Die Shize

Eternal Voyager

He hadn’t eaten in weeks. Or was it days? Was one unit of measure, one increment in time, the same as the other anyway? Whatever the case, amid the gore, he gorged. He fed. He drank. He satiated. He nourished. One verb was certainly the same as the other. However, he needed more. Hunger. Thirst. Flesh. Blood. The fur was spat out, of course. He had sharp teeth, yes. Yet, admittedly, his former incisors might have made this feast easier.

Skin ripped away, hanging from lips, blood drips. Not a pretty sight by any means. A Ratman wasn’t a pretty thing. Only…a Veshkei was always different from the Verm species. A special breed. A superior breed. A more pleasing thing to see. Not to many but to some. This one? He had since shaken the form of the furred Ratkin. He had the tail, he had the horns, he had resemblance of the former in his face, but his was a new shape.

His teeth were like a human’s in comparison, if sharp as a shark’s. His skin was nearly barren of fur. Of hair, even. He was like a hybrid. But whatever he was, whoever he was, his insides were still his. His system was still Ratkin. And the Rat, the rat, was known to eat just about anything, just about any meat, and to live with it.

Rat. Ratman. Ratkin. A few terms with different definitions. His was different from other Shkei even. Yet he still had arms. Legs. A heart. Breath. Feet. Teeth. Nails. Stomach. Cock. Tail. So was it the rodent’s different gastric cocktail that did it? Digestive tract and trail that made him less susceptible to the toxins and whatever-it-is that may make him sick from his hunt. Different species of course, different breeds, different dynamics, different boars, different rats. But only one me…

Another thought. Another memory. Triggered from nothing. But not spurned. Didn’t interrupt his meal. Or…was the blood in the memory? A vision in his vision of yesterday. Of the past in the present. Of purpose unspent. Of a future unearned. Stupid. Quit thinking it. Whatever he was, whoever he is, Veron Blacktear surely had the same protective stomach, the same digestive system as his previous life…right?

Moments later, Veron had found his nourishment, whether from the blood or the fur, the flesh or the bone, one or both, none or all at once. Hell, maybe it was the life he was eating, the death he was drinking. Time would tell. Slowly, he rose, but not lazily. Reinvigorated already, or was that what they said to be the placebo effect?

He turned to face her, the spider, to take in her presence all over again. Abomination. Maybe. They said the same of him. Of his Ratkin. Whether Veshkei or Verm. It didn’t matter to them. They were all vermin.

And Veron was the worst of them.

He wiped blood from his lips with the back of his hand. Debated whether to scratch the itch behind his eyepatch. No. Leave it. It will feed and drink alongside the falling of the leaves. Whatever that meant. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant everything. Maybe it means as much as his own existence between these trees…or the meaningless conversation between a rat and a spider. And another stupid question. His was toneless. His expression was vacant.

“Have you ever looked in the mirror?”

Eternal Voyager

Whatever was coming their way, Veron wondered if it ate junk food, if it could be nourished from empty calories. If the reverse was true. As lost as he was, as uncertain of his own existence in a universe that was so unknown, perhaps there was freedom somewhere in obliviousness; the freedom to find more amusement at this moment than concern over what comes.

Maybe that was why, ultimately, it was so easy for him to shrug off her words, whatever their worth, whatever her worth wherever her world was. What was a rat to a spider? Probably the same as the spider to the rat. In his observations, sometimes they ate each other. Though his world was surely as different as hers and both from this world.

The Mad Rat, some called him, claiming that madness was in his veins. What was madness anyway? Perhaps it was this sorry excuse for a forest or whatever stormed between its trees. “Heads up and legs up, spider.” Though, given her distinct inability to distinguish figures in speech as much as figures of speech, and had difficulty with terms like ‘king’, he could only wonder of her species.

Not that she needed encouragement. Her appendages lifted, her legs spread in a sense, and while there was nothing specifically impressive about the simplistic movements he was impressed. There was an elegance to her motion, a natural beauty to it, amplified by her giant height. She was indeed twice his size and, though those back home might laugh in their grave to hear it spoken, hers appeared to be twice the size of his own ego.

He had met many arrogant souls before and would not hold this against her. Perhaps arrogance was a dish their visitor would find delicious. Perhaps I can eat it for mine own nourishment. If he was dead, well, death had a sense of humor, because it included hunger and thirst. Here we go.

“Oh, hello." The bushes shook madly, like they had broken into some wild dance, first over here then over there. “One for me and one for you it seems.” Two of these things, hidden between the trees, had evidently separated from their advance. Their speed and focus were definitely indicative of predators.

For Veron’s part, he barely moved a muscle. He assumed no battle stance. He just stood and waited. Moments later, as branches swayed in defiance, a giant thing in its own right emerged from the foliage. Truly, Valucre was home to all sorts of beasts, some kinds similar but of varying heights, as much as there were rats and then there were Rats.

Veron had seen a boar before, and what tore toward him was not much different. Only larger. It was a strange thing, its vicious cry quite like that of a wolf’s howl as much as a pig’s squeal. Its great tusks pointed forth so as to gore its target. But the rat was ready for it.

He stepped aside without a roar or wasting any time. His tail whipped as he did, its sharp barbed bits tearing across its neck, opening the throat, so that his prey crashed some feet away.

Whatever became of the spider’s opponent, the Veshkei paced over to his kill and once again wasted no moment. He crouched down to the carcass on the ground and he began to feast.

Eternal Voyager

The way this ‘woman’ had spoken to this ‘man’ just then, the bold insults and the insolence that dripped from her luscious lips, was no less delicious. There was a time when Veron Blacktear would have taken the tongue of the one who spoke to him so, and though this beast would probably prove to be not so easy on the approach as those, his anger might have blazed just then regardless and gotten the better of him.

However, that time was gone, and it had been a long time since the rat, the man, could converse so candidly, so freely, never mind whether he was ever a king, is or was. Is she… Even his thoughts trailed off but, like the critters he had observed, his mind was never vacant. While one eye watched, the other ‘eye’ listened, so that his mind was always active, never distant. My mirror image..? Fragmented, perhaps, but in a way she reminded him of his forsaken past.

Despite the spider’s odd and awkward hostility toward him, there was honesty that even an arrogant king could not deny. Especially when said king was no longer bound by the chains of his own sovereignty. She was right, to an extent. He had lost his kingdom the very same day his world died. All is lost. All is gone… No, you’re wrong, Veron. You are not. You remain.

Valucre may have died. Veron was still alive.

And why should he hide whatever image he remembered of his very own self from her? As amusing as this creature before him was, an enigma in her own right, she had all the importance as the fox, squirrel, the bird…the spider. The trees around her and him might still be standing whatever happened to either.

His contemporary might see him as a means to an end, a tool to take her on a tour in this forest that may be as forsaken as their realms of old, but he did not need her even on that level. To impress her required purpose from her; yet, if in the end Veron Blacktear was really still asleep, and this was all a dream, of what purpose was his own existence within it, never mind the spider’s?

She smirked. He smiled. Whether because of her words or his thoughts. Whatever her tone, a merger of sarcasm or sincerity, one or the other, she was funny. She quivered, mocking him in a way he did not already expect of her character. A sense of humor. In the end, she was no mere voyager. A strange quaint little creature, certainly, but another survivor from time and space dark. Though he would take her claims of his being great to his heart.

“A king of Valucre can eat, sleep, piss and shit just like anybody.” He didn’t know or care how she would take it. Emphasis on circumstance seemed appropriate. “If there are only trees around us then you won’t see anything else from me.” No point in hiding it. No point in foraging for forging a kingdom of leaves and twigs, a crown of lettuce and sticks, with foxes and squirrels for his subjects.

“Stuck together, is it?” Apparently they were matching grins. “That sentence remains to be interpreted. I can only hope you don’t mean being stuck in a web to drink me in ways…unfitting.”

His naked eye shifted again, but not to gawk at insects. There was movement in the distance; the rustle of leaves, like a violent wind had thrashed at branches, pushed past bush, closer, closer. “Table this conversation for later, maybe?”

He had no armor. No weapons. Except for hard skin, his fists and his barbed tail. “Something is coming.”

Eternal Voyager

Valerna Jorgenskull. She may say the name a dozen times over but it meant little and less to him. It was piss in the wind. If a bit uncanny in resemblance. Valerna. Veron. Jorgenskull. Blacktear. ‘Jorgen’ might very well be some foreign term for ‘mountain’ while ‘Blacktear’ was a compound noun anyhow. Then again…in whatever tongue emitted between them, as permitted in this dungeon of an environment, was there even a V in ‘Valerna’ or ‘Veron’? Were there even letters and words in this universe?

Whatever the answer, she had disappointingly missed the point. Maybe it was the fault of his own voice. He hadn’t asked for a name she had already given him. He had asked for a name. To some, a person’s name was inseparable from their title, or reputation in a certain definition, to the extent that ‘who’ amalgamated with ‘what’.

Veron Blacktear, whoever he is, whatever he was, he is/was King of Nesthome. That’s what he was. That’s who he was. Who I am… Who am I..? If his own inner monologue could not satisfy his blighted mind with an answer, how could she? It didn’t matter whether the spider could read the rat’s mind. His thoughts were his own, as were the letters and words written on paper, scrawled on parchment, inscribed on bark, etched in stone. Spoken between lips of man and woman.

Truly, he did indeed consider his query to be an enthralling inquiry; for she had already enthralled him, but not as a queen so much as a beast. A thing. A painting, in a manner of speaking. She might hiss, her tongue more serpentine than arachnid, and she might become his, if he could only remember his powers within…well…whatever this domain is. It was not his. His demesne was…was…abandoned… Forsaken. Forgotten.

Yet they had as much in agreement as they had in opposition. Who and what they were apparently held no bearing over this place they were in. The imprints of their existence were like rat droppings in a pit, or dusted cobwebs in a corner. They existed on the borders of this universe. Either could only bore each other with their history.

Truly, what did ego matter in a forest where trees stood taller than either rat or spider? For this was no mere forest. It was alien if they were ancient. Even a king could lose the weight of his crown whether he still wore it. There was a difference. Her challenge to him, however, whether it would go unpunished, was permitted. No, not just. It was relished.

So, if she had or hadn’t detected the sarcasm in his tone, if she had a crown or coronet of her own, if she was a queen of her species, or some sorry outcast with a broken past, he at least knew he was a king. To cling to his forsaken kingdom, on the other hand, would make him…what, exactly?

Fat. Meat. Bone. It didn’t take much of a predator to relate to the notion. He smelled blood in the air, and maybe it was her share, or another creature’s, but Veron Blacktear had yet to feast. He had yet to chew the fat, to suck the blood, to gnaw the bone. Having ferried with gnoll and dwarf, elf and lizard, and others, in his own voyages, he had plundered wonders, fed creatures to each other, and tasted flesh and blood beyond imagination, but never…spider…

“A king is a ruler of a kingdom; the sovereign of a realm,” began his answer. His gaze never wavered from her. He digested her words, even if he might not address every letter that spilled from in between her lips. He expected no different with him. “Though I have met mighty kings and petty kings. I am, or was, King of Nesthome, a realm that was mine own.”

It was his turn to pause, not to scratch the itch beneath his patch, but to observe her fangs, and wonder. His thoughts? They needed no monologue. “We, however, are nowhere near Nesthome.” He could sense it as surely as the scent of her presence. This place was…different…to put it mildly.

“The world I hail from was known as Valucre. It was born. It became no more. I found a way out from the collapse, a means to survive beyond the bounds of its reality, and here I am, with one good eye and two good hands.” But he did not bow. He just bared his own teeth, sharp and preserved as they should be; and judge his not by familiarity of any Order of Rodentia, for the Verm are vermin different, and the Veshkei superior.

“As to whatever lurks beyond these woods, well…” For the first time in moments, Veron took his eyes off her. His singular gaze roamed the wood, observed the squirrel climbing up the bark, the spider dangling from the branch, the bird perched in the canopy, the fox-like thing in the distance. “Perhaps we can discover that together.” His gaze turned back to her.

Eternal Voyager

Music OOC

My Hider

The music had ended, as expected upon the entrance of conversation. Those notes he himself had struck and plucked, casting speech forth in her direction for her to catch or ignore. Music did not end with silence, then, for the quiet constantly consisted of the noises of the forest, interjected with a man’s voice. A man. Was that what he was? Yes. No. He was more than that. More than man.

He thought as much but his thoughts raced within his brain in instants. Even as the words dripped from his tongue he could scarcely put a name to the tongue itself. The language consisted of letters and words within sentences. It was comprehended. He understood what he was saying. Clearly, so did she. Yet, if the tongue was common, was it from the world of old, or the world of new? What was the world anyway when his own fingers had unfurled a universe from the very fabrics of a reality reshaped and remade? What was language but the web spun between lips and tongues?

This one had one, and lips, and teeth. They probably bit harder than any punch. Sharper than a snake’s tongue. Tongues. There was a word that was suddenly so stuck. Yes…I remember some… Yes. He had taken them from his minions, but not out of punishment. I took one of their eyes to punish them, didn’t I… But he took their tongues simply to shut them up.

The stranger’s fingers might have stopped playing her instrument but her eyes never gave way. They played a different game. Those amber oculars of this giantess with arachnid elements gazed his way, and they spoke another language entirely, one of silence. But as loud as a blind eye shining with malice. With madness.

So, in those moments, as if this forest was an ocean and they were just two droplets within it, both man and woman played. They scrutinized one another, sized each other up, but not yet in the sense of assessing an opponent. If one proved to be prey and the other predator? The spider might likely feed on the rat, but the Rat was Veshkei, and the Veshkei was Veron, and even a rat of his character and stature may one day become a god even if this giantess was already a goddess.

Dominance. That was laced in her gaze. Where there was no fear there were spears, with pupils penetrating through his flesh and bone as if his body was already in her web, and her appendages might just wrap around him any moment to dissect him. At least, this was her attempt, but when she would see she would meet a defense. Her eyes attacked his form, swarmed over it like curled legs, but his eye attacked right back. He was dissecting her in turn.

She was nearly twice his height, her figure heavily accented, her sex rather evident in her giant breasts. That was yet a compliment. Yet his eye did not linger on her chest. The corners of her lips turned upward, she jutted her hip, every movement purposed as if practiced and predetermined, whereas he stood still and expressionless, unperturbed. Perhaps he simply admired the abomination.

Perhaps I may yet determine her sexual orientation. In seconds or days. Her skin was pristine, perfect amid the elegance of her constricted outfit, but not waxed like a doll’s. However, even as his eye took this tall woman in, tickling his imagination of mauling her breasts, rising and falling with her breaths, and even if she might kill men for less, they were lesser men, for Veron Blacktear was no creature’s thrall.

He thought. He watched. She did too. What she saw amid horns and tail fit for a Rat-man was a muscular figure, broad shoulders, skin grey as ash or the decay of the grave, black tattoos intricate and enigmatic at the crook of his neck to the chest, and scars across his body from head to toe. Fitting for a warrior who had taken as many blows as he had given, who had broken bones and bitten flesh. Was she any different? A spider with hair as auburn as a burnt autumn.

She speaks. He listens.

She said his eye wasn’t deceiving him. Apparently it wasn’t deceiving her either. But what about the one hidden beneath? That remained to be seen. She spoke of appearance, and that much was its own deception to him, for Veron knew of form, how to shift his, much unlike his Verm kindred spirits. They were idiots. He had to admit it. He was different.

Meanwhile his arachnid companion in conversation had a tongue as melodic as her music. She called him wise, and even one eye could possess the intelligence of evolution’s peak in its black and white and silver sea. She called herself little. It was his turn to smirk. Brave. Stupid. There was danger in wonder as much as there was wonder in danger. He didn’t answer her. Maybe that his own gate into the domination of conversation. Maybe it simply didn’t matter either way.

Valerna Jorgenskull. Her name sounded like a kind of hybrid between an elf and an ogre. He wouldn’t put either past her depending on her true nature. Spider… Voyager… Fist to breast, evidently a military salute, or at least what he was used to whatever her true culture.

At her offer for him to come closer, he tilted his head. She said she didn’t bite. That much was certainly a lie. One that he liked. She stepped forward, and maybe it was fated, because in that very same moment he stepped forward.

One step. Two step. Three heads. Four heads. Two breasts. Two pecs. Yet her chest was clothed where his was naked. Her gait was that of a woman with wide hips whether she attempted to hide it while his was straight and basic. The closer he came, the bigger her structure, like some looming tower that walked. The Mountain That Rides… Another memory, unbidden, from a long lost slumber. A minion. A red orc. Am I awake? Or am I asleep? He could only wonder.

“Veron Blacktear.” That was his name. Maybe ten feet away now. Approaching half. Given her height, such distance would not matter for either. I…remember… His tail curved from one side to the other. Captain of the Lost Scions. Lord of the Eye, Sycreet, the Iron Pikes and the Black Sea. “King Veron Blacktear of Nesthome.” His dominant hand lifted like his tail had, touching his eyepatch with one of his long black nails, as if the fabric might remind him of his own existence. “Once upon a time, perhaps...but perhaps my past is as blind as whatever hides behind this eyepatch.” He lowered his arm to his side as he paused his walk “And who are you? The Spider Queen?" That would prove to be all too amusing if true.

@Spooder Girl

I’m soooooo bored!!!

Boredom is meant to be broken. Welcome!

New traveler here!

Heyo and welcome!

Pleased to Meet You!

Welcome aboard!

Eternal Voyager

Character:
Veron Blacktear

My Hider

ucarecdn.com/d3bfd128-8b27-485e-ada2-…

Music OOC

My Hider

The Mad Rat

They called them vermin. Rats. For the Verm were birthed from the Great Rat. There was a great history lesson in there somewhere, but history was lost to time, a pale echo that no one cared to hear anymore. No one would listen even if the tales were echoed. Perhaps that was the lesson. Indifference. Ignorance. In the end, the truth was the lie, right? Only the lie was true. History was written by the winner anyway. That was the phrase. So even if the Last Rat spoke, and someone listened, there was never any certainty that whatever dripped from his lips was true or false to begin with, for he himself was neither true or false. He simply…was.

Like others of his kind, like so many of any kind, he was born in the womb. His Broodmother, some nameless creature, had given him into his clan. It did have a name, for broods and clans were groups and groups mattered. Individuals were less important. Only…this one had to disagree…and so he was banished from brood and clan, from cave and realm, from nest and home.

Some called him vermin. He wasn’t much different from the rest of his kindred, only in the context of many he was vermin in the sense of being a beast, a beast in the sense of being cruel, wicked, some ghastly, sadistic, destructive thing. He was Verm. He was Rat. Yet he was greater than his brothers and sisters, the lesser versions of their species, for he was Veshkei.

He made his own clan to his name, and his clan had rats with names, but they were nameless to him, forgotten and forsaken. Only one remained. Only one ever truly mattered. Only his name. Only me… He remembered as he blinked in naked shadow, where darkness had swallowed the light, where one eye was right, and one eye was wrong. I never forgot… He recalled his name, the only name worth its weight when it came to surviving the end times. It was the first name and the last name, for he was the first and the last.

He was Veron Blacktear. And his was a name that the denizens of Lagrimosa had come to fear before their land was ripped root after root, and the remnant of a dead civilization was spat out, bathed in the blood of his enemies, reborn in the afterbirth of a broken universe.

The Mad Rat, they called him, and maybe he was half-mad. Could he be blamed? As he gazed skyward, laying on his back in grass, naked, save for a lonely eyepatch, he wondered. His right eye was open, unblinking, once an orb black all over, obsidian, like the Verm, like his kind. Yet, amid his endeavor to survive, to escape, he had…changed.

He was something different today. He retained his tail and his horns, his skin was grey, yet it had no fur, and his face was more like a man’s than a rat’s. His right eye was still black in pupil, yet silver in iris, and white in sclera. As for the other, well, that was forever hidden. Some said his left eye was as red as blood, striped like a cat’s, and shined with malice.

Some said. A voice in his head said. I say…get up, Veron Blacktear… And so he did, but not for naught. He listened as much as he watched, and heard music, melody, strings of harp, and it had heart. He heard birds chirp, critters creep, smelled trees and beasts, blood and wood, but it was the music that had taken him in, so he followed it, and there he stood. There.

The creature by the lake, the musician, was no tiny thing. In his naked flesh, Veron stood seven feet tall, courtesy of his Shkei species, but what was she? His curiosity danced into the breeze like the notes from her strings, and one would have to forgive him. The creature before him was a woman who still had her head, whereas Veron had left behind a gravesite filled with the heads of men and women and children of which he had reaped in order to simply…be.

“You play that well,” said the rat to the spider. His deep voice came from a safe distance away, but whatever the power of either creature, well, distance and how much it mattered remained to be seen. “You are arachnid.” He stated the obvious. “Unless my eye has been deceived by some spell.”

@Spooder Girl

The First of Us

Music OOC (Recurring)

My Hider

The woman had asked, and a voice had called back in answer, in earnest, even as the former readied her weapon to blast back at an attacker or an infected, whichever. Nothing else mattered at this moment but protection, survival, even if it meant forfeiting a life she might otherwise save.

These words? Nonsense, really. Recited poetry. Regurgitated creed. Little and less. Long since lost and bereft of definition. Save who you can. Slay who is damned. An old friend had taught her, and Charley had wandered this dead earth as its daughter who defied the birth of its curse.
Words. Words are wind.

“So you say…” Charley responded to ‘no infected’. Alas, she had heard those words before, only for infected to almost get her killed moments later. A name came the next moment. Quinn Finch. Obviously she did not recognize it. Didn’t much care for a 25th fucking birthday either. Leg. Friend. Fever.

Charley pursed her lips, determining a decision as much as her position in these circumstances. She was not so callous as to abandon someone who genuinely needed help and would not hurt her in turn. Hell, might just help me. We'll see.

She debated the situation as the tarp opened just then. Training her weapon, finger on the trigger of a rifle not to be trifled with, another woman came into view, though no telling if infected.

“Dollar,” Charley offered across the distance. “That’s my horse’s name.” She ruffled his mane. “Good boy. What about you?” Rifle aimed. “You a good girl or you gonna make me wish I left this world and hell by shooting myself?”

@Atrocious