Hopeless.
There was no other word to describe it.
The last of their defensive positions breached, overrun. And was it any wonder? Where they’d been expecting to defend against near endless hordes of mindless fodder, they’d instead been met with a coordinated assault.
An army well versed in the intricacies ...
2024-11-01 14:35:09 +0000 UTC View PostIt wasn’t long before the vessel was sufficiently pliable.
Warped and corrupted by her prolonged ministrations, until it personified the sordid depths that would best serve her needs. A ravaged display of wicked barbarity at first glance, the flayed and clearly tortured specimen lying atop her operation table was, in actuality, a p...
2024-11-01 14:32:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe freshwater swamplands to the east of the sheer spine mountain range, are a virulent breeding ground for infection and disease.
A forested wetland whose malformed Cypress’s range between varying stages of decay.
The taste of airborne rot contrasting the budding scents of life. A boot sucking mire utterly drained of i...
2024-11-01 14:18:35 +0000 UTC View PostFlight Lieutenant Lucile led her windstorm griffin familiar—aptly dubbed “Little Lucy,” for how darn cute she’d been in her infancy—through yet another sweeping circuit.
Biting her lip as, from nearly a kilometer up, all things told, she and her team scoured the ravaged tundra for any signs of their missing rift spawn. ...
2024-11-01 14:16:57 +0000 UTC View PostThe ground visibly quaked as, from almost a hundred feet up, the lion king’s prodigious bulk landed on the flat of the grasslands proper.
A low, rumbling growl reverberated from its deep chest, easily as wide around as she was tall.
Thunderous.
Like the dark promise of storm clouds just cresting the far hori...
2024-11-01 14:15:44 +0000 UTC View PostWhoever claimed crime doesn’t pay should probably take a good long look at the frankly obscene amounts of “pay” I made off with, after only a single well planned heist. And then maybe think long and hard about their stance on so called morality. Not that something so plainly false would ever have been uttered by a born resident of this...
2024-11-01 14:11:52 +0000 UTC View PostThe day was unpleasant. That much was obvious.
A dry sort of heat.
Like sticking her head directly into a baker’s oven, then throwing the rest of her body in after, just for the sake of consistency. From a clear blue sky, a burning ball of hate beat down on their arena turned blood slick battlefield. Painting the dry gr...
2024-10-29 21:28:35 +0000 UTC View PostThe drake could sense he was doing something and clearly recognized the threat G. Jun posed.
Something he’d been hoping distance and arrogance would prevent, much like it had with the Undying Lich. In retrospect, he supposed he’d been the arrogant one, to think such a convergence of fortuitous events would happen twice. ...
2024-10-29 21:17:49 +0000 UTC View PostSlamming head first into the bubbling iron cauldron, Jun, in turn, drenched those witches in the nearest vicinity with all its boiling contents.
Those he didn’t bowl over with his still flailing body outright, that is. With a sharp crack, Jun came to a sudden, explosive halt, colliding with the trunk of a tree hard enough to bruise...
2024-10-29 21:10:25 +0000 UTC View PostJun stared at the words for an unknowable amount of time.
Scouring them. Imprinting them. Burning them into his mind.
He thought he should feel something. Remorse perhaps? All laid out on paper like this, his actions weren’t exactly the noblest sort.
And yet this place…?
It made a mockery of the huma...
2024-10-29 21:01:14 +0000 UTC View PostIt hadn’t taken much to overpower the soul of this body’s previous inhabitant.
The patriarch’s brat had been weak. Pitifully so.
Oh, they say he would’ve made for a “great man” some day. Indeed, they said a lot of things. A kind and just ruler, blah blah blah. He wouldn’t know. He’d ...
2024-10-29 20:50:38 +0000 UTC View PostSand whipped past as they skimmed across the rising black dunes, barely a few meters off the ground, all things told.
Their speed such that the desert appeared to undulate beneath them, a rippling sea of charcoal granules baking under the intensity of the noonday sun. The gale force winds kicked up by their passage taking the occasio...
2024-10-29 20:48:14 +0000 UTC View PostPale faced and trembling, Meredith stared up at the high balcony where the princess, the demon, and the poacher reclined.
Her drink long forgotten, the familiar weight of a hand on her shoulder had the effect of accomplishing what slowly slackening fingers could not. The shatter of glass startling those in the vicinity nearly as much...
2024-10-29 20:40:09 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you think?” asked Eleanor, crouching over the glistening pile.
“I think it’s insane you’re even considering this,” R. Jun replied.
“But can’t you feel it? They’re practically overflowing with soul energy! You’ve seen the kinds of things some of the wealthier squires ate back at the dormitory...
2024-10-29 20:28:27 +0000 UTC View PostJun didn’t mind his leisurely pace so much, as he rode past expansive rice fields, humble domiciles, and sun tanned farmers in their conical hats—already hard at work, having risen with the light of dawn.
He found the scenery gorgeous within this trial world—sweeping fields, expansive forests, and spearing mountain ranges all—and ...
2024-10-29 20:19:10 +0000 UTC View Post“You’re scared,” he said, like it was a fact. “It’s understandable. We all are, to one degree or another. The total annihilation of the Black Sons was a shock to everyone. That it happened over the course of a single night, even more so. It was not something any of us expected, I’m sure,” more grumbling at this—the angry kind a m...
2024-10-29 19:59:11 +0000 UTC View PostEleanor deftly evaded yet another colossal downward strike.
Like a dancer, she moved with the seismic tremors that followed, sidestepping three other such attempts to smash her flat. Yet even as she stepped, twirled, and slashed with practiced ease, Eleanor keenly felt like a fish out of water—desperately gasping for air.
... 2024-10-29 19:54:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe young man froze, slowly turning to scrutinize him far more skeptically than before.
“I… I’m sorry?”
“Ah, no worries lad. All’s forgiven. There was no harm done, really. A bit taxing on these old bones of mine, I suppose but, other than that….”
The two locked eyes then. The young man clearly bewildered, while...
2024-10-29 02:31:59 +0000 UTC View PostThings were… actually going surprisingly well.
He found it entirely too suspicious. Still, given the unimaginable harvest he’d reaped, he figured this burst of productivity was well worth whatever calamitous disaster loomed on the far horizon.
Basic Mantra: [Sweeping Cleave] (...
2024-10-29 02:26:52 +0000 UTC View PostFor the briefest moment, when he first opened his eyes, only to see the blank void surrounding him on all sides, he worried that he’d somehow wound up right back in the middle of that unreal space between restarts.
The spike of fear he felt at the thought he’d be forced to do all of that again nearly sent him into paroxysms of pe...
2024-10-29 02:18:32 +0000 UTC View PostGoro tore across the sandy arena like all the gates of hell were at his back.
Crossing hundreds of meters in the time it took for Jun to fire off a single beam, planting a massive fist into one fancily armored cuirass, and punching—who he was just going to assume was this Grand Duke—straight through the opposite wall.
Jun rose to his feet and, on instinct, shuffled over to stand next to Goro.
The bovine man’s massive frame was already upright, his eyes fixed on the approaching contingent of guards. And more specifically, on the lone man at the center of their formation. He was tall for a human, middle aged, clean shaven, and with a receding hair...
2024-10-29 01:53:20 +0000 UTC View PostFloating in the endless void, Jun thought about a lot of things.
About his friends, about his enemies, about the weeks, going on a month now, he’d spent attempting this trial. The large majority of that time spent opposite a crotchety old woman with a penchant for provocation—playing a game he hadn’t seen nor heard of outside t...
2024-10-29 01:46:47 +0000 UTC View Post“W-well, that was a grand w-w-waste of time.”
“What was that?” hissed the amiable snake man.
“N-nothing,” Jun replied, trying and failing to repress a shiver.
He sneezed. Snorted. Wiped away the warm, dribbling excess with his tattered, moth eaten sleeve.
Damned cold.
He didn’t know how long h...
2024-10-29 01:42:43 +0000 UTC View PostYou have been found lacking during the Stage of Gathering.
Thankfully, failure is admissible in those young and uninitiated. In that way, some amount of leniency is not only allowed, but encouraged.
BE WARNED!
...
2024-10-29 01:36:34 +0000 UTC View PostJun nearly jumped out of his skin when Goro’s rumbling baritone snapped him from his gawping.
“It would be best not to linger. More are sure to arrive soon,” he gestured at the door they’d just entered from. “If you will follow me, I can get you situated. Somewhere to train, away from prying eyes and unpredictable tempers. The so...
2024-10-29 01:30:28 +0000 UTC View PostWho knew bending the fundamental stuff of reality to make cool shooty laser eyes would be such a major pain in the ass?
You’d think if they were called the “building blocks of creation,” they’d be easier to line up in a row. Not so, it would seem. Either creativity was dead on a primordial scale, a marked drop in appreciation...
2024-10-29 01:26:01 +0000 UTC View PostFrom the second they stepped foot on the hundredth floor it was apparent that something was off.
If the sickly green flames that flared to life from the many brasiers lining the walls weren’t indication enough, the half-skeletal figure reclining atop its throne of bones should’ve been a dead giveaway, no pun intended.
That and ...
2024-10-22 22:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostIgnoring S. Jun’s rather colorful language, as he described, in livid detail, just what he thought of this whole fifteen second swap idea, Jun briefly took a second to catch his bearings.
That was when stinging lines of pain brought to his attention the bird-like figure hovering up above. It was throwing things at him! Wel...
2024-10-22 22:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostJun deftly veered away from the skull shaped fireball—quick steps and acrobatic contortions winning him the day—careful to give the licking green tongues of necrotic flame a wide birth.
It only took a brief introduction to the wonders of necrosis and its myriad effects, to recognize that it, generally, made for a very bad time. Rollin...
2024-10-22 22:00:11 +0000 UTC View Post