Necropalypse: The River of Souls

Herst scrambled away out of the beast's shadow, not at all comfortable about how it disposed of the clone of himself he made.

While able to clone material, organic material isn't cloned alive, but does make for a good fake death. 

His heightened senses warned him at the last second, but it was by fluke he survived that.

This isn't a world he can manipulate. This is a world where his magic has no hold, for he is not Death.

Herst retreats into the shadows, gathering what he can as he tries to observe, shaken by the speed of the giant being.

"Thank you for fixing the plot inconsistency, narration." Rol blinked a couple of times and looked around, as if he had honestly forgot where he was. "Oh, shit death flow." He managed to get out the sentence before being manhandled by the creature.

"Not *huff* on the *huff* first date, yo." The creatures intense strength made it difficult to breath and Rol's shadow armor wasn't really hindering the pressure it was applying. Thankfully, the arm was  sliced off by a returning Reathy, releasing the bounty hunter. "Ooooh, nice save." Brushing himself of Rol re-evaluated the lemure as his mindfart prior had left him out of the combat that had occured in the last few minutes. "Wait, didn't it have two eyes? Why aren't the other ones murdering us? Did I just jinx the shit outta us?"

"I surely hope not. Did Herst chicken out? Nah I'm sure he's planning something in the shadows. I hope. Or did that thing Really kill him? Nah, the guy took out an entire army of soldiers. He wouldn't die that easily. I guess."
Reathy talked to themselves as they dodged the creatures attack. Becoming transparent was a good way to avoid being hit. Especially seeing how this thing was too fast to dodge normally. Although it's speed seemed to be unpredictable. One swing might be fast but the next would be slower, or sometimes even faster. There didn't seem to be a logic to this thing at all.

Reathy turned to Rol." I don't know. We were kinda busy rocketing out of this orb. And then back in. Did someone do something before it lost an eye? Maybe the other ones aren't attacking because their eyes aren't 'open'. Could be."
They attempted to answer while leading the creature away from Rol. "Jinx it? Yeah you probably did." They tried to attack the creature but they were too busy dodging. They couldn't stay solid for long enough to do any damage.
"Rol could you please try to restrain this thing with your shadows. While it isn't looking would be best. It'd be appreciated. We can't keep this up forever. Just saying."
A low swipe nearly got Reathy but luckily, they can fly as fast as they can run. "That was close."

"Oh right, I can do things too."

Rol, being uncharacteristically weary of the darkness that lurked here in the death flow decided his own shadows were much safer to 'deal with' and formed a bolo-type thing around the distracted Lemure's legs. The bounty hunter doubted that direct damage to the oddly formed legs would be overly effective if gravity wasn't.

"Pew pew." He said his 'signature' (even though he never really says it anymore) gun battle cry and fired two rubber bullets, as he didn't switch them to lethal ones. One right behind the other, the former covering the latter from view at the other eye of the Lemure.

The lemure was surprised when it's legs got bound together. It turned its upper body sideways towards Rol and looked like it was going to topple over just from the weird pose it was in. But again the creature defies logic and doesn't fall over. However it doesn't seem to be able to move around with it's legs tied.

Because of that, it can't dodge the bullets. But they go straight through the glowing eye and bounce around in it's mostly empty head. The lemure is distracted by the bullets as it's one glowing eye seems to follow their movements.

Reathy takes advantage of the distraction and flies through the lemure. Once they're through they rematerialize and grab it's ectoplasmic tail. They land with their back turned to the lemure and Yank it's tail so hard that it comes off.
Reathy then absorbs the tail of the creature into their hand."Guess we found their weakness."

The lemure's other eye fades as the ectoplasm is pulled away. The Giant creature falls on it's knees and let's out an ear piercing shriek. It then topples over and seems to deflate like a balloon. "Oww my ears."

The shriek echoed through the air.
The other Lemures turned their large heads towards their fallen brother(sister? Does it even have a gender?). One by one the eyes in their overly large sockets lit up. Once awakened the other creatures responded with a shriek of their own.
"..Fuck."

All 27 of the creatures began scurrying towards Rol and Reathy at inhuman speeds.
Reathy quickly grabbed Rol and flew up into the air. They floated above the river of souls. Out of reach of the creatures, hopefully.
"..I can show you the world~"

A mask, much like one that represents comedy in Drama with it's cheshire smile, floated near the group.

"So, nearly dying isn't a fun idea. How fast can you pull their tails? All of them? May have a plan. I don't have much time to hold them, lost count after that attack. But I can hold them down for maybe a minute, maybe more, maybe less. Just let me know how long I need to hold out for."


Herst sounded like he was still in shock by that attack, but rightly so. Those things were not natural in how they moved, and then one was temporarily moving at super natural speeds, the fact the unnatural was greater than the supernatural may shake people.

"No threesome, just you and doomy then? Hey what?! Just kidding. You better be!"
Reathy looked at the floating mask. "Speak of the devil."

They listened to Herst's questions and pondered for a while. Studying the creatures below. "Guess we have three plans now. Plan A, Hersts plan, keep them down somehow and pull their tails before they get loose. Plan B, Rols plan, full retreat. Plan C, Our plan, Which is too risky so we'll try to keep it as a last resort should everything else fail.


Lets see.. 27 of those things.. A minute.. That will be cutting it close. How immobilized will they be? Just not being able to move around or total paralysis? If it's the the latter then A minute might be all we need. If we have to worry about them trying to grab us however.. We'd need more. Also, We can't drop Rol, .. what do we do with him? Have him glide away on shadow wings? Can he even do that?..Hmm.
It's still a better plan than ours.. which is mostly based on a hypothesis. And if it turns out we were wrong.. We'd rather not risk that."

"Question, ethical treatment of co-workers aside, why can't you drop me? I don't think the impact'll kill me and the landing impact will distract enough of 'em to let Herst do his thing without too much trouble, Maybe?"

The bounty hunter contemplated and technically asked out loud.

"Sure the fall won't hurt you, those creatures on the other hand...
You saw what they did to Herst('s clone). Maybe we could throw you out of their reach?" Reathy shrugged and looked back to the floating mask.
Waiting for Herst to answer the questions they had asked him.

Meanwhile the Lemures tried reaching out to them. But luckily they couldn't get anywhere near Reathy or Rol.

(Sorry for late reply, been to GCAP, a big thing for game devs in Australia. 2 day convention thing. Full on. But home now, for like a day than PAX weekend.)

Herst had taken a couple of deep breaths. He took a knife out of his pocket stared at it. Herst may be hard to kill, but pain was still pain. Unpleasant. But he was running out of time and options. He had to do it or else be near useless as the only shadows he could manipulate were his and his groups.

Those and his blood.

He speared the knife into his palm and could be heard on the other twin of the Twin Masks hissing in pain. 3 of the 8 potion he drank affect his ability to near fatal injuries regenerate, replace blood at a faster rate and invigorated the heart to be able to work at harsh rates with little affect if not used to much or too often.

That also meant that spreading his blood out, making triangle spaces to keep integrity while spreading out the amount of area he could cover, he could skewer the beasts. 

He hoped for a minute. He couldn't circulate the blood outside his body that well, and his heart was pumping at a faster rate. Sure, he was generating more blood cells than he lost but to control the blood this finely in a large area was taxing.

His blood speared the giants from the ground. He tried to get their hands to stop them from attacking or to trap their upper limbs to keep their mobility lower but he wouldn't know from those out of his sight and just hoped they were.

This was his answer. He had no idea how much longer before the effects wore off, but nor dared he to use more of the potions for there was no way to replace them in this country when he returned from this place.

One word came out in a strained tone:

"Go!"

(Sounds like fun times. o: )


".. Okay then."
Reathy swung around and threw Rol, hoping that he would land far enough away from the Lemures. Both to keep him safe and to make sure he didn't get in the way. Because Reathy would have to be able to move freely if they were to succeed.

As soon as Rol was out of their grasp Reathy let themselves plunge towards the Lemures. They spiraled down, 3 seconds. Right before they hit the ground they stopped spiraling and flew straight out of the group of lemures.
Reathy grabbed one tail in each hand as they passed by a few of the creatures. They landed outside the group and used their momentum to pull out two tails at once.
6 seconds.
They then launched themselves backwards into the lemures again.They grabbed one tail and used it to swing around. Pulling it out before grabbing on to the next one.
They swung around the lemure using it's own tail. They grabbed another tail and pulled out the last one. They swung into the middle of the lemures and flew up into the air pulling out their fifth tail.
10 seconds.

Reathy then makes a three point landing right in the middle of the group of lemures. The five tailless ones deflate and shriek just like the first one. The 22 left respond with a horrifying shriek of their own. 
The sound makes Reathy flinch for a few seconds but they recover quickly.
Reathy then grabs two tails in each hand and spins around pulling out four more.
18 seconds.

Suddenly one of their long arms reaches out to Reathy but it passes right through them. They jump over the lemure, put their hand on it's head and somersault past it.
Grabbing on to it's tail as they land. They then pull it out and disarm the lemure.
21 seconds.

They then run around pulling as many tails as possible for the next 30 seconds. They manage to take out 14 more like this, putting their total to 24.
But they slowly start losing speed due to fatigue.
And then one of the lemures manages to break free of it's constraints. Reathy doesn't see the hand coming in time.
And they are again launched out of the orb.
The other two lemures break free too and all three remaining ones set their sights on Rol and Herst. They shriek loudly before scurrying towards them.

Herst groaned aloud. He stood up slowly, pulled out the spare explosives he had cloned of Rol's from back in the pyramyd and began cloning a lot more, casually standing there, a Will-o-Wisp hovering next to his head. 

"Gotta go out in a bang... hopefully this theory of physics is remembered right... Heat and Atom Kinetic Energy Manipulation.... something something... fuck it, I should get some air for a jump and they blow up... sleeeeeep."

Herst was muttering, not that anyone would hear him. It dawned on him he hasn't slept for quite a long time and this battle was using the last of his energy. After this, he was likely to sleep for days.

(Since busy for the next 4-5 days, I'm gonna be bullshitting myself out of the orb and have Herst sleep, which he hasn't actually done yet. No rest for the wicked, literally. Just conveniently let Herst sleeps for me as I have fun being social.... accursed need to network...)

(I'm kinda confused. Did Herst blow up the explosives? Or not yet? Is he sleeping now? Probably not sleeping yet but next post right? Was he anywhere near the explosives? ..I'll just post something and edit it if I got anthing wrong. Which I probably did.)

Meanwhile Reathy flies out of the orb and smacks against the wall, again. They then fall face down on the ground.
"Brother! are you okay?!"
"mjop! mime phime. jusd godda teek a nap."
Reganya stepped out of his body and dusted herself off. "He'll be okay. Might have broken something but nothing serious. However.. I don't think he's waking up any time soon. Give him an hour or ten and he'll be back on his feet."


"Where's Herst and Rol? What happened in there?"
"Still inside. We encountered some.. creatures. We managed to take out most of them but three survived and knocked us out of the orb. Pretty much the same way they did last time. Just slightly harder."
"I see."

Val looked at the gem thing Herst gave her. "Herst is everything alright in there? My brother is down for the count. He'll need a few hours to recuperate. You might want to retreat for now. You can't fix the source without him anyway."
----

The lemures are still scurrying towards Rol and Herst. Somehow they seem to take (a few posts) longer than normal.


/or/

The lemures are caught up in the explosion but so is Herst. Herst is also catapulted out of the orb by his own explosion?
Two lemures are blown to bits including their tail. Only one remains.
It's missing half it's head and an arm but it's still moving, towards Rol.

(I'm going to assume that Herst did the boom)

"Okie dokie. One left. Right..."

Rol watched as the lemure approached closer. Well, like 3/4 of a lemure at least. 

"Ugh. I can't exactly do much." He formed his Shadows in to a large mass in front of him waiting for the lemure to step on it and when it did he materialized the Shadows into a large spike to try pierce the lemure, kind like with the zombies from earlier but inverse. 

"Well, damn I can't solidify these Shadows, maybe I could replace 'em. Can I even manipulate the other ones here?" The bounty hunter attempts as such.

The pierced lemure shrieked as it trashed about, trying to escape. The laws of this place were different than the ones outside. But shadows are still shadows so Rol could manipulate them. It just took a little more effort.

Rol then retreated since there was nothing he could do here at the moment.
But as he neared the border he heard a crack. The lemure had broken free somehow and was now right behind him.
Its large hand smacked Rol right out of the orb, he landed next to Doomy and Herst.

The lemure then followed Rol out of the orb. Reganya and Valkyria gasped as the creature leapt out of the orb. But when it land it's legs shattered and its tail was sucked back into the orb. The creature deflated.


"Guess my hypothesis was correct, those things can't survive out of the orb. Phew, that was a close one."
"What the hel is that thing?"
"No idea. But it's strong..inside the orb at least."

"Well, that was not fun, but apparently my suffering was for science. I can work with that."

Rol said, still on the floor.

"How much you wanna bet we go back and there's more of 'em?"


The bounty hunter chuckled.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. Anyway we can't go back yet. Not with Doomy and Herst knocked out." Reganya sighed.
"Guess Rol's gonna get his nap time now. We should get those two to a bed of their own too. Seperate beds of course. Then again their reactions to waking up next to each other would be priceless."
"...Let's not do that.."
"I was just kidding." Val chuckled.

The Empress had her guards move her brother and Herst to the bedrooms. Reganya and Rol followed. Everyone went to a bedroom of their own and took that long awaited nap.
---
Hours later in Rol's room:

Valkyria stood over Rol's bed and woke him up. "Nap time's over."
She had changed clothes, no longer was she wearing her menacing armor. Instead she was wearing a part dress/armor that looked much less threatening. Also much less protective. There was still armor on her upper body and she wore armored gauntlets and boots but the rest was just a long crimson dress.
Her hair was also put in a single long braid that came down to just above her tailbone.
"My brother isn't awake yet but we should start preparing. Things are getting really bad outside.." She sounded sad and a bit troubled.

(Who is she? Gravelyn from adventure quest worlds?)

Rol sat up on the bed and rubbed his eyes. 

"Right, time to save the world." The bounty hunter yawned. "You know things have gone awry when an attractive lady is standing over your bed and the first thing you think is 'shit'."


He got out of bed and stretched his arms. "Shall we?"

(Since The real Doomy,dreadfyul,painfyul,deathsnephew whatever his name was ((seriously how many times did his name change?)) had gravelyn technically as his sister.. ((He's the one that made his own back story, so not my fault.)).. Yes she is. Or at least Valkyria's design is based on her still slightly different but very similar. Her personality and anything else isn't. Aside from her being royalty and such, which is again the fault of Doomy's backstory.)


"Yeah that or you have a very weird fetish." Her chuckle at the end of that joke was quieter and shorter than her normal chuckles. "Yes, let's. Breakfast is being made as we speak. Can't save the world on an empty stomache right? We can make plans while we eat."

She aproached the door and went to turn the knob but hesitated. "But first I need to get something off my chest.. Something I can't tell anyone else. I need to remain strong in front of everyone else. But you've aleady seen me at my weakest so.."
She turned to Rol, pushing back a tear. "What we did yesterday.. with the barrier.. It was all for nothing. My worst fears came true. Several reports from my scouts indicate more undead hordes are rampaging their way towards here. They're being attracted to the orb. thousands of my citizens are dying right now. And I can't..I-I can't do anything to protect them. I sentenced that town to a horrible undeath for nothing.."

She couldn't hold her tears back anymore and they ran down her face. She leaned against the door for support because her knees were shaking. "I'm the last human empress but that doesn't mean anything. I am completely powerless to do anything!"

At that moment, Herst's Soul Link light up a gold light and his telepathy begun flailing around, pushing itself into the thoughts of any near. Panic, confusion, pain and above all, fear, was felt as Herst mentally flailed.

He wasn't awake however. Being able to link his Soul with a Soul Link, he can experience consciousness when the body has shut down. However, should his body die as he is linked, he will be trapped in the Link, forever losing a body. That fear is now driving him into a crazed panic as he has no idea what is happening, but can sense danger of some form.

Valkyria kept crying, not noticing the soul link flailing around even though she had put it close to her. It totally wasn't stolen by a cat floating on a cloud from beyond the fourth wall. And it totally hadn't been misplaced and only recently put back. No those aren't cat hairs that you see on it. What are you talking about?

She was wearing a necklace with a transparent container, inside of it was the soul link. "Was I wearing this necklace a moment ago?" Yes, you were.
"No, I'm sure I wasn't wYOU WERE!, Don't make me go back and edit it in!

"Alright alright, jeez you're a worse cat than tardar sauce sometimes."

How do you even know about that? Anyway weren't you supposed to be sad and pouring your heart out to Rol?

"You're the one writing this remember? Idiot cat.."
Just because you're Rol's love interest doesn't mean I won't kil you off so I wouldn't insult me if I was you.

"YOU are the one insulting yourself." She facepalmed.
...I'll just delete this.




"You forgot to delete that."^
..Damnit.

"oh shit emotions. time to leave."


"Well, okay. Now, I'll pretend I know how to comfort people and help them through emotional distress." Rol mumbled, this was not his area of expertise.

"I understand this is terrifying and things seem grim. But don't call it quits yet. You're better than that." The bounty hunter continued, grabbing Val\s shoulders and looking her in the eyes. "If we hadn't done what we did, those undead would have already been attacking your people and the causality count would be higher. You've gotta stop blaming yourself, you didn't cause this but as the Empress you do have a responsibility to help fix it. So cry, yell, let it out but don't let it stop you. We need you, your people need you... I need you."


(Bringing out the shoujo manga dialogue, kill 'em. The cheese is real.) 

"..I-I..can't .I.." She looked into Rol's eyes. As he said the cheesy lines. She blinked."..I think I got lactose intolerance from that last part. But yes, you're right." She wiped her tears away. And took a deep breath, calming herself. "Thank you." She smiled at Rol.


"It's weird how cheesy lines can actually work at times. Let's get going, the longer we stay here the more people die. We need to be ready to move as soon as my brother and Herst wake up." She finally opened the door and walked out of the room.

--

They eventually reached the dinning hall again. It was filled with all kinds of breakfast foods. Reganya was already seated and absorbing a pancake.
Valkyria walks to her throne and sits on it. Looking at the table seemingly trying to decide what to eat.
"Anyone have any ideas on how to handle our next attempt?"
"I've been thinking but.. I wasnt there and your reports don't give me much to go on. But at least this time you know how to take care of those creatures. Hopefully there won't be more of them but I doubt we'll be that lucky."