Another rotten one.

Vrog bit off half of the large femur bone, sucked the marrow from the piece still in his hand and crunched on the mouthful, clicking his tongue as he savoured the thing’s vaguely ashen taste. The traces of dust were, strangely, not as pronounced as in the smell. Maybe because they were not quite physical. The bitter, bilious flavour more than made up for it, but even it was getting old.

The horned creature lying at his feet, now reduced to a mostly dismembered skeleton, but still clearly and jarringly alien to its surroundings, was not the first of its kind he had tasted. It might as well have been, though, with how each was perfectly identical to the previous one. The third might have been a little larger than the rest, but the difference was barely noticeable. While this took away from the surprise of every meal, it made following the trail connecting the beasts much easier.

Happening over the first of them had been mostly a matter of chance. Had he not decided to leave the Omen, ghouls and all, to its own devices for a few days to see if he could catch things that would otherwise have seen him coming, Vrog doubted he would have caught its smell, extraordinarily strong though it was. The reek of a putrid soul carried far, but even that had its limits, and someone with a less discerning tongue would not have noticed it at all. Better - he did not want competition over such a meal.

He swallowed the last crumbles of horn, tossed in a seed to follow them and probed the air again. The trail had led him further north from a point already past the Foot-splitting river, up the foot of what he was fairly sure must have been the land’s northernmost mountains. It was hard to tell from how the forest did not thin around him, but from the ups and downs of the ground under his feet he could tell he had wandered well up and into the range. Well, from that, and how the things jumped out at him more and more often. Wherever it was they came from, he was getting close.

Then as quickly as the attacks had come, over and over again, they suddenly ceased. Giving way to a uneasy reprieve, if one could call it that. The chorus of the jungle began to grow distant as Vrog continued on his trek, tongue darting and seeds littering his path, quieting down until the only thing that remained was the sound of a calm breeze gently brushing the tops of the trees. Now in the shadow of the mountain, there came the distinctive sound of water running and beyond that, the rumbling beginnings of a waterfall. Shortly, that rumbling grew louder and louder, till it came into view. There, seeming to split the rock in half, was a stream of water falling down the mouth of a cave. The stream that flowed here was corrupted with the stench of death, rotting decay and the white of broken bones. A grisly sight by any others standards. 

He licked the tips of his teeth, taking in the flavours of the scene. This was the first time he felt such a mass of putrescence outside of himself, and for a moment it made him forget his appetite. Something like this could comfortably be just left pooling and stagnating, seasoning the air. A whole land, no, a whole world like this, that would have been a grand thing. Maybe Narzhak was not so far off after all; a little effort now and then was well worth it if it could have fruits like these.

The black tendril stretched out from his mouth to dip into the rank water. Like with the beasts, the taste was not fully as good as the smell. It did not feel like much over his own mouth. Fresh things were better, ones he could sense being rotted and ruined by his breath like their bones broke under his teeth. It was the same with the air, Vrog considered. The stench from the uncleanness tainted the dull chaos of woodland smells. Every lick of wind that passed over it took some of the reek with itself, and who knew where they would go. Maybe to places where someone was expecting fresh wafts, that would have been fun. All because of some beast’s careless eating.

Right, the beasts. Not that they let themselves be forgotten so easily. Just beyond the smell of the corrupted stream, their bitter track was almost overwhelming. The curiosity of finding where they made their lair was joined by that of how he would find it. If the entrance was already so filthy, the den itself was sure to be loathsome. And, he could hope, there might even be some fresh prey left. Sniffing the air ahead, he trudged through the waterfall and into the cave.

The cave was surprisingly devoid of the carnage outside, only the overwhelming smell of something vile lingered in the air, growing stronger as the descent was made. Long claw marks could be seen on the walls, the roof and the floor of the caves, fresh to the world and deep. Slowly the pitch blackness gave way to the glowing of red, numerous heartbeats and a quiet humming. Almost inaudible to mortal ears, but he was not mortal. Upon closer inspection the red glow gave way to rows and upon rows of strange looking pods, each containing an animal or other beast in various states of change. 

Vrog snapped his teeth, smelling his discovery in wonderment. Each of the creatures in the sacs, no matter what it was, was clearly becoming one of those things. Some were almost complete. If that was how they were made, he doubted they had just sprung up with the woods when someone planted them. Nothing else he had come across around them, or anywhere for that matter, worked anything like this. Making things bigger and stronger. Like with the ghouls, but he could not taste any godly trails nearby.

He brought his fingers on one hand together in a line, letting the metal flow around them into a wide, thin blade. With a quick, natural motion he plunged it through the fleshy shell of a pod, slicing the grotesquely stretched and deformed ape-frog inside it across the throat. Maybe they did not wake up until they were ready, but he was not about to listen to more croaking screams after days in the woods. The inside of the sac felt like grasping around living entrails. Veins, layers of skin folded over each other. Elaborate. No, someone was sure to have set this up on purpose.

The warped ape-frog tasted strange. The rot was not total like in the completely transformed ones, but he could feel it spreading almost as he chewed. Maybe they grew more in the body as they hollowed out. No waste. The boss would have liked this. And if he found out, Vrog considered, licking the pod’s ichor from his hand, he would like it enough to stay off his back for a while. Thinking this made his steps a little faster as he advanced further into the cavern. Whatever was in there was worth a lot.

As Vrog continued on, the cave began to widen even further with each hurried step. The only signs of life were the vacant eyes of creatures changing and the only noise was the humming, now growing in volume. Then at last, the stretch of tunnel opened up into a large cavern. Here there was but pitch blackness, and four burning eyes glowing in the deep. The air was still here, and surprisingly clean. A malevolent presence could be felt in the direction of the eyes however, unwavering and defiant. Soon it was joined by smaller eyes, on the walls and the ceiling- hundreds of eyes all pointing at Vrog. 

His tongue darted around, soaking in the miasma of decay that floated about the chamber. It was everywhere, as though every wall had been smeared with rot, but most of it could barely be felt over the foulness of the thing in the darkness. Large and hungry, like a huge living hole, or a mouth that did not need a body. Vrog grated his teeth bemusedly. Between that sense and its four-eyed fiery gaze, the entity looked uncannily familiar. Had it not been for the lack of that tell-tale metallic tinge, he could have thought it might have crawled out of the same pit as himself. Perhaps it was still close enough to understand a sound argument, though the reek of malice seeping from it made him suspect it was unlikely.

It was worth a try, at any rate.

[color=saddlebrown]”Bad day to die, isn’t it?”[/color] he hailed the shadows, [color=saddlebrown]”Like they all are. Lucky for you, I’m being generous today, so I’ve got a deal. You call off your walking carrion and come out here to talk, and I’ll let you see if tomorrow’s better. If you’re good, I’ll keep the deals coming, too. You get me?”[/color] He spat, keeping the trajectory safely close to his feet, and prepared another seed.

If it all the creature understood, it made no move to respond. The air became palpable with tension, thick with anticipation. Then the humming stopped, for a short time, but renewed with intensity, a dark and violent rhythm. Slowly the eyes began to advance upon Vrog and then, from behind something lunged into him! He lurched forward with a snarl, more out of surprise than from the weight of the assailant, great though it was. Though abrupt at first, his motion transitioned into a smooth forward swing as he reached back with his claws to grasp the creature, seeking to hurl it over his head. There was a deep howl as the creature was thrown forward into the advancing eyes, and when it hit, the room exploded into fury. From all sides they came, the creatures in the dark and unmoving in the distance, were the first set of eyes.

In a moment, Vrog found himself in the midst of chaos. Massive claws scraped and struck at him, grazing off his armour but buckling his swollen form inward under the weight of the hulking bodies. With a gnarled sneer, he shoved away a beast pressing down on his right arm and lashed out with claw and foot, tearing into the rough hide of his foes wherever he found an opening. He began to gather up for a charge against the looming eyes ahead, but stopped when a renewed assault gave him a moment to consider it. If he struck at the creature behind this, there was a hefty risk he would kill or maim it beyond usefulness, especially in this darkness and cacophony of rotted smells, which would wipe out any merit from the discovery. Reluctant though he was to do it, it seemed he would have to pass on the best part of this fight. Grumbling in disappointment, he spun about-face, clawing away at the fiery-eyed mass that blocked his way out of the chamber, and began to inch back towards the mouth. He would at least make it last as long as he could.

Step by step, foot after foot. He had to recognise these beasts had hard heads. The ground under his feet was slick with their blood, and they still kept coming, with broken limbs and shredded skin. Even outside the last chamber, past the fleshy sacs that lined the tunnel leading to it, up to the very mouth of the cavern. The passage was soon too narrow for more than one of the pursuers to fit, and the first in line felt the full brunt of his claws. Held back by what was soon a ragged corpse, the rest growled and pushed in furious bursts, but, behind the new obstacle, they could not keep up. The last few paces to the exit passed without trading blows.

After the choking stench of the lair, the fresh air, even mitigated by the rotting stream, was almost nauseating. Vrog spat the husk he had been holding in his mouth all the while in disgust and turned to face the opening. Whatever the thing in there was, it now knew it had been found. Maybe it was confident enough that it would stay put there regardless, but he knew that was a gamble. If it fled before Narzhak came by or sent someone else to collect it, he might as well have only found a week-old track in the dirt, and there was little glory in that. The best he could do now was make sure it did not go anywhere, and if it still did regardless, at least he would have tried.

With a few movements of almost surreal agility in spite of his bulk, he clambered over the sheer mountainside near the cavern, fingers digging into the stone like soft wood. Cracks ran through the rock, and he pushed them apart. Dust and pebbles began to fall to the ground as the surface gave way with a grinding rumble, before a large part of the natural wall collapsed, with Vrog on top, in front of the fissure. Water splashed and bones crunched as he pulled himself to his feet, surveying his handiwork through the tapping of fingertips. The remaining opening should have been large enough for the smaller creatures to crawl through, but, if the height of those eyes had been any indication of their leader’s size, it was as good as trapped.

Snapping through a seed satisfiedly, he trudged back into the foliage. With this, another few months without control were assured, maybe even a year. There were some places he thought he’d go smell in that time. Where had he left the Omen now?

[hider=”The strange beast of the unfathomed cave was, or had at one time been, a FROG!!!”]

Since his run-in with the dragons, Vrog has taken to exploring the Foot on, well, foot. In the woods around the Xishan mountains, he meets Ansara’s reaper spawn, who keep jumping him despite a poor rate of survival. Following their trail, he finds the cave the Reaper Mother has taken as a lair, and pokes around in it. Fascinated by what he finds inside, he decides to report it to Narzhak, so he can show he’s being useful and keep the boss off his back. When he comes to face Ansara herself, he tries to threaten her into surrendering, which goes as well as can be imagined. Vrog fights the reaper brood, but doesn’t want to risk ruining the most valuable part of his discovery and retreats without engaging the matriarch. Instead, he collapses part of the cave’s entrance in an attempt to keep her from leaving, and heads off about his business.

[i]No Might spent.[/i]

[/hider]