BasiliskVeranda
80s Trash
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[div class=biggie]
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Location: Crow Forest
With:
mothspit
The Gunrunner
Archie
KingHalliwell
Whisker
Keidivh
Mood Music: Florence + The Machine - Delilah
Quest:
A Rather Large, Foul-smelling Bird
[Path 1: To Boldly Go...]
Branch 1: Ravens & Revelations
Other:
I don't want to push to Crow Tomb just yet. Saboona has some stuff on her plate, and she still gotta drag team 2.
So if y'all wanna get on with the Crow Mom things, let's just be conscious of that, and try to smite the birds, but leave 1 standing.
I'm just the set-up guy for this.
[/div][div class=right]
"Fucking hell," Gwyn said, "Just birds. They're just birds. Birds bleed. Birds die." He was sure they weren't just simple birds. They brought a war on two fronts, and possibly three. Yet again, he didn't understand why he knew this. But Fletcher was slowly catching on, of course.
"What the..." Baldur had started, and then made his attempt to wield his gigantic blade, only to miss. He tossed his sword to pull some moves Fletcher didn't think he had in him, being as big as he was. He, was primed to fight. To take lives. To cull his enemies—Fletcher was not.
Oh, to be so very wrong, and not know the half of it. At first, Fletch had tried to ignore this as he clung for cover. I could possibly just be losing my damned mind, he thought. Then again, that fountain of foreign speech had just burst from his throat in a torrent. No, something was incredibly wrong with him, and it was incredible it had taken him this long to truly wonder on it. Ignorance is bliss, they say. It certainly had kept him ignorant.
"Looks like I'm a scarecrow, ya!?" Yet again, Baldur was still making jokes. Fletcher thought he'd be the comic relief of the group, considering his habits. But this one talked more foolishly than himself, even while seemingly half-blinded. To be plain, the blond would've found his antics quite charming if not for their assailants pummeling them as storms do, and of course...the slavery idea.
The tall executioner was fighting his war. The birds screamed his sins, and took on new voices with accents the thief couldn't place as he huddled against his tree. The trick here was to not listen, and yet his companions did, even if they managed to fight back. The thief would listen because the thing within him remained ever-vigilant of what they'd say.
"So you do care vat others think?" Baldur yet fought on, honest and resolute despite being half-blinded.
They were very apparently feathered spies. It, and Fletch, wanted nothing to do with them. This he felt in his bones as the trees rattled with wings.
"My life was less than one loaf of bread."
"Drawn and quartered. So much pain, and you said nothing!"
"Burned in my bed, it was the wrong house."
"Beaten to death."
"Murdered because I would not bow."
"Take the teeth with gold fillings."
"Infanticide."
"'Genocide,' Nadir. But 'The edge cares not.'"
"You made a deal with him. With he. His name, we know the name." A deal, hmm? We know something of deals, don't We? Ugh, please do shut up....
This type of crow-dealt magic drove lesser men and women to madness, he felt. Trouble was, Fletcher was only just realizing that he had already been unmade in madness, long ago. The bark gave no solace to him; it was apathetic to his existential quandary and the strange voice crackling the inside of his skull.
"Could I have a blanket? You can afford one, can't you? Please, just one blanket--" Gwyn apparently had a colder past than he expected for someone still capable of a jaunt of words. Then again, only those with humor last long in a world like this. She could still smile, as could Baldur. Despite her face before this sentence flashing in emotions, she took to fight like second nature.
The others took to fight in their own time when was right for them. Fletcher however, did not.
"Murderer!", the birds cried accusations like bolts through Alrick's flesh,"Butcher!"
"Elissa..." he whimpered in turn. Truly, Alrick's demons were terrible ones. Or, the man could simply still feel them, raw in the yet-unhealed wounds. Yet, he would still bite back, and take action. Fletcher's body refused to obey him to do the same.
The thief's tree-enclave was not large enough to stop the scrape of claws, but the blond attempted it still, though their talons tore through his clothes into the meat of his arm. He slunk beyond again. Flesh-pain was nothing to fear, but the voices of these grackles, and what kept pressing behind his teeth...
"I am all you excuse me of my firefly. Justice will see my day come, but not until you are safe. You will not pay for my sins. I shall do this one thing right before I die!"
Fletcher shirked the call to action, still affixed to the bark, trying to curl in on himself as his companions fought the undulating voices of their pasts. With each caw and whirl of molten black, he tried to shrink further. Fletcher was useless.
Or rather, this thing wanted him useless, he thought. Perhaps to let the others deal with the threat, so that he may not be left exposed. If the crows were distracted by them, perhaps he could avoid falling prey to their words. Fletcher would be right to think this; this was Its plan.
"Why...are you afraid of them?" he managed in a fractured whisper, asking the thing that apparently didn't want to talk with words anymore. It responded as he clocked a bird with a simple tree branch, scuttling it as it cawed. I know not what their Lord is, and it is too early. Too early for them to know Us. Too early for you. Too early for me to crack your shell, little bird.
At least It had given him a clear answer. An answer he didn't like, but a truthful answer (he felt) nonetheless. Fletcher's face was keened against that rough bark as his bright blue eyes stared up at the fountain of birds that scraped across the air and battered their wings against the trees. They painted the sky blacker than it already was. He was transfixed, tree branch in hand.
"It. Is. MINE!" That one is one to watch, It intruded. Kaykavus was something different, and Fletcher suspected, so was Alrick. He felt the miasma. Normal people often couldn't. There were plenty of unusual people in his midst.
Alrick had taken to his hammer. Gwyn had taken to her blades. Kaykavus was letting off arrows though he was missing at times. Baldur was curiously spry, and wielding two weapons. Shia was apparently still stuck within a bushel of thorns, which caused the blond to raise his brows. Perhaps Shia was the safest among them, he reasoned, cheek to the bark. The crows couldn't touch him in his enclave of briars. The parasite bade him follow with an internal tug, but he didn't heed it.
"I appreciate the help!" Here, they had all managed to stand on the precipice of madness and look back on their pasts in strength, and yet he could not. Perhaps Connor would shortly, and Fletch would be left the largest coward here. Surely, Champ would be the biggest victor. Canines had far braver hearts than men.
"I...fear you more than these feathered frights. Let me fight, you overgrown, insolent leech." It didn't reply in the chasm of his mind, but he did perhaps feel it twist with what he imagined was the mental equivalent of a grin. Did he fear It, truly? Was It his enemy? That idea ceased his attempt to be very small. The branch was left discarded.
Realization washed over his featured as his eyes darted to watch every single twisting, three eyed crow. He pulled his face away from the bark. It tasted like power in his mouth. It made a promise he didn't understand. No, this thing was not his enemy, not now.
"Listen not to the foul words these beasts spew my friends, they will only brig you to ruin. Rally us so that we can put an end to this foul sorcery!"
"We must, mustn't we?" the blond muttered, peeling himself from the tree clumsily. His hands found purchase, and his footing was sured. He had but two rudimentary blades, yet he used one to stab a flying devil into the tree beside him. Its bones cracked beneath his blade with a sickening sound as an adept kick far beyond his person sent another flying. He wrenched the blade free from the bark, flicking to his next target as if magnetized on a track.
Fletcher moved in a dance; agile was the word,but a paltry description. Each movement cascaded to another as liquid instinctively finds gravity in veins of soil, dodging feathers, talons and beaks as the birds poured through the trees. Fletch wasn't the strongest here, nor was he the most trained. He wasn't tall, and he did not wield the gigantic weapon Baldur generally had on his person, nor could he ever. He did not shoot arrows, and had no javelin of sorts. He was not a large beast with teeth.
But he was graceful, in only the way a man who knows every fiber and ligament of what his body could do, can be. A dance of blades, a fluid dip below a shot of black, back up again to paint blackened blood across the trees and his skin. One bird snatched his wrist and sent a blade flying as it tore through his flesh. It attempted its sin-pouring speech as blood rolled down his arm, soaking his tattered shirt. It hurt, but pain was an old friend—an often desirable one.
"ᴬᴴ. ᴬᴴ. ᴬᴴ. ᴴᴱ ˢᵀᴵᴿˢ. ᵀᴱᴸᴸ ᵁˢ ᴬ ᵀᴿᵁᵀᴴ, ᴸᴵᴱ ᴹᴬᴷᴱᴿ. ᵀᴱᴸᴸ ᵁˢ ᴬ ᵀᴿᵁᵀᴴ ᴼᶠ ˢᴵᴺ. ᵀᴱᴸᴸ ᵁˢ ᵀᴴᴱ ᵀᴿᵁᵀᴴ, ᴸᴵᴱ ᴹᴬᴷᴱ, ʸᴼᵁ ᵂᴱᴿᴱ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴼᴺᴱ ᵂᴴᴼ ᴸᴱᵀ ᴴᴵᴹ—" That hand came out to crush its shattering speech. Fingers coiled as he clenched the bird, his blood soaking into its feathers. Fletcher squeezed until its neck snapped and its head popped like an over-ripe, diseased pomegranate, black blood flooding down his torn up wrist.
"I don't enjoy grackles cackling my business. Die."
He dropped the creature like a feathered stone and dove for his lost blade, as each member of their group fought their own wars of words and beaks. It had no more past to mine from him, for dying was not a sin. The other sins he had committed were not done by his hand. It couldn't tap that one. Furthermore, thievery was nothing compared to the sins of his companions. What were they going to do, yell about him being a libidinous thief with a penchant for bustiers? Hardly anything worth cawing about.
All this obfuscation of wrongdoings was not to keep him innocent. He had just not been ready, and wasn't now either, he thought. But he would be, and instead of being terrified by this prospect as the words had shaken him earlier, he was in Its thrall.
As enthralled as he was by his liquid movements, spindling like the veins of black waters had once split the skin of the earth. He was bleeding from the shoulder in a twist of flesh, shirt tattered, wrist mangled, and still he was as art. Casting red and black, a painter with a blade, but a fragile one perhaps.
"AH. AH. AH. LIE MA—"
"Do kindly shut the fuck up." His blood cast as a surge of crows attempted to hack at him like they had Kaykavus, but he was too swift. It wasn't that Fletcher didn't feel their piercing talons when they found purchase, it was that he couldn't stop fighting. The dance had to continue; he loved it too much.
The thrall pulled him to slice, and he followed obediently, flirting with death with every cascade of blade against shrapneling black plumage. Riveting, unusual experiences magnetized the blond. Chaos was a gorgeous, dangerous feast, that he would chase until he couldn't chase it anymore.
He would not be sorry for what the creature in his skin would offer as sustenance; the beast writhed in his bones Its response. A satisfied chuckle echoed in his skull, followed by an inhuman voice: show me your darkness, little bird. Dance the dance of war; it is a beautiful carnage, I think.
And still, his blood flew, yet he missed no beats until he was nearly pinned to a tree by a torrent of feathers. They shot at him like a burst of spellwork, he ducked in time and they bled around the trunk. One found itself caught up in diving at his face, and even he knew he was far too spent to pull off more acrobatics. He glared as its talons were primed to gouge his eyes out.
The crow glared back, flapping in the air to halt its attack.
"Yes, yes. Do fuck off." That dance had been too much for the blond; he shrunk with his back to the tree as his blood soaked into his clothes and painted the bark, breathing labored. This crow had apparently decided he wouldn't be felled by it alone, and joined the horde again. Call it a cosmic quirk of a coincidence, or maybe the crow had divinated whatever this It was, and had deigned it too noxious for a solo mission, but that seemed to be its response.
He'd have liked to ask the bird what it knew, but it was too busy flapping around and gathering more to try to peck his eyes out in unison.
"What is it with the eyes? Why is it always the fucking eyes—" Fletch was back again where he started, face to bark and body as low to the ground as possible to avoid being blinded. He had done a great deal of damage, but they'd need a miracle to cull the flock down to cinders—in fact...
Tinder-box in hand, his mawed digits were attempting to do just that, but striking now proved difficult with his face against the bramble and his body taxed beyond what it could handle.
"Hmm. Fuck."
He needed help with his plan, if his plan were to even work, that is. Sadly, they wouldn't be able to get all of them, just far more than they would otherwise. He quickly looked around and spotted the nearest of his companions in their fight, glaring up from the wooded thickets at them.
"You—yes. You; get...torch me. God, shit. Torch. Booze. F—"
[/div]
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"Hmm...I could help you, yes. But I could also just watch you suffer. That'd be far more amusing—what do you mean you'll get me a cat if I help?! Why the ten circles of Zaeria didn't you say that sooner?!"
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[div class=bg]
[div class=bigcenter]
Fletcher Niles Cambria
"What's the worst that could happen—I die? Been there, done that. Anyways, who wants to get drunk and do crimes?"
⸸ ⸸ ⸸
"What's the worst that could happen—I die? Been there, done that. Anyways, who wants to get drunk and do crimes?"
⸸ ⸸ ⸸
[div class=left]
Location: Crow Forest
With:
mothspit
The Gunrunner
Archie
KingHalliwell
Whisker
Keidivh
Mood Music: Florence + The Machine - Delilah
Quest:
A Rather Large, Foul-smelling Bird
[Path 1: To Boldly Go...]
Branch 1: Ravens & Revelations
Other:
I don't want to push to Crow Tomb just yet. Saboona has some stuff on her plate, and she still gotta drag team 2.
So if y'all wanna get on with the Crow Mom things, let's just be conscious of that, and try to smite the birds, but leave 1 standing.
I'm just the set-up guy for this.
[/div][div class=right]
"Fucking hell," Gwyn said, "Just birds. They're just birds. Birds bleed. Birds die." He was sure they weren't just simple birds. They brought a war on two fronts, and possibly three. Yet again, he didn't understand why he knew this. But Fletcher was slowly catching on, of course.
"What the..." Baldur had started, and then made his attempt to wield his gigantic blade, only to miss. He tossed his sword to pull some moves Fletcher didn't think he had in him, being as big as he was. He, was primed to fight. To take lives. To cull his enemies—Fletcher was not.
Oh, to be so very wrong, and not know the half of it. At first, Fletch had tried to ignore this as he clung for cover. I could possibly just be losing my damned mind, he thought. Then again, that fountain of foreign speech had just burst from his throat in a torrent. No, something was incredibly wrong with him, and it was incredible it had taken him this long to truly wonder on it. Ignorance is bliss, they say. It certainly had kept him ignorant.
"Looks like I'm a scarecrow, ya!?" Yet again, Baldur was still making jokes. Fletcher thought he'd be the comic relief of the group, considering his habits. But this one talked more foolishly than himself, even while seemingly half-blinded. To be plain, the blond would've found his antics quite charming if not for their assailants pummeling them as storms do, and of course...the slavery idea.
The tall executioner was fighting his war. The birds screamed his sins, and took on new voices with accents the thief couldn't place as he huddled against his tree. The trick here was to not listen, and yet his companions did, even if they managed to fight back. The thief would listen because the thing within him remained ever-vigilant of what they'd say.
"So you do care vat others think?" Baldur yet fought on, honest and resolute despite being half-blinded.
They were very apparently feathered spies. It, and Fletch, wanted nothing to do with them. This he felt in his bones as the trees rattled with wings.
"My life was less than one loaf of bread."
"Drawn and quartered. So much pain, and you said nothing!"
"Burned in my bed, it was the wrong house."
"Beaten to death."
"Murdered because I would not bow."
"Take the teeth with gold fillings."
"Infanticide."
"'Genocide,' Nadir. But 'The edge cares not.'"
"You made a deal with him. With he. His name, we know the name." A deal, hmm? We know something of deals, don't We? Ugh, please do shut up....
This type of crow-dealt magic drove lesser men and women to madness, he felt. Trouble was, Fletcher was only just realizing that he had already been unmade in madness, long ago. The bark gave no solace to him; it was apathetic to his existential quandary and the strange voice crackling the inside of his skull.
"Could I have a blanket? You can afford one, can't you? Please, just one blanket--" Gwyn apparently had a colder past than he expected for someone still capable of a jaunt of words. Then again, only those with humor last long in a world like this. She could still smile, as could Baldur. Despite her face before this sentence flashing in emotions, she took to fight like second nature.
The others took to fight in their own time when was right for them. Fletcher however, did not.
"Murderer!", the birds cried accusations like bolts through Alrick's flesh,"Butcher!"
"Elissa..." he whimpered in turn. Truly, Alrick's demons were terrible ones. Or, the man could simply still feel them, raw in the yet-unhealed wounds. Yet, he would still bite back, and take action. Fletcher's body refused to obey him to do the same.
The thief's tree-enclave was not large enough to stop the scrape of claws, but the blond attempted it still, though their talons tore through his clothes into the meat of his arm. He slunk beyond again. Flesh-pain was nothing to fear, but the voices of these grackles, and what kept pressing behind his teeth...
"I am all you excuse me of my firefly. Justice will see my day come, but not until you are safe. You will not pay for my sins. I shall do this one thing right before I die!"
Fletcher shirked the call to action, still affixed to the bark, trying to curl in on himself as his companions fought the undulating voices of their pasts. With each caw and whirl of molten black, he tried to shrink further. Fletcher was useless.
Or rather, this thing wanted him useless, he thought. Perhaps to let the others deal with the threat, so that he may not be left exposed. If the crows were distracted by them, perhaps he could avoid falling prey to their words. Fletcher would be right to think this; this was Its plan.
"Why...are you afraid of them?" he managed in a fractured whisper, asking the thing that apparently didn't want to talk with words anymore. It responded as he clocked a bird with a simple tree branch, scuttling it as it cawed. I know not what their Lord is, and it is too early. Too early for them to know Us. Too early for you. Too early for me to crack your shell, little bird.
At least It had given him a clear answer. An answer he didn't like, but a truthful answer (he felt) nonetheless. Fletcher's face was keened against that rough bark as his bright blue eyes stared up at the fountain of birds that scraped across the air and battered their wings against the trees. They painted the sky blacker than it already was. He was transfixed, tree branch in hand.
"It. Is. MINE!" That one is one to watch, It intruded. Kaykavus was something different, and Fletcher suspected, so was Alrick. He felt the miasma. Normal people often couldn't. There were plenty of unusual people in his midst.
Alrick had taken to his hammer. Gwyn had taken to her blades. Kaykavus was letting off arrows though he was missing at times. Baldur was curiously spry, and wielding two weapons. Shia was apparently still stuck within a bushel of thorns, which caused the blond to raise his brows. Perhaps Shia was the safest among them, he reasoned, cheek to the bark. The crows couldn't touch him in his enclave of briars. The parasite bade him follow with an internal tug, but he didn't heed it.
"I appreciate the help!" Here, they had all managed to stand on the precipice of madness and look back on their pasts in strength, and yet he could not. Perhaps Connor would shortly, and Fletch would be left the largest coward here. Surely, Champ would be the biggest victor. Canines had far braver hearts than men.
"I...fear you more than these feathered frights. Let me fight, you overgrown, insolent leech." It didn't reply in the chasm of his mind, but he did perhaps feel it twist with what he imagined was the mental equivalent of a grin. Did he fear It, truly? Was It his enemy? That idea ceased his attempt to be very small. The branch was left discarded.
Realization washed over his featured as his eyes darted to watch every single twisting, three eyed crow. He pulled his face away from the bark. It tasted like power in his mouth. It made a promise he didn't understand. No, this thing was not his enemy, not now.
"Listen not to the foul words these beasts spew my friends, they will only brig you to ruin. Rally us so that we can put an end to this foul sorcery!"
"We must, mustn't we?" the blond muttered, peeling himself from the tree clumsily. His hands found purchase, and his footing was sured. He had but two rudimentary blades, yet he used one to stab a flying devil into the tree beside him. Its bones cracked beneath his blade with a sickening sound as an adept kick far beyond his person sent another flying. He wrenched the blade free from the bark, flicking to his next target as if magnetized on a track.
Fletcher moved in a dance; agile was the word,but a paltry description. Each movement cascaded to another as liquid instinctively finds gravity in veins of soil, dodging feathers, talons and beaks as the birds poured through the trees. Fletch wasn't the strongest here, nor was he the most trained. He wasn't tall, and he did not wield the gigantic weapon Baldur generally had on his person, nor could he ever. He did not shoot arrows, and had no javelin of sorts. He was not a large beast with teeth.
But he was graceful, in only the way a man who knows every fiber and ligament of what his body could do, can be. A dance of blades, a fluid dip below a shot of black, back up again to paint blackened blood across the trees and his skin. One bird snatched his wrist and sent a blade flying as it tore through his flesh. It attempted its sin-pouring speech as blood rolled down his arm, soaking his tattered shirt. It hurt, but pain was an old friend—an often desirable one.
"ᴬᴴ. ᴬᴴ. ᴬᴴ. ᴴᴱ ˢᵀᴵᴿˢ. ᵀᴱᴸᴸ ᵁˢ ᴬ ᵀᴿᵁᵀᴴ, ᴸᴵᴱ ᴹᴬᴷᴱᴿ. ᵀᴱᴸᴸ ᵁˢ ᴬ ᵀᴿᵁᵀᴴ ᴼᶠ ˢᴵᴺ. ᵀᴱᴸᴸ ᵁˢ ᵀᴴᴱ ᵀᴿᵁᵀᴴ, ᴸᴵᴱ ᴹᴬᴷᴱ, ʸᴼᵁ ᵂᴱᴿᴱ ᵀᴴᴱ ᴼᴺᴱ ᵂᴴᴼ ᴸᴱᵀ ᴴᴵᴹ—" That hand came out to crush its shattering speech. Fingers coiled as he clenched the bird, his blood soaking into its feathers. Fletcher squeezed until its neck snapped and its head popped like an over-ripe, diseased pomegranate, black blood flooding down his torn up wrist.
"I don't enjoy grackles cackling my business. Die."
He dropped the creature like a feathered stone and dove for his lost blade, as each member of their group fought their own wars of words and beaks. It had no more past to mine from him, for dying was not a sin. The other sins he had committed were not done by his hand. It couldn't tap that one. Furthermore, thievery was nothing compared to the sins of his companions. What were they going to do, yell about him being a libidinous thief with a penchant for bustiers? Hardly anything worth cawing about.
All this obfuscation of wrongdoings was not to keep him innocent. He had just not been ready, and wasn't now either, he thought. But he would be, and instead of being terrified by this prospect as the words had shaken him earlier, he was in Its thrall.
As enthralled as he was by his liquid movements, spindling like the veins of black waters had once split the skin of the earth. He was bleeding from the shoulder in a twist of flesh, shirt tattered, wrist mangled, and still he was as art. Casting red and black, a painter with a blade, but a fragile one perhaps.
"AH. AH. AH. LIE MA—"
"Do kindly shut the fuck up." His blood cast as a surge of crows attempted to hack at him like they had Kaykavus, but he was too swift. It wasn't that Fletcher didn't feel their piercing talons when they found purchase, it was that he couldn't stop fighting. The dance had to continue; he loved it too much.
The thrall pulled him to slice, and he followed obediently, flirting with death with every cascade of blade against shrapneling black plumage. Riveting, unusual experiences magnetized the blond. Chaos was a gorgeous, dangerous feast, that he would chase until he couldn't chase it anymore.
He would not be sorry for what the creature in his skin would offer as sustenance; the beast writhed in his bones Its response. A satisfied chuckle echoed in his skull, followed by an inhuman voice: show me your darkness, little bird. Dance the dance of war; it is a beautiful carnage, I think.
And still, his blood flew, yet he missed no beats until he was nearly pinned to a tree by a torrent of feathers. They shot at him like a burst of spellwork, he ducked in time and they bled around the trunk. One found itself caught up in diving at his face, and even he knew he was far too spent to pull off more acrobatics. He glared as its talons were primed to gouge his eyes out.
The crow glared back, flapping in the air to halt its attack.
"Yes, yes. Do fuck off." That dance had been too much for the blond; he shrunk with his back to the tree as his blood soaked into his clothes and painted the bark, breathing labored. This crow had apparently decided he wouldn't be felled by it alone, and joined the horde again. Call it a cosmic quirk of a coincidence, or maybe the crow had divinated whatever this It was, and had deigned it too noxious for a solo mission, but that seemed to be its response.
He'd have liked to ask the bird what it knew, but it was too busy flapping around and gathering more to try to peck his eyes out in unison.
"What is it with the eyes? Why is it always the fucking eyes—" Fletch was back again where he started, face to bark and body as low to the ground as possible to avoid being blinded. He had done a great deal of damage, but they'd need a miracle to cull the flock down to cinders—in fact...
Tinder-box in hand, his mawed digits were attempting to do just that, but striking now proved difficult with his face against the bramble and his body taxed beyond what it could handle.
"Hmm. Fuck."
He needed help with his plan, if his plan were to even work, that is. Sadly, they wouldn't be able to get all of them, just far more than they would otherwise. He quickly looked around and spotted the nearest of his companions in their fight, glaring up from the wooded thickets at them.
"You—yes. You; get...torch me. God, shit. Torch. Booze. F—"
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"Hmm...I could help you, yes.
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