Spiritwalking

The stories and lives of the Grim. ((Roleplaying Stories and In Character Interactions))
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Khorvis
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Location: Lincroft, NJ

Spiritwalking

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[[ The next, less dour, chapter following Grief. ]]

The zeppelin flight from Tirisfal to Orgrimmar had left Khorvis covered from head to toe in kodo vomit. Bes'thra, the orc's trusty mount for the many campaigns since the Horde landed upon Kalimdor's shores, was having none of the early spring turbulence patterns that gusted 'round the Maelstrom. Despite Khorvis's best efforts to placate the wailing beast, wave after wave of partially digested dehydrated dwarf meat (as was her favorite) splashed through the Thundercaller's hold.

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Considering the unruly headwind and the extended trip, Khorvis emerged from the Skyway's lift in a mood foul enough to sour springwater. The Voidcaller which had lingered about the Harbinger since his return from the Shadowlands ghosted beside Edgar, who scampered by his master's side with Bes'thra in sickly tow, making pitiful soothing motions only to be swatted at by a meaty fist.

"Stop it! Just bloody stop!" the orc yelled, completely losing his temper. "I just do need a moment to think! Hands to yourselves!" Boneslave recoiled in fear, retreating to Bes'thra to check the kodo's harness and straps which secured the majority of his master's worldly possessions. Given the age and condition of the creature, it was unlikely that she was any longer suited for combat. A beast of burden and the caravan would be her retirement.

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Khorvis watched the elevator ascend away and sniffed the air of Durotar. Chilly, and with the same sweaty musk that soaked the old timbers of the capital, albeit quieter now that the bulk of the war machine was engaged on the Broken Isles. A few peddlers wheeled their carts down the path into The Drag. A rogue wind blew a whirlwind of dust along the same road, and Khorvis, giving in to what was either habit or instinct, followed.

The early morning sounds of Orgrimmar's less desirable quarter were familiar to the orc. The clanging of the scrapper's hammer, irregular in the haze of a hangover. A shouted quarrel between a domineering warrioress and her browbeaten mate. The leather hawker's barking, overselling what were clearly the under-tanned hides of sickly gazelles. All of these noises harangued over the constant creak of the shade sails which hung at the canyon's crest.

Ignoring the wastrels, Khorvis marched onward along the curving path. These cretins that holed up in Orgrimmar's cliffsides were to him nothing but cowards. The aged and the children were to be forgiven, for they would only be dead weight in the war against the Legion, but many of those still rotting in The Drag were orcs, trolls, and goblins in their prime. In his life before the Grim, Khorvis would have been counted among them, were it not for the wise urging of a wily troll. Their selfish stench now disgusted the veteran.

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The caravan and the gust of wind came to a stop at a small pool near Nogg's machine shop. With the spreading of tiny waves and fleeing muddy crawfish, the dustdevil subsided, leaving the orc and his band without a guide. Edgar led Bes'thra to the water's edge with an uncanny gentleness to let the kodo drink her fill. Harumphing, Khorvis sat his own self down upon the dock to consider his next move.

The Voidcaller - Khorvis would need to designate a name for the minion if it refused to depart - caught up with the party, its arms overflowing with scrolls and inks. Clearly it had been to the Mighty Pen to patron the great scribe, Zilzibin Drumlore, to procure what the elemental assumed its old master would require. Khorvis only grunted and gestured towards Bes'thra. Drumlore would likely be sending a blighted invoice for the lot, but he had too little energy to scold the shadowling.

Instead, Khorvis gazed into the pool and thought back to the words he had exchanged recently with Elder Duskheron...

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The Taureness sat at the Filthy Animal's bar, nursing some Vry'kul-brewed swill. She explained her understanding of her relationship with the elements.

"They are your guide. I let the waters mend our comrades, as that is what their blood is mostly made of." She seemed thoughtful. "Though I suppose there is a little bit of each element within us. The air of our breath, the earth in our bones. And the fire in our hearts."

Khorvis seemed skeptical. "You call them guides, these elementals. Why not command them properly as subordinates? Would this not be more efficient in battle?"

Elder Duskheron chided the orc, explaining, "Do you not trust your axe in battle, that your swing will be true thanks to training? Time. Practice. Patience. With these things, you will grow into your own power."

The truth of it dawned upon the orc in a flurry. "Ah, I do think I now see. The blademaster trusts in his sword when it do be cared for. When he knows that the smith worked his forge in earnest and tempered an honest blade." Khorvis went on to describe the leadership methods of Warchief Doomhammer during the Second War, and Duskheron cordially nodded along, her muzzle smiling behind her mug of ale.

The night drifted on, the two exchanging thoughts on the nature of command, until they were both summoned to the Nighthold, to serve the Mandate.


Khorvis's reverie was disturbed, as was the pool's stillness, by a great splashing. A quaking goblin was screaming with both hands outstretched. Her palms were ripped and bleeding, the culprit being immediately obvious having flounced into the small body of water after tearing the reins away from his handler.

A massive war wolf thrashed and shook in the weedy waters, spraying all of the onlookers with scummy waves. The Kor'kron of Garrosh Hellscream had been cruel masters, bedecking the proudest of wolves with armor that would break the backs of lesser creatures. A great many of the beasts had needed to be put down at the close of the Siege, so abused had they been by the traitor Warchief's dark shaman.

Not this specimen. Unruly and full of vigor, the wolf howled and stared a direct challenge at the soaking Bloodstar. Its grey coat glistened in the morning light of An'she, filtered through the massive tree at The Drag's center. Fully armored in the bone raiment of the Kor'kron, the alpha presented a fearsome visage.

Khorvis was no stranger to the training of these murderous mounts. An overzealous flog could whip itself to a nub against such a proud beast, while a timid hand would be torn from its owner's limb in a snapping second. This one required a firm hand to guide it. To direct its vicious nature into a strategic outlet. He approached, palm outstretched unyieldingly.

Willful Heart, or Mash'rogahn as Khorvis would take to calling the worg in the days that followed, inched forward to sniff the orc's flesh. It was in that instant, soaked in pond scum and rank with kodo vomit beneath the shade sails of The Drag, that a powerful connection was awoken between Bloodstar and the wolf. It stretched back in time, to the early days of the Horde, a commitment to principles of loyalty and honor, bound in blood and an indescribable lust for the wild reaches of one's nature.

In the present, the gobliness continued screaming at the vile-drenched orc who was stealing her prized worg. "BLAHHH!!! What do you think you're doing, you lout!" She tucked her lacerated palms beneath her armpits and hopped up and down in a fury. "If you wanna canoodle this blasted fleabag, you can dang well pay for him!" The handler had obviously had enough of caring for the war mount, given the state of her agitation. "But I won't part with Shmuggles for cheap...!"

Khorvis, his fingers already in 'Shmuggle's' mane, scratching the great worg's neck, considered the beast. Bes'thra was past her prime, the journey across the Great Sea had made quite clear. He would require a proper mount to continue his journey - whatever the fel The Commander had meant - and the coincidence of an encounter with such a wolf beggared belief.

"I will take him." Bloodstar responded succinctly. Edgar sent the goblin handler on her way with a pouch of gold coins that left the woman blessedly speechless. Shmuggles pawed cheerfully in the pool with his gigantic pads while Khorvis adjusted his harness. He paid careful attention to the worg's movements, accepting that the spirits had brought to him so obvious a furry guide.

"Water it do be, then... Shmuggles...hrmph." Khorvis growled under his breath as he mounted the worg. "We do need to amend this name of yours. It do be an embarrassment." Shmuggles only whined in response, his coat bristling. He had grown thoroughly bored with The Drag and was ready to explore other paths.

"Right you do be. If there do be one place that I know to find strange spirits, it do be the headwaters of the Southfury RivE-!" Without Khorvis finishing his sentence, the Kor'kron war wolf charged off towards the Western bridge. "Gah!" Bloodstar exclaimed as Edgar and the rest struggled to keep pace. "A willful heart you do have!"

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Khorvis
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Re: Spiritwalking

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Chapter One - The Southfury

Part One

Khorvis slid down from the back of the war wolf, wincing and bending over a fist clutched to his stomach. The old wound given to him by that Sanctuary wench throbbed and ached after the tumultuous galloping across Orgrimmar's western bridge. Up the edgewaters of the Southfury the party had raced at a breakneck pace, chasing the slobbering jowls of their new lupine companion. Only after a mad league did Shmuggles relent, stopping to pant and gorge himself upon river water.

The aged orc glanced quizzically at the Blackrock dagger hanging from his belt, the same blade with which Shokkra had tickled his gut. He could have sworn to the ancestors that the woman had stolen it from him. One day he would need to interrogate Boneslave as to how the putrid knight came to repossess the dagger. For now, Khorvis was content to pat the wolf's mane and catch his breath.

"I do think we will call you Mash'rogahn, boy." Khorvis felt the shoulder muscles of his mount flex with pride. "Willful Heart, which you clearly do own." The warrior's right gauntlet clenched in a fistful of fur. The Hand of Ashran was a vise and before Mash'rogahn could react, Khorvis shoved the wolf's entire head beneath the river's current. Great thrashing and gurgled howls shook the embankment, but the orc was as immovable as an ancient knotty ironwood. Mai'kull's voidcaller darted to and fro in a dash of worry, uncertain of what this mad orc was trying to do, but Edgar only stood stupidly with his mouth agape, admiring the strength of his master.

"You must learn who do be the alpha of this pack," Khorvis growled as the scrambling of paws grew more frantic. The water was frothing with silt as Rogahn's snout dug into the riverbed. "If you do wish to be fed and rest your head within my den, you would do best to acknowledge your place, runt!" As the air ran out in the wolf's lungs, a realization came to the fore, along with a shiver and then the touching of a grey belly to the earth with bent legs. The Hand released.

Mash'rogahn wrenched his soaking head from the Southfury and laid down before Khorvis. Whimpering and heaving out no small amount of riverwater and mud, the war wolf kept his snout to the earth and looked up at the orc through his great big sapphire eyes. Khorvis did not fail to notice that the beast's tail continued to wag, belying any masquerade at hurt.

"There now," he said almost gently, as if he had not just nearly drowned the animal. "Did that be so bloody hard?" Khorvis stood up, letting the wolf's sweat and river's muck drip from his mechanical prosthetic. "What do you say we all enjoy a calm walk to the North... aye, Bes'thra‽" He shouted at the old kodo which was just now catching up. The burdened matriarch displayed a lack of enthusiasm for her new role and could only muster a decidedly annoyed grunt as she passed the party.

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The Southfury River churned between the barrier cliffs of Orgrimmar and the Mor'shan Ramparts as it had since the Sundering. An'she's afternoon rays played along the spray of the rapids which misted the water-worn rocks. Lichen clung to the shaded areas, tinting the shadows green. Where the banks had withstood the pressure, rough granite provided purchase for gnarled cedars and spruces to thrive.

Khorvis let his gloveless left hand run over their furrowed bark, enjoying the familiarity of the terrain and the closeness to nature. The little spaces caught his attention, the small crevices where life took root and tiny rodents burrowed. For a moment, Khorvis had the odd sensation of seeing through his empty eye - not viewing the living world as it was, but as if time were quickly passing. The life cycles of the lizards sunning themselves upon the warm rocks, their skin curling away and leaving behind sun-bleached bones. Embankments fell away into the waters below, carrying with them pines which quickly shed yellowing, dead needles mid-plunge. An aged Tauren paddled down the river in a roughly hewn canoe, a young Brave standing at the craft's bow. As the Brave turned, the Elder had lain against the stern and ceased breathing. The Brave, now turning grey and frail, cast a white linen cloth over the bones of his ancestor. They both disappeared behind a rapid.

Fiercely blinking, Khorvis dispelled the image, and the world righted itself into the lazy afternoon through which the little caravan meandered. These visions were becoming more common ever since his return from the Shadowlands. Uncertain of their origin, though he suspected the infection of his eye wound, Bloodstar made a mental note to bring it to the attention of the next Elder with whom he spoke. For now, the river babbled along mundanely.

Part Two

It occurred to Khorvis that his troop neared the ruins of the ill-fated brewery that he had abandoned some years ago. After crossing an aged stone bridge, likely of Kaldorei make, to the Azsharan side, they slowed their pace. Khorvis listened closely to the woodland sounds and scanned the bases of the pines. Edgar flanked to the right, wraithwalking between each elongated shadow. Above the warbling of the swallowlings and the swishing of the river, sarcastic laughter could be heard between what sounded like two orcs.

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Entering the brewery site's main clearing, the party came to the wide dilapidated and overgrown foundation, once intended to support the sizable facility's main building. Between the weather-worn granite blocks quarried from the nearby cliffs crackled a small campfire. A gnarled orc hunched on a log, prodding the pitiful embers with a metal rod. Scarred across the face with a nasty burn that had failed to heal properly, Grik'nish spat into the weeds through a twisted snarl. Once a dark shaman loyal to the fallen Warchief Hellscream, the fugitive orc appeared to have fallen upon hard times, if the gauntness of his face and state of his armor were of any indication.

A clatter of logs punctuated the precarious mood of the clearing. Towering eight feet tall and helmetless, Oggok Ug’throk stared imposingly at Khorvis and his company, having dropped his armful of kindling. Grik'nish's head snapped up at the noise, his feral black eyes narrowing at the sight of strangers.

"Nish. Company," Ug'throk bellowed in his deep bass. The dark shaman was already getting to his feet, cursing and scrambling for his cudgel. "Who in the name of Thrall's hairless nads... did they track us from Ogrimma-!"

"Bloodstar?!" wailed Grik'nish. Khorvis had come to a halt, leading Mash'rogahn by the harness. Huffing and shaking her tusks, Bes'thra paused at the side, her shadow covering a skittish voidcaller. The Lasher curled the edge of his lip in a grunt that exposed both a tusk and a sickening sense of disgust for his find, as when one lifts a stone to reveal a colony of venomous centipedes. Beyond the guttural bark and a pair of crossed arms, Khorvis provided no other reply.

A sucking of mud resounded from Grik'nish's boot clomping forward in the residue of spring's melt before the orc halted with hesitation. He glanced at his oversized partner and made a hasty motion. "Well. Ain't this a fancy surprise." The screechy worm spat again, this time with unnecessary emphasis. "Last we did see your nasty arse, it was covered in rotter guts while you lost your damn mind!" Despite his brave words, the shaman's only remaining ear laid back against the thinning hair of his skull.

Oggok tried to mirror 'Nish's obscene smile but only managed to look like a fool as he flanked the Grim warrior. "Zug zug, boss. We thought you was gonna be a deader too." The giant kept his hands raised, purposefully showing that they were empty. It would matter little - those huge paws could crush a Halfhill melon as quick as an eggshell.

"Aye, I did be dead, gone, and returned. No thanks to the two of you fools," riddled Khorvis. "Seeing how you both do still be dirtgrubbing and drawing breath, you might count yourselves fortunate that I do not flay you both on the spot for your cowardice." The warrior patted the dagger at his belt. "I do think it would be best if you moved along..." His two boots were planted squarely apart.

Grik'nish had a brow covered in sweat as he waved his hands and tried to placate his surprise guest. "No! ...No reason to be so pussin' hasty, brother!" The wind began to pick up, whipping the tops of Azshara's pines. "We just ah - was thinkin' about that payment you promised! Remember the gold you said you set aside for the Tirisfal job?" The grin plastered on the orc's face was about as real as the palm tree in Everlook's tavern - the eyes were always a giveaway.

Oggok Ug’throk charged first. The huge orc would have crashed into Khorvis had Edgar not taken that moment to shadowstep above the melee and drop before Ug'throk's face with a gap-toothed grin that sent the pair cartwheeling past Bes'thra in a tumble of bones and muscle. Bloodstar's sidestep also avoided a windshear flung by Grik'nish that split a fir tree some few paces to the rear.

Khorvis huffed and drew his Blackrock dagger, set to gut the upstart shaman on the spot. "Stupid choice, you goatsucking peon. You forget your place - and the second chance I did give yoUR-!" His taunt was cut off as his chin clipped the earth. Ropey roots shot out of the ground and snaked their way around Khorvis's ankles, trapping him prostrate and defenseless. No matter how hard he struggled, the tendrils only constricted more tightly, wrapping upwards and threatening to cut off his windpipe.

A baleful cackle arose from the throat of his adversary. "Not so tough without your whip, are ya 'Griiiiiiimey'!" Grik'nish licked his lips and stalked towards a Khorvis that was gasping for breath. The mace smacked menacingly in the shaman's palm. "No, as much as I wish I could make ya suffer, you're just too fuckin' dangerous to let loose. Mad dog!" He giggled, raising the cudgel over his head, ready to bring it down in a crushing blow upon Bloodstar's cranium. "Mad dog! Put 'em down! Put 'em GAH-!"

Grik'nish's scream was silenced as Mash'rogahn's maw collapsed around his throat. A sickening crack resounded throughout the trees as the wolf tore out the orc's larynx, spraying gouts of piping hot lifesblood across the granite foundations of the brewery. Two great paws pinned Grik'nish's shoulders to the trampled weeds as the beast shredded what remained of the orc's neck, until a triumphant snout arose clenching a limp head tenuously attached to a broken spinal column.

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The ropey roots dropped inanimately from Khorvis's body. He scrambled to his feet, regaining his footing while taking in the gory splendor that Rogahn was enjoying. Bloodstar had seen the most brutal of close combat between hated enemies, whether they were orcs or humans, but this primal evisceration presented a spectacle too gruesome to celebrate. Backing away, fully cognizant that the shaman was beyond anything resembling life, the Blackrock dagger and its owner sought out the grapple between Boneslave and the giant.

Edgar had tried to toy with the great oaf. Slipping between the tree-shadows, the deathknight managed only to infuriate Oggok - by the time Khorvis arrived, Boneslave's neck was pinned by a bulging bicep. Edgar's hacking laughter served only to disguise his Master's approach.

Khorvis dug the fingerpads of the Hand of Ashran into Oggok's eye sockets and yanked the orc's head backwards. "I do think you should have kept running, coward." Unceremoniously, the Lasher dragged his dagger across the Kor'kron's neck. The skin split and forth spilled a river of what Bloodstar should have undammed several years hence. Oggok Ug’throk's head slumped forwards, taking with it the untold vengeance of innocent lives.

Wiping the gore upon his leathers, Khorvis let his gaze sweep over the unsteady ensemble of limbs called Boneslave before attending his new mount. Mash'rogahn was licking his chops gleefully. A stark contrast could be drawn between the spray of red ichor decorating the worg's silver mane, yet Khorvis could only feel a sense of relief at seeing the living health of his newly adopted brother.

"Mash'rogahn, you do have a warrior's spirit within those foolish bones," Khorvis muttered as he scooped the sweetmeats from Grik'nish's shattered skull. Upon the wolf's panting snout and brow he painted the orcish runes of strength and alacrity. "This day we together we have charged into battle. Let this be your Om'riggor."

Were Khorvis a more sentimental orc, he might have embraced the wolf. Instead, Azsharan sunset would be content to sparkle in his wet eyes.
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Khorvis
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Re: Spiritwalking

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Chapter Two - Undertow

Part One

Some several years later, Khorvis slid his palm along the rough and stained surface of the Desk of Resolve. It had been salvaged, dragged here to the tunnels beneath Alterac that served as The Grim's new base of operations after the catastrophe at Tirisfal. Now the ancient piece of furniture sat again within the chambers of the High Inquisitor, seeming almost too large for the cramped office. Perhaps the elves who held the office in the interim were not oppressed by the low ceiling, but Bloodstar was reminded of the dark horrors that had crawled from the shadows of the old Halls.

The orc shook his head to dust away the cobwebs both mental and literal. Those nightmares felt a lifetime ago, with two conflicts spanning the gap, both against the Legion and the Fourth War with the Alliance. The Grim had bested the very heart of the Void that had sent the apparitions to chase him into the Shadowlands. Not likely were they to intrude on his thoughts at any time soon.

Khorvis dropped his hand down the side of the wooden desk and found a familiar notch. With enough pressure... *click* There. A small, hidden compartment opened with a hiss and the scent of pond scum. Careful to use his ungloved organic hand, he extracted a round object roughly the size of a dragonhawk egg. Even before the flickering light from the chamber's sooty torches reached the sphere, it pulsed with a dull aquamarine sheen, mostly drawn to the orc's bare skin.

"Now here do be a more welcome memory," Khorvis mumbled to himself.



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The sharp granite, slick with spray from the waterfall, bit into Khorvis's palm as he ascended the rock face of Hyjal's roots. The climb up the sheer cliff left little room for error in his grip and footing, vertical and vertigo inducing. Old muscles groaned under the strain of pulling his massive orc bulk past the hundreth span from the base, and with a heave, Khorvis lodged an axe into the mountainside for additional purchase to afford a moment's rest.

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Panting heavily, Bloodstar looked behind and down... Mash'rogahn, harness held by Edgar at the river's edge, appeared distant and tiny like a marsh fly in the churning mist of the falls. That was a mistake. Khorvis squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, whipping his face skyward just in time to be sprayed with a stream of water from the Winterspring. The elements were laughing.

"Goatsucker!" Khorvis roared through a sodden beard. Having lost his patience, he reached behind his neck with the mechanical Hand of Ashran and activated a latch with a satisfying snap. The Lash unwound from the hilt of the orc's greatblade and snaked upwards over the rocks like a living grappling hook. Whip in one hand and axe in the other, Khorvis began the final ascent at a breakneck pace, heedless of footing, biting into the mountain and launching himself several feet with every swing. From below, an onlooker could have been forgiven for mistaking the orc for a Naga Riptail swimming vertically up the waterfall.

As the Lash encircled and loosened a small boulder at the crest of the falls, a surge crashed against the anchor and sent the rock tumbling straight for Khorvis's head. The warrior quickly swung to the left, his handaxe embedded firmly enough to hold his entire weight, and grunted as the boulder grazed his shoulder on its plummet into the maelstrom below.

He could sense it. The enraged water elemental who made these falls its home, evoking bursts of current to ward off this trespasser. The bastard was just ahead. His prey.

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A torrent of the Winterspring rushed over his chest as Khorvis pulled himself up over the final foot of crag and came to the pool near the cliff's summit. Knowing that his prone form was an easy target, the orc immediately rolled to his right and narrowly dodged another surge of water and gravel that would have flung him off of the mountain and into freefall.

Before the spray could even catch the gaze of An'she in a kaleidoscope of refracted light, Khorvis had launched himself forward, ancestor-given eye shut against the tides but Grim-forged oculus locking on to the heat signature of the elemental. It was boiling with rage, livid that this intruder had the audacity to desecrate its very sanctum, and showing up bright red on the scope. Khorvis crashed into the unbound elemental with the force of an avalanche, his handaxe ripping through the stormstuff that passed as the thing's guts.

An echoing howl that shook the crags defeaned Bloodstar, and he threw up his gauntlet to shield his flesh from the backblast of steam that erupted from the elemental's gaping wound. Orcflesh blistered and popped, throwing lances of searing agony across Khorvis's torso and thighs, threatening to overwhelm his consciousness or drop him to his knees in a sickening bout of vomiting.

Instead, Khorvis ground his tusks and adjusted his footing, knowing that the elemental was far from subdued. He unsheathed his greatblade from over his shoulder, taking a dual-wielding defensive stance and watched as the extra-planar abberation reformed as quickly as it had been sundered. The Lash slithered back over his gauntlet and again curled 'round the hilt, throbbing with unspent electricity. Khorvis knew it would be daft to unleash the lightnings while he also stood knee deep in water.

And so the two opponents faced off, orbiting each other like twin flotsam circling a whirlpool drain. Faster and faster they glided, each testing the other, waiting for some hint of an opening. Khorvis felt a shift in the current at his feet and leapt forward as a riptide threatened to flip him onto his soggy green arse. His greatblade stabbed forward directly towards the water elemental's blue core, but he reacted too slowly.

With a splash, his prey was slunk down into the pool and the current accelerated, sucking the fooled warrior with it. The whirlpool they had been circling had in fact taken on a life of its own and dragged Khorvis into whatever watery tomb lay beneath the mountain pool. Bloodstar dropped his handaxe and clung underwater to the drain's edge, but the current was too strong. A gargled cry was all he could exhale before the mountain took him.
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Maikull
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Re: Spiritwalking

Unread post by Maikull »

((Love the visual additions; Did you perhaps steal that from me? <3 ))
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Khorvis
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Re: Spiritwalking

Unread post by Khorvis »

[[Thank you. Hmm, perhaps? Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.]]
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Khorvis
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Re: Spiritwalking

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Part Two

The mountain ate him. Devoured him. Digested him. Glacial aeons ground by while flashes of icey memories flickered in the dim reaches of static mental caverns. The torrent of water wore its tunneling vortex against the orc's flesh, and yet for all its whirling fury, a silence reigned in the pitch black voids buried far beyond Hyal, broken only by a steady and constant drip of moisture falling from a distant stalactite into still pools.

The deluge receded and Khorvis opened his eye, consciousness returning and face down in a silvery pond. Sputtering and retching up what may have been the entirety of the Winterspring, Bloodstar sloshed to his feet and tried to take stock of his surroundings. He found his greatblade nearby, submereged but whole, and the Lash still coiled 'round the hilt and charged with lightnings. Slung back over his shoulder, the weapon's weight lent some familiarty in this new demense as Khorvis explored.

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Magnificent columnades of basalt marched along the cavern walls, resembling a temple to the worship of some primal god. The effect was only accenuated by the soft white glow of bioluminscent spores which hung from the ceiling by tender filaments. Like living candeliers, the fungus threw the hexagonal structures of basalt into stark relief, swaying in uniformity as Khorvis's movements disturbed the fetid air.

The serenity of the scene was marred by the discontinuity of water. In rivulets and microstreams, liquid seeped from the rocks of both the cavern floor and ceiling, defying gravity and elevation. It ran along the stone, funneled towards a singularity of elemental power - a juncture of primal confluence between twin spires: one stalagmite and one stalactite, very nearly touching. And at the intersection whirled Khorvis's prey - the Southfury elemental. It was healing, recouping its loss from the waters of the deep.

Khorvis saw his chance and charged. The sweep of ankle-deep tides being suctioned into the confluence aided the orc's spring as he ramped up the stalactite, launching him into the vortex of silver until he blasted past the elemental - flinging him into the air. Roaring in fury, the water spirit watched with steamy mirth as the warrior completely missed and collided with a basalt pillar hanging from the ceiling. The orc's greatblade claimed purchase in the rock, suspending him from plummeting to a broken leg.

With his left hand, Khorvis hung from the grip of his blade and bared his tusks. The bite of the Lash was anchored to the stone beneath the elemental, stretching its full nine yards to the hanging orc. Every inch of truesteel cable crackled with unspent lightnings, and its master cackled in Abyssian though he knew not the words.

"You do already be chained."

The lightnings raced outwards. Through the rivulets and tiny streams, a thousand thousand passages of electric destruction lit up the cavern from floor to ceiling. The Southfury elemental boiled with pain and terror, its essence sundered and laid bare. Khorvis continued channeling the power of his flail into the waters until no drop of energy was left within the Lash, and still the elemental writhed in torment.

Some other mechanism had taken hold of Bloodstar's exercise in torture. A well-cultivated desire to master that which seemed untameable made itself manifest in the utter disassembly of the water elemental, juxtaposed against the indefatigable shame hidden deep within the orc's psyche of his own enslavement many years past. Rather than celebrate the free spirit of this elemental, Khorvis weilded the moral decay as weapon in like fashion of the Lash.

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Links began to separate from the flail and reattach themselves in binding shackles to the abberation's wrists. The chains coiled and tightened, sealing Bloodstar's victory and his prey's servitude. With a final titanic heave, Khorvis yanked on the Lash and tore the vortex into a harmless spray of water. The force of the blow dislodged his greatblade from the stalactite, and he fell with a thump to the shallow, rank pool below.

Climbing shakily to his knees, skin still blistered from the initial onslaught and leathers soaked from the whirlpool, Khorvis crawled over the slick cavern floor. Worn smooth by eons of dripping water, the rock gave the orc more than one tumble to his chin before he reached where the elemental had exploded. The biolumiscent spores that still clung to the roof gave off a hazy white light that paled against the sheen cast by a glowing aquamarine orb, tinged with swirling sickly green.

It filled the entire palm of the warrior, threatening to dissolve and slip through his ungauntleted fingers, but he clutched the sphere with a ferverent and covetous glee. Where his skin grazed its glassy surface, the green surged in a incandescent reaction, as if the contents raged against prison walls.

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"The spirit of the Southfury," Khorvis growled low through a wet beard. "And it do be mine..."

Still chuckling to himself, he used his greatblade as a crutch to rise to his feet. His eyes reluctantly left the elemental core and roamed the oubliette for an exit. Smaller than he realized during the battle, he could measure the perimeter in fewer than a hundred paces. Not a single passage could be seen leading out of the basalt pillars, and the whirlpool through which he had been dragged here had disappeared in the wake of combat.

"Nether damn my spirit," Bloodstar spat. "There do be no way out!"
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