All Hell Breaks Loose (Open)

[Deleted]

This is an open storyline for the members of this game. This does not follow any specific time stream in OOC terms. Rather it takes place after the hip pocket adventure of last night. This will be open for a few days to a few weeks depending upon how long it takes until we all know it is time to close it up. So please, read over what is going on, what people are doing, and post your own character's reactions and happenings. I was originally going to post the log, but I think more character bonds and/or reactions would be best served if anyone not there had to ask IC what transpired. So please, write as we all love to and enjoy.

Setting

In the middle of the night there was a horrible commotion in the main taproom of the Obsidian Heart Inne. Those upstairs in their own room would have heard breaking furniture, screams, the sound of a battle, and at the end an explosion. Those outside would have likely heard a muffled battle, but would have seen the windows explode outwards and objects inside tossed and thrown about. For any entering the scene they would have seen those present; Logen, Mira, Girard, Astrid and Fenris. On the ground lay four bodies, each of them in knightly full plate and each of them wearing the crest of Rumeria. Currently they are:

Maria is ducked behind the bar.
Logen is atop Mira behind the bar.
Girard is just reappearing from the shadows.
Astrid is outside of a broken window just getting up from the ground.
Fenris is standing in the center of the destruction.

All of them are bloody, torn, and showing signs of the fight most heard.

[Begin RP]


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[Requiem]

As had been the case many times before the Nightsinger's Blessings preserved and protected the minstrel when there was need of it. The cost had been his immediate focus on the situation, the safety of his comrades forgotten in the wake of preserving his own hide. It was a sobering thought when his mind returned to him within the darkness of the plane where he so often found respite.

He could not remain there, the fact alone proved more than enough to spur Girard on into making the return to the Inne by way of the very shadows that had taken him from the percieved threat to his life taking place therein. Stepping from the shadows and into the inne itself, the step into the prime made him acutely aware of the weight in his primary hand.. of the crimson stickiness still clinging to the length of the shadowed blade of Velatum. Remembering why the blood was there..sent those green eyes to whatever remained of the armor-clad men they had fought.

Coming closer to the source of the destruction meant taking notice of Fenris, though the minstrel said nothing between the looking over of the symbology of the armor and cloaks while trying to clean that crimson mess from his broadsword.

" Who were these fools? "

Glancing Fenris's way seemed approriate considering the group had notably mentioned him.. as The Bloodied .

" Nevertheless they seem to have been terribly misinformed. "

If the minstrel was suppose to elaborate, he was not forthcoming on it. The Zorcans were clearly nothing more than men and women of a hearty human stock, and just as capable of fool acts and mistakes as everyone else - as to were the now very dead Knights. He held some difficulty accepting the obvious bias involved between those of whereever the men had been from and those of Alzorc.

And with sudden-ness the minstrel came to a pause, blank of expression as he rose up and hastened towards the stairs. After all.. Evangeline would have heard the explosion of the Lifestone, leaving her to worry was not in him - nor in his best interest. While time certainly passed in long enough spans to hold a quick conversation with those who stopped him before that instant.. his immediate destination was upstairs to find Eva!

[Deleted]

For Evangeline, from the moment she locked the room door, all of her world was sound. She listened, trying her best to settle the quickness of her breaths so that she might hear more. Being unable to see who came in and what with, there wasn’t even an idea of how many invaders came in, let alone a way to tell what they were capable of.

As each sound shoved about the edges of the door, she began to lower down the wall on its right side. Her hand lifted its way up in equal timing, laying palm and fingers over her mouth to stop the beginning of panicked gasps and cries. She was unable to do anything to help them defend, especially in how chaotic a situation as it seemed to be. Tears streamed her face from mix of that with a heart’s full of worry.

And then the explosion came.

She screamed and jumped, feeling the floors and walls shudder and shake against her, the sound of the explosion, itself, ringing in even her ears. “Girard!!” She screamed it, though her vocals could hardly push the sound out, what with the tightness in her chest. “Gods, please.. no.” Her voice trembled, right along with the rest of her body, but Eva forced herself up.

Fumbling with the lock, the poor thing pushed and tugged and pulled until it came open and she was free into the hallway, heading back towards the stairs. “Girard!!!!” She heard someone on the stairs, but didn’t know who it was. “Please tell me he’s alright.!!”

[Requiem]

Simple comparisons could easily lead to the belief that Girard hadn't been involved in the fight at all. The Knights had clearly been after the Zorcans, and the shadows clearly an adequate defense against the lifestone's explosion.

He did not care what it may have looked like to those who came in later - in fact, the minstrel was much too busy running up the stairs two-steps at a time and more still soon as Evangeline's scream reached his ears.

Never able to reach the room before the very woman he'd sought to make sure was safe was calling for him .. very much in clear distress over what may have happened to him in that explosion that had rocked the inne.

Forgetting himself he moved closer in silence to the blind woman, embracing her first and speaking up later. Hardly the most intelligent of setups when dealing with a someone both unable to see and less than calm.

" I'm alright, Evangeline. "

Physically at least.. the guilt of murder when he possesed no reason for the right or wrong of their actions .. was beginning to set in. The only people who could answer those questions were dead.. or stood on the opposite side of the 'arguement'.

" We should return to the cottage.. if you are up for the trip? "

Remaining at the inne was certainly an option, yet the minstrel would inevitably soon leave by the shadows in order to check on Moonshadow and the young half-elven woman that had been talked into taking care of the child for an evening.

If Evangeline proved willing to be guided down the stairs, he'd set about that .. and soon returned to the taproom he'd left in such haste. Soon as Fenris came into view.. he spoke up.

" What brought them here Fenris and I will hear nothing of national bias in this. "

Well Girard certainly had acquired a back-bone since the first couple of missions underwent on behalf of the Obsidian Heart.. demanding answers from Fenris, without a lick of fear that those less ignorant of who he was and what he'd done may have felt.

[Deleted]

Just as those jagged rocks on the barren shores of Northness stood against the never ending assault of the Maelstrom, so too had Fenris defiantly remained where he was as the Lifestone erupted. As the fragments of wood and glass finished their dance and fell to the ground around him, he slowly drew a breath in. As the thick tendrils of smoke writhed and twisted from the cinders burning upon the floor, he gave but a single exhale. As the feminine screech ripped down from upstairs and the Bard flickered first into existence and then darted off to find his cripple, he drew down but another breath and remained motionless.

Even as his blood rolled down his battered frame to stick fabric against flesh, sanguine lines running to pool around those battered boots, he remained still. As he heard the door open and the sound of all too familiar footsteps fill the empty spaces of his ears, he stood statuesque in the center of the destruction. A living pillar of brutality. Broken pieces of wood embedded in his body, the blood seeping out from around them to run as it would in wild lines down his heavily muscled frame. The front of his shirt torn and shredded, revealing a mark branded down into the meat above his right hip. A deep scar carved down into his flesh by the heat of a brand. The single rune known in all tongues, in all lands. Murderer.

Those once beryl eyes, ever burning with rage and hatred now consumed by the black void of an expanded pupil. No emotion lay within those orbs, no display of what defined a person as alive. To stare into those hellish obsidian eyes was like trying to pierce the veil of death's hood. It filled one's body with an instinctual fear, their reptilian brain pleading with them to flee, to run, to hide from this......this....thing before them. Every primal fiber of their being screaming out that this was what lurked at the top of the food chain. This was no simple Northman pledged to a life of violence and blood. This was a Named Man. This was The Bloodied. Nothing more merciless, nothing more bloodthirsty, nothing more destructive had ever drawn breath.

Head tilting to one side as if he were the dead convict now hanging from the end of a noose. Rolling in one direction then another as he looked down at the bodies of the dead Rumerians upon the tavern's floor. Bones cracking in a sickening chorus as he brought his head back upright at the sounds of Girard's voice.

His steps were not those of a man. They were predatory, savage, every coil and flex of those thick northern muscles promising nothing but agony as he closed upon the one foolish enough to demand something from one such as he. Heavy booted feet crushing anything beneath them as he stalked over to the Bard; corpses, debris, furniture, all cast aside as he cut through the space as easily as a knife through silk. His left hand slamming down into the space between Girard and Eva before ripping them apart to send the crippled woman to land where the fates would place her. His other hand, swift as a striking viper, slammed into the throat of the Girard. Fingers as rough as unworked steel closing down so tightly that Girard would find it hard to draw his next breath.

Leaning close, their faces but an inch apart, he drew down a deep breath through his nostrils. Pulling the scent of the singer deeply into his lungs before speaking. Every deep and rumbling word holding a faint rasp, like a blade being drawn over a whetstone.

"Your life is mine, not your own. Keep your tongue behind those teeth, or I will collect the debt you owe in your blood."

With as much care as a child has when throwing down their toys, the Named Man hurled Girard backwards. Throwing the Bard from his immediate vicinity. Turning his back to those gathered and kneeling down near the mangled corpse of the nearest Rumerian knight. One hand pulling the helm off and gripping a fistful of hair, while the other drew the wicked looking hunting knife from his boot.

The sounds of flesh being partially cut and partially torn could be heard from where the Named Man now knelt. His bloody work masked by his tremendous frame.


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[Requiem]

Girard had come to expect many things. The Bloodied's actions were certainly not one of those things. Split apart from Evangeline alone was enough to make the minstrel irate. When that viper-quick hand slammed into his throat, finding purchase in a way that brought both pain and the difficulty in speaking.

That was not all The Bloodied's got out of Girard for those actions, those words. The man's very shadow rose up on its own accord as if to taunt both men, in its wake was the curtain of darkness swirling around until ending in numerous spiked appendages against the offending man's flesh. Instinct was a dangerous thing, especially when it did not choose to react in fear even when the man did.

Daring to try to speak earned only being tossed away, an act that proved enough to make those sharp shadows disapate while the taunting one followed the minstrel, it was his shadow after all. Picking himself up from whatever debris he'd been tossed in found the minstrel rubbing his throat.

As far as Girard was concerned the Northern's Dark Side had taken fully controll.. there was no Fenris left behind to reason with. The murmur on his lips was a simple, quiet thing.

" I owe Fenris, someone who clearly does not exist any longer. "

Because when he'd looked in those obsidian eyes, he'd heard only the screams of The Song , the acrid scent of a building aflame, of a monstrous ideal given physical form. He knew his father in such a way, in the ideal of Tyranny. He would know The Bloodied by the concept of Rage.

With the man before him no longer the sort he cared to deal with, Girard went to Evangeline. Helping the woman only if she in fact needed the aid. And from there? He'd leave alongside Evangeline.. any plans he may have had to remain were quite thoroughly broken down. The Inne was a tainted place , so long as the Bloodied remained within.

[Deleted]

By this time, Logen had already peeked over the bar counter towards the rest of those that remained living. He had been going about inspecting Mira for injury and found that the girl had been torn and scorched pretty damn badly. With a movement of hands and positioning of legs, he had propped her up against himself just to set an open potion to her lips. Once she took hold of it and drank the liquid deeply, that Healing Potion did it's work to set her straight again, although, the lack of standard clothing might not have her running about. Once he was sure that Mira was fine, Logen rose to his feet and set the Bastard back in to his scabbard.

When he rose, the damage would be revealed. The right side of his face had been singed in the blast as he was trying his best to cover Mira completely with his body. The hair on his head and his face had been ruined and burnt back to the flesh. Had it not been for the craftsmanship of Kana, perhaps he would have been worse off. Never-the-less, he still had his own marks of the fight before. A gash of split flesh upon his forehead where he had thought it was a grand idea to headbutt a man with a helmet and visor, not to mention the blood draining from his right ear from a perforated eardrum due to the concussive force of whatever magic had been summoned. Still alive, though. Still mobile.

With a plant of a hand, he would kick up and hop over the bar top to land on top of some bloody mass. Who could tell if it was a man's ass or his guts? The damage to the Inne had left most unidentifiable. What he was privy to witness wasn't the confrontation between Fenris and Girard, but The Bloodied doing his work in taking the scalps of the fallen. Savage... Tribal... Something from home he'd not figured to see within a place of civilization. Bloodshot blues scanned between the lot of them before settling on the Jongleur and his Beloved. Logen could leave, but there was still the matter of the girl behind the bar and he wasn't about to let her remain with this..monster.

"Surprised to see you take those as a trophy, Northman... Like a renowned hunter taking the pelts of tree rats in pride..." His voice was deep and raspy, with a focus on the softer vowels in speech. "Is it principle... or just hatred?" Logen had seen his fair share of darkness in men. Even had his own some times. Why was he talking to the Bloodied? Just to give Mira a chance to collect herself and get out. She'd not have the stomach to witness such matters of war.

[melodicangeis]

Everything rung around her. She last remembered Logen going to tackle her and then flames. Moaning, she cracked open a single eye. Bloodshot and then the other. Logan had protected her face, but his own looked very damaged when he looked down at her. There was a pain in her side and she felt like she was straggling to breath. Blood bubbled from her mouth. It was near her chest, she felt the pain there and reached down. Feeling the glass even as the bottle was pressed to her lips. She knew she was dying and he was giving her water?

Her throat moved as the Healing Potion was taken by her other hand, she pulled half of a glass bottle embed in her chest. Keeping herself from screaming, she just kept on drinking till the bottle was gone. Wiping her mouth, she smeared the blood across her cheek. "Ouch..." Nodding to Logen, she watched as he stood and and looked down to her shirt gaped open. Watching as the skin...just knitted back together. Magic as a freaky....

The sounds coming from area beyond bar had the young woman wondering if she should even come out. Looking down to her now half burned shirt and the bindings were now useless. They would see that she was....a woman. Cursing to herself, she checked her cloak. It was burned, but it would keep her covered. Pulling it over her shoulder, she nodded to Kana. "You should see to Logen."

The small girl stood up and looked at the bloodied mess. It only took one.....She covered her mouth. Her stomach gurgled. Seeing dead fall when they were half gone was....Her shoulder's hunched up as she felt the retching in her stomach having her hurry over the bloody bar, slipping in the blood as she felt to her knee's. Right into the guts of a dead man. Pushing herself up to a stand, she fled the building.

Hitting the cool night, she finally just let the road have what was in her stomach. The sound of her retching and the sick splatter of half disguised food. Splat. Gurgle sound. Splat. Splash. Gagging. Splat. For the second time of the night she wiped her mouth, this time with her sleeve. She looked back to the Inne. She still has to go in. She had dropped her crossbow. Taking a breath, she took a step inside. "....."

[Deleted]

Man sometimes tries to run from the thing he is. Tries with every ounce of fiber in his being to deny those dark things lurking there in the shadows of his soul. He tries to convince himself that he can be free of them. That he isn't what he has become. He lies to himself, with every shallow breath and every summoned thought. It did not matter where in the world one would roam, what new people he had met, what new title he tried to heap upon his shoulders. You never changed. Your past would always find you. You were doomed to forever live as the thing you often times hated most of all. Yourself.

Fenris Vidarr had tried to become something else. He tried to leave the blood, the bodies, the fires, the smoke, the constant hellish war that came with a name like his up in Alzorc. But it found him. That gift from those powers divine forever nestled down in the depth of his soul. The touch of Sverrir.

No, Fenris would never be free of it. So he did the only thing a man in his position could do. He embraced it. He would let The Bloodied free once again. Unfasten the bonds and throw the door wide. Let that darkness creep out to consume everything around him and drown the world in an ocean of blood.

Girard's words fell across his broad shoulders as the tides did upon the shore, meaningless noise. Girard had not yet tasted the company of The Bloodied. None of them had. None were from his lands, likely none knew what terror could be found within this Named Man. For when that wicked murderer was loose, none were safe. He would see each of them broken and dead. Their lives ripped from their bodies with sadistic savagrey and nightmarish pleasure. The Bloodied lived only for war. His only art was that of death. His fury so deep and so powerful that he saw not allies nor enemies, only himself, and the corpses too stupid to know they were dead. Had it been The Bloodied that grabbed him by the throat, the Bard would find his next verse sung in hell.

Best just let them fear you. Let them see what monster has been in their company. You tried to run, tried to make a new life, and where has it gotten you? What have you brought here but pain and death? You are a fucking fool to think you can live like them. A cryptic voice berated him from the back of his mind. One that he now knew, was right.

The grisly work of hand and blade done without remorse, without thought, without any display of humanity. He tore and cut and ripped and rent the flesh of those Rumerian corpses with all the care that a child shows as he squashes an insect beneath his shoe. Moving from corpse to corpse like a reaper of souls. Deathly silent, his rough face a mask of granite, eyes like those of a corpse simply devoid of life. The eyes, ears and tongues cut from the heads. What bodies remained whole, and even those that did not, he cut from them the hands, the feet, the testicles, even drawing a deep line down and across their fronts to spill their guts out upon the floor. Even in death the Rumerians would find no mercy.

Standing up after the last body had been so brutally desecrated he wiped the blade across the palm of his hand before slipping it into his belt. Bringing his hand towards his face and running it down, palm and fingers leaving sanguine streaks in it's wake, warpaint drawn in the blood of the dead.

This was to be his promise to those that stood against him. For any fool that would stand against this thresher of men. That dead gaze sweeping over those ruined bodies and then those corpses that still stood upright and drew breath. Thick groups of muscle tissue rippled slowly as the sinew drew tight beneath his bloody and scarred hide. A silent and open invitation for any to challenge him.

A faint snort as he moved to pick up his bag and draw it over his shoulder. There was bloody work in the north waiting, and he was just the one to see it done.

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[Head Moderator]

Behind the bar knelt Maria, not because she was fearful, but more out of sheer looking out for her own well-being. Anger flooded her face with color as her bar exploded around her, the glass shattering sent bits of the window everywhere and she just knew her precious polished bartop was going to take much work to dig out all the bits and pieces now embedded.

She popped up once people began to speak, and looked down at the fallen knights, then over towards Fenris. She glanced around for Astrid, but there did not seem to be the redheaded woman anywhere so her eyes focused upon Fenris again as her fists closed and opened and her freckled nose wrinkled in distaste.

"The fuck... I mean.....the fuck just happened here?" She demanded, as she stared over the bar again even as Fenris started cutting up the bodies like they were roadkill or something he'd hunted now cutting up for dinner. "Can't you take that outside? I've enough blood around to stain the floor, now you're going and chopping the bodies up?"

She breathed hard, cheeks red as her hair, as she just stared around at the place. Down deep she knew that Fenris and Astrid had done it out of self-preservation, sometimes there was just no gentlemanly way of saying 'let's take it outside'. She knew this. But, she was still hot under the collar. She spun around sputtering out colorful language in the language of Madder as she disappeared into the kitchen to find rags, a mop, bucket, cloths....oh this was going to take fucking forever to clean up!

[Astrid Oathsteel]

Astrid's jump out of the window when the explosion occured was less than graceful, she attempted to land and roll but instead she fell flat on her face into the dirt with a thud, and a low groan of pain. Pushing herself upwards, she rose and dusted off, then moved to the window she'd jumped out with a snarl of her lips as she stared in. First she glanced to Fenris, then to Maria as her head popped up, and finally to those rotten Rumerians that just would not leave her alone.... nor would they leave Alzorc alone. She spun on heel and stepped in through the door, surveying the damage.

"Bastards. Cut out their tongue, Fenris, so that they cannot speak in the afterlife." Her words were near spit out venomously as she spoke, then ice blue eyes cold as the glaciers of her homeland stared 'round to the others who were making their own comments, or moving about their own business as if daring them to make the wrong move.

[Head Moderator]

Out she came from the kitchen, with her mop and bucket and an old crate to put all the broken things she could collect into, still flushed in the face. She was just mad, not particularly mad at any person - of course the Rumerians that decided to come into HER inne and wreak havoc did bring her ire - but she was just hot about the whole thing. She always got hot when her inne was destroyed, hell it was probably the reason she'd said that Gar Thog should be killed on sight instead of his proclamation he was going to join Runik! Nope, it was probably just because he busted up her inne.

She glanced around, absently mopping and grabbing things to put in the crate and let her eyes follow the movement of Fenris more than anyone else. That Zorcan looked like he was about to wring all their throats, and a brow rose. She stood up, and wiped her hands on her apron and decided that she'd move around the big guy and head outside to find Astrid. Once she was found, she pulled her over close and out of the way and got the big woman to lean down so she could give her some vital information. She'd have told Fenris ... but it was not safe to approach him right now. Plus, she knew Astrid would relay the information.

Once the information she'd found out recently through her Blackfeather associates had been relayed, she darted back inside around Fenris, offered him a salute, and went back to cleaning up her precious inne.

[Deleted]

End Scene