Post by Ktsed Vereq on Jan 2, 2008 19:13:52 GMT -5
I haven't named this story yet... This is my first attempt at a horror story and some of the rather extreme names and characters may be changed.
Prologue- The Twelfth Hour
It was cold. The man couldn’t see, but he counted this as a blessing considering what was happening. But he couldn’t help but feel the cold. The horrible, horrible cold.
He shook himself back to consciousness. If he must go, he would go fighting. Eternally defiant. The man smiled a gruesome smile of determination, the kind that would have chilled any living souls to the bone if any were still around. He opened his eyes to the Horror that surrounded him.
Pulsating, swirling, shifting and eternally altering. The Impossibility nearly drove you mad at its very sight. It was the ultimate horror you always felt so close to but could never quite reach. It was the ultimate Terror which it almost brought a sense of satisfaction to see. A sense of mad, terrible satisfaction.
The man, horribly smiling, stood up unsteadily and almost touched it as he groped about to try to regain his balance. Almost touched it. He could hardly imagine the horror! He couldn’t belie- The man cut off the aura of madness that surrounded the Monstrosity. He had been one of the few that could. Now, he supposed, he was the only. A shiver ran down his spine, chilling him more profoundly than the cold ever could or would. The last one.
He raised his fists to the sky and screamed the most horrible, feral, vicious scream that could ever befall human ears.
Eternally defiant.
Chapter 1- Reality’s End; Pandemonium’s New Beginning
Trent Nighte was very easy to pick out in a crowd. He stood about six foot five or six at least. His straight, clean black hair fell to just bellow his cheek bones, covering one of his eyes in a fashion that seemed to be merely chance in front, and to almost his shoulders on the back of his head. His intense features that made him look eternally angry, sometimes even when he smiled, accompanied by his impressive musculature caused most people to walk on the other side of the street when they saw him coming. You didn’t have to look too hard for Trent Nighte.
Not only his size or his hair, but also his clothes made him stand out from those around him. Everyone else was in a business suit of some kind. With the exception of Nighte, the most liberal piece of clothing in the whole room was a bright green silk tie with a winking leprechaun worn by the man Nighte was currently facing. Nighte, on the other hand, wore dark, ragged jeans and a dark, ragged leather vest over a dark, ragged, close fitting t-shirt accompanied by dark, ragged gauntlets. He was dressed as if he had just finished performing a heavy metal thrash concert, not as if he was making the biggest business deal of his life.
“Now, if you would just sign here, Mr. Nighte, I can make all of your dreams come true,” the overweight and middle-aged man in the green tie offered. Nighte eyed him suspiciously and grabbed the clipboard he offered non too gently and carefully read the paper at an amazing speed. His face, if possible, got even more intense.
“You’re trying to screw me over,” he stated angrily. The man in the ridiculous tie cowered back. He had worked with much more important people, but Trent Nighte always had a way of getting to him.
“N-no. I had no such intentions,” the man said, trying desperately to sound surprised and hurt despite how nervous he was. It worked out horribly. Nighte took a step towards him.
“Yeah, just like I have no intentions of throttling you right here and right now. If I sign this, you will have complete control over all of my assets and ideas. I would become your employee. Your slave,” Nighte ranted, looming over the terrified business man.
The man started backing up towards his desk where he could notify the security officers outside his office’s doors that not all was right in his little world. He started to almost smile when he realized that, if he could make it to his desk and summon security, he could sue Trent Nighte for threatening him. This realization was the highlight of his day.
Trent cut him off.
******************************************************************************
Sieg Beast walked quickly for the door. He couldn’t believe he had been this careless. But he hadn’t expected this. This could ruin him. The thought sent him into a very impressive dead sprint.
Well, he could still continue in his business, but never for nearly as much money as he was already making. The kind of people he worked for didn’t give second chances in his line of work.
He couldn’t believe he had been so careless. Or, he realized, so careful. If he hadn’t been down here checking things out he would have been close enough to have reached his destination already. Still in a sprint, he smacked his head and roared aloud in frustration, giving him another couple miles per hour.
Sieg Beast was probably one of the only other people currently in these Great States whose appearance was more frightening than Trent Nighte’s. He wasn’t as tall, though he was still a respectable six foot two, but he was much larger. Trent Nighte was muscular, but he was no where near a steroid-taking body builder, while Sieg happened to be just that.
******************************************************************************
“Ah, let’s not be that hasty, Mr. Gerrad,” Trent said with a nasty smile on his face. He now stood directly in front of Gerrad’s desk and the button that could save his life. Gerrad was at a loss for words. He was worried that Trent might send him to the hospital or worse if he didn’t think quickly. He told Nale the scam was a bad idea, but he had gone through with it anyway. Now Gerrad was paying the price. Just like every other time before.
Nighte leapt towards the business man and grabbed him around the throat with one hand and warded off the man’s partners with his other hand. “Now, you’re going to rewrite that paper exactly like I tell you, right?” Nighte sneered.
“You’re...going...to...jai...el,” Gerrad squeaked out. Nighte seemed to get satisfaction out of this. He let up the pressure on Gerrad’s throat a little.
“Now, now, Mr. Gerrad. Let’s not be so rude. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen nicely one more time. You’re going to rewrite this paper exactly as I tell you and you and all of your buddies here,” Trent motioned broadly, “are going to forget this ever happened. Right?” All four of the people visible to Gerrad nodded hastily. “Mr. Gerrad?”
Frank Gerrad was on the verge of giving in to Nighte when his office door burst open.
******************************************************************************
Sieg Beast erupted into a stairwell and started clearing the considerable flights in two rapid steps towards his goal four stories up. Way faster than the elevator.
Sieg tried to mentally prepare him for what could await him at his destination. Nothing he hadn’t handled before or at least couldn’t handle, surely. Sieg had “handled” more “problems” than he could count. If he could reach the door before anything happened, he was confident he could handle it.
He reached the floor he wanted and blasted the door off of its hinges as he passed through it without taking the time to touch the doorknob. He flew through the hall past a shocked hallway-pedestrian. He prepared himself for the entrance he had chosen as he neared his destination.
Without slowing a step, he moved his feet from the surface of the floor to that of the wall. Right at the top of his arch of ascent of maybe two feet (all the ceiling would allow) he pushed off the wall perpendicularly to the direction he was running and flew straight out towards a door, transferring the direction of his momentum.
******************************************************************************
The door was severed from its hinges and was warped and splintered into a thousand different fragments by the impact. Gerrad’s first thought was that only a shotgun blast or a grenade could splinter a door like that. He was shocked to see a man fly through the gap, face first with his huge arms extended, as if he had just been shot out of a cannon. Not at all what Gerrad expected.
The human bullet did a forward roll on the ground and brought himself to a standing stop inches from Trent’s face. While Trent was several inches taller, the man with the spectacular entrance was by far larger. His body rippled with muscles so large that, combined with his slightly stooped, at-ready, stance and his inhuman glare, they gave him a quality that made him seem more beast than man.
“Let him go,” the intruder growled in a deep, feral, voice. Gerrad didn’t think it was possible, but he was more intimidating than Trent Nighte. He wore a black spandex t-shirt that looked like athletic wear and a pair of khaki cargo pants weighed down with what Gerrad assumed to be countless kinds of weapons that were most likely the source of the countless black oil stains.
Trent Nighte hesitated a second, giving Gerrad a dose of satisfaction. He ended up holding his ground, and neither giant would back off, leaving Gerrad stuck in between them. Gerrad felt one hand around his neck leave as it dug in Nighte’s pocket and produced a giant switchblade that he had somehow snuck past security and snapped it open. In response, the giant pulled a hunting knife over a foot long out of its sheath at his right hip.
The brute had a horribly scarred face that looked like it belonged on a barbarian warlord and, even though he couldn’t be over thirty-five, made him look roughly forty-five. His skin was bronzed and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. His short, slightly mussed hair came down to about an inch from his bushy, brown eyebrows, where it stuck to his very large forehead thanks to a thin coating of sweat.
The most odd thing about the man was the bracelet he wore on his left wrist. It looked like a broken shackle, and even had about four or five inches of thick chain hanging from it.
“Let him go,” the beast repeated in his almost comically deep voice. It sounded like the type of voice you only heard used for cartoon villains and was so deep it had to be partially synthesized. But this voice was completely real. Gerrad had a feeling that the new challenger would have no problem gutting Nighte under normal circumstances, and Nighte must have gotten the same vibe, because he moved his blade to Gerrad’s throat.
“Step back, or I’ll kill him,” Nighte spat in the shorter man’s face. He seemed to think this through for a minute, then complied. Gerrad was surprised, none too pleasantly, that he must be very important to this ape.
Gerrad heard police sirens outside, but were dismayed when they passed the setting of his own personal horror story by in favor of more serious events. Much more serious and world changing events, these police cruisers were headed for, little to Gerrad’s knowledge.
If Gerrad was crafty enough to survive the very beginnings of these events, then he would surely wish that he could return to the safe simplicity of being a prize being fought over by two unstable giants. Ah, back to the good old days when the only threats were the knife currently to his throat and the one being held by the brute across the room from him. Oh, he would pray to feel only the cool kiss of steel on the soft flesh of his jugular. If Frank Gerrad knew what might await him, he would have cherished every second of the confrontation he was now a hostage in.
But Frank Gerrad was more lucky than that.
A bang. A loud one screamed by like a sonic boom, shattering the window to Tent Nighte’s back. A huge fragment of the glass flew straight through Trent Nighte’s heart at a downward angle and into Frank Gerrad’s. If this wasn’t enough, Trent’s muscles clenched involuntarily, and his switchblade was driven deep through Frank’s tender neck, sending blood splattering all over the floor.
Sieg Beast barely flinched. He turned around and walked calmly out of the room, sheathing the knife he had not needed to use.
******************************************************************************
Prologue- The Twelfth Hour
It was cold. The man couldn’t see, but he counted this as a blessing considering what was happening. But he couldn’t help but feel the cold. The horrible, horrible cold.
He shook himself back to consciousness. If he must go, he would go fighting. Eternally defiant. The man smiled a gruesome smile of determination, the kind that would have chilled any living souls to the bone if any were still around. He opened his eyes to the Horror that surrounded him.
Pulsating, swirling, shifting and eternally altering. The Impossibility nearly drove you mad at its very sight. It was the ultimate horror you always felt so close to but could never quite reach. It was the ultimate Terror which it almost brought a sense of satisfaction to see. A sense of mad, terrible satisfaction.
The man, horribly smiling, stood up unsteadily and almost touched it as he groped about to try to regain his balance. Almost touched it. He could hardly imagine the horror! He couldn’t belie- The man cut off the aura of madness that surrounded the Monstrosity. He had been one of the few that could. Now, he supposed, he was the only. A shiver ran down his spine, chilling him more profoundly than the cold ever could or would. The last one.
He raised his fists to the sky and screamed the most horrible, feral, vicious scream that could ever befall human ears.
Eternally defiant.
Chapter 1- Reality’s End; Pandemonium’s New Beginning
Trent Nighte was very easy to pick out in a crowd. He stood about six foot five or six at least. His straight, clean black hair fell to just bellow his cheek bones, covering one of his eyes in a fashion that seemed to be merely chance in front, and to almost his shoulders on the back of his head. His intense features that made him look eternally angry, sometimes even when he smiled, accompanied by his impressive musculature caused most people to walk on the other side of the street when they saw him coming. You didn’t have to look too hard for Trent Nighte.
Not only his size or his hair, but also his clothes made him stand out from those around him. Everyone else was in a business suit of some kind. With the exception of Nighte, the most liberal piece of clothing in the whole room was a bright green silk tie with a winking leprechaun worn by the man Nighte was currently facing. Nighte, on the other hand, wore dark, ragged jeans and a dark, ragged leather vest over a dark, ragged, close fitting t-shirt accompanied by dark, ragged gauntlets. He was dressed as if he had just finished performing a heavy metal thrash concert, not as if he was making the biggest business deal of his life.
“Now, if you would just sign here, Mr. Nighte, I can make all of your dreams come true,” the overweight and middle-aged man in the green tie offered. Nighte eyed him suspiciously and grabbed the clipboard he offered non too gently and carefully read the paper at an amazing speed. His face, if possible, got even more intense.
“You’re trying to screw me over,” he stated angrily. The man in the ridiculous tie cowered back. He had worked with much more important people, but Trent Nighte always had a way of getting to him.
“N-no. I had no such intentions,” the man said, trying desperately to sound surprised and hurt despite how nervous he was. It worked out horribly. Nighte took a step towards him.
“Yeah, just like I have no intentions of throttling you right here and right now. If I sign this, you will have complete control over all of my assets and ideas. I would become your employee. Your slave,” Nighte ranted, looming over the terrified business man.
The man started backing up towards his desk where he could notify the security officers outside his office’s doors that not all was right in his little world. He started to almost smile when he realized that, if he could make it to his desk and summon security, he could sue Trent Nighte for threatening him. This realization was the highlight of his day.
Trent cut him off.
******************************************************************************
Sieg Beast walked quickly for the door. He couldn’t believe he had been this careless. But he hadn’t expected this. This could ruin him. The thought sent him into a very impressive dead sprint.
Well, he could still continue in his business, but never for nearly as much money as he was already making. The kind of people he worked for didn’t give second chances in his line of work.
He couldn’t believe he had been so careless. Or, he realized, so careful. If he hadn’t been down here checking things out he would have been close enough to have reached his destination already. Still in a sprint, he smacked his head and roared aloud in frustration, giving him another couple miles per hour.
Sieg Beast was probably one of the only other people currently in these Great States whose appearance was more frightening than Trent Nighte’s. He wasn’t as tall, though he was still a respectable six foot two, but he was much larger. Trent Nighte was muscular, but he was no where near a steroid-taking body builder, while Sieg happened to be just that.
******************************************************************************
“Ah, let’s not be that hasty, Mr. Gerrad,” Trent said with a nasty smile on his face. He now stood directly in front of Gerrad’s desk and the button that could save his life. Gerrad was at a loss for words. He was worried that Trent might send him to the hospital or worse if he didn’t think quickly. He told Nale the scam was a bad idea, but he had gone through with it anyway. Now Gerrad was paying the price. Just like every other time before.
Nighte leapt towards the business man and grabbed him around the throat with one hand and warded off the man’s partners with his other hand. “Now, you’re going to rewrite that paper exactly like I tell you, right?” Nighte sneered.
“You’re...going...to...jai...el,” Gerrad squeaked out. Nighte seemed to get satisfaction out of this. He let up the pressure on Gerrad’s throat a little.
“Now, now, Mr. Gerrad. Let’s not be so rude. I’ll tell you what’s going to happen nicely one more time. You’re going to rewrite this paper exactly as I tell you and you and all of your buddies here,” Trent motioned broadly, “are going to forget this ever happened. Right?” All four of the people visible to Gerrad nodded hastily. “Mr. Gerrad?”
Frank Gerrad was on the verge of giving in to Nighte when his office door burst open.
******************************************************************************
Sieg Beast erupted into a stairwell and started clearing the considerable flights in two rapid steps towards his goal four stories up. Way faster than the elevator.
Sieg tried to mentally prepare him for what could await him at his destination. Nothing he hadn’t handled before or at least couldn’t handle, surely. Sieg had “handled” more “problems” than he could count. If he could reach the door before anything happened, he was confident he could handle it.
He reached the floor he wanted and blasted the door off of its hinges as he passed through it without taking the time to touch the doorknob. He flew through the hall past a shocked hallway-pedestrian. He prepared himself for the entrance he had chosen as he neared his destination.
Without slowing a step, he moved his feet from the surface of the floor to that of the wall. Right at the top of his arch of ascent of maybe two feet (all the ceiling would allow) he pushed off the wall perpendicularly to the direction he was running and flew straight out towards a door, transferring the direction of his momentum.
******************************************************************************
The door was severed from its hinges and was warped and splintered into a thousand different fragments by the impact. Gerrad’s first thought was that only a shotgun blast or a grenade could splinter a door like that. He was shocked to see a man fly through the gap, face first with his huge arms extended, as if he had just been shot out of a cannon. Not at all what Gerrad expected.
The human bullet did a forward roll on the ground and brought himself to a standing stop inches from Trent’s face. While Trent was several inches taller, the man with the spectacular entrance was by far larger. His body rippled with muscles so large that, combined with his slightly stooped, at-ready, stance and his inhuman glare, they gave him a quality that made him seem more beast than man.
“Let him go,” the intruder growled in a deep, feral, voice. Gerrad didn’t think it was possible, but he was more intimidating than Trent Nighte. He wore a black spandex t-shirt that looked like athletic wear and a pair of khaki cargo pants weighed down with what Gerrad assumed to be countless kinds of weapons that were most likely the source of the countless black oil stains.
Trent Nighte hesitated a second, giving Gerrad a dose of satisfaction. He ended up holding his ground, and neither giant would back off, leaving Gerrad stuck in between them. Gerrad felt one hand around his neck leave as it dug in Nighte’s pocket and produced a giant switchblade that he had somehow snuck past security and snapped it open. In response, the giant pulled a hunting knife over a foot long out of its sheath at his right hip.
The brute had a horribly scarred face that looked like it belonged on a barbarian warlord and, even though he couldn’t be over thirty-five, made him look roughly forty-five. His skin was bronzed and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. His short, slightly mussed hair came down to about an inch from his bushy, brown eyebrows, where it stuck to his very large forehead thanks to a thin coating of sweat.
The most odd thing about the man was the bracelet he wore on his left wrist. It looked like a broken shackle, and even had about four or five inches of thick chain hanging from it.
“Let him go,” the beast repeated in his almost comically deep voice. It sounded like the type of voice you only heard used for cartoon villains and was so deep it had to be partially synthesized. But this voice was completely real. Gerrad had a feeling that the new challenger would have no problem gutting Nighte under normal circumstances, and Nighte must have gotten the same vibe, because he moved his blade to Gerrad’s throat.
“Step back, or I’ll kill him,” Nighte spat in the shorter man’s face. He seemed to think this through for a minute, then complied. Gerrad was surprised, none too pleasantly, that he must be very important to this ape.
Gerrad heard police sirens outside, but were dismayed when they passed the setting of his own personal horror story by in favor of more serious events. Much more serious and world changing events, these police cruisers were headed for, little to Gerrad’s knowledge.
If Gerrad was crafty enough to survive the very beginnings of these events, then he would surely wish that he could return to the safe simplicity of being a prize being fought over by two unstable giants. Ah, back to the good old days when the only threats were the knife currently to his throat and the one being held by the brute across the room from him. Oh, he would pray to feel only the cool kiss of steel on the soft flesh of his jugular. If Frank Gerrad knew what might await him, he would have cherished every second of the confrontation he was now a hostage in.
But Frank Gerrad was more lucky than that.
A bang. A loud one screamed by like a sonic boom, shattering the window to Tent Nighte’s back. A huge fragment of the glass flew straight through Trent Nighte’s heart at a downward angle and into Frank Gerrad’s. If this wasn’t enough, Trent’s muscles clenched involuntarily, and his switchblade was driven deep through Frank’s tender neck, sending blood splattering all over the floor.
Sieg Beast barely flinched. He turned around and walked calmly out of the room, sheathing the knife he had not needed to use.
******************************************************************************