Sworded Tales

A fifty foot climb awaited them before they would achieve the top of the cliff face, and although each individual had reservations about making the climb, all objections went unspoken when placed in contrast to descending toward the day’s previous noises.  The group began their ascent with minor encouragements offered at opportune moments.

As the last of the party crested the top of the clogged ridge, a Shredder burst forth from a nearby thicket, taking each of the travelers by surprise.  The engrained reflexes of the Ranger were all that postponed the female Halfling’s grisly fate.  As it was, the Shredder catapulted into the small clearing, arms, limbs, saws and gears flailing, and with a wicked sweep of its arced momentum, the Human was no more.  More precisely, the top half of the poor man went plummeting back over the precipice, cleanly severed about mid torso.  The rest of the freshly sectioned corpse collapsed in a wet heap, with slow disjointed movements and splashes of crimson ichor to mark the soul’s passing. Continue reading

“I cannot die,” Gilgallon said to him, her words tinged with pleading.  One of the girl’s delicate hands slid up the unyielding stone nearby, her chill grip seeking to ground her belief by latching on to something familiar.  For a few desolate moments, nothingness was all she encountered.  Then their bony fingers met, hands joining comfortably as their thumbs wrapped around each other in an affectionate embrace.

“I know, my dear,” the man known as Valentine whispered delicately into her mind.  The skeletal mask which gazed down upon the recumbent heroine conveyed no sympathy, no love, only the eternal rictus which was etched into its flesh from millennia past.  How anyone could find solace in the grim spectacle was truly a mystery, but Valentine’s presence seemed to put Gilgallon at ease, if only for the moment.

“Why must I sleep here?” she asked, each word puffing from her lips in a dense plume of fog.  The heat had long been sucked from the surrounding area, and the corresponding energy swirled violently in the cobalt blue of Gilgallon’s eyes.  Eyes that momentarily glistened with a thin sheen of moisture.  In an instant, those pools glazed over into frozen lenses. Continue reading

Liam “Tray” Traymoore aka Operative Grimm

Memory’s a funny thing.  Slippery and veiled one minute, crystal and haunting the next.

I have perfect recollection of my hands on the detonator just before the explosion shredded them into extinction.  Seventeen months ago that was.  This morning, I couldn’t remember what coffee was called.  Chopper I called it.  “Give me a cup of mother crackin’ CHOPPER!”  I screamed at the Sullustan behind the counter for the fourth time.  It didn’t elicit any improved recollection from the misfiring brain cells or a better response from the paling java jockey.

Memory.  It dances a tango of its own free will when you experience a detonite explosion at ground zero and survive. Continue reading

Sharrock

“Our primal instincts are what has allowed us to survive this far.  Suppress them long enough, and you will evolve into extinction.”

Sharrock struggles against civilized suffocation as she wreaks her own special brand of havoc across Paragon City.  Her strong moral compass guides her in her hunt against the seditious predators which abound, but her ferocity often paints her in a poor light in the public eye.

Every dawn brings with it new challenges for this warrior who sees herself as the next step in the evolutionary ladder.

Prismatic Hugh

“The rainbow is the real treasure.  There is no pot of gold.”  –Prismatic Hugh Continue reading