Warning: I decided to have much more madcap fun with this in the light that I lose by default. Krunk did ask, however.
-----
Act X: Didn't Actually Happen
Chapter X: My Brother, My Captain, My King
-What the fuck is with this shit?-
-----
You know, personally, i've never been that into special effects. I know, I know, I'm not exactly one to complain about overt drama when my preferred method of entry can best be described as 'costly' with the default inclusion of the word 'radius', but perhaps it takes one to know one. There are other things like that, where it most certainly takes one to know one, like good liars and even greater clowns. Want to know how you can tell if you're a really good liar? Most people think they are, most people tell themselves that not getting called out on suspicions is proof of real cunning... but it's not. If you're a really great liar, you can spot the really great lies.
I was never a good liar, even before death. I never understood how to be someone else, to take on the mentality of a persona, I was one of the faux-liars, who think excuses make good lies. A good liar never needs excuses, a good liar never gets in a position to be caught.
A good liar never lies. I'm not a good liar.
But, if you can believe it, I do make the occasional bet.
-----
"Man I hate those little dotted lines."
Alpha looks up, the bastards neck swiveling to find what the hell I'm talking about. "What the hell are you talking about?" he says, proving that I should be in fortune telling or a related field. What is he on about, anyway, I know for a fact he doesn't sleep. Hell, I don't sleep, but where I can see his open eyes he just gets to stare at my face like the love interest out of bad anime. I only ever saw one anime, and it was about giant mecha with swords, but I think I got the gist of the genre with that one viewing; fucked up.
"Not a man jack of them could fence" I inform Alpha, who goes to speak, but is rudely interrupted by the ground under my little hideaway turns into the distinctive rubbery mess of a portal. For some reason, I've always liked the idea of gates more. You can write impressive sound-based imagery with a gate, and set up your feelings just right before the story.
And honestly, I have no idea why I just thought that. Luckily, I don't think it for long, as it seems hell has frozen over.
-----
There are around 12 things in hell that might surprise the eternally tortured people within it. A knight falling from the ceiling was not one of them, the crusades had been great for things like that (it was the look of surprise on their faces that was the most amusing, no virgins for half and no clods for the other). However: A knight falling into the shallows of the river, after tumbling profusely through the air flailing like an epileptic spider, cursing all 'wobbly blue portal fuckers', was certainly almost one of the 12. The knight attempting a perfect olympic-class acrobatics landing was also almost on the list.
The sight of said knight, now in a rather rigid and straight position, spearing up to his shoulders into the soft sand, causing a long moment of silence punctuated briefly by profanity, was one of the 12. It didn't help that his head was now the only thing above the sand, and it was also submerged in about eight inches of water, and thrashing slightly.
It would have been one of 12 sights to surprise the waiting dead at the river styx, if any of them had been looking. The sight of two horns wiggling indignantly just above the waterline was fairly mundane, when you considered you were dead and in hells version of hell... a waiting room. Oh, and the bleak and oppressing obliteration of your memories in the face of total recall, that might detract from the experience. Still, 8.5 on the routine from the metal guy.
-----
Axle stepped through the portal first, staring out at the bleak surroundings intently before moving aside. His mind was divided, half reminding the other that he had seen bleaker places than this, and the other trying desperately to encompass the enormity of his surroundings. Above him the sky was black, blacker than the night sky. It wasn't a canvas for light, it was it's grave. His staring was only interrupted when his charge pushed his head forwards sharply, lowering his gaze to meet her stare. "Focus" She said, pointing upwards "this place isn't one to go daydreaming, that's half of its torture". I like pop songs. Do you like pop songs? I'm a huge Robbie Williams fan, really. He just has a certain... pazzaz
-slap- "What did I just say?" Athena said, gripping Axle's jaw and pointing him towards the river. "You were drifting off again, listening to your thoughts. A nice change for you, but this is not the best time to dive into philosophy". She left the man rubbing his face and wandered towards the river, the silvery surface glittering in the distance. The place reeked of death, and misery, and regret. She needed to focus, just as much, as human emotions would grip her thoughts now that she had the body to experience emotion. But what I have, she thought with a grin, is the willpower of a god.
Axle could only think that he had no idea who Robbie Williams was, and so he staggered off after the Lady.
Beneath them, the sand stirred imperceptibly. Crawling thoughts and memories worming out of the sand like creatures of the low tide. It takes one to know one, and the dead know the dead when they feel them. Souls detached, bodies lost. Here they could wind and wend, breed and bite. Memories seek to be re-lived, and when souls go to pieces there are a million memories that cannot die.
Three ferrymen had just turned up at the river Styx, and they would ride any vessel they could.
-----
"Doctor, her pulse is dropping!" The nurse said in a panic, shuffling urgently and awkwardly around the end of the bed towards the dated medical equipment. Lines spiked and dropped madly as the woman they were hooked too began to droop in her bed. Her legs, bound in stirrups, dropped loosely as the maternity ward streaked into action. Medicine is a recent invention, and people were still fairly primitive in the early 70's, and couldn't dress worth a damn. Now, however, their thoughts were off flared... everything, and on the mother who was inexplicably dying before them.
Axle pressed his face against the window of the ward, his tie long since ripped off as his panic mounted. They had to let him inside, he needed to see he- what? Where was he? What was he wearing? Why in gods name was the Lady in labour!?. He stepped back and kicked through the door, the afternoon sun coming through the windows blinding him slightly as he rushed in. "Sir, I know your worried but the doctor is coming!" A nurse shouted, trying to hold him back. Athena was waking up, looking around wearily before focusing on her apparent and sudden pregnancy.
"Relax, you idiot" She said, even as the machines informed her she was dying "Focus, this isn't our memory". She looked around in curiosity, only wincing slightly as the feelings of a doomed woman leaked into her mind. "When I die, the memory ends" She assured him, watching her own pulse get weaker... weaker... ... ... weaker...
"Doctor! Hurry!" A nurse screamed out the door, and Axle was bowled over as the surgeon entered the room. He had a surgical mask over his own black one, and a large white coat and gloves stretched over his steel skin, and he went to work fast.
-----
Dear god, this woman is dying!
"Nurse, get me a shot of enduromines and morphine, we need to stabilize her heart rate" I inform the closest nurse, who just gives me a big dumb stare. Here we are, in an age of enlightenment, and you'd think she'd never seen a black doctor before. Disgusting. So, we can the rather amusingly positioned woman in the bed, the one giving me the death-stare, is our target. That makes trendy in the cardigan number two, and they could hardly mistake me for House. That would be cool, though.
Waggling my eyebrows at legs, I beckon an equipment table over before turning back to the woman "Come here often?". Bone saw, brilliant, conveniently effective on other things beside bone. I brush aside the increasingly frantic staff, advancing on the bound *****. "We need to amputate" I say, apologetically "You've lost the will to live, you see. We'll send one of them to Tatooine". To her credit, he she only sneers as I perform the worlds most direct and possibly most awesome cesarian.
-----
Oh, sweet, my turn. And I must say, I couldn't have a more perfect memory brutally forced into my senses. When it comes to hellish mind-rape, I really can't say i'm disappointed. Loving it, really, keep it up. Do you think we could get some Robbie Williams in here? What? I'd think more on the matter, but it seems a large hairy man is trying to brutalize me with a batteaxe. I love the norse people, so full of vigor. I say, is this that tweed-obsessed dweeb from the hospital?
"She's not dead" I assure him meekly, as he attempts to decapitate an inexplicably armored defenseless peasant. Viking steel just seems a little lackluster against improbable hellish metal. Wait, if i need to die for this t -thwack- Ah, he's going to jus -thwack- beat... bwea... bludg -thwack- gnnngh... concussions suc -thwack-
Urgh...
-----
Lady Athena sat up first, looking around at the coughing ruin that filled the room. Her arm was covered with poxes, her chest felt like it was filled with liquid. the taste of blood filled her mouth and she vomited a black stream over her chest before gasping for air. She, she knew she shouldn't feel, but it was... so... so... painful. She looked in panic as Axle, who had already died in this hellish vision, before she bucked and brought up more of her lungs. Across from her, gore dripped out of the helm of a stilled knight, running down the plates of his armor.
She fell out of the bed, tears of blood rolling down her face as she tried to push herself to her knees as another surge of agony rushed through her body and she opened her mouth to let the last of her life jet out. She fell forward, to weak to lift herself out of the pool of her own bile. She couldn't breathe even if her face was above the liquid, and she fell into her own memories as she jerked in drowning. She had been around to see the plague, the rolling wave of death as it swept through the world of man. Great men were laid low like commoners, and she had feasted on those begging for release. She tried to focus on those moments as her body screamed to try and suck back in the black slime that smothered her face, in a pathetic attempt to breathe. The taste and smell overwhelmed her as she died.
Behind her, a trickle of blood dripped out of the already red helm as the knight reached out for the scissors on the table beside him. "I want to be the doctor again" he said weakly, before jamming the blades into his own face, to quicken the next death in despair. He listened intently as he died, trying to catch a glimpse of the memories that filled his own head. He was being told something, they spoke when he was the dutch peasant... they... they...
-----
"Oh bugger" Axle said as the tank rolled over him.
Athena tried to look disinterested as the guerillas tore into her home with dark grins on their faces.
The building roared as the flames coiled up its length
Black armor tore in the light of the nuclear explosion
A stomach fat with nothing but hunger screams one more time as starvation claimed them
Axle's mother (he assumed) screamed as he was tossed into the chamber with the others
The cars horn sounded in panic as it roared towards terrified eyes
Steel skin struggled to breath beneath the surface of river
The knife slid into his ribcage even as the other mugger tore open is wallet
A steel fist raised over and over as it bludgeoned into the stee- wait.
-----
Oh, another beating. I wonder if this one will break his hands o- no No. no. no. no.
Axle sighed as he was tossed off the shoulder he had awoken on. Oh, a sacrifice, this was new. Wait... did this look familiar?
Lady Athena reclined as the venom coursed through her veins. Cleopatra, classy.
-----
The sand heaved upwards, the river styx vomiting out the writhing black form of it's newest sufferer. Evil rolled back and forth across the sand, shaking in silent agony. Across from him, Axle had fallen to his knees and stared blankly into space. Beside him, Athena was already upright, brushing off her arms and walking towards the twitching metal man. So, even his attitude had failed in the face of a million deaths. She wondered what had claimed him, in the end? Another infant beating, a thousand brutal rapes, the agony of fire or disease?
The spasms ceased as the knight rolled onto his back, gasping for air as he remembered.
Remembered staring through green eyes, into the face of madness.
"It takes one to know one" Athena said, propping the knight up to slump forward. "I thought I knew you in that hospital room, the very first death today. But where I survived by retreating to what I am, it turns out what you were just wasn't as hard as you thought". Her eyes rolled back as the darkness poured out of her mouth, uncoiling and encompassing the knight, probing for a way to find his flesh and flay his soul. The bastard was practica-
The stone crushed into her head, breaching into her brain cavity in one brutal motion. Fragments of skull scythed through grey matter and Athena screamed for an instant as her host died. The darkness already outside her body was wracked with agony as it was severed, the wretched shadow becoming a writhing serpent as it rolled off Evil and into the sand.
Axle stood over her, rock in hand, and the memories of being devoured by his mistress in his mind.
And then a rather larger rock hit him in the back of the head, and what poured out of the front of his face wasn't any eldritch spirit...
-----
The Hunger writhed on the sands as Evil staggered over it. The blackness tried to claw into his boot, but found no gap in the metal. It needed... life. It needed to feed, to become strong again so it could just rip this arrogant bastard open and tear him from within his shell. it needed... it needed souls. It writhed as a black gauntlet gripped it and lifted it into the air. It's un-eyes met the no-eyes gaze of the dreadnaught, and it felt the curiosity wash over it.
"Do you know" Said the armoured man "That I almost forgot that?". He walked out, waist deep, into the river. The legendary tide of death pulled at his feet, but he braced himself against the tug as the ghostly forms of the dead formed behind the pair. "I almost forgot, in all the fun, what made me who I am. I almost forgot, if you can imagine, how I died". Now it was only his head and the dark serpent held aloft that hung above the waters. "Watching all those souls flash by in misery, it just reminded me of why I do what I do, to try and stop it. Look over there, on the bank, it's bloody Euripides. He had a quote, you know; 'I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.'"
But the serpent wasn't listening. It was thinking on what the knight had said about souls, and realizing it was staring at the feast of a lifetime on the banks of the river styx. But... the knight knew! he was dragging it away from the bounty, the lives of all that had ever lived! It could become a god, feasting on those who waited for the absent boatman! Curse this metal fuckwit! Oh, profanity felt good. That was one thing humanity had right, making words powerful! Wait...
The knight was submerged, now, holding the snake barely above the water as he trudged towards the other side of death. But there was one word, one word with power, like a curse at a wedding. Because while the knight may have been his first victim, somebody had to have been him.
The serpent dove underwater, and whispered the knight his name.
And the hand went slack, and the Hunger dove towards the Feast.
-----
I came up for air a while later. Because out there was not a place to be while some tentacle bloats itself to godhood. Funny thing though, it takes one to know one. I wonder if she's found out what that means yet? A good liar never lies, I really had forgot my name. But i'd just bloody told her I like to remember things like that, and she goes and hands me ammunition. A good liar never lies, and I never lied about the souls on the beach. She can eat for eternity the souls of the dead. The final rest for restless souls, not the most traditional boatman. Hang on, did I just improve hell?
Coming out of the water, it looks like Cthulhu really let herself go. The sky is filled with her, writhing and weeping as she tears at her own flesh with her many, many arms.
Looks like you retreated inwards, and didn't find something hard enough, my lovely. Bad thing for an upset stomach, all the misery in the worlds history, it'll go straight to your... uh... you. It takes one to know one, and it looks like you may have caught some humanity from that pretty little thing you were riding.
-----
The knight swore briefly as the portal opened up beneath him and he fell through. And something in his mind, a tune of ringing fists and blood, one that had rung through the violence of all his deaths in rage, stopped him making the connection of just how he had known of the Hungers humanity.
It takes one to know one. What does it take to know yourself?
-----
Act X: Didn't Actually Happen
Chapter X: My Brother, My Captain, My King
-What the fuck is with this shit?-
-----
You know, personally, i've never been that into special effects. I know, I know, I'm not exactly one to complain about overt drama when my preferred method of entry can best be described as 'costly' with the default inclusion of the word 'radius', but perhaps it takes one to know one. There are other things like that, where it most certainly takes one to know one, like good liars and even greater clowns. Want to know how you can tell if you're a really good liar? Most people think they are, most people tell themselves that not getting called out on suspicions is proof of real cunning... but it's not. If you're a really great liar, you can spot the really great lies.
I was never a good liar, even before death. I never understood how to be someone else, to take on the mentality of a persona, I was one of the faux-liars, who think excuses make good lies. A good liar never needs excuses, a good liar never gets in a position to be caught.
A good liar never lies. I'm not a good liar.
But, if you can believe it, I do make the occasional bet.
-----
"Man I hate those little dotted lines."
Alpha looks up, the bastards neck swiveling to find what the hell I'm talking about. "What the hell are you talking about?" he says, proving that I should be in fortune telling or a related field. What is he on about, anyway, I know for a fact he doesn't sleep. Hell, I don't sleep, but where I can see his open eyes he just gets to stare at my face like the love interest out of bad anime. I only ever saw one anime, and it was about giant mecha with swords, but I think I got the gist of the genre with that one viewing; fucked up.
"Not a man jack of them could fence" I inform Alpha, who goes to speak, but is rudely interrupted by the ground under my little hideaway turns into the distinctive rubbery mess of a portal. For some reason, I've always liked the idea of gates more. You can write impressive sound-based imagery with a gate, and set up your feelings just right before the story.
And honestly, I have no idea why I just thought that. Luckily, I don't think it for long, as it seems hell has frozen over.
-----
There are around 12 things in hell that might surprise the eternally tortured people within it. A knight falling from the ceiling was not one of them, the crusades had been great for things like that (it was the look of surprise on their faces that was the most amusing, no virgins for half and no clods for the other). However: A knight falling into the shallows of the river, after tumbling profusely through the air flailing like an epileptic spider, cursing all 'wobbly blue portal fuckers', was certainly almost one of the 12. The knight attempting a perfect olympic-class acrobatics landing was also almost on the list.
The sight of said knight, now in a rather rigid and straight position, spearing up to his shoulders into the soft sand, causing a long moment of silence punctuated briefly by profanity, was one of the 12. It didn't help that his head was now the only thing above the sand, and it was also submerged in about eight inches of water, and thrashing slightly.
It would have been one of 12 sights to surprise the waiting dead at the river styx, if any of them had been looking. The sight of two horns wiggling indignantly just above the waterline was fairly mundane, when you considered you were dead and in hells version of hell... a waiting room. Oh, and the bleak and oppressing obliteration of your memories in the face of total recall, that might detract from the experience. Still, 8.5 on the routine from the metal guy.
-----
Axle stepped through the portal first, staring out at the bleak surroundings intently before moving aside. His mind was divided, half reminding the other that he had seen bleaker places than this, and the other trying desperately to encompass the enormity of his surroundings. Above him the sky was black, blacker than the night sky. It wasn't a canvas for light, it was it's grave. His staring was only interrupted when his charge pushed his head forwards sharply, lowering his gaze to meet her stare. "Focus" She said, pointing upwards "this place isn't one to go daydreaming, that's half of its torture". I like pop songs. Do you like pop songs? I'm a huge Robbie Williams fan, really. He just has a certain... pazzaz
-slap- "What did I just say?" Athena said, gripping Axle's jaw and pointing him towards the river. "You were drifting off again, listening to your thoughts. A nice change for you, but this is not the best time to dive into philosophy". She left the man rubbing his face and wandered towards the river, the silvery surface glittering in the distance. The place reeked of death, and misery, and regret. She needed to focus, just as much, as human emotions would grip her thoughts now that she had the body to experience emotion. But what I have, she thought with a grin, is the willpower of a god.
Axle could only think that he had no idea who Robbie Williams was, and so he staggered off after the Lady.
Beneath them, the sand stirred imperceptibly. Crawling thoughts and memories worming out of the sand like creatures of the low tide. It takes one to know one, and the dead know the dead when they feel them. Souls detached, bodies lost. Here they could wind and wend, breed and bite. Memories seek to be re-lived, and when souls go to pieces there are a million memories that cannot die.
Three ferrymen had just turned up at the river Styx, and they would ride any vessel they could.
-----
"Doctor, her pulse is dropping!" The nurse said in a panic, shuffling urgently and awkwardly around the end of the bed towards the dated medical equipment. Lines spiked and dropped madly as the woman they were hooked too began to droop in her bed. Her legs, bound in stirrups, dropped loosely as the maternity ward streaked into action. Medicine is a recent invention, and people were still fairly primitive in the early 70's, and couldn't dress worth a damn. Now, however, their thoughts were off flared... everything, and on the mother who was inexplicably dying before them.
Axle pressed his face against the window of the ward, his tie long since ripped off as his panic mounted. They had to let him inside, he needed to see he- what? Where was he? What was he wearing? Why in gods name was the Lady in labour!?. He stepped back and kicked through the door, the afternoon sun coming through the windows blinding him slightly as he rushed in. "Sir, I know your worried but the doctor is coming!" A nurse shouted, trying to hold him back. Athena was waking up, looking around wearily before focusing on her apparent and sudden pregnancy.
"Relax, you idiot" She said, even as the machines informed her she was dying "Focus, this isn't our memory". She looked around in curiosity, only wincing slightly as the feelings of a doomed woman leaked into her mind. "When I die, the memory ends" She assured him, watching her own pulse get weaker... weaker... ... ... weaker...
"Doctor! Hurry!" A nurse screamed out the door, and Axle was bowled over as the surgeon entered the room. He had a surgical mask over his own black one, and a large white coat and gloves stretched over his steel skin, and he went to work fast.
-----
Dear god, this woman is dying!
"Nurse, get me a shot of enduromines and morphine, we need to stabilize her heart rate" I inform the closest nurse, who just gives me a big dumb stare. Here we are, in an age of enlightenment, and you'd think she'd never seen a black doctor before. Disgusting. So, we can the rather amusingly positioned woman in the bed, the one giving me the death-stare, is our target. That makes trendy in the cardigan number two, and they could hardly mistake me for House. That would be cool, though.
Waggling my eyebrows at legs, I beckon an equipment table over before turning back to the woman "Come here often?". Bone saw, brilliant, conveniently effective on other things beside bone. I brush aside the increasingly frantic staff, advancing on the bound *****. "We need to amputate" I say, apologetically "You've lost the will to live, you see. We'll send one of them to Tatooine". To her credit, he she only sneers as I perform the worlds most direct and possibly most awesome cesarian.
-----
Oh, sweet, my turn. And I must say, I couldn't have a more perfect memory brutally forced into my senses. When it comes to hellish mind-rape, I really can't say i'm disappointed. Loving it, really, keep it up. Do you think we could get some Robbie Williams in here? What? I'd think more on the matter, but it seems a large hairy man is trying to brutalize me with a batteaxe. I love the norse people, so full of vigor. I say, is this that tweed-obsessed dweeb from the hospital?
"She's not dead" I assure him meekly, as he attempts to decapitate an inexplicably armored defenseless peasant. Viking steel just seems a little lackluster against improbable hellish metal. Wait, if i need to die for this t -thwack- Ah, he's going to jus -thwack- beat... bwea... bludg -thwack- gnnngh... concussions suc -thwack-
Urgh...
-----
Lady Athena sat up first, looking around at the coughing ruin that filled the room. Her arm was covered with poxes, her chest felt like it was filled with liquid. the taste of blood filled her mouth and she vomited a black stream over her chest before gasping for air. She, she knew she shouldn't feel, but it was... so... so... painful. She looked in panic as Axle, who had already died in this hellish vision, before she bucked and brought up more of her lungs. Across from her, gore dripped out of the helm of a stilled knight, running down the plates of his armor.
She fell out of the bed, tears of blood rolling down her face as she tried to push herself to her knees as another surge of agony rushed through her body and she opened her mouth to let the last of her life jet out. She fell forward, to weak to lift herself out of the pool of her own bile. She couldn't breathe even if her face was above the liquid, and she fell into her own memories as she jerked in drowning. She had been around to see the plague, the rolling wave of death as it swept through the world of man. Great men were laid low like commoners, and she had feasted on those begging for release. She tried to focus on those moments as her body screamed to try and suck back in the black slime that smothered her face, in a pathetic attempt to breathe. The taste and smell overwhelmed her as she died.
Behind her, a trickle of blood dripped out of the already red helm as the knight reached out for the scissors on the table beside him. "I want to be the doctor again" he said weakly, before jamming the blades into his own face, to quicken the next death in despair. He listened intently as he died, trying to catch a glimpse of the memories that filled his own head. He was being told something, they spoke when he was the dutch peasant... they... they...
-----
"Oh bugger" Axle said as the tank rolled over him.
Athena tried to look disinterested as the guerillas tore into her home with dark grins on their faces.
The building roared as the flames coiled up its length
Black armor tore in the light of the nuclear explosion
A stomach fat with nothing but hunger screams one more time as starvation claimed them
Axle's mother (he assumed) screamed as he was tossed into the chamber with the others
The cars horn sounded in panic as it roared towards terrified eyes
Steel skin struggled to breath beneath the surface of river
The knife slid into his ribcage even as the other mugger tore open is wallet
A steel fist raised over and over as it bludgeoned into the stee- wait.
-----
Oh, another beating. I wonder if this one will break his hands o- no No. no. no. no.
Axle sighed as he was tossed off the shoulder he had awoken on. Oh, a sacrifice, this was new. Wait... did this look familiar?
Lady Athena reclined as the venom coursed through her veins. Cleopatra, classy.
-----
The sand heaved upwards, the river styx vomiting out the writhing black form of it's newest sufferer. Evil rolled back and forth across the sand, shaking in silent agony. Across from him, Axle had fallen to his knees and stared blankly into space. Beside him, Athena was already upright, brushing off her arms and walking towards the twitching metal man. So, even his attitude had failed in the face of a million deaths. She wondered what had claimed him, in the end? Another infant beating, a thousand brutal rapes, the agony of fire or disease?
The spasms ceased as the knight rolled onto his back, gasping for air as he remembered.
Remembered staring through green eyes, into the face of madness.
"It takes one to know one" Athena said, propping the knight up to slump forward. "I thought I knew you in that hospital room, the very first death today. But where I survived by retreating to what I am, it turns out what you were just wasn't as hard as you thought". Her eyes rolled back as the darkness poured out of her mouth, uncoiling and encompassing the knight, probing for a way to find his flesh and flay his soul. The bastard was practica-
The stone crushed into her head, breaching into her brain cavity in one brutal motion. Fragments of skull scythed through grey matter and Athena screamed for an instant as her host died. The darkness already outside her body was wracked with agony as it was severed, the wretched shadow becoming a writhing serpent as it rolled off Evil and into the sand.
Axle stood over her, rock in hand, and the memories of being devoured by his mistress in his mind.
And then a rather larger rock hit him in the back of the head, and what poured out of the front of his face wasn't any eldritch spirit...
-----
The Hunger writhed on the sands as Evil staggered over it. The blackness tried to claw into his boot, but found no gap in the metal. It needed... life. It needed to feed, to become strong again so it could just rip this arrogant bastard open and tear him from within his shell. it needed... it needed souls. It writhed as a black gauntlet gripped it and lifted it into the air. It's un-eyes met the no-eyes gaze of the dreadnaught, and it felt the curiosity wash over it.
"Do you know" Said the armoured man "That I almost forgot that?". He walked out, waist deep, into the river. The legendary tide of death pulled at his feet, but he braced himself against the tug as the ghostly forms of the dead formed behind the pair. "I almost forgot, in all the fun, what made me who I am. I almost forgot, if you can imagine, how I died". Now it was only his head and the dark serpent held aloft that hung above the waters. "Watching all those souls flash by in misery, it just reminded me of why I do what I do, to try and stop it. Look over there, on the bank, it's bloody Euripides. He had a quote, you know; 'I know indeed what evil I intend to do, but stronger than all my afterthoughts is my fury, fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils.'"
But the serpent wasn't listening. It was thinking on what the knight had said about souls, and realizing it was staring at the feast of a lifetime on the banks of the river styx. But... the knight knew! he was dragging it away from the bounty, the lives of all that had ever lived! It could become a god, feasting on those who waited for the absent boatman! Curse this metal fuckwit! Oh, profanity felt good. That was one thing humanity had right, making words powerful! Wait...
The knight was submerged, now, holding the snake barely above the water as he trudged towards the other side of death. But there was one word, one word with power, like a curse at a wedding. Because while the knight may have been his first victim, somebody had to have been him.
The serpent dove underwater, and whispered the knight his name.
And the hand went slack, and the Hunger dove towards the Feast.
-----
I came up for air a while later. Because out there was not a place to be while some tentacle bloats itself to godhood. Funny thing though, it takes one to know one. I wonder if she's found out what that means yet? A good liar never lies, I really had forgot my name. But i'd just bloody told her I like to remember things like that, and she goes and hands me ammunition. A good liar never lies, and I never lied about the souls on the beach. She can eat for eternity the souls of the dead. The final rest for restless souls, not the most traditional boatman. Hang on, did I just improve hell?
Coming out of the water, it looks like Cthulhu really let herself go. The sky is filled with her, writhing and weeping as she tears at her own flesh with her many, many arms.
Looks like you retreated inwards, and didn't find something hard enough, my lovely. Bad thing for an upset stomach, all the misery in the worlds history, it'll go straight to your... uh... you. It takes one to know one, and it looks like you may have caught some humanity from that pretty little thing you were riding.
-----
The knight swore briefly as the portal opened up beneath him and he fell through. And something in his mind, a tune of ringing fists and blood, one that had rung through the violence of all his deaths in rage, stopped him making the connection of just how he had known of the Hungers humanity.
It takes one to know one. What does it take to know yourself?
I wrote this in one sitting, and can't be fucked to edit. Plot is a ragged sack of shit (I changed about three times in direction). Axle isn't developed and I didn't build enough emotion in the deaths to make the ending have any punch. The name things was some utter dues ex machina and I have no bloody idea what the Robbie Williams or walking into the river bullshit it about. I tried to make it read trippy, Evil tickles the fourth wall a bit at the start, and then abandon it for a srs bsns ending.
Basically, enjoy a first draft and insight into my mind. All my stories start as something like this, and then get extensive re-writes and I select a core plot. Here we have no themes, setting build and i've dropped the ball on evil's character (no 'settle a bet', no 'Whahaha', no black humor and he really shouldn't have been like he was.)
That said, the entire plot was to excuse the little doctor scene, which was pure gold.
Enjoy the ramblings of my mind. Have fun Krunk.
Basically, enjoy a first draft and insight into my mind. All my stories start as something like this, and then get extensive re-writes and I select a core plot. Here we have no themes, setting build and i've dropped the ball on evil's character (no 'settle a bet', no 'Whahaha', no black humor and he really shouldn't have been like he was.)
That said, the entire plot was to excuse the little doctor scene, which was pure gold.
Enjoy the ramblings of my mind. Have fun Krunk.
EDIT: I've already commented at the end of the story, but I just went back and re-read the thing for the first time. Oh dear, did I laugh. I seem to have changed plots three times over the course of the tale. I am most amused.
Lesson for the day, kids: This is why editing is half the battle. That said, it's funny to just let your mind spool out for no reason sometimes. You end up with 'wtf' moments like this. Oh dear, i'm still giggling.
