The Will to Survive (ImportantNobody v Johnathan Alexander)

Agonized screams pierced the otherwise silent night air, tearing through the still, cold darkness with their blood-curdling frequency. Deep in the village of Ku’nan’tor the people hid within their homes, their windows shuttered and their children tucked safely away beneath the floorboards. Mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sat hunched in corners - holding tightly to one another for comfort, as if afraid of the hideous vocalizations of death and destruction, as life was brought forth from the womb.

With every light out, and every person silent - scantly breathing for fear of what might occur - the town was dark, with but one vestige of light giving off its eerie illumination on a single street, in a single sliver poking through a barely open shutter. A young boy, an orphan without a home, sat peering through the window. Watching the miracle of birth, the boy’s eyes were glued to the scene before him.

In the middle of the room, laying on a roughshod, wooden bed was a dark-skinned woman, whose age was apparent by her oddly silver hair. Her legs were spread wide, and her hairy cunt was plainly over the wrinkled shoulder of the elderly midwife, Laurentia. Her spectacled eyes roamed over the woman’s face, before moving back down to the forest betwixt her wizened legs.

“Mardran, are you sure you want to go through with this? You know what this child will be, what it will become. You’re my sister, and I will support you no matter what you want to do, but please rethink this. This child will not be like us, it will not be human.” Laurentia pleaded with her sister, begging her to think about the decision she’d made, to rethink it and change her mind.

“You know my choice. This child will be my son, no matter what he is or what he does in life, he will always be my son. And your nephew.” Mardran spat, her words like venom in the air between them. The conversation had been ended, and a firm dismissal of the subject couldn’t have made it more clear. Outside the window, the boy’s eyes had widened so much they seemed to be nearly popping out of his head.

His thoughts lingered on the subject of the child being born, of what it would one day become. He’d overheard his parents speaking of the child in the woman’s womb, about it being unnatural, inhuman. He hadn’t believed it to be possible, his life was so simple that it wasn’t funny. Many of the wonders of the world, including electricity, had yet to make its way to his simple village. Magic was a fairy tale, a myth. Demons weren’t real, except in the arcane rituals his parents pretended were for a higher deity.

His thoughts lingered on the possibilities, what else might exist in the world. What might this child be, that it could have the entire village hiding in their fear of its birth. Fanciful scenarios played through his mind, only to be interrupted by another blood-curdling scream, which seemed to echo all around him - making its fitful way through the still air only to return from the depths of the woods surrounding the village, cutting it off from the rest of the world.

His attention was brought back to the reality before him, where a head was appearing from the elderly cunt’s vaginal orifice, only to be followed by a full body. The child looked normal enough, from what the boy could see. Still, if his parents feared the thing then he, too, would be right to be afraid. Immediately upon seeing its full body loosed from the prison that, for nine months, had held it; he turned tail and ran.

His flight was cut short, when he slipped in a patch of mud and fell - desperately trying to balance himself - on a hay-fake, which pierced through his heart and caused his blood to flow out on the rain-covered ground. As his life drained, his eyes closing slowly as he accepted his death, the sky rumbled low with the sounds of a coming storm. Lightning struck the house wherein the child was just being put in swaddling. The house was unharmed in the aftermath, and none on the streets survived to see the reckoning come forth.

Inside, with the dim candlelight illuminating the room and casting shadows which danced all across the ground fervently, the child’s eyes closed silently. Its breathing evened out, it let out no cry of joy at being released from the fleshly prison it had been locked within, it simply lay silently, as if brooding, contemplating its own existence.

Its eyes, before closing, channeled energy through them. The midwife saw this, and she grew fearful of the child. Its brilliant, blew irises had become laced with a red hue, cutting through the entire eyeball, just over the surface, like a spider’s web, intricately interwoven in an unknown pattern. The crimson which flashed over the surface was gone in an instant, but Laurentia noticed it. She was afraid of it. For a moment she had wondered at the child, thinking her constant fears to have been nothing more than her imagination. Now she realized that this thing was not human, that it was not truly her nephew.

Touching the child became a disgusting thing, and she could do naught but pass it on to her sister, her eyes lingering over her for a moment. A forced smile covered her face, before she turned her back and walked to the doorway. Stopping for only a moment, she turned her head back. “Little sister, after this moment you shall never lay eyes upon me again. I cannot stand beside you, not when you insist on keeping that…thing…alive.”

And with naught more than that, she walked through the door. From that day on, Laurentia was never seen again. Her fate remained a mystery to all, save for the boy whose mother named Marten.




Marten played in the gardens, running between stalks of corn and beans with the other children. The eldest of the current generation, he was their mentor in many ways. They looked up to him, and came to him for advice on their games. At six years old, he was far from a learned creature, but he was their friend, and he was nice to them. He played the games without a single word of complaint.

Still, the other parents were cautious of Marten. They never allowed their children to play near him without supervision, for fear of what the boy might do - given the opportunity. Though he’d displayed no traits to give them pause, they had never grown to truly accept him. Especially not since the day after his birth, when they’d walked into Mardran’s house to find her body beaten and battered, blood everywhere. They couldn’t prove the child had done it, but they had their suspicions.

The body had been burned, the child had been cleaned up and taken care of by a family whose only child had died in a tragic accident involving a hay rake. Marten had grown up with the family, until they, too, died a violent death. The child, now four years old, was suspected of the crime. They would have thrown him over the cliff’s edge, to die on the rocks below, but another villager had stepped up and confessed to both crimes.

The child, exonerated - and now able to care for himself by village standards - was given his mother’s house and possessions. It was to this house, on this day, that he returned after playing a game of hide and seek with the other children. The door closed behind him, and immediately he closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath of concentration. Once his eyes opened, the careful latticework of crimson ran through them. It was the physical representation of the portions of souls he’d stolen that day, the souls of the children he’d played with. For months he’d been pulling them within himself, bit-by-bit to avoid suspicion, and using them to power his body. Tonight, he knew, was the anniversary of his birth, the night when his true power would come, provided he held enough power within his child-like body to manifest his true self. Power gained from the souls of mortals, stolen in secret and hidden deep within the bottomless pit that held his power.

The sun began to sink slowly, quietly behind the horizon. The sky darkened, and the moon rose above the opposite horizon with little in the way of warning. Whereas the night would usually take hours to fully come upon the tiny village in the woods, it came within seconds. Fear began to run rampant, tearing through the streets of the small village like wildfire. In a matter of moments, the town was filled with widespread panic, as people ran from their posts and current locations on the street to their homes, boarding themselves up inside. Even though they didn’t know what they feared, they knew it would be horrible. They knew they had to protect their children.

Like that faithful night, those few short years ago, children were scurried to hideaways in the floorboards and houses, covered with blankets that were old and dusty. An attempt to hide them from whatever trouble might find its way into their tiny village. Little did they know, however, that all their work was in vain. Nothing could save them from the demon within, the one who sought out their souls for his own gain. Nothing could save them from Marten, the Destroyer.

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Inside his home, in the center of the main living area, Marten knelt upon the floor. His head was bowed, and his medium-length raven hair shifted to cover the majority of his face. He knelt upon a symbol that even he, in his infinite wisdom, didn’t fully understand. He pulled a blade from his side, running its cutting edge across both of his palms, before putting them flat upon the floor. The crimson fluid ran along the symbol, never leaving its border but covering every inch of its surface.

When the final, most minute piece of the woodwork was covered a brilliant, red light flared up from its center and expanded out all around it. The amount of power being channeled through the Rune decimated the house, sending its roof flying in splinters and the walls crumbling down all around him. Still he did not move, he was incapable of moving. His eyes were completely red, a blood-colored variant which would frighten even the strongest of his friends.

Darkness crept in from the woods surrounding the village, an unearthly darkness which spread through the streets of the city, and seeped into the framework of the inhabitants homes. It covered everything, laying over the people within their humble domains. The children weren’t even safe, their blankets and hiding spots were infiltrated by the forlorn black which seeped into their lives like a thief in the night.



It had been a hundred years since the village had disappeared in the night, off the face of the planet entirely. Scholars the world over had tried to find out what happened to the village of Roanoke, and yet none had ever been able to ascertain even the slightest clue of what may have happened. Outlaying villages reported nothing strange on the night it disappeared, except for a red light which seemed to cover over the moon - but it lasted for only a second, and many chocked it up to hallucinations.

Only one living being knew the truth of Roanoke, and he would never tell the tale. Though, honestly, he did so enjoy recapping the events of his true birth - not the puny mortal birth the vessel had given him, but his true birth. Marten had become a man that night, aging over a dozen years in only a few minutes. With his expressed aging, had come a universe filled with knowledge. Marten had, in a matter of minutes, become one of the world’s most powerful warriors, one of its strongest mages, and a creature of such malevolent nature that he was constantly seeking to end the existence of every living creature.

Today he stood on the spot where Roanoke had once been, the city of his birth. The center of his power. Here it had all began, and here it would all end. He’d finally found the way to eradicate all life in one, powerful swipe of his metaphysical hand. Today was the final day.

This is really good! Everything was clear and easy to pictur,nice flow.

(OOC: I altered Alden "a bit" here to make him able to handle the power level of your character without dying instantly)
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"You are needed elsewhere," a disembodied voice said, confident and regal sounding, yet with a hint of urgency creeping into it. He was talking to a young man, a boy really, who was floating in a pure white void without end. The boy appeared to be sleeping at first glance while floating limply in the emptiness and with both eyes closed. He was dressed only in a white cloak, which fluttered around him despite there not being any wind. A symbol on his forehead glowed with a radiance only matched by the sun.

"Go where?" The boy replied with his thoughts, not knowing the man who he was speaking to nor remembering how he got into this situation in the first place.

"A world that needs you."

"Space travel...that's a first," the boy thought with the intent to keep to himself rather then project it outward like his last statement. How successful he was he didn't know, but the voice didn't comment on it. "Anything that I need to know?"

"Even I don't know the true extent of his power or abilities, but I do know that his capabilities go far beyond what one could normally hope to face."

"And that's why you created me," the boy said bluntly, finally putting together what was going on here. "I'm a copy of Alden, the hero from the world where all of my memories lie?" His word choice for "lie" was a play on words, referencing where his memories took place and the fact that they could be false.

"So you recognized this place as the Chamber of Creation, from Alden's memories," the voice replied. "How clever. Your body is something that I created; a copy of Alden, yet without all of the impurities from his mortal life that had limited his potential. In essence, you are a perfect version of one of the finest humans."

"So then I should be able to win easily?" the boy said, giving what would have been a simple statement a hint of a question by raising the pitch of his voice at the end.

"Not exactly. I only had enough energy to create and send one of you over there, so if you lose then I fear that the whole world will parish. Don't underestimate this man no matter what."

"Understood. If that's all you have to say then I'm ready to face him."

"Good luck."

A flash of light was visible even with his closed eyelids, accompanied by the sudden tugging of gravity and the feeling of earth underneath his feet. He opened his eyes to see the bleak looking village that he now found himself in. After taking in all of the sights of his immediate vicinity, he tugged slightly at the cloak wrapped around him.

"He only bothered to create a cloak? It's a little bit drafty in here," he said to himself. "He must have either been taxed of energy more so then he let on, or else he doesn't know much about proper human attire. I better go and see if I can find a clothing store around here...or fight that world ending guy I was warned about...well, whichever I find first."

Alden walked along the streets, keeping on a constant lookout for the man who he was sent to fight. The shock of the trip had momentarily disrupted the arra in his body, but as time went on he could feel his strength returning and his senses flowing out through the surrounding landscape. Pretty soon he would have the whole village covered within the radius of his arra sense, and then he'd be able to find the man easily.

With his eyes closed to the world around him, Marten sat with his mind lingering on the past he’d so often brought upon himself. Tonight, he would revisit a portion of his life – the most important part of it – and use the knowledge and power he gained there to, in essence, reshape and rebuild the entire world in his own image. His hands were resting upon his knees, and he focused his power across the barren landscape of mud and dirt around him. Lances of his power lashed out from his body like spears, diving into the ground and then becoming as malleable as the thinnest of wires. They wound their way through the ground, cleaving through dirt and rock alike. All around his body they went, building a perimeter that expanded out to the very edges of the once-and-former village common.

Marten’s body began to tingle, the memories flashing through his mind in reverse order – reliving his life backwards from the latest to the earliest. His hands closed, his fingertips closing in on his palm and digging into the flesh, drawing his blood free of his body. It swam around his arm, seemingly of its own volition. It descended from his palm, wrapping around his wrists and then moving down his arms – until it dripped off his elbow and onto the barren ground. Immediately, the ground soaked it up – it became a part of the machinations he’d created all around his body.

The ground shuddered violently, rending fissures and crevices through the groundwork all around the body of Marten, tearing through the Earth’s crust like the powerful, well-toned muscles of a championship weight-lifting ripping clean through a single sheet of paper. Marten’s power pulsated in his body, a brilliant crimson aura flaring up around his body, as his mind settled upon the memory he’d chosen. He envisioned that very day in his mind’s eye, the day he’d first gained his true power – learned the true capacity of his might.
His physical body did not move, but his mind reached out into that memory – and then everything around him seemed to shift



Marten’s mental pawn for this particular excursion was an elderly man of the village, in Marten’s time he’d been highly respected and well-loved by the people, enough so that they’d appointed him mayor. Marten’s mind overtook his own, stole him by sheer force of will. Marten’s body, and true mind, still rested inside his physical body several centuries in the future. He held in his power an avatar, a creature of mundane origins who Marten empowered and controlled. It was the dead of night, and the mayor’s body was awakened by the magic of The Destroyer.

He arose from the bed he’d taken, and looked through the mayor’s clothing – looking through what he might wear, considering the fact he was currently stark naked. Nothing appealed to him, and once more he remarked at how much things had changed since his birth. Still, he had to wear something…and so he used his mind to warp the reality around him, building himself a high-end Armani suit, complete with silk shirt, tie, and three-button jacket. The only good thing about his chosen vessel, was that its portly body would belie the inherent strength his control gave it.

He stepped out the front door at four in the morning, and already he could see the lightening sky overheard – if only the residents knew that the forthcoming night would be the last they’d ever see. He walked the streets, his gray hair flittering in the wind, and his unshaven face beaming with a malevolent smile. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his pants, his expensive Italian shoes shifting the dust with each step. He’d come for the power that was rightfully his, and Marten would not be denied it – no matter what.
In the future, he held much power already, but his full power had not been transferred unto him – he’d learned. Much of it had escaped his grasp, going forth into the world and empowering others who – like Marten – were evil at the core, very inner nature of their being. Marten wanted that power for himself, and so had devised the plan he was about to lay, putting it into motion would secure the remainder of the power for his future self.

Soon, he would have what he wanted. For now, he just had to walk the streets in a suit that – to the locals – would appear as nothing more than the ordinary clothing he always wore. Already, Marten’s powers were growing with the intentions of what he planned. Already, he could sense things changing. Tonight was the night he would come into his full power, and he couldn’t help but find himself utterly elated at the thought.

"Let's see...where's the strongest energy source coming from," Alden thought to himself as he was making his way through the streets. At the same time he was reaching out to feel people's emotions. What he discovered caused him to falter mid step, almost making him trip if not for his superior balancing skills; technically being waving his arms like a drunken windmill long enough to place his foot back down and steady himself. There was a great evil flowing out through the town, so strong that it overshadowed any other emotion. That also made it harder to pinpoint the exact location, but he now knew the general direction and could spot him with his arra sense, knowing that he would more then likely be the most powerful one around.

He uneasily made his way to the source of the evil. The arra in his body had completely recovered from the teleportation, so he didn't have to slow his pace as much as before. He went into a light jog, which for someone of his physical capabilities was more like a run for normal people. His white, expensive looking robe flowed elegantly behind him, causing him to stand out. Obviously, taking it off wouldn't help that matter in the slightest. Besides, it was nighttime so people would be unlikely to see him anyways. Pretty soon in his jog he came across an old man with a malevolent smile, a source of unimaginable power and at the center of the evil feeling. This was clearly the man who he had been sent to kill. Alden halted his brisk pace and began to walk along a path to intercept him, hiding behind corners whenever he felt like the man was looking his way.

He walked calmly through the streets of the city, whistling a jaunty tune to himself as he watched everything around him at once. His right hand was shoved into the depths of his pocket, and his left twirled the long chain of a pocket-watch around and around. His dark, pallid gaze took in the sights around him – while his other senses took in the rest of the scene – and he marveled at how little things had really changed. He was, in essence, just wandering aimlessly throughout the village; however, he was not surprised to find himself arrive at an odd destination.

The house he’d grown up in, one that had before loomed over him as a symbol of what had become of him, of what he’d lost as a child, was now before him as the gate to his true power. The force that would unleash upon him the strength to end the lives of so many people. It was here that he had come to a halt, though he didn’t know why he’d stopped. He was quite sure he’d not misjudged the day, and that his birth would not be for another 22 hours, yet. Perhaps he was wrong, though. So, while he stood there at the doorway he listened intently for any sound from inside.

There came nothing, not a sound or a word. The gentle, restful breaths of sleep soon came to his ears, and he took this as a sign that everything was alright. Yet, another sound disturbed him, trampling its way into his mind. The sound of footsteps, ones he recognized as having been hearing quite frequently throughout his lazy saunter. It seemed someone had been following him, and he mentally kicked himself for not noticing it sooner. He turned in the direction of the footsteps, just in time to see a piece of white cloth edge itself back behind the corner of a nearby building – his impeccable vision picking up on this even in the pre-dawn light.

Immediately he shifted his right foot, and with it his entire body seemed to shift. The sensation created could only be described as an accelerated spin of the world, moving at such a velocity that he could transpose himself from one position to another in a scant second’s time. It was there that he came face to face with a humanoid being, whom Marten could not remember ever seeing before. Perhaps this man was fooled by his seemingly ordinary body, as any others would be upon looking at him. So, he took the high road.
“Good morning, stranger. Welcome to our fair village. May I inquire as to what brings you to our neck of the woods?” If his educated, cultured tones were an oddity in this part of the world, in this day and age, it would hopefully go remiss with the stranger whose face e looked upon. His malevolent smile had been placed with a genuine greeting, which touched his eyes and his heart. A true politician, he could fake-smile with the best of them.

“Quite the unusual garment you’re wearing, I must say. Where are you from, anyway?”

If he could fool this man, he could probably fool anyone else who came calling. He had only this one shot, and he had to get it done right – or risk giving up his plans forever. As he spoke, he mentally counted down the time until the birth would begin – and with it his true power would come.



A mental voice broke his reverie, and he recognized it as his own – sent to the avatar-body from the future, and brought down upon his mind in the present. The question asked was a simple one, it inquired as to what he was, for this was entirely uncharacteristic of the future Marten, this conversationalist attitude in which he tried to fool those who stood in their path, rather than dispatching of them. In return, he sent back images of the village burning, what might happen if they fought now – while Marten was yet a fetus inside the mother’s womb. The quandary of what was going to happen when the child was born was enough for a pondering man, though Marten intended to kill his child self in order to empower his adult-self, without destroying the life he so lovingly enjoyed.

How that would work, Marten was unsure. However, ancient texts told him of the ritual – how to perform it properly, and make it work. With that in mind, he’d come prepared to bring about the apocalypse of his present life, the one so many centuries advanced from this one. He still needed to gather the blood of an innocent, though, and perhaps this poor, deluded thing here could be that vessel – should he not be prone to believing Marten’s good-natured disguise.

“Quite the unusual garment you’re wearing, I must say. Where are you from, anyway?” The man said kindly, taking Alden off guard. Was he not the source of the evil intentions that he had sensed earlier? This man was clearly powerful, so Alden thought for sure that he had found his target. That wasn't any proof, so in hindsight he had been a little rash in his analysis of the situation.

"I don't have anywhere I call home," Alden replied. In actuality that was somewhat true because he had been created only just recently. He could have said a location from the memoires that he had received from Alden, but that wouldn't be helpful because he was from another world, so those locations didn't even exist here. "I travel a lot, is what I'm saying. This robe is actually all I brought with me to this town after my possessions were destroyed by bandits."

Alden hoped that the man wouldn't pry into this story he just pulled out of thin air, but then again he was quite creative and could come up with something to appease him. Even so, he needed to find out who the real bad guy was before it was too late. He wanted this man to leave him alone, even if he appeared to be a nice guy to talk too.

"Well anyways, don't worry about it," Alden said, trying to brush it off. "In fact I have a meeting soon with someone who is going to take care of me for a bit, so I don't want to keep him waiting."

Alden began to walk away, hoping that this would be the end of their conversation.

The man’s words echoed in his ears, and his face filled with false sympathy for this homeless cretin, who sought out someone amongst the villagers. He could feel the power within the man though, sense something just beneath the surface – and yet untapped and unyielding to Marten’s subtle attempts to grasp it. So subtle were those attempts, that even the most powerful of Psions would scarcely think of them as anything more than a pinprick thought, killed before it could even form. Still, Marten could not help but wonder who this man sought; though deep down he knew who it truly was, and what he sought Marten out to accomplish.

Those singular thoughts transfixed his brain in a scant moment’s passing, and the realization dawned within his mind even before the other’s back was completely too him – already plans formulated. How to keep this many busy, so that he may accomplish his goal. Ways to maim him, maybe even kill him, without drawing unwanted attention to himself. It really was quite simple, and it was by and large the best method that Marten had come up with. He would simply have the man detained, even this small village had a constable; he remembered, and there was not a man among the village who would not come to the mayor’s call.

With houses surrounding them all, and people beginning to scurry along the streets as the dawn sky broke orange with its brilliance, Marten’s avatar body opened its mouth and called aloud.

“Stop, thief! Men, gather your arms and detain this criminal” His voice shouted, clear and loud, above the noiseless morning. Doors opened on all sides, and men strode out with whatever they had at hand. Forks, knives, spoons, pitch-forks, one man even carried a flintlock rifle in his hands. They all looked first at the mayor, who had his finger pointed at the back of Alden.

Following the direction of his indication, they quickly set upon the man, forming a circle around his body, weapons trained on him. Marten’s true face, the one thousands of years away, was bright with elation and mirth. However, the mayor’s face was twisted into a look of outrage and disgust. A sure sign that he was deeply appalled with what this cretin had done to the community.

The constable came running through the streets in his night clothes, having been rousted from his home by the calls of his child-hood friend, who had instated the detaining of the individual.

“What’s going on here, Alric?” The constable asked, his eyes on the mayor; on Alric.

“This man has stolen my wallet, constable. I was just speaking to him, and when we finished our conversation and he walked away I noticed my wallet missing. Search him, I’m sure you’ll find it.”

Several of the men in the crowd walked forward, and immediately set about searching the male’s clothing, what little of it there was. Inside one of his pockets, they found the wallet of their esteemed mayor – who had, only moments before, used his craft to place it there unnoticed.

“Lock him up in the jail house, boys. We’ll hold a formal trial in three days, with the mayor presiding over the case as usual.” The constable, whose name Marten could not remember, walked in the front of the line, which was now escorting Alden to the city’s single holding facility, where he would soon be locked away and Marten could do the job he’d come to complete.

The only question now was, obviously, could the jail cell hold this vile interloper long enough for Marten to actually accomplish what he’d come to do, and if not would Marten finally be outmatched by a superior opponent?

"What? No I didn't!" Alden protested, throwing up his hands and glancing at the man with a confused look. It was then that he thought to himself, "He isn't as nice as he was acting. If that's the case, then he could very well be the source of the evil intentions after all. How to proceed?"

Alden allowed himself to be detained while only putting out a token resistance to act like he was fighting back with the skill of a simple teenage boy. His kicks soon ceased and he stopped jostling around after he was surrounded and grasped onto with multiple hands, giving them a convincing look of defeat once a chance of escape appeared to be lost. If the man who was his target carried out a plan to get Alden arrested, then he had probably expected it to work and Alden would allow him to keep thinking that. Once the coast was clear he would break out of his captivity and go back to where the man was, finding him again easily now that he knew the exact energy signal coming from his body.

It wasn't long until her found himself being thrown into a jail cell, scrapping his knees hard on the stone but drawing no blood because of the internal barrier of arra inside Alden's skin.

"Get the kid a chance of clothes," one of them mumbled to a guard as he slammed the door shut and walked away. Alden waited until the standard jail attire was tossed into the cell and the coast was clear again. He slipped the oversized gown on from underneath his robe and then casually went up to the metal bars containing him. "It's a bit of a stretch, but..." Alden build up some arra inside his arm muscles, got a tight grip on the metal, and then pulled with all of his strength. At first it didn't budge, but they didn't hold for more then ten seconds against his inhuman strength before they began to bend out of position to form a hole large enough for Alden's thin frame to slip through. After stealthily moving through the building, using enhance hearing to tell when guards were nearby, he slipped out of a window and began quickly making his way back to where the man was, hoping that this diversion hadn't taken too long.

If Alden took the time to look up, and try to discern the time by the location of the sun in the sky, he’d noticed exactly how long the distraction had held him over. The sun was dropping down behind the horizon line, and night was beginning to fall – which meant the ritual Marten had come back in time to invoke was already underway. The constable had questioned him for some time on why he would want to rob the mayor, a man of irrefutable ethics and moral fiber. This had given Marten all the time he’d needed to gather the remainder of his resources, and set up shop in the exact center of the town. The people of the city had decided to remain inside their homes, though why they sat there was of no consequence. The man who’d been in the jail had robbed one of their own. In other parts of the world, that was a normal thing – people expected it and lived with the knowledge it might happen to them. Here, though, crime was almost nonexistent and always had an easily discernible motive behind it. Not this time, and that frightened them all.

Beneath Marten’s avatar’s sitting body was a symbol, a large circle with convexing lines spawning outward, which ended with even smaller circles at four points of equal measurements apart. Inside each of the smaller circles lay symbols, powerful runes designed to absorb, purify, redirect, and summon energies of celestial and ethereal origins. Marten, inside the largest circle, sat upon the largest symbol. A series of intersecting, convex lines which were attached to one another by other lines drawn with power that brought each one together, until it became an imperceptibly complex symbol. Marten’s legs were crossed, and his eyes were closed. His avatar body’s head was tilted backwards, its lips moving silently while the words were uttered within his head. An incantation of might, it was finished long before the other would have a chance to come upon him.

Immediately a fine, black mist spread out from his body and began to crawl through the city streets. The possession was coming free of the mayor, sliding along the city streets and dividing its sentience among itself – until several dozen, individual Marten-like creatures roamed the streets in their mist-bodies with no definable shape. The body of the mayor slumped over for a moment, before its eyes snapped open and revealed a pitch-black discoloration throughout the entire visible eye. Marten was no longer just controlling this body with his mind, now he, himself, inhabited it. With that came the entirety of his true might and power, brought from the future – wherein his body lay, defended by his own magical, impenetrable protections. He was now fully within the past, and the Mayor’s body began to morph and change. The restructuring of the facial features, the body mass, the clothing, happened within seconds. And then there he sat, Satan himself, or so some cultures had taken to calling him throughout time.

He was still Marten, but with the advent of his true body the symbols upon the ground began to glow. Each rune activated in unison. Marten was prepared to complete the ritual when the time came, and inside his circle he would be untouchable, but similarly he would be powerless to stop an interloper from killing his child-form, and thus as long as his body remained in the circle he would be more vulnerable than ever before. That was why precautions were already being undertaken, and the thought of such things only helped to make him feel all the better, as he sat upon the ground waiting for the time to come, and thought of the black-mist now roaming the landscape, as if searching for something important.

"There he is...or is he?" Alden though, gazing at a black mist version of the man that he was after. He noticed another one walking along far off in the northern streets, so that meant that there was multiple version of this man and these were most likely fakes. They appeared to be scouting, so Alden evaded their watchful eye as he made his way to the center of the disturbance. The man's real body was sitting down in a weird circle, and he appeared to be even stronger then before. Was it too late? Alden knew that he couldn't afford to go easy on him in this circumstance, so right after the bat he delivered a move that would hopefully destroy him.

He raised his left hand an d snapped his fingers, sending out a trail of fire heading his direction faster then a bullet. Right before impact it slowed down and spread out it's wings, revealing a powerful phoenix made of blazing hot fire. It was far stronger then even Alden thought, so he hoped that it would be effective as the phoenix closed in on his target and exploded. Meanwhile he rushed quickly to the left, heading out into the center of the town where he was waiting.

Marten sat quietly, his body resting on the symbol drawn within the largest of the fight circles on the ground. His mind traced each line of power, each groove made in the dirt by the powerful magic he wielded with precision and ease. His fingers rested, splayed along the caps of his knees, his head lulled back with his eyes closed in concentration. The trap had been laid, and the circles provided him with adequate protection. The Phoenix which burst upon him, when it made contact with the walls of the magic surrounding him, was gone as suddenly as it’d formed. Sucked into the disparaging might of the power which emblazoned itself upon the ground, and then redistributed and repurposed. Refueling the runes might was a simple matter, a minor flow of his own power – and the purification of arcane arts used against Marten. A constant assurance that he would have all he needed to do what he must.

The mist-like bodies, still holding no true discernible shape, continued to work along the ground, searching out whatever it may find, tainting everything it touched. Alden would soon find himself consumed by these beasts, if he got too close upon them. If one so much as touched him, it would be too late for him. He’d be Marten’s puppet, a plaything for him to pull out and dangle at his leisure. They were very dangerous creations, these black-smoke creations of Marten’s own possession, and he was sure this interloper knew not what he was dealing with.

Still, for now, they seemed wholly uninterested in anything save finding whatever living soul lie closest, and infecting it with its disgusting taint. Sections of them, branches and tendrils ranging from a centimeter to several inches thick broke away, burrowing into homes and storerooms, billowing outwards from the city’s center toward the great forest beyond. Marten’s influence would spread far this night, though only this village was in true dire peril. He made no sign of motion, no thought of power, however. He simply was, and his mouth was ever moving, yet ever silent.

Alden frowned as his attack was easily swallowed by something...probably that ring around him acting like some sort of a barrier. At least that's what appeared to have happened, so he was pretty sure that he was correct. He was also sure that the man was barely even troubled by it, so it would be unlikely that Alden could break through with brute force unless he put all of his energy into an attack. That, of course, would be very risky and leave him defenseless if all it did was destroy the barrier and not the man inside. While considering what to do, he spotted mist-like forms shambling around and grabbing hold of villagers, seemingly going inside of them and filling them up with that man's aura. Whatever that was doing he didn't want it happening to him, so he'd have to try and keep his distance.

One of them spotted Alden and started to make his way over to him, and in response Alden built up a ball of fire in his right hand. It was an easy and generic spell, simply to see if how effective magic would be against these new foes.

"Fire bolt!" Alden shouted, flinging it toward the mist.

Alden’s flames covered the distance quickly, cutting through the air and burning everything it came into contact with. The oxygen molecules quickly dissipated under the furnace of his might, and soon the black mist-body was impacted at its center of mass. For a moment it looked like nothing would happen, as the fireball seemed to melt into the great beast’s body and the beast took several more steps forward – still not near enough to Alden to begin possessing him. However, that Mist body was already dead. So obviously dead, yet still walking. It had yet to realize that its end had come.

For a moment it stood, watching Alden with contemptuous eyes full of spite and desire for a fleshly being. And then it seemed to cringe, inward, its entire body coming together into a compact shape before exploding outwards in a furious display of the magic behind it. The Mist-cells went everywhere, in every direction, broken apart by the power Alden had sent into it. Where those innards touched physical shapes, it broke apart into bits and pieces, and an acrid smoke began to rise as the walls and baskets it touched began to dissolve beneath the acid-like substance.

Marten, himself, screamed out in pain and frustration. A part of him – a very minor part of him – had just died, and the anguish in his cry could tell that he’d felt the pain of it. Were he to lift his shirt, there would be a mark upon his chest, a burn that could have easily come from a fireball much like the one Alden had used to destroy that mist-form. His head tossed back, and his mouth pitched wide open he let the blood-curdling screams out into the open, and when he stopped anger replaced pain. Cold blooded fury replaced apathy.
He moved his hands, his fingers shifting and bending into all sorts of undesirably painful looking movements and signs. The power wrought forth from his body flowed in torments, even as everything about him began to adapt. A fireball of that magnitude and scope had hurt him before – but now it never would again. The smoke-bodies grew not at all stronger, nor adaptive, but Marten’s own body used the knowledge they gained him. And now it was time to fight back, to get retribution for the pain.

A black mist-body had simply vanished into the house of the town blacksmith, a large, burly man with muscles the size of barrels and a chest as wide as a Toyota Camry. The man was impressively built, and his height was immense. This powerful mist-form was an exact duplicate of Marten, not simply a shapeless mass of sentience used to possess someone on a minor level, as if to steal their soul. This was a complete possession, even more powerful than the one he’d used to hold the mayor. The Blacksmith walked to the forge adjacent to his house, and picked up one of the larger hammers there. A good twenty-five pounds, with a head large enough to hit the biggest part of the anvil and cover it entirely – with a bit of overhang left over.

Out his door he went, to find and fight Alden with all the power of Marten, and all the strength of a green beast many people had only dreamed of seeing.

"Uh oh," Alden groaned, seeing his next opponent. He didn't like his odds of surviving this one, but he'd have to try. Knowing that this man was probably stronger, Alden would have to use his speed to try and outmaneuver and defeat him.

"Vine lasso," Alden said, forming his arra into a spell that sent spiked vines sprouting out of the earth and heading in to wrap around his massive legs and ankles. Hopefully that would trip him up and send his weight crashing down. Meanwhile, he dashed over to his left at an incredibly fast speed, darting back in as the vines would hopefully doing their work. When Alden got close enough he would try to kick him in the chest with his left foot. His kicks were quite strong thanks to his arra, so against this large of an opponent it might be better to try smashing into him with a lot of force then to go for some small cuts with his sword.