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Garlock The Origin... (Closed, Violent)

Started by Wrathwyrm, December 15, 2016, 12:09:14 AM

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Wrathwyrm

OOC: It's mostly here for reference, and for your entertainment.

IC>>>>>

Awakening...  Slowly, the fog begins to roll back, and some semblance of consciousness returns.

"Garlock..."

The ears perk up.  Yes, that was his name.  Someone was calling him forth from slumber.  All too soon, however, he found his furry little head tossled by a human hand.

"Wake up, sleepyhead.  Got some things to do and I'm gonna need your help."

"Aw, come on, Zan..."

The setting: A small building in the town of Claris that served as home and business establishment.  Living spaces were upstairs, storage was in back, and up front...was a pet store.  Welcome to Zan Goldswith's Familiar Emporium, Zan proprieting.  The shop front was a simple one-door setup with two small windows flanking it on either side, a number of pets on display, a counter with a commanding view in the back of the room, and a door leading into a small hall with stairs going up and a door leading into the back.  Every door in the building had a cat flap, because among all of these potential pets and magus familiars was Zan's own four-legged assistant, Garlock.

At this time, Garlock had been on the counter, asleep, and was now stretching as he was asked to be awake and aware.  He was a sleek black tom with red eyes and the ability to speak and think in the human range, thus making him more versatile than an ordinary feline.  His sort was fairly common in Serendipity, as well as loyal talking hounds, clever talking foxes, and so on.  The thing that confused him, on the whole, was why anyone would want animals to talk to them.  Garlock's own first works in english were, in fact, "Well, this is nice and all, but you already know when I want fed, human.".  Zan just laughed.

Zan Goldswith was a talented mage, one who invested his spare time into pure research as he worked on how could best-use his arts for the benefit of others, even though his initial practice had been in the usual spell-chuckery to blow things to bits and tiny pieces.  He was a master elementalist, and had a bunch of his spells lying around in back, but he'd branched out to do things that were...more useful.  First and foremost: The securing of animals and elevating of their intelligence to sell to others and get the bills paid.  Zan was not a wizened wizard.  He didn't even have a beard.  Just a normal-looking man with brown hair and common, everyday clothes.

He had Garlock assist him in things that you didn't generally need hands to do, but that he wanted his hands to be doing something else at the time.  So, for instance, reading down this list of requests...

"The McNaire family wants another fox.  They said 'Our Monty was embraced by a spirit fox and has gone east to join his newfound brethren.  Children adjusting, but we'd like another one, please.'."

"We might have to stop doing those if Kitsune come and take them away like that.  People will complain."

"They'll complain anyway, 'cause we're discontinuing them.  Here's another request from Ms. Eldridge for a parrot familiar..."

"I told her we weren't going to DO that.  Parrots mimic people naturally, and giving them the gift of speech on top of that messes with their minds!  What else is there?"

"A small note tied to a brick that was placed neatly by the door, asking for an order of 'Highly-intelligent gerbals'.  It was signed 'Narbon'."

"That...  I don't even know how to respond to that."

And so on.  Mostly, Garlock was someone to talk to and get more out of in return than 'Meow', but Zan regarded him highly, which in-turn led to a great deal of appreciation vis-a-vis the snarky black feline.  In fact, just about the only human being he valued aside from Zan was his niece, Rena, whom he'd known since he was just a kitten.  Garlock minded the front if Zan was in back, minded the back if Zan was up front, and went on errands if possible, as well.  At the time of the incident, Garlock was in back...

Claris was a normal town, kind of a small town.  You had crime in it, every now and then, and the town guard would handle it.  That was natural enough.  What you did NOT ordinarily have was dueling wizards, but it could happen that way, and it DID.  Picture this...  A pair of irrate spellcasters - men who were at least as potentially dangerous as Zan, but not nearly as wise or restrained - get drunk at a local tavern, start throwing choice words at each other, and then decide to step outside to blast each other into oblivion.  It wasn't as uncommon as you think.  The reason so many mages are wise and thoughtful was that they managed to get out of the short-sighted ways of their spellcasting days alive.  Those that didn't were like these two: Dumb enough to kill each other in broad daylight while standing in a market square full of people.

The first explosion got both of their attention, but Garlock had been sleeping in back, so he was a bit slow to react.  Zan had gotten a look at things from the window just as the next succession of spells were loosed, clearing out he market in a hurry.  The black feline heard Zan saying something about 'Two idiots going at it' as he came into focus, and then BOOM!!!  The building shook as the front of it was blasted inwards by a stray fire blast, thoroughly ending everything that lived up front.  Even Garlock was jostled by it, and he'd been in back.  Quickly, he rushed to the front of the store...what was left of it.  Dead animals and cages were everywhere.  They died instantly, luckily, but...it was a bloody, burning, terrible mess.  And then, he saw him.

"Zan...?  Zan?!"

Lying atop cages and half-buried in debris was the sadly-abused form of Zan Goldswith.  Parts of the building had down into him, half-impaling and half-burning him while the impact with things in the room and the counter - which has snapped under pressure - must have done more severe damage.  This was past fatal and into mutilation.  Garlock shook from the revelation, the conscious realization that his friend and owner was dead...crossed with the instinctive rejection of the reality that it had happened, and so suddenly.  There was death all around him, and chaos outside.  Unstable magic fields were abound.  Still standing over the man's corpse, Garlock's head shook, slowly at first, and then more violently as his whole body quivered.

"Zan, you can't die now!  You can't die...!  You can't-  That's not-  I won't-  I WON'T ALLOW THIS!!!"

Something very wrong was happening here...  The cat began to shudder, parts of his body starting to twitch in and out of normal proportions, all as a black aura rose up from him.  The tail was especially wild in motion, and then it suddenly split into two.  People were far too distracted right now to peek back there, which is kind of a good thing, as the violently-shaking feline started to expand, growing from a simple black cat to a grotesque and strangely disproportionate beast.  There was a growl, one that was so great that it seemed to produce its own force  The next thing everyone knew, there was Zan Goldswith, limping out of his shop, dead and brimming with unnatural energy.

Onlookers saw this, but not the dueling wizards.  They were caught completely off guard by a freezing ray that swept over them without warning, containing them within magic-induced ice to keep them unable to act or possibly even think as the undead form moved along.  The dead face was drawn back in total rage before it was all surrounded by shadow that became a cloak, hands and feet becoming as claws.  The people and guards who bore witness were in shock.  Everyone knew Zan Goldswith in this town, so seeing this was like watching family turn into zombies before your very eyes.  They were too slow to react, as the Garlock within swept a hand, projecting claw strikes into the closest forms, tearing through flesh and attire equally and spilling blood messily upon the ground.

The first shriek went up anew as something more sinister than a pair of drunken wizards became the focus of the day.  Fireballs flew from his fingertips. blasting in buildings, and wind shot from his hands, knocking any opposition to the massacre off its feet and into the nearest obstacle.  And let us not forget that anyone fast enough to get close to him was simply evicerated, and then exploded so that the victim's body parts would fly into others at high velocity.  Garlock did not care what he hit, who he hit.  He'd utterly lost it, and his howls of rage echoed throughout the small town, even after he'd razed it to the ground and cracked the foundations.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

They appeared, and the ice they were surrounded in vanished.  They were in a...hellish vision of the town they'd been fighting in.  It didn't seem natural.  In fact, it wasn't.  It was a shadow of Claris, a world of the town's torturous make, where the screams and moans did not stop.  They looked upon this in horror.  There were cats feasting upon the dead.  They looked up at them all at once as soon as they noticed they were being watched.  It was jarring...  What had happened?  Where was this?  This wasn't the town they'd been in, was it?

"How does it feel, gentlemen?"

They hadn't noticed him, not at first.  He may not have been there at all, a moment ago.  It was a human-like form in a cloak, sitting on a pile of bodies.  The voice at least sounded like Zan.

"How does it feel to have created...all this?  Does it surprise you - disturb you - to understand that actions have consequences?"

"W-we were..."

"What was that?  I'm a little dead in this ear, so you'll have to speak louder."

"What...?"

The cloak seemed to be energy.  It shook violently for a second.

"Dead.  You took it upon yourselves to let loose on the town, and I...I simply couldn't stop.  Everything...  Everything destroyed.  I blame you."

"No!  Zan, please!  It was an accident!  We were fools!  Have mercy!"

"I AM NOT ZAN!!"

The body fell to the ground as that inhuman voice roared, and the darkness erupted from him into a bloating, distorted form which grew numerous wildly disproportionate limbs and a face that was a maddening, stretched-out cat-like head with eyes deranged with rage.  Wizard #1 took off in a run as Wizard #2 stared up in shock at the 20-foot feline.  He only tore his eyes away when he heard the first one scream as the smaller cats had jumped him with incredible force and dragged him down, melting into a puddle that sucked him down into itself like willful tar.  The second wizard, understanding now, was shaking visibly.

"It's happened...  It actually happened...  I never thought..."

He looked back up at the towering cat.

"Garlock!  Please, spare us!    End this curse and we'll do anything!"

The mouth opened to reveal way too many fangs.  With a swipe, Garlock knocked him close to a fire, forcing him to put out his clothes...and then back away as the bodies started moving, crawling for him, moaning after him.  In doing so, he ran into Garlock's paw again, who promptly shoved him back into zombie range and allowed them to start tearing at him.  The wizard screamed and flailed, then cast fireballs wildly into their numbers to escape.  The ground erupted before him and Wizard #1 appeared, buried in black cats who were gnawing and scratching at him furiously.  They all looked up at his now-haggard form as one, and half of them pounced him next.  In no time, the cats melted, and the town melted, and all was a cave with slitted eyes and the odd echoing yowl of cats.  The two wizards were dangling like puppets on black ropes, facing each other.  Garlock's face hovered into view like a demon.

"You started this with your petty fued.  Now, you will end it.  Recite your spells, ALL OF THEM.  Cast them on each other until you are uttterly exhausted.  You will not die or be allowed to leave until it is done.  You created me.  Now...satisfy me."

Anything even approaching argument was met with a fierce roar that shook the area, before large teeth appeared next to them, snapping shut to make their point.  He was keeping them from death.  He could torture them for an eternity, and would be all-too-glad to.  They had to do it.  They had to cast magic upon each other that would destroy flesh and blood, and somehow they would not die, no matter how destructive it was.  One after the other, they blasted with fireballs and lightning bolts, acid and icicles.  Every strike was real, every pain was true.  It took quite a long time to go through them all.  Finally, they were down and exhausted, bodies ravaged from the actions undertaken upon each other.

"Good...  And now, I will leave you be."

There was the briefest moments of respite...before they heard the sounds.  Dogs...and cats...and exotic birds.  Foxes, wolves, and other animals...  They were basically ruined corpses, alot of them, crawling towards them from all sides.  The two wizards were completely drained.  They couldn't possibly put up a fight.

"Why...?  Why?!"

The cat looked down at them, calmer...but no less angered.

"You killed my friends too.  I owe them this."

It was hard to tell if the screams from then on were ones of pain or a sudden break of sanity.  Perhaps both.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The solitary moment among the ruined town and the ruined corpse of a good man was somber and tormenting to the cat, even after avenging his death.  He had nothing now.  Zan had been his friend and companion throughout his life, and they were nothing but good times and lazy days.  Now, it was over.  Even if he hadn't raged his way through the whole town, killing en masse, the shop was ruined and everything inside of it had been killed, as the backroom had been cleared of excess pets and familiars last week.  He had no one and nothing to his name.  He was just a Destroyer now, a beast with a desire to wreck and massacre.  Yet, deep within all of this, he himself was in torment.  Nothing could replace Zan.  Not unless...

"Unless..."

Unless he could find her, Rena, the only family he had left now.  But where to find her?  He did not know the world, and as of now...he hated it all.  The people and things he thought he knew had turned on him in an instant, and while he came out the victor, there was nothing but betrayal all around him.  The black cat turned and began to walk out of town.  As he did, numerous other cats - the only creatures to survive the carnage - fell in step next to or nearby him.  Until he found Rena Goldswith, they were the only beings he could trust.  All others were essentially forfeit.

I am Garlock.  Garlock The Destroyer.

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