Monstertown

Re: Monstertown

Postby Urukhin » Mon Oct 20, 2014 8:28 am

The halfbreed's easy manner fades as the cyclops speaks, as he leers and glares, brutish features darkening with each word. By the time he's done with his lewd insinuations the half-orc is glaring from beneath lowered brows; a soft click at his hip as he thumbs the heavy blade loose in its sheath. The giant strides nearer and the half-orc holds his ground, head thrust forward, tusks bared. Oblivious to the whisper from the autumn-drab undergrowth, to the healer's distraction.

"Lean in an' I'll offer you somethin', right in th'fuckin' eye. Give your dam a good fuckin' stink. Have you eatin' your own fuckin'--"

Instants away from furious bloodshed, but there is a touch at his side. A presence, a press of fingers, and it's enough to still him for a moment; enough to give him pause on the brink of murder, head turning to the young woman beside him; the sight of her is an anchor, a fixed point by which he might orient himself. He straightens slowly, draws a deep breath, and grudgingly shoves the half-bared blade back into its sheath with a dull clack; ready to fight, eager for it, and that urge for violence still burns in his gaze as he looks back to the cyclops. Waiting for further provocation, for an excuse.

"Ain't wastin' more breath on you." His voice is a low, sullen growl from between jagged teeth, but he strives to keep his tone level, if not particularly civil.

"Where's your boss-man?"
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Re: Monstertown

Postby Rance » Mon Oct 20, 2014 9:55 am

That one eye could show so much mirth, so much excitement and anticipation, seemed a monumental feat. But as Murrukh's steel whispered against its scabbard and the handle revealed its promise, the pupil bloomed wide and black, the great gusts of breath increased. The rocky chest was a scattering of muscle and fat bared and ready to receive, and arms to return. One iron-hard fist beat into the cup of an awaiting palm.

"Y'come to oor hoom, with yer creamskin-cargo and yer feckin' soord. Y'come to oor land, ready t' kill over words. Big man, y'are. Big shittin' beast, eh, troompin' anta this grass like y'somethin' better."

But a touch from the physician calmed the half-orc, and the sword snapped away.

The cyclops bared a hundred teeth in a vicious, victorious grin.

"'At's a good boy. 'Cos y' oonerstan' what 'appens if'n y'draw: I poomel yer gentled arse, and we get the shit-end fer crooshin' yer skull anyway. Feckin' hoomans and their ilk," he grumbled. "As fer 'Oldmaster Bazzil, 'e's a busy fella. Why you wantin' t'see 'im? I woont it from yer lips, noot hers."

A few feet away, the figure engaging Mercy Tirel crept forward, the porcelain shine of a soft-skinned knee breaking the shadows where it squatted. Ferns and underbrush still clothed the skulking silhouette, but its face pressed out from between two waxy leaves to regard her. A boy's face, scarcely a few years beyond that of a child that might cling too closely to a mother's skirts. The features were impish, rounded with youth and mischief, but oddly angled at the edges: ears terminated in points either elfish or bestial, and on a tiny, hawk-beak nose was perched a pair of cracked spectacles.

"Ill will," the child-thing whispered. "Ill will," as if the idea was preposterous. "I'm a knight; knights d-...don't mangle pretty ladies. Around here we don't h-...hurt what oughtn't b-...be hurt. Rule and law. Chivalry.

"I plant and I g-...grow. Good blossoms. D-...do you want to see them," he asked her. "You don't have to if y-...your rattlebones say no, no. I'm Phlynn; I'm Cries-to-Flowers. Come see. Come see."

A rustle of leaves and he was off, bounding through the thicket beyond--

And left tangled behind him, murmuring in the vines and leaves, a simple question:

"Who are you?"
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Re: Monstertown

Postby girl » Sun Nov 02, 2014 10:58 am

The cyclops would no longer have to worry about the words falling from her lips, as her attention had strayed fully from the pair posturing to the smaller form that had just emerged from the underbrush. A child peers at her from the shadows just past the treeline, and her hand drops from Murrukh's back. A single footstep is taken towards the treeline; she's found herself both charmed and intrigued, a terrible combination for the physician.

“I just, I'll just be--” she announces the words to Murrukh, but does not leave him enough time to chase after her. Like a thief in the night, the physician follows behind Phlynn, movements unhampered by her masculine choice of dress. She ducks into the foliage with a forearm and hand braced upward and away from her face, branches glancing off the pristine cream of her tunic.

“I'm Mercy! Wait!” she calls out to the disappearing form of the Monstertown inhabitant she was unintelligently parading after, leaving both Murrukh and her general good sense in the dust in the face of her pursuit.
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Re: Monstertown

Postby Urukhin » Mon Nov 17, 2014 8:39 am

Calmed is perhaps not quite the right word for the halfbreed's temper; restrained, perhaps. Forestalled. The one-eyed sentinel gloats, goads, taunts, and Murrkh glares, glowers, increasingly given to reconsider the sheathing of his blade.

A fierce effort tightens the muscles of his jaw, breaths drawn with a very deliberate steadiness, gauntleted hands closed into tight fists at his sides. When he speaks again it is in a low, monotone growl between teeth that itch for the giant's throat.

"Like th'lady said, she's a healer. Better'n most. She heard y'had a camp here, wanted t'offer her skills to any what needs it. She come t'help, out o' kindness, an' then there's you standin' in th'fuckin' way." A snort, a low rasp in the brute's throat, and he hawks a thick wad into the leaf-litter between himself and the cyclops.

"Y'don't know her. Y'don't know me. Y'don't know fuck-all 'bout anythin'. Y'got sick here, right? Got wounded, maybe. Y'think they'll thank you for leavin' them wi'out healin'? Y'ain't in charge. Y'ain't got th'fuckin' wits for it, so she'll talk t'someone what does, an' he can decide, an' you can got back t'tuggin' your meat."

A sound argument, compelling, and to the halfbreed's mind far more polite than the situation deserves. He glances back to Mercy for confirmation, except--

An empty space, a rustling of undergrowth and a raised voice somewhere off between the trees.

Murrukh is a half-dozen strides off the path before he realises he has no way of knowing where she's gone; a few increasingly frantic moments of casting about for a trail, for footprints or whatever else, but he's no tracker, no ranger, and before long he's left at a loss, clutching his head in despair, staring helplessly into the monster-haunted woods, the cyclops momentarily forgotten.
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Re: Monstertown

Postby Rance » Tue Nov 18, 2014 1:28 am

Amid explanations, Murrukh spat. The cyclops leaned forward, that bulbous eye straining to peer through the physician's keeper.

"Right koind of 'er t' do. But look'et ye, like yer some special lump'a shit what doon't stink, eh? Itchin' foor a fight, ain'tcha? Y'ain't no hooman, little boy; y'aint no down-tempered creamskin."

The bald head turned as Mercy dashed off into the brush. He heard the boything's summons through the brush. Having no dexterity of his own to pursue the woman, he left the matter to whoever else might stumble upon her. Instead, Murrukh was his focus.

"Draw that blade again," the cyclops warns, "you die here."

From the hip of his meager loincloth, he drew a wineskin of cracked and weathered leather, one that almost seemed to vanish in the breadth of his hand. He tossed it at the ground in front of Murrukh.

"Drink soomthin', boy, 'and cool oof afoor y'do soomthin' stupit."

* * * *

Following the boy was a feat, but not an incomprehensible one.

Thorns and briars lashed and bit. Branches broke around Mercy as she barreled into the brush, a veritable bastion of undergrowth cracking and snapping at her flight through it. Before her, none of the branches had been harmed or even shaken by the one she pursued: he, occasionally visible in a sliver of daylight, was an almost liquid presence whispering between limbs and dancing across ferns, acrobatic, nimble, and otherworldly. Still laughing, his voice a ragged chime--

"Mercy. You're Mercy," he chirped.

Some hundred yards beyond, over fallen logs and through knotted vines of white and green strangled of light by the overzealous sun-stealing canopy above, the woods thinned. A clearing sprawled out before Mercy, and in it stood the one she followed: a child, draped in a tattered, muddy cloak. Along his neck and crawling up to the canals of one of his wildly-pointed ears was a legion of green moss that had taken hold in his flesh. Askew and bent, a pair of spectacles was perched on his nose. Bluish lips tried to imitate a smile, a thing learned from other children. Sprouts of auburn hair lay like windswept weeds across his scalp.

Underneath his feet, a city of withered husks bowed. In circles, swirls, and concentric patterns, the proof of a vast, harvested garden was flattened beneath them both.

"Winter's awakening, and I d-...don't like it; I don't like the cold in my bones," he said. Then, leering at her, still smiling: "You smell l-...like dead little girls and boys. How is it you sleep if y-...you smell like them? You smell like everything. Whole worlds of s-...sadness, of lost lives. D-...do you smell it? I'm not blind. I'll s-...see things for you."

His head tilts. Nostrils flare and spasm.

"Do you watch the life go out of them," Phlynn asked lastly, a breathless inquiry. "When th-...their eyes reduce to tiny black dots and the soul comes out from their mouth.

"How do you forget?"
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