Haverous Bog

As Sanina took Nare's hands in her own she leaned close to whisper softly to him.

"You must find my family," she told him. "They must be made to know I live yet. That those who wronged us must be made to answer for their actions. Only when I am avenged will I be free of these bonds."

Her crimson eyes bled to a milky white as images were imparted to him. Just flashes of faces that were gone in rapid succession.

An elven man with skin as pale as marble turned to look upon Nare his eyes searching as if he could sense the pair watching him. His hawkish eyes were carefully guarded before his image faded and was replaced by another.

There was shouting now from a woman with wild hair and a wide assortment of piercings as she angrily shoved a dark-skinned man wearing leather and a smug smirk. They too faded.

The next image to pass Nare's eyes was that of teen making his way down a tunnel where a sea of zombie-cyborgs were parting to grant him passage. In his hand was grasped a ceremonial dagger, but he faded from view before Nare could discern his destination.

Nare found himself within a dank basement as he looked upon a young man with stark white hair and pasty white skin stretched gaunt over his bony form. He was working over a lab table where a dead canine of some sort lay motionless with the flesh pealed back from its face to reveal the muscle and bone beneath. The grizzly image lingered on momentarily before it was gone like the rest.

Next was that of a blonde woman who could have almost been the mirror image of the woman who stood before him within the bog - albeit it several years younger and with blonde hair. A sibling perhaps? While Nare was left to speculate over the woman who was at work unpacking bags within an empty room one more image appeared to him.

The final face to appear was that of a youth that couldn't have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old. He was surrounding by flashing lights and the press of bodies in what appeared to be a club of some sort.

"Viktor Thrice, Varia Vulpes, Arien Valentine, Christian Belock, Kaitlyn Lessard, and Lazarus Lessard. Remember their names," she whispered softly. "And beware the Nightroads, and the Vankoryth Detante. They are as treacherous as they are dangerous. Do not trust their words should you cross their paths. It is with the Lessard's that you will find sanctuary, and in time answers."

Nare's mind was reeling from the images. He wasn't sure if he'd even be able to remember it all...but for his memories being gone, these were almost imprinted into his mind.

"These....these people you want me to find....What do i do when I find them? Where do I even start to look for them? Also...I wish to know...what is your name?" He said, with mixed confusion, and conviction. He wasn't sure what he was really being asked to do, but he would find them. NO matter what it would take. He wondered, for a moment, what would happen if he failed. He shook away that thought as quick as he could.

"Sanina," the woman replied. "You will find them within Wing City, to the east. Tell them what I told you. Tell them of this night."

And with that the woman was simply gone leaving one to wonder if she had ever been there to begin with. No lingering trace of her remained, and there was not so much as a ripple of the waters that Nare stood within.

The entire situation that had happened....the whole conversation....Nare was not sure that it had happened. He then remembered that he was still a walking corpse. He then realized that he should start moving. Sanina...she had told him to go east, to a city called Wing City. It was his only task, and the only thing he had figured he could do. He looked up and stared at the sun between the leaves of the trees, trying to figure out the which way was east. He turned and headed to wards his left, eastward, towards Wing City. Whatever lied there had the answers he needed.

Deep within the bog the sounds of rustling water echoed midst the cacophony of animal noises and general sounds of the bog.

four shadowy figures clad in ghillie suits, vines, leaves, and other debris slowly trudged through the bog towards the group, their appearance and demeanor obscured by the mud and foliage that covered them.

Something strange and unsettling came from these strange men.

Nare could see the shadowy figures through the trees. He took to heart what She had told him, only to have trust for the Lessards. Keeping that in mind, he instantly did not trust these people. Thinking on his feet, he silently sank into the water and allowed himself to float, having his head stay submerged under the water since he no longer needed to breath. If the Marines came to look at the body, it would appear that he was dead.

Nare waits for a long time, then decides to get back up. It would appear that the group of soldiers have left the area. He sighs as he begins to take another trek into the dense forest, using only the sun as a guide towards this Wing City. The bugs kept swarming around him, trying to devour his dead flesh. Soon enough, he made his way out of the Haverous Bog and found himself staring at a sprawling city.

"This must be Wing City....Time to begin the search....." He paused. He grabbed his shirt and brought it to his nose. He took a large sniff, inhaling the smells left by his time in the bog. "I could also use a change of clothes....and a smoke." He made his way to the edge of the city, took one look back the way he came. He briefly considered just turning around and walking back to those bogs. He turned back to the city. Nare walked forward, into the sprawling streets.

A young women sat on a branch in an old tree, just over looking the bog. Flowers decorated her curly hazel hair. She looked over with bright brown eyes. She appeared to be quite happy, an obvious smile rested on her lips before she stood, balancing on the branch. She looked around before jumping to another tree.
As she gracefully jumped across the water towards the other tree, her actions resembled those of a wood nymph. She soon jumped from this branch to another, in hopes of perhaps entertaining anyone who could see her.
She soon picked a third branch to jump to, this one above the mucky water aswell. She tossed herself towards it, yet soon realized that she was off, and would miss the branch. An odd whistle sound escaped her lips, resembling a scream and she tried to reach out for the branch. She just barely grabbed it, and soon found herself dangling from the branch trying to pull herself up.

Dark sky thunders loudly but no streak of lightning comes from above in the still of a soupy bog night. Instead a vast white flare grew to pierce even the dense fog obscuring this locale then diminished slowly as emerged a long large creature the girth a cruiser and the length of many burnt away clouds along its path. Its duties were merely to protect this world but found the life and bustle of wing city less suited to its nature of war. Armor revealed such a purpose by the gleam of a dense ferroplasm shell in ridges over a wyrm of capital scale. The dorsal and ventral plate flexing as if a ripple of muscle underneath torquing to land as projectors pulling against planar space lens the air above the endless dark shaped into this locale. It found the darkness here settling and the giant wyrm, an agent of a massive creature named Myrkul's Vein, merely cared to rest. There were many things here that wished for the dark here that lurked but it had neither a quarrel nor fear of them as it rumbled the ground below. Though it was day the closer Tolyl got to the forest the more daytime lost the battle against this murky place.

Four onyx eyes looked upward as blue sky at noon gave way to just a blackened soup from whatever source blackened this bog then down to find a hollow place to set down. It picked a rare open spot upon the tall canopy where it spied a construction of humankind. A place well swallowed by the bog by now and perhaps by enemies of the light. The canopy sheds leaves as a huge closed maw occludes the rare sunbeam to stares down the shaft of weak foggy light barely penetrating at all in the first place.

It saw the human construction more clearly and the state of disrepair it was in. A sleeping house starved of light by itself and other things in dark places. Boarded up perhaps to defend but no humankind remained here anymore. Its senses extending through the house the sight atop a gun barrel seeking targets. There were creatures that could bite, certainly, in the disused gardens as much the waters but none that threatened itself and no humankind to impulse its service. That suited Tolyl fine as the huge head pushed through the shaft of light to settle in the watery swamp desperate to consume the little solid land the building still stood on.

As its weight settled down upon the turf and soil water rushed toward the locale much like the dark reclaiming this place. Purple transector emitters cool down into welcoming dark. With them came the last of the worm piled behind the building head held high to examine its construction as the anemic shaft of light returned. If for a moment of impulse as while Tolyl while was now devoid of true hunger desired the dark to come for a quiet place to sleep away from Humankind. As its maw opened the haft of light diminished into a deeper darkness its basal maw pushing light and sound of Humankinds world away from much of the swamp.

In the fading light rotten ground shook and the water quivered as Tolyl looked at a mossy hillock and dark grey flesh let go of its helmet. Meters thick ferroplasm armor in the shape of a Wyrm's maw fell gracefully toward the ground then with a splatter obliterating a rotting stump. Motes underneath the helmet disgorged disused scales and grey burnt-out psi-matter from quivering sandy skin shaping into elegant patterns of dunes. Wherever the clumped threads and scales touched the bog it rotted away into compost.

Tolyl closed his eyes and went to a more restful sleep than the black storm ever allowed without being within myrkul's Altar. grey eyelids close over onyx eyes but not entirely a weapon of war was ever ready.

Even deep in its slumber Tolyl remained accessible to Myrkul's Vein. The deeper shadows it imposed on the bog punctuated by the quiet pulsating of the ebb and flow of its power. Myrkul reached into the mind of a capital weapon dreaming of destructive things to gently raise the dream to the surface. Tolyl's huge eyes shifted their steely lids as the mind trundled its thoughts back to life. It looked down at the helmet that crushed a new pond atop a stump with curious creatures using it as a roost. Roving blue lights of coronal discharges flare to life and drag a squelching metal helm upward toward the leviathan's head. Water drains away then flashes to steam as it opens apertures of its mind to empower its armor once more.

"I am required? I think I will remain in this place in the future.", Tolyl's voice sheds leaves from the canopy in speaking.

Answers a booming voice to Tolyl's mind that sparks painful light from even anemic sunbeam through the canopy here, ((As you will it. Proceed to the place known as AC-215. Do not engage what is not humankind there. Remain distant. The conflict is not of the Living Emperor's concern only to collect the souls of Humankind left behind.))

Moss and rotting detritus crushed into grey paste as gravitic forces marshalled to propel the creature skyward. Burbling marsh squelched as Tolyl curled once around trembling marshy soldiers of trees then pounding through the canopy. The scream of a planar transector came from the skin of reality as Tolyl crawled upward toward space to leave this gravity well. Long rolls of thunder punctuated its exit into the upper atmosphere.

Where the lesser touched the world and chose to rest the endless servitors of Myrkul's Vein slowly congregated. Though they normally sought out human habitation in this case Tolyl had no interest in such places instead curling around a disused mansion deep in the forest. They'd learned much in their short time in the world thus far. Notably about the need for defense in absence of the lesser.

Though often the metacreative lesser, Eldryth, was needed for construction Tolyl was her polar in destruction to return matter to bonded psimass. In this case the slow leach of purified annihilation did require a certain distance from human habitation. The swamp started to luminesce as cloying fluid leached from its pores quite normally a thing hazardous to mundane humankind. It found the plane of Genesis far too bright for its liking and would not stay there. More free than the other servitors as a lesser of Myrkul Tolyl was a grumpy sort favoring isolation.

So Jinhai came from Genesis, attracted by Myrkul's writ upon the Almanac, to organize a location to both correct the leaching of a slumbering lesser and create a transitory station to vent psipass into Myrkul's wellspring. The first group wandered the mash for some time, occasionally beset by abominations, but proved of little nutritional value. Numbers bloomed at the discovery of open threats driven to anger by the noxious substance but with lancing of disintegration beams held their own. When Tolyl returned the abominations fared little better as a force of destruction second only to Myrkul's Vein returned.

Tall Octahedral spires writ with deep red patterns slowly reversed the flow of the noxious substance as Tolyl returned to rest. Though the swamp still glowed with power noxious to weak intelligent life too near to the mansion the swamp soon becalmed. The glow emanating from proximal waters gave rise to far more energetic creatures but in time some even began to acknowledge the lifeless servitors as an inevitable function of the forest. Only in this place eddies that glow in murky water edged toward anything with a mind.