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Interlude: Spread your Wings!
🕑 Added 2021-11-03 19:02:31 +0000 UTCNot everyone needs to walk the Road to Purgatory.
Some can just spread their wings, and soar through the skies.
Under a beautiful, cloudless blue sky, a group of Manticores is flying, their wings beating the air in a slow, steady pace as they circle above their prey. Their cries cut through the air from time to time, calling their brethren to hunt.
Far beneath them, their prey is desperately trying to escape, five humanoid figures running downhill, towards a stretch of brambles that cover part of the mountainside, growing out of a small valley further up. Before the prey can reach the cover they so desperately long for, to avoid the pursuit of the aerial hunters, the Manticores start diving down, angling to tear into the running figures, cutting their flight short.
However, just before the Manticores are in range, one of the figures raises a stick to the sky and suddenly, a blazing light shines from that stick, almost as if the sun itself had made a brief appearance on that mountainside. Not willing to continue while blinded, the Manticores scatter, each of them retreating to a higher altitude, to wait until their sight is restored. Their prey won’t escape, even with such a trick.
Once the first has their eyesight restored, it starts back down, not diving but simply descending in a way that would allow an easy retreat if there were another flash of light, allowing the next Manticore to tear apart the stick-wielding humanoid.
But there is no flash of light, instead a fog-cloud appears out of nowhere, covering the mountainside in dense mist, making it impossible to dive down. Shrieking in disgust, the Manticores circle above the cloud, their beating wings slowly dispersing the cloud. Though, their actions are futile, the cloud is large enough to reach the brambles, forcing them to circle above it, as they consider their actions for a few moments.
Below them, now hidden by the brambles, the five humanoids position themselves, as they slow their breathing and ready for combat. Suddenly, a crashing sound makes them whirl around, focusing on a suddenly depressed part of the thicket they are in, a Manticore frantically moving around, trying to get traction to tear its body free from the vines it dashed in. Before it can get any, one of the figures stabs a spear into the Manticore’s side and another of the figures vanishes, its shadow lingering for a moment before reappearing in the shadow cast by the Manticore’s wings, instantly stabbing it, before tumbling down through the branches, its small body moving through holes the Manticore can only stare at.
Still the individual vines are too weak to give the Manticore the needed traction and it is too tangled up to easily free itself, even with the pain given to it by the lesser creature motivating its movement. Another of the figures vanishes, reappearing on the other side of the Manticore and carefully stabbing a polished silver-blade into the Manticore’s side. The Manticore starts beating its wings, trying to get the blade away from it, it’s movements turning franting when a dim, red glow appears within the figure's eyes. It takes a few seconds before the squirming Manticore manages to strike the figure with its wing, forcing it away, the bloody blade in its hand.
Seconds passed, with the Manticore ceasing its struggles for a moment, as if trying to assess the situation and find a way out of the tangle it had landed itself in. Yet, before such a way could be found, a dark haze settled around it, some of the veins on its body visibly turning black as it let out loud shrieks of pain.
Down below, the humanoids have repositioned, the largest of them meeting another Manticore, this one slowly moving on the ground to avoid getting tangled in the vines and losing traction. The humanoid form is clad in a red, glowing aura, shrouding her being almost like a suit of armour. The clash between humanoid and Manticore echoes through the valley, the ringing of sharp claws on metal joining the constant cries of the Manticores above.
Their clash continues, even as another Manticore starts to make its way through the vines in an effort to flank the hiding humanoids, to force them out of their burrow, where they can be torn apart and devoured.
Suddenly, the howl of a wolf, loud enough to make the brambles shake from the sound, echoes through the air, drawing out all noise for a moment. In the brambles, the largest humanoid is briefly, for just a split-second, obscured by a silver haze and when the haze recedes, the Humanoid has changed. Gone is the blue-grey skin, replaced by smooth, shining silver fur, gone is the humanoid head, replaced with a canine’s, complete with muzzle and ears on top. Yet, the beings strength has obviously increased, as the Manticore it has been fighting quickly suffers a deep wound in its chest, dyeing its tan fur crimson.
The humanoids leave the dying creature behind, in order to face the next one, though time is starting to run out, as more Manticores arrive and start to make their way into the thicket, towards the hated humanoids.
As the humanoids clash with the next Manticore, the shadow of one of the humanoids in the back suddenly shifts in an impossible fashion, forming a pair of black wings that wrap around the humanoid's form, concealing it within. After a brief moment, the wings open and a changed being remains behind. Where before, it was a petite humanoid, now, there is a partly avian, partly humanoid creature, with wicked talons and large, black-feahtered wings.
Suddenly, the creature springs forward, pushing off the vines in a seemingly impossible display of agility, its talons lacerating the Manticore its allies are fighting, before retreating into the protected back-line.
There, it stops for a moment, holding its bloody talons in front of its chest, before swinging its talons, as if to slash another Manticore, on the other side of the brambles, regardless of the distance between them. In the middle of that slash, the blood on its talons forms a small, crimson shard that flies toward the Manticore, burying into its chest and a thin strand of dark-red energy forms between the two wounded Manticores and the beings talons.
The Manticores let out screams of pain, while the other being stretches its wings out and, despite the thorny vines all around it, starts to beat them slowly. With each slow beat of its wings, the wind starts to swirl around it and it raises its head towards the concealed sky, starting to sing in an eerie voice, halfway between a human’s and a raven’s. Avian caws mix with human vocals, forming a haunting song.
As the song starts to intensify, so does the swirling wind, the streams of air turning visible as colour starts to swirl with the invisible air, a mix of red and ashen-grey hues spreading with each wing-beat. The vines around the being start to wither, crumbling at an easily visible speed, leaves falling or turning to grey dust and swirl with the wind. The avian form starts to rise into the now-cleared sky, after the thicket has crumbled away, still singing its haunting song, when the canine form starts joining into the song, its howls forming a contra-point to the avian’s voice.
A dozen Manticores try to reach the avian that has decided to fight them in their domain, diving into the swirling air in order to tear off its wings and crush it on the unforgiving ground below, though before they can reach the avian form, the swirling light settles around them, some of them simply falling to the ground, where they are torn into by the canine, some forced to move with the wind, as their strength is slowly sapped, their power not enough to escape the unforgiving wind, their earlier calls to the hunt now forming another voice in the haunting song of death, sung by the avian in the air and the canine on the ground.
The song rises in volume, as the winds start gaining in strength, the devastation on the ground spreading as the Manticores drop out of the air, crashing into the ground. A small, golden bubble is visible on the ground, shielding the other three humanoids from the winds, and the sound, as they watch the devastation take place.
Finally, after the avian’s song reaches a crescendo, silence falls, the winds fading away as if they had never been there, silence returning to the valley. The silence of the grave, as dozens of Manticore-bodies litter the ground, like toys discarded by an angry child.
Blue flames start appearing all around them, blotting out the scene, as the globe becomes visible, covered in those same, blue flames.
Yet even if you fly, nobody can escape the Road to Purgatory.
