead.

For a while it danced without form, entertaining in its own spiraled designs. When it finally came together, a large half-moon stood in its place. Though only half illuminated, one could make out the outline of the dark half, a hint of the umbral aspects it contained. On the light half was Zan's face, stern, but complacent. On the other half there was nothing but darkness and, once more, a thread of knowledge unfolded in his brain, a continued gift from Lowen. It was a crest of the Manyskins, his crest. Any other lycanthrope would have had a wolf or some other creature embedded in the dark half. The blank canvas of Zan's showed he was not one creature, but all of them; the crest burned into his brain behind flesh, behind bone. Every thought he possessed was tainted with it, painted with it. Before Zan could question it, it was gone, forming into an almost theatre-like projection of the source of his supposed lie. That which he had walled himself against to clam up his sanity. Fully clad in a hospital gown...

His mother.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
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Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
Exalted Player
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Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
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Post by Zan » Sat Nov 05, 2005 8:45 am

Zan's initial reaction was to leap up and wrap his arms about the woman, to hug her to him and never, ever, let her go. It wasn't that the projection was so convincing that he believed her to be the real deal or anything of the sort. No, in fact, she seemed to be mainly comprised of blue light like some reject copy of Princess Leia. No words came from her lips, however, and the only thing that made his wrists burn into the silver of the shackles was the simple sight of her. Though she was false, a memory, she blinked, her hands swung in subtle shifts at her side. Animated. All he had seen of her in the last several years was frozen shots in pictures, bland copies of the life she once held. Zan's father had made sure to incinerate any film there might have been of her during his post mortem grieving. Yet, for one twisted lash of reasoning or another, he left the pictures to their still mockings. He could handle snapshots, but whereas his son craved her movement, he loathed it. It cracked something inside of him, crafted him into a broken mirror. Anytime Zan had attempted to get close with his father after his mother passed away, he was only cut, scraped by the shards that remained of the man. Such thoughts were turned aside by the verbal interruption of Truth.

"Yes, she is the source. Now show me the moment where your lies began to craft. Show me where your personal deceit began." His voice was almost supporting in tone, like a counselor guiding his or her charge through some life travesty.

Before Zan could argue that no such moment existed, before he could protest that this was all some elaborate twist of the field itself, the projection from his forehead began to shift. In a moment his mother sat groaning in a wheelchair, his father grasping one hand while Zan clutched at the other. She was sick, cancer. Leukemia. He had walked into the kitchen, hoping to sneak some forbidden treat from the fridge, when he found her unconscious upon the cold tile. Shouting had followed that moment and had brought them to hospital; his mother unable to stand on her own, was brought the wheelchair shot before him in an assortment of blue light. Jumbled images followed the first, Zan asleep with his father on the hospital couch, Zan on the couch by himself, etc. etc., until his mind slowed on the next piece of significance. A window, the Window, his mothers face so translucently glued to that piece of plexiglass, her palm plastered to its surface. To this day he was unaware of why she did this, simply assuming that it had been a side effect of her chemotherapy. Even he knew something was off there, but his mind had already begun to move past it, to shuffle past the next batch of sensory impressions.

For weeks she was gone, extensive treatment required to give her some hope of recovery. Zan wasn't allowed to visit her. Any time he'd bring up the possibility with his father, it would be shot down in a lash of syllables. No discussion, no consideration. Simply put; no. No. No. No. Eventually she came home, a brief moment of his father bellowing on the phone about 'no more treatment' ringing through the cold fog of the Blights. He had forgotten about this, forgotten about the decision his father had made. He had stopped his mothers chemotherapy, had yelled at the doctors for even trying to loft the option through the air. Was this the lie that Truth expected him to tell? Impossible. Too small...too little. And it hadn't been a lie, not really. Simply a loss of proper recollection. The other two, Decadence and Salvation, simply watched the movie before them with hollow poses that portrayed neither interest nor lack thereof. Back to the root issue, had the decision his father made been the first wedge between them? It seemed probable. If Zan, albeit unconsciously, recalled the rash conversation with his father on the phone, how could he not hate the man? She could have lived if it weren't for him. A part of Zan could have still beat with life.

The next thing to pause before the freeway of zipping images, the blur of pixel and sound, was his mother on a hospital bed once more. This time, curved scars (eight in number) nuzzled themselves under her eyes. His father sat next to Zan at her side, eyeing the boy like he had expected him to pop. It was an eerie look, a look Zan was oblivious to origin-wise. What had he done to earn just a harsh, piercing stare? So fearful, so full of a porcelain caution that had the man walking around Zan like he was surrounded by a minefield of nuclear capabilities. A click of movement and they were hope again, his mother whispering to herself, laying otherwise catatonic with her focus cast out the window. Even still, the sunlight that lanced through and bathed her in the golden warmth of its light had her lit up like an angel. None of it made sense; even trying to think through it coherently was proving difficult. Whatever therapy this was supposed to induce was failing and failing rather horribly. Chaos cannot bring clarity. Chaos contrasts clarity like black fights against white. Such concerns demanded to be vocalized so, naturally, this was exactly what the lycanthrope did.

"I know you three are simply trying to help, but none of this makes sense. I lived this, why show me it again? Am I supposed to pull some morals from this, gather a lesson, make some evolutionary declaration, and be done with this?" His voice hinted at an agitation that threatened to simply spill forward.

"Your story is not over, Conner. Continue, show us how far this tunnel leads."

Conner? A grinding headache later and the knights were the grey, palled businessmen they had started as. Conner had lost his digital face and the reel of images ran by yet again. It stopped on a meek, smiling version of his mother. She didn't look better, but claimed health and his father was eager enough for this to be true that he simply ignored the pale, sickly look she possessed. A click of conversation later and his mother had the keys to their cheap little car in her hands. Something in Conner's gut had told him, right then and there, that he would never see her again. Yet, an hour or two of cartoons later, and the sound of the garage mixed with padding footsteps across the carpet exclaimed her return. Smiling, Conner got to his feet, following his father to the whispers they heard murmured in a nearby room. A loud noise, something, something that upon focusing on it only brought an ache to his temples. Her whispers had ceased and an opened door revealed her slumped, dead on the floor. The leukemia had killed her. Abrupt? Yes. Too abrupt? Truth seemed to believe so.

"This is where your lie's main focus ceases, but there is one last thing for you to know. Think upon yourself, what have you convinced yourself of yourself that was untrue?"

Pain coursed through Conner's skull, threatening to rip it in half as the last trial ensued. Conner's cancer, the beautiful gift he had inherited from his mother, had him hospitalized. His father paced awkwardly before him, Leo trying to ease his nerves with idle chatter and, eventually, a laptop that would bring about the creation of the Replica. But that wasn't the focus of this relapse, no. It was him in the room, that God damn room, with radiation filtering through him like caustic acid. Sickness boiled in his gut, bubbled through his veins with a torture he couldn't muster a will against. What was important about this? What was the point of making him relive a moment that occurred just the year before? It was a recent happening, whereas the other things had taken place years before. The connection. What in the hell was the connection? Unable to find one, Conner simply watched the movie play out, curious to find the twist that lay at the bottom of the barrel. It was there, waiting for discovery with Conner the conduit for such an event. And then it was over, the image becoming a swirl of blue light once more. Not disappearing, no, but simply waiting for direction.

"Alright, I looked at all the crap you wanted me to look at. Now what? Get these damn chains off of me!" His reaction only wrought disappointment from the trio of Wall Street wannabes, a jerk of movement from Decadence bringing his (its?) cane out from the concrete.

"Alright, Zan. Now that we've identified all of your lies, it's time to force the truth. Through pain, you'll be liberated." Decadence's voice was a low rumble, a bassy sound.

"And through comfort, you'll find yourself." Salvation held charm and promise in what could have only been the voice of a woman (though, in the World, all these were skewed).

Zan was frozen upon Decadence's approach, the world becoming that of knights and fog once more, pupils dilating in a surge of fear, in a loss of words and possible movement. Knowing full well that the metal on the creature's blade was either lined with silver or crafted of the metal, his Beast had kicked through the bindings of his transformation, released through the haze of logic and civility that the Heavy Blade had set up. Though still bound into the shackles of that same glistening craft, wrists sizzling and bubbling as he fought the man's approach, the snarl that shook his lips, that revealed the rows of razor teeth hidden in his muzzle, was dripping with a salivated warning. Yet still the knight pressed towards him, determination shimmering through the red of his eyes. As the cold pressed into the former college student's gut, not breaking skin, but oh-so-close to, Zan's eyes darted to Salvation. The chain mail gloves that covered the white knight's hands were humming with a golden energy, a promise of life, a promise of revitalization if he could only face the truth. What truth was that? Was there even one? Was he supposed to find a lie in their words?

"Zan...take us back to your mother in the wheelchair. Show us that moment, those moments, and show us what really happened." Truth's words were hushed by the thud of blood racing through Zan's ears.

It was the same as before, the eerie blue light that shot forth from his forehead forming a woman groaning in her wheelchair, either hand clutched by her family. The overly sanitized stench of the hospital was stronger this time, but nothing more. Truth didn't seem pleased by this and, with a motion of his wrist, the silver of the blade began to lick a horizontal line across Zan's lower abdomen, drawing agonized cries and boiling blood from the quivering lycanthrope. A piece of the puzzle shifted in Zan's head, something on the blade (a toxin of sorts, Zan could only assume) mixing with the electrical signals of pain to reveal a step along the path. The scene flashed to his mother on the kitchen floor where Zan had thought to have found her doubled over from her cancer. Things were different this time, off. Happier. The beautiful woman, Lilith, stood shaking but smiling on the cool tile of the kitchen. One palm lay flat against her inflated belly, her words screaming gleefully at her husband, declaring the impending arrival of their child. It wasn't Zan, no, but a second baby, a new son. That revelation alone had the Heavy Blade's mouth agape, lips moving with words he couldn't speak. It was too much, too impossible. How could he have forgotten that? What had been so bad about a new kid? Jealousy? No...no. That wasn't it.

"Good. We're making progress, Zan. Salvation, if you would." Another gesture wrought a nod from the shimmering white knight, those golden hands wiping a single digit along the wound, pumping it full of endorphins and sealing it shut.

The relief was hardly registered on the boy's features as the light refracted once more, coming together to form his mother in that wheelchair. Instead of holding Zan's hand, however, she seemed to be holding her stomach still, her father clutching the other with an excited ring as the nurse began to wheel her away. A whir of noise and refragmented shift of color and Zan found himself, small and ponderous, standing outside of his mother's hospital room. His father was holding her snug against his chest, whispering comforts into the ear of the woman who was sobbing meekly against him. Was the baby dead? No, a nurse had rushed it away, barking orders at others like her. The Window again, Lilith's hand glued to it, eyes staring in a trance through the pane. Her cancer, the therapy...just a side effect. As if sensing this thought, which he had to have, Truth flicked his wrist yet again and the familiar tear of flesh, the sound of his blood sizzling upon contact with the silver, sounded through the air and through Zan's form. Another anguished scream and details began to surface, corrections.

She hadn't had cancer and had had no reason to have any chemotherapy. Logic, yes, but not something his mind had wanted to come to. A blur of movement later and he was crawling onto her lap against the pleas of his father, youthful, childish face pressed up against the glass in imitation of his mother's palm. There, through the window, a small infant barely four and half pounds lay attached to an array of tubes and other atrocities that chilled the little boy to his core. Zachariah, his brother, the weakened heap of shuddering flesh and fragile bone, had become his mother's mental destruction. If there was one thing that had made her the angel he had remembered, it was the connection she had with him, the devotion and love she showered him with day after day. Motherhood was her purpose in life and she cherished it, adored it. When the baby died, when its heart simply couldn't keep up, she had failed at what she felt God had intended her to do. It shattered something, splintered a clay mentality. For days she sat there, even after the baby's passing, glued to the window, eyes wondering over the empty bed which had once held her son. No doctor had the heart to pull her from it and only on the third day was his father able to peel her from its surface.

Another satisfied nod and the golden touch of Salvation let his mind settle.

What had only been a week (not the several that Zan had imagined, and definitely not the location he had so thoroughly believed) had passed in his mothers admission to the Three Feather's Mental Institution when his father couldn't bear it and had her placed back in her home with the family he believed could cure her. It was an ignorant belief, but now the words of 'no treatment' on the phone, bellowed from his father to the doctors, made sense. It was then the image paused before him, his mind stopping in its recollected churning. He wanted it to press on, to reveal to him what he had guarded himself so extensively against, but it refused. Even the initial glide of Decadence's blade along his gut did nothing but make him wince. His mind had forsaken him in hopes of stability, in what should have told Zan to cease right then and there. These weren't things to be dabbled in. Look not in the past, but forward into the future. Such inward advice was ignored as Truth signaled for a second cut, this one dragging vertically upward from the center of the other wound, not cutting deep, but spilling boiling blood just the same.

The second attempt did the trick, his mind shuddering onward, pressing through the sleet of his mind's securities as the next 'recording' was played. It was his mother crying, screaming, begging for her child from a God she felt she had failed, from a God she no longer felt listened to her. Back pressed to the wooden counter of their kitchen, hands clutched to her face, an eerie sound began to plague little Zan's ears. He was trying to comfort his mother, trying to pry her clasping digits from her cheek. It wasn't until the blood began to dribble through her fingertips and the eerie sound was identified as nails grinding along bone that he stumbled back from her. It wasn't until her cries (though never simple) began to take on a wretched volume that his father appeared. Shock on his face, skin paled, he was frozen as his son was for a moment as she fought to tear the pain from her, tears spilling her soul through the anguished screams. A flash of the blue light and the scene moved to the hospital where she lay quiet and catatonic on starched sheets, eight curved wounds nestled under her eyes on the high rise of her cheekbone. Never again, not one moment more, did she cry. Not simply a metaphor, she had cried her soul out, hollowed herself out to leave a husk, a nothing body of an angel that had had her wings ripped by fate from her back. Ignoring advice from others to admit her to Three Feathers again, his father brought the broken woman home.

Lying in her bed, eyes cast to the open window, she'd spend her days bathed in sunlight, both illuminated and dulled by the lancing rays. When the star would fall and the moon would rise, she'd sing lullabies to 'Riah' (the nickname she had, somewhere along the line, given to her dead child), the melodic properties of her voice cast into a tragic lull, a despairing pitch. It was like some tragic maiden cast to sing her song at the top of some tower, inducing fits of depressing along the seas, leading sailors to their deaths like a Siren against the rocks. Months of this ensued with no signs of possible recovery. It was during this time that his father had begun to drink and drink heavily. Drunken rages would have Zan pit into a corner, clutching his knees to his chest, as off in the room just across from his own his mother sang to a boy who would never be. It was also during this time that Zan began to lose his own mental foundations, though his mind was much more determined to salvage itself. All it needed was a reason to lock itself, to throw away a key that nobody but, apparently, a few digital knights would be able to find. It didn't have to wait long.

One day something in her head clicked, made a decision to get up and breathe. It was a miracle, a magical day that had his father clutching her in his arms like he had come across the Holy Grail. It was a happiness that was so divine that it couldn't be real, couldn't be lasting, and indeed it wasn't. She offered no explanation for the last few months except the fact that she "needed time." The pair, father and son, didn't care. She was back. They had her back. What had seemed like just a simple request at the time would turn his father against himself, would be the heart of the thing that made him the pudgy drunk Zan was oh so proud of today. With the night sky tossing a blanket of stars that seemed as innocent as could be, Lilith asked her husband for the car keys. The simple explanation of "Some fresh air would be wonderful," and the dismissal of any company, she drove off into the night. Something in Zan told him she wouldn't be back, told him she had left to drive off somewhere and out of their lives. That something, however, was wrong. With him and his father watching some late night cartoons in a rather gleeful mood (even with Zan's bad feeling, which he had kept to himself), they only barely heard her enter the garage and close a door behind her. That's when the image paused yet again, leaving Zan frustrated and struggling to find the end to this game. A hiss of sound and he was Conner again, the gentlemen before him eyeing him with disappointment.

A flick of what had to be Truth's wrist and Decadence drew a sword from the cane-sheathe, drawing the familiar line of pain along the boy's belly. Nothing. A grunt of determination and the vertical line was matched. Nothing. Frustration building, Decadence began to push the blade through his chest, stopping just before his heart. Nothing. His mind wouldn't budge, wouldn't put the last piece of the puzzle in place. It wasn't until the silver lanced through his heart and out his back that the movie resumed, Conner's voice numb from screaming, pain still riddling his form even as Salvation stopped him from dying. He was back in front of the television, watching a coyote go about its satire when the music began, the music of her voice. She was singing to him again, to Riah, lulling his conception to sleep. A blur of movement and panicked noises from his father and he was suddenly running behind the man, fighting and failing to keep up with him. His father stopped after opening a door Conner had forgotten about, the entrance to his brother's half-finished bedroom. The smell of wet paint still lingered through the door, easily forgotten as the color on the man's face could be visibly seen draining. Conner's little heart racing, thudding against his sternum like some primal drum, he bolted to the door, squeezing past the little space his father had left to view the horror before him. His mother sat on a chair right next to the cradle, knees drawn to her chest, a large hunting rifle (one they kept in their summer cabin, a locked cabin with a key on the key ring given to her) cradled in between her knees. One hand steadying the barrel under her chin, the other hovering a finger over the trigger as the lullaby came to an end. Eyes filtered from the crib to fall upon Conner, no sign of surprise or unease being found in those pupils. She simply smiled a weak smile at him and spoke the last syllables that would ever crawl from her lips.

"Don't cry, plum."

It was then, when the back of her head popped like a grape and painted her along the walls that his mind shut out the truth, that he was lost to the mechanisms of his own self-preservation. The movie fell silent, the blue light dispersing, as the shackles around his wrists flew back into the earth. The world around Conner became surreal, became a thing that seemed to vibrate along the seams. His body shook but let fall no tears, no pain, for there was none. There was only the white, hot light of truth that let way to a new field; a field that lay him kneeled on grass. Whatever view it might have had was blocked by Lowen, the woman saying nothing as she moved to kneel, wrapping her arms about the stiff tension of his back. She had seen what they had seen, what Zan (now without his real world face) had seen. He hadn't had cancer, it had only been a lapse of his sanity. Even that was gone. Still no tears fell, even with her arms encompassing him in warmth that asked for tears. It wasn't that he wasn't sad or that he was broken or insane. No, though sadness was there, his mind was fine, healed even. With the exception of a sadness that can only come with the loss of a parent, he only felt a weight lifted form his shoulders.

Sanity reclaimed.
Last edited by Zan on Sun Feb 12, 2006 2:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
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Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
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Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
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Post by Zan » Fri Nov 18, 2005 12:34 am

The moment between them was a lasting one, the warmth of her embrace ebbing into his muscles. Her skin, the press of her face against his neck, was like honey and just as sweet, a fragrance that truly capitalized on the happiness his moment of enlightenment had brought him. It was a temporary fixation, a temporary lid on his problems. There were far too many to simply be washed away by one moment of revelation, however intense such a moment may have been. With his mind mended and the pain from his once-fragile mentality healed, his body began to migrate his pain. Like some basic principle of chemistry, unable to either create or destroy energy, all the damage to his brain had fallen south, to his heart. What might have been a frustration for others (having felt healed, only to find yourself aching just as immensely, though more subtlety) was entirely doable with Zan. Where he had been unable to hide his precarious insanity, the darkness his mother's suicide had brought to his chest was disguisable. Such a thing seems unhealthy on the surface, sure, but the Heavy Blade was simply so used to having his instabilities displayed that being able to take pain and handle it through a more commonly used bottling-technique was elating. It just was.

When Lowen's empathy began to huddle back inside of its shell, when she began to realize just how vulnerable her compassion had made her, her slender frame began to tense and pull from him in desperately cautious movements. He paid no mind to it, could already see the reason behind it before she had reason to explain. With the heat now dispersed and his body left to incubate itself, he lofted his gaze to meet her own, watching the dark caramel of her irises slowly rise with her. Professionalism once again overtook her, completely contradicting the black whispers of silken thread that fell so alluringly in front of her shoulders and onto the dark red leather of her waist-length jacket. It wasn't until he caught himself intrigued by the hourglass curve her hips created, matching in tune with the way her ashen pants and equally obsidian tank-top (bare arms reluctantly hidden by the coat) hugged her with a sweet perfection, that he stopped to realize what it was he was doing. His interest in her was no longer distant as it had been when his thoughts were fragments, when his actions were shards. Sanity had driven him to do thing all humans find themselves enjoying at one point or another; lusting. It was so initially foreign to him that he had to battle with his own eyes not to reveal his own inward shock.

The battle was won rather quickly and led him to his own feet, catching his bearings and allowing himself a quick stretch of what felt like new muscles. He was reinvented. Though the Beast was in no way defeated and even now had him daydreaming of skies that cried blood and bones that littered the ground like a carpet at his feet, it was dimmed. Sanity had gifted him with humanity as well, it seemed, and humanity was as big a bane for the creature as silver. Such a thing inspired further confidence in the former college student, a light smile curling to dawn about his lips. Something in Lowen's eyes, the way they began to wonder about him, made him feel as if she was dishing out the same ocular exam he had given her. A closer look into those pupils and he didn't see want, but surprise. Such a thing caused a rise in his own brow, his gaze turned to the sleeve of what was once a simple real-world-esque coat. It would seem that his mental stability had gifted him with the ability to let his old life go, to allow himself the reality of the here and now. The Heavy Blade found himself once more in the clothing he had arrived in the game with. At least, this was true for the most part. Black pants and an equally dark knee-length coat adorned his figure, complimented by the dark green shirt that gloated a tight capture of his chiseled featured, features given to him by the natural prowess of the Beast. A metal-balled necklace with the full moon drooping from its "center" hung from his neck, sunlight bouncing off its surface to shine spots of light onto the raven leather of what looked like military boots.

Feeling rather foolish after a few seconds of gawking at the rapid change he had stumbled upon, he gave his head a brief shake, lifting it to center about once more. It was then he noticed the true beauty, the true call of the landscape around him. In front of him, his eyes bleeding to the smooth amber of the wolf, stretched miles and miles of lush grassland, a prairie that simply stopped and dropped into what had to be a cliff. Eyes returning to normal, his ears took on no visible difference, but simply twitched a bit, his hearing kicking up to track the drop of the wind. A moment of this and he gave from the cliff's edge to the ground below a mile or two, an impressive length and a fall he'd definitely not want to experience. If there was one fear he shared in common with the populace of the world, it was the fear of heights. The remembrance of such a fear turned him around to few a sweeping difference of land behind him. Forest mingled with forest, stretching on and on with trees as big mountains into what could only be an endless bout of glades and the like. The thing that caught his attention, however, was the Mayan-like temple in the forest's center, towering over the behemoths of wood like a stone defiance of the world around it.

"That's home. My home. Where the rest of us are. Would you like to--" Her voice, so naturally sultry yet defiant of such, was cut off by the speed of his own remark.

"Take me there." So confident in his own fascination, his syllables rang no hint of caution or doubt.

The wolf, the Beast, both howled in his head at the surroundings, each blade of grass and each fleck of bark screaming of a home his mind (or perhaps simply the Beast) had been so eagerly in search for. If it had not been for the fact that he was almost sure there were precautions to be made going into such a place, he'd have bolted without her, gone off to fine the wonders of that gargantuan palace on his own. Palace. Not a word his mind had given him, but the Beast. A knowledge. It truly was a palace of sorts, home to the Alpha, home to the leader of a pack he had never felt but that filled his nostrils with a natural spice of familiarity. No, of family. He belonged here, or at least a damn big part of him did. That was all he needed to know and, as if sensing such a thing (as he knew she most likely did), she moved past him. Careful to keep in step with her, the woman possessing unnaturally long strides, he did was he could to admire the sight about him. Earth had few trees of this size and those that did exist were revered and preserved like ancient monuments (which, he supposed, they were). The smell of soil and the dusty humidity brought about by their elevation was oddly comforting, giving the impression that he hadn't actually come here to calm the murderous thoughts his Beast inspired, but to camp. God damn...what a place this would make for camping. Logic and experience told him he'd have little time to enjoy it, so he did what he would with the time allowed to him.

From the outside, the temple seemed to be only a few yards, but whatever intricately coded traps had been created for their central place of operation had made it much longer. What felt like an hour but was more towards half of that came to pass before they began to move left, away from it, or at least what his brain told him was away. A handful of minutes and odd-maze like directionals later and he found himself at the foot of the structure, finding himself awed by the sheer number of steps he had to look forward to. It would be a workout, that was for damn sure, but ever since climbing up the mass of rock to reach a giant bird as he had on a slightly less calmed adventure with the rest of the Freedom Fighters, climbing was no longer an issue. And besides, at least he wasn't ascending at a perfect vertical angle this time and his legs were the only tools needed. With this touch of inspiration to move on filtering through him, he ignored his drive to admire the craftsmanship (digital as it may be) and pressed on. Lowen's pace had reduced itself to something hinting at normality as he caught him with her and began the trek. It was then, staring at the number remaining and the physical exertion it must take, he realized that they must stay inside pretty damn often. It wasn't exactly a trip you happily made every single day. Going down was a different story, sure, but in this case what comes down must come back up. Several minutes of mental rambling and incoherency later and he had reached its 'peak', turning behind to stare at his accomplishment. To his dismay, only four or five steps were needed until one would hit the ground; some twisted inversion security that would allow them to access any threats in haste but have said threats have to really work to get to their goal. Genius, really. That cold feeling returned to his gut, the pang that told him he no longer possessed the face of Zan, but of Conner. Only one individual could scratch his code like that and, turning to face the Replica, he knew his words before he could say them.

"You are not coming in." Simple, to the point, and bluntly obvious in his ambitions. Repli-Zan in a nut-shell.

(For those of you who don't know, when the replica is around, I refer to him in the quest as "Zan" and the non-replica as "Conner" due to the fact that he takes on his real-world face when the replica is around. Though this changes a touch later in this post.)

"Why the hell not?" Conner's brow lofted in confusion, such a welcoming not quite being the thing he had expected from his replica.

For a while the clone of data but definitely not of personality simply glared at him, his irises retaining some trinket of knowledge that Conner was obviously out of the loop from. He exuded hostility, dripped it from his pores and huffed it from the impatience of his breath. Conner had never had a reason to fear the creation and did not start such a habit now, simply responding to the harshness of his look with the muddle of his own. Something was going on that he was so blissfully unaware of, of that much he was certain, but as to what such a thing could be...he hadn't a clue. It was only when Lowen brisked a ginger step forward that his confusion was magnified, slender digits coming to lightly wrap themselves through the cloth of Zan's T-Shirt. For a split, sweet second he thought she'd lift him and toss him aside like a pebble, but instead she offered a stiff and rather unattached nuzzle into his throat. Zan was too focused, too rigorously determined to keep Conner out that he sensed only the action and not the void of emotion that clung to it. Something was supposed to be going on between them. The way Zan so casually fit against her told of his delusions, of a relationship he still thought he possessed. The Heavy Blade, being the ignorant little bee that he could be at times, was unable to fathom what had occurred to form a chasm between them.

"Don't do this, baby. Please." There was a touch of desperation in her voice and such a thing was not like her. Conner knew this even now.

Baby? The word, the way she tried to use it in an affectionate manner but failed, made his nose crinkle with unease.

This was getting old fast. Why didn't she just hold him back? Even now, without his senses magnified and his whole generally human, he could feel the power melting in waves from the woman. Something was in her eyes as she turned them back to dip into the Siberian Husky blue of Conner's eyes; guilt. She wasn't fighting him back because it would pain her to do so. Why? It was a swarm of contradiction and illogical discrepancies, a verbose competition. Her presence or, perhaps, her words seemed to halt him momentarily as consideration struggled with his anger. Conner was still back at square one, not on the same page, never on the same page, as his own mind was having a wrestling match as to why such anger existed in the man's veins. Had he truly been hell-bent on keeping him away? Was it a territorial thing? Conner felt obligated to ask, to end the awkward silence that constricted their throats like a boa. The Heavy Blade continued to hope for the deviance of her intervention, for her pride or the building frustration that shook her bones to explode and reduce Zan to a trembling thing. But it never came. Though the thoughts were crashing through her skull and making themselves obvious to Conner in some dwindling hope he'd understand, it never came.

"Get out of my way, Lowen. Now." His voice was low, careful, controlled and more steadied since the first words that seared through those lips. She offered no verbal confirmation, but simply stepped aside and disappeared into the dank shadows of the temple's elevated threshold.

"Zan, what's this about? Why the hell is the matter with you?" Fear starting to creep in now, Conner felt himself pinned and trapped between ignorance and a hard place.

"Do you even know what you are? What you're capable of doing? What you're capable of destroying?" Questions answering questions, the absolute worst way to go about an enigma.

"I'm a lycanthrope. I'm ju--" Sound cut off by noise.

"Yes, yes. You're that. But that's a fucking fraction of what you are. You'll be the end of this place. You'll kill them off. You will be their God damn ragnarok. Their apocalypse." The anger was returning again, resisted but taken steps edging him neared to Conner, downward.

"What the hell? Who fed you this crap? I'm not going to kill anyone!" Tempers fueling duel fires, promising an inferno.

"Elaina told me. She's the Seer in this place. She touches you and she taps into the code, the variables, the assortment of equations and...well, a long explanation short, she sees into what has yet to pass." He was speaking of the act like some sort of digital miracle. Maybe it was.

"You mean see the future." Conner's words were less so, more blunt. Lacking poetry.

"Yes, I mean the future, ass. Now you turn yourself around and go back to that lot of rejects and dreamers and go cook with the Elite's. You won't take these people away from me." Finality in his voice, a teeter of anger waiting for that last tip.

"Hey, you don't even know those people, those "dreamers". I'm going inside. So if you'll excuse me..." Conner was confident in his escape. Zan wouldn't try anything. Not up here.

Sadly, the young lycanthrope barely got a step past the replica before he felt his feet give way to air, legs swept out from underneath him in a graceful glide of movement. The back of his head was the first to crack against the jagged stone, warm blood promising pain as he tumbled backward. What should have been a simple fall turned into a chaotic spin down step after step, flesh slopping against the cold granite time after time until it became a sort of twisted melody. His perception was off, however, as the roll was but a bout or two, Zan stopping the decent by catching Conner's gut with the heel of his boot. Groaning in pain, twisting to get up and away from this onslaught, the former college student felt helpless for the first time in what had been too long. Feeling helpless kept him on his toes, kept his hubris from kindling. Scrambling to crawl away from Zan, Conner felt a foreign hand grab the back of his head, clutching at the thick hazel of his hair. With a roar of rage that rattled Zan's chest, he smashed Conner's head forward, the collision shattering his nose into a pool of blood and cartilage, his cries now anguished and gurgled. Conner hadn't the strength to resist this, to transform and heal the wound that bellowed a fire on his face.

He did only what he could think to do, begin a rise to his feet, words already beginning to plot onto his tongue. He could talk him down, talk him out of this fit of insanity he was experiencing. The unsteady initiation of his assent was only met with a slam to his gut, the boot digging into his stomach and exclaiming the strike. All wind, all air, all breath was forced from his lungs, setting them on fire as he fought to regain some of what he had lost. His mind was too distorted, too unsupplied with the hopelessly lacking oxygen to formulate anything. His body was ignited with so much pain that most of it had begun to numb, to ease him into unconsciousness. This little task would have been accomplished, but the sudden hand grasping his face from under his chin continued its shakes, keeping him from his momentary nap. He could make out Zan's voice telling him to stay awake, but the rest was a slur of syllables he couldn't muster the focus to hone in on. Blood was thudding and coursing through his ears so loudly it was as if a drum was thundering inside of his skull. It was too much, all of it becoming simply too much. A blur of color and jumbled sensory alternations showed a fist rearing back to deliver a blow, a blow that was halted by the sudden below of a voice Conner couldn't recognize (and this seemed to go behind his general inability to hear at the moment).

"ENOUGH! Gemini, get the hell away from him!" The voice was like Thor, loud and booming and commanding in its make up.

Gemini? Is that what they call him?

As Conner began to collect enough of himself to shift to Clabro to heal, he felt his nose reconstructed, felt the bones mending in place and his aches dissipating. His vision now cleared and the series of Ol Repths doing their job, he was able to eye the man that had ceased his torment. His frame was massive and equally impressive, every ounce of fat rippled into muscle to make this hulk of a man. Standing at just above six feet, his shaved head, black rugged beard, and collection of leather about his body and animal fur about his neck reminded Conner of a Viking. He, like Lowen, screamed a power so hot that the Heavy Blade felt he'd blister in his presence. An obscenely large blade lay horizontal across his back and the man's eyes mirrored Conner's in their desolate azure, complimenting the gold skull on the ring that adorned his right hand, sapphire’s gleaming in the sockets of its eyes. His smile was friendly, welcoming as he extended a hand and assisted the still partially dazed lycanthrope to his feet.

"Not that I don't appreciate your help, but who are you?" Suspicion had become Conner's friend now, nervous glances offered up to Gemini from time to time.

"You may call me Boros. I'm Lowen's second-in-command." Another puzzle offered up with these words.

"Thank you, Boros. For helping. But I have to ask...Lowen's what?" Ah, the joy of being constantly clueless.

"Second-in-command to her Highness. The Alpha." His words were lined with something else, a tone that seemed to say 'you didn't know?'

"...I...huh. I mean, I knew she was strong. I practically choke on it. But an Alpha? I thought for sure it'd be you. Aren't the pack leaders usually...well..." The next word, he feared, would drop Boros' opinion of him, however low it already may be.

"Male? There is always an Alpha female in a pack. But she's more than that. She's the Alpha everything. Lowen has led us through our exile and made the few of us who can think for ourselves into something truly great. Now, go, she wants to see you in the Hall. I'll have a little chat with ol' Gemini here." He was amused, entertained, but not rudely so. Gemini, however, looked on with anger and bewildered fear of the man.

Wanting to ask where exactly this "Hall" was, but deciding against it, Conner drifted into the darkness of the entrance, his face rearranging into Zan, fleshing into something he had generally grown used to. Old-styled torches lined the walls as he walked, intricate and beautifully medieval tapestries hung about from metal protrusions on the wall. Though the walls were made of the same stone as the outside (something that, oddly, surprised him), they were decorated with so much silk and hanging, colored velvet that one hardly had the time to give it a thought. After a minute of winding through lit torches, he came into a room whose ceiling stretched a few hundred feet upward in a way that made it too big on the inside to fit the outside. Not wanting to ponder the physics of this place, Zan pressed on. The room was filled with three extraordinarily long tables, each seat filled with a population of what felt (felt..? huh?) like NPCs. Their conversations droned on about fighting the Fahmor and battles and losses and victories and downfalls and triumphs. A jumble of things that would have been fine had it not been for the vibe they gave off. Sitting at the end of the center table, facing Zan, was Lowen, caramel eyes locking with his own. Something akin to relief passed her face at the sight of him, as if she hadn't expected him to arrive in such pristine condition. Perhaps she didn't.

"Welcome, Zan. Welcome hom--" Her savory, tempting voice was cut off by the intrusion of Boros' sudden appearance, one large, meaty hand showing Zan backward. And as Gemini appeared behind him, Conner's face returning, he couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the looks the two men were giving him.

"You brought the Plures Vultus Mortis here! You brought us death!" Again he was reminded of Thor, a god of a voice shaking the walls around them. The Latin was grading, but something in Conner's head clicked and explained.

The many faced death? What in the hell is going on?
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
Exalted Player
Posts: 206
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:28 pm
Contact:

Post by Zan » Fri Nov 25, 2005 5:29 am

Conner once more found himself trapped in a cage of confusion, lost and uninformed. The Heavy Blade had initially pinned Gemini as some gullible buffoon, someone who had taken this 'Elaina's fortune telling a little too seriously. However, from the moment he had met Boros only moments before he had accumulated a well of respect for the man. His eyes spoke of control, of logic. Something in his gut told him that if a man like that could lose his temper, could command such a blind faith in those dead blue eyes of his, than there had to be something to it. What was wrong with him now? Did regaining his sanity unbalance the pretty little scale of the word and, to even things out, was he being forced to carry some sort of pathological sadism? As angry as he had gotten in the past, as homicidal as his thoughts had become from time to time, he still couldn't see himself being the end to entire "race" of people. Genocide simply wasn't a regular supplement in his bloodstream. Yet...that look, that hard-as-rock, tough-as-nails determination in Boros' eyes told him that there was something to this chaos. Such a thing made him suddenly aware of where he was, of the league of eyes all boring into him. Suddenly, he didn't want to be there.

"Boros, calm dow-" Her voice was calm, bordering on a sickly degree of serene.

"I will do nothing of the sort! You heard what Elaina said, you saw it! You told us you deleted that virus! That filth of data before me!" Such anger...anger hot enough to bring the place to ashes.

There was an eerie hush over the room, a quiet that one only possessed out of something like a hivemind. No chatter, no whispers, no idle gossip at the awkward, shifting boy before them. It was then his mind tapped into the knowledge Lowen had gifted to him with a simple breath. It wasn't only knowledge of this deleted place, of the The World's Shadow. A single exhalation had granted him insight into her kingdom. He eyes were suddenly converting the occupants into streams of data, only the temple remaining graphically inclined and stable. Dozens of lycanthropes, some human, some shifted, were streaming lines of ones and zeroes. Only five people in that room, including Conner, possessed something unique, something out of place; their data was white, flowing, a shine of that continuous duo of numbers. Conner didn't bother to himself a close look, the hot light of his shine was too blinding to strain in such a manner. As if a light switch was flipped in his skull, they were back to normal, still gazing, still tossing judgment towards him. Somehow Lowen, Boros, and a very broad shouldered Asian looking man whom his mind told him was "Jeng" had their data critically linked with the rest of the pack. Though there was an additional AI beyond those three, Elaina, her data was linked to Lowen.

Conner was aware that, if one of those three were to be destroyed, the dozens of lycans they were connected to would simply cease to exist. Due to this, though the NPC's did have the ability to bound off on their own and have pointless, repetitive conversations with others, whenever any of three (whom were called by the designer of this place and these people as "Anchors) would be solely focused on one person or one emotion, the rest would display this eerie collectivity. It explained the sudden silence of the room with every computer program showing a disturbing amount of human intelligence in their eyes. It felt like he had walked into a beehive with a queen and her generals and, in a way, he truly had. Though with all the talk of his part in their doom lofted between Boros and Lowen, he couldn't help but feel oddly at home here. He was meant to be here. Had to be. One didn't simply call up such a territorial contentment on a whim...right? No, that couldn't be it. Something in his soul, no, something in his code was holding him to this place. It made him ill, in a way, to feel forced to feel a certain way. It was a type of control and if there was one thing he despised, truly despised, it was feeling helpless and bound down by the will of another.

"I did delete it, Boros. The Plures Vultus Mortis was sent back to the Source. I buried it as deep in her digital heart as I could. But...you know how linked I am with it, yes?" Her voice still retained that calm, that collectivity that spoke of a peace only a good leader could dish out.

"Yea, yea. The Key to its Lock. You've told us all of this." Stern, but now curious as to where she was headed.

"Whoa, hold up. I'm not an 'it', thank you. Lowen, can you please explain to me what the hell is going on? I'm getting a little worn from this third-party chatter." Lowen's head tilted a touch, eyes blinking in momentary confusion, as if she had forgotten he was even there.

"Oh...I suppose I must. When we were first deleted, when we were first trapped in this Shadow, we found a bundle of data in one of the rooms the programmer had kept hidden from us. It was incomplete, without a shell. It's purpose had been written but not given form. Elaina here..." She said, pointing to a woman with hair as jet black as her own and a pair of sheepish violet eyes that made his heart skip a beat. "We had her touch it, tap into the data streams and see if it was something we could use. She saw, she showed us, killed by what she called the Plures Vultus Mortis. The images bled together, so to speak, so the exact way we're destroyed isn't apparent. But we saw our existences cease so the four of us, those who had Awoken, decided to get rid of it. We used Elaina's talents to send the data back to the Source, to Her, and rid ourselves of it. But you see, when I first came across it, the code tapped into me. Without a shell to take and mine already filled, it needed a way to protect itself. So, even though I had deleted it, I now felt its movement and the fluxes of the Source itself like a whisper in my ear. Not too long ago the Source spiked, an anomaly that we've seen happen upon your companions' receptions of their unique...abilities. This spike, this Twilight Virus, grabbed at the nearest thing to the Source and threw it into you. So, for a while, I've been tracking you. I wasn't going to interfere. I was going to leave you alone. A part of you, after all, had been seen as the thing that would take us all into nothingness. But...well, recently we've been made aware of something. A threat th--" Her voice was halted by Boros, who seemed to have grown agitated once more with the monologue she had spouted.

"That's enough, Lowen. Our problems are none of his conc--" Interruption reposed by interruption.

"No, that's enough for you, Boros. This...threat we stumbled upon isn't something the four of us are going to be able to handle on our own. I found myself desperate for a solution and went and brought back the only one could access this place; you Conner." Something was in her eyes, something Conner couldn't place.

"One more isn't going to make a difference! Unless you unwrap the Plures Vultus Mortis and give him access to its powers, he won't tilt the odds in our favor. But unwrapping that code is what's going to kill us. Awakening that power is going to bring down this place." His tone turned from outraged to desperate, his own mortality suddenly caught in his throat. For a moment Lowen simply stared at Conner, as if deciding something.

"...I'm not going to unwrap it, Boros. We....we don't need it. I would just like another soldier. Alright?" Again that look in her eyes, something he couldn't put his finger on. But he knew what he felt, what his eyes were saying. Pain.

"So you brought me here to be what? Fodder? Thanks a lot, Lowen. But whatever fucking threat you're talking about can be dealt with without me. You don't need me. Boros said it. Now get me the hell of out of here." Fists clenched at his side, he felt his blood begin to boil. He had allowed himself a certain level of affection for this woman only to find out his only purpose here was serve as some foot soldier. Rejection was a bitch.

"...I understand. I can't make the journey back with you tonight, but sleep here for now and tomorrow we'll leave. I'm so--" Interruption was starting to hold a pattern.

"Tomorrow then. Is there some place away from this temple where I can sleep?" It was childish, sure, but he didn't care.

"Out by the edge of the cliff, a little ways from here. It's a small cabin, pretty out in the open. It's sort of a lookout point we've found to be obsolete." The nervous laugh she tried to pass off was only met with Conner's back to her, shoving his way past the large Viking and the one who had taken his face.

"You're doing the right thing, my Queen." His voice was both smug and relieved, sifting Conner with nausea as he exited the threshold.

"Boros...shut the hell up." Her voice, something his heightened hearing allowed him as he bolted down the steps, betrayed her exhaustion, as if her denouncement of his role here had hurt her as much as it had him.

It was no matter, none of it. Forcing his senses to calm down to normality, he was graceful, bounding thing down the fleet of steps. It didn't matter if this place was home. He wasn't going to stay here. He wouldn't be a pawn. Not here. He had grown mildly used to the position in Nall's little armada, but he wouldn't accept that here. This was supposed to be a place where he belonged, where people actually wanted him for him. The hurt was a heavy weight in his chest, his mind flashing back to the image of his mothers suicide and causing him to trip in the grass he had finally reached not moments before. With a thud on the ground and slid across water that was oddly damp, his mind was forced to slow. He felt betrayed, used, and it was holding him down. Thoughts managing to snail with the rest of him, he was able to realize that the water being wet wasn't exactly normal. Blinking, he was suddenly aware of the pitter-patter of rain on his coat. A roar of lightening and a ripple of light across the now-gray of the skies brought him from his wallowing to admire the sight. Oddly enough, it soothed him, grounded him further. It was then he noticed that, although his hair was becoming a clingy mop atop his head, his clothes remained dry as ever. Odd, but nothing extraordinary. He couldn't expect every ounce of data to be flawless in a place that had been, basically, tossed out into the garbage. Hell, it was shocking that more things weren't glitched.

Minutes of running, no, sprinting across what was a forest and became an open valley drew his attention towards a small structure of stone too far off. Cabin made him think of wood and this thing simply screamed tomb. The inside, however, he soon found out completely contradicted the exterior. The same assortment of old-age torches lined the stone of the walls and the same rainbow of silk and luxury draped about every corner in depiction of what looked like Fahmor. It was then he realized, glancing at the black and white velvet of the sheets and the pillows of the bed, why this place had been abandoned as a look out. It was meant for easy access to whatever would crawl up the face of the cliff, but it had no windows, no weapons, armor, anything that could have been useful. Had it not been for the gruesome images depicted on the tapestries, he would have felt himself to be in some sort of fancy smancy hotel room. It was the type of the room he had always wanted to have, the sort of things his lazy, welfare-dependent father could never give him. Even Domini didn't have the right funds to pay for something like this. It made him envious of The World once more and, for the first time in a while, he felt glad to be stuck here. Fantasy, his new reality, was a much better place. Sure this opinion would change once he was left to fight some big ass bird again, but for now it was heaven.

Falling asleep happened with a smooth transition; one moment he was flopping onto the assortment of things too soft to be real and the next he was lost in a dream too lucid to be fake. He was suddenly in a room of stone and intricate cloth which, initially, made him think he had simply woken up. The designs on the tapestries, however, drew him to a different conclusion. Instead of gruesome conglomerations of teeth and claws from the Fahmor, he found himself eyeing a silhouetted of a man, the shadow entity depicted in a series of events that seemed oddly familiar. Not things that had happened to Zan, but events that he had either seen on a movie or read in a book. A little boy traveling with an old man, that old man turning the boy into animals, turning himself into animals. Knights clashing in jousts, the same general outline of a boy following around a particular knight. Dark Age battles disguised as tournaments. It wasn't until his eyes fell upon the boy drawing a sword from an anvil mounted on a stone that he felt enlightenment brazen over his expression. The legend of King Arthur; a series of tales Zan had a particular obsession with in high school. The rest of the images became pointless to him, but whoever he was in this "dream" continued to follow his development. A queen, Guenever, wrapped in an embrace of what was now a man. And then the third party, the person Zan had always hated in whatever form the legend took; Lancelot. The French adulterer sneaking with the Queen to mingle in her bed.

Something about that, the image of Lancelot and Guenever locked together, flooded him with guilt. Why? Why did this feel so familiar now? It was no long about the story, but some relation it had with his life. Guilt grew into a weight of sorrow that made his heart swell and bleed, infection riddling the wound and spreading its poison. Zan had never cheated on any girlfriend he had managed to possess during the extent of his lifetime and therefore felt no reason to find the tragic legend so applicable to himself. It was then his eyes got the odd shimmer of light that was tossed to the wall, a beautiful assortment of revolving blues and spinning teals. His gaze, a gaze he was unable to control himself at the moment, followed the trail of light on the floor and to the artifact in the center of the room. Stuck into an anvil that was mounted on a stone was the most beautiful sword he had ever seen. The hilt was crafted from a slab of obsidian from the digital equivalent of the dark side of a moon, the metal curving much like that of an Arabian sort of broadsword. The blade, made from a crystal, glassy sort of metal, curved the opposite direction of the hilt and was outlined in a glossy, silvery substance that flowed like water in a continuous circular rotation. The first thing that came to Zan's mind was Excalibur, a gift from the Lady of the Lake. But, for one reason or another, he knew that wasn't its name. Its presentation was Excalibur and nothing but, but its name was different; Umbral Tear. A single shed moment of sadness from the unseen face of the moon.

Stepping closer, he saw his face in the sheen of the blade, a mirror of unimaginable beauty. Looking into this odd metal brought about a revelation, it wasn't his face at all, but Lowen's. This realization brought a jolt of shock through his head and suddenly he was standing behind her, no longer seeing through her eyes. As if sensing him, she spun around, frantic eyes searching the extravagantly decorated wall behind her. Oddly, she didn't seem to notice him and this lack of presence made her heart flip. He could still feel her emotions like they were his own and it brought unnecessary confusion. To help this ease away, he let his own feeling become a background noise, focusing instead on her. She was suffocating on her own despair, on her confliction. Gemini had been aloud to come to this place, to this Shadow, because of his connection with Zan. She had called to him first, had brought him to her world in hopes of battling a threat. The exact nature of this threat she managed to block out, wall up, hide from Zan. She had to know he was in her head and, for one reason or another, she was enjoying it. It gave her a way to divulge the heavy lead on her chest in a way that didn't need real words. The moment Gemini arrived she knew him not to be who she needed, but the way he talked, the words he weaved cracked her open like an egg. He saw through her false mask of confidence and aggression. Like so many in a position of power and popularity, her real self was a fragile child looking for warm arms to ease those nerves to sleep. Gemini had provided those arms and she felt herself truly happy for the weeks they shared. However, the impending threat and the choice she knew she'd have to make had edged to near and, once more, she had to search for Zan.

Being as close to him data-wise as she was, it wasn't exactly a hard search to commence. When she found him in that desert, plagued by the winged Fahmor, she had felt the seed of affection take place. As much as she owed to Gemini, as much as she hated herself for it, as much as she kept flashing to Lancelot and Guenever, she couldn't help but be drawn to the man. He wasn't particularly intelligent, strong, or witty. Not in comparison to Gemini (with the exception of strength, perhaps). Yet, he had one quality Gemini would ever possess, something she'd never possess but wanted so much to be rained with; humanity. She didn't long to be human; she had no false impressions of the joy of their lives. There was no joy but the love they had. To be loved by someone real was a craving in her blood and this man, this stranger, Zan, could give it to her. It was a girlish hope but, suddenly, she couldn't care anymore. If she was to die soon, something promised by the threat that she continued to wall up as private, than she would live out her last days to the fullest. It wasn't fair to Gemini. Hell, it was downright despicable, but she couldn't care anymore. And suddenly she was moving, whirring down halls, bolting past torches, dragging Zan's ethereal body with her. Boots were slamming into the thick mud that rain had created, heavy droplets still cascading to soak into her scalp, though leaving her clothes dry and untouched. The more she ran the more it came into view; the cabin, the tomb, where he rested.

Just as fast as he had left himself, he was whole again, eyes suddenly wide and awake, pinned to the dimly lit ceiling above. A flash of lightning and a toss of a foreign shadow brought his eyes to the doorless doorway where she should. He could still feel her pain, the sorrow and anguish that wanted so badly to drag her kicking and screaming into her own personal hell. He wanted so much to ease that pain, to soften the suffering and tell her that everything was truly going to be okay. He watched her then, the caramel of her eyes so haunted with the choice she had made yet so content, wisps of ink-black hair clinging to her cheeks, dew drops of water sliding from those tendrils of wet silk and outlining wet trails down the hollow of her throat. Edging himself out of bed, he slowly made his way towards her, his motions careful and cautious as if he was handling a frightened doe. He opened his mouth to say something, but she took one stride towards him and placed a single, slender digit on his lip, hushing him. There was a decision formulating, a new one, and something in his gut told him he would look back on what she was about to ask him and either love himself for the decision he had made, or live his life in regret. It was a scary thought, sure, but one too unavoidable to be anxious about.

"The threat I was talking about before...the same threat you felt me thinking about just a minute ago...do you want to know what it is?" It was a question that seemed completely out of place, but he was still careful enough of her at this point to keep his mouth shut about that.

"...yes..." Uncertainty, an edge of it heavy in his voice. She either didn't notice or didn't care.

"The Fahmor are mounting a sort of Hail Mary attack against us the day from tomorrow. At least, that's what Elaina tells us. She saw the Beast leading the Fahmor, the thing that chased us when we first met." She was leaving something out, it showed in the weave of her syllables.

"Okay...what aren't you telling me?" Accusation was mingled with curiosity and, again, she didn't seem to notice.

"No matter what they tell me, you will make a difference. But you will be just another soldier unless I unlock the Plures Vultus Mortis inside of you. Elaina told me this too, in a more private setting away from the ogling of Boros and her lover." 'Lover' brought a loft of Zan's brow. "Her lover, Jeng. Anyway, the Manyskins, the Many Faced Death, will destroy the Fahmor."

"But, what, I'll also kill all of you in the process? No offence, Lowen, but no fucking way is that going to happen." Agitation now, he was sick and tired of being treated like some Anti-Christ.

"That's what everyone believes. But I just can't see it. Your face..." She said, lifting her thumbs to trace the strong lines of his cheek bones."It's too gentle. Your eyes scream of loss and I've seen why, but you and the rest of your group are meant for great things. Such great things..."

"Then what's the problem? Why can't you just give me this power?" Whatever logic was involved...it was escaping his grasp.

"If I do this for you, I want you to know the risk involved. Elaina could be right. Hell, she's never been wrong. My personal feelings of her current prediction aside, there's a very real possibility that you will kill us." There was something else. There was always something else.

"No, Lowen, I'm not going to ki--" Once more she placed a finger centered on his lips, quieting him.

"That's not all of it. The Beast...if it defeats me, any of the AI, it'll consume us. If that happens to me, and I've unlocked this code inside of you, you have to do something for me." She leaned in, unable to speak the words aloud. Each letter came as a whisper inside of his ear and, when she was done, his eyes were wild, but after a moment he offered her a nod of his head.

He was still frozen, unable to believe what he had just agreed to, when he lifted herself up onto the tip of her toes, lips as silky as the sheets he slept on coming to graze along his own in a kiss that set his skin ablaze. It was too tender to be considered passionate, but God if he didn't think it was. Her lips pulling away from his own, a small nip of her teeth drawing out his lower lip for a moment before releasing it, he watches as a think wisp of shadow floated from between her tiers to pass into his own. And, just as quickly as it had entered him, he felt his body ignite, his code unraveling, twisting, mutating. Looking down at his hands, he thought he was seeing himself in code once more, but something was different. His mind was overlapping the images, graphics and data alike. There was something added to the ones and zeroes before, a single number; two. It was the Plures Vultus Mortis, he knew, but he couldn't help but gawk at it in its simplicity. Something so small, so minimal, a single interruption of the equation, and he was now meant to kill them all. Like before, the code in his vision soon disappeared and left him to normality and, before he could comment on it, she was leading him by the hand and over the wash of pillows and things too soft for the real world. As adult as he felt the situation growing, he knew that wasn't where this was headed. When they both had crawled onto the cushion, they simply watched each other, studied each other, before she moved to him, her hands clutching at the green material of his shirt, at the full moon on its front. With a sigh that melted into quiet, trembling cries, she buried her face into the strong apex of his throat, salty tears running streaks along his flesh. One arm of his was looped, draped under her and around the small of her back, holding her to him, while the other hand was gently cradling the back of her head. Though Gemini had seen through her, had seen the real her, Zan had gone beyond that. He had given her a shoulder to cry on.

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When she had finally fallen asleep and his subtle whispers of comfort in a language he knew to be of those who had the Gift grew pointless, he began to feel his own consciousness melt away. No matter how muddled he felt amongst all of this, everything that had been so harshly tossed at him, he wouldn't trade this intimacy, this feeling of symbiosis, for the world. She was the last piece of his happiness puzzle.

He was complete.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

Zan
Exalted Player
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Post by Zan » Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:09 am

For the first time sense his reception of his Gift, he didn't awake with a start, but with the cautious eye of a predator. A foreign smell was suddenly plugged into his nostrils, invading his rest, invading the also tranquil sleep he had had in thirteen years. A growl mingled itself with his mumble of disapproval, eyes slinking up and down the intrusive form in front of him. The stream of jet black tresses in a streamed dance with the violet hue of new eyes told him just who it was; Elaina. But it wasn't the fact that it was her that had surprised him, but the attire she was currently sporting. The purple weave in black, an assortment of cloth cobwebs, were no long seen. Now she was hitched up in leather armor, a fire in her eyes and a small sword in her right hand. Initially, he thought the stumbling of the woman on Lowen and himself in the same bed had spurned some sort of rage due to some displaced loyalty with Gemini. No...no, that wasn't right. There wasn't anger in her eyes, in those entrancingly bright irises, but haste. Worry. Fear. That was enough to jolt him upward, shaking Lowen out of her slumber as well. Either she hadn't spotted Elaina, or she hadn't cared enough. She simply offered the Lycanthrope a lazy smile, an almost sensual lilt of a smile that edged towards him...nearer...nearer...and in time for her to eye Elaina in her armored glory. She too was suddenly up, the haze of morning lust dispersed from her thoughts.

"What? Elaina, what is it? Why are you dressed like the--"

Any question was tossed from her mind at the sound, that horribly ominous sound in the distance. To Zan's currently human senses, it was like rolling thunder, a promise for rain and flickering electricity, but nothing to fret about. It was only when he let the Beast into his blood, when his ears were suddenly on the scene, that he realized what all the fuss was about. Each rumble was one step into the march, into the march of a thousand, a thousand thousand, feet. The Fahmor, they had arrived. Damn early too. Leaving his trenchcoat behind and staying simply clad in the green, full-moon imprinted shirt and loose black pants, he turned his eyes to their Alpha. His Alpha. Instead of the look of a leader, the look of a warrior, she gave him the look of a lover whose husband was being shipped off to war. A look that said this was the last time they'd lay steady eyes upon one another. The Heavy Blade couldn't face that look, couldn't bear the weight it impressed upon him. Gritting his teeth, clenching his jaw in a wired-shut position, he pushed himself past the threshold the small stone cabin offered and looked to the Mayan-esque temple a few dozen yards in the distance. There they were assembling, the wolves, separated into three different groups from as far as he could tell. By the time they had assembled near the edge of the cliff and Lowen had made it outside, he now saw the army they had.

A queen and her two generals. In the center, at the head of the biggest group of NPC werewolves (all of whom had transformed) was the still-human Lowen. Draped in the same nigh-primitive leather garments, she held tight two swords, spinning the weapons effortlessly over the top of her hands, only to come to grip them once more. Her face was stolid, focused. To her right was Boros, the Viking still dressed as he had always been in the array of animal furs and the like, a sword two large for any human to carry slunk over one shoulder to hand effortlessly past the other. To her left was Jeng, the man in the same armor Elaina and Lowen had put on, with the obvious adjustments made. In his hands balanced a wicked looking swallow, the spear-like weapon with blades on either ends curving away from each other. Elaina didn't seem to have her own troop, but instead stood at the head of Lowen's army; all of them arranged in a trained formation that told him they had done this before. But...something was different. They actually looked scared, almost off balanced. Something in their eyes, in the unsteady release of their breath, told the Lycanthrope that they hadn't faced an army this size before. Forcing himself to see what they were seeing, his eyes bled into the amber glow of the wolf and indeed, he saw.

Unlike the skeletal Fahmor he had faced upon his entry into the cookied world, the Shadow, the ones now lined in rows and stacks as far as the eye could see...they had girth. Meat on their bones. All of them appeared to him like over-trained weight lifters, all a good few inches above six feet. All of them held either a sword, a spear, or an axe in their right hand and a large circular shield in their left. The moment they knew they were spotted, still dozens of miles away, they began to clash their weapons against their shields, shouting in grunts and hardly intelligible noises in some attempt to mock or goad them into action. Further still, past the foot soldiers, past the rows and rows of intimidating number, was the four generals that led their army. They, unlike their army, did not move, but instead waited for the attack to come to them. They were the real show. One a mirrored copy of Lowen, the other of Jeng, a third of Boros, and the last, Zan. Where Lowen led the army from the cliff, it was Zan's opposite half that led the ones down below. It wasn't hard to tell them apart, even with the near-cloned status they held. Everyone of them had various woad, blue streaks of war paint, decorating their forms. Zan's opposite was the only not mirror in reflective quality. Unlike Zan, he simply sported the black jeans in a more tattered form. Barefooted and bare-chested, a single symbol was painted on his chest. It was in the Gift language, in the language of the wolves.

Zan did his best to put it into English, into something even remotely correct in translation. Sadly, he could do no such thing. There was no one word to encompass the ideal that one symbol held. The closest he could come to wasn't simply a pair of words, but a concept; Chaos Theory. It told him that for every action, there wasn't simply an equal and opposite reaction, there were millions of them. It told Zan that he could turn back, that he could run and keep running until no breath held in the flames of his lungs. The Heavy Blade almost did just that, but the sudden presence of Gemini's hand on his shoulder stopped him. Startled, the Lycanthrope did nothing but stare, guilt in the hollow of his eyes. Something in Gemini's gaze told Zan he knew of Lowen's moment with him, that he was quite aware of the bond that had developed. Rather than anger...there was only a sadness. A regret. No words came to the man now to explain himself, to explain the spontaneity of the entire event. He tried, with a mumble of syllables and hushed prerogatives, but nothing coherent spilled forth. The man only shook his head, a gesture of recognition and rejection all in the swing. He didn't want to hear it. He wouldn't hear it, any of it. He was simply taking Zan's fear him, a parting gift. Zan knew right then and there he'd never see Gemini again. Betrayal ran cold in the AI's digital veins and he was going to be the one walking away. If he was real, none of the others seemed to notice his exit. Shaking himself from the seemingly random incident, he lofted a question to Lowen.

"Lowen, wait. Who the hell are those guys in the distance? The ones who, well, look exactly the fuck like us." He was feeling their worry now, their fright.

"The Beasts. Our Beasts. You'll feel now that you, in your human form, have the strength and the speed of you in your transformed state. We can't transform, they've stolen the visage. If they defeat you...if they defeat any of us..." Her voice trailed off, crushed by the weight of what she had asked of him the night before.

"Than we become Beasts ourselves. Lost to the hunger." His voice was subtly monotonous, a repetition of her late-night whisper.

"Yes. Please...stay here. If we need you, I'll call to you. I'm leaving Elaina here to help protect you." She raised a hand the moment she had spoken, stopping whatever comment he might have tried to worm through. "You haven't faced these before. If any of them break through, come up here...I want you to have some back up. That's the end of it."

Offering no room for argument, Zan had to simply let it go and he was allowing himself to do just that. He was meant to save them, to save them from the doom that waited under the weight of their enemies weapons. Yet, he was meant to destroy them just the same. Not wanting at all to be a part of the latter option, he didn't want to join in the fray that was about to break loose below. Not if it meant he could bleed those around him. So he simply stood still, idle, as the trio of wolven battalions launched themselves off the face of the cliff. The drop below was a good handful of miles and, yet, he knew it wouldn't kill a single one of them. Had anxiety not already settled into his gut like an iron weight, he would have been impressed by such a fact. The fact that they were easily outnumbered three to one did no grace upon his worries, simply fueling it further, making him itch with impatience. If he was supposed to save these people, than why couldn't he simply jump down and save them? Better yet, how in the hell was he supposed to do that in the first place? Nothing in his arsenal of abilities allowed an assault big enough to take them all on. Zan was definitely the least prepared to deal with the threat at hand and...yet...Lowen had promised he'd bring about great things. She had ignored the terrible, glorified the great and filled his head with egotistical inflations. Now it was all for naught. Seeing the army now, he knew he was powerless to stop them.

Hell, he was simply powerless.

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A little boy sat idly in front of his television, small eyes moving over the images that animated themselves before him. It wasn't cartoons he watched, oh no. His father had fallen asleep, vodka still in hand, leaving the news blaringly loud at such a God-awful time of night. How could the cub not crawl out from his cave to see what had woken him? On the television a teenage boy was guided in cuffs from his house, head hung low; delirious, unattached, vacant. Was it a smile on those lips? Surely one wouldn't smile with the men-in-blue taking them in custody? The eight year old child was drawn to this sight, drawn to the satisfied look on the strangers face. It consumed him, ate at him, begged him to learn more. So he listened. He listened and he waited for that small nibble of fact that would send his belly full and off to bed to dream about gum drops and lollipops. Little Conner watched as fancy medical men in jumpsuits wheeled a pair of lumps out in two large, black bags. Face only inches from the screen now, innocent fingers set themselves against the screen, itching for explanation, yearning for enlightenment. What was going on? Why was the man-handled teen so happy and what, oh what, was in those bags? It was then the reporter slid into view, a quick jerk of the camera.

"We are standing here now at the aftermath of a gruesome double homicide. The attacker, Geoff W. Robinson, seems to have killed his mother during an act of adultery. Nearly every police officer that has gone into that building has come out ill, vomiting." She paused for a moment, beckoning a green-looking cop to offer something to her microphone. "Excuse me, sir, what did you see in there?"

"He...Jesus Christ...he slaughtered them. Painted them on the walls...the blood...sweet God the blood..." And again he fell sick in the grass, dry heaves tearing the pain from his stomach.

"There you have it, Chuck. Horror in the Heartland. Back to you in the studio."

And like that she disappeared, the first dark seed planted in the boys head. Little Conner's eyes opened, if only for a single, shining moment. That boy, that Geoff W. Robinson, he had killed his mother. Somehow, he had ended a life, two of them, and seemed fulfilled. The little boy craved that long lost sensation like a poor child craved food. Not sense before cancer had claimed his mother had he felt himself whole. Innocent eyes panned to his father's slumbering form on the leather chair behind him. Could he free his father from this? From the pain, the drinking, the tears, the anger, the beatings, all of it? The knives in the kitchen could serve as tools in this holy mission of release. Would saving his father save himself? Would he walk away from the police with that same crooked smile? All of this ran like rabbits through his mind as he made his way towards the kitchen, youthful hands coming to the sought-after droor. Sliding it out just a fraction, just a small little inch, he lofted himself onto his tip-toes. The glint of the steel from the moonlight that lanced so victoriously through his curtains was inviting. It whispered for him to do as he wished. Use the knife. Save yourself. Save your father. He wants to see Mommy, doesn't he? Pulling the tool from the droor, he crept carefully towards the snoring beast with rot for breath. The weapon arched, ready for delivery, froze in the air. He couldn't do it. Little Conner simply didn't have the heart, the bravery, that good ol' Geoff W. Robinson had possessed. Instead, he lifted himself on his toes once more, leaving his dad with an affectionate kiss to his cheek. He'd put away this knife, this thought, and go to where the gum drops waited.


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Zan blinked the memory away, a memory that had crept up as he watched the Beasts in their idle waiting in the distance. That moment, that forgotten day, it had been the first display of that primal kick to end the life of someone who threatened your survival. The first display of the human Beast. Had he really ever been so innocent as to simply gawk at the television without identification of something like a body bag? If it was ever so, it was ages ago. A shred of identity lost to the winds of times passage, to the flutter of wings riding the edge of a crow's back. It encouraged him so blindly to destroy his visage in the distance, that inhuman display of painted humanity. Murder...he had nearly been capable of an act as such. He didn't bother himself with the ramifications of his actions in this false place, in The World has a whole. No matter what gruesome things passed under his hands, a part of him was always prepared to dismiss it as a game. Was it simply that? Just a game? No, it was a reality all its own, but delusion could be a truly beautiful release. So sure, things that stirred on in the game could be forgotten, but taking a life in the real world? That he had ever been possible of such a thing made him hate the Beast in the distance. He blamed it, him. If he destroyed that thing...would he conquer that tainted consciousness?

Right now, in his heart of hearts, he knew there was no Beast stirring in his brain. He was given momentary piece during this war. It had stolen itself away from his body and left him to breathe. What if someone killed his Beast, but he did not? Did that mean he would forever wrestle with the mental turmoil that bubbled so freely in his thoughts? Ignoring his fear of heights, he was already bolting towards the edge of the cliff, ready to dive and freefall in the hell raging below him. A figure crawling up the cliffside, obscuring his path with a single, human arm reaching over, made him come to a premature halt. A weak voice asked for help and he was in the middle of doing so before he could stop himself. The leaders of this clash were out in the distance. This had to be one of theirs, didn't it? Elaina was yelling her disagreements behind him, but he ignored it, lofting the man up and over and, eventually, onto his feet. No words were exchanged between the two, simply quieted curiosity. They studied each other then, an ocean of thoughts between the other. This stranger, this helpless man, he looked as if he could be Zan's brother. Not his twin, no. Not quite. Ruffled, unkempt black hair came in tufts past his shoulder an inch or so. Hazel eyes were wild, untrained, almost lost. Raw scratches etched themselves into his belly and by the bloodied condition of his fingers, Zan had a feeling he knew their origin. The marks resembled that of a person who hadn't eaten, hadn't fed themselves, in ages. The wilderness in his eyes...Zan knew what it was now, recognized it as something he had long ignored; hunger.

That was when this stranger opened his mouth, widening his jaw in a wicked display as he reared his hack back. His teeth, for a single moment in time, were the normal arrangement, and in the next, they were two opposing rows of jagged enamel shaped like broken shards of glass. They littered his mouth, decorated his gums like disfigured shark teeth. The creature was too fast, too quick, mouth launching forward, odd strings of silver and gold colored saliva clinging from one row of teeth to the other. Those teeth locked themselves around his neck, sending his nerves into electric spasms of fire. Though Zan wasn't too sure of the purpose the gold had, he felt the silver mingling with his blood, paralyzing him like a tranquilizer. In that one moment he knew this being wanted to rip the flesh from his neck and savor the hot slide of flesh down his throat. He was so hungry. Something was stopping him, some vague representation of self-control. When he was released from that razor prison, he watched the world as he fell, eyes glancing behind him as his head bounced against the ground. Elaina had gone, left him. It was no matter; the pain was too much, too distracting to care about anything else. This entity, whoever he or it was, grasped the sides of his face and forced Zan's eyes to meet his own. Hands pressed to his cheeks as they were, he could feel the mild bite of mangled claws against him. The voice that spoke him then was low, bassy.

"I have searched so long to find you. So very, very long. No flesh to sustain me but your own...." A movement of his eyes downward and Zan was suddenly made aware of the blatant sight of the man's rib cage. He was so thin, so meekly thin."You made me, you know? This place, now simply the Shadow, but The World itself...it tipped the balance. So what is a lowly game of equations to do but re-balance the equation. Say hello to your negative, Zan. Conner. Plures Vultus Mortis. Where you deny your hunger, I serve it. Where you fight to control the Beast, I am willingly enslaved by it. When you are strong, I am stronger. I'm more fortified. When you are fast...I am faster. I'm more accurate. Where silver makes you burn and gold will soon, I control them. When you hunger, I feast, but I am never filled. Only when I taste you, when I consume you, will this game let me cease to be. I should consume you here; toss your bones to the ones below after so dutifully sucking your marrow dry. However, the Lady had compelled me to wait. You must come with me, so I can eat. So the both of us can be free. So do not fight me. Let this take place. As for those who fight below, they will be dead soon. The Lady has ordered the Fahmor to accumulate as they have. No one defeats the Lady, don't you see? The Lady in White is more than this place..." Inhumanly deranged eyes lifted from Zan's to stare at something elsewhere. Blood still dribbled from his mouth, the creature unconsciously rolling his tongue to catch the stray drops.

That monstrosity suddenly relinquished itself from the hunched position it held over Zan's frozen form. Gnashing its teeth at whatever had caught its eyes, it drew away in caution. Elaina moved to stand above him, the violet miracles of her eyes watching the creature as it so dutifully watched her. A sword was in her hand, something he had seen through Lowen's eyes. The Umbral Tear. Without explanation, she simply placed the tip to his throat, a sigh coming from her, no, from the blade itself, a sigh mildly muffled as if it had come from somewhere submerged underwater. A chill like ice bit his neck then, that same cool wind bleeding into his veins, reducing the silver to nothingness, replacing it. The moment he could, the moment he was able, Zan scrambled to his feet and away from the creature. It was everything he didn't want to be. It wasn't the Beast, it was a slave to the Beast. It was his negative. Where Zan stood at one end of the spectrum, the Beast in its center, the horrid creation in front of him crawled at the opposite end. He felt pity for it, a pity soon followed by guilt as he realized it had been him who spurred the thing into being. Ordered by this 'Lady in White' to come here, it had sought to end its own suffering. Did that really make it so evil? Whatever questions Zan would have asked, whatever apologies he would have offered were lost as the thing rippled away, as if a pebble-disturbed lake had reverberated along his image until he simply faded. Faded to be seen again. Zan was sure of it.

"When I saw you this morning with Lowen in your bed, I indulged myself in a vision. A simple touch to your forehead showed me him, showed me your mother, showed me your friends. It also showed me the Umbral Tear, told me how I would save you. Now you must do as the fates have woven their weave and save your people. Save us. And then, undeniably, kill us. I have no ill-will towards you. I have accepted what we are. We have and were always meant to be simple variables in your equation. There is no life for us here in the Shadow." Sullen as her voice was, there truly was a tone of acceptance mingled in as well.

"Look, thank you for saving me from...that thing. But God damn it, I'm not going to kill you." Desperation was a rake against his throat.

"Say and believe as you will, but look to the battle below. Lowen needs you now. The pack needs you." Exhaustion, it seemed, was embedded in her voice as well.

Heeding her words, Zan turned to walk a few yards forward, eyes offering him the potential slaughter below. His pack was being overwhelmed by the sheer number of Fahmor. That wasn't the surprise, however. The surprise was that Lowen, Jeng, and Boros had all wormed their way past the foot soldiers and found themselves in front of their Beasts. Zan's eyed him patiently, knowing full well what was about to happen. That, however, wasn't on Zan's mind. It was the promise he had made to Lowen the night before, a promise he'd prevent from needing fulfillment. It was time to fight.

His darkest hour.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
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Zan
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Post by Zan » Sun Jan 08, 2006 7:11 am

Standing there, hazel eyes glazing over the clash of flesh and bone below him, Zan didn't know what to do. The lycanthrope prayed to whatever god would listen, to whatever ear would offer him some time, that they would take some sort of advantage. However, as time progressed, things only seemed to follow this steep incline of downward spiraling events. The agonizing howls of brethren were breaking his heart, tearing apart his mind from the logic that had tried to settle in. Rationality was fading. Times such as this made him loath his abilities, every little nook and extension they possessed. What would otherwise seem like some wild animal calling into the night to most was an intricate stream of conversation for his ears to suffer through. Each one called for help, begged for it, while still others pleaded for death. Even from this height he could smell the blood on their coats and the odd chemical-bile combination of the Fahmor's heartsblood splattered on the ground. The heart-wrenching smell of the bleeding werewolves below far outweighed the acid bite of the Fahmor's wounds, telling him just where this battle was headed. Too many below, far too many. It was like watching an entire colony of ants dance below him with the occasional pattern disturbance of the wolves.

What was he to do? One soldier against an army? Boros had been right when he said that Zan couldn't make a difference. It was like tossing a rock at swarm of bees, parting them for a moment before their wills collected and wrought pain in their wake. The Heavy Blade was only vaguely aware of the prediction he had been bombarded with since his introduction to the pack. Zan was supposed to save them from this. He was supposed to be their momentary savior, a war-compelled messiah that would liberate them from the Fahmor, only to turn and take them out one by one. That alone was ridiculous, if nothing else. Though the pack was a lot smaller than the Fahmor's army, he would have no easier chance taking them out. Not only did he lack the immense strength such a feat would call for, but he lacked the will to harm them. Though reluctantly, and perhaps never fully, they had taken him in and offered him a home away from the terror of the Elites. They had given him some distraction to ease his head upon and a woman that could very well mend the wound in his heart that his family was never able to, not since the death of his mother. Before he could arrive at a decision, the violet-eyed creature behind me spoke up and made one for him.

"Zan, you know what you have to do. Save them. Don't fight this any longer. The Plures Vultus Mortis is just waiting for you to realize your fate. Fly over them, alpha, and wipe them clean with a thought. I've seen you do it, now you just have to fulfill what is to be." Her voice was careful, almost assuring, like a mother promising her child that the water wasn't too deep.

"I can't do it, any of it. I can't fly, I can't just erase things from existence. I don't possess this power that you keep fucking speaking of and the only God damn thing that virus has done for me is exile me from all of you. And I'm not an alpha." It was a jumble of badly coordinated responses, his mind distracted in part by everything miles below his feet.

"Perhaps you aren't now, but you will be. Just fly. Save them, stop their pain." Desperation crawled through her vocal cords once more, urging him on.

"I...no. I can't. I won't." The stubborn creature that he was, Zan fought as he always would.

"Damn it, Zan! Fly!" She, obviously, wasn't a creature of patience.

A harsh, inhumanly strong shove and he was flung off the cliff, barreling and flipping through the air with the grace of a falling rag doll. His heart was screaming injustice against his chest, doing its best to crawl up his throat and escape from the painful fate of the falls impact. What the hell had Elaina just done? How was he going to help anybody if he wasn't even alive to do it? Anger gave way to fear and odd ambition, his mind going over the last thought. Would he help? Was he going to follow this path that promised death for the only family he was sure he'd ever really have? Yes, he was, but he wasn't going to let them die; fate be damned. That split second of acceptance and he felt himself begin to change, felt his data begin a subtly familiar shift. Though he didn't yet possess the power to take on this new form's full look, full flare, differences were definitely made apparent. The hue of his hair bled black, rich black, each strand of hair becoming like the fine material on a quill, the extensions of a feather. Though his eyes retained an outline of black, some mild definition, the rest faded to white; a blank slate. His fall already beginning to slow, Zan allowed himself a glance along his arms. Intricate, feather tattoos painted themselves along those arms, every bone in his body beginning to hollow out, to empty. It was then he realized he was no longer falling, but gliding, soaring towards his Beast with a look of determination creasing his expression.

It was then he looked to the fight still waging below him and remembered why he had taken upon this weight in the first place. Somehow, some way, he had to destroy every last one of the Fahmor before he hit the ground. Calling out again to whatever would listen to him, perhaps even a part of himself, the Heavy Blade asked for help. In the same time it took for him to become what he was at the moment, he felt whatever power this power had to offered amplified through the Umbral Tear and the field itself. Though such a thing would undoubtedly fail in the actual realms of the game, he now was the field. Though earth stretched out endlessly to his right, to his left, it was the molten material below the made up the real element of the field. Fire. He could feel the heat in his eyes, the powers only warning. The outline of his eyes darkened, reddened, turning orange the closer you found yourself to the center, only to complete in yellow around the pupil itself. Everything seemed to slow down in that instance, becoming crystallized sequences rather than a chronological expanse. A gout of flames spread from the center of his eye and across his cheeks, licking upward in a harmless stream along his 'hair', along his flesh, to the air above. The slowing anomaly froze completely, leaving him suspending in the air for one precious moment. A click, a snap, and the world was ablaze. The ground below him swam with fire, an inferno of crackling flesh and tortured cries.

Zan expected to hear the yelp of the warriors below, the hiss of his fellow werewolves as his attack swallowed them in turn, fulfilling Elaina's prophecy. But she was wrong, she had seen wrong. All he received from them was silence and shock as the flames passed over them without harm. Hitpoints draining, fleeing from them, the Fahmor began to blink out of existence in rioting crowds around him. His steady fall forward continuing, he watched with a smile, in amazement of himself until he was only yards from his Beast. Some trick of its power prevented him from attacking in the same fashion. There would be no easy way out of this. His bones filling, the tattoos on his arms receding and his hair becoming a dark brown fall of actual hair, he braced himself for the impact his rate of his decent would offer. The sudden gain of momentum caught his Beast off guard, wild, amber eyes widening as the sickening crunch of their forms met. Fear raced through him as they rolled for what seemed like forever, their bodies finally coming to stop only moments after. Again, a trick of the blade and the connection to the field had him healed and mended before he could even give it a thought. His Beast, however, writhed and moaned in pain as Zan came to his feet.

It was an odd twist of fate, it really was. Where so many times his sanity, his life, had been held in the hands of the thing on the ground, its life was now in Zan's. The Heavy Blade felt himself moments from going berserk, from thrashing and dismembering that extension of his consciousness to free him from its control. However, something about the way Lowen, Boros, and Jeng were fighting theirs made something seem...off. While the Beasts thrashed and clawed, bit and chewed their better halves, the three AI's fought with a sort of civility (if such an aspect can be applied to combat). They weren't going for the easy blows, the open areas of abusive damage. No, they were going for the quick killing blows; snaking forms trying to snack necks, decapitate the Beasts, all of that. Zan took from this that it wasn't only that you had to kill them to beat them, but you had to kill them in a way that set you apart from the wolf. You had to kill them as a human would kill and you had to do it quick, an extension of mercy that wolves didn't always possess.

Looking to his Beast, he gave him a small, genuine smile and showed him a quick brand of mercy, his sword lopping off the head of his foe. In that moment his entire physiology changed, the returned presence of that primal existence in the back of his head making him feel as if he had failed, done something wrong. But...something was different. It wasn't this raging threat in his skull, but this submissive growl waiting for his permission to rumble from his throat. It was a golden moment, a shining moment, that as all others was not meant to last. His eyes filtering to the side, he found himself face to face with Lowen, her canines (both top and bottom) engrossingly lengthened, eyes the crazed amber of the wolf. He could only think one thing then, one single word that wasn't even allowed time to pass his lips.

No.

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"If I do this for you, I want you to know the risk involved. Elaina could be right. Hell, she's never been wrong. My personal feelings of her current prediction aside, there's a very real possibility that you will kill us." There was something else. There was always something else.

"No, Lowen, I'm not going to ki--" Once more she placed a finger centered on his lips, quieting him.

"That's not all of it. The Beast...if it defeats me, any of the AI, it'll consume us. If that happens to me, and I've unlocked this code inside of you, you have to do something for me." She leaned in, unable to speak the words aloud. "If I lose...you have to promise you'll kill me. You don't understand what it's like to be completely consumed by the Beast. Being taken over by it, as you have before, is mild in comparison to being truly eaten up by it. Once it happens, if it happens, I can't be swayed back to my...humanity. Don't let me exist that way...please." Each letter came as a whisper inside of his ear and, when she was done, his eyes were wild, but after a moment he offered her a nod of his head.


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The Heavy Blade's mind replayed that scene from the night before. Zan hadn't expected to be here, in this position. Did he fulfill his promise to her and free her from the primal insanity that now enraptured her? Or did he contain her and search for some sort of cure? It wasn't even a struggled decision, not really. Zan couldn't kill her, he wouldn't kill her. Perhaps he hadn't known her long enough to love her, but his heart still did summersaults at the sight of her, even now. A quick glance to Jeng and Boros revealed they had come from their fight intact, victorious. Good, he'd need the help. Opening his mouth to call for them, to call for their help, he found himself suddenly aware of the hand that had begun to raise his blade from the idle position at his side towards her. His hand. Blinking momentarily in confusion, he tried to force the weapon back down, but...it wouldn't budge. Zan's eyes locking with Lowen's, he found her buried their, buried deep. All of her willpower was being spent to keep herself at bay, the snarling woman in front of him snapping her teeth in warning. He knew it wouldn't last, that'd she lose herself in seconds and he'd be on the receiving end of destruction, but a part of him still prayed for her sanity to be returned.

And, yet, the sword continued its resistant rise to press horizontally against her stomach. Both hands tightened around the grip, his knuckles whitening as he continued to search for an answer to why he was doing this. Was it the Plures Vultus Mortis? No...he knew what it was. At least, the infected Twilight stirring within him knew. There had been an odd fashion to her words before, an odd echo inside of her head as she asked for his hand in death should this fate come to pass. The alpha had oath-bonded him, had inserted a stream of factors and forced variables that had locked in place with a simple gesture, with his nod. Boros and Jeng, two generals covered in leagues of scratches and lesions that were beginning to knit themselves closed, were frozen behind her. Though there was no way they could piece the entire puzzle, of two's conversation the night before, something in their eyes said they knew the air wasn't right. Something was off, something was wrong. Not with Lowen, they could smell that, but with the crazed eyes of their promised apocalypse. Zan couldn't bring himself to speak, couldn't do anything but try his damndest to pull the end of the blade from her stomach.

Instead, the flow of the water-like substance around the tip of the blade begin to alter, thicken. For a moment it seemed to gel, loosing its clear hue and solidifying into what Zan knew, into what Zan could feel was silver. Though his mind was raging a war on his body, his body showed no signs of it. He didn't twitch, his jaw didn't clench. Everything about him was gracefully preparing itself for an execution. The touch of silver to her flesh brought the hurricane of the Beast in her skull to a quick stumble and the Heavy Blade knew he'd remember the next few seconds for the rest of his life. Lowen's eyes filtered to brown and her teeth dulled back to a human state. She could have spent the last few seconds of her existence calling for help, for Zan's restraint, but she didn't. Instead, she practically flung herself forward, arms coming to lock over his shoulders and around the back of his neck, lips smashing against his own. Unlike the others, there was no tenderness to this, only desperation. There was no movement past that, simply a savoring of what she'd never have. And back It came, teeth poking mildly against his tiers, her eyes flashing open in unison with his own. Dipping his shoulder down, turning it to stab into her own, he used all of his weight to shove her away, but it wasn't enough. The oath would see itself fulfilled, and that was the end of that. Before she could get even an inch away from him, he shoved the horizontally placed edge of the Umbral Tear into her so that it pierced a good inch or two into her stomach. Her blood already beginning to boil, to sizzle with a gut-wrenching sound into the air. With a cry of his own helplessness, Zan pivoted his body to the left and yanked the blade away from her, the sliding motion only digging the weapon further into her before it was completely removed.

The force of the cut sent her stumbling a few steps back, eyes once again becoming her human hazel, teeth shrinking in turn. She tried to speak, but each syllable came as a cough and spatter of red across her lips. Zan ran a few steps towards her, tossing the blade with a momentary, humming clang on the ground. She looked confused, or perhaps it was shock beginning to settle in. Lowen tried to steady herself against him, to talk, but the coughs were becoming thick, wet with death as she choked on her own blood. The silver-laced wound wasn't getting any better, but continued to bleed as free a wound naturally would. The silver would act as a 'safeguard' against Repth, so he didn't waste his time scrolling through his inventory to secure the ability. She needed to lay down...she, God, she just needed some rest. This would work out. It would be okay. It had to be, there was no other alternative. Running with his illogical solution, Zan guided her already weakly slipping form to lie on the hard, cracked earth, setting her head to rest itself on his knees, legs folded behind him. A few seconds of staring at her non-responsive eyes and his own lofted up to the two men standing only a yard or two away. There expressions were blank, unmoving, frozen in place. Tears beginning to burn themselves against his eyes, Zan raised her upper body, arms wrapping around her, his hand sliding against her cheek to press her head against his chest.

"Lowen...I'm...God, what'd you make me do? Please don't do this, not now. I need you, I can't be here alone. I don't want to be alone again. Get to your feet and we'll find a way to fix this...I promise you...just get up..."

Grief strangled his voice, took on the form of hot tears in wet lines down his cheek.
All that was given to him in response was one final breath outward, a shaky removal of the last remains of oxygen in her lungs. Zan was shaking now, shuddering perpetually as he clutched her against him. Whatever words he spoke next mingled with the weight of her sorrow against her neck, muffled by the silk of her skin. He tried to breathe her in one last time, but the game had removed that 'feature' upon her death. She no longer held any warmth, buy lay limp, lifeless, and cold in his arms. All of his senses suddenly burned to life and he was made aware of the dull thumps that sounded behind him. Laying her warily on the ground, he turned his head back; eyes allowed the sight of at least two dozen werewolves dead and slunk to the floor before they simply blinked into nothing. Her death had changed something in Zan, not only emotionally, but physically and mentally as well. His mind was suddenly synchronized with Boros and Jeng and, for what could only have been a split second, Elaina as well. When he found he could no longer smell her either, his eyes honed miles upward to the dead, fallen corpse of the Seer. It was then he remembered that each AI was linked to a dozen or so of their NPC brethren. Upon their death came the death of several others and, in Lowen's unique case, the remaining AI that had been directly linked to her; Elaina.
Though Jeng's eyes had filtered upwards as well, to the sight of his dead love, his mind was empty to Zan. Boros, however, had snapped from his trance and was trumping over to the Heavy Blade, face red with rage and murder embedded into his eyes.

"YOU! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE! I TOLD HER YOU'D DO THIS! I WILL TAKE YOU APART PIECE BY PIECE AND MAKE SURE YOU'RE CONCIOUS TO FEEL EVERY. MOMENT. OF. IT." Anger was a palpable thing in his words, a whip of fury.

Each word also inspired something in Zan, something dark, his hand wrapping around the Umbral Tear's grip as he came to his feet. Hate rumbled around his heart; hate for himself, hate for Lowen, hate for the man that acted with ignorance before him. Unfathomable anguish hollowed him out, corrupted him, twisted him. Whatever home he could have had was gone now. The only person he had given his heart to, if only for a night, had been killed by his hands. A part of him was aware of the physical change that begun, starting at the hand that held the sword and ending, for the time being, at his elbow. Though it stayed in proportion to his current state, his self-loathing had mutated his arm into the full state of his lupine transformation. Where his fur usually held a dark brown shade, it was tainted with a black deeper than the void in his heart. Even his claws held that obsidian hue, continuing along the black of the Umbral Tear's hilt until even the normally-blue, see-through blade became like tar. Zan's arm and the blade in turn began to drip with a black oil, a dark grease, a perfect embodiment of the unnatural sentiment in his chest. Boros was too consumed with his own mission to notice the change, tunnel-visioned on his target. The Heavy Blade had seconds to make a choice, and with the conquering of his Beast, he now actually had the power to do so. He could hurt the man, terribly, or he could try and reclaim some normality with the situation. He wanted so much to indulge in the mindlessness of the Beast, knowing full well it would bring him a temporary hit of satisfaction like the quick bite of a heroin injection. Sick and tired of being sad, he let himself go.

Zan didn't simply want to hurt the man, he wanted to end him. This drive was powerful, too powerful to ignore, and he felt all the anger, all the hate, all the sorrow manifest under his skin. All he had to do was open it up, to tear himself just a little further, and it would be over. So Zan wounded himself with a thought, a cut not opening against his flesh, but against the protected layer of source code that made up who he was. The powerful firewall that the Twilight Virus had set around him was blemished with a hole, a fracture. The negative emotions poured from this wound, crawled unseen onto his blade. With an inhuman roar that should have been impossible with his current form, he led the blade in a perfect one hundred and eighty degree, horizontal arc forward. Though it never touched Boros, the subtle wave of invisible but rippling energy that distorted the air around it did. It was enough to halt Boros in his tracks, to filter confusion across his face. Suddenly touching his hands to either ear, he drew his fingers back to his eyes, staring at the blood-coated digits. He opened his mouth to say something, but when blood began to trickle from either side of his mouse, his nostrils, and even the corners of his eyes in crimson tears, his eyes rolled back into his head. There was no struggle, the Viking simply slumping to the floor along with his own personal army of lycanthropic NPCs that blinked out completely while he remained as both Elaina and Lowen had as well. The AIs didn't seem to have ghosts and their forms seemed too stubborn to go the way the NPCs did.

With Boros gone, Jeng's pain was as clear as day and as loud as a fog horn in Zan's head. Zan had killed Jeng's love and the man had finally come to realize it. Though Zan's own hate, his own sorrow had begun to lessen with the attack he had unleashed, it was soon in refueled by the alpha link he possessed with the man. Lowen's death had passed the torch, for some reason, to the distraught Heavy Blade. Elaina's comment of 'You will be,' suddenly began to make sense. Jeng's loathing was a scalding wave against him, much more intense than the sort that Boros had held. Turning to Zan, Jeng began to change, white fur rippling along his form, muscles swelling, his face jutting out into a muscle as his body stood to claim another two or three feet in height. Zan could feel how much those saliva dribbling teeth wished to clamp around his throat, how much the thick, several inch long claws wished to tear through his flesh. Pure, unabated fear allowed Jeng's hate to corrupt him further, his own body ripped apart and made anew by his transformation. Not surprisingly, the pitch black mutation of his arm had swept over the rest of him; his entire form seeming to be a walking shadow, dripping repulsively with the same tar.

Whether out of arrogance or convenience, Zan let the Umbral Tear fall to the ground once more. Jeng too left his hands weapon-free (at least as weapon-free as his claws could be). The next few moments were blurred with the haze of his frenzy, of his berserker state of mind, but he knew it was Jeng who struck first, nails digging inch-deep burrows into his gut. Wounds became too numerous to count or note with any accuracy, but in the end it was Zan who crouched in a hunch over the dead form of Jeng, his muzzle red with blood, teeth working monstrously to tear away the flesh of his chest, cracking his sternum into splinters. It wasn't until he captured the man's heart in his mouth, yanking it free with audibly grotesque snaps of veins and nerve bundles, that he felt his humanity return to him.

Jeng's death had erased the last of the NPCs, all who had stood in silence during their fight under what Zan assumed was Jeng's command. It was then his mind came back to the prophecy, to Elaina's promise. In the end, he truly had been their salvation and their destruction; rescued from the Fahmor, only to be ended by his teeth, his claws, his sword. In his search for control, the lycanthropes had given him not only that, but his sanity. He could only repay them in death, the only gift the World had granted him. Jeng's heart still in his mouth, he swallowed the organ in a single gulp, snatching up the Umbral Tear and driving it into the ground. The blade itself hardened to stone, rippling cracks outward that swallowed up the corpses of his friends whose blood still stained him. Falling to his knees, Zan lofted his muzzle into the ground, mouth opening just a touch towards the moon that had appeared as readily as the blackened skies.

A howl tore from his throat then, a mournful sound that ripped through the barrier of the World's Shadow to ring across the expanse of the game itself, audible only to those with the heart to hear it. They'd feel Zan's sympathy, his pain, his sadness, and in those notes they'd hear the story of the king who ruled over no one, of the king that had saved his people...

...only to kill them all.
Lv. 50 Heavy Blade
Wishlist
Special: Levels, GR Sendai, PL Sakai, Darklore.
W: Tonosama Sword, Mineuchi, Jundachi.
A: Samurai Helm, Able Hands, Rare Greaves.
I: Holy Sap, Treebane, Cooked Bile, Nightbane.
EX: Elemental Summon (Lv. 2), Overdrive (Lv.1), Elemental Attacks (Lv. 2), Enhance Dark, Elemental Breath (Lv. 2).

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Nighthand
Master of Games
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Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 9:23 pm
Class: Bladesmage
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Post by Nighthand » Sun Apr 02, 2006 11:10 pm

Zan -> +4 Levels + Earthian Sword + Snow Panther + 2 Speed Charms

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