Pinglist: @Aetherskyes
A little town stood alone in the abiding boneyard, loomed over by the mesas and bone spires by the horizon. Made of quaint little buildings and a tiny little population, it made one of the perfect kinds of spots for someone to run away to. Remote, unknown, hard to get to, and it wasn’t like anyone in this little town of Pus Pond was gonna find the hope or courage to go out there on their own and start spreading word around. Anyone who tried never succeeded.
A shadow grew over Pus Pond today, black and a sickly orange with tattered feathers and focused eyes.
Gatkax cleaned one of the many gaps in his teeth with a single claw, grimacing as the sharp tip dug into the gums and unearthed some rotten chunks of whatever. Slamming his claw back down on the counter, he spat out the mess he’d just mined into his personal spittoon, his speckled jaundiced hide sandy and turned a dull beige with the dust in the air.
His nostrils puffed out a tired sigh as he turned back to look out the partly-boarded window to the Featherback’s Fall Tavern. It was foggy today. A sickly orange mist engulfed Pus Pond and didn’t seem to plan on letting go of it any time soon. Little light flooded the place from the outside, so they had to rely on lamps and candles as usual.
Speaking of lamps, Gatkax’s four eyes caught the bartender walking by, lamp in tail and glasses haphazardly adorning his snout like an uncertain twig uncertainly balanced on an uncertainly frowning stone. The bartender turned to Gatkax and placed down his drink. “Here you go, sir. One pint of cactus water and diluted bone serpent venom…”
Gatkax nearly lifted the pint to his lips when he heard the barkeep mutter, “Dunno why anyone would want something like that…”
Gatkax grumbled in response, “I like the way it burns the throat, strangles the tongue. Makes me wanna gag.” Causing the bartender to nervously swivel around, not thinking that his customer would notice the jab. “Well, it’s just that all you’re doing is drinking a pint of homemade pickling solution… with some extra water from the pond this time so you won’t dry up like a corpse in Dragonhome.” Gatkax shrugged. “‘s better than what they had back at the circles of hell.” The bartender raised a curious eyebrow, smirking. “Well, that’s a start to a story my old ears haven’t heard before!”
The bartender continued handing out food and drink before returning to Gatkax and asking, “So, new fella, what’re these ‘circles of hell’ you’re referring to?”
Gatkax narrowed his eyes and sneered, hissing out a few insults towards his old abode before tilting his head up to the bartender and asking, “Ya heard of the Fallen’s Fang?” The bartender scratched his chin and scratched his cheeks before getting a spark of memory in his eye. “Ah! Yes, the Fallen’s Fang. I believe I’ve heard of them from a few of the other Plague residents around these parts… of course, that’s about all I’ve got. I’m just an old Earth geezer here because some liar told me about… my apologies, what were you talking about?”
Gatkax dismissively waved a claw and hissed out, “My old home. This big old clan of Plague fanatics. Every day we’d have to train for our big rite of passage… clawing at my brother’s eyes, ripping at my sister’s scales… beating my siblings senseless just to get stronger. Then, it’d escalate to getting sent out on my own into the wild and having a hunt demanded of me. Days turned to weeks and I still ‘wasn’t ready’ for the big day. All the while all of my generation had already moved past that point, had already become adults, and had gone onto…”
Gatkax paused, clenching a fist and clenching his teeth. “… The rite of passage. Slaughtering each other in the ring, pulling entrails, gutting teeth…”
Gatkax took another swig from the pint. “Killing each other like common animals. And they made me watch.”
Gatkax continued. “And every day! Every day, they’d make us say our prayers to the Plaguebringer, to our goddess, saying, ‘O great mother of rot, may we all grow stronger from your gifts and may the weak be left behind, and may any others be left to bleed on the battlefield.’ And I believed every word of it, I believed EVERY WORD from their grinning maws and twisting grins! I believed that, one day, maybe just ONE DAY, I’d get strong enough, I’d hunt my prey and I’d face off against my brothers and sisters in the arena and win.”
Gatkax’s brow furrowed and he looked up at the bartender. “I believed with my whole heart and soul that if I ever saw a dragon like you, they’d deserve to die.”
The bartender grimaced. “Odd thing to bring up to me specifically, but I’m curious enough to ignore my common judgement and hear the rest of your tale out.”
Gatkax’s voice grew shakier. “Then, I saw it in action. I saw the philosophy at work day after day in the front row of that Arena with the scythes looming over me thinking it’d ‘make his heart grow harder’, and I saw the patrols on my hunts close in on those confused wandering dragons and tear their throats out like a pack of wild dogs.”
Gatkax looked away, back out the windows. “I don’t know why, but for some reason out of all of my peers I was the one to see the problem with it.”
The bartender leaned in cautiously. “And what was this problem with it?”
Gatkax sighed. “It was murder. Murder for the sake of murder and murder for the sake of hatred, disguised as murder for the sake of glory, strength, and honor.”
The bartender continued his story for him. “And so, you left.”
Gatkax nodded. “On one of my hunting trips I decided never to return. On one of my hunting trips I strayed for miles and miles and eventually wound up here…”
The bartender continued again. “Nearly dead and devoid of water, like just about every other runaway who ends up here.”
Silence filled the conversation, the only sounds being the clinks of glass and the chatter of others, with a hint of the flickering lamp flames and the creaking of old wood.
The bartender piped up, “Want another glass of that… stuff?”
Gatkax nodded. “Yes. Please.”
The bartender gave a nod back before disappearing to the back of the tavern and finding that the water storage was empty. He frowned to himself and remarked, “Odd. These sounded full about thirty minutes ago.” He shook his head and walked back out to Gatkax. “It’ll be a while. I gotta fill the kegs with water again.”
The bartender left the tavern, wandering through the fog. It smelled of rot, like an algae bloom on a hot mire day. He wrinkled his nose and gagged before continuing to the pond and pulling the tubes from behind the tavern and dipping them into the pond, waiting for the mucky, blackened water’s level to stop lowering before he removed the tubes and put them back at the back wall.
The bartender returned, waltzing through the haphazardly secured door into the lesser stank of his work. “My apologies, folks. A free drink of water on the house for all of you!”
Once he finished up handing out the pints of fresher than average water, the bartender took a sip of it himself and continued his work.
Gatkax continued drinking, feeling the sting of the pickling juice in his mouth again before swallowing it.
Before he began to feel a different kind of burning.
It started in his stomach, but started to spread throughout the rest of him. Gatkax coughed and gagged, and the ambiance around him began to get filled with the sounds of struggling bodies and death.
He clutched his chest with his claw, coughing and gagging intensifying before turning to a fit of thrashing and jerking on his stool, his lungs barely able to get a single breath in through the spasms and blood slowly filling them.
Gatkax opened his tears eyes a bit more, wheezing and gurgling, finding that the bartender had begun to succumb to the same fate, clutching the bottles on the rack behind him but only succeeding in breaking the glass and cutting his claws.
The noise of coughing around Gatkax began to dim with the light.
Dobolg clutched the limp head of the runaway, a permanently sneering expression showing pain in his last moments. She turned it a bit, one way and then the other before noting it in her log and dropping the head to let it go limp again.
As she did so, it smacked onto the counter, before rolling off of it and hanging downwards towards the floor. A flood of blood escaped from between his teeth, speckled and jaundiced lips now stained red as it pooled on the floor.
Dobolg paused, and wrote that down as well before inspecting her surroundings with a cold gaze to find that the rest, or at least the majority, of the town had met their fates as well.
Dobolg walked out of the tavern doors, back out into the fog and towards the Fallen’s Fang Clan.
It was unfortunate, really. Her victim was intelligent, and would have made for a perfect Pestilence assistant had it not been for his cowardice.
The dust settled between her claws as she looked over her notes again to make sure she had written everything down for later reflection.
‘Used fog mixture to lower visibility’
‘Poisoned water supply with dragonsbane flower extract’
‘Drained tavern water storage’
‘Successful assassination of the runaway’
‘Successful extermination of heretic village’
Dobolg closed her tome and looked back at the town one last time before spreading her wings and flying away into the distance, the shadow over Pus Pond shrinking until it was finally gone.
A little town stood alone in the abiding boneyard, loomed over by the mesas and bone spires by the horizon. Made of quaint little buildings and a tiny little population, it made one of the perfect kinds of spots for someone to run away to. Remote, unknown, hard to get to, and it wasn’t like anyone in this little town of Pus Pond was gonna find the hope or courage to go out there on their own and start spreading word around. Anyone who tried never succeeded.
A shadow grew over Pus Pond today, black and a sickly orange with tattered feathers and focused eyes.
Gatkax cleaned one of the many gaps in his teeth with a single claw, grimacing as the sharp tip dug into the gums and unearthed some rotten chunks of whatever. Slamming his claw back down on the counter, he spat out the mess he’d just mined into his personal spittoon, his speckled jaundiced hide sandy and turned a dull beige with the dust in the air.
His nostrils puffed out a tired sigh as he turned back to look out the partly-boarded window to the Featherback’s Fall Tavern. It was foggy today. A sickly orange mist engulfed Pus Pond and didn’t seem to plan on letting go of it any time soon. Little light flooded the place from the outside, so they had to rely on lamps and candles as usual.
Speaking of lamps, Gatkax’s four eyes caught the bartender walking by, lamp in tail and glasses haphazardly adorning his snout like an uncertain twig uncertainly balanced on an uncertainly frowning stone. The bartender turned to Gatkax and placed down his drink. “Here you go, sir. One pint of cactus water and diluted bone serpent venom…”
Gatkax nearly lifted the pint to his lips when he heard the barkeep mutter, “Dunno why anyone would want something like that…”
Gatkax grumbled in response, “I like the way it burns the throat, strangles the tongue. Makes me wanna gag.” Causing the bartender to nervously swivel around, not thinking that his customer would notice the jab. “Well, it’s just that all you’re doing is drinking a pint of homemade pickling solution… with some extra water from the pond this time so you won’t dry up like a corpse in Dragonhome.” Gatkax shrugged. “‘s better than what they had back at the circles of hell.” The bartender raised a curious eyebrow, smirking. “Well, that’s a start to a story my old ears haven’t heard before!”
The bartender continued handing out food and drink before returning to Gatkax and asking, “So, new fella, what’re these ‘circles of hell’ you’re referring to?”
Gatkax narrowed his eyes and sneered, hissing out a few insults towards his old abode before tilting his head up to the bartender and asking, “Ya heard of the Fallen’s Fang?” The bartender scratched his chin and scratched his cheeks before getting a spark of memory in his eye. “Ah! Yes, the Fallen’s Fang. I believe I’ve heard of them from a few of the other Plague residents around these parts… of course, that’s about all I’ve got. I’m just an old Earth geezer here because some liar told me about… my apologies, what were you talking about?”
Gatkax dismissively waved a claw and hissed out, “My old home. This big old clan of Plague fanatics. Every day we’d have to train for our big rite of passage… clawing at my brother’s eyes, ripping at my sister’s scales… beating my siblings senseless just to get stronger. Then, it’d escalate to getting sent out on my own into the wild and having a hunt demanded of me. Days turned to weeks and I still ‘wasn’t ready’ for the big day. All the while all of my generation had already moved past that point, had already become adults, and had gone onto…”
Gatkax paused, clenching a fist and clenching his teeth. “… The rite of passage. Slaughtering each other in the ring, pulling entrails, gutting teeth…”
Gatkax took another swig from the pint. “Killing each other like common animals. And they made me watch.”
Gatkax continued. “And every day! Every day, they’d make us say our prayers to the Plaguebringer, to our goddess, saying, ‘O great mother of rot, may we all grow stronger from your gifts and may the weak be left behind, and may any others be left to bleed on the battlefield.’ And I believed every word of it, I believed EVERY WORD from their grinning maws and twisting grins! I believed that, one day, maybe just ONE DAY, I’d get strong enough, I’d hunt my prey and I’d face off against my brothers and sisters in the arena and win.”
Gatkax’s brow furrowed and he looked up at the bartender. “I believed with my whole heart and soul that if I ever saw a dragon like you, they’d deserve to die.”
The bartender grimaced. “Odd thing to bring up to me specifically, but I’m curious enough to ignore my common judgement and hear the rest of your tale out.”
Gatkax’s voice grew shakier. “Then, I saw it in action. I saw the philosophy at work day after day in the front row of that Arena with the scythes looming over me thinking it’d ‘make his heart grow harder’, and I saw the patrols on my hunts close in on those confused wandering dragons and tear their throats out like a pack of wild dogs.”
Gatkax looked away, back out the windows. “I don’t know why, but for some reason out of all of my peers I was the one to see the problem with it.”
The bartender leaned in cautiously. “And what was this problem with it?”
Gatkax sighed. “It was murder. Murder for the sake of murder and murder for the sake of hatred, disguised as murder for the sake of glory, strength, and honor.”
The bartender continued his story for him. “And so, you left.”
Gatkax nodded. “On one of my hunting trips I decided never to return. On one of my hunting trips I strayed for miles and miles and eventually wound up here…”
The bartender continued again. “Nearly dead and devoid of water, like just about every other runaway who ends up here.”
Silence filled the conversation, the only sounds being the clinks of glass and the chatter of others, with a hint of the flickering lamp flames and the creaking of old wood.
The bartender piped up, “Want another glass of that… stuff?”
Gatkax nodded. “Yes. Please.”
The bartender gave a nod back before disappearing to the back of the tavern and finding that the water storage was empty. He frowned to himself and remarked, “Odd. These sounded full about thirty minutes ago.” He shook his head and walked back out to Gatkax. “It’ll be a while. I gotta fill the kegs with water again.”
The bartender left the tavern, wandering through the fog. It smelled of rot, like an algae bloom on a hot mire day. He wrinkled his nose and gagged before continuing to the pond and pulling the tubes from behind the tavern and dipping them into the pond, waiting for the mucky, blackened water’s level to stop lowering before he removed the tubes and put them back at the back wall.
The bartender returned, waltzing through the haphazardly secured door into the lesser stank of his work. “My apologies, folks. A free drink of water on the house for all of you!”
Once he finished up handing out the pints of fresher than average water, the bartender took a sip of it himself and continued his work.
Gatkax continued drinking, feeling the sting of the pickling juice in his mouth again before swallowing it.
Before he began to feel a different kind of burning.
It started in his stomach, but started to spread throughout the rest of him. Gatkax coughed and gagged, and the ambiance around him began to get filled with the sounds of struggling bodies and death.
He clutched his chest with his claw, coughing and gagging intensifying before turning to a fit of thrashing and jerking on his stool, his lungs barely able to get a single breath in through the spasms and blood slowly filling them.
Gatkax opened his tears eyes a bit more, wheezing and gurgling, finding that the bartender had begun to succumb to the same fate, clutching the bottles on the rack behind him but only succeeding in breaking the glass and cutting his claws.
The noise of coughing around Gatkax began to dim with the light.
Dobolg clutched the limp head of the runaway, a permanently sneering expression showing pain in his last moments. She turned it a bit, one way and then the other before noting it in her log and dropping the head to let it go limp again.
As she did so, it smacked onto the counter, before rolling off of it and hanging downwards towards the floor. A flood of blood escaped from between his teeth, speckled and jaundiced lips now stained red as it pooled on the floor.
Dobolg paused, and wrote that down as well before inspecting her surroundings with a cold gaze to find that the rest, or at least the majority, of the town had met their fates as well.
Dobolg walked out of the tavern doors, back out into the fog and towards the Fallen’s Fang Clan.
It was unfortunate, really. Her victim was intelligent, and would have made for a perfect Pestilence assistant had it not been for his cowardice.
The dust settled between her claws as she looked over her notes again to make sure she had written everything down for later reflection.
‘Used fog mixture to lower visibility’
‘Poisoned water supply with dragonsbane flower extract’
‘Drained tavern water storage’
‘Successful assassination of the runaway’
‘Successful extermination of heretic village’
Dobolg closed her tome and looked back at the town one last time before spreading her wings and flying away into the distance, the shadow over Pus Pond shrinking until it was finally gone.
