Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Shedding the Skin

They were called Snakes.

No one on the Rogue Isles knew where they came from or what they wanted. None of the residents of this land of iniquity had the slightest clue why these rampaging fiends slithered their way through the shadows of their private Gomorrah.

No one, that is, but Bloodravyn.

He knew these vile creatures well. He had last seen them on the last days of his former life, wielding spears and venom against those he kept closer than family. These creatures had stripped him of his dreams and murdered him in every way but the physical. They had left him for dead at the coils of their dark master...

...and now it was time to make them regret that mistake.

This was his first test according to Kalinda. Did she secretly know his history with these beasts or was this merely a coincidence? Did she only send him here to deal with a threat to the illicit citizens of Lord Recluse's city or was there a deeper reason? Something darker and more insidious? He did not trust the women, despite her beauty.

Or perhaps because of it. The last beautiful woman he trusted had returned his faith with failure, his love with lacerations and his devotion with damnation. Never again. Never again.

Memories were pushing at him again, so much so that he nearly fell victim to the first serpent in the shadows. He was in their dank tunnels at Kalinda's behest, here to prove himself to her. "If you can survive this simple errand, harder challenges await, my Lord."

He almost fell victim, but not quite. The humanoid snake managed to attack first but its bite never landed. He knew these things and he knew how they attacked. They always overextended on their first strike, seeking a swift end to their prey. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction.

Sidestepping, he let the mottled brown killer lunge past, mouth open and body stretched as far as its upper coil allowed. Then he lashed out with his forearm, swinging it like a sideways hammer across the thing's spread jaws. Impacting the unhinged bones on either side of its mouth, he jerked his arm sharply backwards, twisting his plate steel bracer to bring its bladed fins into sheering contact with scaled flesh.

The results were... bloody. The snake man's lower jaw exploded in a flare of red and fell to the earth, leaving the creature to gurgle helplessly. It writhed in pain, but not for long. Bloodravyn brought up his fist in a crushing blow, slamming it down into the thing's spine. As he did, edged plates of obsidian appeared around his gauntlet, transforming his crippling punch into a brutally lethal intrusion. His fist emerged through the reptilian's chest, spraying bone and gore across the stone below.

The snake dropped without a sound, dead before it landed. Ravyn stared at his hand, opening it slowly, watching as the fatal oily glass flowed over his armor, moving as he did. What was this? Why was this happening?

Pondering it seemed to awaken the rocks around him. Stone rose up around his feet, shrugging aside the coiling corpse to move over his legs and anchor to his armor. It was like a second skin, covering him in thick, resilient basalt. Crystals of obsidian jutted out in the same patterns as the spikes on his armor, forming deadly ridges in all the right places. Between the new plates of black stone, deep veins of magma blazed in hues of brilliant, brooding red.

It was the power of the planet's dark side, the rage of the Angry Earth...

...and it felt good.

So good in fact that he threw his head back and roared. It wasn't a shout. It wasn't a howl. It was a full throated, inhumanly wrathful sound. A true roar, bestial and drawn from the depths of his soul. It reverberated throughout the narrow passage, reaching the farthest ends of the cavern lair. The snakes all heard it.

The snakes all rushed forth.

And the snakes all died.

--------------------

Ravyn fell to his knees, exhaustion claiming every muscle, his body trembling as both strength and his earthen shell left him. He was naked again, clad only in his battle armor and a cascade of sweat beneath it. His body made a wet sound as he came down, his knees striking not stone but the burned and broken husks of his serpentine victims.

Gasping for breath, he hung his head, only dimly remembering the orgy of violence that brought him to this cave painted in blood and tiled in the massacred dead. He opened his eyes to stare are hands that had wrought such terrible destruction, mutely watching steam rise up off them as the blood was burned away by fires racing over his palm and then flickering out. "What is this?" he whispered, knowing there would be no answer.

"What have I become?"

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