Nebula Gravis
04-16-2012, 03:06 PM
Zackwell finally came to shore on Nigerautumnus.
It's still deep in the night. Probably about 3am.
He lifts his head, having drifted to sleep for a short while.
At first, he was worried that he had found himself on a different continent, but there was no mistaking the dark, black sands of Nigerautumnus.
The way the moon played off of the dark waters was eerily beautiful. Or so Zackwell thought.
He turned away from the ocean, and saw a daunting forest before him.
As he made to approach the dark forest that laid before him, something caught his eye.
A silvery light.
A ghostly apparition of a young girl, standing right there before his eyes.
He knew it was not uncommon for ghosts to appear on this continent, given the abundance of demons and graveyards...
But here? So far from any haunting grounds?
"You there! Young ghost!" Zackwell cried out. "What reason have you to linger in this world?"
The girl turned to face him. Or she would have, had she a proper face.
Zackwell winces. It looks as if the girl's face had been torn off brutally and stuck back on.
The girl frolics off to the south. Zackwell's gaze follows her, dumbstruck
"Could this be a demon...?" he says to himself.
Suddenly, something much more chilling meets his eyes. A ship, wrecked upon the shore.
Having no direction of where the nearest city was, Zackwell decided that he could probably get a good view from atop the crows nest, which reaches above the treetops of the surrounding forest.
He draws a deep sigh. "As long as they're only ghosts, I'm not worried."
He starts walking. "If I find anything else I'm not going to be happy."
http://bb.ohsk.net/uploads/The%20Broken%20Ship.mp3 [OOC: Originally for Angel's game by me. Thought it worked here too so I put it here.]
He finally reaches the broken hull of the ship. As he touches it, a foul smell reaches him. "This is Paraffin..." He puzzles.
"How does a boat get covered in Paraffin like this...?"
He shrugs and begins to search around for an opening.
He eventually finds a hole big enough for him to crawl through.
The inside of the ship is extremely dark. Not a hint of light creeps through from the moon.
The inside still stinks of flammable liquids.
Zackwell curses. "Can't use any fire in here. Not unless I want to burn this place to the ground."
He finds himself wondering... "How old must this ship be...? A hundred years old? Maybe two?"
Shaking his head, he remarks to himself "That still doesn't solve the paraffin mystery."
He stumbles around in the dark, knocking several things over before he finds a staircase.
He ascends it before hitting his head on a trap-door.
"@#$&*!"
He gently rubs the top of his head, now quite sore.
He fumbles with the catch, and lifts himself up, out of the darkness.
An unnatural chill... The dread, encroaching.
He raises his head and sees a room full of shapeless blue ghosts.
"Shades..."
Zackwell climbs awkwardly to his feet, a cold sweat falling from his brow.
Shades are nasty creatures. Many people mistake them for normal ghosts, but in fact they're much worse. Normal ghosts are the remnant souls of those who died but had unfinished business.
Shades, however, are merely the remnant negative emotions of those who departed for the afterlife. Shades radiate emotion; they infect the living with their displaced hate and sorrow.
There are three different kinds of shades, all depending on the strongest emotion felt by those who passed on.
Red shades inflict anger on those around them...
Blue shades inflict sorrow...
But worst are the black shades, whose being constitutes of murderous intent.
Zackwell feels the sorrow eminating from the creatures drifting in front of him.
"S-such sadness!" He wrestles with the overwhelming emotion within him.
He reaches to his back and pulls out something of a golden hatchet His hands shake violently as tears stream from his eyes.
"F-fine, I'll release you from your torment."
In a flash, the handle of the axe extends into a magnificent halberd, which he swings in an arc above his head, slicing through the shades, which scream in anguish.
The shades turn to dust, which settles on the ground.
Zackwell mops the sweat from his brow and the tears from his eyes before climbing to the deck of the ship.
Another swarm of blue shades wait for him; but this time, he is prepared. He cuts them all down with his halberd.
As he breaths a sigh of relief, he treads in a dark puddle.
"Eugh... More paraffin...?" He touches the puddle.
The hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
"Blood...?"
He shivers. "This is getting more and more interesting."
Suddenly the ship judders violently and inexplicably.
"Wh-what the?!"
The ship comes unstuck from the beach, and begins to drift away from the coast.
"Aw Dammit!" Zackwell curses, looking out over the port side of the boat.
He runs to the ship's wheel and attempts to turn it back into the beach, but the wheel is stuck fast.
"YER GOIN' NOWHERE!" a booming voice cries. The sheer volume of it is enough to make Zackwell dizzy.
He falls to the ground, his head swimming.
"The hell was that?" he gasps, as he begins to regain his composure.
The voice seemed to be coming from nowhere. And such hatred in it's words...
"It can't be a shade... Shades can't speak..."
He picks himself up.
"This must be an incredibly powerful undead to retain such will..."
He looks at the sword on his belt.
"If I can't use fire... this is going to be a very difficult fight indeed."
The moonlight isolates the ship amidst the deep black waves. Impermeable black fog surrounds the ship, preventing Zackwell from seeing anything.
Perhaps the sentiments of the blue shades was lingering, but he couldn't help but feel a certain sadness from the lonely ship.
He descended into the captain's cabin. He wagered that such a powerful undead would surely make that his abode.
He shields his eyes as he opens the door. Several balls of bright blue flame sit either side of the corridor.
"Will-o-wisps...?"
He steps carefully past them.
"Intriguing. The church would certainly have enjoyed sending this place to hell."
Looking back, Zackwell narrowly misses a door which swings open before him.
He leaps backwards in shock before he starts laughing. "Oh this is getting fun."
Stepping through the door, he sees a figure sat in a chair.
"You." Zackwell points at him. "You must be the captain of this wayward vessel."
The figure stands. "Aye... That I be. And you... You be a maledictor, here to taunt me?"
His body burts into a crimson flame.
Zackwell raises an eyebrow. "No, I'm not here to taunt you..."
"Then you have come to deliver me from this torment?"
The flame turns blue.
Zackwell sighs. "I see... You've become a hybrid shade."
His eyes begin to glow through the dark as he readies his halberd.
"I am here, to release you from your suffering..."
The shade falls to it's knees. "Then give me... Give me life! The life that was taken from me!"
Zackwell stares at the pitiful creature on the ground before him.
"I can do no such thing." he shakes his head.
The undead leaps into the air, it's flames turning a dark crimson. Flames spread around the room as the paraffin catches alight. Suddenly Zackwell could see everything. On the floor were piles of corpses. Men women and children alike. He grimaces.
"IF YOU ARE NOT MY SALVATION THEN YOU SHALL DIE!" The shade-captain cries.
Zackwell brushes his hair from his face.
"The only salvation you will find is death!"
Zackwell brandishes his halberd and makes a swinging motion towards the shade.
It is blocked with a resonating clang, as the shade draws it's own sword, engulfed in crimson flames.
A battle ensues in the burning captain's quarters.
He draws his halberd into the air and into an over-arc, knocking the captain through the ceiling and onto the top deck. Zackwell vaults through after the captain. The entire ship is aflame.
"I guess there's no point in holding back now." Zackwell says as he clips his halberd to his back once more. He draws his sword, whose blade flickers in the light of the fire.
He leaps forwards towards the shade, releasing an unrelenting chain of slashes.
He narrowly avoids a swift thrust from the captain before shattering blade of his rapier.
The captain tries to flee; but too little too late, as Zackwell's blade tears through his chest.
A burst of energy shoots from the glowing wound. The light grows more and more intense, shearing through the black fog. Then suddenly, the light was gone.
Zackwell rubs his eyes, blinded by the bright light. It had been a long time since he had seen that kind of purification.
"Ngh..."
A shimmering light is the first thing Zackwell can see as his vision returns.
Where there was a malevolent spirit, there now hovers a silvery being, which Zackwell knows is a true ghost. He pulls his blade from the spirit's chest, who falls to the ground, resting against the burning mast of the ship. Light leaks like blood from the wound in it's chest.
Another shining spirit joins the wounded one. Zackwell recognises it as the girl from the beach.
"I... I must thank you..." says the spirit with a voice that is only just noticable.
"You killed the demon that took my soul and body for it's own..." He coughs as light drips from his mouth, nose and eyes.
"Surely... you are a blessed man, to be able to do such things..."
Zackwell says nothing, as he looks into the ghost's empty eyes.
"I see... You are... A man of little words..."
The young ghost seems to be trying to tend to the captain's wounds.
"No, Mina... You can't help like this..." he pushes the young ghost away.
"Tell me..." says Zackwell "What happened here...?"
The captain coughs again, splattering the ground with glowing drips of light.
"It was... A routine journey... From Port Rayne to Port Fen. We had an important traveller aboard, a noble or something of the sort..." The captain had a shameful look on his face. "I was intoxicated...
And this noble girl was so beautiful, it was nigh unimaginable."
Zackwell draws another deep sigh.
"I... shamefully tried to take advantage of her..."
Zackwell shakes his head. "Confessing to me wont absolve your sins. I'm no priest."
The captain looks down. "Of course, I apologise..."
"Continue" Zackwell urges.
"She stabbed me through my heart. A fate I no-doubt deserved..."
He sighs "I was afraid of death, as many men are... So I made a pact with a demon, to give me back my life. It then made me take the lives of my crew... And my daughter... No, Mina!"
He pushes away the young ghost as it tries to treat his wounds once more.
"Please, if I were to make a final request of you... Please deliver my daughter unto heaven..."
Zackwell shifts uncomfortably. So the young girl with the disfigured face is his daughter...
"I..." Zackwell begins.
"I did not give my daughter... The life she deserved. Please, if you do one thing for me before I am doomed to the abyss... Send her to heaven..."
Zackwell sighs. He'll catch hell from the church for doing this, but his humanity can't allow him to ignore the wishes of a dead man like this.
"Very well," says Zackwell. "C'mere, you."
Silvery flames wrap around Zackwell's hand, as he graps the young ghost's arm. He takes a small vial of water from one of the various pouches about his waist. He splashes it on the ground and onto his hand, with which he draws a symbol on the forehead of the ghost.
"Take her." Zackwell says, facing the sky. He closes his eyes tightly, as a bright flash of light snatches the ghost away into the sky.
Turning back to the captain, dying on the floor, he says:
"If I ever find myself in hell, you owe me, big time." Zackwell stretches. The boat is going down any second now.
"I've gotta go." He climbs onto the railing at the edge of the ship and dives down into the water.
[OOC: 2064 words. My current record for a single post.]
It's still deep in the night. Probably about 3am.
He lifts his head, having drifted to sleep for a short while.
At first, he was worried that he had found himself on a different continent, but there was no mistaking the dark, black sands of Nigerautumnus.
The way the moon played off of the dark waters was eerily beautiful. Or so Zackwell thought.
He turned away from the ocean, and saw a daunting forest before him.
As he made to approach the dark forest that laid before him, something caught his eye.
A silvery light.
A ghostly apparition of a young girl, standing right there before his eyes.
He knew it was not uncommon for ghosts to appear on this continent, given the abundance of demons and graveyards...
But here? So far from any haunting grounds?
"You there! Young ghost!" Zackwell cried out. "What reason have you to linger in this world?"
The girl turned to face him. Or she would have, had she a proper face.
Zackwell winces. It looks as if the girl's face had been torn off brutally and stuck back on.
The girl frolics off to the south. Zackwell's gaze follows her, dumbstruck
"Could this be a demon...?" he says to himself.
Suddenly, something much more chilling meets his eyes. A ship, wrecked upon the shore.
Having no direction of where the nearest city was, Zackwell decided that he could probably get a good view from atop the crows nest, which reaches above the treetops of the surrounding forest.
He draws a deep sigh. "As long as they're only ghosts, I'm not worried."
He starts walking. "If I find anything else I'm not going to be happy."
http://bb.ohsk.net/uploads/The%20Broken%20Ship.mp3 [OOC: Originally for Angel's game by me. Thought it worked here too so I put it here.]
He finally reaches the broken hull of the ship. As he touches it, a foul smell reaches him. "This is Paraffin..." He puzzles.
"How does a boat get covered in Paraffin like this...?"
He shrugs and begins to search around for an opening.
He eventually finds a hole big enough for him to crawl through.
The inside of the ship is extremely dark. Not a hint of light creeps through from the moon.
The inside still stinks of flammable liquids.
Zackwell curses. "Can't use any fire in here. Not unless I want to burn this place to the ground."
He finds himself wondering... "How old must this ship be...? A hundred years old? Maybe two?"
Shaking his head, he remarks to himself "That still doesn't solve the paraffin mystery."
He stumbles around in the dark, knocking several things over before he finds a staircase.
He ascends it before hitting his head on a trap-door.
"@#$&*!"
He gently rubs the top of his head, now quite sore.
He fumbles with the catch, and lifts himself up, out of the darkness.
An unnatural chill... The dread, encroaching.
He raises his head and sees a room full of shapeless blue ghosts.
"Shades..."
Zackwell climbs awkwardly to his feet, a cold sweat falling from his brow.
Shades are nasty creatures. Many people mistake them for normal ghosts, but in fact they're much worse. Normal ghosts are the remnant souls of those who died but had unfinished business.
Shades, however, are merely the remnant negative emotions of those who departed for the afterlife. Shades radiate emotion; they infect the living with their displaced hate and sorrow.
There are three different kinds of shades, all depending on the strongest emotion felt by those who passed on.
Red shades inflict anger on those around them...
Blue shades inflict sorrow...
But worst are the black shades, whose being constitutes of murderous intent.
Zackwell feels the sorrow eminating from the creatures drifting in front of him.
"S-such sadness!" He wrestles with the overwhelming emotion within him.
He reaches to his back and pulls out something of a golden hatchet His hands shake violently as tears stream from his eyes.
"F-fine, I'll release you from your torment."
In a flash, the handle of the axe extends into a magnificent halberd, which he swings in an arc above his head, slicing through the shades, which scream in anguish.
The shades turn to dust, which settles on the ground.
Zackwell mops the sweat from his brow and the tears from his eyes before climbing to the deck of the ship.
Another swarm of blue shades wait for him; but this time, he is prepared. He cuts them all down with his halberd.
As he breaths a sigh of relief, he treads in a dark puddle.
"Eugh... More paraffin...?" He touches the puddle.
The hairs stand up on the back of his neck.
"Blood...?"
He shivers. "This is getting more and more interesting."
Suddenly the ship judders violently and inexplicably.
"Wh-what the?!"
The ship comes unstuck from the beach, and begins to drift away from the coast.
"Aw Dammit!" Zackwell curses, looking out over the port side of the boat.
He runs to the ship's wheel and attempts to turn it back into the beach, but the wheel is stuck fast.
"YER GOIN' NOWHERE!" a booming voice cries. The sheer volume of it is enough to make Zackwell dizzy.
He falls to the ground, his head swimming.
"The hell was that?" he gasps, as he begins to regain his composure.
The voice seemed to be coming from nowhere. And such hatred in it's words...
"It can't be a shade... Shades can't speak..."
He picks himself up.
"This must be an incredibly powerful undead to retain such will..."
He looks at the sword on his belt.
"If I can't use fire... this is going to be a very difficult fight indeed."
The moonlight isolates the ship amidst the deep black waves. Impermeable black fog surrounds the ship, preventing Zackwell from seeing anything.
Perhaps the sentiments of the blue shades was lingering, but he couldn't help but feel a certain sadness from the lonely ship.
He descended into the captain's cabin. He wagered that such a powerful undead would surely make that his abode.
He shields his eyes as he opens the door. Several balls of bright blue flame sit either side of the corridor.
"Will-o-wisps...?"
He steps carefully past them.
"Intriguing. The church would certainly have enjoyed sending this place to hell."
Looking back, Zackwell narrowly misses a door which swings open before him.
He leaps backwards in shock before he starts laughing. "Oh this is getting fun."
Stepping through the door, he sees a figure sat in a chair.
"You." Zackwell points at him. "You must be the captain of this wayward vessel."
The figure stands. "Aye... That I be. And you... You be a maledictor, here to taunt me?"
His body burts into a crimson flame.
Zackwell raises an eyebrow. "No, I'm not here to taunt you..."
"Then you have come to deliver me from this torment?"
The flame turns blue.
Zackwell sighs. "I see... You've become a hybrid shade."
His eyes begin to glow through the dark as he readies his halberd.
"I am here, to release you from your suffering..."
The shade falls to it's knees. "Then give me... Give me life! The life that was taken from me!"
Zackwell stares at the pitiful creature on the ground before him.
"I can do no such thing." he shakes his head.
The undead leaps into the air, it's flames turning a dark crimson. Flames spread around the room as the paraffin catches alight. Suddenly Zackwell could see everything. On the floor were piles of corpses. Men women and children alike. He grimaces.
"IF YOU ARE NOT MY SALVATION THEN YOU SHALL DIE!" The shade-captain cries.
Zackwell brushes his hair from his face.
"The only salvation you will find is death!"
Zackwell brandishes his halberd and makes a swinging motion towards the shade.
It is blocked with a resonating clang, as the shade draws it's own sword, engulfed in crimson flames.
A battle ensues in the burning captain's quarters.
He draws his halberd into the air and into an over-arc, knocking the captain through the ceiling and onto the top deck. Zackwell vaults through after the captain. The entire ship is aflame.
"I guess there's no point in holding back now." Zackwell says as he clips his halberd to his back once more. He draws his sword, whose blade flickers in the light of the fire.
He leaps forwards towards the shade, releasing an unrelenting chain of slashes.
He narrowly avoids a swift thrust from the captain before shattering blade of his rapier.
The captain tries to flee; but too little too late, as Zackwell's blade tears through his chest.
A burst of energy shoots from the glowing wound. The light grows more and more intense, shearing through the black fog. Then suddenly, the light was gone.
Zackwell rubs his eyes, blinded by the bright light. It had been a long time since he had seen that kind of purification.
"Ngh..."
A shimmering light is the first thing Zackwell can see as his vision returns.
Where there was a malevolent spirit, there now hovers a silvery being, which Zackwell knows is a true ghost. He pulls his blade from the spirit's chest, who falls to the ground, resting against the burning mast of the ship. Light leaks like blood from the wound in it's chest.
Another shining spirit joins the wounded one. Zackwell recognises it as the girl from the beach.
"I... I must thank you..." says the spirit with a voice that is only just noticable.
"You killed the demon that took my soul and body for it's own..." He coughs as light drips from his mouth, nose and eyes.
"Surely... you are a blessed man, to be able to do such things..."
Zackwell says nothing, as he looks into the ghost's empty eyes.
"I see... You are... A man of little words..."
The young ghost seems to be trying to tend to the captain's wounds.
"No, Mina... You can't help like this..." he pushes the young ghost away.
"Tell me..." says Zackwell "What happened here...?"
The captain coughs again, splattering the ground with glowing drips of light.
"It was... A routine journey... From Port Rayne to Port Fen. We had an important traveller aboard, a noble or something of the sort..." The captain had a shameful look on his face. "I was intoxicated...
And this noble girl was so beautiful, it was nigh unimaginable."
Zackwell draws another deep sigh.
"I... shamefully tried to take advantage of her..."
Zackwell shakes his head. "Confessing to me wont absolve your sins. I'm no priest."
The captain looks down. "Of course, I apologise..."
"Continue" Zackwell urges.
"She stabbed me through my heart. A fate I no-doubt deserved..."
He sighs "I was afraid of death, as many men are... So I made a pact with a demon, to give me back my life. It then made me take the lives of my crew... And my daughter... No, Mina!"
He pushes away the young ghost as it tries to treat his wounds once more.
"Please, if I were to make a final request of you... Please deliver my daughter unto heaven..."
Zackwell shifts uncomfortably. So the young girl with the disfigured face is his daughter...
"I..." Zackwell begins.
"I did not give my daughter... The life she deserved. Please, if you do one thing for me before I am doomed to the abyss... Send her to heaven..."
Zackwell sighs. He'll catch hell from the church for doing this, but his humanity can't allow him to ignore the wishes of a dead man like this.
"Very well," says Zackwell. "C'mere, you."
Silvery flames wrap around Zackwell's hand, as he graps the young ghost's arm. He takes a small vial of water from one of the various pouches about his waist. He splashes it on the ground and onto his hand, with which he draws a symbol on the forehead of the ghost.
"Take her." Zackwell says, facing the sky. He closes his eyes tightly, as a bright flash of light snatches the ghost away into the sky.
Turning back to the captain, dying on the floor, he says:
"If I ever find myself in hell, you owe me, big time." Zackwell stretches. The boat is going down any second now.
"I've gotta go." He climbs onto the railing at the edge of the ship and dives down into the water.
[OOC: 2064 words. My current record for a single post.]