Waldron and Emmalia IC

Waldron stood there, waiting with his fists balled up. He then raised a hand; he could've told her to move, and just went on to killing them one by one. Yet with a greatsword the size of his, it may not be that hard to cleave through zombies. Waldron was finally able to calm down, sighing, then he raised one valid point in his mind, a point that had history to it "Those zombies are a lot stronger than you think Emmalia, when it's night and they really are all conjoined in one blob, they all move and strike like they're one single entity... They rip and tear flesh and never stop..." He said the last part in a tone as if he was quoting someone else. He became visibly tense with hatred and anger again "Fine, fine if you want to wait, i'll go with you. We'll get them all at once." He sighed, looking for something to pass the time in this lowly village. Waiting for something like this; every minute would feel like hours for him. If they really were going to wait, it would take him a lot of willpower. If Emmalia, the one with a calm head at the moment, thought this would be the better way to go, he could trust her.
 
While Emmalia could understand being mad - furious, even, to the point of irrationality - that didn't mean she would allow him to let it control his actions. Whatever was upsetting him would just keep controlling him if he couldn't learn to let go. But that would be a conversation for another day. "I'm not saying we sit back and do nothing. What I am saying is we could set a trap. We could search the area. We ought to look around and see what resources we have. It'll do no good to walk into this blind."

What was it she had always been told? Test a stage first before performing. Every time. Then rehearse a few times. There was no room for rehearsing here, but they could at least scope out the area.
 
Last edited:
Waldron looked back at her, quiet for a moment, then nodding. "That- that sounds like a good plan." He had regained his sense of calm, but it was still evident that he was eager for an opportunity like this. He wanted to go into the forest, even if it was just planning,that would put them one step closer towards actually killing the zombies, something he thoroughly was looking forward to.
"Well, let's head off then. They can't be that far if they're bothering the villagers work every night. We do have a decent amount of daylight left. Plenty of time to figure out whatever plan you're thinking of." He turned around, walking at a calm pace with his sword sheathed on his back and his arms thrown over the cover of his red cloak.
 
Emmalia could already tell that Waldron's strange temper regarding zombies would have to be watched carefully. Depending on what kind of zombies these were, he could easily become poisoned or infected himself, if they could get past the armor. But if he let that bloodlust get the better of him.... she had best stay out of the way of his blade in case he forgot himself.

Emmalia and Waldron headed South as the priest had directed. The entire walk, Emmalia was on edge, smelling for rotting flesh, bone, anything that could indicate undead. Only once did they come across a skeleton - a mere pile of bones lying by a tree, evidently left there for generations. If the cemetery that had been disturbed was as old as the priest had described, by Emmalia's reckoning, many of them would be skeletons mostly if not completely , which meant that to move they had to have a large amount of dark magic. This thought upset her deeply. Dark magic was bad for her to be around if it was strong, it could throw her off a bit.

The place itself was but a small glade, evident based off the priests description and the sense of magic being heavy in the air. At least, it was evident to her sensitive senses. It didn't quite feel like dark magic, but that didn't wholly reassure her. On the edge of the glade, downwind, was a rocky outcropping that had some height to it. On the opposite side was a small pond.
 
Waldron had unsheathed his blade at this point, dragging it along the outskirts of the glade. He looked around the trees and the surrounding area, looking for signs of any recent fights, any more undead that he would have to cut down. He ultimately couldn't find any. And so he stopped, jamming his sword into the dirt nearby a tree and leaning next to it, his arms crossed. "It doesn't look like there's actually anything here...Yet I doubt you don't feel it either, the dark magic? It's evident that something is actually here...No matter how hard it is to spot. Wraiths or spectres maybe, both leave no trace."
He took a few steps away from the tree, looking down at the rocks and the pond, trying to make out if anything was in there either, but again, nothing. "Don't tell me this is just another bandit ambush, we'd be the two adventurers with the most piss poor luck to ever grace these lands." At first it was a joke, but now Waldron became a bit suspicious of what he had said, looking up at the trees and around the area, not sure if he had jinxed the two into an actual bandit attack.
 
"It's not an ambush," she said decisively. "I can smell it, they've been here, and rather recently. The smell of decay is slight, but noticable. They must have been terribly well preserved, somehow. They don't come here til nightfall, though. We should familiarize ourselves with the lay of the land and maybe even set some traps." The advantages they had in being able to manipulate the land were rather large. They only had to take advantage of it.

"I suggest we set up a place on the high ground for you and I to stay at while we wait. As for down here on the ground... if we make pits we'll have to be careful not to trip into them ourselves. Any thoughts?" Part of her objective at the moment was to keep him occupied. They still had a few hours til sunset, after all. And maybe he could somehow stop being so antsy about undead in that time period.
 
Last edited:
Waldron kicked the dirt below his feet, then looked over at Emmalia "Not really anything to dig with, nor really any supplies around at all." Waldron thought for a moment, looking around. He was still anxious about anything, he wanted to keep looking. Staying here and trying to come up with traps with nothing to work with wouldn't work. "Unless you have some bear traps or anything on you, i'm gonna do what you first suggested and look at the terrain." He needed something to help clear his head, and studying the area would definitely be a fast and easy way to cool down.
 
"No supplies? Then you do that, I'll do this." Emmalia said, then muttered something under her breath about knights needing to have things made for them. Without asking for permission, and not caring even if she did need it, she went over to the rocky outcropping and picked some large heavy rocks, which she then began carrying up to the flat, grassy top of that same outcropping. Her plan was to work on gathering some of those large rocks and moderately sized boulders and to carve some boughs from the tree branches overhead to use as crude spears from the top of the outcropping.
 
Waldron had surveyed the area slightly beyond his glade, dragging his blade in the pursuit of possibly even one undead he could find to kill, but alas, there wasn't a single moving corpse. So, after checking to make sure the area was safe and seeing that the sun would be setting soon. He found a small shaded hill that would let him have an overview of the area and sat down, taking his helmet off in the shade provided to him and eating some food.
But as the sun dipped under the final hill is when he heard the shuffling, the digging and pushing of dirt as the decaying and rotting hordes finally made their move. He stood up, slamming his helmet back on and grabbing his sword. He looked down the hill to see the lifeless mob splitting, one part heading towards where Waldron last saw Emmalia setting traps in the forest. The other part was stumbling up the hill towards him. "Emmalia! They're here!" He really hoped she heard that before the whole lot of them surrounded her, yet he trusted her traps. And he himself had the high ground. They were ready. Or he was getting too anxious. One of the two.
 
Emmalia had been waiting on the top of the outcropping for them to show. Though it was dark,. she had no difficulty seeing the undead that approached her. At first, they stopped in the glade, though some peeled off to hunt for Waldron. But with all of them in one place at one time, she used that to her advantage and rolled a particularly large rock down the outcropping and into the mass of zombies. A number fell, and a few stayed down, but the rest got back up, though some were missing limbs.

As they approached, shambling, falling, and generally tripping over each other, Emmalia continued rolling boulders onto the mass of undead, but they kept coming. She threw spears and stabbed through them when they got close enough, but soon she was out of her improvised weaponry and had to draw her sword. The scent was overwhelming to her, and so was the sound of the creaking of their bones.

The zombies attacking Waldron shambled up the hill, one after another, and the scent of decay became strong enough for even Waldron to smell. Finally they reached him.
 
The metal man stood at the top of the hill, his hands tightening around his massive blade. His moment of vengeance was here, he could finally have what he wanted, the undead bastards would pay. A small group of zombies stumbled forward and Waldron took a decisive step down the hill, applying the force into his swing and cleaving a bloody path through the first 5 zombies in his way. The massive, cleaving swings continued and Waldron began hacking his way down hill, some of the zombies that survived the onslaught began gripping onto Waldron, but it didn't matter. As the numbers began pulling on him, he slammed his sword into ones skull and began using his gauntlets and boots, ripping and tearing at the skulls of any nearby zombies, the only surefire way to put zombies down.
As the undead butcher killed more and more, even the air itself around Waldron seemed to be darkening, gaining dark magic. And a small crackle of dark energy could be seen behind him as he drove his fist into another zombie, spreading gore throughout the surrounding area and himself. Going further and further into the killing, the energy around him only seemed to expand. Especially when he re-found his weapon, cleaving again.
 
Unlike Waldron, Emmalia couldn't just swing a sword and take a handful of zombies down. Her compensation for this was speed. When one made a swipe at her from overhead, she ducked and slashed through its spine with her shortsword. Already a good number of the undead were completely dead, thanks to her improvised traps, and those that were left she would dispatch in hand-to-hand combat with relative ease. Her movements blurred before the eye as she hacked and cut and clawed. The scent of disturbed corpse rose up and would have choked her were she less used to such scents.

The one problem she was having was the necromantic magic that gathered around Waldron's armour. When the bits of magic were in each corpse, it was distributed enough not to bother her. But all in one place? It was throwing her off of her game. One of the undead even managed to get its hand on her before she crushed its skull with her gauntleted hand.

The horde of zombies about Waldron never ebbed, but it did surge constantly toward him, and as they attacked they rose in height, for they climbed on top of the bodies of their fallen comrades.
 
The tide of decayed flesh began to stumble out of every accessible way around Emmalia, those not totally disabled by the traps would tear themselves off and keep going. Although, many of them did have the wooden spears still sticking in them and many were dragging themselves due to being crushed by the boulders, but in the end they would just keep coming.
Waldron on the other hand had lost all semblance of tact or calm, he had become a hate-fueled whirlwind, still descending down the hill with the gory blade in hand. A zombie had stumbled behind him, laying it's decrepit hand on his prized, glorious armor. This wouldn't stand, and Waldron spun around and with a crackle of the dark energy building from the undead he had slain, had cracked it's head into mush with a punch from his metal gauntlet. He had made his way decently downhill at this point, and the pool of blood and gore was seeping downhill with him as he continued his rage-fueled path downwards. And he was only getting stronger at this point. Perhaps too much energy at this point,with so many slain undead. But he couldn't, or wouldn't notice this, as the dark, necromantic energy coalesced into sparks of dark purple energy around him as he was coming to the final steps of the hill, forming a bubble of deadly energy his dreadful armor.
 
The energy from Waldron's armor had begun affecting Emmalia to the point that her body was shaking. As sparks began to crackle around him, she completely froze for a split second, just enough time for a zombie to bite into her upper arm and break through her clothing and into her skin. Waldron could hear her cry out in pain, though immediately it was followed by a growl. She had crushed the zombie's skull and decided that enough was enough. With the dark magic increasing her aggression and adrenaline, she attacked.

In a berserk fit of rage, she grabbed one of her makeshift spears - with a zombie on it - and swung hard in every direction. Once on the ground, she made sure that they didn't rise again by bashing their skulls in with the spear, which had already lost the zombie stuck to the end. Slowly the poison from the zombie's bite began to spread through her body, an uncomfortable kind of heat, and she began to slack in her assault, which brought her to an almost average pace. By that point, just about all of the zombies near her were demolished, and Waldron's armor was no longer a boon for her, but a burden. She reckoned that she didn't have long before the poison had spread so far through her body that she collapsed. But in that time, she needed to get away from Waldron. Her body was already stiffening as she moved away toward the woods, then stumbled and fell. It felt like her limbs weren't working anymore. In her panicked mind, she could only think about what Waldron would do when he saw her, and the only things she could imagine as a result was impending doom.

For, on her upper arm, there was a growing black blood-stain.
 
The bloody blade was sated, drenched in rotting guts and darkened blood, along with the warrior himself, who knelt upon a mound of re-dead, purple energy crackling and sizzling around him, zapping nearby cadavers. He heard the pained cry though and shot up, with a jolt of seemingly impossible energy after the slaughter he ran to Emmalia's battlefield, stepping on the dozens of corpses along the way, his armor absorbing the necromantic energy along the way. He reached up to a dead tree and snapped a branch off, immediately the branch ignited in his hands, and he began searching for his comrade. All her cunning was obviously put to good use, or at least he reckoned as he stepped past the spears and the boulders it seemed increasingly likely that she came out victorious, there was no way. "Emmalia! Where are you!?" Waldron shined his torch into the dead-woods, dragging his cleaver through the dirt with his other hand
"I have to say i'm pretty impressed, this is a lot of...well, dead. Emmalia? Where the hell..." With a sudden jolt, Waldron impaled a stumbling zombie into a nearby tree, looking at it for a moment before continuing his search without his blade, only the torch and the odd energy surrounding him they even he personally didn't understand.
 
Emmalia had barely manage to get back to her feet with the assistance of a tree. She could feel the magic of Waldron's armour approaching her before she heard him. The poison had not affected her mind, merely her body. She tried to hobble away further, but without the support of a tree, her balance was compromised and she fell into a pile of leaves and twigs.

More and more, she panicked internally and tried to force herself to move away from Waldron's approach. He's going to kill me if he finds me.... After her second fall, though, she stopped struggling so much, as she started wondering why she cared about life or death anyway. To her, it didn't matter terribly much anymore. The sleeve of her left arm was entirely drenched in black.
 
Waldron shined his torch light through out the twisting path of the forest, determined not to leave his friend behind. Although he wasn't skilled at it, he was able to find some tracks that weren't just shambling and random, and determined that these were most likely Emmalia's and kept following them.
Something felt wrong, she shouldn't be this hard to find...It's like she was trying to get away from something, but what was dangerous? All the zombies were slain, or at least most of them. There was no more threat for the two, they were done. He stepped into a smaller glade, shining light at what he believed was Emmalia's form, he tried waving to her a few times, and began walking over. Albeit a bit cautiously...something was definitely off.
 
Emmalia had managed to back herself up to a tree to lean back on. The poison had already given her a fever, but that merely added a wild look to her eyes as she waited for what was to come, whatever it could be. Her shortsword was in her left hand, with the blades laying across her lap. As Waldron approached, she could see him without the light of his torch. Yet she made no movement at all. All she could do was breathe, and watch him approach. Once he got close enough, she held up her shortsword defensively.
 
Waldron approached at a steady past, looking over his wounded ally. As he got closer he gripped the shortsword with his free hand, inspecting the bite mark and her strange eyes for a few silent moments. With no apology, no warning, he suddenly ripped the sword out of her hand and hit her across the face with enough force to knock a normal person out. As she most likely hit the ground, he pulled his crimson cloak off his back, wrapping it around her blackening wound and along the rest of her body, mainly in an attempt to conceal her face. He then walked back to his greatsword, quickly slaying the zombie by ripping it's spine asunder when shifting the blade and sheathing it on his back. He then walked back and picked Emmalia up slowly with two arms. He went to go find a way back to the town, wondering along the way who he could possibly talk to about this issue, he was no healer, he couldn't help her. The priest maybe? It would have to do for now...
 
Merely the magic from Waldron's armor was almost enough to knock her out. It was definitely enough to make her slow enough and weak enough that he could rip her own sword from her hand. Had she managed to somehow stay awake, she'd have been comforted by the fact that her guess was right (she could only assume) - he was going to kill her. The darkness of unconsciousness was rather a repast for her. No panic, no fear, no instincts. Just silence.
 
Waldron had walked into the small village, many people whispering and asking among each other about the person he was carrying. He didn't care, he wasn't sure what to think actually. The blood, the wound. The signs were all there but he couldn't be sure of it and he was damn sure he was wrong. The dark knight approached the church from earlier, slamming the door open and walking among the quickly dispersing clergy and church members "Where the hell is the priest!?" He shouted into the crowd, looking around for the only familiar face in this village. A short and skinny priest adorned in white robes adorned with dusted gold-yellow stepped forward, looking to be in his older 30's with dark brown hair. Waldron pointed at the man and stepped forward with Emmalia in hand "I-...We need help. We cleared the undead, the forest is peaceful again. But she's injured." Waldron pulled back the cloak to show the man the blackening injury and his eyes widened and he quickly waved Waldron to another room "Set her here, I'll...I'll see what I can do to repay you for your work" Waldron set her on a large stone platform. Staying silent.
As the priest and his lackeys began trying to use holy magic in an attempt for restoration, Waldron was raging, albeit confused inside. He quickly stepped into another room, an open courtyard. There, if anywhere he thought he could clear his head about this issue. It was conflicting-it went against his vows to let someone like her live, but she was a comrade who had fought by his side and saved him at least two times over...He dropped to his knees, unsheathing his greatsword and leaning against it in the sunlight. He needed to think.
 
Emmalia's unique physiology occasionally caused troubles. For example, the priests magic could heal her, though more slowly than a normal human, but it was excruciatingly painful. Had she been conscious she could have gritted her teeth and suffered through it. But she was not. One of the Holy men had been smart enough to remove her weapons belt. This helped considerably when she woke up with a loud cry of pain tbat even Waldron could hear and struggled against the men for a few seconds before losing consciousness again.

Affects of poisons converted strangely in her body. Instead of slowly dying in agony, as the poison would do, she had developed a high fever and would have been very weak were she awake. The priest checked her eyes and found that they were green and not red, as he had expected. He checked her mouth and found she did not have fangs, as he had expected. To conclude on what exactly she was, was therefore almost impossible.
 
Waldron sat outside in the courtyard, kneeling against his blade with his head down. The priest had come out a few moments later to inform him of the news "We can't find any trace of...Vampirism." He said this last part hushed and away from other ears "Besides for the black blood, which is admittedly extremely strange, yes. But other than that, there are no other signs pointing towards your claim or anyone else's for that matter."
Waldron had stayed silent throughout the information...He knew what he saw in the forest, how she stumbled away from him in fear, like she was weakened by him or his armor. Speaking of, was still tattered and covered in blood. He never managed to go clean it. Which would be a perfect excuse for him to get away from this for a bit and clear his head...Think of a solution to what the hell was going on. He stood up and sheathed his blade, facing the priest "I need to go clean my armor. I'll be back for her. If she wakes up...Well, I honestly don't know what to tell you if she does wake up, just make sure she doesn't cause any trouble." With that, he walked out of the church and to go find someone who would be willing to clean this much blood.
 
Emmalia didn't stir for an hour. Her wound had been cleaned and bandaged, and her left sleeve was cut off to access the wound. When she did wake, it was with a wet towel on her head and a young novice at her side. She wasn't dead, and that seemed positive. Evidently her glamour had been what had saved her.

Laying out on a stone slab was uncomfortable for her, so she swung her legs over the side and sat up. The novice tried to get her to lay back down, but she merely pushed him aside with ease. "Where am I?" She growled. Her wound was wrapped, but that was not any guarantee for her safety.
 
The priest pushed the door to Emmalia's room open, followed by two more servants. The man quickly cleared his throat as the two servants were silently arming themselves with small daggers hidden on their back. The command made them stop going for their blades and the priest looked over at Emmalia from across the room. "Your friend, the...Dread knight, I think it was. Brought you here and told us to help you for payment of clearing out the forest. So here we are." He extended his arms quickly with the last statement, dropping them. "I believe he went to go clean his armor...He was also very concerned about your health." The priest sat down by some bloodied cleaning equipment and held up a cloth covered in the black blood, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top