Post by Legionnaire on Dec 7, 2016 23:02:38 GMT
Up until recently, life in the Southwest had gone on as normal, the aftershocks of the Civil War a decade ago were still resounding in places. But everything had been pretty much business as usual, up until the discovery of the alluring Other Worldly pieces of rocks that men quickly started to call Dark Stone. They possessed many unique qualities and some of them bordered on witchcraft and Magik!!! But, in the wake of the discovery of the wondrous rock, HELL followed and Demons and Nightmarish Creatures stalked the world!!
THEN:
The saddle leather creaked as sheriff Maxwell Gritt turned and surveyed the motley gathering of fortune seekers, crusaders, well meaning fellow human beings and natives he had before him. He touched the brim of his hat for reassurance, it had taken the brunt of a would-be assassins bullet two years ago and he was rarely seen without it these days. At his side was a comely homestead woman, he never caught her name but she looked like an Edith to him and she carried a brand new Winchester rifle with confidence. Before him he had four individuals, and he had crossed paths with them in the past. There was Reverend Ezekiel, a tall, gaunt, serious looking man with glasses and all dressed in black, riding a midnight black stallion. As a man of the cloth he shunned weapons but Max had seen him call down The Lord's Judgement with his own eyes and the old boy swung his bible with gusto. Maisy Duke was a petite good looking girl from the east, she could be a little naïve at times, what she was doing out here in the dangerous wilderness Max couldn't really figure out, but she could swing that big axe she was dragging around with the best of hefty swarthy lumberjacks, so maybe she wasn't as innocent as she looked. She was often playing around with an old coin, it was not of an American origin in any case. Nervous Elk was a native and dressed in traditional indian clothes but wore a blue cavalry jacket over it, his senses were sharper than anyone else that Max had met, and even though he had sustained a badly healed leg wound that made him limp like a peg legged pirate, he still moved as swift or even faster than most men with two fully functional legs. Then there was Pedro, or as he liked to call himself, Pedro Maria Alonso de la Cruz, aka “El Toro”, a swaggering, loud-mouthed, two gun toting Mexican! Pedro had contracted some kind of malady in their last foray together, he claimed that something now lived in his mind, constantly whispering dark secrets to him, but also enhancing his reactions. Max wasn't sure he believed all that, maybe he was just a bit unhinged anyway. Max was positive that there were posters with his name across the border, but he filed that information away for later. He knew Pedro carried an old hand mirror that had belonged to his mother in a waterproof leather satchel on his belt, and it seemed to give him comfort.
“Ok, Edith here,” Max finally spoke, indicating the homesteader with his head,
“says that her husband John and several others joined the local priest. They were going to light up the darkness or something like that, exorcising a mine a few miles away from here. And that was three days ago.”
“I'm afraid that John and the rest may have gotten into real trouble, the kind sheriff Gritt has promised to help me,” Ethel said and it was evident she was fighting hard to hold the tears back, but she was made out of stern, practical stuff. She took a deep breath.
“And when he saw you come riding our way he said, I know those people, I think this is your lucky day ma'am.” She looked at the four riders, nervously awaiting their reply.
“Well, if there are people in danger, we have a God given duty to rescue them out of the clutches from the forces of Evil!” Reverend Ezekiel's voice boomed and his eyes gained a fiery stare, raw power crackled around him, as if the Lord himself had given his consent.
“What a shame, I thought it was such a nice day for a ride through the countryside but I guess that the old biblethumper is right, if someone is in danger I guess we'd better see if we can help. It might even be fun!!!” Maisy corrected her hair and a fresh smell of her perfume wafted in the air.
“Sheriff,” Nervous Elk inclined his head slightly.
“if these are going I'd better come as well.” Max got the feeling there was more to say but Nervous Elk left it at that and five pair of eyes turned towards Pedro. He was having his leg nonchalantly across the saddle and he lit up one of those foul smelling cheap cigarillo's that he liked to smoke, taking his sweet time and extinguishing the match only after it had burnt his fingers, but he didn't flinch one bit. He took a few deep drags on the cigarillo, took it out and observed it, before looking up at Max.
“You know,” he said in his heavily accented English and pointed at Max
“when I first met you, I thought I was done for! So I tell you what, you don't try to arrest me,” and his hands slipped casually but with enough clear intent down to the butts of the matching pair of S&W Russian pistols he wore in a shoulder rig,
“and I'll help. We are all amigos y amigas here!!!” he gave a hearty laugh and when Max nodded his consent he too joined them, but riding at the back of the queue.
It didn't take them long before reaching the entrance to the cave. It was dark and foreboding, a faint scent of decay was emanating from the cave mouth and the horses were jittery. They dismounted and none spoke a word, they all checked over their weapons and when ready, they strode forth. Reverend Ezekiel lit the oil lantern and they entered the cave, slowly and carefully for they knew that from now on, anything could happen.
They had barely entered when a sudden gust of wind, coming from nowhere extinguished the lantern's light, and despite the short way they've walked, it turned pitch black around them in an instant! Several voices immediately spoke, in various tones of emotional distress, to get the lamp lit, and as soon as Reverend Ezekiel with slightly shaky hands had gotten a match lit, the sharp noise of the cocking of a gun echoed as Nervous Elk brought his gun to bear:
“There's something moving above us.” he said, the heart thumping a bit harder in his chest.
“What? Who? I can't see anything!” Maisy Duke queried.
“I don't know, but whatever it is, it can't be anything good.”
Then... all Hell broke loose!!! Monstrous snake like winged beasts dropped in from above, shrieking horribly and a stench of death and rotting flesh erupted as a multitude of shambling figures, only vaguely resembling the humans they had once been lurched into view! The shots seemed to echo for an eternity and when the posse was finished, the air was so thick with gunpowder smoke that you could cut it with a knife!
“Anybody hurt?” Max yelled, his ears were still ringing from the sounds of gunfire at such close quarters.
“No, we are all fine.” came the reply.
They pressed on and Nervous Elk found tracks from several boots, a few days old, that most likely belonged to the missing party. They entered a somewhat larger room and Pedro got a bit further ahead from the others.
“Hey look, there's something moving out there,” he said and pointed ahead with one of his drawn pistols...
NOW:
They kept looking behind them, spurring the horses on, eager to get away from the Horrors while they still could draw a breath! Reverend Ezekiel was well ahead of everyone on his black stallion that was moving as swift as the wind, he held a handkerchief to his mouth and coughed up blood from time to time and had a burning pain in his side, but there was no entry wound. He assured the rest of the party that he was doing fine, but he felt far from it. Nervous Elk had a barely dressed big gash in his chest that made him wheeze like a 50 cigarettes a day smoker and he felt sluggish. Edith the homesteader had a big dressing on her right hand, courtesy of a piece of Maisy Duke's petticoat, forcing her to use her left for most tasks and even though she could still shoot her rifle it was clumsy and awkward to do so. Max Gritt had a big bandage over one of his eyes, it interfered a lot with his depth perception but he was glad the eye hadn't been totally gouged out and Pedro was having his left arm in a sling around his neck. The only one not looking like they had come out from a war was Maisy Duke, apart from a slightly ruffled coiffure and a torn dress, she seemed alright.
“Hey Preacher, slow down!! I think we are clear!” Max bellowed and the words seemed to reach the Reverend because he reined his horse in.
“We were in no shape to continue to battle the Hellspawn! We MUST return to the nearest town and stock up on provisions and now that we know what we are facing...” Reverend Ezekiel switched into sermon mode and held up the bible, beating against it with his hand.
“And dynamite, lots, bloody tons if we can lay our hands on it!” Pedro said through gritted teeth.
“Dynamite??” the good Reverend got completely thrown by the offhanded remark.
“Si, dynamite! I'd like to see those Scafford bastards try to dodge THAT!”
A slithering mass of tentacles and fluctuating gelatinous flesh that neither bullets nor blade seemed to be able to penetrate and the infamous Colonel Scafford himself, the feared Southern Colonel that now was half man and half serpent had turned out to be the cause of the tragic demise of the expedition that John had belonged to. They had glimpsed their twisted mangled corpses as Colonel Scafford's horribly mutated men had slithered over the remains and nearly wiped them all out. It was only thanks to Maisy Duke that they had managed to flee.
Nervous Elk dismounted and got down on the ground, his leg hurt like a pregnant dog and he drew a sharp intake of breath, the chest wound made him wince when he moved too quickly. He studied the ground with his knowledgeable eyes while the others kept bickering about what to do next. He nodded to himself and rose up, they didn't seem to notice that until now and their voices died away as he patiently waited for them to shut up.
“Several monstrous individuals, leading two humans in that direction,” he pointed
“the tracks are an hour old, two hours at the most.” He held his Sharps carbine in both hands across his chest.
“d**n,” Max said and took off his hat, he turned it over in his hand.
“the way I look at it we have two choices. Either we continue as we planned and go to town, buy lots of dynamite and blow the cave to Kingdom Come, but then it's a guarantee that we doom these two fellow humans to a fate worse than Death! They might already be dead, but we can't possibly know that. The other option is, we swallow the bad medicine we've been dealt and go after the humans. We are in a bad way and short on supplies.” He let the words sink in and waited a minute as they thought about it.
“Let's take a vote. All those in favour of returning to town, raise your hand.” They all eyed each other and it looked like Maisy and Pedro were about to move their hands, but as no one else did all the hands stayed down.
“I guess that settles it then, Nervous Elk, please lead on.”
“I still say we should've gone back and gotten the dynamite,” Pedro muttered from the back of the queue but no one paid him much attention.
They rode on for a while as Nervous Elk effortlessly interpreted the faint tracks that had been left, most people would've missed them altogether, completely blind and oblivious to their existence, but to Nervous Elk they read like a novel. Here they had let the humans rest for a while, one of the humans was of a slight build, possibly a female or an adolescent, it was impossible to tell what had them in their clutches, there were slithering trails as from snakes but also indentions as from many legs. Suddenly, Nervous Elk stopped.
“d**n, they have split up, one of the humans have been taken that way,” he pointed in a north western direction,
“and the other, the smaller one, has been taken east.”
Max looked both ways, they were equally bad options.
“Ok, I reckon we can't all go after one of the prisoners and WILLINGLY doom the other that we didn't even try to save!”
“Why the Hell not!?” Pedro spoke agitatedly,
“There's strength in numbers and unless your damaged eye has blinded you completely, we are in a bad shape here, half of us can't even hold a gun properly!”
“You are right Pedro, we are about as bad as we can get before we become permanent fixtures at Boot Hill!!! But we HAVE to try!!! What kind of people would we be if we didn't?” Edith, the homesteader spoke up sincerely.
“Amen!”
“And our disadvantage could work to our advantage, as they have split up, it means we have less of an opposition to face, it makes it easier for us to go unnoticed and with a bit of luck we might even catch them unaware. I reckon the Reverend should take two people with him and Maisy take the rest, seeing as you two are the best choices to keep the rest alive. Any volunteers to go with the Reverend?” Hands were raised and the teams were ready to move out.
Max felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder and everyone else had already started riding off towards their assignments, except for Pedro.
“Hey amigo,” he said looking Max sternly and unwavering in the eye,
“I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can spot BS from a mile a way. You think we are in way over our heads, this is absolute madness! The sensible thing would be to go back to town and get the team back in fighting shape and THEN... then exact revenge for those two prisoners lives.”
Max was taken aback! Those were EXACTLY, word for word, the thoughts that had gone through his head earlier.
“I...I... how did you know?” Max stammered
“A little voice whispered that in my head,” Pedro put his finger to his forehead and smirked, then he cast his head back and gave his trademark loud unsettling laugh and spurred his horse on. Max watched him for a moment and felt a cold unsettling chill run along his back, maybe, just maybe, that bit about the Voice was true. He donned his hat and took the reins, nudging his horse on he joined his team. No one said a word, all were lost in their own private thoughts...
THEN:
The saddle leather creaked as sheriff Maxwell Gritt turned and surveyed the motley gathering of fortune seekers, crusaders, well meaning fellow human beings and natives he had before him. He touched the brim of his hat for reassurance, it had taken the brunt of a would-be assassins bullet two years ago and he was rarely seen without it these days. At his side was a comely homestead woman, he never caught her name but she looked like an Edith to him and she carried a brand new Winchester rifle with confidence. Before him he had four individuals, and he had crossed paths with them in the past. There was Reverend Ezekiel, a tall, gaunt, serious looking man with glasses and all dressed in black, riding a midnight black stallion. As a man of the cloth he shunned weapons but Max had seen him call down The Lord's Judgement with his own eyes and the old boy swung his bible with gusto. Maisy Duke was a petite good looking girl from the east, she could be a little naïve at times, what she was doing out here in the dangerous wilderness Max couldn't really figure out, but she could swing that big axe she was dragging around with the best of hefty swarthy lumberjacks, so maybe she wasn't as innocent as she looked. She was often playing around with an old coin, it was not of an American origin in any case. Nervous Elk was a native and dressed in traditional indian clothes but wore a blue cavalry jacket over it, his senses were sharper than anyone else that Max had met, and even though he had sustained a badly healed leg wound that made him limp like a peg legged pirate, he still moved as swift or even faster than most men with two fully functional legs. Then there was Pedro, or as he liked to call himself, Pedro Maria Alonso de la Cruz, aka “El Toro”, a swaggering, loud-mouthed, two gun toting Mexican! Pedro had contracted some kind of malady in their last foray together, he claimed that something now lived in his mind, constantly whispering dark secrets to him, but also enhancing his reactions. Max wasn't sure he believed all that, maybe he was just a bit unhinged anyway. Max was positive that there were posters with his name across the border, but he filed that information away for later. He knew Pedro carried an old hand mirror that had belonged to his mother in a waterproof leather satchel on his belt, and it seemed to give him comfort.
“Ok, Edith here,” Max finally spoke, indicating the homesteader with his head,
“says that her husband John and several others joined the local priest. They were going to light up the darkness or something like that, exorcising a mine a few miles away from here. And that was three days ago.”
“I'm afraid that John and the rest may have gotten into real trouble, the kind sheriff Gritt has promised to help me,” Ethel said and it was evident she was fighting hard to hold the tears back, but she was made out of stern, practical stuff. She took a deep breath.
“And when he saw you come riding our way he said, I know those people, I think this is your lucky day ma'am.” She looked at the four riders, nervously awaiting their reply.
“Well, if there are people in danger, we have a God given duty to rescue them out of the clutches from the forces of Evil!” Reverend Ezekiel's voice boomed and his eyes gained a fiery stare, raw power crackled around him, as if the Lord himself had given his consent.
“What a shame, I thought it was such a nice day for a ride through the countryside but I guess that the old biblethumper is right, if someone is in danger I guess we'd better see if we can help. It might even be fun!!!” Maisy corrected her hair and a fresh smell of her perfume wafted in the air.
“Sheriff,” Nervous Elk inclined his head slightly.
“if these are going I'd better come as well.” Max got the feeling there was more to say but Nervous Elk left it at that and five pair of eyes turned towards Pedro. He was having his leg nonchalantly across the saddle and he lit up one of those foul smelling cheap cigarillo's that he liked to smoke, taking his sweet time and extinguishing the match only after it had burnt his fingers, but he didn't flinch one bit. He took a few deep drags on the cigarillo, took it out and observed it, before looking up at Max.
“You know,” he said in his heavily accented English and pointed at Max
“when I first met you, I thought I was done for! So I tell you what, you don't try to arrest me,” and his hands slipped casually but with enough clear intent down to the butts of the matching pair of S&W Russian pistols he wore in a shoulder rig,
“and I'll help. We are all amigos y amigas here!!!” he gave a hearty laugh and when Max nodded his consent he too joined them, but riding at the back of the queue.
It didn't take them long before reaching the entrance to the cave. It was dark and foreboding, a faint scent of decay was emanating from the cave mouth and the horses were jittery. They dismounted and none spoke a word, they all checked over their weapons and when ready, they strode forth. Reverend Ezekiel lit the oil lantern and they entered the cave, slowly and carefully for they knew that from now on, anything could happen.
They had barely entered when a sudden gust of wind, coming from nowhere extinguished the lantern's light, and despite the short way they've walked, it turned pitch black around them in an instant! Several voices immediately spoke, in various tones of emotional distress, to get the lamp lit, and as soon as Reverend Ezekiel with slightly shaky hands had gotten a match lit, the sharp noise of the cocking of a gun echoed as Nervous Elk brought his gun to bear:
“There's something moving above us.” he said, the heart thumping a bit harder in his chest.
“What? Who? I can't see anything!” Maisy Duke queried.
“I don't know, but whatever it is, it can't be anything good.”
Then... all Hell broke loose!!! Monstrous snake like winged beasts dropped in from above, shrieking horribly and a stench of death and rotting flesh erupted as a multitude of shambling figures, only vaguely resembling the humans they had once been lurched into view! The shots seemed to echo for an eternity and when the posse was finished, the air was so thick with gunpowder smoke that you could cut it with a knife!
“Anybody hurt?” Max yelled, his ears were still ringing from the sounds of gunfire at such close quarters.
“No, we are all fine.” came the reply.
They pressed on and Nervous Elk found tracks from several boots, a few days old, that most likely belonged to the missing party. They entered a somewhat larger room and Pedro got a bit further ahead from the others.
“Hey look, there's something moving out there,” he said and pointed ahead with one of his drawn pistols...
NOW:
They kept looking behind them, spurring the horses on, eager to get away from the Horrors while they still could draw a breath! Reverend Ezekiel was well ahead of everyone on his black stallion that was moving as swift as the wind, he held a handkerchief to his mouth and coughed up blood from time to time and had a burning pain in his side, but there was no entry wound. He assured the rest of the party that he was doing fine, but he felt far from it. Nervous Elk had a barely dressed big gash in his chest that made him wheeze like a 50 cigarettes a day smoker and he felt sluggish. Edith the homesteader had a big dressing on her right hand, courtesy of a piece of Maisy Duke's petticoat, forcing her to use her left for most tasks and even though she could still shoot her rifle it was clumsy and awkward to do so. Max Gritt had a big bandage over one of his eyes, it interfered a lot with his depth perception but he was glad the eye hadn't been totally gouged out and Pedro was having his left arm in a sling around his neck. The only one not looking like they had come out from a war was Maisy Duke, apart from a slightly ruffled coiffure and a torn dress, she seemed alright.
“Hey Preacher, slow down!! I think we are clear!” Max bellowed and the words seemed to reach the Reverend because he reined his horse in.
“We were in no shape to continue to battle the Hellspawn! We MUST return to the nearest town and stock up on provisions and now that we know what we are facing...” Reverend Ezekiel switched into sermon mode and held up the bible, beating against it with his hand.
“And dynamite, lots, bloody tons if we can lay our hands on it!” Pedro said through gritted teeth.
“Dynamite??” the good Reverend got completely thrown by the offhanded remark.
“Si, dynamite! I'd like to see those Scafford bastards try to dodge THAT!”
A slithering mass of tentacles and fluctuating gelatinous flesh that neither bullets nor blade seemed to be able to penetrate and the infamous Colonel Scafford himself, the feared Southern Colonel that now was half man and half serpent had turned out to be the cause of the tragic demise of the expedition that John had belonged to. They had glimpsed their twisted mangled corpses as Colonel Scafford's horribly mutated men had slithered over the remains and nearly wiped them all out. It was only thanks to Maisy Duke that they had managed to flee.
Nervous Elk dismounted and got down on the ground, his leg hurt like a pregnant dog and he drew a sharp intake of breath, the chest wound made him wince when he moved too quickly. He studied the ground with his knowledgeable eyes while the others kept bickering about what to do next. He nodded to himself and rose up, they didn't seem to notice that until now and their voices died away as he patiently waited for them to shut up.
“Several monstrous individuals, leading two humans in that direction,” he pointed
“the tracks are an hour old, two hours at the most.” He held his Sharps carbine in both hands across his chest.
“d**n,” Max said and took off his hat, he turned it over in his hand.
“the way I look at it we have two choices. Either we continue as we planned and go to town, buy lots of dynamite and blow the cave to Kingdom Come, but then it's a guarantee that we doom these two fellow humans to a fate worse than Death! They might already be dead, but we can't possibly know that. The other option is, we swallow the bad medicine we've been dealt and go after the humans. We are in a bad way and short on supplies.” He let the words sink in and waited a minute as they thought about it.
“Let's take a vote. All those in favour of returning to town, raise your hand.” They all eyed each other and it looked like Maisy and Pedro were about to move their hands, but as no one else did all the hands stayed down.
“I guess that settles it then, Nervous Elk, please lead on.”
“I still say we should've gone back and gotten the dynamite,” Pedro muttered from the back of the queue but no one paid him much attention.
They rode on for a while as Nervous Elk effortlessly interpreted the faint tracks that had been left, most people would've missed them altogether, completely blind and oblivious to their existence, but to Nervous Elk they read like a novel. Here they had let the humans rest for a while, one of the humans was of a slight build, possibly a female or an adolescent, it was impossible to tell what had them in their clutches, there were slithering trails as from snakes but also indentions as from many legs. Suddenly, Nervous Elk stopped.
“d**n, they have split up, one of the humans have been taken that way,” he pointed in a north western direction,
“and the other, the smaller one, has been taken east.”
Max looked both ways, they were equally bad options.
“Ok, I reckon we can't all go after one of the prisoners and WILLINGLY doom the other that we didn't even try to save!”
“Why the Hell not!?” Pedro spoke agitatedly,
“There's strength in numbers and unless your damaged eye has blinded you completely, we are in a bad shape here, half of us can't even hold a gun properly!”
“You are right Pedro, we are about as bad as we can get before we become permanent fixtures at Boot Hill!!! But we HAVE to try!!! What kind of people would we be if we didn't?” Edith, the homesteader spoke up sincerely.
“Amen!”
“And our disadvantage could work to our advantage, as they have split up, it means we have less of an opposition to face, it makes it easier for us to go unnoticed and with a bit of luck we might even catch them unaware. I reckon the Reverend should take two people with him and Maisy take the rest, seeing as you two are the best choices to keep the rest alive. Any volunteers to go with the Reverend?” Hands were raised and the teams were ready to move out.
Max felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder and everyone else had already started riding off towards their assignments, except for Pedro.
“Hey amigo,” he said looking Max sternly and unwavering in the eye,
“I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can spot BS from a mile a way. You think we are in way over our heads, this is absolute madness! The sensible thing would be to go back to town and get the team back in fighting shape and THEN... then exact revenge for those two prisoners lives.”
Max was taken aback! Those were EXACTLY, word for word, the thoughts that had gone through his head earlier.
“I...I... how did you know?” Max stammered
“A little voice whispered that in my head,” Pedro put his finger to his forehead and smirked, then he cast his head back and gave his trademark loud unsettling laugh and spurred his horse on. Max watched him for a moment and felt a cold unsettling chill run along his back, maybe, just maybe, that bit about the Voice was true. He donned his hat and took the reins, nudging his horse on he joined his team. No one said a word, all were lost in their own private thoughts...