Die Shize

Island of Rain

Music OOC

My Hider

Up the rotten wooden steps. Next step across the deck. Beyond the doorway. Into the hall. Between the walls. There was naught but darkness within; the remnants of inhabitants long since forgotten amid this abandoned residence. Forsaken, even, and there was a difference. Morning sunlight tried to slide in past the frayed drapes, ever defiant to a wet appetite, but the rain had taken this place like swords in a storm, and decay was not compliant—like a mother who mourned her slain babe but would never forget his name.

Though, no attempt to restore this shelter was in order. There were no elders in this forest fit for the purpose. The linen sheets that covered furniture had served their purpose to futility; ancient as aged skin. Underneath their equally flimsy structure, emboldened by the holes, crept insects. Maddened with a need to feed, they danced at the corners the way snakes slid between the blades of grass.

This morning's visitor or, indeed, intruder, paid no other living thing any mind as much as he did to the dead abode. In the living room, a fireplace where the fire was once stoked remained ashen grey; cold, and even within this pit the mold was able to grow. A corner table, coated with the growth of dust that no lord could comprehend amid, had a complement of spider webs.

Take your blade to them. A voice beckoned within his head. Oh, he knew the stroke. He was trained to take the hide from a deer with his knife as much as penetrate a man’s bone with no fear. That sword in his scabbard was not for show. No. He approached, not webs or memories as he glimpsed trees and friends between them, and enemies in the valley to defend the former by breaking them, but steps.

Remember the embers, my son. Another spoke. He remembered as flesh rendered with bone. Wood and stone. Caught in this waking dream, it was all the son could do to envision the sun, and its rays were made to prevent him from sleeping. It was beyond dawn, the sun since risen in the sky outside this house, but a new dawn was yet to rise.

He climbed. He advanced. He moved with purpose as much as by chance. He did not know where he was going but he knew he had to go—no, not leave, even if his horse chanted a chorus at his back, but advance forward. Forward, Always. Brave. Foolish. It was the same fate anyway.

Bedroom. Window. Morning’s glory shone, its glow vacant of rain or storm, defiant to lightning, stubborn to thunder. Cadrian’s Wall. Even today, may it never fall. Thoughts lost, but he walked on. Bathroom. His hand rested on the hilt of his sword at his hip as he entered, though he could not remember a maxim, nor did he know whether it was fate or accident that gave his gaze to a lady in a bathtub. Maybe it was magic.

But it wasn’t a skeleton. The figure was pallid in complexion, a ghost to the bone, and covered in the dirt of the earth as with the drapes and the furniture of this abode. It was if, at first glance and if one would pardon the darkness of the vision, this person had slit her wrists and let fate take her away like the blades of rain.

Only there was no blood, not even coagulated, and no water in the bathtub. Knees bent upward, rigid as sticks, arms crossed over her chest, positioned with purpose. This was predetermined. Not languid. Not given to death, unless undead, what with her breath as faint as those blades on the window.

Is she asleep? Awake? He didn’t know. His words were light, though, like his pace, never mind perfection in a story or seamless scenes, for perhaps that would simply be boring, as his free hand gripped the edge of the tub and he leaned forward toward her. Though, he did not touch.

“...Hello..?

Island of Rain

Not long ago, there was balance between the sky and the land. Sunshine, brighter than this morning, would bathe the scenery from plain to lake. The grass was dry right to the blade. When it rained, the island was wet and grey, and the next day changed back. Nature had her way. The weather of Orisia was in order. Morning dew might linger like residue from a forest fire, the like of which was no less vital to rejuvenate vegetation, but the cycle was final.

These darkened days, though, no flames could take trees drenched day and night, and even time could not escape the rain. The very forest floor, once hardened, was treacherous as quicksand in places. The mud was soaked as much as the hood and would break the hoof so that the horse and rider would share the same fate if it could.

So he knew to go slow. He navigated with patience. He was alone as he rode, eyes and ears alert to his surroundings, where even critters who once found no taste for the rain had adapted to it and come out. They still had to eat. Like them, he learned to see between the cascade, to hear beyond the droplets, watch and listen for trouble.

That was adjustment. It was accepting this new reality, where every moment was a puddle, and the very ocean had all but swallowed this island with the crying sky as its ally. He tried not to look up, not least because he need not get his face wet beneath his garment, but needed not be reminded of his opponent. Those skies were winning, every raindrop like a taunt as if to tell Orisia’s victims that they would never go thirsty but would wish for thirst if it meant an end to the pour.

Lost in thought, it was all he could do as he watched for signs for a squall. He had also learned to almost sense the presence of a storm like a shadow at his back, more than ever before when the lord had a tower and a forest in his land, and was not merely some traveler in a forest on horseback with a sword and a backpack. These were no mere woods though. The bark, so soaked it peeled off like skin from bone as his fingertips brushed it, was from an ancient tree that stood as a sentry of many—as much as an orchestra for Orsia’s queen.

He walked onward, peering between the trees, seeing the past, present and future amalgamated in a silent symphony save for the rain. He tilted his head, spied an abandoned nest in the canopy, glimpsed large wings arcing above the crowns if beneath the clouds. He turned his face, spied no tree, no lake, but something that nature had not made.

It was an abandoned building.

Clicking his teeth, shifting the reins, the rider led his steed toward the structure, every step measured, but unwavering. The mare paused not but a walk away as the rider swept his gaze over the home, or what he had taken for one. Like everything else, it was not spared time’s scar. Its wooden steps, once proud and hard, looked rotten. Sparing a look at the clouds as lightning flashed on the horizon, and thunder rocked the stones, he dismounted his horse and approached.

Guiding his mare by the reins, he wrapped them around a post. With her secured, offering a whinny as if to tell him not to take too long, he cautiously walked up the steps. He wondered if their wooden frame might break like that bark did as much as whether some threat might dwell within. Who could tell? Yet his sword was sheathed at his hip, and he did not fall, as he entered the building, footsteps creaking over the floorboards, and walked into the hall.

Island of Rain

Music OOC

My Hider

The skies cried that night, a deluge that had lasted for days and nights, in truth. Perhaps the heavens were upset, and maybe the gods who governed them were shedding their tears into the realm beneath. Some said, at least. Others might accuse those deities of being too indifferent to even glance at the ground below their crown. With or without faith, that singular truth remained: it had been raining in these lands from morning to evening, day after night, until some no longer recognized time or space absent of rain.

Through the thick and thin of this existence, nothing changed except the days. In the welkin grey as ash, one that swirled with storm clouds that threatened to crack the sky like glass, sunlight remained in slivers. Sometimes, when the torrents were more merciful, it even shined to deliver warmth to the denizens as it did these thickets; branches and leaves haunted by droplets.

Those people? Citizens. Visitors. Civilians. Government officials. Nobles. Peasants. Whether under the serfdom of a local lord, perhaps in the north furthest from the crownlands where even the Black Queen’s abolition of feudalism didn’t completely reach, or free laborers everywhere in between.

The ones over them, from the upper echelon of the peerage seats to the lower courts. From the landed knight to the hedge knight, the bandit to the baron, the hunter with hounds to the bounty hunter. All of them, those isolated inhabitants of this ancient island, with fortunes or misfortunate, predators or prey, from the wolf to the hyena, the lion to the mockingjay, shared the same fate: they were the remnants of Orisia.

One of them had been riding for days and nights. Journeying from the mountains in the north to the plains in the south, he was a lone rider, one who found company only when he passed others on the path, perhaps the open road or a forest trail. Again when he managed to come across an inn and order hot food on a plate and ale in a tankard at a table instead of chewing on hard biscuits under a tree canopy.

Throughout his travels, he recognized none and was recognized by none. This was deliberate. He wanted no others to discover his actual identity. So he rode with his dark grey cloak draped over his shoulders, the hood upward, courtesy of the rain as much as to hide his face. His horse didn’t mind, of course; a brown mare with a black mane.

The previous evening, the rider had slept in a cave after driving the wolves within it away, and they weren’t so dire. The next morning, his bedroll rested at the back of his saddle, his halberd sheathed at one side, his bow and quiver of arrows at the other amid pots, pans and saddlebags with tools and personal possessions.

Finding a measure of comfort to read a book, however, was few and far in this weather except when it came time to find the right brook at night for a campsite beside him, light a fire and retire for the night, if he was fortunate enough.

Maybe later. This morning, the rider was focused on only one thing ever since he began this journey. Everything else was supplementary, from being thirsty and hungry to feeling a longing for his home and its own comforts like his hall’s hearth and his bedchamber’s tall bed of feathers. Those were luxuries he had forfeited for his adventure that was just as much of a mission. It is what it is.

The man sighed into the breeze, lucky that it wasn’t a gust. The last thing anybody wanted in this rain besides a flood was a bitter wind to greet them like a wicked grin. So, between the trees of a forest, with morning sun peeking beneath the grey clouds looming above verdant crowns, the rider steered his horse forward at a comfortable trot, breaking his gaze with the thicket.

Leaves and twigs crushed under hoof. His steed whinnied to express her resentment to all this water. He accepted her complaint as he patted her neck. “Easy, girl,” he whispered. "You're all good.” However, they were powerless against the clouds. It was all they could do to go onward, save their strength, and head south. Day after night, night after day, a lord and his horse, but just victims of this endless rain.

@Blessed Blight

The First of Us

Music OOC

My Hider

At first, Charley was torn between squeezing the trigger of her rifle the next instant and actually allowing this other woman into her vision. It was as if she was death permitting the life of an intruder in her presence. In a sense, it wasn’t far from the truth given what everyone reckoned with when eking out an existence like this.

But this woman, Quinn Finch, stood her ground in this town. That not only disproved the theory that she was a mutant but further suggested she wasn’t infected. Unless she’s bitten and it’s only a matter of time before she turns. Charley reflected, biting her lip, never wavering her gaze or her weapon from her contemporary’s face.

Dollar, the woman repeated, as if the name ‘Dollar’ for a horse was as far out there as this very universe. Charley didn’t mind the tone. If anything, it made her grin in shared amusement; or some semblance of human connection amid the threat of being turned on any moment, at best.

Trying to stay alive, the other woman said. Trying to survive. The first woman said inside her mind. Honestly, that was the only reason Charley accepted one day after the other, ever fighting forward. Perhaps it was no different for this other woman evidently named Quinn.

Then she mentioned a friend and, well, if Charley had planned on lowering her rifle then damn it all to hell, because the words of her contemporary did little and less to settle her nerves and then some.

“A friend?” Charley cocked her head. “How long he’s got?” She wanted to sound perplexed as much as sympathetic. “Until what?” She shifted the weight of the rifle within her grip, whether she needed to or not. “Till he changes and turns you too?” Her right eye squinted as though aiming through a scope. "Because fuck that and it is what it is."

@Atrocious

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!