-[Crypt Island] To Hell and Back-

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

OoC: Ick, I suck, should be in the title but thread is closed, and I'll probably need a mod, >.< Edit 2: And apparently I also forgot too timestamp it, which I only noticed when i came back too read it again today, I fail hardcore.

Early morning of the First Day of Kalendryas.
Winter, Era I of the Celestine Mandate, Era XV Post Fractum.

The suns rose as they always did, climbing into the sky, chasing the moons, or were the moons chasing them? Perhaps something for the lone inhabitant of the island too ponder later, she had lots of time to thinking these days, too much in fact, it had drove her half mad long ago. However, the suns, being suns cared little as they made their way higher melting the frost from the stones and wood of her current hide out as the morning progressed. The place was silent, no animals, no birds that she had seen, and best of all, no soft skins. Food would be a problem perhaps, meat any ways, but any of the three would be easy enough too come by in the surrounding waters and islands. A chicken here, a human there would be enough too keep her feed through the winter. The fact that she could escape too the sky after, faster than any soft skin could pilot their boats was even more appealing. When the snow had lifted from the rest of the empire, she would probably leave and head back too the mainland, but for now, she was here.

Kour'el al'Kil'ark de Lanalia Vassil Kha'Serith had indeed fallen far from the dracon she once was. She was taller than a normal softskin but short for a dracon. She was also gaunt., as starved looking as any dracon could be. Emerald and sapphire scales drawn tight over bones as architecturally beautiful as any of the cathedrals and castles in the empire. The scales were the only part of her that seemed healthy. Fairly glowing in the suns light, obsessively kept clean of dirt and debris because they were the first thing Kour'el checked when she woke up, too make sure she was still a draconess, still herself, not transported back into the horrible elf body she had been 'graced' with. Her scales and wings looked like they had drained the life from the rest of her, and the rags she had wrapped around herself didn't help.

Crouching on one of the beams of the abandoned house she had found on some god forsaken spit of land near one of the other god forsaken soft skin infested islands, she surveyed her temporary home with a cold gaze. Narrow emerald feet, callused, the rags wrapped around them dirty and battered scrapped against the beam as she wriggled her toes briefly too keep them warm before sinking back into the wood. A skeletal hand reached up too scratch at her neck, the claw structure built onto the tips of her fingers and the muscles in her wrists clearly visible with no padding of fat or extra skin too disguise them.

Her current physical state was not because she found it hard too fend for herself though. Her combat training and the fact that she had been on her own for most of her life now had taught the draconess quite a bit about which foods were safe too eat and just where too get them. Even now, her the small bundle of belongings she still had, she had a gnawed on rabbit, the last thing she had caught in the hinterlands before she had flown this way. No, the cause for her sad state was because her guilt, fear and fury were eating her alive. Even now, when she closed her eyes briefly, something she rarely did, she felt a wave of panic rise up, sure that this time, when she opened her eyes, the emerald scales of her arm would turn once more into that disgusting golden skin and once more she would feel hair along her shoulders, and her wings would have disappeared. Blinking was a chore, so she had trained herself too keep her eyes open as long as physically possible, giving her an even more reptilian aspect.

Glancing behind her, the draconess opened her wings with a smooth rippling motion, feeling the leather membrane become taunt as they reached their full span. Sighing, she shifted slightly, enjoying the sunlight warming her wings and her body in the cool morning air. After a few minutes, Kour'el rose too her feet, snapping her wings shut and picked her way across the beam, her tail, talons and wings helping her keep her balance. Dropping down, she surveyed her new home. A rough patch of flooring, maybe six feet by six feet, perhaps it was once part of a second or third story too this building. It suited her since it was above the ground, and the only way up was too climb the wall beams, or too fly.

Her small ragged bag of belongings was in the corner, along with the dead rabbit. Picking her way across the floor carefully, still not confident the whole thing wasn't rotten and would break at any minute, she crouched down and picked up the rabbit, sniffing it. In a day or two she would have too toss what remained of it out into the water, when it was too decomposed and rotten too eat anymore, but for now, it was still relatively fresh. Ripping off a chunk, she barely chewed it before swallowing, dead yellow eyes staring at some point on the wall as she tore a few more chunks of rabbit from the carcass. Finishing with her light meal, the draconess tossed the rabbit carelessly into the corner again, dirt didn't bother her, not on her food any ways.

Breakfast finished, she flipped open her bag, a few gold crowns, her saex some more rags, a battered sketch book and a quill that had seen better days. Her ink pot was pretty much empty, perhaps with some spit or water she could get a few more lines out of it. However, she avoided looking at the top page of the sketch book, a smeared, blurry picture done with a burnt twig, it was of Eion and Lin'sea, the children she had abandoned when she had been cursed into an elf. It was a bad drawing, her basic skill at work, but still, it represented the little ones she had given up when the gods had made too many demands of her. Then her hands found the two items that didn't show hard use, even as her eyes shamefully skirted the picture of her babies. the skeletal hands shook as she removed two squares of blanket, a vague floral pattern on both. Trembling, she brought them too her nose and sniffed, hoping for a scent of her dracolings too come too her. None did. A tear escaped the haunted eyes, rolling down the scales too fall on the blanket scraps. She had wrapped her babies in these and was all she had of her dear ones.

With a heart wrenching cry, she dropped the cloth, grabbed her saex and turned from the bag and her memories. She ran too the edge of the platform and launched herself skyward, wings straining too carry her far, far away from picture and the blankets and the former life she had lived. A day of riding the wind around this island and the others, brooding over the last few eras of her life until she was so exhausted she wouldn't dream when she returned.

[Wynd]

Hunger eats away at the mind, nibbling on the edges and leaving it frayed and over-sensitized. Isolation. Insomnia. With them came fear, anxiety, depression. The dracon's brain and sanity were decaying alongside her rabbit, and pity to the prey of the powerful, but mad.

Secyclion was a small city, a tiny gem in the turquoise oceans and scattered archipelagos, but there were tens of thousands of people on the islands around for whom it was their metropolis, the centre of activity for this sixth of Eunesia. Ships, sail boats, triremes, and canoes wove the fragmented islands together. Kour'el could see them, vessels transporting hundreds of softskins cutting through the sea like water bugs. Crypt Island was a small, six acre crescent, and none of the bugs usually split from their routes to land on this haunted island. But today was different.

To the east of Crypt Island there was a much bigger island, largely wild and untamed, but populated. Several primitive tribes of humans fished, hunted, and farmed there, living in villages by the beaches while further in it turned to steamy jungle. They had strange customs and language there -- most believed them to be some kind of aboriginal Eunesian, having existed there before the northern humans had come down from the icy seas to claim the warm bay. A canoe full of about ten of these people landed on one of Crypt Island's beaches.

One of them, a skinny, heavily tattooed man in a loincloth and carrying a spear was the scout, heading off before the main group who remained on the beach, and he struck toward Kour's ruined mansion just as she was taking off from it. His chest, arms, and legs were painted with rich designs of snakes and spiders battling each other and humans, and there were on his forearms, shins, and neck, rings of hieroglyphs. The skull of a small reptile hung from his necklace.

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

OoC: Thanks for picking this up Wynd ^^

Intent on getting height, the draconess failed to notice when one of the many craft on the water landed on her island. Early morning flying was always more physically demanding then flying later in the day. Mornings, when the sun hadn't been up long enough too warm the air, usually had few breezes too work with. The air was dead, the thermals were still asleep. Kour had too work too gain any altitude she she could just coast along, searching for the breezes as they began to pick up their pace. From there she could just be lazy and watch the world below her. For now, she had too flap. Flapping was hard work and demanded lots of energy. This was the only reason the emerald draconess forced herself to eat most days.

When she finally settled at an acceptable height, and when the warmth in her muscles was just shy of turning into burning pain, the draconess leveled out and stretched her wings fully, feeling the membranes pull taunt and the strain across her chest lessen somewhat. She was breathing harshly though in the cooler air. Golden eyes looked around, watching the water, boats and islands. Perhaps something interesting would float by her today, or better yet, a ship would sink or be attacked by pirates. Watching soft skins kill one another, drown or be eaten by sharks would be an interesting way to pass the time.

However, such pleasant day dreams were dashed when the reptilian golden eyes focused on the small craft that had dared too land on her island. Snarling, the draconess adjusted her wings slightly and circled back over her home. Soft skins. Vermin. Like flies too a dung heap they had come. And like the insects, they would suck everything they could from the islands before moving on to the next pile of crap or corpse they found, spreading death and disease as they went. The peace she had found on the island was shattered by one small canoe. But, Her mind whispered. it doesn't have too be... When one was annoyed by flies, all you had too do was swat them and kill them, and problem solved. A cruel smile flitted on the draconesses scaled features as she picked out the man who had wandered from his group. He would be the first too be swatted.

Clawing for a bit more height before making her move, and too make some half formed plan, Kour'el fingered the medallion at her neck thoughtfully before dismissing it and her ring. Perhaps later she would need them both but for now, she would rather enjoy the tactile feeling of ripping her prey apart with her bare hands and fangs. A burst of maniac giggles escaped her as she abruptly folded her wings, plunging down towards the softskin who had foolishly left his group. She was aiming for his face and eyes, making the minute adjustments of her wing tips and body to angle her attack. A fly was to be swatted today, and Kour'el had turned into one of those psychotic who liked pulling the wings off before killing them later. Her target approaching rather quickly, Kour'el flexed her talons and grinned.

[Wynd]

OOC: My pleasure.

The tribesman didn't even know what hit him. A trained scout, he nimbly leaped through the island underbrush, wary of snakes and traps, eyes all around, everywhere -- except up. Maybe if he'd been a poet with his dreamy eyes to the sky he'd have survived. Too bad for the primitives they mostly only had survival on their minds.

A frozen moment. He flicked his eyes up. A reptile (his tribe had never seen Dracons before) rocketing down from the sky. Then Kour'el tore through his face, and her dropping body weight toppled him over and bashed his skull open against the ground. He had enough time to let out a terrified scream before a thud.

Then came the rest. Apparently the scout wasn't so much a canary as a flare. These nine were a tribe's warriors, all armed with spears and heavily tattooed. They came ready to fight, and Kour might have been in trouble, but they stood shocked in the presence of the Dracon. They knelt before her, touching their foreheads to the ground as though she was an Ancient Allerian descended to Telath. One of them stood up, the rest stayed prostrate. This one was some shaman or holy man or something, he was older, more wrinkled, and had bone-jewellery protruding out of his face. He spoke some savage language and nothing that Kour'el understood, but he walked straight up to the Dracon with his chest out, unarmed, and pointed at the dead scout. The others looked up in horror and awe, and their leader picked up a chant. They echoed it, as if in religious ceremony.

Who were these people? And why were they all tattooed with reptiles in combat with arachnids, and wearing reptilian skulls and bones around their necks and in their faces?

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

A ghost of the old Kour'el felt a bit sorry for the poor fellow. He had no idea what happened in the last few minutes of his life, a fleeting glimpse, and then bam! He was on the ground, dead, his face ripped open. However, the crazed beast she had become shoved all thoughts of pity aside. One did not pity the bugs that ended up squashed and smeared across a palm. These things had trespassed on her island after all, it wasn't like they didn't deserve death. There were far cleaner was too commit suicide after all.

Absorbing the shock of hitting the man, Kour'el's forward momentum was pretty much lost, flaring open her wings, feeling her shoulders and chest take the rest of the strain she landed, skidding a bit on the underbrush before digging in her toe talons. She shook herself, enjoying the satisfaction that came from taking life in a perfect move before turning to confirm her kill.

Unfortunately for the emerald draconess, she had little more time too enjoy the kill. The rest of the man's friends came along then, and she hissed, curling her fingers to display the long talons, her long tail weaving patterns behind her as she tensed, ready to launch herself at the closet one and rip her way through them, or if things got too serious and she was in danger, to claw her way up the nearest tree and flee. Of course, she wouldn't be going far, she would get these primitives of her island one way or another.

Then one of the most surprising events to happen too Kour'el in a while happened. The things prostrated them sevles before her. Blinking, her golden eyes darted from left too right, expecting some trickery. An attack from the side or some magic act. Her kind was hated by pretty much all of the empire. Enough of her friends and family had died too attest too that fact. Then the ugly one, with bones piercing his face came up too her. That was something new too the draconess. She had seen the make up and the wigs before, but not bones in the face.

Narrowing her golden reptilian gaze, the draconess followed his point too the corpse for a moment. Her guilt was only slightly obvious, she had blood on her talons. Glaring at the man, she hissed and jerked her horned head up and down once, defiantly claiming the death as hers, daring him too seek payback for his dead man.

[Wynd]

When Kour'el acknowledged her kill, the shaman held up his pointing hand and the chanting ceased. He turned to face his people and consulted them in their gibberish language.

He turned back to face Kour'el. He struggled with Common, but said, "You are... dray-con. Yes? I have a story to show."

The tribesmen disappeared, and something changed about the island. The foliage was different. And there was a village. It was night. The people looked like the same tribe of humans as the scout Kour had killed, but they huddled in fear around a fire in the middle of their mud and straw houses. Things shifted outside the firelight, and then, spiders. A man-sized tarantula leaped from the bushes. Several men with spears lunged out to kill it, but their weapons did nothing to its tough skin and it devoured them. Another came out, a different spider, that sprayed its silky goop over the next warriors, and the villagers fled, only to run into several more of the beasts lurking, and many were devoured. Kour saw this again and again, and then it was daylight, and a warship was anchored out in the sea by Crypt Island. A boat came onto the beach, and the tribespeople came out to greet the Mainlander -- a lone Dracon with a huge sword strapped to his back. Their dress was ancient, maybe from the Age of Chivalry before the Empire's ascendency over the continent. The Dracon came onto the island and fought the terrible spiders. The snakes and lizards of the islands followed him. The tarantula was sprawled and bloody over a rock, one a charred skeleton, the others maimed in many ways. But then -- the tribespeople were all leaving in canoes, and--

the illusion cut off.

The tattoos made sense now. The reptiles fighting spiders. And on the shaman's back, as Kour would have seen when he turned to speak to his people, was a very primitive and basic depiction of a Dracon, basically a lizard with wings, carrying a sword and gouging a tarantula.

"You here for spiders." The shaman knelt, and his people touched their foreheads to the ground once again. He raised his head again. "You go -- to our village?"

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

With the arrogance of youth, Journal thought she had seen and done it all that this cesspool of an empire had to offer. Being shown an illusion was however a fairly novel experience for the emerald scaled draconess. She smiled wickedly when she viewed the humans huddling around their puny fire, afraid. As well they should be, the lesser races were usually afraid of the dark. The boogeyman and other worse things came out at night.

However Kour frowned and hissed with agitation when the spiders came into view, massacring the weak softskins, flinching away herself. Illusion or not she couldn't help but also feel disgusted. Journal hated bugs. They were gross, useless creatures. She liked them small enough to dance on, though scrapping the crushed bodies and the guts was always unpleasant. Usually, she wiped her feet off on grass, or a particularly nice rug that caught her eye.

The dragon figure intrigued her however, and she wondered just how long ago this had happened. Being one of the newer races, perhaps not that long ago, maybe this dracon was one of the first diantars after Diana had freed them. Her blood warmed at the sight of him fighting the spiders and she bared her teeth in approval, proud even to see an illusion of her race in combat, triumphing where the humans had cowered in their own urine and fear.

When the human knelt, Kour'el gazed down at him regally, her tail weaving back and forth slowly. Perhaps, if she helped these wretched creatures, they would leave her island alone and never return. Or perhaps reward her with something better to eat than a half rotten rabbit. Nodding her horned head slowly, the draconess spoke slowly in her own accented voice. "I will kill your spiders, like my ancestor did." She pointed at the tattoo on his back, and held up her hand, palm up, fingers curled slightly like the legs of a dead spider and grinned.

She wasn't about to hop in a boat with a bunch of half naked savages though, whether they worshiped her kind or not. Kour'el wasn't that stupid. "I will follow you there from the sky." Kour extended her wings, they rippled out smoothly, where the blue membrane glowed, marred only by the scar at the outer edge. She flapped a couple of times slowly, and pointed upwards with a deadly, blood coated talon.

[Wynd]

The shaman nodded, and they moved. What Kour'el had agreed to was too grave for words of thanks. The shaman only explained to his followers that Kour'el would follow by sky, and so they darted to their canoe. What they had come to this island for was forgotten. They had found something far more important. The idol of their hero-worship had arrived. A Dracon.

They glided over the sea like a waterbug. Their island was not far, and it was not a difficult flight. It was huge, bigger than the island Secyclion was on, and most of it was untamed jungle. From the sky Kour could see several clutters of huts along the beeches. More curiously, off in the distance a number of stone towers broke out of the thick jungle foliage. Further and further down the island the jungle became more and more twisted, and what looked like black leaves and purple branches clawed at the sunny Eunesian sky.

Their canoe landed on the beach next to a village. There was no one running around, as they had in some of the other visible villages. The bodies of several tribespeople lay around, half-eaten or suffocated in spidersilk. A trail of wreckage lead into the forest.

The warriors of the now-dead and fled village stood mournfully on the site. The shaman, however, knelt before one woman's corpse. He took out a pouch of powders and bones and sprinkled and shook them over the body, dancing and chanting, and the body burst as a wraith rose out of it. They communed, and the shaman turned to Kour'el and his people.

"The survivors are in jungle. Spiders came today."

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

While the humans had run for their canoe, Kour'el had taken to the air, her wings beating quickly in the cool morning air. It was slightly better than before but it was still quite a bit of work for the emerald draconess and briefly she thought of abandoning these people to their fate of ugly bugs and horrible death. The prospect of food that wasn't going green or smelling funny was too great a lure though, she did retrieve her messenger bag though and the rest of her belongings. The old blankets she had used for her dracolings were to precious to loos to the wild or thieves. The rabbit was dropped into the ocean as she left the island. Let the sea creatures enjoy the rest of the disgusting thing. If the humans didn't take the corpse of their companion, likely he would end up in the same place.

Following the boat was tedious, often in cases like this, the draconess had to double back. Though they were faster then people on foot, something the draconess was glad for. It didn't stop her from enjoying the flight to their island though, since flying was the only joy she had left. Sweeping, swooping, soaring, air-current thrill rides, there was nothing better for the bitter, crazed draconess. For miles around, she were the only things in the infinite, wide-open, clear blue sky. The water belonged to the softskins but the sky was hers. Looking for an adrenaline rush, the draconess climbed higher into the sky before tucking in her wings and went into a steep dive-bomb for about a mile straight down. Wings out, grab an air current like a domain, and she zoomed past the boat, skimming the waves to feel the spray of the water in her face. Gods, nothing is better, more fun, more exciting.

Then they were landing on some large untamed spit of land, and Kour'el angled her wing, spiraling down before she dropped the last several feet out of the sky, away enough fromt he savages that they couldn't attack her right away, close enough to hear their broken common if they talked to her. Grimly, Kour eyed the wreckage and corpses, even getting close enough to poke one of the webbed victims with the tip of her long knife before she wiped it off on her pants. Then the shamman did some weird bit of magic and the draconess sat back on her haunches, crouched near the cocooned body, watching the proceedings before rising to her feet.

Looking into the woods, she frowned. It looked completely wild and over grown from where she was standing, if she had to get away, it would be almost impossible by flying, if the growth was tangled all the way up the trees. She would have to climb one and risk ripping her wings open in branches or she would have to run till she made the treeline.

Still suspicious, she had killed one of their own after all, they may still be seeking revenge for that, the draconess drew her saex. Armed with both of her remaining weapons, Kour gestured towards the trees. "Will you show me the way or will your ghost friend?" Either way, with a careful eye to her back, the draconess approached the trees cautiously.

[Wynd]

You can have the streets, because we ARE the sky! --Stadium Art Manifesto

"Show you... the way?" the shaman shrugged. The warriors, not so brave any longer, stood around baffled, until one of the younger ones stood forward and spoke to the shaman. The shaman in turn said to Kour, "Akinwe go with you. He speak no Common, but good hunter. He find spiders."

So she had a hunter who didn't speak her language. She was on a jungle island haunted by murderous spiders preying on a people whose shamans practiced necromancy. This was the land of savages. Was Kour'el even in the Empire? She wasn't far from Secyclion or Crypt Island, but did these people even know they lived on the Emperor's territory? Or did they not know any civilization beyond Secyclion? Kour'el was in the dark places on the map. And with the hunter she walked into the jungle, into a forest where life and death grew tangled with each other. It hummed with life, with plants and beasts and bugs, and as they devoured each other to grow outward and outward, thickening and blooming, death hung over it all. And it was death-rot that made life grow so quick and so thick.

As the forest thickened the light dimmed. Akinwe lead the way. The trail was easy to follow -- the foliage was crushed for a five feet length, covered in human blood and spidersilk. They walked for an hour. They came to the base one of those huge stone towers that broke the canopy. Up close they were even more alien. The stones were blue and in the dusky forest they glowed. They could not have been built by these primitives. Some other force had been in these jungles.

And at the base of this tower, Akinwe stopped and looked around, like an animal sensing either predator or prey. And from the tower the tarantula leaped down on Akinwe and bit off his head.

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

Less than happy with her appointed guide, Kour'el never the less realized that on this godforsaken spit of land removed from the empire, she had little choice in regards to who she got to help her. She supposed she was just lucky she hadn't been graced with some yankee from across the boarder, who's favourite past time was wiping his arse with corncobs ands fornicating with his sister. Then again, the general intelligence these people had shown didn't discourage the thought of inbreeding. Depending on how long they had been on the island, Kour'el had to wonder how many babies were born with extra fingers and toes.

Shaking her head, the loose scales on her neck clicking faintly, the draconess had to laugh grimly at her situation as she followed the soft skin into the wilderness. The tangle growth soon was giving the draconess the creeps. Normally forests didn't bother her, but this one was different. Everything was tangled together and gave the distinct impression of reaching for her. Even the Serewood had been better than this. Longing on her scaled features, the draconess glanced up frequently at the rare breaks in the foliage where some light was let in. She wanted the clean, clear sky.

The blood didn't bother the draconess, she rather liked it. Human blood, with it's rich red colour looked so pretty when it graced her talons and scales. The spidersilk on the other hand made her queasy. She hated bugs. With their twitchy, jointed legs, alien eyes, and their creepy way of moving. Perhaps, if she found the spiders too numerous to kill and all the people dead, she would burn this place down. Let them all rot in Jalat's realm. Fire would give her nice updrafts to float on, watching and listening to the carnage anyways. A slow, bloodthirsty grin spread as Kour'el pondered the idea for a moment, liking it more and more.

However as with every good dream, it was interrupted, first by their arrival at the tower, their guides stop and then his quick death. Kour'el hoped the bastard had felt some pain at least. At least his death would give her some lee way she hoped. If the spider kept busy with it, doing whatever it did, eating it or something more sinister, it wouldn't be paying attention to her. A quick glance as she removed her saex and long knife from their sheaths and Kour'el leaped for the spider, hoping to land on the things back. Maybe it would squish with the force of her weight. If not, the weapons would seek out the creatures eyes and head. Not much survived a knife in the brain.

Unless they were zombie spiders. Ew.

[Wynd]

Given the horror they wrecked on the island and its people, the spider was an easy kill. Kour'el tore it to shreds with her weapons and her body weight crushed it, too. She stood on top of spider and human body parts. This spider-hunting might just prove easy if they all went down like that.

But it wouldn't be that easy. If Kour'el were to look up the tower, she'd see a half-dozen other spiders crawling up and down it, ready to leap down and devour her the way they'd eaten those villagers. Webs were strung thick in the canopy between the tower and the trees -- and some of the villagers had been strung up in them. It was thick with half-eaten corpses, and some of them... some of them were still moving, groaning, still alive while the spiders prowled around them, staring them down and prodding them with their sickening arms. A bloody limb thumped into the undergrowth next to Kour'el.

There was a humming coming from inside the tower. There was a door around the other side, and up where the spiders were there were windows -- she could kill them, if she chose to do that instead burn the whole forest down, by climbing up the tower and taking them each down one-by-one from the windows. Inside the tower was an even bigger mystery. There was a winding staircase going up the full seven levels, and each level was just a large circular room. The floors were strewn with mechanical junk, weird gadgets and machines and engines, some of them still clunking along, others emitting hums and high-pitched beeps. Some of them looked dangerous. Some were leaking pools of radiating blue goop, potentially arcanic waste.

If Kour made it to the top of the tower, she would find a man up there, chained to the wall. He was shirtless, and on his back was a huge spider tattoo like an Aztec design.

[Kour'el Kha'Serith]

Much to the draconess' glee, the spider was stupidly easy to kill. Softskins were just inept at everything they did. The bumbling fools of the world. Kour'el had to wonder why the Xet or her Cyraxian forefathers hadn't been able to crush the entire empire if it was filled with savages with pointy sticks. Perhaps they had just gotten bored with mindless slaughter and went back home to get drunk and have wild sex.

Wiping the gore off her blades on a nearby plant, the draconess kept one cold reptilian eye on the tower and the other bugs she could see moving about. She flinched as the bloody limb fell beside her, not because she was disgusted by it or afraid of it, in fact she looked at it with a glint of hunger in her eyes. Considering her last meal had been a few bites of rapidly rotting rabbit, a tender piece of human would hit the spot. Except it probably had spider drool on it, which was not a pleasant thought.

Sniffing, she kept a careful eye above her now, as she slid her knives into their sheaths. She didn't want drool covered body parts raining down on her, when she had obssessively cleaned her scales once already this morning. Picking her way around the tower, she noted the windows and the door, and the decorations of body parts and spider. Apparently whoever had lived here hadn't called Trading Spaces to renovate, instead settling for a Clive Barker and Stephan King joint venture.

She tested the door and found it unlocked. Cautiously she entered, blinking at the light change at the mess she found. She had been expecting more corpses and perhaps some monstrous queen spider, fat with malignant new spider life or something. Not a bunch of garbage and glowing ooze. Picking her way carefully up the first set of stairs, Kour'el poked around a bit, avoiding touching the blue liquid and killing killing a few of the spiders that tried to crawl into the window.

After that, a quick glance at the rest of the floors were enough to satisfy her curiosity for now and she climbed higher, checking behind her often to make sure no spiders were following her. The rest of the ones outside she could deal with after she found out what this place was for. If it proved to be a fruitless search, she would kill the rest of the bugs she could reach from inside before making her way outside once more to assess her situation.

However something curious that did nothing to answer her questions awaited her on the last floor. Narrow eyes took in the chained softskin from the doorway suspiciously before she spoke. "What the hell are you doing here?" She was as eloquent as ever.

[Ocarion Feral]

(OOC: Just waiting for Tarot's ok on this, but I'll pick it up from where Wynd left off. PM me I need to know anyhting important before so.)