TWO FORSAKEN ENTER, ONE FORSAKEN LEAVE
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Saves: +1 Fort, +1 Reflex
Having watched the gruesome torture of Blackerly, the Walker in Darkness continues its slow and methodical circling of the scene, tail flicking left and right as it observes the aftermath with the attentiveness of a predator. Six eyes focus on Oswald, and then down to the poppet that he had set aside before beginning that grim task. The Walker makes a soft, silken sound like a purr with undertones of rattling metal before circling back to Drisella and waiting somewhere nearby in the darkness.
The Walker in Darkness is just as much a wolf in sheep's clothing as Drisella is, but for wholly other reasons. When Barnabas gouges out a portion of Blackerly's eye, the terrible creature releases a rattling sound like cabled wires clattering inside of a steel drum. It steps forward, just enough to breathe in something with a loud snort; fear, blood, something more ethereal. Then the Walker moves back to Barnabas' side and lets its chitinous, segmented tail gently brush along the man's blade arm as it murmurs something that -- for once -- isn't in some pit-spawned tongue. "When a man dies in the name of another God," its voice is a cacophony of whispers, each of them sounding like the voices of drowned men still slick with water, "the soul does not move on, but is gifted to He whose name is invoked at the time of death." The voice is a whisper, enough for Barnabas and Blackerly to make out clearly. "The pious do not fear death, because they know that their God awaits them." Turning its sixfold eyes up to Barnabas, Walker suggests, "Show him that stone walls and iron bars do not alone make a prison."
There was a time when the Walker in Darkness has its many eyes set on Kergh, as if it had seen something in the dwarf that it wanted. Now, however, the oily shadow on four legs has stalked up behind Barnabas, even as Drisella sulkingly walks away from the proceedings. Making itself known with a throaty growl that sounds like something grumbling into a tin can, the Walker upturns its head towards Barnabas, inspecting him with all six eyes, before turning its attention towards Blackerly. The Walker's snaking tail curls behind Barnabas, drifts by cheek level, and the tapered point motions towards Blackerly's eye slowly. Then, it grows silent and still, watching.
Some time during this discussion, the shadows reclaimed the Walker in Darkness.Now an inky shape in the already dark night, the predator stalked around the periphery of the group, in the long, dark shadows cast by flickering torchlight, through the puddles of rainwater swirled pink with blood. A single, sinuous tail lashing back and forth in silent procession from a creature that is nearly more shadow than flesh. It doesn't make a sound, not even when Drisella notices it has gone off on its own. Looking up from one of the dead soldiers she crouches over, the young woman withdraws her dagger from his face and stares wide-eyed at the empty space of courtyard where she'd thought it just was. "Hello?" She sweeps her hair back from her face, rainslicked hair clinging to the shape of her skull as she strides barefoot over to where she hears conversation, a freshly bloodied knife still in hand. Behind Arianna, the shadows have teeth. ____________
Clinging to the side of the ramparts, the Walker listens to the sound of the moving guards. The rattle of armor, the hiss of breath, the patter of rain displaced by their bodies. As one of the guards comes by where the creature is hidden from sight, the Walker moves with the sudden alacrity of a predator, springing up over the wall. It appears for only a brief moment as a glistening black shape with wide jaws of dagger-like teeth. The creature's maw snatches the guard by the shoulder, sinks into armor enough to secure a firm hold, and then hoists the guard off of his feet and hurls him bodily over the side of the wall, screaming on his fall to the courtyard below where he lands with a clatter of armor and a sickening crunch of broken bones. By the time the other guard has a chance to look back, the tarry beast has already receded back down below the wall and out of sight.
Hearing the screams and picking up the scent of burning flesh, the Walker in Darkness turns to look at Drisella staring out the window and drops to the floor below with a clatter of its claws. The beast makes a noise in the back of its throat, eliciting the girl's attention before starting out the door after Kergh. Something has the beast's attention. Walker bounds down the stairs, the tip of its tail smacking sharply against the tower wall a few times as it rounds the stairwell down to the ground floor. Without hesitation, the creature pads through the blood of the fallen, leaving paw-like prints in its wake. The eidolon quickly moves over the fallen bodies and out the front door to where Brother Harvin is still burning in unconsciousness from the alchemist's fire. With a growl, the beast steps over to the smoldering cleric, firelight reflected in its eyes. The Walker looks up, then, to Drisella in the window and watches her intently, as if waiting for something... ________
Clinging to that spot on the wall above the entrance to the tower, Walker in Darkness waits in silence, tail lashing back and forth as its tri-fold eyes stare intently on its point of ambush. It has no intention of going to rescue the vanguard of the forsaken -- better to wait and lure the others to their demise. ______
Letting out a rumbling growl, the Walker in Darkness circles around behind Kergh and prowls to the interior wall of the tower. Claws scratch at stone before the beast vaults itself up onto a desk, then latches on to the stone wall and begins crawling upwards towards the ceiling. The ichor-coated musculature of the Walker glides over unusual metal parts as it climbs the wall and portions of the tower ceiling before coming to rest directly above the door, its tail lashing back and forth slowly like a cat waiting to pounds. Its jaws open, revealing gleaming steel teeth as another rattling growl slips out of its maw. _________
As Drisella takes nervous steps back and away from the door when discussions of battle emerge, the Walker moves in to fill the young woman's space. It is like one aspect of a personality fading to the background, while another emerges to the foreground, but with less symbolism and more direct physicality. As it moves, the wound in the Walker's side oozes black ichor and the beast has a subtle limp on the flank that was stabbed. The Walker moves to the doorway, tail lashing back and forth behind it, sweeping discarded books aside as it does. Finally, it comes to stand beside Kaynen, looking up at him with all six of its eyes and a single slap of its tail down on the ground as if to imply, I am ready.
Walker is at 1hp and could probably use some healing.
Having left Drisella's side, her erstwhile and monstrous companion stalks through the ruins of the tower, pushing charred books and papers aside with its clawed hand. Six eyes scan the materials, intently looking for something. After a moment, the creature's multiple eyes square on a document and its tail lashes out, pinning down a record within arm's reach of Arianna. The creature presses the tip of its tail firmly against the tome, then approaches slowly, snatching the record up with its jaws before shaking it wildly and sending the papers scattering to the floor. Piece by piece it flips through the papers with one clawed forelimb, searching for something. Then, seeing whatever it was it was searching for, the walker in darkness backs away from the records and returns to Drisella, who has occupied herself with circling Grumblejack inquisitively. ___________
A few moments after the bloodied young girl enters the room, something else entirely emerges through the doorway from behind her. At first it looks like a patch of moving shadow, but then something far more animalistic becomes visible. Four and a half feet at the shoulder and leonine in build, its head is a slick, nearly featureless protrusions on a long neck with jaws like the bladed steel of a beartrap. Six, beady black eyes stare out at the room, fire reflected in them and across the tarry ichor that coats its oddly biomechanical body, where muscle, flesh and sinew merges with pitted metal. It growls, a rattling and hollow growl like a steel drum full of wire cables. Then, just as the beast gets within striking range of the girl, its brings its head over her shoulder and brushes its jaws against her cheek. Urging Drisella out of her fugue state, the creature steps fully into the room, lashing tail flicking back and forth like a bladed snake behind it. "" Its voice is low and whispery against her cheek, a susurrus of words like silk over barbed wire. Infernal:
"Do you feel the desperation?" _____
With one, feral shriek the Walker's jaws open and it lashes out at the guard, teeth sinking into his leg this time and ripping through soft flesh. As the guard collapses onto his knee from the pain, the Walker swings with one clawed paw, swiping across his head and merely buffeting him aside. As the guard recoils and tries to get back up, a second claw comes in and rakes across his face, splitting his cheek and mouth open before sending him collapsing to the ground. The walker lets out another, monstrous howl and then begins savaging the unconscious guard, raking with claws, tugging at limbs with powerful jaws and ferociously rending the man limb from limb, flinging bodyparts away before finally tearing at the guard's belly and devouring the soft meat inside. Only when it has finished with this grim task does it begin to move away from the body. Down in the oubliette, Drisella stares up with wide eyes, her fingers twitching and an ache in her side sympathetic to the injury that the walker suffered. Pressing one hand against the aching spot, the girl rises up onto her toes and watches as the Walker's blood-soaked muzzle eclipses the opening, followed by a scrape and a clatter as the bucket and rope come crashing down into the cell. Drisella hops out of the way as the empty bucket rings against the floor. Then, hesitantly easing over, she wraps her trembling hands around the length of rope and starts to pull herself up ever so slowly. The walker brings its mouth down to the rope and begins to tug, trying to help drag the girl up.
Lowering itself down into a crouch, the Walker in Darkness raises its hind-quarters and opens its jaws slowly, letting a trickle of acrid fluid dribble down to the floor. A heartbeat later and the creature springs into movement, leaping up off of the ground, bounding off of the wall adjacent to the table before crashing down atop the guard seated there with his book. The creature's jaws latch on to the guard's arm and squeeze down, tearing into flesh as its head jerks from side to side in a rending motion before finally flinging the guard aside, sending him crashing into the table, toppling it and the lamp over onto the ground with a crash. Blood rolling down its jaws, the Walker turns to the guard, letting out a rattling growl from deep within its six eyes blinking asynchronously. _____________________
Greasy black claws dig into stone, corded muscles of fibrous metal flex and construct, hauling a tarry mass of flesh and steel up through the opening in the oubliette. The long, tapered muzzle of the creature emerges first, steel teeth bared and drooling a thick line of black saliva. Its lashing tail rises up with bladed tip flicking back and forth as its hindquarters pull up from the opening, allowing the monstrosity to stretch to its full length like some nightmarish cat. Six beady eyes stare out from its tar-dappled, iron-carapaced head. A low, metallic rattling sound like barbed wire in a tin can echoes down its throat. With one lash of its tail from left to right, the abomination starts to stalk with oiled silence. __________
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