A stillness in the air fell over Thormane. He held a hand up, brushing his fingers through the atmosphere, sensory nerves in search of information. The azure spirit hovered above him quizzically. He could feel it, the many pairs of eyes within, observing relentlessly. Glancing up st the sky, he wondered if a storm was on it’s way. The air felt charged in the way a calm before thunder and rains will seem. In a matter of seconds, he had his answer.
Small veins of alazarin leaped and jumped from arbitrary pockets in the air before him, growing both in size and frequency, until a frenetic maelstrom of crimson energies swirled into being, tearing open a rift mid-air and spilling hellish void-light out onto the nearby environment.
“THORMANE!” A booming voice tumbled out through the time space orifice, warbled and distorted by the interdimensional tunnel. “HEEL, BOY! Hah. YOUR MISSION IS COMPLETE. RETURN MY WEAPON TO ME, FOR I HAVE CHOSEN ANOTHER TO BEAR THESE ARMS, AND REPLENISH MY SUFFERING MENAGERIE”.
“At once, my lord”. Thormane voiced, and stepped into the rift. As reality began to shift and melt away around him, he saw the spirit glide off into the forest.
“You go where we cannot follow” its voices projected to him psychically as he was torn from the landscape in crackling electric fire, the rift closing and leaving nothing behind but the smell of ionized air.
As before, he was dropped from the rift and deposited into Lokarr’s Crucible realm from a height of at least 10 feet. Unprepared for the sudden descent, and weighted down by his armor, he landed awkwardly and felt a bone in his left foot pop out of place, collapsing to the floor in a heap of metal. For those who might have missed his comical entry, his helmet came toppling off and announced its departure with awkwardly loud clanging and banging. It rolled over like an egg, eventually spinning to a stop several paces away.
“HAHAHA! OH how I have missed you, dog!” Lokarr’s voice boomed mockingly from across the gladiator’s pit. He had a habit of purposely placing rifts JUST high enough off the ground that those traversing them would experience an exciting re-entry. “Now be a good boy and bring it here. The gun! If you please…” Lokarr stood by the treasury, beckoning Thormane to him with his outstretched hand.
Grunting, Thormane stood, swooped up his helm, and gave his foot a few resting steps wincing at the pain before limping towards his master, the Huntsman slung loosely over his shoulder. As he neared Lokarr, a wretched hand snapped out and grabbed the rifle off his arm. “THERE THERE, why so timid!”
Lokarr inspected the weapon meticulously. “A true shame about Longshore. He was a prize, and I did have SO MUCH planned for him… ahAHAHA! YES I did… At least there is still you. OH but I have been so BORED here, no melees to uphold, no enduring mortals to absorb my ridicule. It is high time we had a melee here, and what better occasion than on your triumphant return? I suppose you shall need a bit of an upgrade… Your old master shall craft you a few new… GIFTS, I suppose you’d call them… Go to him. Now.”
“As you say, my lord” Thormane bowed, and hobbled down the treasury steps, stumbling at the bottom. “oh, careful now! Ahaha” Lokarr mocked. Thormane clenched his jaw with irritation, but resumed his pace to his old master, who had produced a fine set of new armor, tailored specifically to Thormanes proportions. He geared up, flexing and stretching to get a sense of the maneuverability in his new skin.
“Do you like it? Good… Now, SHALL WE BEGIN?!” Lokarr said, suddenly materializing behind Thormane and shoving him out into the gladiator’s pit. As the emerald rifts churned and spawned what denizens remained in Lokarr’s menagerie, Thormane gripped his new mace, and charged into battle, the old bloodsong from his gladiator days shouting from his lips without him ever realizing he had opened his mouth.
An underhanded strike sweeping below the range of a cultists ironsights causes mortal wounds, shattering his existence.
On the final wave, as Thormane faced off against a hulking Ancient Shambler, he dropped low and came in hard and fast, smashing the head of his hammer against the inside of the monsters right knee joint.
The creature bellowed out in pain, reaching for any nearby surface to brace itself from falling over completely in the shock of the impact and attempting to steady itself. Thormane, battle experience and killer instinct fully realized, slammed his shield home square in the abominations unprotected groin, and conquering it in Lokarr’s name.
Part of him came alive in the pits, a part he’d thought he’d lost forever. Though by now he’d faced horrors in Cairn that shouldn’t have been able to exist outside the Crucible realm, there was something altogether different about fighting in the melee of Lokarr’s court. A thrilling adrenaline bucked through his veins with each wave of opponents defeated, which found him screaming for more, like a wild berserker. He realized then what it was- he had grown so much from when hed been chosen for his mission into Cairn, so much that he was able to relish in his victories here, towering over the slaughtered corpses with a knowing confidence that betrayed the fear in his earlier days of the realm. It was glory, that he felt. The glory of victory, repeated over and over again, until he was showered in even finer armaments. Now clad in improved arms, his prize for entertaining Lokarr’s mad wishes, he put them to the test…
His new armor, near impervious to his opponent’s blows, lashed out at his attackers with caustic energies, spraying acid and melting their skin, weakening their flesh for Thormane’s assaulting retorts as he shrugged off their attacks with shockwaves reverberating so violently they sent the corpses of lesser enemies hurtling into the air, splitting bodies and tearing limbs in the process.
Those who without the blastback exploded in fiery infernos shortly thereafter. Thormane, utterly impervious to the fire, waded through its flames unscathed in seach of his next targets as bodies of the dead fell back to earth.
The cultists tried, yet again, and failed to subdue him. Their gunfire streaking across Thormane’s armor, deflected in a shower of sparks.
Too slow! In killing range, Thormane was a craftsman with shield and mace, moving amongst his opponents he bobbed and weaved, swinging shield arm and weapon like an enraged wolverine, battering and bludgeoning the cultists into pulped masses of unidentifiable biological waste.
The last test before Thormane could feel satisfied was the Aetherials. A mass of bulging floating eyeballs floated overhead, seething with tendrils of Aether lightning. Heedless of its dangers, Thormane charged it head on, the formation swallowing him up in an electrified sheen of energy. He disappeared briefly before smashing it from the inside out.
Satisfied, Thormane set his bloody melee aside. Lokarr granted him this, for the entertainment had been of great value to him.
“You are hereby relieved of your duties, old dog. Stay awhile. Hone your battle skills here, and entertain me. I have missed your warrior monk spirit here. Besides, in the time that you’ve been gone I have recruited the services of… OTHER agents. Yes… And soon, I shall reveal them to you! I understand your hammer was lost during your mission- Fear not! I have one such agent painting the lands of Cairn red in search of this weapon. Once found, he will report back to me, at which time I shall return the weapon to you, and, provided you are still ALIVE, you may go.”
“Another agent, my lord? Might I know this man’s name?” Thormane asked.
“Heh! I suppose that wouldnt be TOO much to ask…”
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