Forgot Sanvun in that last post. I'll amend it as soon as I can.
Also, if y'all wanna wait for DC to go before making any responses I'm good with that.
IchorBorn's forum posts
They are here now. Struggling with the squirming masses below me. They are fearless. Masked vigilantes abound, some armored in steel and technology, others in agility, wit or skill. It matters little. Those destined to fall will fall, and there are many such souls here this day.
Among their number, at least half a dozen stand out as being beyond the pale, as greater than the common man. They are the ones the master spoke of. They are the ones I was born to destroy.
I take that final step, the plunge into the dark sphere of the master's horsemen, and relish in the cold dark before the familiar heat of battle overwhelms me. Show me, oh Black Marauder, show me what true power is, that I might spread your gospel to these unbelievers.
A human-like form, wild in its imitation of man, sloppy and crude, pierced the domed greenery so carefully constructed by the immortal Feerl, the black, oozing welt from which he emerged rotting away as the Ichor took its toll on ally and enemy alike. Bones spiked out from its knees as it landed, its joints shattering as tibia poked through patella, forcing black blood to ooze through the wounds for fractions of a second before the twisted tendons and muscles within popped the pieces back into place. He might have screamed, had his jaw not been fused shut when it was reconfigured into a form more fitting of the Dark One's general. Still, he pain in his body was only temporary, that in his mind eternal, only ceasing in the brief moments during which he served his master. So serve he would.
From his back he detached the blade, the enormous cleaver sticking with lines of sticky black ooze until finally they all gave way at once, the ichor releasing itself to the will of the universe's reaper.
The choice of targets were many, and the satisfaction he anticipated with each elimination grew. Subjugation was the goal, and that was best done by tearing down the greatest of heroes first. He moved to do so, approaching the red and blue mass barking orders above the city.
Seizing the blade in both hands, he made cleaved his way through men and women, Deckos and Ichor born fiends. All matter that impeded him was cut down and tossed aside, his mind focused on a singular goal that did not belong to him, but was forced into his brain by the slaver he happily served.
When at last he was in leaping distance, still a good ways away, he readied himself, drawing the ever-sharp but clumsy blade to his side, he tightened the muscles in his legs, positioned in a low crouch to store the maximum amount of force possible for the coming attack, and then leapt at the earth's iconic hero.
The thunderous sonic boom that followed pushed away the piles of corpses he had built in his venture across the battlefield, black ichor shedding in great globules from his speeding form as the black blur shot across the air. When finally it reached Superion, the Shadow's Shade, Yami no In'ei, drew the blade from one side of his body to the next, positioning the edge to cleave through the thinnest portion of the hero's torso, to separate the his body at the waist. But he knew that Superion, as the symbol of justice in the world, would not die so easily. As soon as he sliced past, In'ei bounded from the cement and steel skeleton of a building under construction, the force knocking free chunks of concrete that scattered to the ground below as once again his bones cracked and snapped beneath the force before rapidly coming back together.
Once more, he shot through the air, this time seeking to cleave his assigned foe vertically down the center, from head to wherever his torso ended then. There was little time to actually see Superion. At those speeds all was a mass of color, with the only marker of success being the stains upon his blade.
While the general screamed into the fray, the ichor continued to coalesce. The mass of nerves and muscle seized from their victims making them faster to react, whip-like in speed and fervor. The slugs, content once to hi-jack the central nervous systems of their hosts, began to crave something closer to completion. They cannibalized the ones they possessed, incorporating stringy masses of muscle and stitching them together into massive lines of psuedo-biological structure, forming a creature blackened by decay but monstrous in proportion.
Glowing clusters of nerves shot up with electrical impulses passed further down into the "body" of these things, each shift in in mass creating a vast shedding of tainted flesh that rained on those around them. Soon the black, ichor creatures took notice of this grand structure, born of their brethren, and sought to converge upon it, to become one with the rot that would soon grasp the city.
Their frenzy became more controlled, more deliberate, the hive mind of the Unvoid having a voice on earth at last, albeit one that spoke in only whispers.
Armor and Arachnids
Hitherto unseen behavior began to come into being for the Ichor Born, their limbs grasped at rock and metal, throwing heaving chunks into those that resisted. Simple projectiles began to cleave through the air at frightening speeds, at the armored wanderer and the web-slinger particularly, as they remained out of the reach of all but the largest and clumsiest of muscular amalgamations. They sought to tear them from the skies, to sink them into the plague-pits of surging slugs and muscular limbs born from nothing but hate and bloodlust. There they would seek to pierce them, constrict about them and bite into armor and flesh with enamel beaks, to surge their own structures into the bodies of the would-be heroes and take their flesh for their own, as they had to so many before them.
Tempting Death
All around the swordsman burning bodies and puddles of flesh fell and then rose again, the rotting slugs seeking desperately to find a host to free them of their temporary reprieve from death, to grant them a life beyond one lived in hours. The did not know intention, only instinct. Their instinct led directly to the former warrior. They craved the strong flesh on his bones, the honed and hardened husk he occupied a tempting prize to beings only smart enough to know that death came soon.
At first they simply lunged, easy to kill as they threw themselves blindly at the swordsman, but as the great black structure of weaving black muscle grew its enormous bulbs, they began to shift and writhe, their wills overwritten by that of the Unvoid. They retreated, gathering into masses of Molded slugs and binding together their congruent nervous systems and muscles, the final fusion taking on a distinctly humanoid appearance.
They grew more coordinated, each circling in and lunging in an effort to force an opening, attempting to tie up the swordsman with the sheer amount of flesh he would be forced to cleave through as they approached. They swarmed him together, their limbs grasping desperately at him as they attempted to hold him for the others in their number, who sought a quick end by assimilation or consumption.
The masses of enamel beaks brought forth by individual slugs lined themselves in rows in the Molded's mouths, teeth sharpened with the purpose of slicing skin and allowing entry to muscle and nerve sought now to gnash the flesh into manageable clumps, to steal his ability through the simple and efficient manner of ripping the pieces away.
Wrath of the Dead Gods
The goddess was readily identified by the myriad monsters in Dehli, and whatever creature she approached, if touched by the ichor, writhed in impatient agitation. The title she bore alone rose their ire, the status she received as a being beyond the limits of their universe drawing from them the false belief that she too, was a god born of an inverse universe. Where her light shone chaos followed; masses of clumped muscle lashed out with insane fervor, and broke themselves her shield. Whips of tendrils attempted to swat her from the sky, and shards of bone, the waste product of the Ichor's conquest, flung themselves against the barriers she erected.
Where she went, the fighting grew in intensity and passion, the defenseless marked her coming not only in the number she saved but in the number who died as the activity of ichor surged around her. Soon her glowing orb was pursued by an ever-growling, ever-growing black mass of flesh blanketing the area, swallowing people whole and weaponizing their flesh.
The spire of flesh in the city's center directed a pulsing yellow postule in the direction of the one meant to provide solace, and denied it. The creatures followed her in a frenzy of black bloodlust, throwing themselves upon her in suicidal strikes meant to break, if not her shields, then at least her will.
They would strike down the false goddess and she would join their number, just another forgotten god in the mass of swirling hate that was the Unvoid.
Broken Silence
The creatures conglomerated into new things, deathly coordinated but striking with fury reminiscent of untamed animals. They surrounded groups of men and women, corralled them into pockets for ease of slaughter, and caught the blood between gnashing fangs and enamel speartips. Nerves, like wire spooled within the slugs, shot into the bodies of their victims and immediately hijacked the central nervous system of those struck. Their bodies forgot to breathe, their hearts ceased to beat for those few crucial seconds, and then the person was gone. Left were the ravenous horde, the ichorborn, in their place.
It was this horde that came for the obvious target, the man who highlighted himself, involuntarily, in any given situation. The ichorborn, while blind as slugs, were all too eager to use the seized gift of sight to hunt more prey, to make the jobs of their brethren all the easier.
They swarmed, like rats, after the fleeing couple, the scent and sight of a more-than-mortal body making for a tempting prize. A vessel superior to all their brothers and sisters, a body that would grant some greater glory, some distinction to separate them from their faceless kin? The ichorborn were not above such vanities.
The molded, those creatures born of a thousand slugs set to die, struck first. The muscle in one arm spooled out like rope, slack and naturally weighted with the extra mass of a disfigured hand at its end, and whipped at the legs of the fleeing couple, an attempt to entangle and grapple at once, an attempt to reel in its prey and regurgitate the thousands of frayed nerve endings into a host which would preserve its own life by granting theirs.
But this was not the only one who sought the polar prince's flesh. No. Dozens of slugs eagerly slithered upon the ground around him in every direction, coating the city's pavement like a wriggling carpet of corpses, standing on end when they felt his approach, coiling their bodies to spring upon his approach. They leapt up to meet him at every angle, throwing their worthless lives away in an attempt to steal his body for themselves.
He was a prize, one the vain among the ichor could not resist.
Then
Corruption takes all, but it is not something born from outside. It is inherent in every one of us. It is weakness that craves strength. It is indignity that yearns, futilely, for respect. It is love that pines and festers into jealousy and hate.
So it was with me. Vengeance stole my heart, but I was not strong enough. Not nearly so. I trained and trained, worked until I sweat blood, the pain forcing the tears from my eyes, but I knew it was not enough. Not enough to challenge him.
Then came the voices. Whispers at first. Infrequent ones at that. But those whispers soon became a din. Those smatterings became swells that called for blood, for power at any cost. And I was born to indulge them.
"We know what you seek. We know what you are, what you wish to be. Give yourself to us. Let us make you whole."
That was the cry that destroyed me, the one that broke my spirit, that made me cry out in acquiescence on that fateful night. "<Show me! Make me strong! Fulfill your promises! I yield to you, so show me what powers you possess!>"
This I shouted, as though by instinct, to the stars. They did not answer. But some deep rumbling did, something inside of me. Looking back, I know now what that was. It was that black speck all men carry with them, the corruption carried inside, inert but ever present. That is what I bid forward. That is what answered.
--YOU ARE WEAK--WE WILL MAKE YOU WHOLE--
It was then that the ichor spread within me, every heartbeat pushing it into the furthest extremities, the tips of my fingers burned with the black that springing forth from the darkest reaches of my soul. It was in me all along. I was only ignorant of it. Naive.
My iron shell warped around my new form, the inky black stretching and deforming my limbs and trunk, thickening in my veins and choking the life from me. My old life faded as the black flowed into my mind, as darkness ate at everything I was. Everything I used to be. The changes... they were almost unnoticeable at the outset, but I could feel them burning within. Feel that black sludge seize everything inside of me, grasp the physical, the mechanical, the digital aspects of my being, fusing them into something greater. It did not matter that the whispers in my head had coalesced into one singular being. That his name was Gen. That he commanded all that I was, or ever would be.
None of it mattered. I had power. Power enough to kill the psychic bug that sent my friend's intestines slithering into a gutter, bled him dry. That is all that mattered then. It is all that matters now.
My vengeance will be done. And after that? After that it doesn't matter. He can do what he likes with me. The world can burn for all I care.
And if the whispers are telling me the truth, it very well might.
Now
His gaze carried down to the carnage below, hidden from mortal eyes by the thick foliage, but not to his. He could see the heat dissipating from the bodies of the dead, never to return again to the bright hues they once held, oranges and yellows decaying into blues and violet, almost black, forms. He felt nothing. No pity, no sympathy, no hate or anger. Their deaths simply were.
He did as ordered, waiting motionless atop the vessel upon which he had come. It was not a matter of patience, nor of feelings of fidelity to his new lord, his brain simply took in the words and reordered his mind in such a way as to comply. The ichor had taken well to his human mind, altered it in ways useful to him, allowing him effortless dominion over his own desires, but allowing Gen that same overriding access to his will.
His hand gripped the black blade. Waiting for the first of this world's notorious heroes to crawl out of the woodwork, to make themselves known. Then, and only then, could he descend upon them and fulfill his master's desires.
Ichor Released
The black creatures welled up out of the ground, sprung from flowers and out of the remains of Darklings. Everywhere there was death the slugs seemed to spawn as though from the very soil, leaping and squirming their way into the fallen and seizing their bodies to further augment the flesh they controlled. Quickly, the bodies piled and the slugs joined, sharing one mind in grisly coordination. They pooled the corpses they had gathered, fused the oozing, slithering worms of bundled nerve and muscle into a singular being, a twelve foot tall, towering behemoth of rotting, black bone and muscle.
The noncombatants made most of its form, and the militia, for their part, fought valiantly against it. Hired mercenaries rained bullets upon its improvised body, the slugs crawling all along its exterior shedding in great, bloodied clumps, easily torn asunder by their weaponry. When the time came for its response, it raised its arm, a cudgel of squirming worms and cobbled-together corpses and swiped at the mercenaries, knocking those who did not react in time against the dense foliage birthed by Feerl, reducing the plants and the men into paste. Those who evaded, who thought themselves safe from its attack, were assaulted by the worms shed in its attempt to crush them. The slugs leapt up from their positions on the ground or in the trees, panicking the men and allowing the Ichor Spawn battle with a less composed foe.
The raining gas Yoshimi spread upon all only fueled the fear the Ichor Born were created to cultivate, but also provoked the fight response in the slugs themselves. They writhed with agitation, springing from the core body whenever given the opportunity, striking at the slightest provocation, the most minute sign of weakness.
On the ground, the fallen slugs were cannibalized by their brethren, dead nerves and muscles given renewed life as they were absorbed into those still living. It was a self-perpetuating nightmare, one seemingly infinite in its ability to seize fallen flesh for repurposing.
A nightmare that went, for the moment, unopposed.
Log in to comment