The space between

[Arkash]

36th of Glade, 121

Just two days into his career as a revolutionary, Derek was being deployed to the front lines from Gothenburg's rails. All the battles were taking place on the city's lifelines, as The Omen was trying to cut off the revolution's blood flow. Shipments of food, medicine, and ammo were actively intercepted and seized along the rails, and Derek was tasked with undoing the roadblocks in the company of other Rien conscripts, Errants, Knight-Argent, and covenant.
Everyone there had passed some sort of proficiency test with some firearm, as they were the only weapons that stood a chance against Kindred at close range. What was more? The vultures were supported by the faith, who aided and guided the attacks. Knight argent loyal to the crown were supposedly there, aided by droves of hollows.
The thought of encountering one of those monsters put him at great unease, so much so that he considered slipping away before he boarded the train. Kindred? He'd rarely seen them from the slums of Lower Nivenhain and didn't know what they were capable of. Hollows were a different story; he'd seen the bodies of mauled nameless, scattered in the snow. He'd seen them rush down people bigger and stronger than him, kill members of his own caste in swarms. They'd taken his eye, his arm, his mother... Those lifeless, monstrous shells.
He feared no human, no mage. Hollows alone brought him to tears at the thought of encountering them, and he was utterly helpless before them. Fayeth and Asmodei understood, but they weren't there to help him. He had to face them alone.

The train's passage through the snowy stretches on the outskirts of the city's limits was short but rocky. It was just a few minutes, but damage to the rails saw the carriage he was in jostle in stretches; it was an effect that the conductor called turbulence.
Men from various walks of life sat in silence as the train moved, some staring and imagining the horrors that awaited them with the ambient clatter of the train's passage to accompany their thoughts. Others looked about their peers with horror, lost.
Everyone there knew that they tangled with death on the battlefield. Not everyone in that carriage was making it home. Sure, they were reinforcements, support for the men and women already present on the battlefield, but all it would take was one misstep to wind up caught by the neck on the enemy's blade. They feared the bite of steel and the heat of magic. Arkash could sympathize, for he'd felt the same some year ago.
Pain didn't phase him anymore. The lines on his wrist and palm were all the product of his own foul magic, the sacrifice of his own vitality over and over again to fuel the creation of strong weapons and spells. He was certain he'd find a few wounds in the fight to come, he just hoped they wouldn't be to the teeth and claws of hollows, as he doubted his own ability to fight them off if such a fate befell him.
It was only when the boom of artillery and gunshots came into earshot that Arkash looked up from the carriage's floor to spy the Errant across from him. He was the first to hear the battle, all thanks to his dranoch hearing. He could almost feel the racing heartbeats around him, the rampant thud in his own chest. Quickened breathing, gritting teeth, trembling. The pungent stink of piss, vomit, and feces laid ambient to the atmosphere of suppressed fear that clung to the air of the carriage. He'd long since forgotten the dreaded stink of sweat.
Then, the fight entered earshot for his peers, and he watched as heads lifted and turned to the sound of gunfire and roars. Kindred shrieks and the clash of metal soon accompanied those sounds, and their hearts quickened in response. A lot of them were breathing fast, and it wasn't until he heard the raspy shriek of a hollow that he too began to quake.
A shaky exhale left his lips as he straightened his back, and squeezed the barrel of his first rifle, and adjusted the belt of ammunition around his body. He had to do something, he couldn't stand against a hollow. How would he make it out of there alive if he couldn't defend himself? Gunshots wouldn't work, and he hadn't the courage to raise his sword against them. As his mind raced a mile a minute, he turned to desperation and looked to the man before him. "You," he called to the Errant.
The boy, younger than he was, looked from the direction the train was heading to settle his gaze on Arkash, who barely appeared older in his human form. "What? Me?"
"Yeah, you," Arkash returned. "Look, I'm..." he took a moment to breathe, then swallowed hard. "I'm a great shot; I've got three guns for a reason," he explained with a nod. "I'll watch out for you; shoot any of those fuckin' birds and zealots if you help me with the hollows. Deal?"
Recognition flashed in the errant's eyes, who knew that gunfire didn't work on hollows. Being an Errant, Arkash knew he wasn't done with training. He likely wasn't that good of a shot. He could still swing a sword, though, and that was usually all it took to best a hollow. The errant seemed to analyze Derek for a moment, then licked his lips to dispel the dryness of his mouth before he nodded in affirmation. "Alright," the boy returned. "Yeah, let's stick together."
Too easy. Who wouldn't want to partner up with someone carrying three guns and an eyepatch? If it weren't for the apparent age of his humanoid form, he'd surely look like a well-practiced combatant. He was, after all. At the boy's affirmation, Arkash held out his leather-gauntlet to shake the boy's hand. "Derek," he introduced himself as the knight-in-training took it.
"Hans," the boy returned before he adorned his helmet. The fighting became loud, but Arkash could differentiate the sounds well, having practiced his refined senses in the middle of the Breven riots.

As the train slowed to a stop, chatter began to creep up in the carriage. Someone vomited a few rows to his right, and Arkash squinted his one visible ice-blue eye with a curl of his nose. Admittedly, he felt a lot better with his new Errant companion. They would be his shield, and he would be their spear. Could he trust the boy? Only time would tell. Even so, a flimsy disposable shield was better than no defense at all.
To a grinding halt, the train came. The battle was beyond the doors. Thuds and crashes boomed at a distance that felt as though the battle was on top of the train, against its walls. Derek's eyes widened then, and he threw himself from the bench as a bloodied greatsword cut through the sheet metal of the carriage wall where he'd sat. The attack was delivered by a knight Argent, Arkash recognized. He'd made out the sounds of thudding sabatons through the snow just beyond.
Hans caught him, and called in surprise while others began to rush and stand. Arkash looked into the visor of his designated companion, nodded, and grinned confidently. "That would'a sucked, aye?"
The boy seemed to study him further as if Arkash's survival of the event had helped subdue some of his own fear. The boy had faith in him, or so Arkash read. The doors began to open, and conscripts began to rush for the exits, all but trampling each other in the process. With one hand on the railing, Arkash pulled on Hans's shoulder to guide him. The errant was his only line of defense, he wouldn't lose sight of them. Through the flood of warm bodies, Arkash fought, pulled and pushed, and finally broke out into the bloodied field of snow and rising smoke.
Silhouettes of kindred swarmed the bleak sky as hollows, knights, and faithful did battle on the ground. Blasts of magic, gunfire, swords to armor, and clashing shields. The battlefield was chaos.
Hans seemed to freeze in his claws as conscripts roared their battle cries and threw inhibition to the wind in their death charges. Hollows were everywhere, swarming opponents on both sides in a mad zerg rush. Arkash's heart sank. "NEW PLAN!" He called above the mettle of battle as he looked a glance at his shield. "FOLLOW ME!"
With that, he pushed through the conscript flood and led the knight to the stalled train's carriage gap while it weathered gunfire and melee attacks alike, and slipped between to put his hands to the bars of a ladder. A motion of his head signaled for Hans to follow him, and he quickly climbed to the top with the long barrels of his rifles dragging along the wall of the neighboring carriage. Once he was there, he got low and helped pull the boy onto the train's rooftop with him. Arkash rolled across the surface, lying prone as he produced his rifle and pulled back the lever to unlock the mechanism's safety, then let down the latch.
Down the sight, he took aim with his ether-forged bullets primed. There, he waited and squinted the icy blue ring of his iris.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Called Hans while the battle raged. Indeed, the boy had expected to be on the ground, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Arkash was given a different task, however.
He didn't reply to the Errant. Instead, he locked his sights on a swooping Kindred, who'd locked its gaze on a target of interest somewhere in the fight. A lick of his finger tested the wind, and The disguised rathor adjusted his aim while taking into account the bird's speed and trajectory. The speed at which his digit dried indicated how much he had to compensate. So, he did according to the distance between him and his target, then exhaled as he squeezed the trigger slowly, and launched his projectile with a thundering boom.
Intercepted, the Kindred was struck by the blast of ether laid packed in the bullet's tip and reeled as it was thrown off course. At once, Arkash ejected the shell and produced his second rifle, where he quickly took aim, disabled the safety, and fired a second shot with the same conditions in mind. A second etheric blast erupted over the bird's body, and Arkash repeated the ejection of the used shell with a pull of the lever. The smell of alchemical discharge began to fill his nose, and adrenaline flooded his system. "I'M ON SUPPORT!" Arkash yelled to Hans as he swapped again to his first rifle while the second cooled down.
It was the truth. His assignment in the battle was to stop the interference of Kindred with the etheric bullets he was lent.

Image source.

[Taelian Edevane]

It had been a long time for Mr. Venger. So long that he could scarcely remember the last frigid breath he took in Westfalen, coordinating beneath the auspice of the Covenant-Pact. The cold of Lorien was a familiar, and perhaps even welcome sensation, as he returned to the land of his ascension; the place where he deigned to take his first prominent steps as the dire son of one Venadak, and where he became a Noble, unhappily married to a man who perhaps failed to fulfill the uncertainty that stalked his mortal life.

And now, upon returning to Lorien, he was not the man that he was as he left. Not long after becoming ascended, it was learned that he suffered from a lethal scourge -- an affliction of corruption, far more dire than any mage could imagine, and even too severe for an untrained Draedan to survive.

Godhood. For a moment, he had grasped it; what had to have been the singular desire of much of mankind. The power that gave him... it was phenomenal, even breathtaking, at times. The vitality with which he stepped; the invincibility at all times, and the lack of any need to subsist in the way that mortal men did. He would often ponder on the Ald'norai, all their folly -- and he thought, perhaps, that if led by a man like him... they would have known, and become, better.

But Taelian had lost the will to pursue those old dreams. No -- as time followed on, he became a man lost, unaware of all that he desired, or whether he even desired anything. He became replete with doubt, and as the Covenant's investigation into chilling a Divine Spark continued, the idea that he would lose his Godhood became increasingly apparent, and even worrying. Perhaps one would imagine that a man raised an urchin, clung to the filth of the streets would not find themselves so entitled to their power, but he was. He had sought everything but the suppression of his Divinity, and the mage longed and wept for it throughout it all. The one man he thought perhaps cared for him enough to feign understanding was there, present... always prepared to console him, but equally, to remind him of the splendors mortals had with or without immortality.

Taelian, though, only felt more isolated the longer his Spark remained intact. Divinity was a lonesome thing, filled with boundless potential for misunderstanding. What ignited within him almost simultaneously with his emergence as an Adac was a primal rage -- even a violence. A desire to harm others. A desire to cleave, upend, and enact manic power upon. Arguments quickly became volatile, and more than once, Taelian struck his now once-lover. Never once did he strike back.

Eventually, that Divine Spark within him was made to sleep. And in its rest, emptiness filled him like an expanding shadow... always alongside him in his contemplations. What mortality thought to rekindle only became more sundered; he felt a man separated from his own soul, Famished once more, but in a much different way. The greater destiny he thought himself starting to recognize... now vanished.

Only one thing -- an impulse, really -- remained in Mr. Venger. That same lust for violence from before, always seeking a foe, a name. He realized that it had followed him for all his life, and Godhood had only emboldened what was already there. What had been there for a boundlessly long number of years.

- - -

"Eloise, I can take them," he said, narrowing his gaze towards the Umpire, his now long-time instructor in the arcane.

"I believe you can handle Zarhog, Taelian, but not him and Tresvayn. Regis will focus on routing the forces of Knight-Apostle Malkern while I lure Tresvayn towards our towers. The Aether Cannon is far less reliable on this front; Tundraec has used his blizzards to obscure the Kindred's ether trace."

All of the Thespians of the Covenant -- and truly all -- gathered around the 'basin' that lied at the core of their war room, set intricately within Gothenburg's palace walls. Finely crafted game pieces laid on a complex urban map, made by Wylen to resemble the Kindred, the Omen, and conversely allied forces. All of the Thespians were dressed well. Taelian was, as well, with a regal grey overcoat of expert make. The one notable divergence, however, lied in his drained complexion; dark bags lied beneath his eyes, his face always sullen, drug down by a deluge of negativity. He was less the kind, charming Thespian he had been in the past -- now more hostile, assertive, unwavering. And yet, within him lied a strength of character many others began to admire. He was decisive, committed, and beyond all, powerful. He was a stronger mage now than Eloise, able to Ascend whenever he so desired. And he had only been an active practitioner for a fracture of her own time.

"There is no need to allow the possibility for Tresvayn to slip through the Ward and into Gothenburg palace. Lord Baringer's safety would be in jeopardy -- and I fully believe I can handle Tresvayn. Zarhog has already been severely damaged by the Aether Cannon; there are reports that he cannot return to his original form," he said. Both Zarhog and Tresvayn were the 'born-again' Kindred names of two Wohlricht, both Knight-Apostles for a time, before entering a league on their own. They were promoted to fill the void that Jeddoth left, though of course, no newborn could.

"Eloise, I believe we can trust in Taelian's capabilities," said Regis. "I can provide overhead support for him while he contends with the two, as well as auxiliary support for the army. You, Miranda and Iridith can confront the main Omen assault directly; you'll be needed to properly organize the Pact forces regardless, and we can't afford losing our Umpire to a direct confrontation with the ravens. Naimre can accompany the Third Knight Battalion to front West-Lungren, since they're among the most besieged. And -- Wylen can bolster and repair the Hollow forces on the Tydric. That way, we cover all of our bases, yes?"

The woman pondered for a moment, averting her gaze to the war-table before briefly peering at and between the two men; one a young firestarter - quite literally - and one an old, but personally invested man. It was clear, resulting from recent events, that the woman's trust in Taelian had diminished severely, but her faith in Regis had only grown. One was an unwanted challenger to her dominion, and one, a desired successor who had kept the carefully threaded weave that was the Covenant together.

One of them wanted power, perhaps power alone, and one of them wanted a home not always plagued by conspiracy and deceit. Of course, she had to admit that a part of her wished not to offer Taelian that chance to find glory -- the opportunity to slay two Wohlrichts, two of the greatest assets of their foes. She would not admit so openly, but the unspoken knowledge within their chambers of war had brought all to the same conclusion. Perhaps, in some way, Eloise was afraid that Taelian would in fact persevere. That she needed not have faith in him at all, for his power had far surpassed her own, even no longer the Godling he once was.

There was a certain predictability to a Godling, she had always known. A divine purpose of sorts -- a compass or arbiter that guided them. In that way, they could be led or misled, perhaps even attached to like a parasitic symbiote. Taelian had been that man for her, in the past few months. No longer, though. Now, he was wholly his own man, with his own ambitions and dreams... entirely divorced from hers.

And that... it scared her.

Nevertheless, the mage was brought to the battlefront. Eloise conceded, and Taelian got his wish. He was sent to the very vanguard of the front most besieged, assaulted by a combination of two Wohlricht who had quickly developed into some of the rebellion's most tenacious foes.

Before him lied cinder and ash, black upon a now molten field of tundra and snow. The mage gripped Ard Fuil tightly in one hand, while preparing to fire Glare out of the barrel of a gun. His somewhat unsteady hands faced the head of an opposing Knight, though before he fired, Zarhog presented himself. The Kindred materialized from seemingly nothing, talons ready and primed, his wings wrapped around his form to both shield him and prepare a flurry of degenerative plumes.

Only, the Kindred did not meet him with his talons or a spray of feathers. As Taelian prepared to defend, striking his blade forward and channeling his fire towards Flash, an ethereally augmented bullet came ripping through the wind, landing harsh against the feathered exterior of the Kindred. As it reeled, a second shot came, sending the beast towards the soil. It shifted to that of a mortal body, before becoming far more difficult to see. Intangible. Taelian swiped forward with his blade, Emblem slashing with a fiery wave, but the agility of the Wohlricht allowed it to escape immediate harm. Instead, it appeared to disappear entirely.

Taelian's gaze shot towards the gunman -- an unfamiliar man, though with a familiar sort of weapon. A longer rifle than his small, meager flintlock-gun, not even loaded to fire a shot but merely acting as a conduit for Glare.

He almost thought to commend him, though the mage quickly became distracted as a second, less injured form appeared almost accompanying the wind. The creature immediately launched a barrage of feathers down upon them, battering the field with its toxic, pus-laden feathers. Several Knights and Hollows were immediately struck, causing lethal injury in most. The crow then vanished again, preparing its second bombardment. A shell of fire encircled Taelian, who still sat beneath it, attempting to immunize himself from the second volley.

It was Tresvayn, and he knew it. Both Wohlricht were here, now -- and they were trying to stealthily take him out.

He began to chant in an old, forgotten tongue, preparing to call forth a number of Caru to act as projectiles in seeking the Kindred out. As he did, the injured Zarhog would appear once again, this time attempting to kill the gunman who had struck him. He dove down at him from the sky, beak ready to skewer him, drag him through the air, and release him from the sky.

[Arkash]

"You...-" Hans started from where he knelt, looking on as the vulture dipped and vanished from sight among the crowd "-you killed it?" Bothknight and criminal believed it to be dead but kept their gazes set on the mark a moment longer. Derek furrowed his brow; he hadn't expected it to be so easy to kill a kindred. Even so, he wasn't well versed in the abilities of a Wohlricht. Having lived in the slums most of his life, he'd scarcely even heard of them.
"...I think so?" Derek returned as his first rifle clicked, indicating that it was ready to be fired once more. The icy blue ring of his eye scoured the battlefield, looking for a trace of the confirmed kill. He stared down the adjusted iron sight of his borrowed gun while he glanced between the combatting bodies. Who did he see... But Taelian?
There, in the heat of battle, yet utterly intact and unharmed, was the godling he'd met in the fall of the year just gone, the man that seemed to vanish, swallowed by the world. Derek's heart seemed to stop, the world around him disappeared and all the sounds and smells of bloody battle were muffled in those few moments of emotional slugging. Everyone the young rath held dear either left him or died. He'd never expected to find one of those endeared people again, least of all Taelian. The God spawn with so very far to go, fighting in wars that weren't his own. Deep down, Arkash had thought the man died; lost to some fight, nameless and forgotten.
The fact that he was wrong, that Taelian hadn't perished to the enemy's steel and fangs, brought him both relief and grief alike. Taelian had professed his love for him, and he believed the elf, so what kept him so far? What had happened in the last couple of seasons, so egregious as to prevent their meeting until that day? At least he knew the man was still alive; if nothing else, they could work out whatever happened to cause their distance. They could close the space between.
"...You alright?" Hans asked with a press of his hand to the rath's shoulder. Derek blinked and looked to the Errant with a curl to his brow. "You're crying..." The lesser knight explained.
Derek lifted a hand from his rifle and felt along his cheek with the leather of his gauntlet. When he lowered it, he found the gloss of tears on the surface. "...It's just the wind," he returned with a croak. "Makes my eyes dry," came his explanation as he looked up from his gauntlet in time to find a second vulture attacking Taelian. Knights all around him were crushed by a flurry of feathers, and Arkash hissed as he brought his sight to the beast, but it was gone. Taelian was encircled by fire without the knighthood to back him up.
How? Hadn't he lost his fire magic when he became a God? The onset of turbulent emotion in his mind was momentarily muted as the heat of the battle crept up around him.
Before Arkash could contemplate such a question further, Hans cried out in desperation. Before the human's cry could end, Derek's gaze snapped to the human, saw that he was looking up, then also directed his gaze upward to find the sword of doom dropping on him, only in the form of a raven's beak.
There was no time to yell his warning, no time to move away. His mind ran at a mile a minute as his form desperately fired up to try and evade a sudden lethal blow from the blue. Hans' safety was out of his hands, he couldn't save both of them. His disposable shield had outlived itself already, it seemed. It was uncertain if he could even save himself, let alone Hans.
A push of his form engaged his core muscles while he laid prone, and he pulled his gun-encumbered form to roll to the side. The Kindred's target was his spine, the downward thrust of its beak was to direct a tremendous amount of force to a single point; he didn't doubt that such a strike would skewer and kebab several Argent, but because both the Kindred's target and the surface area of the strike were narrow, he had a chance to avoid it by moving just a little bit.
So, he rolled to the side to offset the bird's target, and opened his side to the attack. There was a sudden burst of weight on his front, a pull, a rip, a burst of searing pain that brought his teeth to clench beneath his widened eyes. Had he just been gutted? He couldn't tell in his adrenaline high.
The raven's beak crashed and ripped through the train's roof, destroyed the sheet metal with incredible ease. He felt the shape of the vehicle warp under the weight of the strike, in fact. Hans was gone, somewhere on the other side of the Kindred's strike, he still lived. Arkash could feel his fast-beating heart.
As the sheet metal squeezed the raven's beak, Arkash continued his roll, pulled on the train's roof to spin his form around, and landed on his back with his rifle aimed down his body at the kindred. A squeeze of his trigger launched his third bullet and struck with an etheric blast of kinetic force, square on the beak. The strike was enough to knock the Wohlricht free of the train's hold, and even slid Arkash further down the carriage an inch or two at the force of the boom and the recoil alike.
Zarhog was on him again, though. As the bird broke free of its momentary snare, it quickly closed the gap with the disguised rathor and brought down a second vertical strike for the sake of skewering the unprepared gunman. Arkash hadn't the time to switch gun, or even eject the shell. The meager boon of his dranoch speed and strength wasn't nearly enough to keep up with the being.
Still, he managed to maintain the defensive by bulling the weight of his entire lower body to throw over his head. From the floor, Derek Egon backflipped onto his feet as the puss-ridden Wohlricht struck the spot that he laid in. Before Arkash could even produce his second rifle, the bird was gone, completely invisible. Hans was on the floor, laying on his back some distance from the rathor with some arm wound clutched in his gauntlet. The boy lived.
In a flash, it appeared as though some other challenger had decided to join the fray, as some warped, partly tattered humanoid appeared before him. The creature was incredibly fast, faster than he was. He didn't have the time or space to dodge the sudden swipe of its blade, as he stayed with his feet planted atop the broken train carriage. So, he spun his rifle around lengthwise and used the barrel to block the attack. It wasn't enough. Zahrog cut through the gun, splitting the golem's long barrel in two. Narrowly, Arkash avoided the resulting slash with a slight graze to his chest piece. it was there that he found that the kindred had shallowly cut his stomach, which was left exposed. The raven's beak had ripped through the leather of his borrowed armor's stomach and shallowly wounded him.
Arkash's eyes widened as he looked upon whatever the hell had just attacked him; faster than any knight he'd ever killed, miles stronger. Suddenly, the revolutionary who thought himself an apex predator had become the prey of a much bigger fish. "CUNT!" He called as his gun split, then ducked beneath the second swipe of its blade, then dove around the third and threw himself from the train.
At once, Arkash gripped the edge of the train's roof with his gauntlet and threw his momentum upward with the use of his powerful core. The Wohlricht was on his non-existent tail, however, rushing with extreme agility and reflexes to the place Arkash intended to land. Upon the snow, Arkash fell crouched, only to roll aside as the beast slashed at the same spot. Arkash couldn't even draw his sword, though he knew it would do him no good if the monster was capable of cutting through golems with ease.
His one visible eye widened as he landed, for he was forced to evade another strike. Zahrog was relentless, and Arkash hadn't even a second to spare. All his resources were committed to the defense, and even then, it was scarcely enough to maintain for long; he would eventually grow tired.

Image source.

[Nyx]

Thread Review

Arkash

Regular Experience: 8 EXP

Magical Experience: N/A

Injury/Ailments: N/A

Awarded Lore:
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 1
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 2
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 3
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 4
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 5
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 6
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 7
[*] Tracking: Generic Lore 8
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[*] [PC] Taelian: Fought on the frontlines against the Kindred and the omen briefly
[*] [PC] Taelian: A boss as bitch in combat

Loot: N/A

Character

Regular Experience: 8 EXP

Magical Experience: N/A

Injury/Ailments: N/A

Awarded Lore:
Tactics: Generic Lore 1
Tactics: Generic Lore 2
Tactics: Generic Lore 3
Tactics: Generic Lore 4
Hunting: Generic Lore 1
Hunting: Generic Lore 2
Hunting: Generic Lore 3
Hunting: Generic Lore 4

Loot: N/A


Comments: If there are any issues with the review feel free to send me a message!