Purge the Night Away

You would think that murdering an entire continent of people would be hard work.  And you'd be right! I didn't get to participate in the puring other than hearing it from a far (thanks whatever gods for small favors) but from the screams and shouts from the brothers it was a lot harder than having people line up to be put to the sword.

For his part Dezryan sat back on his horse listening (because he's blind did I mention that?), I don't know if he normally participated or just added his moral support to their entirely immoral actions. And yes I judge them immoral which tells you how bad they have to have been.  I mean if you are killing everyone you are "saving" where do you stop? Why not kill everyone in the world before they wrong you or wrong themselves? I tried to make these arguments to Dezryan while we were traveling between massacres, but that just lead to him encouraging his horse to to faster (because nothing says "I'm listening" than why don't you suffer some more?).

These purges continued into many nights, always afterwards the brothers would gather around a campfire and eat heartily and boast about the work they'd done to "heal" the land.  I for my part was kept tied to Dezryan's horse, under guard from whoever had drawn the short straw that day.  They fed me their scraps, so there was that, because letting a person die of hunger after murdering an entire town that day would be cruel and unusual.

And so it went for an entire week. I was actually surprised that we hadn't run across any real evil (well you know aside from the callous dicks I was saddled with).  When we came across a walled in town that was very quiet... And thats where I'll pick up with the next entry!

The Brothers Jerk

"Take his weapons." Dezryan always the negotiator was making sure I was completely unarmed in his presence.  Not like I had much of a choice a bunch of guys in suits of armor vs me in my rags? If I had my magic maybe, but revolvers have that really crappy having to pull them out and aim them requirement for murder, and thats why magic will always be better. We were still out in the open though, I felt this was a bad decision, even surrounded by burly men in shining armor. On top of taking my weapons they also bound my hands, because unarmed, basically naked, and without magic was not defeated enough. With my hands bound they tied a rope from my wrists to Dezyran's horse and then continued marching on, I'd say its the most humilating time in my life, but sadly it doesn't crack the top ten.

"I know why you're here and the answer is no." Dezryan again, we were in the back of the column of his brothers with good distance between us and the forward group.  Personally I thought it a bit silly to have the leader not protected by others, but the blind man had shown he was more than capable of handling threats in the past.

"You don't even know why I'm here, personally I wanted a vacation and I heard the lands of the east were a hot bet."

"You're a terrible liar, I've heard your some kind of businessman, I don't see how thats actually possible."  You ever been drug by a horse at a slow pace naked in the heat and the dust? Trust me it sucks.

"What do you want me to say in the face of you saying you won't help me with my problem."

"But I did help you with your problem, you were insane and a danger to others, I had two options kill you and do the world a favor or trap you in an anti magic bubble thereby minimizing your impact on the world and sparing your life.  So if you look at it from my angle I was more than gracious to you."

"Right just like you and your brothers murdering everyone in this land."

"This land is corrupt we are purifying it the only way it can be purified."

"By killing everyone."

"If there is nothing left to infect there is no longer an infection, don't worry Trezlan, when we are finished we'll ship you back to Ronerawth." And with that our conversation was over.  Dezryan lead his horse forward (I have no idea how, he's freaking blind!) and I stumbled behind like a drunken fool being brought before the constable for my crimes. Honestly I felt really stupid assuming Dezryan was some kind of altruistic monk type.  I should have known any order that is lead by the blind would follow darkness (HA!).  I also felt sorry for Ruk, here I was thinking Dezryan could help him, and his order would just as suredly murder them than help.  Some saviors they are!

White Knights To the Rescue

There are certain things you expect when wandering the wastes during a time of evil (yes I've done this more than once, yes the other stories will eventually make it in this journal). You expect dried corpses next to supply wagons. You expect ghost towns haunted by either the evil itself or secondary creatures exploiting the power gap (happens all the time, lesser forms of filth take over in places greater ones abandon).  Hastitly made new graveyards recently picked over by humans being as terrible as usual (graverobbery in the midst of tragedy is probably the most vile thing I've ever witnessed and I've seen some pretty vile things). Last, but certainly not least horrible is the smell, the damned areas always smell like a mix between wet garbage, shit, and mold.  You'll know the smell if you ever get in an area overrun by evil, because its hard to miss, though pray pray you never ever smell it yourself.

What you never expect is a band of knights riding in to save the day.  In this case I'm speaking of something that truely actually happened.  I was walking the road to the north feeling under dressed and underarmed when I heard the clomp of hooves.  Figuring the flesh creatures had somehow turned horses against us (horses are already evil enough, believe me they'll kill you and everyone you've ever loved without a single thought, such is the mind of the beast) I ducked into the sticker bushes near the road side (thus once again reuniting myself with an old foe, for their part they pricked the hell out of me). I'll leave out that the pricker bushes provided zero cover and I basically was standing in dust anyway so when I lept to the side there was a cloud showing where I'd gone as well as my foot prints.  Shit I said I'd leave that out, damn writing in pen.

Less about my bad hiding spot, and more about what was coming.  Knights in white armor on horse back.  At first I thought I'd actually gone crazy again (I can't even recall at what point how many times crazy this would make me), but even I knew that madness would not create this insane of an illusion. At the sight of me hiding in the bushes they stopped, the lead Knight hopped down from his horse and drew a sword (no fire arm just a very bright and deadly looking sword) and approached me.

"Stand and die knave." Not the friendliest greeting to be had I'll admit.

"I'd prefer to squat and live, you know if its all the same to you."

"We are here to cleanse this land of your evil monster stand and fight!" I have to admit at that I started to laugh pretty hard and did leave my bush.  I stood up to my full heigh and in all my mostly naked, scratched up, covered in dirt and scraggly bearded glory.

"I'm a monster? Are you insane? At best I'm a wandering vagrant lost in a land clearly out of its damn mind!" He had the sword at my throat now, my had fallen to my own revolver, but no way could I beat him to the draw as it were.

"We are aware that the creature of this land likes to hide in unlikely places, and you sir are an unlikely place."

"Thats the dumbest logic I'd ever heard of, are you just running around killing everyone who looks like they've had it rough in a land full of flesh monsters?"

"Yes."  Damn the one thing I hadn't counted on someone being dedicated to crazy.  For a moment I imagined all the people fleeing this disaster these idiots had killed and thought how stupid I was for coming to this land of damn madness.

"Wait Brother Loud (prounouced like Lude but I know how it was spelled, I saw it on his tombstone... Oh if that ain't an allusion to something... that is how I know how all of these names are spelled despite being prounounced differently)." One of the other armored knights had emerged behind Loud, he had dismounted as Loud had while the other knights remained on their horses stoicly allowing him to murder me.

"What is is Brother Corle (pronounced Corelay) I am about to purge the darkness from this man." I've heard killing people called a lot of things, this was the first I'd heard it called that.

"Master Dezyran wishes to speak with this man."

"The master with this man? Surely you must be joking."

"I am not Brother Loud now stand down." I was in a bit of a shock, I hadn't heard of this Dezryan fellow but I liked him already, well I thought I did, turns out... I was brought to back of their column, on a smaller horse dressed in a simple robe and wielding one of those weird bladed staves was my blind man.

"You son of a..." Corle and Loud restrained me, Dezryan looked on (well as much as a blind man looks at anything).

"Hello Trezlan I hear you are looking for me." And thats where I'll leave you for today.  Because I'm a dick like that and my hand hurts.

The Aftermath of Cowardice

Ok confession time (maybe I should retitle this journal to "Confessions of a Horrible Person" though I've seen several journals with similar titles, I'm sure my confessions are a lot worse), the real reason I didn't attempt to leave my junk pile was not fear, it was cowardice.  I didn't want to be with Ruk and his group anymore, I was terrified of what fate I'd set them on and I just wanted out.  I think I had already started to distance myself from the group during the escape purely to run away and have an excuse for it, that I also got attacked in this only helped me "escape" (and by escape I mean attempt to be killed and get buried underneath wooden rubble).

When I awoke smoke was filling my nostrils, buildings had been burning all night and the fire was starting to burn down the one I was in (hence what woke me up).  Ordinarily fire wouldn't scare me too much, but without magic I was a bit more leery of the stuff of course.  I did manage to get both my revolvers from where they'd been discarded and out of the building without getting singed, so points for Trezlan!

The town was littered with corpses of the skin creatures, which was at least a partial sign they weren't cannibals (look I took what I could get in the bad situation I was in).  Or if they were, they didn't their own.  I had to get out of the area before I could really explore the rest of the buildings looking for bullets, or supplies (I at least still had my cantine, though I lacked what most normal people call clothes, thank god it was a hot area, if the temperature had been lower I'd have frozen to death). So I looked like a naked vagrant holding on to a semblance of clothing, I added to that covered in ash (I mean I have brown skin anyway, but the ash totally not a sexy look on me) and I was runing out of bullets.  Doing a survey I had 15 possible bullets left.  So everything I had was loaded in my revolvers.

I noticed which direction Ruk and his group had gone from the corpses leading in that direction so I went the opposite way (again as much as I wanted to help some heroes, well I didn't want to actually do that, I confessed earlier...).  So they went east and I went north.  I figured the white creature would write me off and I could hopefully luck into finding that blind man, I mean why not? My entire life is a random sequence of events that happen to work in my favor most of the time, why not this one?

Adventures with Skin Monsters

"Move!" That was Ruk yelling at us all, the skin creatures were coming fast, we'd killed a couple getting out of the basement and between that and Jules screaming (of which she was continuing to do) the entire group was alerted, and there were a lot of them. For my part I was using my pistols on anything that came close, it was about a 70/30 shot on if they worked which was better than when I'd previously tried them.  Ruk was firing on anything, instead he had his hands full basically carrying Jules, the twins were freezing and setting everything on fire they could see. The town which had looked just run down before now looked like something out of a nightmare, flesh creatures howling, buildings caught on fire, and our small group running down the middle of town hoping to dodge both things. For my part I was doing pretty well to keep up with the group and try and take out the damned creatures as best I could. I did look in horror at my gunbelt as my ammo was slowly disappearing (naturally you can't fire and drop bullets and not run out of them).

I was actually looking down at my ammo when I felt a fleshy hand wrap around my neck.  I turned up to look for Ruk and the rest but they were gone.  It was my own fault for basically walking backwards and firing, they had darted off down a side street and I'd kept on walking, and I would have kept on walking if the fleshless thing hadn't grabbed me.  I tried to load the bullet I'd snagged from my gun belt into my revolver, but she'd lifted me off the ground and the round hit the dirt with a slight puff.  The creatures face was missing, or I should say where there were normal face features there were bloody holes.  It screamed at me and then hurled me into a nearby building, I was thankfull the glass of the former storefront window was not there or that probably would have been all they wrote for Trezlan Lorentino.  With the impact the revolver I'd been trying to reload went skittering across the ground, it dissappeared under a shelf that currently had stocked nothing.

The creature shrieked again and the wooden empty window disentigrated into wood chips.  It was moving slow, slow enough for me to grab my other revolver and not fire it because it too was empty as I was reloading the first one before I got to the second.  I tried to kick the legs out from under the creature, but it didn't work, whatever grounded it was not in the bloody stumps it walked on.  It did stop the creature for whatever that was worth.  I could feel magic being raised up, whatever had been done to me had not stopped my ability to at least know of magic.  The air around me felt tingly and then the floor under me was gone.

There was no basement in this store only the crawl space under the floor boards, but her attack had caused the shelves and other forgotten furniture nearby to collapse on top of me.  Not painful, but a little alarming. I figured I was pretty much dead at that point, the creature would plunge an arm through the wreckage and finish me off, but there was nothing.  I heard boards creak up above and then it was gone.  I didn't dare move, whatever it had done it figured it'd finished me off and I wasn't about to dispell it of that notion.  I could hear the howls leaving town, probably chasing after Ruk.  I also heard a strange song over the screams of the creatures.  I figured that was that lady in white, denied her sacrifice she was coming after it in earnest.

Or maybe she was merely after me, wanting to rid herself of the former necromancer she'd run into before I ruined whatever plan she was up to.  Either way I was too afraid to move out from my place of hiding.  I was actually so afraid I went to sleep, its amazing what fear can do for you! Well fear and a bunch of junk on top of you.

Back to the Business of Awful

"What's that god awful smell?" I figured it might have been whatever was in the cigarettes me and Ruk were smoking (because I'd been having coughing fits the entire time I had been smoking it much to Ruk's amusement).

"Get inside fleshies are coming." Ruk moved with the swiftness of someone worried about getting eaten alive (Sad to say I know that exact speed having run that way multiple times). We ran down stairs and Ruk put out the fire (which in the darkened basement made everything pitch black). I'll give Ruk credit, he was at least a leader of his crew keeping them quiet and not freaking out while we were potentially about to become food.  The smell grew stronger and then we could hear them, wailing and screaming in some forelorn horror speech. I was actually wondering at the time how these creatures snuck up on anyone.  Ruk would explain that only when they are in groups do they tend to make the noises.  Ordinarily their attacks were like I'd sort of witnessed at the compound, they send in one of their own looking like a person (don't ask where the flesh comes from, you don't want to know) and then once that person has disabled the armed people in the camp, the horde shows up to murder the rest. So what looked like a random thing was actually a very common thing during this darkness.  Now you'd think that people would stop inviting in strangers, but no matter how self sufficient your community is there are ways for things to get inside, most of the time relating to male sex drives or motherly instinct to protect children.

The wailing drew nearer as the horde passed over head.  I could hear footsteps, Jules looked to be on the verge of screaming and Ruk noticed and put a hand over her mouth.  The twins were pretty calm, I'll admit I was a bit worried, but thats my natural state of being. Just when it looked like things were going to pass by we heard the trample of feet over on the floor boards over us.  Jules couldn't keep it in any longer and screamed like a girl worried she was about to become a meal would scream like.

"Shit." We were in it, so I figured I might as well admit it.

Look Its Complicated

"What are you doing out here anyway Misser Lorentino?" I tried to spell Mr. how Jules tended to say it (and she said it often) it made me wonder if there was some kind weird dialect for the money'd class in these lands that made them sound like damn idiot or if Jules was a unique moron.

"I'm looking for a man, he did something to me and I need to find him to undue it." And I wanted to kill him, yes he saved me from me, but he also TRAPPED MY MAGIC INSIDE ME LIKE AN ASSHOLE! He effectively gave me a death sentence and didn't even bother to tell me about it.

"Is anyone from Ronerawth going to help us?" Ruk had gone off with the twins to "hunt", I was left alone with Jules (because heroes are idiots, sure lets leave the ragged clothed older guy with two pistols with our one lone idiotic female who barely manages to feed herself without injury).

"No, the seas are too bad to cross, and to be honest they don't care either way." I'm not the best sugar coater, so of course this lead to Jules crying like someone who just told her her entire land is doomed, because yeah I just did that. Of course this was the moment that Ruk and the twins showed up and Ruk immediately blamed me for telling the truth I guess.  He told me to stand outside and he'd "deal with me" have to say I wasn't really feeling great that I was probably going to have to kill a yokel and doom the other three to being killed by the lands of the flesh monsters.

Ruk emerged from the store front he didn't bring his rifle which had me feeling a little better, he took something to smoke out of one of his pockets, they were hand rolled and he offered me one, I accepted, and he lit our cigarettes with a small lighter he had previously used to start the fire in the basement.  "So we're right truely screwed aren't we?"

"Well if your plan was to wait for help, yeah its not coming." He sighed and looked up, it was night time, the stars were shining bright.

"Well you made it right? Others could come."  He didn't believe it, his tone of voice was that of resignation.

"Aren't you guys heroes? Can't you like save this land with some mystical something or other?"

"Shit thats just what I tell Jules to keep her from freaking out all day, to be honest all I am is a guard, I'm supposed to bring her to a spring where some white haired something or other will stop this for a time and we can go back to being what we were before, nothing more." I had underestimated Ruk, he was more like me than I liked, because honestly seeing anyone like me is terrifying.

"And the twins?"

"In case the witch doesn't accept Jules, magic is dangerous and the group we were with was afraid of them."

"I've see the spring and the lady, she isn't going to save anything."

"I have to try Lorentino, you understand that right? Some heroes right? A scared boy dragging three girls to be sacrificed so we can continue to fight a losing war against evil that is spreading in this land."

"You could always just try and actually kill the evil, I've seen evil its very killable, well normally." I didn't know why I was giving this boy confidence, if he did delay this monstrosity it would make it easier to find my blind man, but at the same time, I can't stand when people assign destiny to others, destiny is just a way of saying "Screw you stop asking."

"How can we stop it though?"

"Well the white thing can stop it right? We just have to find a way to force her to do that without a sacrifice and I happen to know there is a person somewhere in these lands who has that ability, we just have to find him." Ok so I did also have the thought it was better to travel in a group looking for the blind man, instead of you know as I normally do wandering helplessly.  Also I wasn't sold on the sacrifice as anything but a way for Ruk and his friends to get killed, and I'm not a huge fan of that, because as always I felt sorry for the hand they had been dealt and wanted to try and stop that.

And so it went that Trezlan Lorentino joined their party in earnest, well sort of earnest I mean I was using them for protection against this horrid wilderness.