The Dead Forest (Increased Orc activity due to skirmish)

[Chen Ning]

Chen gave a simple nod and suddenly took off to continue down the paved path before them into the forest. Happy to finally be going at a faster speed, his leather coat fluttered behind him like a cape as he started his run. He kept a pace of breath in the trained way that he was raised: inhales through the nose, exhales through the mouth. Keep the breathing consistent and don't lose your rhythm.  

[Maximos]

It all happened so fast.

A moment ago a conversation, a moment past and Damion's arm was buried almost to the shoulder in the gut of another man. It was a risky move. If Ivan was as Vlad before, then his gut was really just a gaping maw which Damion had fed himself to.

But such was not the case. Damion was greeted only to the wet pop of flesh giving in, and the rush of warm blood over his arm. Ivan's hand axe moved for Damion's head...and then stopped. With a pop, the earth elemental had earned himself a length of bone. Ivan's knees gave, his eyes fell to his killers green eyes and for once...they seemed to lighten.

And then Ivan fell back. Lifeless.  

[Eternal Dirge]

Damion closed his eyes as Ivan fell, gripping the length of bone tightly in his right hand, feeling the warm blood dripping from it's tips and the protrusions of his knuckles. He turned slowly on his heel, dropping the bone to the floor and opening his eyes again, " Pointless. Your death, your life, pointless. Hope you found your gods damned paradise." He lifted his clean left hand up, palm to the ceiling as the soil slowly began to pull Ivan's body under, horrid ripping sounds issuing forth as his body was pulled apart by the strength of the earth.

He wouldn't waste any more time in this place, moving towards the door and knocking the hand axe free with repeated tugs, whatever it took. With it free he'd move next to the door, flicking it open with a hand while remaining hidden, waiting for some horror to slam into and through the newly opened door.  

[Uberwulf X]

And so they moved, following tracks.. one in trees, one on the ground, both at a quicker pace than before that was estimated to bring them closer to their game. There would be no hinderance from the forest on this matter.. though roots remained gnarled and protruded from he ground, though the air grew a bit more damp as is the wont of a well-kept, mis-named places, though the darkness crept in even more and the algae shined along the path... there would be nothing to leap out at them and no bramble gates to bar them.

In keeping with the results from Chen's satellite mapping, they would travel an entire one and a half miles before seeing anything noteworthy on the road. However, Chen could see that along with a bit of a more rocky downhill path, the wagon tracks became unstable... the left were still straight, but one of the right ruts began to twist and curve.

Further down, when the ground leveled, there was a broken wagon wheel on the right, lying in the dirt beneath a tree just off the road. Its method of destruction, given the downhill path, may be obvious.

Tenkai, being high, would be able to see through breaks in the dark canopy and from this area, observe an are from which orange light illuminated the otherwise dark, gray place.

The tracks led from here to there. There was no replacement for the missing wheel, but the step of the barefooted became quite heavy as one pair walked alongside the single right rut.

 

[Maximos]

Gone. Gone and buried. In a few precious moments Ivan had been permanently moved from the present tense to the past. A was, not an is.

Damion could have left his opponent's carcass spewed across the ground but he did not. Slowly, surely, and definitely the earth rose through the foundations of the Tavern. Its powerful arms shoved through cement like thick tar, and then shattered what remaining planks of wood covered the floor. Ivan fell. A man who died for a nothing.

There was a crunch and a crack a few moments later and a hand axe tumbled to the floor with a clang. The door opened to...

Nothing. Before Damion lie the entirely intact and yet entirely disassembled parts of his motorcycle. The mainstreet was a devoid of life save for a few villagers scurrying a couple hundred feet ahead joining a crowd.

And a crowd there was. Easily a hundred strong and charging toward a single point far up the road. The sheer amount of flesh blocked all view of center of the mass, but viscera, wormy bits and blood sprayed through the air as the sky was alight with bursts and explosions of royal blue and indigo, and unnatural swashes of darkness moving against the pale moonlight. It was a silver bathed slaughter.

It was time to move.  

[Chen Ning]

A mile and a half seemed like such a distance to jog continuously. But Chen was pretty athletic to begin with. He has jogged for more miles than this every morning around the city where he lived, being one of his routines every day. He took notice of the land starting to descend, but it didn't cause him to stop. The only thing that would bring him to a stop would be the sign of the tracks having drastically changed. Crouching down at the point where a straight line became footprints, his eyes followed around with the other trackings until Tenkai came down and presented a wheel up to him.

"That explains it."

But he wasn't concerned about that once Tenkai had told him about a campfire being up ahead. Standing back up, he walked over, taking the wheel from the monk to examine it with careful eyes before Tenkai suddenly took off into the trees, telling Chen his master plan. Contrary to popular belief, Chen actually was going to stick out and listen before barging in on conversations. Sometimes he stuck to the role of a police detective when he needed to.

He looped his right arm through a spacing of the wheel to carry it on his right shoulder for the time being, holding onto it. He figured he could use as a way to introduce himself to the group of people he was going to meet eventually. You always needed a plan before barging into unsuspected territory. And with that, he followed suit, continuing down the path while keeping himself close to the trees for the sake of stealth. Not like he was really trying, but he wanted to keep out of any general open areas.  

[Uberwulf X]

We're walking, we're walking...

First impressions held well; it was a campfire and as their observations would show them, was occupied by a lively bunch of beings.

Words were slow, but not slurred, spoken by people with a great deal of bass in the chest. Still, their accents, which might be considered some backwater mix of something, was like to make them nigh incomprehensible at first listen. Once they were able to sort the voices...

"Me Bairn..."

"Shut yer hole, not carin'..."

"Rest... then we be fixin' te wagon an' movin'."

Orcs, green of skin, great of mass, six in number, surrounded by a large fire. There was a wooden, covered carriage off to the far left of the camp proper... at least it was to the left of the orcs, as they'd pitched quick camp off the beaten path that the carriage remained on. Behind one orc, who was wearing a large beast fur over his back and head, was a pair of boots.

The carriage, manned by four oxen was covered with a tannish canvas, the entrance blocked by mesh netting.

"I should go to the cart?"

"Cart fine. Rest then you fix wheel."

"Auuugmph..."

 

[Eternal Dirge]

Son of a b***h

Damion stood in the doorway with his elongated jaw to his chest, eyes widening in an almost comic expression of horror. A low moan escaped his modified voice box before he took a better look around, looking closely for anyone in robes chanting or anything of that sort. Never hurt to be too careful when throwing yourself into almost certain death. But his new form wasn't good for multi-person combat, and he sloughed it off as he walked, groaning against his shoulders popped back into place.

" I'm starting to see a pattern in my life....chaos upon chaos upon chaos...."

He talked to himself as he walked, stooping for amoment to scoop a hammer from the ground, the dimensions similar to a sledge hammer although one side sported an axe head.

" Oh, excuse me."

The heavy axehammer swung in a powerful swing, smashing through the skull of the first straggler Damion could catch, a heavy spray of blood, bone, and brain matter spraying the air and covering his weapon. A snarl overtook his face as he moved on, the decapitated body bouncing away as he moved on.

" We're gonna have words Maximos!"

Another heavy swing, this time into one of the villagers who had spotted him, the man charging him with the business end of a sickle, screaming incoherently until the decending axe head removed his hand at the wrist in a way that was normally impossible, splitting it down the middle before ripping it off entirely through the sheer force of the strike. Damion's second strike silenced him completely, the blunt end of his weapon smashing into his assailants chin, driving bone fragments and teeth into it's brain and out into the air.

" Let him deal with that..."

Damion stepped over the body of his latest kill, looking around again for Nicolai.  

[Chen Ning]

Chen was about in the same boat as Tenkai: he had only read about orcs from his general studies, and have yet to run into one until now. From what he knew, they were usually ugly humanoids who had a way of showing their aggression to other species. In short, they were pretty barbaric in attitude. With this new knowledge, it made it harder for him to want to walk straight in and perform a proper greeting. Orcs gave bad impressions for a reason. It was because mostly they were bad in the first place.

The detective made notice of each of the six Orcs, observing and analyzing them. The one that stood out was the one wearing animal's fur on his back. But when he saw the boots settled behind it, it made him wonder what primitive-like beings such as orcs would want with boots. Then again, the orc may just be an admirer of wearing clothing and accessories. He did remember seeing footprints resembling those back when he was examining the tracks.

So now Chen had to figure out what to do: either stay where he was and wait for them to leave.....or walk on in and give them a greeting. If things went bad, he had a monk waiting to help, so why not give a chance to be friendly with the beasts? From what he was hearing, they fairly knew common language, though the way they spoke proved to him that they weren't as smart as the average smooth talker.

Stepping out into the opening with the wagon's wheel still over his right shoulder, he walked a bit into view before stopping and giving a shout over to the Orcs: "Hey!"

He waited to get their attention before he continued: "I found this wheel here on the road while I walking through the forest and couldn't help but notice it belonged to you guys. Need a hand fixing your wagon?"

Negotiating with orcs was probably not as simple as talking to the normal human, but let's see what happens, eh?  

[Uberwulf X]

Chen Ning

"Hey!"

Each of the orcs lifted their head, some grunting in curiosity, all looking to the carriage.

Chen Ning

"I found this wheel here on the road while..."

They all began to stand together in a relatively slow manner, all reaching for back-holstered axes and side-sheathed two-sided knives. The clicking of buttons and unclasping of leather holdings happened under the sound of Chen's otherwise uninterrupted greeting, though there was no secrecy to their motions.

Likewise would Chen's Danger Sense begin to tingle.

One of the orcs to the right of the fire spoke up-- the one that the fur-wearer had last been talking to. "Need no help from humans. Leave."  

[[Niitsu] - the - [First]]

A very tanned individual, looking very much like a Native American of historical archetype, stood in the arena within the forest's expanse. He didn't really know too well how he'd gotten there, but he was there, and it looked like he was in the prime location for a fight.  

[The Last Pedigree]

The arena was less of an arena, and more an area where the trees had been cleared, and the ground flattened in order to make it more suitable for fighting. No maintenance had occurred here though, and the floor was covered in various small digs of the earth where a blade had torn apart the ground, or patches of blood where an opponent had fallen. A few orc bones littered the floor of the arena, clearly the orcs had hollowed out this place to use, however the being now viewing it didn't take that into account when he saw the Native standing at it's center.

"Hume, why do you trespass upon the home of the woodland creatures? Is it simply callous disregard for your own safety, or perhaps foolishness and brashness? Enough. I don't want to hear your reason, all I care about is that you remove your presence from this forest, or we're going to have a problem."

Iopurl watched from the edge of the arena, his sharp eyes looking over his opponent for any obvious weaponry. He was clearly less than pleased that someone was in the arena.  

[[Niitsu] - the - [First]]

As the non-descript man spoke to the new-comer, the flowing black tattoos that spiraled liquidly about his ears glowed an eerie green; they returned to a bland black after Iopurl shut up. The eyes of the Native American squinted sharply in the mouthy man's direction, and his mouth, similarly bordered by fluid black tattoos, pursed and was pulled to the left.
Native American boy replied, and the tattoos flowing up his throat and ending like a plume of smoke just beneath his mouth flared up in the same green brilliance; "Why are so many more people so much less hospitable?". And again, the green light died down, and the abyssal blackness reclaimed the unnatural markings.