[center] [color=lightgreen][i]Deep within the Darkness Peering A monster lurks... Wandering... Seeking...[/i][/color] [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-heSRbvCErU[/youtube][/center] [color=lightgreen]"MMMMmmmmmmmooooooooaaaaahhhhh..."[/color] Its voice echoed through the forest. It had obtained a fair few wounds this time. Not the arrows, nor the spears, one of them had an axe. One had fire. They attacked it without provocation. A dozen in all swarming like termites over its form. Gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning. They attacked it, and the Nidhogan felt their color. Reds, with golds, then purples and blues as things didn't go in their favor. The quarry proved strong. Their fury and greed were met with something ancient and primal. It still felt the blood under its trunk like legs, already supping them for their water. Thorns, clubs, claws, teeth. It always ate the fire. It was the root that marched against the flame... that's what it was called before. More so than the name it was given so long ago. The monster looked at the broken bodies and tapped them. Their colors vanished now, and with it, so did its own color, leaving only the yellows and greens as its attention went to itself. It hurt. It hurt but it would not stop moving. That was good. A reason to see yellow. With a terrible groan and the crunch of a dozen arrows, it moved its limbs and pattered back through the forest, never thinking another thought. Sometimes the squishies were just violent like that. Sometimes they weren't. Sometimes they spoke, just like now- [center][i][color=yellow]"---Mother, for whom we thank for this boun---"[/color][color=blue]"---need your guidance, please please---"[/color][color=red]"---stain the rock with their blood---"[/color][color=purple]"---me the strength to def---"[/color][color=gold]---needs a new pair of---[/color][color=aqua]"---I hear you child, need only---"[/color][color=pink]”I-I pray to Satelle, the Goddess of Peace that this is the place, which I seek."[/color][/i][/center] The voices were chatty today. It was almost like music, almost, it kind of came all at once sometimes. But it always paid. The clearest ones were always the closest. The clearest ones, the loudest ones, they were always fun to follow. And so the monster turned, turned in pursuit of a voice it barely understood. Than it stopped. Another bellow of cracking wood and the creak of groves that were ages in the making. [color=lightgreen]"Hooooommme."[/color] It sometimes lost what it was looking for. Sometimes it forgot, but sometimes it stopped itself, stopping to remember that it needed something more important than fun. Much more important. All the squishes had something... a box without sun, it always wondered why. But maybe it'll learn one day. It knew its box needed something with a bit more sun. The tops of the boxes came off easily enough. [color=lightblue]"This way... you need to go this way..."[/color] Another voice came in, loud and clear, well a whisper, but it was different. Alot of times it heard names and things that didn't fit its description at all. Very confusing. Sometimes, sometimes though. When it was important, the voices spoke to it. It had to follow. Coincidence that it was the direction it was already heading. [hr] The monster looked up to see the road, the bridge that lead to a great castle, a stone edifice that peered into the sky. Its mangled form rested at the bottom of the ravine, its bulk moving through the fog that collected at the bottom. It met a wall, a wall that lead to the castle. It reached to touch the rock, the soil and it felt different, very wrong somehow, but peaceful, as if the stone needed not life to find its own purpose. This blocky thing. Was that what the voice had said? This way. A wall is there, it must climb. The monster began to scale the cliff side, its massive digits unfolding and refolding and splintering into the cracks between black stone in nearly a hundred places as if a tree was growing out of the wall itself, over and over and over again as it defied gravity and all sense to enter the palace from its exterior foundation. Onlookers would see a beast of trees and moss and leaves move like a rat scaling the wall, but profoundly slower and more terrifying. No doubt its disturbance would attract the custodians whom protect this place, and as the Monster reached the cusp of his ascent, right at the foundations of the grand sanctuary, already several automatons were their brandishing their weapons. The monster however seemed not to be perturbed by them as it pulled itself over the side of the cliff and onto the plateau that held the great holy place. Its head writhed this way and that as it crouched, resembling something akin to a dog, perched and waiting for its master by a door. The head, the 'hair' branches that swayed like hair as it looked to the walls, to the skies, to the automatons, than the ground. So many voices were here. So many. So many yellow voices. And with that, the creature itself seemed to bloom... its bark grew flowers, its leaves becoming more akin to petals on the vine as if the creature was a cherry blossom tree given life and motion. It gurgled and thrummed and bellowed, its mouth open and yet [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCkK1AqsIAI]A dozen voices rung out[/url] as if they were all singing with their throats. Needless to say, any onlooker would be quite confused.