Hopeless.
There was no other word to describe it.
The last of their defensive positions breached, overrun. And was it any wonder? Where they’d been expecting to defend against near endless hordes of mindless fodder, they’d instead been met with a coordinated assault.
An army well versed in the intricacies of warfare.
They’d never even stood a chance.
A never-ending tide of skittering black bodies, and them, the coastal cliff gr...
2024-11-01 14:35:09 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t long before the vessel was sufficiently pliable.
Warped and corrupted by her prolonged ministrations, until it personified the sordid depths that would best serve her needs. A ravaged display of wicked barbarity at first glance, the flayed and clearly tortured specimen lying atop her operation table was, in actuality, a prime example of her unparalleled mastery.
Utterly broken in mind, body, and spirit, yet possessed of a soul shell that blazed with an intensity ...
2024-11-01 14:32:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe freshwater swamplands to the east of the sheer spine mountain range, are a virulent breeding ground for infection and disease.
A forested wetland whose malformed Cypress’s range between varying stages of decay.
The taste of airborne rot contrasting the budding scents of life. A boot sucking mire utterly drained of its vibrancy. An undead thing, still alive and kicking, despite all evidence to the contrary.
A damp, humid, miserable place where, for every two...
2024-11-01 14:18:35 +0000 UTC View PostFlight Lieutenant Lucile led her windstorm griffin familiar—aptly dubbed “Little Lucy,” for how darn cute she’d been in her infancy—through yet another sweeping circuit.
Biting her lip as, from nearly a kilometer up, all things told, she and her team scoured the ravaged tundra for any signs of their missing rift spawn.
Lucile, sensing the tension in her familiar—as she no doubt picked up on her own mounting distress—ran an absent hand down t...
2024-11-01 14:16:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe ground visibly quaked as, from almost a hundred feet up, the lion king’s prodigious bulk landed on the flat of the grasslands proper.
A low, rumbling growl reverberated from its deep chest, easily as wide around as she was tall.
Thunderous.
Like the dark promise of storm clouds just cresting the far horizon. The demon beast slowly padded its way forward, moving with a disconcerting grace. Its amber colored eyes locked exclusively on her.
Eleanor...
2024-11-01 14:15:44 +0000 UTC View PostWhoever claimed crime doesn’t pay should probably take a good long look at the frankly obscene amounts of “pay” I made off with, after only a single well planned heist. And then maybe think long and hard about their stance on so called morality. Not that something so plainly false would ever have been uttered by a born resident of this world. Here, where it’s as if criminal dealings have been refined into a high art.
Jun chuckled.
Even the most unscrupulous, u...
2024-11-01 14:11:52 +0000 UTC View PostThe day was unpleasant. That much was obvious.
A dry sort of heat.
Like sticking her head directly into a baker’s oven, then throwing the rest of her body in after, just for the sake of consistency. From a clear blue sky, a burning ball of hate beat down on their arena turned blood slick battlefield. Painting the dry grasslands a shifting red hue.
One that had very little to do with the warm splashes of iron.
The sun’s rays cast a carpet of ruby r...
2024-10-29 21:28:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe drake could sense he was doing something and clearly recognized the threat G. Jun posed.
Something he’d been hoping distance and arrogance would prevent, much like it had with the Undying Lich. In retrospect, he supposed he’d been the arrogant one, to think such a convergence of fortuitous events would happen twice. No, instead he’d barely managed fifteen seconds of the several minute long charge time and already the Monarch was onto him.
Not good. 2024-10-29 21:17:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Slamming head first into the bubbling iron cauldron, Jun, in turn, drenched those witches in the nearest vicinity with all its boiling contents.
Those he didn’t bowl over with his still flailing body outright, that is. With a sharp crack, Jun came to a sudden, explosive halt, colliding with the trunk of a tree hard enough to bruise.
Only later would he know how lucky he’d been that it hadn’t been one of those with a child nailed to it instead.
Witches screa...
2024-10-29 21:10:25 +0000 UTC View PostJun stared at the words for an unknowable amount of time.
Scouring them. Imprinting them. Burning them into his mind.
He thought he should feel something. Remorse perhaps? All laid out on paper like this, his actions weren’t exactly the noblest sort.
And yet this place…?
It made a mockery of the human condition. Dulled sensation. Stymied emotion. And it didn’t help that the only times when he could feel things like pain, regret, or...
2024-10-29 21:01:14 +0000 UTC View PostIt hadn’t taken much to overpower the soul of this body’s previous inhabitant.
The patriarch’s brat had been weak. Pitifully so.
Oh, they say he would’ve made for a “great man” some day. Indeed, they said a lot of things. A kind and just ruler, blah blah blah. He wouldn’t know. He’d never met the guy. All he did know was that he was currently making the best out of an especially shit situation, and was actually rathe...
2024-10-29 20:50:38 +0000 UTC View PostSand whipped past as they skimmed across the rising black dunes, barely a few meters off the ground, all things told.
Their speed such that the desert appeared to undulate beneath them, a rippling sea of charcoal granules baking under the intensity of the noonday sun. The gale force winds kicked up by their passage taking the occasional bite out of the odd dune as they passed.
Looking back, the reason for their breakneck pace was made obvious. Not a hundred paces behind them...
2024-10-29 20:48:14 +0000 UTC View PostPale faced and trembling, Meredith stared up at the high balcony where the princess, the demon, and the poacher reclined.
Her drink long forgotten, the familiar weight of a hand on her shoulder had the effect of accomplishing what slowly slackening fingers could not. The shatter of glass startling those in the vicinity nearly as much as the familiar grip had her.
Attendants swept over to remove the mess in short order, and very soon the droning babble of conversation r...
2024-10-29 20:40:09 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you think?” asked Eleanor, crouching over the glistening pile.
“I think it’s insane you’re even considering this,” R. Jun replied.
“But can’t you feel it? They’re practically overflowing with soul energy! You’ve seen the kinds of things some of the wealthier squires ate back at the dormitory to improve their soul capacity. Why should this be any different?”
“And if they jumped off a cliff one day and called it ‘training,’ wo...
2024-10-29 20:28:27 +0000 UTC View PostJun didn’t mind his leisurely pace so much, as he rode past expansive rice fields, humble domiciles, and sun tanned farmers in their conical hats—already hard at work, having risen with the light of dawn.
He found the scenery gorgeous within this trial world—sweeping fields, expansive forests, and spearing mountain ranges all—and he’d caught it at the best possible time. Having arrived at around the tail end of spring, it was now nearing autumn, which helped add a splash of v...
2024-10-29 20:19:10 +0000 UTC View Post“You’re scared,” he said, like it was a fact. “It’s understandable. We all are, to one degree or another. The total annihilation of the Black Sons was a shock to everyone. That it happened over the course of a single night, even more so. It was not something any of us expected, I’m sure,” more grumbling at this—the angry kind a man makes when he’s fearful but won’t show it.
“Now. I cannot say that I come to you with the perfect solution. I can only say that I come ...
2024-10-29 19:59:11 +0000 UTC View PostEleanor deftly evaded yet another colossal downward strike.
Like a dancer, she moved with the seismic tremors that followed, sidestepping three other such attempts to smash her flat. Yet even as she stepped, twirled, and slashed with practiced ease, Eleanor keenly felt like a fish out of water—desperately gasping for air.
Every ragged intake like she was breathing down hot coals.
In fact, she had just begun to flag, to fully submit to the heavy chains of ...
2024-10-29 19:54:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe young man froze, slowly turning to scrutinize him far more skeptically than before.
“I… I’m sorry?”
“Ah, no worries lad. All’s forgiven. There was no harm done, really. A bit taxing on these old bones of mine, I suppose but, other than that….”
The two locked eyes then. The young man clearly bewildered, while Jun was trying his utmost to remain in character.
“You really don’t make it easy for an aged fella to visit, now do you?” Jun laughed, wh...
2024-10-29 02:31:59 +0000 UTC View PostThings were… actually going surprisingly well.
He found it entirely too suspicious. Still, given the unimaginable harvest he’d reaped, he figured this burst of productivity was well worth whatever calamitous disaster loomed on the far horizon.
Basic Mantra: [Sweeping Cleave] (1st Aspected)
Grade: (Excellent Quality)
Conceptual Stability: 60%
Basic Mantra: ...
2024-10-29 02:26:52 +0000 UTC View PostFor the briefest moment, when he first opened his eyes, only to see the blank void surrounding him on all sides, he worried that he’d somehow wound up right back in the middle of that unreal space between restarts.
The spike of fear he felt at the thought he’d be forced to do all of that again nearly sent him into paroxysms of petulant rage and despair.
Then, the simple fact that he could feel his eyes in the first place sank in, and the barr...
2024-10-29 02:18:32 +0000 UTC View PostGoro tore across the sandy arena like all the gates of hell were at his back.
Crossing hundreds of meters in the time it took for Jun to fire off a single beam, planting a massive fist into one fancily armored cuirass, and punching—who he was just going to assume was this Grand Duke—straight through the opposite wall.
Like, actually through the damned wall!
Going so far as to leave a comically person shaped impression. An unfinished snow a...
2024-10-29 02:00:26 +0000 UTC View PostJun rose to his feet and, on instinct, shuffled over to stand next to Goro.
The bovine man’s massive frame was already upright, his eyes fixed on the approaching contingent of guards. And more specifically, on the lone man at the center of their formation. He was tall for a human, middle aged, clean shaven, and with a receding hairline.
His demeanor, fine clothes, and haughty expression practically screamed of aristocracy. He held what appeared to be a perfumed handk...
2024-10-29 01:53:20 +0000 UTC View PostFloating in the endless void, Jun thought about a lot of things.
About his friends, about his enemies, about the weeks, going on a month now, he’d spent attempting this trial. The large majority of that time spent opposite a crotchety old woman with a penchant for provocation—playing a game he hadn’t seen nor heard of outside the trial, and likely would never do so again once he’d left it.
A pastime taken up to while away eternity.
Little more than an excuse to...
2024-10-29 01:46:47 +0000 UTC View Post“W-well, that was a grand w-w-waste of time.”
“What was that?” hissed the amiable snake man.
“N-nothing,” Jun replied, trying and failing to repress a shiver.
He sneezed. Snorted. Wiped away the warm, dribbling excess with his tattered, moth eaten sleeve.
Damned cold.
He didn’t know how long he’d spent toiling over his poorly conceived creation, lost to time in that nothingness realm between trials, but near the end there, it was either r...
2024-10-29 01:42:43 +0000 UTC View PostYou have been found lacking during the Stage of Gathering.
Thankfully, failure is admissible in those young and uninitiated. In that way, some amount of leniency is not only allowed, but encouraged.
BE WARNED!
The same can not be said for those whose ken has been recognized, deemed entirely sufficient. Whose actions engender grand consequence, far reaching i...
2024-10-29 01:36:34 +0000 UTC View PostJun nearly jumped out of his skin when Goro’s rumbling baritone snapped him from his gawping.
“It would be best not to linger. More are sure to arrive soon,” he gestured at the door they’d just entered from. “If you will follow me, I can get you situated. Somewhere to train, away from prying eyes and unpredictable tempers. The sooner you work up a sweat, the sooner you’ll ward off the cold.”
For an awkward moment, Jun just stared at the bovine man, nearly too overwhe...
2024-10-29 01:30:28 +0000 UTC View PostWho knew bending the fundamental stuff of reality to make cool shooty laser eyes would be such a major pain in the ass?
You’d think if they were called the “building blocks of creation,” they’d be easier to line up in a row. Not so, it would seem. Either creativity was dead on a primordial scale, a marked drop in appreciation for the arts—because I mean, c’mon, who could say no to cool shooty laser eyes—or these patron ideals he kept hearing about were ...
2024-10-29 01:26:01 +0000 UTC View PostFrom the second they stepped foot on the hundredth floor it was apparent that something was off.
If the sickly green flames that flared to life from the many brasiers lining the walls weren’t indication enough, the half-skeletal figure reclining atop its throne of bones should’ve been a dead giveaway, no pun intended.
That and the fact that the ground leading up to its raised dais was also made of bones. And so were the walls. Not to mention the massive chandel...
2024-10-22 22:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostIgnoring S. Jun’s rather colorful language, as he described, in livid detail, just what he thought of this whole fifteen second swap idea, Jun briefly took a second to catch his bearings.
That was when stinging lines of pain brought to his attention the bird-like figure hovering up above. It was throwing things at him! Well, that wasn’t very nice. And as far as he knew, there was only one real solution to such heightened levels of rudeness.
“Splitting Chop!”...
2024-10-22 22:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostJun deftly veered away from the skull shaped fireball—quick steps and acrobatic contortions winning him the day—careful to give the licking green tongues of necrotic flame a wide birth.
It only took a brief introduction to the wonders of necrosis and its myriad effects, to recognize that it, generally, made for a very bad time. Rolling, skidding, then popping back to his feet, Jun kept up the repetitive mantra that’d saved his hide more than once during this interminable fight. 2024-10-22 22:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post