Hooligan Hoe Down IV The Distraction

[Sola]

35th of Glade, 4622

Luna was brought to the raider camp, her heart heavy with dread as she anticipated what awaited her. She knew what was expected of her, and she was no stranger to using her body to entertain. In fact, she was one of the best courtesans in the country, if not the world. But that didn't mean it was effortless. Entertaining over a dozen people was a lot, even for her. The raiders wasted no time in putting her to work, and Luna found herself entertaining and performing her duties with practiced ease. She tried to focus on the task at hand, being a sexy distraction.

Her saving grace was her magical powers of mentalism. And in this dark and dangerous place, her skills were more valuable than ever. Luna tapped into the massive reserves of energy within the Obelisk she had created earlier in the day, using it to maintain the emotional state of each raider after they were satiated. It was mentally draining to multitask on her physical and mental duties, but Luna found that she was learning to cope. She pushed herself harder than ever before, channeling the power of the Obelisk to keep the raiders in a blissful state of happiness. She felt her mind stretching and expanding, taking on a workload that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

As she worked, Luna wondered if her magic afforded her a heightened mental capacity. Perhaps it was the result of years of training, or maybe it was the energy of the Obelisk working through her. Whatever the cause, Luna knew that she was capable of things she had never imagined before, and that gave her a glimmer of hope in the darkness of her captivity.

Created by Moop!

[Arkash]

He still felt it.

In his chest, that bubbling rage, the overwhelming tension in his muscles and bones. Long after the fact, he felt the desire to rip into those raiders, their faces etched into his eyelids.

He breathed deeply through his nose and expanded his lungs against the confines of the rope, then let out that deep breath very slowly through his mouth.

It was the same anger, he resolved. The same anger that had polluted his mind since Glade had rolled around. He hadn't realized it at first, and instead focused entirely on the mission. And as such, he'd successfully resisted the temptation for the first time.

The raiders had forced him to operate on their leader; a purple-skinned Moroi with a missing arm, dying of infection. Arkash had revived the decaying flesh and built the sod anew arm. After all, he was the one that had severed and eaten it.

"Limit violence," he said as he breathed to himself, then began to change shape. The ropes around his arms loosened as Arkash morphed into something utterly inhuman, and fell to the floor on all fours. His clothes barely fit, and dragged along with him as he crawled free of his bindings, then began to re-assume his True form. The bones beneath his carapace changed shape to become more human while his forked tongue flicked from his muzzle to taste the air.

Sweat, urine, blood, feces, disease, gunpowder... But none of it was Luna's blood. He could smell her, her essence and the like, but she hadn't come under any harm.

With a deep exhale, he crawled along the sandy floor of the tent he'd been stowed in, slipped outside and wrapped his arm around the neck of the appointed guard. His elbow hooked his hand before he pressed on the back of the raider's head to amplify the squeeze of his chokehold.

Far superior in strength, he yanked the man back into the tent with him and took his full weight while the raider fumbled for his pistol before he gave up and tried to pull at Arkash's face, out of reach. Soon enough, his limbs fell still. Arkash loosened his hold while he listened to the slow-beating thrum in the man's chest, then smiled with a scoff of disbelief. "Nothing!" He chimed quietly as he began to wrap up the man with the same bloody ropes that had been used to bind him. With his grafting needle, he sewed the man's lips shut.

Overstepping didn't strike him, somehow. "Maybe because I didn't kill 'im?" he questioned himself before he dragged the bound, unconscious raider to the corner, then peaked out of the tent to get a look of his surroundings.

The tower watchman was still active, still distracted with that rifle in hand. He needed to betaken care of before any of the others. However, a glance at the large tent put his mind's eye on Luna. How was she faring in there?

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[Sola]

Luna continued drawing on the energy in the Obelisk to keep herself safe. A happy raider wasn’t the kind to take out his frustrations on a courtesan, at least not physically. The problem was, she had no idea how long her safety would last. She’d used an Obelisk to keep one person’s emotions maintained for a long time so logic told her that keeping this many happy would not last long. She didn’t exactly have the obelisk on hand either so it wasn’t as if she could examine it. It was somewhere off to the side with the rest of her belongings that’d been taken from her. The good news was, she felt as though she was over halfway done with entertaining them.

Luna wished she could have blamed Arkash for taking so long. She tried to make a timeline in her head to track what might have happened to him. She presumed that he was treating the leader for his injuries, or whatever. They had been pretty vague about what was wrong with him. If it was something serious then treatment might take hours. Hours that Luna likely didn’t have. Or perhaps, he was lying about being a necromancer and had simply started killing people. She felt a glimmer of hope that he was already securing his belongings.

“What will we do with her afterwards?”

The words pulled Luna from her fantasy of being rescued in the next few minutes.

“Tie her up of course. That was the best time I’ve had in… I can’t remember when! I think she likes it.”

“Ugh,” Luna thought, “just a little while longer.”

Created by Moop!

[Arkash]

With a deep exhale, Arkash resolved that Luna was fine where she was. From what he could hear, they were having a good time with her. With no fresh blood in the water, it could only mean that their fun didn't involve brutalizing her.

So, Arkash continued to the watchtower. he moved fast and low, dipping out of sight when the watchman looked at the tent he'd come from. With remarkable ease, Arkash slipped beneath the tower, then began to scale it as though he was weightless. Claws dug into the stonework of the tower and carried him higher, all as quiet as a mouse.

He stopped when he was placed right under the platform that the tower guard stood on, listened for the man's beating heart, then the shift of his weight as he adjusted position. "Even Jones 'as gone to 'ave some fun... Why am I still out 'ere?" He complained in regard to the raider Arkash had choked and bagged.

Once he'd positioned himself right, Arkash gripped the edge of the platform, bend his knees at the wall of the tower, then threw his weight to swing off the edge. the floorboard creaked as he made some distance, but not enough. He swung back down and kicked off the wall at the right moment for some extra momentum, where he landed on the railing, directly in front of the sun-baked rifleman.

The human blinked in disbelief where Arkash perched, then raised his rifle as Arkash swung the bludgeon of his tail to knock it from his hand. The Raider hissed in pain and clutched his finger before Arkash kicked off the railing to drive his hands into the watchman's neck. Suddenly, the broken finger wasn't as much of an issue as the man tried in vain to pry the claws from his neck. he kicked and thrashed and struggled all he could below the dranoch, but couldn't so much as approach his strength.

Down he stared in glee as the resistance receded from the Raider's twisted features before they lost consciousness. Arkash wasted no time in applying the grafting needle. He sewed the man's mouth shut and bound his arms to his torso and closes the gap between his legs with more skin. In order to move, the raider would need to forcefully rip his skin off.

With the watchtower out of the way, Arkash dropped from the tower and rushed across the sand to the big tent as their temporary leader had put it. From what he could tell, it sounded as though they were finishing up with her. One of the men even wandered out of the tent, pulling his pants up with a sort of dopey glee plastered on his face... At least until he saw Arkash waiting to pounce on him. Straight to the sand Arkash took him, covered his mouth before he could scream, then headbutted him with just enough force to knock him unconscious.

From inside the tent, he heard a cackle. "Boys, Tigs jus' dropped!" He called with some more laughter to follow the observation.

"You really did a number on him, huh?" Observed the brute from earlier partway through his time with Luna.

"I'll go drag 'im outta th' sun," sighed one of the younger men, who ventured outside after him. And again, that raider failed to return.

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[Sola]

▬ι═ﺤ

Once Arkash got close to where Luna was he would invariably feel the effects of the obelisk. It was possible that he would feel unusually happy, or perhaps his altered form would perceive emotions differently. In any case the point was that Luna was using the Obelisk to emit happiness in an area of effect, not just on a specific set of people. The only one intentionally immune to its effects was herself.

As Luna finished with the last of her new clientele, she was in fact tied up with some ropes next to where the vehicles were parked. She felt like a horse being set aside until her services would be needed again.

Thankfully, by the time the obelisk stopped working most of the men were content with falling asleep. There were not that many that remained awake which probably meant Arkash would have an easier time getting around. Luna hoped that she would have an opportunity to escape, but she was still being watched for the time being. Why wouldn't they watch her?

She wasn't that worried at this point. She had a feeling that she could use the weave to cut her restraints if absolutely necessary, though doing so without hurting herself was probably impossible. Also, she needed to locate a sharp object.

"Come on, how long does it take to grab some stuff?" She thought. She couldn't see Arkash and she hasn't seen any sign of him either. Plus she didn't know how to drive so she couldn't exactly escape on her own.

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[Arkash]

Arkash did smile more than he normally would when he approached the large tent, and even more so when he disabled the first man to leave the tent, and again when he jumped the second. Arkash strangled the boy into the sand, sat on his chest with wild glee in his eye. Again, he only held his choking grasp until the boy passed out, then bound his limbs and lips with his own skin before he dragged him to reside by his fellow wormified raider.

There, Arkash waited and listened for the commotion on the inside of the tent to settle down, then began to smile even more as the rattling thrum of their beating hearts began to slow; the men inside napped in their pleasure-saturated stupor.

The only evenly paced heart in the tent was then carted off by one of the men. By the smell that followed it, he could only imagine it was the woman he'd brought with him from Rustbucket. He waited there a moment longer while he listened with closed eyes to the beating hearts scattered within as they descended to the slow, rhythmic spell of sleep. He sighed in anticipation before he slipped under the rim of the tent and merged with the darkness of the interior.

He moved quickly to a raider who laid on his front as the claws of his right hand began to elongate then burn with unseen black fire. The scales of his hand lightened to a shade sickly pale.

Without pause, he gripped the raider by the hair, then pulled. He lifted the man so that he was upright on his knees, finally roused by the pain of being so harshly yanked. He let out a cry of pain before anger flashed in his eyes and he moved to try and grab the unseen force that held him. Arkash watched as the men in the room began to rouse, some of them rolling over and jumping to their feet in a state of panic.

He laughed.

He dragged his claws across the throat of the raider in his hold and cut so deeply that the man's neck was half-sawed. The gash opened further as Arkash peeled his neck back and cast leech on the lifeblood of his victim. Blight encircled him in a storm of dark red that blotted out his shadow-cloaked form. Then, with a throw of his claws, he sent out the raider's blood.

Bands of twice-hardened blood bound all those in the tent by the mouth, ankles, and wrists per his will. Frenzied, panicked men were thrown to the floor by the force of Arkash's Sway and Bloodshaping. Muffled screams and writhing ensued as all seven of them were disabled in one fell swoop.

Arkash let his camouflage fall and withdrew the manifestation of his Dranoch claws before he looked himself over. The moment he released the raider's hair, they fell to the carpeted floor, dead. "No mageblight?" he asked, apparently confused. He felt over his scalie head, inspected his cheeks and nostrils for any blood. "What the fuck?" He asked, bewildered.

His stunt had cost no ether, fueled entirely by the life of the raider he'd sacrificed, but even so most violent encounters up until that point had afflicted him with overstepping. What was the secret? Why was that happening? He shook his head to discard his thoughts before he left the screaming men to writhe on the floor where they belonged.

The blood on his hands hardened and coated his knuckles like gauntlets as Arkash flicked his tongue and followed the scent of the woman that had been moved.

With the effect of the obelisk gone, his smile receded to something of a cold stare as he stepped into the tent where she was being held and vanished from the naked eye. The raider posted there gasped, raised his gun, fired, and missed as Arkash had effortlessly side-stepped the slow attack. And then, in less than a second, he was struck with a heavy blow to the head and knocked flat to the sand cheek bone clearly fractured while his cold eyes looked up at Luna.

He cast sway on the hardened blood that covered his knuckles to let it drip as liquid from his fingers before he let his camouflage recede, then bowed his head to the bound woman. "You seriously need a bath, ma'am," was all he said before he knelt at the post she was tied to, hardened the blood on his hands to a razor and cut through the ropes that bound her with a single swipe. "I could smell you from the other side of the camp, I'm not even exaggerating!" He clarified while he pulled the coils from her.

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[Sola]

▬ι═ﺤ

Luna was tied against a post. Her figure was wrapped snugly with rope around the arms and legs and she was understandably still naked when she was restrained. So she just stood there, leaning slightly to the side so the rope could bear a good deal of her weight. She found herself increasingly annoyed with their dumbass decision to tie her in a standing position. It was cruel which made sense, but still.

As the minutes ticked by, Luna also become annoyed with her very limited vision of what was happening in other areas of the camp. Her first hint that something was indeed happening was some noise from afar. She hadn't heard it, as she'd been humming to herself to pass the time, but the person watching her turned to go look outside. Then there was a bang.

Luna leapt in surprise only for the ropes to yank her back down. She hissed in pain and she reached out with her mind to levitate a nearby tool used for chariot maintenance. Thankfully, she didn't need to use it. She let it fall to the ground when she realized it was Arkash. He was the only one on the planet tha might possibly look like that anyways. He didn't look the least bit happy so Luna guessed that her obelisk had worn off. That, or he was immune to its effects.

Luna smirked at him when he called her smelly. "I didn't know that form of yours allowed you to smell beauty." She stretched when she was released and continued, "so, did you find what you were looking for? And did you happen to spot where my clothes and stuff are? Perhaps that nose of yours can pick up on em'." She spoke quietly, not knowing that most of the camp was likely dead already. She also looked worried, thining the bang of the gun might have alerted others that something was wrong.

Created by Moop!

[Arkash]

Adrenaline rushed through her veins. It swelled the vessels, made her heart and lungs faster in anticipation of whatever it was that had startled her. Arkash couldn't help but smile; most people he surrounded himself with were very much accustomed to the roar of a gun's blast, but she was not.

At her joke, he laughed dryly. "If beauty smells like essence of frustrated desert bandit..." he waddled his head side to side then shrugged. "Maybe?"

He took the man by the legs before he drew his grafting needle from a thread in his dark green rags, then deftly stitched the bandit's legs together with luminescent blue thread that materialized as skin when activated. Curiously, his unwieldy claws didn't seem to slow him down at all in his needlework.

"...Your clothes?" He thought as he looked up, partway through binding the raider's wrists behind his back. "Might be in the big tent still. As for my stuff? It's around here somewhere but we've got time to look," he stopped to turn the man over on his side, then tested the bound man's jaw to find it dislocated with a slight cringe to the bridge of his muzzle. "He'll be alright," he assured with a wince.

All done with his work, Arkash pushed the length of his forked, pale tongue from his mouth, then closed his bright yellow eyes when he withdrew it. "...Yeah," he spoke when he opened them again. "Come on, just uhh..." he thought for a moment, then squinted at her. "...Just don't think too hard about what happened to everyone in there, alright?"

"Actually, let's start from the beginning," he began as he brought his hands together, almost in prayer. "Are you squeamish at all? Does... Blood, guts... Anything like that freak you out?" He gave a pause for her to reply before he followed up with "what about pain, crying, pleading... Death?"

"If any of that bothers you then you might wanna stay here, otherwise follow me," he offered with a motion of his hand before he turned and moved into the campgrounds proper, then after a short walk through the sun and the sand, into the big tent were seven men were bound in cast black cuffs. They were muffled by the same dark material while they yelled and tried their best to break from the binds. One of the men was face down in his bedroll dead, half decapitated.

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[Sola]

▬ι═ﺤ

Luna observed how Arkash put his grafting needle to use. "That's pretty clever," she said, "I'm studying to be a necromancer and I would have never thought that the needle could be used like that."

He asked her how she would handle a variety of terrible things and she responded by saying, "Oh, so you mean to say you slaughered them all. That's... actually pretty impressive. Who would have thought someone could accomplish so much with just the ability to shapeshift?"

She walked over to the raider who'd been watching her and picked up his firearm. She examined it in her hands and absent mindedly said, "I am training to be a Necromancer so I can handle a good amount of... unsavory sights. I'm sure I can handle it. I feel safer with you nearby anyways, so let's get going." She gripped the rifle in her hands knowing full well she didn't know how to shoot it, but it ought to serve as a good blunt weapon if anyone snuck up on her.

Luna was definitely not able to handle it. When she saw the half decapitated man she knelt down and vomited, then wiped her mouth on her arm. "Ugh." She hurried over to her clothes and put them on and retrieved her other stuff while Arkash did whatever he had to do. Unless he was interrogating them or made an effort to convince her to stop, Luna would use the men as target practice. She'd shoot an arrow at each. She figured an arrow to the chest was a good enough punishment for what they'd done to her.

After her work was done, then she'd continue to follow Arkash.

Created by Moop!

[Arkash]

"Not quite..." Was all Arkash said to the prospective Necromancer when she suggested he'd killed them all. If she'd encountered an Arkash two years younger, the answer might have been yes. But he'd done well to capture most of them alive with minimal injuries. Of course, they'd seen him use blood magic so none of them were allowed to live, but Arkash planned to cart them back to his headquarters for food.

He hadn't anticipated that Luna would vomit when she entered the big tent, but upon seeing the single casualty in the room, she did. Arkash exhaled from his nose as he collected her clothes, then knelt beside her to gently pat her back. "If it helps at all, just think of it as oddly shaped meat," he suggested before he put her clothes down at her side along with his waterskin, then left the tent.

Into the bright sun, Arkash didn't squint as his eyes rapidly adjusted to the lighting. Toe claws spread through the sand as he walked from tent to tent, inspecting the interior of each in search of his belongings. There were several crates of supplies, chariots, barrels of water, human remains, some treasures and trinkets, and... What he'd been looking for.

He waited there until Luna caught up with him, smiled with a bow of his head, then motioned her closer. "Feeling better?" He asked hopefully with a glint in his eye.

When she drew near, he'd open up the tent to reveal... A small, pyramid-shaped forge laid in the sand, an iron-maiden-like construct leaning against a post and a spherical dark iron vessel. There was also a sizeable black leather bag, a metallic claw, a small ornate dagger with a gemmed hilt, a length of brass and dark iron chains, a flanged tool of menacing curves, and a pair of twisted dark iron tongs laid upon a nondescript table at the edge of the tent. All in all, it looked to belong in a torture chamber. But if Luna had any knowledge of it, she'd recognize it as a Sundering Kit.

"This is what I've been searching for all this time, this is what they stole from me," he spoke almost wistfully. "As I promised, everything else in the camp is yours..." he said as he closed the tent and turned his attention to her. "But I would ask that I take one of those chariots for myself..."

"Izzy and Bants will be here in the morning with their Ozy and cart to bring all this stuff back to the derelict, so you've got plenty of time to look around for anything you want... And there's no one left alive here," Arkash explained with a turn of his claw. "You don't need to cart that gun around but it's yours if you want it."

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