History Repeats Itself

[Revenant]

The right rear wheel of the wagon had a slight squeak. It wasn't the sort of thing that was normally prominent enough to notice. Of course it was the sort of thing that became very prominent when one was forced to sit in the wagon for a seven day trip. Now, that slight squeak had William Arcus ready to kill someone. Not that that was too far a stretch for him.

William was a Revenant, a human soul with a demonic one bound to it, which made him less than stable when it came to dealing with emotional issues. He was also the Captain of the Ixian Knights' monster hunting squad, a job for which he was more than qualified. It was also the reason he had spent the last seven days on a wagon full of heavy weaponry making its way from Salvar to Raiaera.

"He's got that look again," Lorelai whispered to Heigei, though it was apparent to everyone in the wagon that William could hear what she was saying. Heigei nodded though William, for his part, made no motion to acknowledge that she had said anything.

Lorelai Pernissus and Heigei Yoshino were both members of William's monster hunting squad, along with four of the wagon's other passengers. The remaining hunters, the brothers Rawls and Kyron, the gruff Sergei, and William's second-in-command Jerrick Vancaserkin glanced briefly from Lorelai to William, only to go back to what they were doing when the Captain made no move. They had spent enough time on the road with the Revenant to understand when not to push a point. They had fought, and killed, and spilled blood together on countless occasions. They were as close to a family as people in this line of work could afford to be.

The only man in the wagon which was, thankfully, nearing its destination along the rolling foothills of the northern Raiaeran Mountains was Zack Blaze. Sei Orlouge, leader of the Ixian Knights, had quite the fondness for sending the monster hunters out to kill with untrained, and generally unwanted, Ixian Knights along for the ride. Quite often these Ixian Knights were new recruits, Sei apparently wanting them to see the exciting side of like in the private army, and more than a few of them hadn't come back alive. The spiky haired Zack, currently lounging casually in the back of the wagon ignoring the hunters, was the most recent of these 'additions'. William hadn't wanted the man along and had, as always, argued the point against his commander. But, as always, Sei had put his foot down and insisted.

Unlike other recruits who had been forced unwillingly upon the monster hunter, Zack's presence was his own doing. He had been the one to bring the rumors of the ancient artifact and its ferocious guardian to the mute Mystic's attention. While Sei didn't typically send his knights out as treasure hunters, though William knew that he liked his precious baubles as much as any Mystic, the supposed power of this particular item had Sei practically drooling.

And so it was that William and his crew, with Zack in tow, had found themselves and their equipment loaded onto the next ship from Corone to Salvar, and from there on a wagon through the pass to Raiaera.

[Zack Blaze]

Zack basked in the sporadic rays of the Raiaeran sun, preferring to relax on the long ride rather than be uptight and stiff like his hosts. The youth was sprawled out in the back of the wagon, throwing up a yo-yo nobody else could see, and catching it. The art of the mime was lost on these monster hunters, and half of them wrote the teen off as delusional. In truth, Zack had been surprised by how accommodating the Ixian's had been to his arrival, much less the story he told with no more proof than his word.

Zack had heard it from a reliable source that deep within the Raiaera woods was a cavern with a boulder in front of it. Such a thing was not uncommon, as shown by the fact that the Ixian Knights leader, Sei Orlouge, lived in a similar setting. The strange thing was not the cave's unique position in Raiaera, but the boulder than protected it. Anybody who had gotten near the cave was attacked by the boulder, which shifted itself into a clay-like golem and began to rampage until people were dead, or running away in terror.

Zack had hurried to tell the Ixian Knights, knowing full well that they possessed the resources to check the rumors out, as well as the strength to back up Zack should a fight start. But what was this item that had Sei Orlouge so concerned that he'd send out (possibly, from what Zack could tell) his most dangerous warrior?

A simple mirror, or so it would have appeared to the common man. In truth, during the ancient wars, the demon army had this mirror used as a back up plan should they fall. This mirror would allow whoever owned it to see through any point in time. Now, whether this meant simply the past and present or even included the foreseeable future, Zack did not know. However, something that powerful needed to attention of Althanas best and brightest, and the guardian of the mirror needed to be put down.

After all, the thing could wind up in the wrong hands.

The thought crossed Zack's mind, causing the youth to smile while sitting up. He looked to the group and scratched the back of his head. "Just so you guys know, we're about there. I think, if we want to keep our carriage intact, we should probably park the thing somewhere."

Zack rolled his shoulders, reaching to his side and pulling out what he mime-acted to be a sword. Though he wasn't capable of actually hurting the golem with mere street fighting skill, he could at least make it look like he was trying. "Let's do this."

[Ceidon]

“Damn it Ceidon!” Elemental mage Atzar Kellon cried out. “Ever since I've met you I don't think I've gone five minutes without being chased by endless hordes of creepy little things.”

“Look on the bright side Atzar," Ceidon replied. "It's better than being chased by endless hordes of creepy big things."

The two adventurers were running for their lives with a horde of half elf / half demon midgets hot on their tails. Ceidon ran out front, using his blade to cut through the rough thicket of trees in one of Raiaera’s many unnamed forests. Atzar, meanwhile, was shooting fireballs at their assailants.

“I wish,” Atzar huffed between fireballs, “I wouldn’t have sworn that damn oath!”

“Just calm down, you've been through worse. You still got the stone right?”

“Yeah. Here, you take it.” Atzar said, throwing the yellow hued stone to Ceidon. Ceidon caught it in midstride and quickly stuffed it into his pocket. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Atzar Kellon and Ceidon Lore were ranking members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, a group devoted to the protection of Althanas' dark secrets. They had been in Raiaera for two weeks searching for the fabled ‘Bow of Raendur.' Raendur, a legendary Tel Aglarim captain, had used the weapon in the elfish war against the Durklan nearly 15,000 years ago. Ordinarily the Order would have no interest in a historical trinket, but the group’s leader, Caduceus Grimaldi, recently uncovered a diary belonging to a fallen elfish warrior that suggested that the bow was actually a conduit for a great power that had laid waste to entire Durklan cities during the war. Naturally the Orders top field agents were sent out to find it and determine if the power was real.

It took them only two days to find the bow, but it was impossible to get to. It was hidden behind a door powered by a magic scale. In order to open the door, the scale had to be perfectly balanced with two stones. They found one of the stones next to the scale in the tomb, but the other was lost. They tried everything to balance the scale without it, but by some ridiculously impressive feat of ancient mathematics, the door refused to open. A week and an exhausting trip through Raiaera later, and the two had found the stone in some uncharted native village in the northern part of the country. There, these demon/elf creatures worshiped it like it was some kind of god. However, Ceidon doubted a connection. The creatures were plain stupid. This tribe was probably the result of 10,000 years of inbreeding and had probably found the stone on the ground somewhere.

“I think I found a path.” Ceidon eventually called out. He was right. A few feet in front of him was a large path with fresh wagon imprints.

The two hit the path hard and started running south. With no vegetation in front of them, they finally gained some separation from the elf/demons. They ran for about two minutes before Ceidon noticed a wagon up in the distance.

“Hey!” Ceidon screamed as they approached. “Hey! Stop!” The wagon slowed and soon Ceidon and Aztar were running alongside it. “Hey, can we hitch a ride?”

“Twenty Gold,” the driver called out. Ceidon looked to Atzar and they nodded at each other.

“Deal,” Ceidon said, jumping up onto the moving wagon. Once he was firmly in the bed, Ceidon extended his hand to Aztar and pulled him on board. Ceidon reached into his pocket, grabbed a twenty gold piece and stumbled to the head of the wagon. “Here,” he said. “Oh, and by the way,” Ceidon said, looking behind him. “You might want to step on it.”

The elf/demon creatures had begun to emerge from the woods and were surrounding the wagon.

[The Sin Eater]

(OOC: Hi guys, Rev invited me over so here's my post. I'm just assuming that the wagon Ceidon mentioned is a different one then the Ixian one.)

Thomas Braelrain had been silently studying the Necronomicon for the last couple of hours. He had been on the wagon for almost two full days now. For a few coins he had received a lift from the kind dwarven driver, who had picked him up him at a small village south of Eluriand, Raiaera's capital. Tom needed to get away from civilization for a while, because he had done something stupid, yet again.

He had fallen in love. Stupidly, stupidly and especially very blindly in love with this beautiful woman called Silvia. She wasn't like the other villagers, but intellectual and sophisticated and oh so pretty. From the start he had known that he was merely one of her many lovers, but he didn't care. But blindly in love as he was, he had convinced himself that he wouldn't be thrown away like a puppet when she would loose interest in him.

Ironically, he hadn't given her enough time to do so. Over time Tom had grown more and more jealous of Silvia's other admirers, especially the uptight piece of elven shit who visited her more then any of the others, including Thomas. One night, when he was on his way to see her, he spotted the tall elf leaving her house with an arrogant grin on his face. Filled with jealousy he decided to stalk the guy, not knowing exactly what he would do but something nasty for sure.

Apparently he hadn't moved as cautious as he wanted or perhaps it was just the elf's supreme hearing which spotted him. Anyway, the fellow had turned around to him, laughed and said something about Silvia being an cheap whore he had used so often she was getting boring. The next moment, Thomas was on top of him, using his knuckle duster to turn the elf's oh so pretty face into a wasteland. After he had cooled down a bit, he noticed that the bastard was only barely breathing. Not like he gave a shit about his well being, but the cocky elf was one of the most influential figures of the area and Tom would be in great trouble if the elf would survive long enough to get the law involved. So without further ado, he slit the elf's throat and took his money, hoping it would look like a burglary gone bad.

As if nothing had happened he cleaning himself up, went back to Silvia's house and made love with her for the last time. Sometime after midnight he left and headed for the nearest village where he had bought his ride on the wagon.

So here he was, reading about the demonic influences on the material planes. Though it was a really interesting read about the precise workings of demonic plagues and how they could effectively turn an human being into a miserable yet horrifying undead abomination, Tom had started to doze off. Unfortunately, two shouting woke him up and before he realized what was going on, one of them jumped on the wagon. Or to be more precise, he jumped exactly on his right feet. With a scream he jumped up, cursing at the unwelcome passenger.

“Argh!” shouted Tom, “You crazy son of bitch, get the frack away from me!” He grabbed the tall guy by his cloak, ready to throw him back off the wagon again. When he noticed that his precious demonology book had fallen off the carriage, he let go of the troublemaker and jumped off board himself.
“Look what you have done, I'll make you pay for this!”

As he run past the second guy, who appeared to be some mage, he was about to pick up his Necronomicon when he noticed something moving in the corner of his eye. Multiple extremely ugly midgets emerged from the woods, screaming in a very disturbing manner.
“Oh, crap,” he uttered while quickly picking up the book, “just my luck.”

Though little, the ugly buggers looked like they wanted to cook him alive and where armed to the teeth with primitive but deadly looking weapons. While trying to evade the sharp stones raining down around him, Thomas sprinted back to the wagon who had already covered quite some ground in the mean while. The horses where scared shitless by the screaming demonoids and apparently tried to break the sound barrier.

“Hey! Wait for m- AUCH!” he yelled as one of the stones hit him on the back of his head, “frack, those stones hurt. Hey guys wait for me!”

[Atzar]

By the time Ceidon hoisted the mage up onto the back of the wagon, Atzar was spent.

He slumped immediately to the wooden floor, sucking air like a cyclone. Physical exertion was not his forte, and his adventurer friend had a secret mission to piss off every relic-protecting, subhuman creature on Althanas.

“I signed up for treasure, Ceidon!” Atzar complained between breaths. “Gold, silver, priceless gemstones... not boring rocks and angry degenerates.”

“Keep your voice down!” Ceidon gestured meaningfully at the wagon's other inhabitants, a dwarven driver and a human passenger. “Keep your mind on the bigger picture,” he whispered. “This stone isn’t the goal. Now, keep the midgets off us, and I’m gonna go talk to the – wait, where is he going?!” The human had jumped off of the wagon in pursuit of a huge book, running straight into the throng of elf-demons.

Atzar looked tentatively over at his fellow adventurer. "He's none of our concern. Right?"

“Don’t be an idiot!” Sword raised high, Ceidon leapt heroically off of the wagon to fend off the attacking halfbreeds. The mage swore and followed.

Hitting the ground with a stumble, Atzar righted himself and began flinging projectiles. Instead of fiery missiles, though, frigid chunks of ice leapt from his hands in rapid succession, cutting into the masses with a staccato of thunks and crunches.

The small man had retrieved his book and now raced back to the wagon. Ceidon dashed ahead of him, slashing through the half-breeds as if they were naught but the reaching, snagging limbs of the dense forest he had assaulted before.

“Hurry up,” Atzar snapped angrily as they reached him. This was all their fault. If the moron had not dropped his precious book, and if Ceidon had not felt the need to be a hero, then the mage could have been sitting in the wagon, picking off midgets from relative safety. Instead, he found himself in the center of the fray, a place where no mage wanted to be. He took up the rear of the retreating trio, continuing his deadly barrage of ice.

But he couldn’t hold them back. The vile creatures began to find cracks in his defenses, and no matter how quickly he dealt death, he couldn’t get them all. Jaw set stoicly, he weathered the barrage of small stones. But when a spear-wielding cretin jabbed his primitive weapon into the back of the mage’s thigh, he cried out in pain. This wasn’t working; time for a new strategy.

He returned to flames, but this time no mere ball shot forth. A constant wave of roaring fire emanated from his hands, engulfing those nearest him. More than a dozen lay charred at his feet, having succumbed to the inferno; the rest fell back, singed and afraid. The mage broke off his attack and took the opportunity to limp after the wagon as quickly as his injured leg would allow.

Once again Ceidon pulled him onto the vehicle, and once again Atzar collapsed as soon as his feet touched wood. He sat there panting, this time due to anger as much as weariness.

“Wasn’t that a little much?” It was Ceidon, leaning over him, sword still in hand. “Why didn’t you just follow us out?”

The mage bit his tongue so hard that he tasted blood.

Sin, good to have you. Good intro. To everybody, readers included; as always, if you have any fixes, comments or complaints, let me know. My PM box has room, and my AIM is Ark Ether.

Edited.

[Revenant]

William’s burning eyes flickered to rest upon Zack’s posturing. It was the slightest of movements but it was made all the more noteworthy by the fact that William hadn’t made even the slightest of movements in the last two hours. The air in the wagon thickened, Heigei finding a sudden interest in rechecking his weapon’s readiness, the twins pointing out distinguishing terrain features to each other, while Lorelai put the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle an embarrassed cough.

“Hmph,” William grunted, returning back to blankly staring into space. He was really tired of people that Sei sent along for hunting experience trying to tell him how to do his job. He hadn’t spent this annoyingly long trip telling Blaze how to be a loud-mouthed lay-about, so was it too much to ask for the man to leave the monster slaying to the demon?

“This looks like the area that the cave is supposed to be in,” Sergei called from the front of the wagon, waving a hand to beckon the others forward. William uncoiled sinuously, his motions fluid and controlled in a way that was more than human.

A small pathway of stones marked the pathway leading to the mystical cave of wonders Zack Blaze had led them to. It was difficult to see if you didn’t know what to look for, a perfectly blended defense to keep unwanted eyes away. It was also a roughly laid path, weathered by hundreds of years neglect. Taking the wagon over those stones wouldn’t ruin the wagon but there was no telling just how much space was on the other side. It was just as possible that the cave and its guardian would be in the middle of a clearing as it was that the path would be hemmed in by brambles, fallen rocks, and ancient tree trunks. As much as it galled him, William was forced to admit that Zack’s suggestion of leaving the wagon behind was the best course of action.

“Pull it over,” he growled, indicating a lighter patch of brush on the roadside. William’s squad were well trained, well drilled, and highly experienced. In short order the five-man, one-woman crew had the wagon secured, their weapons out, and were ready to march. William’s eyes scanned each of the boar spears and heavy crossbows that were the standard-issue weapons for the monster hunters. As with everything, William could see all of the imperfections and weak points in the weapons, but was satisfied to see that they were few and far between. His crew took pride in their weapons, just as they took pride in their position within the Ixian Knights.

“On guard people,” he said, retrieving his own weapon; a matte obsidian warscythe. “Creature’s a golem, rock or clay, meaning it’s going to be tough and it’s going to hit hard. Let’s do this safely, get Sei his mirror, and get back on the road.”

Jerrick nodded and gave the order to move out. Solemnly, the Ixian monster hunters headed down the rough stone path without another word.

[Zack Blaze]

Zack swung his faux sword around a few times, putting on a rather convincing show. With his spare hand, the youth rubbed his thumbnail into the print of his index finger. As he took his practice swings, he was approached by one of the Monster Hunters. If he remembered correctly, this guys name was...

...Jorge? .....So Gay? ...Tuesday?

"Sergei, at your service, sir," Zack sighed in relief, as the guard had solved the name dilemma that was plaguing him. "I'm just curious how the invisible weapons work. I mean, I've never seen anybody use such things on Althanas. Would you mind explaining it to me?"

Zack smiled and 'sheathed' the sword. He then pulled out another invisible object with a smile, much to the confused look of his interrogator.

"See this pin?" Zack said, a wry grin on his features, "Of course you don't. It's invisible. Basically, anything my mind can conjure up, I can create as an invisible item. Pretty nifty huh?" Zack looked to the other monster hunters, who seemed less than impressed with the teen's lie. "Don't believe me, eh? Well fine, I'll prove it."

Zack removed his finger from his thumb nail and held it up. Taking the 'pin', the street fighter brought the 'tip' across the print area of his finger. Within a second or so, a thin line of blood began to seep out of the young man's digit. If anybody had looked closely enough, they would have noticed the blood in the thumb nail on the same hand. Luckily, it seemed as though the group had become a little more trusting of Zack in his display than to pay attention to an insignificant fingernail.

As they walked, the youth could not help but hear the shouting of chipmunk-voiced people. He raised an eyebrow as he looked around, catching a few glimpses of running dwarves (at least, Zack assumed they were dwarves at first glance) chasing a trio of warriors. The warriors quickly dispatched the group of tribal dwarves and began approaching the Monster Hunting Team. Zack walked over to William and tapped the man on the shoulder, pocketing his 'pin' and pointing towards the approaching caravan.

"Ummm," Zack said, biting his lower lip, "I think we have some company."