Versus Gum.

(Part of my Versus project closed to Gum)

Nosdyn awoke.

He was not sure where he was, or how he got there.

No memories of what I was doing before... He was drawing blanks.

His eyes narrowed and he could make out that he was in a cavern someplace. It was not terribly different form the cave network that N'Jal and her followes called home there, but it had subtle difference. Things were very bad lighting, but Nosdyn focused a little bit and was able to spot glowing fungi on the walls, that was a good start.

Those fungi would assist with his getting orientation of the new cavern network. He could not feel N'Jal's presence or any other of his allies....he only knew he was mostly alone. His eyes adjusted after a few moments of the low light in the chamber. He had room to walk around, and he heard the sound of water nearby. There was a running stream of some sort nearby. That will provide supplies and such... Nosdyn stretched for a moment or two, his powerful muscles tightening with each movement he made.

He strangely felt a sort of peace in that cavern.

Reminds me of home... He thought of temple of N'Jal often, where home was for him and his companions those days. You seen one cave you seen em all. The champion of N'Jal carefully prepared a plan for himself.

I need to prepare a base camp and work things from there. Nosdyn got to work...

The cave's murky maw called to the shaman and the centipedes alike. Beneath the ageing man's ragged feet, cockroaches cracked and earwigs crunched. With the remnants of sticky creepy crawlies dangling from his bare heels, Do Mugu pressed into the darkness. Equipped with an even temper and a rare knowledge of the Underworld, Gum did not fear the unknown. After all, death gods and all the spirits of the earth, the rocks, the trees and the animals were his to converse with: few traps could snare his skin and bones.

With his palm splayed across a storied stone, the shaman opened his heart to the word. Just as the forest pygmies had forewarned, the stone corroborated: there was a demon within. Driven by his holy burden to protect the people of the Xangu Basin, he plunged into the horrible depths. The shaded forest light, dimming behind him, finally died. But the blackness was challenged by the birth of a strange glow ahead. "Fungus," he mouthed through his broad frown. And the sound of water! Gum do Mugu, a steward of Dheathain's Xangu Forest, felt the gentle warmth of life around him.

The narrow cave quickly widened.

Do Mugu had reached the cavern.

The challenge: to find the demon in the dim fungal light.

The champion of N'Jal felt hours pass.

He kept himself busy preparing a small base camp for himself. The nearby stream and running water would serve as adequate source of water and potentially food...both would suffice. Once the work preparing his camp was completely finished, the older demon sat down on the ground, thinking deeply about the situation at hand. Something has called me here... Nosdyn thought, considering the many mysteries of the world. There were many ancient places of power, holy grounds some would call them. Because of his intricate relationship with N'Jal...Nosdyn had a profound respect for most of the religions of the world.

If they were Thayne codex or not, was not relevant...

People's beliefs made them adequate targets to hunt when the time came.

He thought of Ettermire often those days...and what betrayal it had taught him. Two different Dark Elf women had caused him great pain. He'd been no stranger to love and loss. Those were the events that lead him to N'Jal's fold so many years prior. Lifetimes ago it felt like. Nosdyn wore the symbols of N'Jal on his clothing proudly, some would be repulsed by him, by what he was. He did not mind it.

His kind, his people...were always at odds with the natural world.

Maybe, some would say his kind didn't belong there...maybe they were right... But Nosdyn had carved out a small piece of the world for himself. His own life through it all. He missed his woman, Xelldra greatly. He was not sure how much time had passed since his last embrace with his woman, and his current predicament. I have to figure out if I can get home. The thought occurred to him that he didn't even know where he was.

He sighed. Much had happened since he'd first arrived in Alerar as a son looking for a place to call home. Twice the nation of Alerar rejected him and that was how he ended up in N'Jal's fold as well. She accepted me for whatever any of that is worth.... But something always troubled the Demon further,he never could quite place his finger on it.

Knuckles, pulled tight by the years, burned with the shaman's defiance; his fingers ached him to a grimace as he stretched them open. Digits pointed, he pressed them into the neon glow, dragging his bony fingers across the bioluminescent fungus. "Demon, I have been sent to confront you," he rasped into the echoing cavern.

"My gods and the spirits of the land command me to tip the scales against your unwelcome presence."

Like fireflies, Do Mugu's fingertips danced in the shadows. He smeared the glowing slime across the seasoned creases of his cheeks and into the worry lines of his brow. The shaman was adorning himself with otherworldly warpaint. "I will not hide from you," he explained indifferently, as he rubbed his hands together, spreading the glow across his palms. "See me, so that you may approach me," he bellowed, while pressing glowing prints of his hands onto his chest. He had become a garish beacon in the dark; to disadvantage oneself like that, it was confidence. Moreover, it was fearlessness in the face death. After all, the shaman had been to the Underworld—death held no cards against him.

Gum continued the hunt; his ears were pricked, his narrow eyes widened against the dark, and his nostrils were flared in search of a scent.

Each step bounced the shrunken heads strung around his neck.

Each step jangled the weapons at his waist: his disease jars and his simple axe.

Each step brought the nascent spectre of the three-legged crow to his shoulder.

Each step took him closer to his foe.

A distinct feeling hit Nosdyn at that point.

He felt it very very subtly because of his heightened senses. He was in danger...or at least perceived danger. He nodded to himself. "It is all right." Nosdyn said out loud to nobody in particular. He knew he would always be at odds with the world at large. His base camp he'd prepared himself and he listened to the running water of the stream ahead. It calmed his nerves...he was not afraid. He'd suffered too much loss and too many failures in his life for any of that to matter.

"Think I don't know you're there?" Nosdyn asked of Gum. He looked at the fellow, the man had glowing marks on his body. He nodded to the stranger. "Maybe you have some answers for me? I have no idea where I am or how I ended up here." He stood up at that point and slowly lumbered toward Gum.

Nosdyn was cursed by being slow...would someday be his downfall. Maybe today is that day... The thought occurred to the old demon at that point.

An excitement filled his stomach he had not felt in many years, it was almost orgasmic.

He removed one of his iron maces to prepare for battle. Nosdyn looked at Gum very carefully. "I don't judge any of your kind." He was referring to people, to men. "But I am guessing you have already made up your mind about me yeah?" Nosdyn nodded carefully. "It is all right your kind is usually fairly racist anyway. I have accepted this long ago." Nosdyn felt that feeling his gut, it wasn't the usual foreboding he felt when it came to battle...this was something else.

Time to put to the test...all I have learned. Nosdyn thought calmly to himself. For some reason, images passed in his mind. He thought of his family back home in N'Jal's cavern...their base. Their temple. Mental images of his wife, Xelldra, and his son Tharak and the Dark Elf boy, Llukai. Images passing in his mind of all the pains Ettermire had instructed him in...had taught him. Pain, loss, suffering all those memories were his.

He carefully studied Gum for a long moment. "I wonder...whose really the righteous avenger here...you or me, a lowly follower of N'Jal." He said not revealing his true status as one of her champions. He carefully studied Gum. "You have ventured a long far out of way to get here I admire you for that." He said to Gum calmly.

They were face-to-face, they were immediate foes. While violence was inevitable, they warmed the cool subterranean air with the embers of of their ideologies—a quaint exchange of perspectives. The demon seized the initiative, and spoke first. Meanwhile, the glowing shaman remained impassive while his blue-skinned adversary leveled accusations of racism and judgement.

With care, the tranquil shaman composed his response.

"Stranger," he ventured, "I do not believe in righteousness." Gum do Mugu twitched his nostrils and sniffed, there was a swirl of sulphur spreading through the cavern's air. "Our eyes and minds experience life—just dreams and nightmares—and often we endure these illusions against our will." The shaman looked down at his own fragile frame, he saw it as neither gift nor curse. "Our bodies," he explained, "come from our parents." His sermon, dosed with the vibrant energies of the spirits around them, quickly gathered pace. "And our control of the worlds we live in is limited." His logic was becoming clearer, and so the lesson was taking shape.

And then, summoned by just a thought, the previously nascent crow became—for that moment, at least—flesh and blood. The vociferous bird fluttered onto his master's shoulder and began to stifle squawks into the shaman's ear. The bird uttered troubling truths, revealing every banshee and spectre looming from Nosdyn's murderous past.

"So," he mused pointedly, "what is blame?"

(Posting on a fairly limited basis here, not starting too much new stuff until the current two threads are done. Thanks for understanding.)

His mind reminded him of someone from his past, the old undead priest who he once called friend. "Someone else said something similar." Nosdyn looked off to his left for a moment, away from the shaman and then back to the shaman. "All things wither and rot." He nodded carefully reciting the teachings of N'Jal. "There is a cycle between life and death...we are not so different. Maybe in another life we could have been allies." Nosdyn carefully studied the glowing shaman. "War paint." Nosdyn said calmly.

"You are not a stranger to the battlefield." Nosdyn complimented the man, carefully studying the magic hubris that man summoned. "Arcane arts at your disposal...you remind me of my son." Nosdyn tapped the side of his own skull. "My son says that we all have different skill sets, different talents. Yours and his own lie with the arcane arts. Mine is in this." He raised one of his iron maces for the shaman to see, but did not strike yet. "Blunt instruments...cause great chaos and harm. Not subtle...but a more direct style of combat as my father taught me, and his father before him..a long line of my fathers and forefathers." Nosdyn said, there was a history lesson of his own int here somewhere.

He was falling back to what he knew, his old instructor's ways. He'd raised an entire legion of N'Jal's followers virtually by himself. "You ask me what is blame...?" Nosdyn narrowed his eyes calmly. "I feel sorry for you if you must ask that on the battlefield. There is no blame, only one truth matters. Do you attack or not. Do you live or not. Do you win or lose?" Nosdyn was reciting some of the precepts of hosue Krotar. Nosdyn nodded. "You have a familiar thing in your eyes...an emotion I have seen before in my life. I have lost track of what century it is by this point long have I raised N'Jal's followers."

Nosdyn looked at the majestic bird perched on the man's shoulder. "I have to wonder...how sharp the bird's claws and beaks are I wonder if they can inflict adequate damage to cause me pain." Nosdyn was hinting at what he was, the type of warrior he was. "I am used to pain, old one...loss...sacrifice. What are you willing to give up for your chance to smite me?" The demon asked.

Indignant, the bird squawked back at the demon for daring to reduce its talents to a beak and claws. Gum, typically unexcitable, was amused by his mysterious companion's shrill reaction—he almost smiled. "I am grateful," the shaman whispered with deference to the crow's ancient spirit. Then, its insight imparted and its obligation met, the three-legged crow vanished in an eerie squall. A fistful of feathers was all that remained. As the crow's remnants drifted down to the damp floor, they captured the vivid colours of the cavern fungus in their luster.

Do Mugu's glowing hands wavered between two weapons; on one hip, his simple axe was slung, while on the other, he was tempted by his string of sickness-carrying jars.

"I have nothing to sacrifice," the shaman's baritone barely escaped his sullen frown. "This body belongs to the planet," he explained. "And my spirit," he paused, "can never be lost, only reborn." In that moment, the shaman began to shape the secrets he had learned from the crow. Information became a miserable weapon. "But," an abrupt amendment, "not all spirits can be reborn freely." The Xangu holy man wondered if the demon was capable of compassion. He was about to find out.

Then, a bolt of lightning, Gum do Mugu's narrow eyes bulged open. Horror pulsed from his black/brown irises; he glowered at his unwelcome foe.

From the cavernous shadows, the shaman summoned three dreadful ghosts. A face, beaten open and sunken into itself by a blunt weapon, was missing an eye; from inside the hole, the mushy brain slopped out. Another spirit, dragged along its pulverised leg with a tumbling gait. But, the last ghost was the most tragic of all: she might have been of age; a sorrowful prostitute of an Ettermire tavern.

While interaction with the Overworld was forbidden, the shaman's spell gifted the horrible spectres the look and the smell of (rotting) flesh and blood. But, should the demon fall for the trick, a quick swing of that mace would reveal their vaporous nature.

"Do you recognise these people?" Do Mugu begged of Nosdyn, the demonic invader. Then, the shaman stepped back, letting his ghost minions take the front foot. "They are just three of the fifty you executed in Ettermire that night."

Nosdyn grinned suddenly.

He looked at the old man. "You speak false. You accuse false." The demon said. "I am a follower of N'Jal, madman." Nosdyn looked at the undead that were present around them for a moment. "Not N'Jal's...thusly not my responsibility to claim." Nosdyn shook his head at the old man. "You use glamour like a child's play thing old one." Nosdyn said calmly.

"You have gravely sinned here in mistaking me for some common brigand or foe of life." Nosdyn said. "I am the champion of N'Jal!" Nosdyn suddenly yelled. He swung forward with one of his mighty iron maces. He kept his stance calm the entire time, half stance, muscles tight. Pectorals bulging with each movement, he was that well chiseled. The marks on his body were not tattoos, they were birth marks his tribe was born with. The illusions of the undead women barely phased the demon, but only angered him further.

He wore his title with pride, he'd earned it. Bled for it, suffered for it...died twice for it. That title was his and his alone.

Nosdyn knew suffering, he'd trained his mind and body to handle suffering in extreme levels...to survive and keep going through the pain. His black heart was intact beating his demon's blood throughout his body.

The battle had begun proper. The undead women looked confused for a moment as they saw the champion of N'Jal...recognizing the bite mark on Nosdyn's lower stomach. Nosdyn removed his vest in mid swing suddenly.

Nosdyn's blood raged hot.

Many images burned through his mind. "You show me images of undead who are not N'Jal's...do not insult me again, old one." The swing of his iron mace was aimed at Gum's head. If it struck, it would cause serious mayhem...just what Nosdyn liked to inflict on his opponents.

The demon's vest fell to the ground. There, plain as day was the single and grotesque scarred bite mark the undead woman from Corone had given him...yet...Nosdyn was not undead himself.

There was a mystery there to be solved...a mystery of the blood. "Don't speak of Ettermire again, old one! Two different dark elf women stole from me...stole greatly from me."

The decades had sapped his speed and strength, so the Xangu shaman was critically reliant on his tranquil mind; through dutiful meditation, his wits were sharp, his planning was sound, and his reactions were serene and astute in equal measure.

Nosdyn's marauding mace whiffed right through the apparitions as though they weren't there. Truth be told, they weren't there. The mournful ghosts lost cohesion, turning to vapors in the darkness. With the illusion broken, they twisted back into the Underworld. Through the fading mist of his ghoulish spell, the shaman caught a glimpse of the Nosdyn's racing bludgeon.

But, having already conceded a modicum of ground while summoning those ghosts, he was one step ahead—or behind, rather. Still, Do Mugu stumbled. Scowling, his face became a wretched tribute to Oxxad, his foul death god. He went backwards, and felt his footing falter on the damp mud and rock floor of the cavern. Regrettably, he wasn't able to avoid the strike completely, but his head was safe. Instead, the mace smashed his left shoulder and scraped the tightly stretched skin from his bony chest.

Gum sucked in one mighty breath to dull the pain, he balanced his thoughts to dull the pain, he made peace with all outcomes to dull the pain.

The raging demon, though, had inadvertently unleashed something powerful.

SMASH!

It was the piercing sound of glass shattering against stone. In dodging the worst of Nosdyn's attack, Gum had lost control of his disease jars.

"Champion of N'Jal," he wondered, as he scrambled to put more distance between himself and his hulking adversary. "Are your kind immune to our diseases?" As he spoke, he used the cavern wall to get back on his feet.

The tainted medicine man's broken jar contained Ungotuu Magic Fever, a feared mystical pathogen. The sickness, airborne and virulent, quickly assaults the mind of its victims causing anxiety and dread, along with bleeding eyes and noses—some weak-minded fools were even known to take their own lives under its torturous influence.

Because of who Nosdyn was...what he was...something else happened.

His mind envisioned not the field of battle for a moment or two...perhaps the effects of the disease pathogen in whatever limited capacity they could affect him...but still affect him. Nosdyn saw something a memory from the past...he dreamed and half dreamed of Ettermire. His first love, the woman who had killed herself in front of him. Illsandra...his first wife. The image was a powerful one and he began to cry as his body adjusted to the effects of the pathogens and disease.

He had no knowledge of the man's mystic arts...but he had knowledge of the fact his body had a rare genetic marker.

N'Jal had told him so.

It was how he had not turned when he'd been bitten by the one from Corone.

Nosdyn looked at the shaman for a moment as the effects of the disease in it's fullest potency attempted to ravage...something. The tears flowed from Nosdyn's eyes freely. "In another life...we could have been friends." Nosdyn said truthfully. He sometimes hated himself for what he was, a mere instrument of chaos and war. What he really hated was the fact that he existed...he would always be at odds with life itself. The effects of the pathogens also made him think of the woman from Corone...there could have been something there had she not wandered off into the wild lands to die.

"I am not immune to any disease as you must know by now, old one. I am made to survive. Long after you and your kind are gone I will be here still perhaps that is also my own curse, not just being N'Jal's champion." Nosdyn saw various apparitions from the haywire effects of the pathogens going nuts in his blood. One particular hallucination caught his eye immediately. He saw, and he assumed the shaman would be able to see the demon's memory as well. An old priest, undead himself, walked up to both of them. This was new...it would likely not happen again. It was an effect of Nosdyn's powerful blood and his connection to N'Jal.

The old priest greeted the both of them. "You are both being tested here." The priest said calmly he looked at Nosdyn. "Remember the teachings my friend eventually all things must wither and rot...you will not however. Your kind are destined for some other fate beyond my capacity to see." The priest was telling that to do Mugu as well. There was a lesson there to be learned by both of them.

Nosdyn understood his old friend's meaning there. "I am cursed to survive to the end of time." Nosdyn said to the both of them. The tears were flowing freely as he stood there. Holding his weapon. He did not know what to do...he hesitated a moment. "I am cursed...my kind is always going to be at odds with everything else. All I ever wanted was my purpose. My reason for being here. I'm not going to die shaman." Nosdyn suddenly told Gum the truth of who he was and what he was...he didn't know how to react or how to take it. The gods had cursed him primarily.

Do Mugu had developed immunity to the infectious influence of his disease weapons while training as a shaman, decades ago. However, he was not prepared for how the fever would affect Nosdyn, an extraneous demon. In humans, the sickness afflicted the brain only, overwhelming minds with haunting visions and suffocating dread. But, the Xangu native watched the sickened demon react. He soon appreciated Nosdyn's potent life force for what it was. The demonic invader was broadcasting his Ungotuu nightmare outwards and into the psychosphere.

That broadcast picked something up! "I can see," Do Mugu muttered evenly. He could see his victim's vision. He could see the undead priest. It was jarring, even for his well-kept mind. Nevertheless, the shaman was bound to his own gods and a foreign priest could not so easily invade and sway such a devout mind.

Playing along, the shaman nodded piously while the priest pontificated about a shared destiny.

But, within, Gum do Mugu insulated his sacred thoughts. Dutifully, he contained his heightened willpower behind a wall of strict and complete blankness, i.e. a perfectly empty mind; he was meditating. And through that meditation, the shaman supercharged his own life force. He was preparing for a complete transformation. The fibres of his muscles were morphing. The colour of his eyes began to tremble, flickering from brown to yellow. His teeth and bones were aching from their cores. Thick hair was sprouting across his formerly hairless body.

"You should die," the shaman insisted, clutching his left clavicle—it was as shattered as the Ungotuu jar, its shards spread across the cavern floor. The shaman was unperturbed by the demon's violent emotional swings; rage to sadness and back again. "Your life, it is suffering," he said coolly. "Allow me to relieve you. Let me send your spirit to the Underworld, where Oxxad will give you new life so that you might find balance."

In one moment, the desire to stop fighting against life itself stopped.

Something happened there in front of the shaman...an acceptance by Nosdyn.

Where three times Ettermire herself had rejected the demon and his people...a transformation occurred within Nosdyn.

The ghosts of his past were there present with Gum and Nosdyn....watching the event transpire.

"I have no place here." Nosdyn said suddenly. He lost his grip on his weapon, still crying...he dropped it on the ground. The iron mace fell with a hard thud that echoed like a thunder blast throughout the cavernous wall. "Twice I died for N'Jal." Nosdyn said calmly, he looked at the old shaman. "They were empty deaths...not the warrior's death my father promised me. And his father promised him...it was all for nothing." He looked at Gum. "Maybe you are right...maybe life itself is right maybe I do not belong here at all."

Nosdyn handed gum his cloak. "Take, so I am not forgotten. So my people are not forgotten."

"I am ready shaman. I am tired of fighting...maybe I can also know peace. And be with my love that I left behind." He closed his eyes and stopped fighting at that point. He stood there, bare chested and would allow the shaman a chance to completely finish the old demon exile off...he could see her in the distant part of the cavern. Illsandra, looking at him with a peaceful expression on her face.

"Come home with me my love..." She said to him. "You don't have to fight anymore."

Nosdyn looked over to his first wife. He nodded towards her. "I'm tired...I have been fighting for a long time." He looked back at Gum and waited. "If you're going to do something, now is your chance."

Their brutal and burgeoning encounter teetered, swaying on the uneven crux of their shortcomings. The Xangu shaman, let down by his brittle form, was evidently unfit to compete with the robust demon—a bloodied and broken shoulder was the very evidence. But, Nosdyn seemed to be showing his own shortcomings? Do Mugu, nursing that terrible injury and undeniably lagging in the race, would not overlook the opportunity for a clean and clear deathblow.

If N'Jal's famed champion thought a sorrowful submission would temper the shaman's heart, then he was critically mistaken.

It was true, Gum do Mugu was physically weaker.

But, perhaps Nosdyn was mentally weaker.

It wasn't that the Dheathain human lacked compassion. On the contrary, he had fostered a perennial affection for relieving the suffering of others. Consider this: Nosdyn was suffering, of that there was no doubt. Furthermore, the crow's caws had told Gum of this demon's murderous past. So, at least in the eyes of Do Mugu and his cast of divine overseers, the kindly act was to remove this chaotic invader from the playing field. After all, death was not the end; in service to his masters, the shaman had ferried so many souls into the shambling clutches of the Underworld's chief general, Oxxad.

Locked in the midst of his metamorphosis, the shaman was quaking with pain. He struggled to respond to Nosdyn's heartfelt words.

Regardless, Gum had little to say in return.

Yet, Nosdyn continued to pour out his melancholy heart. "Maybe you are right...maybe life itself is right maybe I do not belong here at all," the demon said.

At first, Gum could not respond. His silence was involuntary. There wasn't much he could say to Nosdyn. He knew that the sooner it was over for the troubled demon, the sooner his broken spirit could begin the process of rehabilitation. And, eventually, rebirth—it was a good thing.

"Intro..." Do Mugu rasped, "...spection." Then, he spat blood and phlegm down his chin while his organs churned, mutating from their natural form into something else. "Introspection," he gasped, finally. He was choked from within, caught off guard by his own spine crunching inside his neck. It, like his organs, was morphing from human anatomy into feline anatomy. His mouth, by then covered in jet black fur, jutted forward into a short snout. Then, another mouthful of blood oozed from his narrow, quivering lips... then, his teeth—blunt, human, useless—fell from his mouth and spilled out across the cavern's moist substrate. With a snarl, his new set of jagged, bone-crunching gnashers and skull-piercing canines came in.

"Take, so I am not forgotten. So my people are not forgotten," the demon said, offering his shaman foe a dear treasure.

With his right hand, Do Mugu gripped the cloak in a balled up fist. But, he said nothing. He wasn't able to speak.

"I am ready shaman. I am tired of fighting...maybe I can also know peace. And be with my love that I left behind."

The Xangu man dropped the cloak, it fell to floor like the shaman's blood and teeth before it. Gum shook his head ruefully, he had meant no disrespect. However, his hand had turned to a paw.

The shapeshift was complete; from human to Xangu jungle cat.

With a muscular spring of his hind legs, the black jungle cat leapt at the demon. The injured left shoulder had followed him into cat form, so he was only able to slash at Nosdyn with his right paw. Meanwhile, his canines were unleashed—the Xangu's most deadly assassin was aiming to crack through the demon's skull and burrow into his brain.

If the demon possessed even the dimmest glimmer of hope, the slightest will to live, then he would have to sidestep Do Mugu's savage assault! Otherwise, his desire to be reunited with Illsandra would be fulfilled—together, Gum believed, their spirits would be joined in the comforting flow of the glowing cavern's stream.

The choice was Nosdyn's.

Death or life.

What Nosdyn saw before him made him actually smile...

It was a glimpse of The After...

A mere follower of the Thayne codex but not on any devout level...Nosdyn had earned redemption. The giant black cat gorged on Nosdyn's powerful flesh. But deep down, Nosdyn knew death would not be permanent...it would be a temporary window to his own transformation to his own peace. Perhaps, the encounter with the shaman was also fate. Was also destiny...Nosdyn's sole religion by that point had become N'Jal herself.

Nosdyn was aware the entire time the black cat consumed him.

He'd been through worse...he would go through worse in his life.

But the important part of it was the shaman had instilled in him the building blocks to heal.

He looked at Illsandra. She stood there with her eternal Dark Elf beauty..."I want to give you something."

"You've already given me so much..." Nosdyn said to her he held her hand. "The shaman was right my kind don't belong in the world perhaps anywhere."

"There is a place for you, Nosdyn. Not by N'Jal's side where you think you belong." Illsandra him. "The title will always haunt you that will always be yours. But you are more than N'Jal you are more than an endless war and conflict and strife." Illsandra said.

Nosdyn sighed. "My father would tell me since I was a boy...ours is a tribe that fights. We are a fighting tribe. It is in nature to fight...but perhaps that is not all there is to it anymore." Nosdyn walked over towards Illsandra. "Since I arrived at Ettermire you and Xyllea taught me the lessons of love and betrayal. You killed yourself in front of me...I held that anguish in my heart for a long time." Nosdyn said to her.

"For what could have been?" She asked.

"No. For what was lost...you taught me that even I could love." Nosdyn said to her. "I gave myself so completely to you that losing you was one of the worst battles I could have ever gone through. You never gave me a choice in that matter."

She considered what she was hearing. "I am sorry Nosdyn I was so consumed by the fact I could not give you a child..."

He placed his hand on her face gently. "I would give anything to have you be by my side once more. But I know it is too late for that." Nosdyn looked off to his left, something he did often when he thought of the past. "There is one more thing Ilsandra." He kissed her deeply at that point...

Relenting, the ferocious jungle cat reared back from the ransacked corpse of its victim. Nosdyn was, in that moment alone, defeated. Drops of demon blood fell from the shapeshifter's black whiskers, his yellowing canines were coloured pink by the rampage. Red, a violent colour, sullied the cavern's lively green fungus. Where they had fought, the earth was disturbed. Gum looked down at the earth, he sighed for its gory corruption. N'Jal's champion, before the Xangu shapeshifters eyes, had endured his own disturbing ordeal. Do Mugu, in reflection, was failing a sacred obligation to remain equanimous. Like the earth, like the vibrant fungus, like the dying demon... the victorious shaman felt utterly disturbed, it was a total breakdown in his training.

In the bowels of Dheathain, a miserable drama had played out its cruel crescendo.

And, while his laconic indifference gradually decayed, the shaman experienced passing, but tender, thoughts for his fallen foe, Nosdyn. After all, it seemed as though—with his final words—the demonic intruder had ruefully conceded his imperfection. From there, the journey to tranquility could have blossomed. Perhaps the demon didn't have to die, Do Mugu thought. But, nevertheless, the spirits and the gods demanded the demon's removal. The very world itself demanded it.

With a lurching cough, the brutal feline fell to the ground.

He began the painful return: shifting from big cat, back to his natural human form.

"Gum do Mugu, who do you have for me..."

The shaman's teeth clenched as the death god's words crept through the psychosphere and into his mind. A distant trickle, the nearby stream continued to flow in spite of their sorry melodrama; its dogged insistence nagged Gum, a servant burdened by the living and the dead. A thousand souls had passed through the shaman's rigid fingers; Gum knew the waterways from the Overworld to the Underworld well enough. Yet, this time, the notion of his ritual emerged like a dreaded spectre. With his training in tatters and his mind warped by the experience, Do Mugu felt unprepared to resist the powerful spell of his Underworld masters.

"Bring him to me," Oxxad whispered in the dark.

The stream trickled over subterranean pebbles and cobbles.

"Bring him to me," Oxxad insisted in the damp.

Moisture dripped down the cold cavern walls.

"Bring him to me," Oxxad hissed!

Do Mugu rested his hand on his broken shoulder. He finally replied. "I need time," he explained, "I am injured."

Hours went by before expert shaman was ready.

---

Dragged into the sunlight, dappled by the Dheathain canopy, Nosdyn's remains seemed hardly dead. Ringed in totems, the ritual began with a chant. Then, silence prevailed. In tune with Gum's trance, the entire rainforest dimmed its din. Foreigner or native, all tremble before death. And so, the shaman understood, all souls must be shepherded with compassion from the Overworld to the Underworld.

Through meditation, the shaman lost consciousness and the river of the honoured dead flowed out before the two enemies...

Gum's sticky eyes resisted opening, wise to the awaiting vision. Death itself, the god of all endings, stood tall before him. Do Mugu had awoken in the Underworld's proudest castle, the rock and shadow of Atataratzu and Oxxad's dreadful seat of power. Oxxad's wretched form—hideous in every sense—leered over the shaman's prone body. Oxxad's narrow ribs gripped his seeping torso from the outside. The Xangu god's organs dangled uncomfortably from his unnaturally open abdomen; those organs were bountiful and unrecognisable to those learned in human anatomy. Between the legs of Oxxad were the slashed remnants of both male and female genitalia, the mutilation had been carried out in a definite pattern; it appeared ritualistic. Each hand carried digits numbering in the twenties, and each finger crept and bent in the manner of a spider leg. Beneath the dripping guts were the spindly legs holding Oxxad at his lofty height. He was the tallest creature in the Underworld. Looking up at Oxxad's face, Do Mugu saw his god's peeled lips and jagged teeth, the skin of Oxxad's face was pulled tight over a deformed skull. In place of eyes, the death god had obsidian lumps, shoved awkwardly into the sockets. A flock of doves, innocent and white, circled over him for all eternity. Beside Oxxad stood his grim totem of rotting corpses, the freshly dead were stacked at the top and the old bones were slowly turning to dust at the bottom.

"Ah, Master Shaman, my dear friend," Oxxad's voice was hissed through hell and into the nightmares of children. "You are always welcome in our domain."

"Lord Oxxad," the shaman responded with reverence, "I have a very special soul for you."

"I see that," rasped Oxxad with delight. "A demon's soul—we must make preparations!"

Do Mugu struggled to his feet, adjusting to his new hellacious soundings. "Demon," he said, speaking to Nosdyn's lingering soul, "Oxxad will take care of everything..."

Oxxad's laughter sliced into the shaman's statement. "Demon," the death god began, "your options... are... paradise, rebirth, or perhaps I can send you back to your own gods?" He fingered his own guts while he waited for Nosdyn to choose. Then, lastly, he made another offer. "Maybe," he grinned, "we can fix your old body and send you right back into the service of N'Jal? Hahahaha!!!"

Black heart beat the entire time he was not consciously facing injuries...

A clue, a hint they all missed...

In the presence of the pagan god, Oxxad, his eyes suddenly burst open. Oxxad noticed it first...

Nosdyn rose as his heart beat black blood into into his veins, his chest...

"Keep your empty promises of salvation." Nosdyn spit, he was in a half state of hysteria from his waking back up he looked at Oxxad, not disturbed by the pagan entity. He'd seen worse and gone through worse. "N'Jal is all I need." Nosdyn spat.

He turned away from the false promises of Oxxad and redemption...Nosdyn knew who and what he was. He was a warrior, of house Krotar. No...more than that...he was the champion of N'Jal.

He looked away from Oxxad. And turned toward the shaman. "...Thank you. I forgot who I was. You helped me remember myself." The scars that Gum had inflicted...were not healing. What the fuck am I? Nosdyn though to himself. He looked down, with no capacity to regenerate naturally, he was doomed to survive, doomed to live. Life itself had cursed him.

He remembered something his wife, Xelldra, had told him. What happened before N'Jal was new...she'd never seen it before... He looked at Gum one more time. "I have a bitch of a Goddess to go kill now." Nosdyn said with a very calm voice.

Nosdyn walked with a limp at first, getting used to walking again. He was not quite undead himself, he was not quite dead nor living.

A different sort of transformation had occurred before the underworld and the eyes of Oxxad and the shaman. A different type of rebirth, like a caterpillar changing into some grotesque and evolved form. Nosdyn represented a scourge. He walked slowly away from the two of them, and the pagan god's empty promises of redemption.

"Stop him..." Oxxad said to Gum.

But it was already too late...Nosdyn had found himself.

Thank you both for participating in this battle.

Just a quick note before the final scores are announced.

As per the announcement made on the 31st March, we are temporarily limiting "feedback heavy" judgments for members to ensure that no threads get caught in limbo and that all rewards are issued in a timely fashion. Obviously, competitive judgments must be done for Citadel battles, but, and I stress purely temporarily, feedback will now be limited. I apologise if anything comes out as particularly vague or unhelpful as a result, but I am MORE than happy to expand on the below scores over PM, in discord or whatever. Hit me up if you need.

Now, onto the final scores!

Judgment

Nosdyn vs Gum do Mugu

Plot:

Story- 4 / 5
Setting- 4 / 6
Pacing- 5 / 5

Character:

Communication- 5/7
Action-5/6
Persona- 5/7

Prose:

Mechanics - 4 / 7
Clarity- 5 / 7
Technique- 4 / 7

Wildcard: 8 / 8

Final Score: 49 / 65

Gum do Mugu wins!


Comments:

Whilst Gum kept a relatively consistent theme throughout, I felt there were a number of inconsistencies at the start for Nosdyn. For example, it seemed he had no idea where he was or what he had been doing, but in the same post (post one) seemed to have a number of deeply warming memories. This seemed odd to me, but otherwise the rest of the thread recovered to an average level.

Nosdyn, one thing that hurt you (in a purely competitive sense) was that I felt you gave very basic lip service to the setting, whereas Gum took the basics and expanded on them far more. To coin a decorating analogy, it was like you built a stud wall with wood, but Gum then plastered, painted and decorated after you left. I felt like I was getting most of my vision of the cave from Gum.

This is by NO means a Nosdyn-bash, though - what I REALLY like is how much energy you pour into him. By far and away, he is your best character (controversial maybe?) and the way you write him makes me feel like you ARE him, at times. This is a good trait.

However, this is a competitive judgment, and unfortunately on this occasion I have to judge Nosdyn against Gum and not on their stand alone merits (of which there are many on both sides). In Gum, Nos, you are going up against someone who I feel brings a different flavour to the RP dish with his characters. It's no different here; he really made me invest in the Xangu shaman in this battle, and I think the difference in my scoring is a reflection of how heavily each of you made me believe in your characters and how real they felt to me. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE Nosdyn, but I think you can really put in an extra few percent to make me invest.

My final comments relate to the dreaded prose part of the judgment.

Nosdyn, I really am sorry to say this but Gum absolutely murdered you here, and although I cringed when I typed the score out above (believe me, I don't like it anymore than you won't like reading it), there was a chasm between you. The difference between you is a combination of basic spelling and grammatical errors (innumerable on your part, Nos, especially easily avoidable ones) and technique. Gum made the odd error here and there, but I feel that Gum gives me something more with his writing; exploring different ways of presenting his work to the reader that keeps things fresh and generally keeping on top of his basic errors, presumably with spellcheck.

It's not that you are terrible with your technique, but you didn't provide enough power in your writing to really bring out the full potential of Nosdyn and tell the story better through your technique, on the day.

I feel like I need to conclude on a positive note for the both of you. For a moment, ignore the "formality" of the judgment above, and take pride in the fact you both have two very fun, deeply interesting characters that you both love to write. That's what we all want to see here on Althanas, and I love watching you both write, whether its against each other or individually. Whilst the judgment above is, and only should be taken as, a snapshot assessment of one thread in a whole character lifespan, take the negatives and the positives from it but don't dwell, and come back to kick ass another time.

Rewards

Gum do Mugu receives 1,925 EXP and 104 GP!

Nosdyn receives 350 EXP and 89 GP!

Rewards added!