9th of Frost, 4621
He paused, claws splayed against the bark of the tree while his ears rang, his chest burned with the threat to explode and fragment. The claws of his feet sank into the cool morning earth, the wetness of the dew on the forest grass licked at his scales while he lifted his head skyward in a desperate attempt to catch his breath.
There it was again, the ghastly howl somewhere far behind him. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the sound and stared into the morning mist. The thrum of thudding paws on dirt, the rustle of leaves.
He had to move.
Again, he pushed off from the tree and clutched his side, the site of that wound, and ran his way through the forest, away from that sound, deeper into the wild. His heart drummed in his ears, his venom ran in streaks across his dark scales, matting his visage with a sort of primal aggression that wasn't found anywhere but his most dire straits.
The constant thud of paws on the ground eventually caught up to his awkward half limp, coupled with the drag of breath through snarling lips, Arkash brought his eyes to look upon the source. A wolf, one of them, more gaining on him quickly. The beast briefly met his gaze before Arkash turned back to the front and pushed his wounded lung even harder to reach a clearing in the woodland ahead.
The moment he passed into the open sunlight, a torrent of wolves poured out into the open from behind him. They circled him around the front and cut off his escape route with gnashing teeth and violent barks. As more closed in from behind him, Arkash drew his black sword, spun, and cleaved the beast in half with a single swing. More came at him from the sides, both directions at once. Arkash rolled through the gore and spun as he landed with an outward fling of his blade.
Pained whines and yelps escaped the wolves as more rushed him from behind. Immediately, he hardened the blood he'd rolled in to grant a thin layer of steel-grade armor, and turned to cleave through the first two of his attackers as a second volley pounced upon him, all in vain. Arkash bared his teeth as he fought the larger beast away from his neck with the blade, then flung it outward to cut through the upper half of the wolf's head. Lifeless, their alpha fell upon him.
Some wild swings saw him cleave through a few more wolves as they began to disperse and flee, but not all inflicted wounds were lethal or maiming. One struggled and limped where its paw had been cut off, and in a flash of fury, arkash flung some of the hardened blood from his body with sway and littered the beast ina s series of spikes. It yelped again, wobbled, then collapsed, still against the glade's floor.
The pack had dispersed, he was alone.
With a deep breath and a shuddering exhale, he pushed the headless wolf from his body and stood as he brushed some of the mess from his sword arm, and sheathed it at the hip. He leeched from some of the drooling wounds of the wolf cadavers and used that blight to pull all the blood that rested in their bodies to a single focal point, where it hardened and accumulated in a single large blood ball. The husks they left behind were withered and drained, but that was fine. When he was certain he'd gathered all the blood he could from the handful of wolves he'd killed, his jaws fell upon them, and he began to feed off their flesh and bone, as dry as it was, with a series of aggressive and destructive clasps of his jaws.
When he was done, the injury to his side, the gunshot wounds inflicted some weeks ago, felt so much better. He sighed while he pressed and tested his scales in the area, then rolled his shoulders as he turned his attention to the blood ball he'd accumulated.
Was he in any shape to even attempt what he'd ventured there for? Time would tell, he supposed.
His eye looked about the clearing to gauge his surroundings; it was a small opening in the woods that surrounded Couronne; circled by the bodies of trees with their canopies extending over the brush around the fringes. The grass beneath his feet was short, shaded, clean of any struggle. The only indication that anything at all had happened there was the mass of blood that sat before him.
Arkash turned his attention to one of the trees, then reached into his pocket to unfold a piece of paper. It was a diagram of sorts, some sort of depiction of the musculature in the human body with several scrawlings of different labels and the like around the different muscle groups. He couldn't read, but the flow of muscle fibers was shown clearly, the direction in which they flexed. Arkash looked closely upon those images again, and as his eye traced their looks, he began to run his clawed hands up his arms to press and test his own muscles beneath the scales. While his eyes remained fixed to the printed drawing, he curled his arm to feel the shift of tension.
If he just started with his arms, his chest shouldn't move too much, should it? He furrowed his brow then rolled his fingers to test the tension in his forearm. Grip strength was found in the forearm, he imagined, as he clenched a full fist and felt the tension there. As he peered closer at the diagram, he found the shoulders in a different sort of group, separated from his arms. He wouldn't focus on them too much, not yet.
Without a guide to show him the various motions he had to perform to strain those muscles, Arkash was left holding the limb, feeling its tension as he moved about and squeezed, testing all the different flows of motion and force. When he'd been at it for a while, he found certain muscles grew just a tinge more tired after repeating the same motion, and it was well known that the miners he toiled within labor camps often grew stronger, adapt to the hard manual labor that they had to endure.
Was that it? Repetition and resistance?
He wouldn't know unless he tried.
So, with a roll of his shoulders, he turned his attention to the ball of material he'd gathered and began to reshape it with a reach of his unseen ether. he split the material and created a series of bars of varying density and weight. The density of the blood was identifiable by the shade, as it grew darker the more it was compressed. The lightest blood bars were their usual bright red, and the heaviest was completely black.
He began with the deep red bars, a small one in each hand. Steadily, he curled his arm to fully contract his bicep, then lowered the bar with just as much care. He repeated the process with his other arm and found about the same degree of resistance as the first. After a nod of approval, he began to repeat the motion but found his shoulders growing tired the longer he went on. The effect confused him, as he was meant to isolate the strain to his arms.
When he next checked the diagram, he looked at the flow of muscle fibers and found the motion that was causing unwanted strain in other parts of his body. It was the motion his arms took when they rolled forwards he'd done. After some time trying out a series of other lifts, he determined the best fix was to keep his elbows pinned at his sides. His arms would not move at the shoulder and only bend at the elbow.
When he began the lift, he found quite a bit more strain than he had before, all isolated to his upper arms. Arkash bared his teeth and curled his nose with a grunt as he pushed through the strain, and leaned back to fully complete the curl, then let his arms fall without control. He took a moment there to breathe while he leaned forward, putting the weight of the blood bars on his back. There, he found an uncomfortable pressure, so he once again straightened his posture and set his head forward, and tried again to curl the bars, one after the other.
Eventually, his forearms began to burn in tandem with his exhausted biceps, and he found his grip strength waning. So, with a grunt, he cast them to the floor, bent at the knees, and supported his upper body there with a series of deep breaths. Uncomfortable, exhausting burning wrought the muscles of his arms, but it was a sort of discomfort that he found he enjoyed. Once he'd recovered, Arkash began to round up the blood bars and stowed them in the clasp of a hollow.
He reached back to feel the center of his spine, where he'd previously felt a degree of pressure. Though it was sore from improper form, he believed it wasn't injured. With a sigh, he collected the diagram from the tree's bark, then made his way back to Couronne proper.
He paused, claws splayed against the bark of the tree while his ears rang, his chest burned with the threat to explode and fragment. The claws of his feet sank into the cool morning earth, the wetness of the dew on the forest grass licked at his scales while he lifted his head skyward in a desperate attempt to catch his breath.
There it was again, the ghastly howl somewhere far behind him. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the sound and stared into the morning mist. The thrum of thudding paws on dirt, the rustle of leaves.
He had to move.
Again, he pushed off from the tree and clutched his side, the site of that wound, and ran his way through the forest, away from that sound, deeper into the wild. His heart drummed in his ears, his venom ran in streaks across his dark scales, matting his visage with a sort of primal aggression that wasn't found anywhere but his most dire straits.
The constant thud of paws on the ground eventually caught up to his awkward half limp, coupled with the drag of breath through snarling lips, Arkash brought his eyes to look upon the source. A wolf, one of them, more gaining on him quickly. The beast briefly met his gaze before Arkash turned back to the front and pushed his wounded lung even harder to reach a clearing in the woodland ahead.
The moment he passed into the open sunlight, a torrent of wolves poured out into the open from behind him. They circled him around the front and cut off his escape route with gnashing teeth and violent barks. As more closed in from behind him, Arkash drew his black sword, spun, and cleaved the beast in half with a single swing. More came at him from the sides, both directions at once. Arkash rolled through the gore and spun as he landed with an outward fling of his blade.
Pained whines and yelps escaped the wolves as more rushed him from behind. Immediately, he hardened the blood he'd rolled in to grant a thin layer of steel-grade armor, and turned to cleave through the first two of his attackers as a second volley pounced upon him, all in vain. Arkash bared his teeth as he fought the larger beast away from his neck with the blade, then flung it outward to cut through the upper half of the wolf's head. Lifeless, their alpha fell upon him.
Some wild swings saw him cleave through a few more wolves as they began to disperse and flee, but not all inflicted wounds were lethal or maiming. One struggled and limped where its paw had been cut off, and in a flash of fury, arkash flung some of the hardened blood from his body with sway and littered the beast ina s series of spikes. It yelped again, wobbled, then collapsed, still against the glade's floor.
The pack had dispersed, he was alone.
With a deep breath and a shuddering exhale, he pushed the headless wolf from his body and stood as he brushed some of the mess from his sword arm, and sheathed it at the hip. He leeched from some of the drooling wounds of the wolf cadavers and used that blight to pull all the blood that rested in their bodies to a single focal point, where it hardened and accumulated in a single large blood ball. The husks they left behind were withered and drained, but that was fine. When he was certain he'd gathered all the blood he could from the handful of wolves he'd killed, his jaws fell upon them, and he began to feed off their flesh and bone, as dry as it was, with a series of aggressive and destructive clasps of his jaws.
When he was done, the injury to his side, the gunshot wounds inflicted some weeks ago, felt so much better. He sighed while he pressed and tested his scales in the area, then rolled his shoulders as he turned his attention to the blood ball he'd accumulated.
Was he in any shape to even attempt what he'd ventured there for? Time would tell, he supposed.
His eye looked about the clearing to gauge his surroundings; it was a small opening in the woods that surrounded Couronne; circled by the bodies of trees with their canopies extending over the brush around the fringes. The grass beneath his feet was short, shaded, clean of any struggle. The only indication that anything at all had happened there was the mass of blood that sat before him.
Arkash turned his attention to one of the trees, then reached into his pocket to unfold a piece of paper. It was a diagram of sorts, some sort of depiction of the musculature in the human body with several scrawlings of different labels and the like around the different muscle groups. He couldn't read, but the flow of muscle fibers was shown clearly, the direction in which they flexed. Arkash looked closely upon those images again, and as his eye traced their looks, he began to run his clawed hands up his arms to press and test his own muscles beneath the scales. While his eyes remained fixed to the printed drawing, he curled his arm to feel the shift of tension.
If he just started with his arms, his chest shouldn't move too much, should it? He furrowed his brow then rolled his fingers to test the tension in his forearm. Grip strength was found in the forearm, he imagined, as he clenched a full fist and felt the tension there. As he peered closer at the diagram, he found the shoulders in a different sort of group, separated from his arms. He wouldn't focus on them too much, not yet.
Without a guide to show him the various motions he had to perform to strain those muscles, Arkash was left holding the limb, feeling its tension as he moved about and squeezed, testing all the different flows of motion and force. When he'd been at it for a while, he found certain muscles grew just a tinge more tired after repeating the same motion, and it was well known that the miners he toiled within labor camps often grew stronger, adapt to the hard manual labor that they had to endure.
Was that it? Repetition and resistance?
He wouldn't know unless he tried.
So, with a roll of his shoulders, he turned his attention to the ball of material he'd gathered and began to reshape it with a reach of his unseen ether. he split the material and created a series of bars of varying density and weight. The density of the blood was identifiable by the shade, as it grew darker the more it was compressed. The lightest blood bars were their usual bright red, and the heaviest was completely black.
He began with the deep red bars, a small one in each hand. Steadily, he curled his arm to fully contract his bicep, then lowered the bar with just as much care. He repeated the process with his other arm and found about the same degree of resistance as the first. After a nod of approval, he began to repeat the motion but found his shoulders growing tired the longer he went on. The effect confused him, as he was meant to isolate the strain to his arms.
When he next checked the diagram, he looked at the flow of muscle fibers and found the motion that was causing unwanted strain in other parts of his body. It was the motion his arms took when they rolled forwards he'd done. After some time trying out a series of other lifts, he determined the best fix was to keep his elbows pinned at his sides. His arms would not move at the shoulder and only bend at the elbow.
When he began the lift, he found quite a bit more strain than he had before, all isolated to his upper arms. Arkash bared his teeth and curled his nose with a grunt as he pushed through the strain, and leaned back to fully complete the curl, then let his arms fall without control. He took a moment there to breathe while he leaned forward, putting the weight of the blood bars on his back. There, he found an uncomfortable pressure, so he once again straightened his posture and set his head forward, and tried again to curl the bars, one after the other.
Eventually, his forearms began to burn in tandem with his exhausted biceps, and he found his grip strength waning. So, with a grunt, he cast them to the floor, bent at the knees, and supported his upper body there with a series of deep breaths. Uncomfortable, exhausting burning wrought the muscles of his arms, but it was a sort of discomfort that he found he enjoyed. Once he'd recovered, Arkash began to round up the blood bars and stowed them in the clasp of a hollow.
He reached back to feel the center of his spine, where he'd previously felt a degree of pressure. Though it was sore from improper form, he believed it wasn't injured. With a sigh, he collected the diagram from the tree's bark, then made his way back to Couronne proper.
