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Post by Lawnmower Joe on Jun 7, 2013 15:57:48 GMT -5
The night was black as pitch and the Moon lay hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds. Despite this, the swamps still seemed to buzz with unknown life and Nadya could see things stirring in the black waters. The ferry sputtered slowly to its destination, its crude engine belching smoke.
"Just keep running, just keep running, just keep running and running..." chanted Nadya in a soft voice. In the days she'd spent doing supply runs for the rangers, the ferry had broken down about three times, leaving her stranded in the middle of mutant-infested waters. Needless to say, she was not fond of it.
Suddenly the engine coughed and spluttered, and a black gust of thick black smoke blasted out of its exhaust pipe. Nadya swore through her teeth and kicked the struggling machine.
"Run, damn you!", she hissed before casting a fearful look down at the water. Thankfully the engine overcame its momentary weakness and proceeded to drag the ferry to the safety of the shore. With a relieved sigh Nadya hopped ashore and crouched, eyeing the area with caution. A slight mist had been steadily growing and Nadya was having trouble seeing beyond a few metres.
"Fucking Christ in his fucking Heaven", she muttered as she set off. Ahead of her lay a few broken islands of overgrown tarmac and concrete hemmed in on all sides by swamp water. In the distance there stood the hulking form of a destroyed overpass, barely visible in the fog.
"The weather is never on your side, Nadya", she muttered, keeping an eye on the water around her. She froze and raised her rifle when she caught a glimpse of something leap into a pool of brackish water with a loud splash. After a moment's wait, she heaved a soft sigh of relief and resumed her journey.
As she reached the overpass she stopped again. Something had definitely moved out in the mist, something big. The lone stalker waited for a while, almost not daring to breath lest she miss the sound of a hidden attacker. The damp night remained mostly silent save for the low, long croak of some unseen creature. Reluctantly she continued, moving more slowly than before.
It was as she reached another isle of mud and tarmac that her unseen stalker made its presence truly known. There was the sound of something huge emerging from the water behind her, followed by a low wet rumble.
"FUCK!", Nadya squeaked before bolting like a rabbit. She looked over her shoulder and briefly saw an enormous green beast with a chitinous head and scythe-like limbs crawling after her.
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Post by Commander Xillian on Jun 7, 2013 21:22:29 GMT -5
The night was black as pitch and the Moon lay hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds. Despite this, Charcoal felt more exposed than she had her entire life. Her ability to bend perception was moot when the entire swamp she was passing through was overrun with thousands of intelligent creatures. An older, more skilled Dark One might have been fine, but the adolescent Dark One was out of her league here. The best she could do was try and create distractions. Incidentally, those happened to be one of her specialties.
To the small pack of Lurkers, it looked as if there was a massive light rapidly coming towards them. With a whoop of fright, they loped away hand-over-foot, giving Charcoal the opening she needed to dash across the midnight shaded plaza and into the remains of a flooded mall. With a sigh of relief, she made her way slowly, cautiously, towards a reddish light she'd seen earlier, finding an abandoned campsite. Sitting down to try and warm her hide, the Dark One kept alert of her surroundings, mentally checking for anything approaching.
After a short few moments, she rose, leaving a small memento behind for whoever might have started the fire (provided they weren't dead) as thanks for the brief respite. Making her way from the makeshift camp, Charcoal looked out over the bog, towards the horizon. She wasn't sure why, but she felt something drawing her, away from the Library and towards a distant place. Wanderlust? Maybe, she wasn't sure anymore. She had spent quite some time in the Library, it would make sense she needed to see something more.
And something more indeed! She had never seen something like this swamp before! It was wondrous as it was disgusting, a verdant cradle of new life. Already, she'd seen both new and familiar sights, some of which were decidedly unfriendly. Something caught her eye, down in the bogs below her perch however, or rather, her minds eye.
Something new, and something familiar, a large, angry creature, and a very scared human. Indecision stayed the Dark Ones hand; Should she help? These creatures were responsible for the death of her people! Did two wrongs make a right, would one human life set in balance the destruction of the Dark Ones?
Ultimately, her run-in with the Humans in the library set her right; the feeling of shame she felt after setting the Howlers upon the humans, and of guilt for what happened inside. No, Charcoal set herself on a course, We only wanted peace. To fight now would shame their memories, and their spirits.
Charcoal, with a growing sense of dread as to what would happen, steeled herself, and reached out with her mind.
To the massive beast, it was as if a second roar announced itself from it's left, as another of its kind took down the human. With a crash of scything talons upon the marsh road, it let a challenging call out.
To Nadya, the beast came to a halt, staring where she was moments ago, before growling fearsomely. Almost immediately afterwards, a voice called out, not audibly, but heard none the less, from a distant three-story building, a dim fire in the second story with a shadowy silhouette cast against the frail light in the distance.
As the beast charged, the phantom challenger vanished, confusing it, but revealing Nadya unfortunately. With a gulp, Charcoal's mind raced. She needed another way to distract this thing if the human was going to get safely upstairs.
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Post by Lawnmower Joe on Jun 8, 2013 11:46:33 GMT -5
The heavy ammunition pack slammed with metronomic regularity into Nadya's back as she ran, boots squelching in the swamp's mud. She didn't need to look behind her to tell that the beast was still hot on her heals. The monstrous being pursued the terrified woman relentlessly, crashing through reeds and lumbering clumsily over banks of mud. Its hot and fetid breath enveloped Nadya like the stench of a charnel house.
Suddenly, her foot brutally caught on something and Nadya fell forwards. Sharp pain lanced through her ankle, only to be dulled by her face brutally smacking into the ground. Shaking and moaning in pain and confusion, the dazed stalker weakly tried to scramble away from the giant mutant. A part of her lazily noted that she would die very soon and braced for the final eruption of agony that the beast's jaws would bring.
But nothing came.
Nadya rolled onto her back, biting back a pained whimper. She saw the thing that had caused her fall: a twisted root sticking out of a broken patch of tarmac. Her face burned angrily where the ground had struck it, and Nadya felt something warm and wet pooling at the front of her gas mask. Her mouth was filled with the coppery taste of blood.
"Chiort...", she moaned, shakily getting back on her feet. A sudden burst of panic made her look swiftly around her for any sign of the beast. The thing was now several metres away from her, roaring and lashing at some unseen entity. Despite her confusion and pain, Nadya did not think twice about taking advantage of the beast's apparent confusion, and she started to limp away from the scene as fast as she could.
Then came a voice, distant and incomprehensible but undoubtedly human to Nadya's ears. The struggling stalker searched wildly for the source of the voice, finally deciding that it was coming from an abandoned building whose large, almost monolithic silhouette barely emerged from the gloom. Another surge of adrenaline gave her the strength to bound clumsily forward, ignoring the pain her ankle gave her with each laboured step.
Another roar and the explosive crash of some huge body entering the water. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something huge move with discomforting ease through the water next to her path. Soon the thing would catch up with her and kill her, there was no way she could evade it, not in her current condition.
Sure enough, the creature threw itself out of the water next to Nadya, its great head towering above her like that of some antediluvian monstrosity. The titan's snake-like body was endowed with several insect-like legs and its head was encased in greenish plates of some chitinous armour. Strange luminous growths had taken root on one side of its skull, seemingly taking the place of the creature's non-existent eyes. The beast inhaled sharply and its maw fell slowly open, revealing several large and dagger-like teeth encrusted with swamp filth and rotting meat. Nadya felt every single fibre in her body tremble in abject terror, the terror of prey facing the predator's merciless jaws.
The terror of seeing Death itself.
But through the fear, her instincts kept on working. Her hand reached for her trusty revolver, missed it and locked its fingers around the plastic handle of a flare gun. Bringing the orange flare gun upwards, Nadya aimed it straight at the creature's head. The beast lunged forward. Nadya pulled the trigger.
The flare shot right into the beast's open jaws, landing somewhere at the back of its throat before igniting. The flare burned brightly, illuminating the mutant's mouth with surreal red light.
"What the...?", began Nadya, but her surprised was cut abruptly short by a staggering blow to her ribs that sent her flying through the air. She landed a few metres away in shallow water, the ammunition pack on her back slamming with agonising force into the small of her back. Shaking and gasping for air, Nadya half-crawled and half-swan towards the building she had seen earlier. She whimpered with relief when she reached the building's facade, with its blasted bay windows overgrown with vines and moss. She wriggled through, her pack briefly getting caught on a vine and digging its straps into her skin, and rolled onto her back. She lay there for what seemed like an eternity, oblivious to her soaked and muddy clothes, oblivious to the pain in her ribs, face and ankle.
Finally she rolled over and dragged herself up, moaning with every shot of pain the act brought. With dazed slowness she gazed around her, locating an ancient escalator leading upwards. Away from the water. She liked that. She limped laboriously to the escalator and found that she was too tired to make her way up on her two legs. Instead, she opted to crawl up like an injured dog.
When she got to the top of the escalators the adrenaline began to wear off, leaving Nadya with all the pain and horror she had earned from the encounter with the "swamp thing". Tears began to flow unhindered and the last of her strength and resolve abandoned her. She flopped to the floor, a boneless, gutless ragdoll, and wailed.
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