https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAwLS2BzEbU
[color=ed1c24][centre][h2]The Adversary: Slough Week[/h2][/centre]
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Run. Thud-thud-thud. Paw hits ground. Dirt between claws; good. Cold air through mouth and eyes; good. Rushing wild wind inside and bursting; good. Sun on back, dust in fur. Black heart beating, beating through skin and bone. Hard. Pain, pain but good. Power, raw endless power bursting through joints and coursing through ligament and burning in teeth and jaws and ripping through veins. More than he had ever felt before. More than any mangler had ever felt before.

Broken branch. Stirred bush. Footprint. Stop and nuzzle. Hain’s thick scent washes through him. The prey’s fear rolls deep in his flesh. Reeks. What a delicious hain this was. Sharp -- interest. Obsession piercing through his brain. HE MUST KNOW. He must see. He needed lusted hungered to know the prey. He wanted the hain’s whole being.

The hain quivering in his eyes now. Spear outstretched. The mangler roars with all his might. Lets the sound thump against his ribs. Pleasure. Run run fast run faster. Head down. Mouth shut. Like a flint-thorn. Muscles pulling, meat contorting. Hain closer and closer and wide-eyed and screaming.

White hot pain blazing through his right eye. Iron salt in his mouth, unbearable blood flooding down his gullet. His and the hain’s. He rears up, moves his head from side to side to flee the pain. He writhes and twists the spear out of his eye. Prey, standing spearless, frozen. Crush. He crushes the leg with his hardened jaw. The hain kicks him and crawls away, falls down the slope backwards. The pain grows. Blood still runs thick, hot ribbons pressing against his cheek. The mangler turns and skitters up the cliff and limps behind a rock, finds shade. The hain’s crawling grows distant. The ground numbs. He feels less and less and nothing. He sleeps.

A crack of light. An eyelid is half-open. Hunger. Unsatiated hunger. Open eye, he lets craving possess him. He stretches, tenses and stands through the agony. It was...impressive. The prey. It had never fought back so hard. The mangler felt a spark of something none of his kind had known before. He shifted, eye bulging, doing the work of two. Drinks the scent of the hain once more. Cherry Eater. That was his name. He had crawled far, far away. This was also impressive. The mangler had had to rest, but the hain had not. Time to run again. He contracted his burning muscles, raised his head, howled with all his wild might. Time to hunt again.

Thud thud-thud, thud thud-thud. Limping while charging because even now, with all the need, all the hunger, he could not bear that pain. But he would not stop. He would not retreat now, he would find his prey and finish it. Finish knowing all of him.

The sand grew dark Sun retreated, sky was black. The dust that threw up between his paws as he sprinted was like the webs that the bright-beast-that-bites-hot spat out when eating. And the new power he felt within him was greater than ever before. He was running, legs pounding at the ground, but he was not moving. No matter. Run harder.

But a hand grasped his muzzle and washed calmness through him. A terrible voice spoke. A language of meaning, not words. Its single letters punctured through the mangler’s mind and forced him to understand.

[color=crimson]“I am sorry, Sloughling. You have done well, but your hunt must end here. Your prey has been tested, and he has broken. Don’t be sad -- failure is beautiful all on its own. But [i]you[/i] didn’t fail, did you? You ran on. Despite the broken bones, the gaping eye. It would have been so easy...I have not forgotten you, child of my sister. I will raise you high, I promise. I will have use of you yet.”[/color]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG5EmRit0W8
[centre][img]http://i.imgur.com/eo3eaPg.png[/img][/centre]
[color=ed1c24][centre][b]Cherry Eater's Journey[/b][/centre][/color]
[color=ed1c24][centre][b]Level 4: 7 Might 0 Free Points[/b][/centre][/color]

The sun glinted somewhere between the canopy. The air was so humid it dripped. Cherry Eater took a deep breath and brushed aside the clinging vines and bushes. With careful steps he wandered, ear cocked to the jubilant calls of nature. Slate-apes whooping, birbs singing. Plantlife blooming. He raised a hand to stay the tide of dew and sweat that stuck to his face. The relative cool of the jungle floor was welcome, but the horned hain still sweltered. He tried not to think about it.

There had been a clicking for a while now. Clack click snip crack. It stabbed through the jungle miasma. It might be what he had been searching for -- he’d seen signs, leaves in his sleep and rivers running backwards. Grasping branches in his own reflection when he washed in mountain springs. Travel west, travel through the tall green trees. His king commanded, and he followed. Click.

He hacked at one last cloying vine. It was growing darker, deeper. The heart of the jungle. Little light dared to fall so far from home. It was silent…

Blood hung from every leaf. The sweet stench of death skewered through his nostrils, rot slithered on the tip of his tongue. Entrails were nailed to trees, slick liquids slipping slowly down to feed the earth. Bodies lay pinned to the ground with stones. Parts cut up. Clothes in a small heap, burning. Bony fingers skimmed up and down pink flesh, running flint shavings through ligament and tendon. The hands worked their way across hain backmeat and brain, snipping here, pinching there. Then they started stitching together. Part to part, flesh to flesh. Then nothing. The stitching cutter stitched and cut no more, and stood back to watch its art at play. The subject -- the [i]doll[/i] -- shuddered and twitched, shaking against the ground.

“Interesting. As I thought.” The stitcher spoke without looking. “I put a hain’s head on another’s body. It seems Head Subject can control Body Subject.” The lurching doll shook harder and stopped. Its head was smashed against the stone floor. “Well, to an extent.” He looked up at Cherry Eater. “It is hard to tell what is the Head Subject and what is the natural shakings of the body.” Cherry Eater laughed.

“How is it that they move when dead?”

“That is simple. They aren’t dead.” He prodded the doll with a claw. “Or they weren’t. They always do that, you know. Kill themselves. It rather ruins the whole sport.”

“How...improper.” Cherry Eater walked deeper inside the jungle morgue. He picked up an arm. “You broke this.”

“Yes. It took some effort. Our plates are really pretty hard, you know? I suppose that is what happens when a maker god makes you. But! I now know their average hardness. For the tribe that lived here, anyway. It’s a small sample size. I was just about to move on again, actually; that was my last live subject.” The horned hain dug his leg of blood against the dirt. He wasn’t nervous, but...wary.

“You won’t try to use me?” The stitcher looked aghast.

“Good worldliness, no. You are the chosen of Mammon! The Adversary’s finest. How could I betray my lord like that?” Cherry Eater reeled. Now he had fears. It knew his name. It knew his master’s name -- his [i]true[/i] name, his real name. He needed to know more. He needed -- he reached out and clutched the -- other’s face and drew it to his. Raked wide eyes across every crack and rivulet.

His face was twisted. In every sense of the word. The bizarre model of a hain’s head. But split in the centre. The prongs had spread outward. Now they grasped at the distant sun, two horns scraping against the silent sky. His eyes were vertical. His mouth jutted down, out, like a searching knife-- a beak to replace the horns. With a blink he reared his head away, stepped backwards.

“What are you.” The stitcher grinned. Cherry Eater felt a shiver of joy. A keening burst of interest. He tried to keep from vomiting.

“I am your master’s servant. I was once something not so different. An -- artist. Exploring another medium. But now I am -- he called us Goathead Magi. Do you know how we came to be? No? We ate. It’s part of our...drive. To experiment, aesthetically at the start. But it’s not enough. Never enough. We must be, as well as see. I ate the meat inside a young hain’s head. Others had sex. A lot of it. With a lot of...things. Some destroyed their work to feel it end between their hands.” He paused.

“I left a drink for you. In a shell, by the branch with the hand nailed to it. Yes, in the hand.” It was congealed red. Slow and stagnant, with lumps of black softness. “Blood of your kin mixed with maggots that fed on brush beast brain. It will fill your limbs with fire.” The horned hain -- [i]the[/i] horned hain, champion of adversity -- raised the shell to his lips. His mind rebelled. But his blood...drew to it. Stroked against his plates. He licked the shell. Then the surface. He stuffed his face in the potion, gulping it, forcing it through a throat that would not swallow. The Magus had cocked his head when he lowered the empty shell. “It works, doesn’t it? That’s the materium for you.” He was right. Cherry Eater felt more awake than ever before.

“Come, follow me. I know another town near this one.” Cherry Eater was repulsed. At what the Goathead had done, at what he had drunk, about what he’d witnessed and about what he hadn’t done. How he hadn’t stopped the Magi. But...his feet still followed the Magus’. It was like a hook slipped gently through his rib plates, dragging him onward. To see what he could. To break what he could, like the dead hain’s arm.

[hider=Narrative Summary]
Slough week. A mangler hunts a hain called Cherry Eater, but is stopped at the last moment by the Adversary. Mammon makes a promise to reward him for his perseverance.

Normal: Cherry Eater journeys deep into the jungle at Mammon's command. He discovers a Goathead Magi -- a creature twisted out of Jvan's sculptors, that spread through material gratification. He follows him to a new village...
[/hider]


[hider=Might Summary]
1 Might spent creating the Goathead Magi.
[/hider]