Into the Night

[Jack Frost]

(Closed to Tobias)
A cold wind sliced through a small hamlet as it's inhabitants found their way into their homes to warm hearths and wool blankets. The sun was beginning to set and for the longest this town could remember the waning light would usher in hours of quiet terror. For years these people had been haunted by some ghastly monster who would rip people from their beds and leave their corpses strewn across the road, but now the town had a quiet sense of confidence. A small bonfire burned in the towns snow covered plaza in defiance to the wind. As the darkness began to encroach on the world this small fire stood vigil. Sitting by it were two lone men, one cloaked in a white hooded jacket lined with furs. He sat on an old stump pondering the growing night with an unnatural calm whilst his companion poked at the flames. He had been blowing through looking for a job to fill his stomach, as the surrounding wastes didn't seem to house any form of wildlife to speak of. In fact there seemed to be nothing but dust and wind for as far as the eye could see which led the man to even wonder what people would even bother trying to scrape a living out of this mess. His partner seemed to be in the same predicament as well and the two had struck a deal of sorts.

The wind continued to howl as it tore into the town, but both the fire and the young man seemed unfazed. In fact the young man didn't even shiver or wince. His demeanor was unchanged, as he stared uninterested into the dancing flames. A monster was due to arrive soon, and he was going to kill it. The price on it's head was more than the man could refuse, and it would pay for him to travel to somewhere less...dusty. Long after the sun had sunken below the horizon and the darkness had settles into a moonless inky blackness the young man piped up. "I don't believe we have been...formerly introduced..." he said breaking the silence, fog flowing from his pale lips. He pulled back his furred hood to reveal a tangled mane of silver that partially covered his sapphire eyes. "My name is Jack Frost...and yours?" he said motioning to his silent companion. It was going to be a long night waiting for whatever terror awaited them, and an even longer one if the two kept silent.

...

Meanwhile in the dead of night something was stirring. To call it a beast would be...an inadequate description. It held no constant form, but instead seemed to be a writhing mass of shadowy flesh, all arms and undefined features. Anyone who had seen this beast was either dead or driven mad by it. It seemed to be constantly changing it's mind about what it exactly wanted to look like. Most of the time it simply seemed to be a jumbled of crooked limbs with gaping mouths lining each limb attacked to one singular yellow eye. Each mouth would let out a low, hungry, moan as it crawled it's way mindlessly towards the village from the middle of nowhere leaving no tracks as it went. It was going to be a very long night.

[Tobias Stalt]

Tobias drained the last of his aleskin with a few vigorous shakes. A single bronze eye peered into the drunken abyss and he frowned. "Piss on my luck," he cursed as his companion went about the pleasantries he had been content to forego. It was a job, and while most mercenaries were fans of shooting the breeze while they waited for their prey to amble along, Stalt was grim and purely business oriented. The man gave his name, Jack Frost, and asked for his in return.

"Stalt," he grunted as he clipped the skin back to his belt, then turned an eye on the enigmatic man. "Tobias Stalt. I came for a cut of the reward." He left unsaid the conclusions that Frost could draw on his own. There was a sense of camaraderie between most mercenaries; Tobias found friends in men like Jak Roth Rute and Eldric Thormund, who fate saw fit to force him into business with. Others, those he could avoid lengthy conversation and life threatening situations around, he often left the silence to lie.

The "creature," or whatever it was, already had many local legends swirling around it. The little reliable information they had was "its dangerous." With a snort, the rogue snatched the pipe from inside his cloak and set it between his teeth. "Hromagh's frigid taint," he cursed as the wind blew out his first match. He snatched another from his satchel and struggled to ignite it. Night had already made its victory over daylight, and stars twinkled in the Salvic sky. On the peaks, Tobias knew, Sway fanatical Aeromancers held the vicious, brutal storms that made life miserable only a hundred years before at bay. He thought he could hear the faint screams of that horrific wind as it echoed far away.

Triumphantly, he puffed the toxic plume that buffeted his throat. "Ahhh," he moaned, "sweet poison." Lurid golds swept across the horizon, in wait for the beast that posed a threat to them. Behind closed doors, the inhabitants of the house who had donated their porch for base camp prayed vigorously. "I wonder," he pondered aloud, "if they realize that no god can save them?"

[Jack Frost]

Jack frowned at the mans response and watched as he struggled to light his pipe. It was clear the man didn't feel much obliged to talk. This would simply make the night longer and put Jack more on edge. The man could handle bandits or other sellswords in a fight, but he wasn't particularly fond of the idea of a monster he knew nothing about. The wind continued to howl mercilessly Reminds me of where I grew up... he thought to himself as he stood up and stretched. The night grew so dark it was all but impossible to see anything past the fire's light as the stars seemed to watch the event in silence. Then the first scream pierced through the wind. It was far off from the village but haunting and made the young man's blood run cold, a feat in itself do to his icy nature. "And here I thought this was going to be boring..." Jack quipped sarcastically.

The beast made it's way into the town slowly, and soon it's low moaning was heard everywhere in the town, as if the sound waves were ignoring any interference caused by the wind. Claws dragged the being forth, and soon a bright yellow eye the size of a wagon wheel was visible from the fire in the distance. It stared forward unblinking as it turned it's gaze to the two men in the distance. Jack tensed up a bit and drew his mythral blade, readying it for action. It was impossible to tell how close or far away it was, the darkness at this point almost seemed unnatural. It was as if the eye was simply painted on a wall of black, no perspective seemed to be gained, no way to gauge distance. It stared at the two unmoving, or was it? Jack couldn't tell. For what felt like forever the beast sat there staring, and then let out a bloodcurdling cacophony of screams. The mouths along it's arms began to glow red illuminating it's distorted chaotic form in the darkness as they began to gape.

"Hromagh's frigid taint," Jack breathed staring at the horror. "What the fuck is that..." he muttered taking a defensive stance. Perhaps his companion had been right. Perhaps no gods could save them. Ten arms spat forward at the two with blinding speed, five heading for Jack and five for Tobias. The frosty young man dove to the side to avoid two and parried one away while with his free hand he summoned two spikes of ice and flung them at the remaining two hands that blindly let them hit. The beast showed no sign of pain as the spikes impaled the claws, and the claws simply kept charging forward. Panicked Jack focused on the spikes and urged them downward pinning the hands to the ground. What have I gotten myself into...

[Tobias Stalt]

He was about to reply to the youth's enthusiastic sarcasm with a sharp jeer of his own, but a piercing and inhuman call cut him short. The one-time soldier turned his gaze toward the horror that encroached on them and puffed a hazy cloud of black in front of his face. "Ah," he muttered, "there you are."

The other man whipped into a frenzied display of defensive tactics, and with deft hands, he conjured icy stakes to drive themselves into outstretched arms. The fell beast seemed only to grunt and cry out in anger at this. "Magic," he snorted offhand as the deep black blade slid free of his sheathe. Blackheart seemed to echo the darkness of night as he took it tightly in hand. "Always magic."

Five monstrous arms ripped toward him, but Tobias' face remained stiff like etched stone. His golden eyes flickered with annoyance as a stray finger ripped the pipe from his lips and sent it to the ground, shattered. "Fuck," he spat angrily, "you greasy, festering cunt-"

Another hand whipped past him in a blur of motion, though Tobias seemed to shrug out of the way. "That was," he grunted as he hefted the Dehlar blade, "a gift." Tobias brought the blade down with a crash, and oozing black blood splattered over his face. The beast whined loudly and recoiled. All of its arms jerked backward with the realization that these humans could cause it pain. "...from a dear friend." Tobias finished the sentiment as his weapon drooled viscera and he crouched, a hand on the broken neck of his smoking device.

Blood seeped from a thin wound at Tobias' ribcage, where a stray claw had ripped him. With a quick downward glance, Tobias nodded. "Right," he admonished, "it's not slow."

The mercenary glanced over at Frost, who had finally recovered from the dive that had narrowly saved his life. Tobias let the heavy blade fall to his side. "Hop to, Frosty," he called, "this is why they're paying us the big bucks." Another hand shot toward Tobias, this time with splayed claws fully visible in the harsh starlight of Salvar. Snow mirrored the hate in the creature's gaze as it tore toward Tobias. A loud screech as claw met sword caused the rogue to grit his teeth. "Any bright ideas?" Tobias hissed.

[Jack Frost]

Jack barely had enough time to contemplate his partners words before more claws came at him faster than he could account for. Once knicked his shoulder before he could recoil away and a sharp pain shot down his arm. "Motherfucker!" Jack roared bringing a sword to slice the claw off as he stepped away from the other arms. The arms seemed more like razor sharp tentacles with no specified lengths and seemed to fly from everywhere at once. Jack hissed, arm still sore, and summoned a blade of ice into his off hand. Two blades in hand the mercenary grinned. "Let's dance!" he grunted as more arms flung at him. His arms were a flurry of ice and mythral as he slashed about deflecting and slicing arms apart as he dodged the claws to the best of his ability. A few would glance him now and again, slicing at his skin.

This fuckin thing is sharp! Jack thought to himself as he cleaved through another arm. But these arms almost seem...dispensable. it didn't seem like the arms were thinning out, in fact it seemed like with every arm he was slicing two more were taking it's place. "Hey Stalt..." Jack called out as he barely dodged several arms. "I don't think this current plan is working..." he continued as he sliced yet another arm off. It seemed at this point that the ground was soaked with the black blood of the beast, as was Jack. His blades shined black with the fiends blood and suddenly he noticed how the eye itself was staying away from the fight. "I think we need to take out the eye..." he called out as he deflected an arm.

Pivoting away to doge a sweeping attack he took a deep breath and exhaled violently unleashing a gust of wind strong enough to blow several of the arms back and staggering them. The open maws shined a crimson light upon a clear path straight to the eye. "If you go for it I'll cover you"

[Tobias Stalt]

"Y' don't say," Tobias drawled at Jack's assertion about the current plan not working. He bashed the lithe, luminescent arm aside with a harsh motion and took another breath. He saw the eye as the youth called out that they should change targets. "It's gonna take a bit more doing than that," he groaned when Frost called that he would cover him."

"We don't have a lot of choices," Jack called back to him. Tobias could not help but agree with the lad. If there were anything he'd learned in his travels, it was that the enemy often gives you few alternatives. The eye flicked madly between both man as they stalked between either man. "Go!"

The eye raced toward Jack as he cried out and Tobias seized the moment. The Dehlar blade ascended with unchecked fury as the Tactician raced forward. Razor sharp arms ripped down all around him as Stalt tore toward the beast's center mass. The eye turned and fixed its lambent gaze on him, even as the black blade skewered forward.

A pained scream escaped the beast as a squishing sound escaped it's eye. Blood squelched around Blackheart as the sword drove deeper and Tobias punched it home. "That," he hissed, "was for Camille's pipe. You ugly fuck."

With a callous rip, Stalt freed his weapon and swiped at air, which sent blood and tissue to the ground in tatters. "It's not dead!" Jack screamed in warning. Tobias took a step back as a wild swipe almost cleaved him in two.

Though it could not see them, it could clearly hear just fine. In response to the much appreciated outcry of Jack, the beast rounded on the frigid boy and whipped its arms in a wild, frenzied attempt to kill anything and everything. "Shit," Tobias grated, "how do we kill it?"

"Can't take much more," Jack huffed between ragged breaths. "It has got to be almost dead."

"Let's hope," Tobias whispered, and he took a breath.

[Jack Frost]

Arms rained down in Jack's direction in increased speed and wild ferocity as the fiend tried to lash at Jack. The attacks were random and frenzied but also simply the beast groping blindly for its mark. With some decent timing the youth managed to dodge the brunt of most of the attacks. And when he did get hit it was with the arm itself and not one of the razor sharp claws that would have cleaved his skin from his body. One arm had knocked him flat on his face and he watched in horror as several arms descended on him, the fiend aware of his location. He rolled aside but a claw grazed his cheek causing blood to spill into his right eye. "Fuck" Jack spat rolling away.

"You okay?" Tobias called out. "Im not dead if that's what your asking!" Jack called our rising to his feet. He was breathless, sore, and sliced up. Blood had blinded his right eye and he was tired. "Fucking stab it again and kill this fucker so we can go get out money and drink some fucking ale or something!" he growled as he charged the eye. He relinquished his blade of ice and began to cleave through arms with his mythral blade as he ran. His vision was blurry and his breath was ragged. With his free hand he began to chuck ice spikes at the beasts eye hoping to hit it. A few landed their mark, but the rest were either complete misses or buried into the fiends arms. With each spike the beast screamed and flailed more but the arms seemed to be dispersing and the tide of arms was becoming less dense. Soon there only seemed to be a handful of arms left and a drastically dimmed yellow eye oozing black blood as it tried to limp away

[Tobias Stalt]

With a bestial howl, the cyclopean creature reeled back onto its haunches and the ground seemed to shake beneath the sheer fury. Tobias held his composure with a careful, measured gaze, certain to keep both eyes trained on his prey. The monster could bolt or attack at any time, and it was the mercenary's sworn duty to ensure that it did not escape with its life. The fact that his life was in danger seemed to be a small side note to a much larger contract.

Once, Jak had explained to Tobias that the entire life-threatening danger clause was why they got to charge such bloated prices. The grim realization was that, above all voices, money spoke to men loudest. As the creature sank forward and drove all its feral digits toward the Strategist, Tobias let out a ragged haze of white breath. "Let's make this quick."

Grisly splotches of black splattered the snow as Dehlar ripped through meaty flesh and sinew, then split bone. Shattered specks of monstrous marrow flecked the ground beneath his feet as the master swordsman plied his trade. Blossoms of his own blood tattered open sporadically, accompanied by a broken string of grunts.

With a deft motion, he slammed the blade into the creature's swollen eyelid to the hilt. A hideous screech rippled out from it as it spammed in its death throes. "Now," Tobias snorted, sure to hold the weapon tight until the creature ceased to twitch. "That wasn't so bad, eh?"

The beast shivered as though the cold had finally broken through to it, and with one anticlimactic sigh, it collapsed. Tobias ripped his black blade free of the oversized corpse and began to clean it. "May as well rouse the village," he called to Jack, "they'll be wanting their proof, like as not."

[Jack Frost]

It was as if Tobias' voice had broken some sort of spell, the people of the village seemed to wander out of their homes awestruck at the noise they had heard. No screams of people, just the monster that had haunted them for months if not years. The mayor and some of the most able men approached the sellwords with torches in hand to examine the creature that had seemed to melt into a mess of black mush as all that remained was a yellow eye. Wordlessly people stared at the corpse of their tormentors. It was over, finally over.

Jack had taken to tending some of his wounds with a first aid kit he had stashed on his person, dabbing at stinging cuts with herbal ointments. Luckily none of his wounds were terribly deep. The mayor extended his arms to his side and exclaimed "People of Kof, the BEAST. IS. DEAD!" he roared. People stood silently for a moment and then burst into a mix of cheers and prayers. They had been saved.

...

The parties festivities were small but grand to the people of the town. Jack found himself being patched up by some of the more...attractive women of the town and being fed meat and ale as he rested and regaled the people with tales of the horror he and his accomplice had slain. However he was exhausted and retired to a warm bed with a warm townswoman early on. In the following morning he would take his reward and leave in the middle of a blizzard and never to be seen in that town again. Many years layer the tale would be one of Denebriels sons descended from a snowstorm to slay the foul beast, who's eye would remain in the town hall for decades to come.

[Tobias Stalt]

When the coin dropped into his palm, Tobias' eyes glazed over. The moment he had toiled toward felt so empty. Blood dripped from many wounds across his body, but he seemed indifferent to the pain. "Pain is fuel for power," he mumbled beneath his breath as he slipped the blade into its sheath. People danced and sang in the street; they swarmed the body of their one time feared enemy and set it ablaze. Around the ruin, old men drank and told tales of a time long since past. Women giggled and whispered conspiratorial gossip.

The rogue slipped his earnings into his kit and turned to leave. He felt out of place in a village that he had never visited for pleasure. Kof was burned into his mind as work, and jobs finished were left in his wake. Dust and echoes. He strode quietly for the foothills beyond the town's limits as he pondered his next destination.

"Sir, a word," came a soft female voice from behind a house. Tobias glanced up quickly. The girl had slipped away from the festivities, apparently for this. "Mister Stalt, I watched the fight," she admitted, "though my father and husband hid and told me to do the same."

Tobias grunted a bit, then folded his arms and decided to hear her out. "The men in this town are ruled by their fears," she said in a rueful voice, "and they delight in the triumph of others. What you did this night, it flies in the face of all I've ever known." His golden gaze held her for a moment.

"Your father," he drawled, "the mayor?"

"Yes," she told him, and my husband-"

"I don't give a ruddy fuck who your husband is, ma'am," he said soberly, "pardon my saying so. This all sounds like it has very little to do with me. I'd apologize you haven't had a more interesting life, but I know better. Take it from me, dear, if you want to live a long, happy life, stick with the boring routine you've already got."

She watched him as he spoke, and her fingers idly twisted the ring on her finger. "Tobias," she muttered, deflated, "I want what you have. I want adventure."

He took a step toward her, and the girl flinched. When his hand fell into her golden tresses, she melted like the cold. Tobias ruffled her hair gently. "You'll grow out of it," he assured her. Her bright green eyes locked with his as she snatched his wrist and pulled him against her chest. Tobias let out a laugh.

"Ma'am," he told her, "I don't fuck married girls. It's not good for business."

"Call me Shara," she said sweetly as she slid the ring from her finger and slipped it away. Tobias could feel the subtle curves of her body hidden beneath layers of cloth and silk. She was a small girl, but not unhealthy. Unlike the rest of her town, he could tell that she was well taken care of. "And for tonight, I'll call you my husband."

"Gods no," he hissed, "never that. Never me." His face scrunched at the very thought of marriage, of a woman bound to his side for all eternity. It smacked of a shackle he'd seen severed by some twist of fate, long ago. Bittersweet memories.

Shara frowned for a moment, then smirked. "Ah," she giggled, "one of the profundities of adventure." Tobias could feel his hand slip along her hip unbidden, and the guilty pleasure he felt stirred something in his trousers. Shara seemed to feel it too. "Aha," she whispered triumphantly, "so you do feel." Her smirk was catty as she pulled his head in and planted her lips against his despite the cracking cold.

"One thing," he said as he hiked up her dress and slid down her breeches. Her inquisitive gaze searched his eyes as she shivered. "Tell your husband I'm sorry for ruining you for him." She laughed aloud as Tobias fell to his knees in front of her, and her laughs turned to moans.

Well, he thought, this is much better than gold.

[Philomel]

Name of Thread: Into The Night (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28575-Into-the-Night&p=242127#post242127)
Thread Type: No Judgement
Participants: Jack Frost (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?14396-Jack-Frost) and Tobias Stalt (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17202-Tobias-Stalt)

Rewards:

Jack Frost receives:
480 EXP
55 GP

Tobias Stalt receives:
515 EXP
55 GP

[Hysteria]

Exp and GP added!