Forums » Fantasy Roleplay » Tigers and Ravens [1x1]

[ Poor guy >]

The demon just... stared at him for a long moment. "Wow." He muttered. "You're really off your rocker." He shook his head and turned to walk a few steps back. "I already said I wasn't planning on killing you. If was going to do so, I wouldn't have back when the nagas attacked would I? Or I would have, if only to shoot you in the head when you weren't looking, no?" He cocked his head, turning to look over his shoulder at him. "You're as bad as my employer! And I would bury them anyway but-" He would turn a leery eye to the man. "How do I know you won't just come back and dig them up later, now? It was better for you when you didn't know, don't you see? I was trying to keep it that way. Even if you had looked in the box, you woudln't have questioned about the bodies unless it was to suggest 'better' disposal methods. And keep your voice down you git," He grunted, walking to the other side of the cart to inspect damage, and turned to look into the forest. "You'll attract the beasts faster. We don't need to stay long, or else-" It was at that moment, as he took another step towards the trees. that a small, green snake jumped at him in an attempt to knock him to the ground.

[Roll to hit: Result: 1 (Avg: 1.0)]
[Roll for severity: Result 7 (Avg: 7.0)]

The demon bellowed angrily as he was slammed into the ground, the naga's claws ripping into his chest again. "MOTHERFUCKER!" He cried, trying to wrench the thing off himself.

Hramn snorted. "I've survived as long as I have by being a suspicious bastard." That covered a lot of quirks and disorder, but it summarized fairly well. "Diamonds or some other form of gem? Please, if it was something truly valuable, your employer would have it locked away and magically..." A sneer entered his voice for a moment. "..sealed it away so then even a master thief would not have been able to get at it." He shrugged. "You don't know I won't. But you do know that I already have enough money to last myself for several months without any additional income, and having even more of it would be impractical and pointless. You can't see me as a rich snob ever, can you?" By his voice, yes, but Hramn would never in his life give up his way of life now. Too set in his ways. One could just imagine him at a fancy dinner party leaping across the table to throttle the first bastard who disagreed with him.

That however, just when he had started to fall into step with the demon again, was when the naga struck. He leapt after both of them, aiming to tackle the creature sideways to latch his own claws into it's neck and using the momentum of his movement to try and jerk it off.
[ rolls 1d2 1 = hit, 2 = miss & gets 2.]
He skidded, as the beast ducked before he landed. Rolling over in the ground for a moment, he then jerked himself upright before removing the axe from his belt, and aiming a sideways blow to the monster's head.
[ Pulchra rolls 1d2 1 = hit, 2 = miss & gets 1.]
[ Pulchra rolls 1d10 naga's injury severity & gets 5.]

[He jerked it off. *snerk]

The man would watch Hramn fly overhead and hollar something in Spanish along the lines of "Idioto!" before he snake got a big gash to the side and was thrown Off the demon. The Spaniard would groan and roll over, Clutching at his twice gouged torso, while the snake recovered, giving a pained hiss and turning to Hramn with a bloodthirsty glare. It coiled up to strike and lunged itself at Hramn, hardly imposing as the thing was scarcely four foot in length. It's fangs would be bared however, to dig into his leg.

[roll to hit: result: 1[
[roll for severity: result: 2]

Meanwhile, another pair had drawn up, but at the ment were occupied with tearing into the still warm corpse of the horse.

Hramn was well into 'fight' mode now, even without the creature being dominant this time. He jerked his leg back, and the fangs nearly closed onto his leg - instead, they scored over the flesh. He lashed out with one clawed hand towards it's face, aiming to get an eyeball (yes, him and eyeballs again...).

[ rolls 1d2 1 = hit, 2 = miss & gets 2.]

the little snake would duck it's head back to avoid the swipe, giving an angry hiss at having been struck at again. It would fall back, only to leap forward again with claws to try and embed them in Hramn's gut, while screaming like a banshee all the while.

[Roll to hit: Result 1 (Avg: 1.0)]
[Roll for severity: Result 3 (Avg: 3.0)]

Sho would rise , holding his chest with one hand and look to the side, where more naga were starting to appear. "Hramn!" He would call, picking the supply bag up and tying it to his belt, then stooped over to pick up his hammer. "We need to move, now!" He called, and would go to slam the puny little snake out of the ballpark with a batter's swing.

[roll to hit: Result 1 (Avg: 1.0)]
[Roll for severity: Result 10 (Avg: 10.0) [Ahahaha]]

The snake would go flying across the grounf into the distant trees, lungs collapsed and many bones in it's body broken, including the neck.
"Move." He woudl command, going to try and grab the man's arm and jerk him along towards the trees- with the nagas circling around the wreckage, there was no way they could get back to the cliff, or the rope, without having to go to war. And with both of them injured already, Shojah didn't want to risk it. "Go, go! Move your pale English arse!"

Hramn more or less... dragged the monster back to the forefront. While he could retaliate well enough in a fight when injured, the ancient beast had the advantage of far more centuries of experience under it's metaphorical belt. Snatching up his axe again after wrenching it free of one of the naga's bodies, the smoke then re-appeared about his hair, arms and even the halberd-shaped tail emerged again, lashing the air behind his 'pale English backside'.

With a snarl, he lashed out with a clawed hand towards the face of one naga, forcing it to back off long enough to snatch up his bag again before running after Shojah. "We still need to get rid of what is stuffed down your pants, don't we?" His voice had taken on a many-layered sound, brassy and nasal. Bleeding, irritated and now running. Not fun.

And what a nice, pale English ass it was, Shojah mused to himself, but quickly got his mind back on saving his own ass. And speaking of things shoved down his pants, said pouch was making it hellishly uncomfortable to run, as it was starting to slip down the leg of his trousers. Even so, the injured demon was booking it and kicking up lots of dirt under those pointed soles, and wasn't about to stop to correct it right away, until it had gotten to his knee, where the material was tucked into his boots, preventing it from slipping any further. By now, however, the Spaniard was wheezing so badly, it seemed as if he would fall out dead then. He stopped, put his hands on his knees and spat another glob of fluid before dry-heaving once or twice. After that, he seemed okay.

"Okay.. okay." He panted, wiping his sweating brow. "Holy fuck.. I am.. a lot sicker than I though I was.. fuck.. out of shape.." He coughed, looking back behind them. "Don't think we're well enough away yet, are we?" He asked, standing and holding his arms clasped above his head and taking deep, regulated breaths. "Fuck, if you laugh at me I will claw your face off." He grunted, rather embarrassed at how pathetic he felt at the moment.

Hramn had, when the Spaniard stopped to hack up a lung (that was how bad it had sounded), skidded to a halt as well before once he was recovered mostly, giving him a firm two-handed shove of a jolt to get him moving again. While breathing heavily and with beads of sweat forming on his brow and starting to stick his shirt to his chest, he certainly was not as ill as the demon.
"We're injured, we stink of dinner." Bluntly put, thank you for that. "They probably won't stop tailing us until we're back inside the Tether's grounds." Or at least, past the boundary wall that divided the uncivilized vegetation and undergrowth from the more maintained garden.

Shoving a hand down his pants, the demon bent over until he could grasp the package and pulled it out, pocketing it instead. He would nearly topple over when shoved, but would start to move again, starting off at a jog. He looked up to the sky, where the sun was still shining through the jungle canopy. "We're fucked. So much for smooth sailing huh?" He smirked dryly, trying to add a little bit of humor at least. "Shit like this never goes according to plan..." A shake of the head and a sigh, before gaze returned up to the passing trees. "Hold on.." Raising a hand, he would do a quick 360, quick enough to make him mildly sick again, before dashing off to the nearest tree. "I got this." Wanting to redeem himself as being capable, the Spaniard would launch himself at the trunk, and digging in his claws, managed to get a few steps before dropping down and kicking off his boots and socks. With the added help of the claws on his toes, he would begin to awkwardly scale up the tall palm tree, giving the occasional swear as he was stabbed with the sharp bark or splinters.

Hramn snorted quietly. "We'll be fine. I promise that your ass will be intact so your lover won't chase after me to chew my nuts off for not keeping you safe." Not that he was aware at all of what Shojah's lover was species-wise, but there was no harm in the benefit of the doubt - best to assume that the other was as supernatural as the demon himself, even if not another from the bowels' of Hell. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "The next time you are sick, I'll make you swallow it," was his answering snarl, before he took the moment Shojah was clambering up the tree like a cat with a dog chasing after it to scrounge in the nearby grasses. A few minutes passed, before he found what he was looking for.

Kneeling down, he hacked away a good handful of the plant - some leaves and part of the stem - before tieing it together into a nearly square shaped package with a few strands of grass. "Eat this once you get down," he called up to him. "It'll stop the nausea for a few hours, long enough for you to get back to the Tether."

Shojah laughed loudly from his place up in the tree, giving a wheezy cough and sniffling as he continued to climb. “I'm sure you would enjoy that too much.” He chuckled down, reaching the top of the trees and looking around. From up here, the rocky hills and trees blocked out most of his view of the mountainside on moth sides, specifically the large cliff they had scaled down. Do doubt they were below sea-level now, and he couldn't see the docks to tell which way the Tether's entrance was located on- but he was pretty sure he had a general direction figured out. He would peer downwards, and start to descend. When he was a few feet closer to the ground, he dropped, legs trembling under him before he righted and dusted his hands off on his trousers.

Peering at the sun, he would make a calculation before relaying his observations to Hramn. “I think we need to head southeast.. and keep walking along the cliff to see if we can find a way where we can get up, or climb it if we have to.” He would take the plant-cube and look at it disdainfully. “What is it?” He asked, giving it a sniff, refusing to stick it in his mouth until he knew what it was. “I looked around, hard to see for the rocks, since we're a little below the horizon, but I'm pretty certain we need to head back generally the way we came.. I'm thinking southeast is the way we need, like I said. Just make sure we arch around the wreckage, no doubt there's a swarm of Nagas there..”

Hramn scowled slightly. "I didn't ask you to analyse it, it's for you to eat." While Shojah was up the tree, he had allowed the creature to stir again just slightly - just enough to give him slightly heightened senses. While it was in him involuntarily, he had already worked out that it needed his body to survive. Had it been strong enough to survive on its own, he knew that he would not have been standing, watching the demon perform tree acrobatics to get them back 'home' again. So for the brief time being, he saw the life-force feeding parasite to be somewhat beneficial. For now.

"It's basil, wild basil that is. Not the stuff you find freshly prepared in your salad obviously, but it's closely related and has the same properties. My son's mother used it." Then he paused sharply after that, and just extended the leaf package forwards again. There he had broached on a subject he had not dealt with for some time. Strange to imagine the mercenary married, never mind having an offspring with a woman. But the former lawyer had agreed to surrogate, and he had kept close ties throughout her pregnancy and after. What had become of her after the Age of Destruction however, he had never found out. He had searched, for a good few months in the area, but had found not even the smallest clue as to where she had gone, or if she had even survived. In the end, he had given up, and sought other pressing matters.

He nodded at the suggestion. "Or if you could see the coast from where you were, we could head in the opposite direction to the nagin, find the coast, and then walk along it. They aren't marine predator's, the bulk of the prey is likely to be inland." He couldn't imagine creatures the size of what had attacked them feeding off just shellfish, after all. "Because they aren't stupid." Instinct-driven, but not entirely dumb. "They'll figure that we'll come back to it, and probably remain in the surrounding area."

the demon snorted back angrily. "Just because your ass tells me to eat something doesn't mean I'm going to eat it! It's a wonder I trust you. This could be poison ivy for all I know!" He snaps back, unafraid to get back in the other man's face. But even so, he puts it i his cheek and starts to chew on it idly as he walks. "Mother?" he questioned, quirking a brow at him over his shoulder as he strolled around their clear spot. "I didn't know you had a son." If Hramn didn't want to divulge, however, he wouldn't press. He knew himself that some things were better left unspoken. He had his fair share of painful memories, and wasn't about to force another man to spill his woes.
"I couldn't see it from there.. we are too far below the ridge.. I assume we are in a valley of sorts. Couldn't see over the cliffside.. But finding the coast sounds like a plan to me. If we walk the opposite direction like you said, we should find beach.. eventually." He shrugged, rolling the plant in his cheek like a cow with cud. "After that.. then we head south, si? should come around the right side of the mountain sooner or later.. might have to make camp. It's pretty late in the afternoon now.. judging by the sun." A squint would be offered to that mighty star before he turned his red eyes back to Hramn. "Sound alright to you?"

Hramn snapped his jaws together when the demon closed the distance for a moment. "I wouldn't get paid if you died." That, plus he would then have to explain the absence to Verbrechen, and to Shojah's employer as well. All in all, given the man's phoenix-like quality being demonic and all, he had no reason to honestly worry. Hramn felt no point in killing something that was just going to come back again.

"Aye. A surrogate. Not sure if she's still alive, but as a lawyer she'd have had a good start after the world went tits up." Maybe not on survival skills, but she'd certainly had the money to buy protection, and food resources at least for a while. Cunning as a fox, she had that going for her as well. It was not a hugely sore subject for him, given how most of the more sensitive memories he had were still heavily shrouded in amnesia. "Went right for m'wallet once my son was born." Understandable of course, but doubling the price he had been going to pay had been a tad riduclous. Did contracts hold no weight anymore?!

He paused, and looked at the sun as well before nodding. "That'll work. Armed and ready to go?" While injured himself, the constant low level presence of the creature - visible in the tail lashing behind his backside - was keeping the worst of the pain and fatigue at bay for now. No doubt it would make him feel horrendous later, but better that than collapsing in the middle of a jungle. With that and if Sho' gave the affirmative, off they set!

"Damn right you wouldn't!" he said in a faux haughty tone in reply, putting hands on his hips and giving them jiggle and putting his nose in the air to make his point. "Plus it would be kind of redundant... I could just take your body over.." Or try at least, thought he was likely to fail, strong-willed as Hramn was, plus pre-existing beastie within him, "Speaking of! I have a favor to ask of you." Swallowing the now pulpy plant with a grimace, he cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his now-frizzy hair. It was no more than a giant mass of coils framing his face and only getting worse. "If I die out here.. which is starting to seem likely... May I have your permission to sort of.. ah.. hitch a ride on your person until you get back to the Tether, so I may posses someone there? I promise to not try and corrupt your soul if you get there fast enough. Over time my influence would begin to seep in regardless but, that takes at least a week to even start." He rolled his hands, seemingly bored of these technicalities which he had come to abide by. "Surely you can get back to the Tether or die within a week, no?"

He listened quietly as he spoke of the woman and scoffed. "I can sympathize in part with you there." He mumbled, fishing pockets to see if, by chance, he had a cigar or cigarette on him. Unfortunately the only one he found had been squashed into pulp and snapped in half. Tossing it to the ground he continued. "They're all the same, women. A bunch of abusive, vindictive spiders with nothing better to do than tear out your genitals and heart then piss on your finances, am I right?" An accurate sum of his prior relationships with almost all women he had ever encountered. "I only met one woman I truly loved, and the only one who never back stabbed me. Married her when she was 19, I think the year was 1936. We had five kids." He laughed, a little bitterly. "Aye I'm sure they all gave grandkids by now..." He said this with such an air of despair, it seemed he had lost contact soon after they moved out. "Other than that, women are worthless cows as far as I am concerned. Men are something I can understand." And as a joke, he would tap his skull as if to say it was hollow.

"AS armed as I will be." He cleared his throat finally and rubbed his torn chest, making sure his makeshift shirt-bandage was tight enough for now. "And if you laugh at my hair I'll knock your teeth out. I don't suppose you have a band or string of any kind, do you?"

Hramn kept walking, but did occasionally look behind him to ensure that the demon was still following and not coughing up a lung again. At least the little herb parcel would keep the worst of the nausea at bay, a good eight or so hours. A brow rose then when the enquiry came. "A favour?" From me? was his thought not too long after. He blinked.. "You can, but I am not sure how easy that would be." He was being truthful as well. While he had no issues with the demon temporarily hitching a lift, he was not so sure that the creature in him would welcome an intruder. Not to mention that with two extra individuals in his head, could his mind even take the strain? He was genetically altered, yes, but not alarmingly super-human.

He chuckled then. "I do not blame her for doing so, really. The world was already going down the shitter before the destruction - I could afford to pay her." Evidently while he had felt like ripping her throat out at the time, more important experiences had allowed him to forgive her to a degree, even if he had never forgotten. He snickered. "They aren't all that bad. I might not like them, but I can talk to them. Well, most from my world anyway." If only because they had gone through many similar experiences to himself, and so there was a degree of comradeship... when they were not from an opposing faction of course.

Shojah caught that questioning look and laughed a little expecting as much. "I am willing to live with my chances. If anything I'll just have to go all the way down to hell and back.. a really tedious trip unfortunately.. so much paperwork to sign.." he joked and waved a hand.

"What happened with all that? When, really... not sure if you and I are from the same timeline or not or if things will end up the same.. but these things tend to be parallel don't they? I want to be prepared for the apocalypse... though the only mythical beings back in my.. dimension or whatever were holy ones from all the religions and shit. You know. Demons, Valkyries, those sorts of things. We tended to avoid each other. And you know it's sad." He huffed. "You're gay adn get along better with women than I do. Or actually." He smirked. "I guess that makes you more able to sympathize no? What with your homosexual femininity and all." He teased again.

"I've had bad experiences with women all my life though." He grunted, taking the string out of the tie on his tunic and using it to pull back his hair, where he ended up with a wavy mass pulled against his head, and the 'tail itself was no more than a massive ball of frizz. "So I can't be bothered to see them as kind beings... my mother was a black, heartless she-devil. I think I can honestly say she turned me off women as a whole. And besides.. my last.. oh.. 8 lovers have been men. I have been considering just.. being gay you know? Plus you tell women you're gay and they let you lay all over their tits because they think you don't like them." He laughed, seeming to be in better spirits at least, even if a bit sickly still.

Hramn paused for a moment, and actually looked serious for a moment. "...What made you sell your soul?" While he could see some of the benefits, the idea of giving up what he considered to be a form of freedom that could not be gotten back was quite uncomfortable. At least given his modifications, his soul was still his own - not even the creature could truly take it, even if it could rot it slightly. Not like he was bound for anywhere pleasant when he died however.

He smirked faintly. "The Age of Destruction occured in the year 2062. So I have a hunch that my timeline was somewhat more forward than your own, and in a seperate world, or plane of existence depending on how you look at it." He had always thought of things like the layers of an onion - the world's of Furcadia, his world and Shojah's had to be close together, relative speaking, to allow movement between them. Travel between worlds further apart would have taken significantly more effort and magical energy than a waygate. "We - speaking of humanity in general - tried to control magic with science. Mages became government employees, and mythical creatures went into hiding, going into the Umbra." He only knew that name for it from rumaging through the Nexus Corporation's files after his escape. "It was a mage, who tried to release and repair the magic. An Unmaker. Only.. he tore the very structure of magic itself in the process. Think like a volcano erupting, paired with at least a hundred nuclear bombs and then that amount of energy spreading through telephone lines of raw energy." He could describe it only through what he had seen and sensed - he was not a magic user himself, and so could not explain it properly. "It destroyed our world. Technology was useless for the most part, and what mythical creatures came back into this world were corrupted. The weather was unpredictable, going from sunshine to storms in minutes. It was..." He shrugged slightly, looking almost thoughtful for a moment. "...the end of our world. It was only in the recent five or six years that things began to settle down in a way. There were no longer towns or cities, but terrotories held by warlords who controlled supplies. Every man for himself."

He then smartly flipped Shojah the bird at the comment. No more words neccesary on that subject. A brow rose slightly. "I suppose I can understand that." He could understand it and sympathise to a degree, even if his own experiences told him otherwise - generally if women were foul, there was an underlying reason.

Shojah was temporarily stunned by the question- in all honesty no one had ever asked him before. "Well. It was spend eternity engulfed in flames and pain and suffering, or forcibly kill people every once in a while to take over their bodies and be able to walk around on the surface and have some semblance of a life in exchange for doing a bit of dirty work. Suffer eternally, or walk around and kill people and preach about the devil." He shrugged a little glumly. "I was young. Obviously the latter sounded good, even with the.. conditions. Besides." He growled bitterly. "I had just set a building full of people on fire. Surely a few more wouldn't hurt." The sarcasm in his voice was thick. He regretted his decision now, it seemed. "I was stupid. Young. Didn't know any better. Just an angry little shit."

"It seems so." He agreed, as it had been the year 2000 for him when he had left. Then again, there was no guarantee they counted years and days the same either. He listened, and was honestly intrigued it appeared as he would often watch Hramn's face as he spoke, eyes attentive. "That sounds like some fucked up shit. What did you do after the world shat itself?" He asked, quirking a brow. "Turn into a ercenary, like you are now? Makes me glad we don't have mages in my world.. no doubt things would be very different. The strongest beings in my world, besides deities, were lazy assholes who lapped up the life of luxury rather than go out and cause trouble. No.. I think mortal man trying to fight nature will be the downfall of ours... With pollution and trying to control the weather and fucking with the ice and oceans and whatever. I stopped paying attention to the news when televisions were invented. Because then you could... see it happening. It wasn't the same as just listening to someone talk I guess. When they started showing the real deaths and disasters on the telly all the guys up on high thought people would change." He laughed. "Didn't work that way. Ahh but that's depressing stuff to talk about." Stuff he didn't want to think about. "Had any great conquests lately?" He smirked, hoping to change the subject. He was gloomy enough as it was.

Hramn winced slightly. He was, however, not religious. He had as well, never seen the underworld, hell, hades or whatever it was. (Pulchra, another resident of the island, had... but she had come back reasonably intact due to her genetics). He had no desire to find out either, given his own track record. "Don't you ever think about the possiblity of earning your way to an eternal rest?" Not neccesarily forgiveness... but to him, there were three tiers of afterlife. 'Heaven', the grey fields for the neutral people, and Hell.

He chuckled quietly. "I turned mercenary, aye. I was part of a genetic altering programme already, so I was already trained to a certain degree. I worked for myself, turned spy on a few occasions.. whatever it took to survive." He nodded. "Lower level mages were no issue, but the more powerful ones could almost level a city if they set themselves off." He'd only seen that happen once, and thankfully from a distance. He shook his head. "I don't consider it safe for me to even try, what with..." He tapped one of his temples. Nope, he stuck with his hand. "How many pets do you have now?"