Kalanna Rai
Joined: 21 Jan 2006
Posts: 3102
Location: The Frozen North
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| Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 1:25 am Post subject: A Hunter's Tale |
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A little something I cooked up a while back, now submitted to excuse my absence. Well no, not really, but enjoy anyway...
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A Hunter's Tale
I come from nowhere. Where once was a land of lush greenery, there is now blight and destruction. Horrors of bone and rotting sinew that walk and never die for they have already shrugged past that cold clutch. My people gather in cities that evoke our lost greatness. In spires of flawless ivory marble, trimmed in gilt, and gaudily draped with silks in eye searing shades of red, pink, violet, and electric blue.
I come from a race of addicts, clawing at the vapors of the past. The last of our royalty, a betrayer, a ravening madman who would usher demons of world shattering power into our homes and have us call them master just to succor our cravings. We have refuted him but we have lost our place in this world, all of us sharing his shame. Now we labor on, mistrusted, forever earning our keep under the guidance of a competent but forgettable Regent. Most of us don't even know his name.
I am not an addict, nor are those like me addicts. We have cast aside our cravings and our need for the arcane, gaining greater focus instead. Our bond with our companions runs deep and from that bond we draw strength. Some of us are bound deeper than others, some of us are better shots than others, and some of us just don't die when the world says we should.
But all of that is ages in my past. I have not been back to that place in many a season. Not since my hair was long and the only beast who would trail in my shadow was a fiery creature of scale, wing, beak and flame. A red and gold fledgling who's undulating flight held a serpent's grace and who's breath brought fiery ruin upon my foes. That beast no longer follows me on my travels, content to remain safely stabled away. I return every so often to run my hand along it's warm hide and scratch it where it's curved beak meets it's scaled face.
The companion that walks in my shadow changes from time to time, depending on what aspect of my abilities I call upon. Sometimes, I crave that companionship. That strength. We are a team, a pair of dancers working in perfect unison to achieve our goal be it some task we preform for another or simply fending off any of the hazardous beasts that roam the lands of this shattered world. Other days, it is my keen aim that is required. The power of my bow requires that my beast be only a distraction, a buffer that keeps the creatures from me long enough for my arrows to shatter their vitals and send them back into the nether.
You are young yet, you are still trailing around your first companion and your weapons are little more than a twig with a string bending it and a long sharpened staff. Your armor is made from the hides of boars and boiled until it could be stitched with sinew. One of my arrows could shatter you, leave you expired on the earth, and if it did not the first taste of the claws of the lion that walks in my shadow would. But I am not here to be your destruction today. I am here to show you what awaits you.
And so we go down, into the shadowed heart of the city, into that place where red rock is always shrouded in twilight and the gaping maw in the rock wall reveals bridges of stone above channels of lava. Fear not young one, you and your companion will be safe. I have seen greater challenges than this and I am still here. Though I am not without my scars.
I can hear you following me in the tunnel, your footfalls are ragged, the claws of the raptor you have claimed as your own skitter on stone and the beast lets out a squealing roar. It doesn't like the smoke, the heat, the smell of the creatures ahead. Liven entities of stone, burrowing worms with acidic spit that will dissolve you, and the misshapen dwellers of this subterranean world. And the cultists. Since the shattering of this world they are everywhere...but they were here before even that event.
The stragglers are easy to pick off and I don't even break my stride, shattering the elementals and laying the worms down where they slither. The dwellers too are easily dispatched, a swift shot each drops them. Much like rabbits. I leave their corpses and whatever useful things and treasures they carry to you. Others have passed this way before, many have fallen. No doubt these things have scavenged their belongings for their own.
When I tell you to wait you do and I leave my lion with you. He wards you although he has grown lazy of late. He no longer lusts for the fray of battle as he once would have, he no longer charges his foes when they come to close. But should one seek you harm, they will taste his claws quick enough.
I, on the other hand, run past them, angering them, drawing them to me. Their blows skate across the mail I wear and I can hear the crude metal edges of their weapons skating across the smoother, finer quality of mine. I draw my staff and block some of their blows, but mostly I just run. And when I have them all, I spring the first of my traps and watch them slip and fall, slowing their steps to safely pursue. But there is no safety. Beyond the ice a trap of fire waits, beyond that a trap of poisonous vipers. And I string on my bow many arrows, one for each of them, and I fire true.
None make it across my killing floor and I leave their bodies there to come and collect you. Once again their bodies are yours, I require no recompense. Only remember this young Hunter. Remember what you have seen here this day. You are not of my race. You are not of my past. And you are not in my league. But you share my passion. You shall one day share my skills. You too shall one day test your patience, waiting for that one singular beast that you will prize above all others. And when that time comes...seek me out again. For then I shall have something new to teach you.
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I hope you liked. |
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