Lugubrious — Roleplayer Guild

Harper Saxum – Deadwood Copse

@liferusher@lunarlors34

The ground cratered where the oversized undead's fists made impact, sending dirt, dead leaves, and fragments of twig flying in every direction.  A direct hit from such an unnaturally powerful attack might have obliterated either of the girls' skulls in just one attack.  If not for the rebuke of the war guild's prestigious sigil, Ashlyn, Thor, and Harper would have been Frenzy pudding.  When Ashlyn took steps to try and remove the curse mark assaulting her soul, her monstrous opponent took the initiative.  A huge hand flew toward Ashlyn's head to grab and crush it like a nut between its fingers.

As mentally compromised as she was, Harper knew that she could not let that happen.  Time seemed to slow down as adrenaline rushed through her veins.  In less time than it would take to down a glass of soda, her new comrade would be dead.  Gritting her teeth, Harper shrugged off Thor's push and threw herself toward the ogre-like enemy.  Landing atop its shoulders, the young ninja pulled the first thing she could find from her belt -a three-pointed shuriken- and jammed it with all her strength into the creature's eye.

A bellow of pain shook the clearing, but from the monster, not Ashlyn.  Harper grinned crazily to see that her stupid, rash plan had gone off without a hitch, but found the next moment that her elation had been preemptive.  The meaty fingers of the once-human thing to which she clung locked around her through, and with a small squeak Harper was thrown violently to the ground.  Though she slammed into nothing but dirt, a vile cracking noise told the others that several of her bones had broken nonetheless.  So much pain coursed through her that she couldn't move at all.  Her lungs contracted like balloons, sending a slow stream of air out of her open mouth like a sigh.  ”Aaaaaaaaaah....”  While her eyes would open, they were already glazed over, and could not see the massive foot about to reduce her head to a pulp, nor the white light that heralded her ally's restoration.

Then a burning strike connected with the fiend, courtesy of the wizard that Harper had saved.  Ashlyn's fist gutted the obese zombie, punching a messing hole straight through her and cauterizing the wound.  The lack of resistance, however, meant that not much force had been imparted to the undead monster itself.  Still, the blow caused the path of its foot to change.  Instead of falling on the ninja's face, it fell on her stomach.

The next second, Ashlyn's fire-infused punch exploded, rocking the copse and blowing the creature in half.  Both parts, still flailing around, sailed off the cliff and to a messy end below.  Any kind of joy that might accompany the monster's defeat, however, fizzled out before it got started.  Harper lay on the dirt, almost cut in half herself.  Her blood soaked the soil, and the light had left her eyes.

Mercury Marowit – Silken Grotto

@hatakekuro@caits

Enma's resolution against using his magic garnered a shrug from Mercury.  As much as he didn't like the current situation, weakening the floor with vibrations enough to send the whole place hurtling into the depths of the cragland canyon was probably not a good alternative.  The little argument between the oni and the kid didn't capture his attention, but a voice from above prompted him to look skyward.  ”Who cares how?  Jus' make the rope and get us outta this hellhole.  We can't risk collapsin' the place with magic.”

He cast an irritated glance at Gabriel as he yet again felt the need to get all prickly with an ally.  However, the true problem, as Mercury quickly discovered when the rescue attempt really began, was Ike's ego.  Did that moron really just risk injuring an ally and potentially undermanning a town's defense force simply for the sake of his pride?  Mercury's own temper flared red-hot in less than an second.  ”Bet Sanders will be real happy to know your braindead screwin' around cost us this operation, at least if I don't kill ya first!  Get it in gear, Ike!”

Ni Rensa – Bleak Graveyard

@zarkun

The atmosphere before a storm felt like a vacuum.  Everything felt eerily still just when people expected the winds to be picking up.  Damian's question hung limply in the suddenly muggy air, but it got the wheels inside Ni's head turning.  Did Phoenix Wing's blade mean to suggest that this scorched man was one of the two beings within the hovel that burned down just recently?  Since the bones that she'd pulled from the debris matched a human female's, that meant that this fellow could only be Singed Willard himself—if that wasn't completely preposterous.  Not only had the fire victim died, but he'd been incinerated, and his ashes gathered into a pot for interment.  Yet...

Crows, storm, graves, sickness, and more.  Nobody in their right mind could take a look at Belka now and not feel it to be haunted.  Not in the sense of poltergeists, perhaps, but the town oozed the suggestion of some kind of supernatural occurrence.  In a place like this, and with the limitless potential of magic in mind, could it really be so impossible that the dead could rise?  The thought made Ni Rensa shudder, her face a mask of muted fear.  Belka did not harbor citizens of exceptional physical well-being, but there were a lot of them, and if some sort of necromantic catastrophe befell the place Ni  didn't know whether or not the guild could escape being overwhelmed.

She had to make sure.  Heedless of what Damian might think, she approached the young man and whispered, full of dread for whatever answer may come, ”Who are you?”

He adopted a quizzical expression, though in the poor light it could have been a ghastly leer.  “Willard, of course,” he replied as if it were the most obvious, ordinary thing in the world.  “Everyone knows me...the klutz who lights the lamps.”

Cormorant Sanders – Frenzy Camp

@oblivion666

Gravely, Frenzy Plant's general listened to the report of the guild's newest private.  Around him, the soldiers had already begun to move, their suspicions rewarded with decisive action at last.  Sanders barely even needed to issue an order to galvanize the last few warriors into shape, and in only a handful of moments the first squad of soldiers was ready for deployment.  ”Riona, please join Kilo, Joakim, Beardo, Riggs, and Kumbha on the way to the chapel.  Private Riggs, please facilitate a swift journey, and if battle erupts, a casualty-free fight.”

The young woman gave a salute, her usual carefree attitude completely absent.  ”Yes sir!”  She moved her lyre into playing position.  Around her, the other soldiers adopted runners' stances, like sprinters preparing for the pistol-shot to start a race.  ”Here we go.  Up-tempo!”  A pass of her practiced fingers on her instrument sent a wave of ethereal blue energy frolicking through the air around the soldiers.  At once they set off, moving far more quickly than they possibly could have otherwise.  They would also not lose stamina doing so, and Riona, for whom fatigue was already issue, felt her breath returning all at once.

Bytan Brass – Graveyard Chapel

@raijinslayer@zarkun@oblivion666@caits@hatakekuro@liferusher@lunarlors34

At least Argus seemed eager, though the thought of him laying waste to the whole region with demonic sorceries did worry Bytan a good deal.  ”Yes.  Let's move.”  The two took off at a fast pace, with the old man in particular running at a speed that defied his age.  Compliantly the townsfolk moved out of their way, concern and fear in their dull eyes as they made sure to offer no obstruction.  They raced through the claustrophobic, wood-dominated district of Belka, emerging onto the main plateau on which stood the gate to the unpopulated cragland.  While Bytan didn't want to ruin what little the villagers could coax from the earth beneath his hasty heels, the threat of an unknown, imminent horror made the notion of circumventing the little farms completely out of the question, so he endeavored to step between the rows of scraggly vegetables on his mad dash toward the cemetery and the chapel nearby.

They didn't take long, but nevertheless, by the time they arrived the entirety of Belka had become smothered in the calm before the storm.  Lightning flashed in the distance and thunder rolled through the cragland immediately after.  The noise made by the pounding footsteps of Bytan and Argus changed as they stepped from the dirt of the town onto the stone path of the graveyard leading up to the chapel.  With zero hesitation they rushed down it and through the splintered wooden door into the building.

Before them stood the same room that Bytan had seen not so long ago, but its content had changed.  Viscera covered more than just the healing altar, now—it leaked out from the corpses of four clerics heaped on the ground near that same table.  The short, portly one with which Bytan spoke before was now kneeling, bent over, on the altar itself, facing him.  Around him stood three ominous figures.  They wore ragged clothes that revealed only their faces, and those faces were deathly white, raw, and suffused by black veins.  Only groans interrupted the silence, not from these strange beings, but from the bodies of the clerics themselves.  On closer inspection, traces of black mist surrounded them, and their skin, too, was pale.

One of the standing men rasped hoarsely, “Too late.  This place, and its treasure, is ours.  But you may watch, outsiders, and despair.”  The slam of a door caused Bytan to look to the right, and he saw two more deathly interlopers emerging from the passage that he knew linked to the chamber with the pit of flesh.  Before he could speak or act, each of the five invaders slit the throats of one of the clerics, and they gurgled their last.  The barbarity of it caused Bytan to ground his teeth, and he prepared to cast a spell.

Then the dead clerics moved.  Around them, the black fog thickened.  Before the soldiers' eyes, their bodies deteriorated, becoming rotten, beastly, and slightly larger.  Baying like mad hounds, the five undead sprinted toward Argus and Bytan as fast as they could, eager to tear them to pieces.

From a tattoo gotten in memory of a long-dead sage of magic, Bytan summoned his magic.  From his outstretched palm a beam of blue and teal arcane energy the width of a wagonwheel surged forth, obliterating two of the zombies in seconds.  He expected Argus to take care of the threat on his own, and possible the invaders as well.  Those evil, accursed men, however, did not seem overly concerned.  If anything, they looked as if their job had already been done.  Bytan soon found out why.

An awful, horrible noise rumbled through the chapel and the graveyard, filling the whole eastern side of Belka with its unholy din.  Within the back room of the chapel, something began to move.  Its awakened thrashing turned wood to kindling and sent walls tumbling down, and as the rear area of the chapel collapsed, Frenzy Plant's soldiers got a good look.

Malignant black fog surrounded a huge and disgusting amalgam of flesh—the great pit of spare and recycled parts made and preserved over the years by Belka's unique healing.  Whatever plague of undeath festered in the newly-created undead thanks to the foul breath of their less fresh counterparts had brought the visceral heap to life, and now it stood like a grotesque titan above the remains of the chapel's back half.  The dust that filled the air blew away in the headwinds of the oncoming storm.  Rain poured down from the sky, which undulated like the sea in shades of green, black, yellow, and gray.  Lighting flashed among the clouds, illuminating the repulsive, horrific giant for far too long.  Its tortured, guttural cry thundered through the town, from deadwood copse to silken grotto.

From the misshapen clump of limbs and organs that might have been its head, a black fog wafted forth.  It cascaded down and spread over the ground, blanketing the whole town in only a few minutes as an inexorable tide.  The townsfolk it touched collapsed, clutching their heads and crying out in wordless terror.  The soldiers of Frenzy Plant felt it too: a crushing sensation of hopelessness emanating from an evil sign newly etched on their minds.  One light remained: a burning magical beacon of indomitability emanating from the guild marks on their necks.

Still, that execrable behemoth loomed like death itself.  Its abominable image, standing in the throes of a raging thunderstorm, promised to wipe out all life in the region.  

Ruin had come to Belka.
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