Marrun

- Items found in Marrun -

- Creatures found in Marrun -

Bloodwyrm

Draco Hemocracia

Darting between sweating trees of the sinew forests, the Bloodwyrm is the top of the food chain in Marrun. Its sleek, semi fluid form makes it the perfect stealth hunter and its ability to rapidly grow teeth, claws and talons on command leaves the Bloodwyrm ready for any encounter. These pseudo-dragons nest in the tallest peaks of their pulsating homeland, their impeccable vision able to pick up the smallest of movements upon the ground so far away, perfect for locating prey or defending their territory. If venturing in Marrun and you hear the throaty screech of this beast, seek shelter, or pray that it has just eaten.

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Chapter Six : Meat and Sinew

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The floor blinked, and The Mercenary wrinkled her nose in disgust. The eyes followed the two as they walked, glistening with a shine of tears and watching with an empty fascination. They were in the last land – Marrun, the living flesh. When the Wretch was slain so long ago, its bones fell to the west, becoming the Bonelands, and the meat of the creature… Well, the pair stood surrounded by it. They walked a well-trodden path, the skin of the floor beneath them callous and cracked from years of use, and walked along the edge of the Sinew Forest. The “trees” of the forest were not trees at all, in fact tumorous growths of muscle that rose pillar like from the ground toward the sky. Stretching between the trees, like a rigid spider web, tough sinew connected the growths to one another forming a thick canopy of pale branches. Of all the places they had visited, The Mercenary thought this was the most alien. At uneven intervals in the ground, small orifices and eyes peppered the landscape and bushes formed of writhing arms and legs sprouted in the shade of the muscly trees. Across their path, a hand scuttled on its fingers and into a nearby hole, hiding from the sun in its damp den.

“How much longer do we have to stay here?” Said The Mercenary, her discontent at the surroundings evident in her tone. The Cartographer mused for a moment, furrowing his brow in thought.

“Not long, not long. The map is nearly done, I can feel it. I just need…” He trailed off and stopped walking, instead looking at the scenery. The other side of the path, the side not bordering the Sinew Forest, was a flat plain. Hills of flesh rose in all different tones, this area boasted the classic human browns and creams but in their travels The Mercenary had seen sections of blues, greens, and more, the flesh of other races on the Continent.

“You just need what?” She said, and stopped along side him. Across the plain, tufts of wiry hair occasionally jutted and jagged teeth and nails rose like rock formations from the meat. It was like an odd mockery of the world she knew, each tree, bush and river given a grisly shade in this breathing waste.

“I don’t know.” Said The Cartographer. “Something. There’s always something. Every moment we experience in these lands, each narrowly avoided spearhead and crumbling mountain pass, it adds to that thrill. I feel more ink paint upon my skin, and I know the ground better. I know its thoughts, its feelings, and most importantly its shape. I just need time, I fear. To truly live in this world.” He sighed, and turned back to the path. They were headed to a bumpy mountain range upon the horizon, and were a few days walk away a least. He had vaguely explained to her in his whimsical way how if given a high enough vantage point he could force his way through the map, tracing what he saw until it was what he felt, but she could sense his disparagement to the task. Either way, the destination was clear – they just had to reach it.

An hour had passed in relative silence, broken by irregular yowls from the forest or the sound of air moving through the ground.

“Hello? Hell-” The voice cut off to a sharp scream, and The Mercenary whipped around to the source. The forest. The sinew grew in thick clumps here, tendons blocking her line of sight into the trees. The Cartographer looked to her, worried. His hands trembled, and it was evident the shout had startled him.

“That sounded like someone in trouble. Might they need help?” He said. The Mercenary did not respond, her eyes were locked in the direction the sound came from.

“Hello? Hell-” The voice cut to that same scream. It was identical to the previous sound, the same cadence, the same wobble in the ‘hello’.

“Do you need help?” Shouted The Cartographer, and The Mercenary shot him a glance. He apologetically shrugged, and then joined her in watching the treeline. Something, only a shadow, moved.

“Do you need help?” It repeated, in The Cartographers voice. The Mercenary pulled her glaive free, gesturing with her fingers for the mapmaker to move behind her. He quickly did and The Mercenary scoured for the creeping shadow in the mangle of white and red, her eyes landing on two beady pinpoints of light. Eyes. She watched as they blinked, and five more opened in their place.

“Pretty thin-, Pretty thin- ” Said the shape. The voice was light and feminine, and the word ‘thing’ was abruptly, unnaturally cut off. “Lost? Are you lost?” The Mercenary’s eyes were glued on the creature. Its shape didn’t stay, the loose silhouette she could make out kept writhing and shifting.

“Behind us.” She said calmly, just above a whisper. “Do you see where the ground dips, almost trench like.” The Cartographer nodded.

“Yes.” He said, just as quiet as her.

“When I say, I want you to run and hide there. Make your way along the trench until I come and find you.”

“And what about you, my armoured associate?” She smiled at that, his alliteration seeming so out of place in this situation.

“I am going to kill whatever this thing is. Or…” She sighed, “It’ll kill me.” She had done her research before setting off on this venture, and she had a rough idea of what it was that was lurking just a rocks throw away. If she was paid to keep this man alive, she would keep him alive. No matter the cost.

“Lost? Pretty thin-, are you lost?” The voice mocked with its stolen words.

“Okay.” Said The Cartographer. “Just tell me when.” The two stood facing the trees in a standoff. Thirty seconds or so passed and the time seemed to stretch to hours.

“You need help.” Came The Cartographers voice from the trees, and The Mercenary let out a sharp breath.

“Now!” She barked.

The Cartographer ran, and as he did he spared a glance behind himself. Lurching from the trees, with teeth riddled wings and two curved white horns, a dragon bore down upon The Mercenary. The creature looked made of a shifting flesh, as if its upper layer of skin had been peeled away to reveal the tender red beneath webbed with crimson veins and shiny in the light. The Mercenary’s blade clashed with a taloned wing as the face of the thing was an arms reach away. Her glaive sliced through a sharp claw and the creature howled as it began to slowly circle her. From its mouth a forked tongue flicked and small eyes formed and blinked out of existence like bubbles rising to the top of thick soup upon its crocodilian head. A wave of bristles shuddered along the creature and soon it had coated itself in yellowing spines. She had read about this – a Bloodwyrm. The creatures possessed incredible shifting abilities, allowing themselves to evolve into all evolutionary niches at once. By definition, this was the apex predator. She watched as the wings of the beast slowly shrunk down to clawed paws, each movement a ripple through the soft red body like an earthworm crawling through mud. It hissed at her as she paced in a circle of her own, frantically thinking of ways to fight this thing. The creature had no back legs, and pulled itself over the ground with its newly formed thick arms, tail flicking like an angry cat and shoulders pulled up high. The Wyrm’s head moved on its long neck, and The Mercenary watched it like a hawk. If it would just come a little closer… There! She lunged forward with a downward slicing action and gasped as the creature split from where her weapon should have met flesh. The head of the beast split in two, followed by the neck and torso as the two parts of the creature moved around The Mercenary pincer like, reforming as a full dragon behind her. She span around, keeping her momentum, and made a wide sweeping attack. Again, where the blade should have met flesh the meat of the dragon split, faintly connected by red strings that her glaive cleaved through only to reform once it had left its body.

“It’ll kill me.” Came her own voice, a quiet whisper from the dripping jaws of the creature.

From the trench, the hooded head of The Cartographer peeked out tentatively. He couldn’t just run, and leave her here. He watched as the creature danced and weaved its fluid form around her, its body shifting to avoid each of her desperate attacks. Playing with its food. Vile shrieks, some human and others he couldn’t pinpoint, came from that Wyrm. He watched as gaping mouths stretched open across the dragon’s chest before closing again, returning to that same primordial ooze that formed the beast, each screaming in a different voice. The Mercenary stood solid in the centre of the whirling red, her feet solidly grounding her and foul liquid splashed across the plates of her armour. He had to help. Under his breath, he began to whisper old words.

The Bloodwyrm grinned a smile of too many teeth, and another ripple of movement shuddered across the dragon, bristling spines retracting and hundreds of small eyes spinning in their sockets taking their place, staring The Mercenary down. She panted, and felt her heart drop. Eyes were not defensive, if anything more eyes made the creature vulnerable. The only reason it would have made that shift would be to taunt her. She knew it was done playing with her. She sucked in a sharp breath and held her glaive tight in her hands, thin cracks spreading from her white knuckles. The creature bellowed a throaty screech, its own voice, and lunged towards her. She screamed back, twisting her weapon around herself. In that brief moment, she saw something odd. A faint trail following the tip of her weapon, black shapes painted on the air like a calligrapher’s brush. The Wyrm struck, and so did she. Her shoulder flared in pain as the long teeth of the creature pierced through her armour like an eggshell, and she felt her glaive finally cut something. As soon as it had bitten her it reeled back, screaming. Across the side of its face, a dark gash ran from the side of the beasts mouth up to its eye. From where she had hit the creature, the flesh fell away like old parchment paper, decaying and blowing on the wind. The dragon jumped back from her, and she put a hand to her shoulder only for it to come back sticky and black with blood. From the tip of her glaive, that same inky trail followed. She moved it cautiously, testing, and watched as the eyes of the Wyrm followed the tip of the blade with satisfaction. It was scared. Shrugging off the blistering pain of her shoulder, she stood defiantly against the creature. Eyes retracted and sharp fangs and ribs protruded from the creature, twisting horns crowning from its head like a halo of bone. The flurry that followed tested her. She stood limber, adopting a fluid seraphim stance, and lashed at the twisting maelstrom of gore that spun around her. Talons sliced, cutting her face and ripping parts of her armour to the floor, the delicate chain mail underneath scattered to the soft floor below. But she sliced back. The Wrym continued its tactic of shifting to avoid the blade, but when she got near enough the inky trail would leap from the metal like a jolt of static and stain the flesh of the dragon, eating it away. Each time she struck she felt a fluidity herself, a rippling wave of arcane joy, and she let herself hope that maybe she might get out of this alive. The two danced around one another, claws and metal glinting in the sun, ducking and weaving around one another until she saw it. The perfect opportunity. The wings of the Bloodwyrm had sprouted again and it dived at her, teeth a gnashing frenzy. She threw herself to the floor, rolling to narrowly avoiding the flurry of fangs, and in that moment as the undercarriage of the creature passed overhead she stabbed upwards with one sharp motion.

The world seemed to freeze for a second, and then the dragon began to convulse. Wild spasms as the pink flesh slowly turned a pale yellow, and slowly the corpse blew away, flakes of paper on the warm wind. She lay there on the floor, feeling her heartbeat in her ears and blood seeping from a mishmash of cracks over her body. A minute passed, or maybe two, and then blocking the sun two spectacled eyes peered over her.

“Dragonslayer,” He said, helping The Mercenary to her feet, “Once again, I owe you my life.”

She laughed. A strained exhalation of a laugh that blew blood mottled spit to the floor, but she was smiling. “Come on, let’s leave this place. Find you a soft warm bed, and a hot meal.” The Mercenary blearily looked around. The creature was gone. She had done it.

“What about the map?” She said.

“The map?” Said The Cartographer, beaming. “Why, the map is finished!”

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