Versus Gum.

[Nosdyn]

(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...

[Gum do Mugu]

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.

[Nosdyn]

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.

[Gum do Mugu]

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.

[Nosdyn]

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.

[Gum do Mugu]

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?"

[Nosdyn]

(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.

[Gum do Mugu]

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]

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."

[Gum do Mugu]

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.