Tusk

Tusk

Soulkeeper
Weaver
Excavation Site South
Free City of Elenhage (former)
Year 348 E.O.D

The dead had ever made for poor witnesses. Stubbornly silent, for the most part, they told stories that sometimes ran counter to one another. It was up to the investigator what to make of their demises. In this case, Tusk felt encouraged to put it down to bad life choices, and the same kind of curiousity that had killed the cat.

'Poor fuckers.'

Clad from head to toe in plate and mail, the Cazadore could do naught but shake his head at the sight. Labourers, they had been. Daytalers hired for pick-work. Some big, some small. All dead. There were about half a dozen, all told. Mostly human, though, Tusk spotted a dwarf's noggin nestled amongst the detritus, staring out at him from the shadows, like one of those shrunken heads shamans and swamp witches used to adorn their huts and belts. For decoration, Tusk figured. Weren't much practical about the practice.

Nor did there seem much sense to exploring old, abandoned ruins. And yet here we are, thought the Cazadore, dust devils swirling in the gloom around him, driven into a frenzy by the harsh winds ripping in off the coast. Elenhage was separated from the sea by a small islet.

Sailcloth marked the horizon where the Sun chose to wake every morning. So close, and yet so very far away.

Turning away from the view, the Soulkeeper worked his way amongst the dead, inspiring calm where once there had been chaos. Guardsmen watched them from the top of the slopes, part of a cordon meant to keep people out rather than whatever was down here in.

'They took the rest with them,' said the orkin, following lines and shapes drawn in the sand. 'The bodies. Dragged... or carried them deeper. Back to the hive.' To feast and replenish their numbers. To wait until more prey arrived. Elenhage's ruling body had already tried to root them out. Hadn't gone well.

'The Denmaster spoke of Cazadore's among the slain.' Drawing to a halt before the entrance, Tusk glanced over his shoulder, to the man wearing his shadow. 'She tell you their names?'
 
Garrod fixed the strap of his monster slayer. Got up from the low crouch that had let him make better sense of the broken femur, rent through with hard claws. Bits of the bone gnawed on. Marrow sucked dry.

"Hankh, Chima, and Paloma the Quick," not a greenhorn among them.

Three Cazadores, all dead in one hole.

Fixed his bone gauntleted right. Felt the cinch of the straps, just a tad loose. Made sure there was no give to the bone white armor. Fingers in his glove, just a little more snug. Mailed, and cloistered in the shell of a blued steel cuirass. Tasseted. Greaved. Adjusted the sit of his long messer. Checked the draw of his heavy hunter's knife.

"I hear the fucking skintakers take on, parts of those they flay," his eye looked down into the depth of the darkness. "Can't say I ever wanted to go up against any part of Paloma," fastest blade in the Southern Holds, so the den whispers went. "Or Chima for that matter," smirked. "Bastard always had the meanest mug," a strange grin. "Wicked way with the shroud at that,"

If they took the man's brain, did they take everything with it?

Snapped the clawed fingers of his gauntlet. Sparked a mote of green flame. No bigger than a candle light. The ghostly little fire bathed the white plate in its strange light, shined the color of dying stars about the jewel fixed there upon the pale.

"Down we go," Garrod smirked as he went down into the shadeless depths. The last gasp of sea breeze, before the stench started creeping in with every breath.
 
A grunt, acknowledging. 'Yes, and no.' Skintakers did not collect trophies the way warriors did. They absorbed, partaking of their victims' flesh, so that they might learn their secrets... and skills. 'I have known them to don the faces of those unfortunate enough to become prey, in the past,' said Tusk, a hand resting upon the grip of his bastard cutter.

'Hankh, Chima, Paloma,' he repeated the names, solemn, as if reciting a pledge. 'We will see them again, and soon.'

Not a hunch. A statement, rather. Tusk was unsure why the Takers did it. To confuse, perhaps. Or to terrify. Most folk tended to soak their trews at the mere sight of them, though, few survived the experience.

Malcazadores were different.

'Down, aye.' Down into the dark where the nightmares roamed. Lanternlight pointed the way. The excavation teams hadn't made it far into the old ruins, just far enough to disturb the hive. A death sentence, even for seasoned hunters. No wonder the guards were loth to come down here. For once, Tusk couldn't blame them.

'Two o'clock, Palehair. Hole at the end of the chamber.' Manmade. Pick or hammer, it mattered little when the end result was the same. Blood and slaughter. Bet the first one through didn't even see it coming. They were quick like that. Silent, too.

'Shall we knock first.' Holding the lantern aloft, Tusk drew his steel, tried his utmost to make it sound like a question. 'See who answers. Bound to be a couple stragglers. More, depending on the size of the hive...'
 
"Be rude not to," he eased his monster slayer off his shoulder, set it by the wall near hole's entrance. The bite of its steel against the stone, almost a warning.

Drew the long messer with his left. Snapped his fingers with his right.

Inside the hole, a green flame flicked to life. Sparkled and hissed. Popped with a soft crackle that echoed down the tunnel walls.

Oh, the half rotted eyes that flashed with the light of the fire. Clung to the ceiling. Shambled round the corners of the darkness. All saggy shaped and flat as tapeworms. With claws. And Teeth.

Mockeries of people. Like some god's twisted satire. All wrong and bent odd. The green flame winked out.

Garrod grinned. Half stepped back away from the pickmade maw. sword cut up, and sliced a taker through like a bloody ribbon. A second hissed as its body whipped it forward. Legs that could hardly work all angry with how they broke to run.

Turn on his heel. Two hands to the grip. Cross cut took off the things arms. Motion flowed to the second cut that took off its legs. It fell to the ground with a hard crunch. Jaw still snapping.

"Stragglers," Garrod laughed. Crunched his boot down on the things head with a crunch and pop. "More rushing up." Sheathed the messer, reached for the slayer.
 
'Yes.' Tusk could see them coming. Younglings, weaklings, outcasts. Not enough to bring the two of them down. Complacency would. 'I've got them. Rest your arm awhile, Garrod, and observe!' Hooking the lantern through his belt, the orkin put himself betwixt brother and beast.

The first was small, and yet taller than the average human. It died to a single sword-thrust. Monsters had hearts, too.

The second was bigger, stronger. Didn't go down quite so easy. It attacked head-on, too focused on his throat to 'ware the sweep of his blade. Belly as soft as yesterday's dinner. Still it came on, refusing to give in, even as he took away its hands.

Third made to take his flank in the interim. Three and a half pounds of cruel-cut steel met its sneering jaw, bisecting its skull from ear to ear.

Stepping aside, Tusk finished the second with an executioner's finesse as it barrelled past, his blade kissing the back of its neck.

Six seconds, start to finish. Not bad for an old hand like him.

'The hive must be full.' Lowering his sword, Tusk turned a body with his boot, let blade's tip do the telling. 'These are all young ones. Short claws, no thickened skin or carapace.' Meant they would be swarming like rats further in. Good news and bad. 'Our brethren will have thinned their numbers some. Still. Best you and I proceed with caution.'

Three dead Cazadores was a tragedy. Five was unheard of.
 
A long rise and fall whistle. "Still got your step, old timer," Garrod said, all grin as he eyed the wall of meat and steel that had just danced through the takers. Monsterslayer pulled from the leather that bound it. Runes sung with the faintest hint of shroudlight. All sunlight across the morning dew. "Caution is a fine thing," he muttered as he stepped into the tunnel. All edge of the lantern's light. "Careful we don't let it turn to hesitation," all teeth and green eyed.

Down they would go. Across corpses un-taken. Only a matter of time really. Till the draggers got to them. And might be, that was what the outliers were up to. Too young to drag things back all, quick and on the dead path.

Young was relative when it came to Takers though. Young as Takers, didn't mean they wore the husks of the young. Pretty sure the one he stomped through was an old man. Bow legged, and skin like paper. Skull too brittle to handle the boot heel. Too old to be mining.

But there he was.

The lantern flame beat the air. Quiet, barely there against the shaft's stillness.

"You knew them well, Tusk?" the one eyed hunter asked. Eye forward, steps sure. Sword ready in one hand loose, bone hand clutched.
 
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A huff, like a laugh's distant cousin, thrice removed. 'By all means.' Wiping his cutter clean, Tusk bounded into the breach after Garrod, the click-clack of plate like gnashing teeth. No point creeping, no need for subtlety. The Takers already knew they were here. Strong sense of smell, not to mention the fact they could hear a fly fart from a mile away.

Shit vision, though. Abhorred light of any kind. Probably why they chose to live underground. Evolution really was a bitch sometimes.

Following Garrod, the orkin held his peace, their quietude the result of experience and common sense. Takers were silent predators. Rarely did they make mistakes or give hints as to their approach. Alas, humans held no such reservations.

'Not really. Only Paloma, so-called Quick,' replied Tusk, shifting to Garrod's blindside, sword resting against his shoulder as the path ahead split to left and right, as if offering them a choice. 'I was her sponsor, back when she sought to join our ranks.' A volunteer, she had been. Not some stray swept in off the street. Handy with a blade, though, even her sword-skill could not match the sharpness of her mind. 'A pity. I did not know she was in Elenhage. Otherwise, I would have made an effort to visit her,' the orkin grimaced, wearing his grief openly.

'The good die young. The rest of us wait our turn.'

Pausing, the Cazadore listened a moment, grip tightening about sword's hilt. The whispering dark pressed in like bodies, some imagined, others real. It was only when one of them reared up that Tusk reacted, blade licking out to smite a skull draped in another's flesh.
 
All hiss and wail.

Hive Song, old Cazadore's called it. Like the church bells ringing in the congregation. Didn't stop their steel from cutting it short. Narrowed point sunk through the gaps in the bone plate. Ripped upward with a full bodied grunt. Ribs cracked. Runes glowed. And the old fetid blood sprayed out as the song died in the ruin of its rent throat.

Weight shifted forward with the step. Greatsword hung high with all its menace, turned to cut with wrath. A shelled fucker came bruising up the darkness. Hobble and lurch and too fast for how big it looked as it drag hopped its way forward. Garrod's grin spread wider.

"Clubber!" he called out, hands twisting the handle, lining the edge. Eyless thing. Face all barnacled over. Just teeth and calcium.

Down swung the sword. Runes burning with wind's brightness. Bit into the bone, there where the shoulder still moved. Gaps in its carapace. Windsheer on his shroudwoven sword digging in, just the bit more. But the bruiser's bulk rippled. Its limbs, woven from bones and corpses of lesser Takers, shook. Hands that made digits slapped against each other to ball into a fist.

Thumped Garrod across the chest. Knocked him into the wall. Hands still on his sword as blackness and startwinkle dazed across his vision.

Armor held. The shock still fucked him though. Grinning like a mad man. White fingers twitching in their own pale shell.
 
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Tusk whirled, steel arcing down to sever an outstretched arm, all bone and too-taut skin. A Taker leapt to place its throat in his hand. Shroud-strengthened fingers clamped shut. The kick and scrabble of clawed appendages did little to loosen his grip, even as he felt its larynx give way under the pressure.

Still the Hive Song continued, deep into the dark webway, where Takers took. Another beast threw itself at Tusk to be met with steel and contempt.

The one that thumped Garrod earned its licks. Bent to finish him, wounded as it was. The Cazadore had managed to retain his blade, despite the knock, though Tusk doubted it would serve him well, position he was in. Grunting, the orkin shouldered a lesser aside, stepped in to drive his sword betwixt ribs not unlike his own. Takers were humanoid, and yet did not possess an ounce of humanity between them.

Nor did he where monsters were concerned.

Lunging, Tusk guided his weapon up and in, through paper-thin flesh and protruding bone, into the Taker's core. It exhaled as it died, sudden and sharp, like the cleanest deaths always were.

'On your feet, Palehair!' Soulkeeper barked, offering the man his paw. 'Deed ain't done!'
 
Shook it off, took up the Old Cazadore’s hand with a grunt as he got to his feet. Pulled free the slab of metal he dealt death with. Stuck in the bite of bone that was the Clubber’s amalgam of a corpse. Just a hitch.

The hive’s song clawed on, deeper in the darkness of the tunnel’s maw.

“Deed aint done,” he repeated. Blood high in his head. Raised his sword. "Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? The charms of horror please none but the brave." said unto the darkness.

Lantern light still flickered against the shadow at light’s precipice. Garrod set low into his stance. Sword’s point aimed at the bleak nothing. Its great blade, long in the ox stance. Muscles coiled like springs waiting to turn sprung. A shift of the heel. A press of weight grounding through the toes. Grit of gravel and stone as Cazadore turned to bolt of steel, bone, muscle and magic.

Stabbed through a run of the Takers. Magicked blade ripped through them with a blast of shroudwoven wind driving the steel tempest up. Turned cut over his head, down across a swath of the fuckers hording up the way. Dashed them to halves and chunks.

A turn of foot, white gauntlet scraped across runed steel. Sparked. Green fire trailed in the sword’s wake.

Heavy weapon crashed down. Set a spark against the rock and stone. Detonated a magick blast of green flame that washed out over a bunch of shambling rotted skin husked fuckers.

Flames licking, debris settling. A hole opened in their swarming ranks for one particularly big and dancy fucker to break right through.
 
Garrod's words were like raindrops upon windowpanes - nice to listen to, but easily ignored. 'Focus up, now!' The old Cazadore harkened, two hands taken to the death-dealer's task, his brother a step ahead. A chance to recoup, and observe, thought the orkin, the magic flowing through his veins a heady toxin, both parts blessing and curse.

Blood flowed freely at Garrod's advance. Himself marked by the Shroud, he cut and cleaved like an adept honing his craft, sword trailing gore and gristle, and flames of emerald light that danced and weaved its own vile path through the throng.

The opening came, and Tusk did not hesitate.

A blink, a beat, and he was amongst the dazed mass, weapon whirling, biting, scraping against boneplate to find the few soft parts a Taker possessed. Throats and necks; groins and guts. Whatever did the job.

'This is not your grave... But you are welcome in it,' he muttered quietly, his blade a blur as he carved his way deeper into the press. Takers wailed and shrieked, the hive's song losing its lustre as the dead piled up. Some broke and ran, others stood and died. A score dragged their fellows off into the dark. To save, the hunter thought with a wicked, sadistic grin. To devour, more like. Compassion was not their way nor was it his.

One, the largest by far, refused to run. Clutching a skull-topped club, it waited as the rest departed, the dust kicked up by Garrod's weaving settling upon its skin mantle like dew upon grass.

It's visage was at once familiar and disturbing. Tusk knew without a shadow of a doubt what he was looking at. Who he was looking at. What remained of him, anyhow.

'Hello, Hankh,' said the Cazadore, excess shroud leaking from the pores of his skin to gather along the edges of his bastard sword, and around his eyes.

'It saddens me to see you so diminished. But fret not... For soon, you spirit shall know peace.'
 
Heft his sword up, sweat starting to bead on his brow. Lungs pulling hard as the shroud thinned. Already thinner down in the depths.

But you have me, Oh Bearer Mine, his fiend hissed in delight.

Grit his teeth. Lips cracked to horrid grin.

"Hello, Hankh,"

Well, that was just lovely was it not?

The thing that wore Hankh's skin slammed its club against the cave floor. Shadow of lantern light all shake against the stone walls and craggy teeth that hung from the ceiling. Jammed forward, all ravenous want for death. Ageless desire to rip and tear and feed.

Club crashed down. Caught clangorous across the broad road of Garrod's monster slayer. Turned the blow, that near crushed his limbs right out of their sockets. Form and supple spine the only things that helped him glance the death shot.

Tusk was there in the wake of it. All grace and silent venerable wrath. Blade finding soft spots like a painter placed the right touches on their rendering piece. Blood spraying in mad ribbons and arcs that spattered with force against the flame colored stone and dancing shadows.

Garrod's eye widened at the sight of the stalactites. One oversized fuckhuge pillar causing his grin to splay wide and wild.

A sharp whistle.

"Put it under the green flame!" Garrod called out. Sited his spell with ringed fingers plated in white. Let loose a single green wisp of fire, up high on the roof of the tunnel's way. The stalactite, long and heavy and ancient, promising an end to anything touched by its daggerous point.
 
Hankh, so-called Brute, had been a fierce opponent to face off against in life. Partly for his size, and partly because he had never known when to quit. The Taker wearing his flesh was of a similar mindset, all bash and gnash and bite. The skull decorating its club was the first to crack under the pressure, each consecutive swipe creating fissures in the bone, hairline, then not.

Dropping back into a defensive stance, Tusk weathered the storm of blows, waiting until a new opening appeared to strike. His blade became like water, flowing past the creature's guard to carve bloody channels at arm and neck and stomach.

Soft targets amidst the tangle of bone and tanned flesh. Less muscle or gristle to thwart his fervour. He had Garrod for that.

Light blossomed in the space above their heads, eldritch as well as eye-catching. A small flame, green, like those what had haunted the salt marshes of his youth. Tusk was no clairvoyant, but he was competent. Knew Palehair's tricks nearly as well as he knew his own. 'Yes,' he replied, between grunts. 'Beneath the flame.'

The taker wasn't Hankh, but he had consumed the poor lad's body, sure as shitting. The knowledge only helped to stoke the old Cazadore's wrath, as ruinous as it was.

'A corpse... should be well left alone,' he growled through gritted teeth, attacking low, before a one-armed shove caught the bastard thing unawares, throwing it off-balance. Fingers caught the edges of its skin-mask as it stumbled back. Hooked it free, like nothing else mattered.

Distancing himself, Tusk stared into the sunken hollows that constituted eyes, finding no recognition there, only hunger.

'Now,' he said, calm, and to himself.
 
A snap of bone white fingers. The little mote of green fire bubbled. Sparked. Blew out. Like a little star going micro nova. A ring of eldritch force blasted out. Sliced into stone, all shroudwarped sawblade buzzing through the timeless earth.

Garrod's eye wide. Grin wider as the death trap split apart. The green fire died against the stubborn stone. The rest of the rock gave way to gravity.

Crackled. Split. CRASHED.

Spike of ancient earth skewered through the top of the Taker that wore Hankh in a spattering of gore and pasted flesh. Splashed right across the pair of Cazadores in a spray of red mist.

Green eye blinked through the dust, warm red, and debris. Almost burning with how bright it looked in the darkness. Shoulders heaving with each breath, hand tight about the hilt of his monster slayer. White hand twitched. Convulsed. Came to a tight and clenched fist.

Red coated, turned white again in moments.

Garrod laughed. "Fuck yeah," his voice smoked. Looked to Tusk. "How you holding up, Old Timer?"

The slab of death stone groaned above the remains of the defiled corpse of Hankh. teetered. Fell with a earsplitting clap.
 
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Tusk closed his eyes as the spike hit. Blood misted the air, splashed like paint across a canvas of jagged stone and cold steel. Shards of bone burst free of the flesh-cage keeping them contained. A femur. Bits of a skull. A collarbone that might have belonged to a human, once.

'How am I holding up?'

Opening his eyes, Tusk paused to wipe the red from his face. Once business here was concluded, he would have a nice, long soak. In a tub or river. Or maybe he'd wade down to the ocean to submerge himself beneath the waves. Let the churn sort him out.

'I am alive and whole. In other words, I am holding up just fine, Garrod.' Nodding, the killer turned to behold his counterpart, crimson-coated, and yet no worse for wear, it seemed. 'How are you faring?'

Like holding conversation at the summer market. But then most burghers didn't possess bone gauntlets, or carry the flayed skin of once-brothers.

Looking down at his hand, Tusk sniffed, the folds of Hankh's face fitting neatly into the seat of his palm, still wet and rubbery.

'I shall try to find more of him, once the deed is done.' Tusk promised, gently folding the torn remains, before slipping them inside a pouch. 'Now, we must find Paloma... and Chima. And the Hive Mother, wherever she might be lurking to, the horrible bitch.'
 
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