War Shade's page

.:There is no pain/There is only pain. The sensation we understand, the absence we recognize, the effect we do not know. We are many thoughts with no minds to think them. We are the moment of battle, the tide of war, the scream of the dying on the battlefield, the last memory of home, the fretful sleep before the battle. We are many made one, and none complete. Like our arms we are broken. There is no hope. There is no relief. There is no fear. There is only fear. There is only anguish. There is only bitter tears. We are the horror of war, and we are the battlefield. We do not -feel-. We consume feeling. Our memories cannot be erased/we are our memories. We are dead/not dead. Your words tumble into the void of us and we choose to pick them up, or they would tumble endlessly into nothing. We have no mind/we are many minds.:

Churning in place, the gestalt being scathes the ground beneath it, rotating faster as if excited by thought. Legs sprout from the mass, made of broken blades, to prop it in place, only to once again be absorbed as it rears up like a serpent, petals wide open to reveal that hissing, endless vortex within, deep red light dappling from every break and seam but -pouring- from the central "eye", coloring the nerve strand crimson.

.:We are eternal torment. We are hunger incarnate. We are the drum of war. We are the blood that soaks the earth. We are the foetid mud that chokes the fallen where they lie. We do not care for what we have lost/we ache for what we have lost. It is our fact. It is our being. The recruit shat himself as the blade carved deep and we are the fear he knew in his last instant. The sergeant fell when the bolt took his horse and he was pinned beneath its bulk and we are the lingering horror of effluence, viscera, mud, gathering around him, as the rain fell, drowning him long after the battle's end, unfound by comrades scattered by the horror. The healer cut her hand as she pried the spear's tip from the soldier's thigh, and he died in her arms; we are the last spell she prayed to heaven when the barbarians overran the line. We are the exultant scream of the berserker as he clove through the enemy ranks, his guts speared on pike and spilt across his churning legs, bringing more down before him before he was claimed in furious death.:

.:We are all of these, and all of them dead. Whether dead a thousand years or whether the carrion crows feed on our organs even now, we are more and less than all of this. We will seek others like us, we will add them to our knowledge. We will take, and be, and know, endlessly. For that is what we are. All that makes a thing living, we are it extinguished in war.:

A brief, basso hum, a vibration that ripples through the roiling mass of shattered shields and rusted chain .:Show us the next step. We march to battle ever onward.:

.:We remember so many things...: The air vibrates around the vortex as armor scrapes on stone, slicks through the flesh that trails the floor, and jagged edges clatter together amidst grimacing helms and shredded leather. .:We remember how Adelia cried when we told her we were off to war. We remember the way we felt our bowels release as the blade plunged into our gut. We remember the searing agony as the horse's hoof came down again upon our already broken thigh. We remember the stink of the heathen's brains as we bashed our mailed fists through his head again, and again, and again, our father's sword lost in the muck.:

Without face or facing the tendrils rise up and open like a flower, as if the bloody cast of light within the center of the whirling debris were a great myopic eye peering toward the nerve-like center of the room. .:We remember you. We remember the maker's discussion of our ethereal nature, of our incorporeal essence within the shell of steel. We require no feeding, but we remember being fed. Remember the crash of iron as we were burned entire by the scorching ball of fire, and then the satisfaction of our entirety being again restored to wholeness.:

The aggressive tendrils jag and stretch and point, before the worm-like bulk of the trailing entity collapses back in on itself and hunkers towards the floor in mobile supposition. .:We will see the world beyond the walls. We will seek out other souls to add to our collection. We will understand our place. Show us the other experiments, so we may dismantle them.:

Really sorry about the delays you guys. Some hospital drama and some network drama coincide to make an interesting couple of weeks.

When Quizzle pauses in the doorway, the shade, eager to see more of the world outside the only 20x20 space it has ever known, hurries along as well. While corporeal it is not -quiet-, and Elgorbb will know that the spinning blender of undeath is directly behind him almost immediately upon stepping into the weird, slodgy room.

Unfamiliar with this kind of... let's call it architecture... Unfamiliar with this kind of architecture, the thing goes immediately into the middle of the room nearer the primary supporting pillar/nerve cluster.

.:What is this?:

.:We are not yet hungry...: the War Shade insists, but it spins through itself once again to hover nearer the Wispwraith. .:But let us leave. Let us see more of this place. Let us see more of this world.: Spinning and scraping increases as the impatience grows, the monstrous conglomeration of parts reaching a consensus.

The War Shade begins tinkling around the room, dragging it's trail of garbage behind it, the waste of war scampering to catch up to the mobile heap of broken weapons and armor that it helps to define. It pokes at the other cages, curious, like a cat examining new surrounds.

Sated by design and seeing the light flicker out of the Gatorpede, the Shade immediately loses interest. With the clatter of dropped steel it collapses in on itself and pushes through its own position, 'turning around' in fluid fashion to face the other way, and looming vaguely closer to the Homunculus. .:Dead... all dead. Killed in battle. Rent asunder. Left to fester on the field. Burning flesh and tattered hide. See it decompose?:

A trail of shattered debris slithers behind the whirling mass of broken refuse, tinkling softly against the stonework as it races to rejoin the mass of negatively charged detritus. The blood-red light that glows darkly within the whirling mass sometimes shimmers out through the metal, through the leather, through the wood, casting eerie shadows around it before being again cut off by the wash of ever rotating armament. The heat the gryphoenix gives off is palpable, and the closest thing - thus far - that the War Shade has experienced to pain. It gives a wide berth, flowing wide around to observe and putting itself in ideal charging position 15 feet away from the Grizzled beasty's fire-scorched starboard flank.

.:A living thing... such rage... but is it bred to war?:

Tendrils flex and the slow-to-start battlefield slithers itself into position, tendrils of shattered blade and jagged shield extending in an aggressive test of its own reach and capabilities.

.:Such rage... shall we taste it?:

Init: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (2) + 3 = 5

Patient and introspective, the War Shade simply moves out of the dirt-floored enclosure which is all it remembers. The smell of blood and rust follows it, and the tinkling scrape of broken edges skims over the stone as it moves away from the formerly shaded scene of its genesis. Ten feet further than it has ever been before, it drifts, unsure of itself, but part of its unliving attention is focused on the delicious edge of the Rakshasa's blade, invisible to living eyes but clear to its salivating sense of hunger.

.:Bloodshed?:

Woot woot! Raise the (Dead)Roof! Delicious HP and combat bonuses.

The slow shuffle and spin of broken arms and armors becomes faster, and tinged with the low sub-vocal murmer of a dozen voices. A weapon is drawn! There will be combat!? Even glutted as the undead mass of spirit and metal is, the promise of its one and only source of sustenance causes a tinge like excitement, like the apprehension the night before a battle that lays like a pall over the fitfully slumbering army. Blades bristle like raised hackles as the undead oozes towards the site of its existence-long barrier, and tentatively, so hesitantly, slips across it. Nothing holds it in place any longer, its senses alert and aware of all that is living, all that is of interest, and daggers spread around its periphery like raised hackles, deadly goosebumps, when it takes its first 'steps' into this livening aura that prepares it for the heat of war.

.:Delicious:

Alternatively, the little homunculus looks slightly delicious...

Warped red light flickers across the earthen floor of the War Shade's cage, its composite parts swirling with the faint rustling of a speechless, settling army. Like a coruscating eye, the vortex at the center watches the plight of the shrieking homunculus with detatched interest, barely taking note - yet - of the distant, many-legged assailant coming to claim its meal. Without loyalty or malice it simply watches with the expectant hush of a crowd of bored observers, swirling with a faint scrape over its now wall-less enclosure.

.:Where am I?: