[ PRP ] Goliaths (Rep, the crew)

[Baneful]

Rep got a bit shriller in return to Mark. "We can run." he said, feeling that running wouldn't be enough to escape whatever the ******** it was that was obliterating half the ******** desert.

When he was pulled through the portal he had to strongly resist the urge to hug Cael in relief, but he didn't, instead stumbling away to anxiously stare at what they were up to, if he was honest, he agreed with Mark that this was just waiting for them to get caught up to and probably horribly cooked. They'd gotten off a little lighter than Sam had though.

Rep eyed the crystal closely. "Grief crystals? Are you telling me that ******** death star out there is something to do with the legacies?"

 

[Zoobey]

Rep was given four more awkwardly long crystals to hold, and then Mark, and then Sam.

"Five each," the Death lead was instructing, "placed equal distances apart. If you miss placing one down, you will prevent all from working so don't ******** up."

"Wait," Mark was barely even visible holding his impressive quartz collection, "Place them equal distances apart where."

The answer came in the form of a portal, dropping directly beneath the four, only Sam managing a small sigh before they all comically fell through the lack of any solid footing.

Rep would land in the sand again, though it felt more ragged, coarse, like sitting on jagged stone hiding underneath the sand. Closest to him was Mark, who just shrugged and then scrambled to pick up his loot again, holding it in both arms rather dramatically.

A strange noise, like a soft scraping sound followed by an enormous pillar of sand ascending-

- And then they were suddenly, startlingly, rising, ten, twenty, then suddenly fifty feet into the air as whatever they were standing on pushed upwards and grew long stony scales and spines all directions. The tips of each spine was coated in red, their base leaving an opening that was also the same pulsating red that whispered destruction. Mark was already doing his best to keep balance while sticking the white crystals in some of the ridges, Sam in the distance struggling a little more with just one hand, swearing loudly. Whatever it was, it didn't seem to have noticed the occupants on it yet, and moved slowly, like a massive wandering titan. Streams of sand blew all directions whenever it exhaled, each step it took a miniature earthquake.

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

"So no pressure then." Rep said grimly. Just the fact that if he ******** up everyone would be ******** up. Like everything else he'd just do what he could and hope that it was enough. He gathered up his own crystals with due care, holding them a little tighter just in time to have his stomach leap up into his mouth as they all fell downwards.

He too regained his s**t just in time for the whole world beneath them to s**t.

"Oh <********>" Rep said under his breath. "This is some ******** shadow of the colossus s**t right here." But he knew right away, as he felt his center of balance shift with every single slow step that this wouldn't be anything like a ******** computer game, there'd be no neat little taps of x to place s**t, only scrambling against gravity and ******** hoping.

 

[Zoobey]

Rep managed about two more steps before he would sense someone else there. The presence felt almost familiar at first- head covered in a deep maroon cloak, half-seated against one of the larger ridges of the beast as if the thing belonged to them.

"I found another dirty insect," said their distinctly female voice, laced with madness, "It thinks itself so important but it too will fall." It raised one hand covered in black, thin red lines etched down her skin. She felt dangerous. "Would this worm like to know how they died?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep froze up at the figure, bracing himself as if he might need to fight any second. He set his mouth in a thin line. Tracey too in his mind grew oddly defensive, a strong sense of jealousy and defensiveness springing up. The black and red reminded him of the weapon in one of the golems, but this figure was anything but an ally.

"What did you ******** do?" he asked in a low snarl.

 

[Zoobey]

"I do as I please," she stated, and in the distance Mark was yelling at Rep and the creature shook violently, the Death Assistant flying right off his footing entirely. "You are in the presence of your queen."

The goliath suddenly stopped, and one by one, each platelet began to glow an increasingly brighter red. In the distance, Rep might have been able to make out a Hunter camp, still smouldering and in ruins.

"Go on then," she held out her hand, the action almost human-like, and so very familiar. "Kneel down and beg your queen. Then, perhaps, she will find this forgiveness."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

There was a moment where he was afraid, a fleeting moment of terror which was shattered by the sight of Mark sliding into danger. He couldn't barter with her, he couldn't barter with ******** anyone in this s**t world, the deals were all shitty and the cards were all stacked against him.

Rep laughed. "b***h, you aren't my queen. I'm a ******** queen the ******** blue one, and the only ******** I kneel for is my goddamn husband."

And in an act of surprising violence, he leapt at her wielding one of the white crystals he was carrying in lieu of Tracey.
 

[Zoobey]

It felt like Rep had hit a wall, the crystal sliding out of his hands to lodge precariously between two protruding scales. He fell roughly against one of the larger spines as she stood up.

"Behold, the queen worm of the blue kingdom," her voice was mocking, and she laughed and laughed, "an army of ashes and dirt at her feet, a crown made of her own powerlessness. No, filthy human, you are not a queen, just a worm vile and disgusting, flesh and bones and insignificant words. Your greatest moment will be your sacrifice to my legacy."

And then she picked up the white crystal Rep had dropped-

- And impaled him in the back with it.

*

"Interesting," the stranger was there, she was there in Rep's room, examining the door that Protection had sealed. "This human worm has more to them than just words." He felt her shift and suddenly his mind as open, as she weaved through pages and pages of his memories. "This grail is no match for what is to come. Open your mind, show me more about your Hunters."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep hissed in frustration as his efforts were blocked. He hadn't expected much different, but pride and rage had made him try anyway. He snarled at her, but knew that there was nothing he could actually do and that ultimately her words rang true.

He moved to summon, to fight back, but there was no time at all as he found himself at the mercy of his own improvised weapon.

Within the room he wanted to fight back, to get her out of there, to shove her further from him, away from his memories. He hated memories and he could feel them there as she thumbed through, a childhood of helplessness and horrible things that morphed into a child that built a shell of anger around the worthlessness and solitude into the furious, brutal adult he was, an adult which still harboured that core of lonliness and unworthiness at his very heart and used it like a reactor core to fuel his hate and cruelty.

He drew away from it as much as he was able and tried to fight her, to deny her anything about the hunters because that was where Harrison was, and he wasn't hers to take.

 

[Zoobey]

"These human sentiments," she seemed distracted, bored, "The others were the same. Is this truly all you humans think about-"

Suddenly she stopped, and held up a single red butterfly on her index finger. In this room, she did not have a cloak on, appearing painfully similar to someone else's weapon, almost a pale mimicry of. She smiled as a second, and then a third red butterfly descended on her hand. "Perhaps, it was not your allegiance I should have questioned."

More and more butterflies continued to emerge from seemingly nowhere, spiraling to rest on her hand, and down her arm. It surrounded her in a sea of red and as they did something in Rep snapped, a a familiar anger, one that sought to eat and control and destroy. It pulled at him to follow, and filled him with an unusual wrath, threatening to overwhelm him, threatening to consume him.

"Have you been one of us this entire time?"

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

Rep felt the threads snap and it didn't help that when he looked at her he wanted to hurt her, to do brutal and inhuman things to her for daring to violate his mind and this place. Rep had never been able to control his anger, it was something that had gotten him into no end of trouble over the years, from nearly murdering people on the training fields to his constant and relentless nastiness on twitter.

It was impossible to resist, always feeling like the easiest option, like something that came so very naturally and easy.

The small part of him that objected to her, to kneeling or obeying anything she said always seemed so truly tiny in comparison.

 

[Zoobey]

As the red spiraled out of control the anger becoming deeper, more centralized, based off not just her but everything that encompassed Rep himself.

This anger was all he had now.

This anger was all knew.

This anger was Destruction, and destruction was so easily manipulated by her.

The progression seemed only natural, and when she offered the fake memory, that of a path where he was one of hers, was a horseman, had fully embraced destruction, that felt almost natural too.

Baneful

Rep is faced with a "what if" situation in where he is a horseman serving Medea/ feel free to write it out however you'd like!

 

[Baneful]

Rep fell into the anger like an old friend, turning all of the pent up frustration and bitterness to it. He was pulled into the spiral without resistance, without the ability (or deep down, the desire) to do anything about it. Rep in spite of all the things he loved and cared about was a creature of instants, and in the now all thought of consequences and of danger were far off and intangible.

He walked the path because it was in front of him, the way he always did, and didn't question the strangeness.

"Mistress." he said in the same way that another him, in another world might have said the word Boss. It wasn't particularly usual for a war horseman to swear fealty to someone who hailed from Death, but Rep had always been close with the death faction of the clans. Harrison wasn't quite a priestess, it wasn't allowed, but he was his guardian just the same.

Rep was all lithe muscle and tattoos, covered in as many scars as freckles and he positively bristled with feathers, all of them brilliant russet and iridescent. His wings, folded loose at his hips were like those of a rooster and all that he wore was a tigerskin loincloth to preserve his modesty.

"Have we to kill aw the disgusting wee ********?" His accent too, curled a few conquest lips, everything about him crass but primal and dangerous. "Because there's ******** nothing I love more than making them bleed."

The eagerness for battle thudded in his heart like a tight and powerful drum. He'd fought innumerable battles and never tired of it. His life was war and it was part of him, right down to the bone and even deeper than that. Life between fights was a flatline, a biding one's time till the next, and the next. The only brightness was Harrison, a keen pool of cold duty and an armoured sort of love. Together, side by side, they were impossible to stop, like a blade and a shield, combining into an elegant balance of offence and defence which only the most skilled could penetrate.

"You know what I'm like, I've never been one for the whole, taking hostages thing. They breed like /rats/ anyway, and that's ******** being kind to the rats."

 

[Zoobey]

And then he submerged from the memory, like someone drowning, grasping to hold onto something through an undertow. He was from Deus, he was a Hunter, he-

- "When we are done with the hostages and only after, may you properly play with your toys," Medea was saying, and they were in the chaos after battle, they had won, bodies some still struggling covering the landscape crimson red. Several horsemen were already busy picking up some trophy prizes from their conquest: arms, heads, flesh and bones.

"Go on," she said, flickering one wrist towards the sea of bodies, "Pick your toys. Be quick with it, there is much to do."

Baneful

 

[Baneful]

He seized hold of conciousness as long as he could before once again he sunk back down.

- Rep laughed and nodded. "Fine, as you say." He didn't mind following orders, it made life easier when you could always blame someone else for what went right or what went wrong. You just had to act and that was fine with him.

He shoved one of the others aside as he reached in to steal a femur from one of the fallen, as things went even by war standards he was a bit of a butcher, hoarding the viscera and bones of his opponents. There was something of beauty in decay, rot and the fragile disintegration of humanity.

And he'd never admit that perhaps in the hoarding of it, there was a little of envy, a little of desire for that brief fleeting life that made everything so very urgent and intense. He'd never grow old, he'd never change, and yet like infinitely breeding creatures they changed, they were part of the world, in the cycle of it, as much as they were for ever outside of it.

He tossed his spoils in the bag he had at his hip and made his way back to Medea like a loyal dog, he had no interest in the still struggling figures, if they weren't sport, they weren't worth playing with.