Where Fiends Walk

[Teron_Ashfiend]

A slow and steady tread carried him away from the burning Kaczmarek farm and into the plentiful forests of Myrken Wood. Each boot touched the ground in silence, sound itself fleeing from his ghastly figure, clad in burned and scarred steel while a tattered black cloak clung to his looming frame like a burial shroud. Searing, crimson eyes nestled beneath his hood provided what light he needed to see, and dimmed the air around him as if fueling his fiery gaze.

An armored hand rested upon the sword at his side. A tiny silver skull topped the handle, protruding from between mailed fingers and regarding the world with a rictus grin. The greenery around him bore traces of some passing blight, the brown of disease and white of death, that traces through leaf veins and arced along tree trunks, poisonous thoughts leeching out into the world around him and made manifest by the chill that hovered and followed.

Until the figure still followed, at some distance, but following all the same. The strange creature that had alighted upon the battlefield at the Kaczmarek farm and evidently seen battle with Karolinger's men. The Marshal who had sworn foolishness concerning light and wrath and justice.

He stopped, turning slowly to face the following figure, tattered lips moving beneath the taut folds of an old, gray scarf.

"Why do you follow me?" He rumbled at length. "What do you hope to see?"

[Sadism]

There was a tree limb, mighty and proud in the way it curved ever-onward towards the sky above. It was here that he came to stop, when the Ashfiend turned, settling onto it in much the fashion a bird might have. A large and vicious bird, he, coming to 'roost' in a crouch that compacted him. A strange breed indeed, with those wings that arced behind him. Yet now, as he settled, they transformed once more. Leathery membranes shriveled and tore themselves apart, leaving only the ruined vestiges. Long, sinister fingers that arced behind him with exposed bone and cartilage and raw, red, dripping gibbets of flesh.

Even as the Ashfiend spoke, he was brining one wing into reach to grasp in ashen hands. Fingers became stained with blood as the worked at the exposed meat, digging into it with almost ecstatic abandon.

"I follow because you are interesting. Because you drive so many to such depths of hatred." A task that, really, wasn't so hard to accomplish; he himself could do the same, had he preferred such. However, as he saw it, if you walked with such a mantle of notoriety about your shoulders, people lost some of the abstract terror you instilled because they might come to expect certain behaviours. Be able to shield themselves against it. He'd cock his head, his hair refusing to shift with gravity as he examined the Fiend from another perspective. His eyes seemed to glow, but not with some inner let, but a reflective sheen of what light it captured.

"I want to watch. I want to witness your art."

[Teron_Ashfiend]

Art, the creature spoke as it gazed down at him from the tree. It wanted to satisfy some ascetic impulse that lurked beyond the stranger's eyes. He regarded this one, with eyes ablaze in tireless flame and restrained fury that at all times struggled against whatever curse bound it to his core.

"I am not here for your amusement, creature," he snarled in a voice of endless cold and hollow notes as if he spoke from across a great chasm. "I am not given to flights of fancy, nor to entertaining others."

He spared a slow shake of the head, somewhat dumbfounded, at the very implied notion that he might be scourging Myrken for fun or simple mayhem. Such adolescent urges had been scourged from his soul long before he had fallen into darkness, when mankind was yet a worthwhile friend and sought-after ally. Event he merest thought that his rage across the land had been done out of blind instinct sent a ripple through his shadow, and slowly curled fingers about his sword's handle.

"Seek out the carnival if it is entertainment you want," he rumbled dismissively before he proceeded on his way into the dark woods near the Silver Lake. Heedless or whether the creature deigned to follow him or not, and moving with silent steps. Yet despite his soundless passing through the forest that began to wilt around his immediate, blighting presence, he towered as darker than the evening, a necrotic stain, and would yet prove easy to follow.

[Sadism]

As the Fiend began to move, so to did he move. The wing he'd been picking at, and it's companion, split apart with a wet suction, becoming a mass of squirming tentacles that rose from behind him. Several reached for a branch above and before, winding around it with a death's grip before he swung down. Rhythmically they worked, carrying him just above the floor of the forest, one branch after another.

"Carnival's do not offer the sort of entertainment I prefer." Thin lips turned up at the only visible corner, a faint smirk playing across one of the few parts of him that didn't melt into the darkness they both traversed through.

"Whatever reason you have for what you do, I hardly care. Maybe your mother didn't let you suck on her tit enough. Maybe daddy hit you too much. Had to kill your own dog? Or are you on some twisted mission for whatever deity you worship?" His passage was not exactly quiet, but neither was it any louder than the Ashfiend's. His would be harder, if not impossible, to track, however.

"Whatever pushes you to do what you do is not important. You do not need to know why the minstrel decided to play, to listen to what he creates with his instrument." Now he'd swing faster, the mass of fluid shadows working like a thousand arms to bring him over and around, in front of the Fiend. They'd relinquish their grip and he'd drop to the floor, to stand just out of reach. Like elastic bands, the tentacles snapped back to him, into him, and vanished.

"Allow me to bear witness to your deeds. Who knows; maybe you'll even find a need for someone with my skills."

[Teron_Ashfiend]

For all that darkness and death had long since become his silent companions, sprouting in his path like a plague, certain tones and attitudes yet irked him and dug irritatingly through the ancient steel that sealed away his cold flesh. This strange creature's was one of them and as a rebuke begins to form upon lips concealed beneath the coils of a grey scarf, he is given pause at his lack of memory for either mother or father that this one speaks so freely of.

Many were rallying, stirring with the land of Myrken as it readied for flux within and without. Patience's courage had won a temporary peace from him, yet war brewed beyond Myrken borders even as others stepped forward during the time of tumult to wreak their havoc upon the besotted land. Already the ex-constable elementalist had sought him out, as had this one. Perhaps it would prove to be a sign of the end for the land, he considered, as infestations that could sense the growing weakness in their host and home. He had seen it before.

Yet with every bloody sword-stroke the people of Myrken remained firm in their efforts to oppose him, men and women of disparate means and lives forming together, drawing themselves closed against the depredations of the outsider. This, too, was something he had seen before. Myrken had the unfortunate oddity of being home to so many powerful individuals who, he believed lacked the means to end him, could yet foil his plans and overwhelm his attention.

A sinister, searing gaze composed of writhing, leashed fury fell upon the creature that followed him as if seeing him for the first time. Perhaps some measure of cooperation, or understanding, with a few select others would not be such a horrid thing.

"Yes," he rumbled at length. "Yes your talents might indeed prove quite useful."

[Sadism]

A smile full of pearls was flashed, it's purity bespoiled by the taint of malice that linger in the thin lips, lit the crimson-pupil of that only visible eye. Carefully, both arms were crossed over his chest, though the gesture was modified for the blades that hugged the outsides of his forearms. Deadly blades that glinted in stray beams of moonlight.

"Speak your will, and it will be done." Again he flashed a smile that would have been pleasing, if not for the evil that stained his features. Was this acceptance of servitude? No, not in the least. It was a means to and end, and if carrying out duties meant he could witness this one in action, then he would carry out whatever was asked of him.

In the same breath, it was unlikely that he'd find anything asked of him to be too terribly boring, either. Especially if it involved bloodshed.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

There was one shadow that loomed longer over any other across the heart interred within a dead chest. One urging that had drawn him ever deeper into hateful darkness with the sweet promise of reward and full life. The magical focus secreted away beneath his ancient armor fluttered in sympathy with his thoughts, stirring against the back of a hand beneath scorched steel.

"You shall find for me enough blood to fill a living person," he rumbled at length, words hollow and echoing across a great gulf of purposes and endings. "Untainted and unspoiled."

"How you procure it is up to you," he offered over an armored shoulder as he began to make his way deeper into the darkening wood. His own shadow flickered long over the path before him, the forest around him, even in the evening darkness. All that fell within for long perished and he painted his path a dead swath of brown and blight as he made his way from Callisto's company.