Cursed Beasts of the Forest[Ethereal]

[Ranganok]

It was a quiet and silent night. The full moon blooms in all it's splendor, as a cool breeze goes trough the forest. It was a pretty dark part of the forest, the silence was all but calming. Not a single soul could be hear there, no animals, no nothing like they were scared of something. The trees around seemed sick, all of their leaves fell down, leaving just a hard and dead husk of what it was once, a tree. The shapes of the trees were nothing close to friendly...patterns could be seen...scary faces, tree-like monster silhouettes, a creepy whistle of the wind...what could anyone wish more?

In all this horror cliche of a forest, a single person could be seen. A black cloaked man. He was fairly tall and slim, tough anything else is concealed by his long cloak that was covering him from head to his ankle. He slowly moves trough the forest like a shadow trough the dark, unafraid of anything, always moving forward, never stopping. Until a certain event...a crack could be heard in the distance. The mysterious man stops inspecting the surrounding trying to ascertain the way the crack came from....most probably it came from a dried branch.

The man continues his journey unaffected by what happened. Always conscious of his surroundings , he manages to reach out to a clearing. The moonlight softly fall upon his cloak, giving it a dark shine. He goes into the middle of the Clearing, kneeling down and inspecting the ground...it was a footprint...but it was odd...it didn't belong to any creature known by him, it was sharp and soft in different parts, the irregularity in this was very suspicious. And the sheer size of it was worrying, it was as big as his forearm, if not a bit bigger.

In the bushes two bloodlusted red eyes were watching the sole living being in this whole part. The unknown creature stalks his new found prey, with a piercing gaze, making his presence unknown to the man in the clearing. The beast, slowly advances, prowling. The creature was deliberately trying to avoid the moonlight, being just a shadowy silhouette . The cloaked man takes his hand from the footprint which seemed still fresh, raising it up to his chest and clenching it into a fist slowly.

The beast then suddenly jumps at the mysterious man, his open up wide and his massive claws towards the man to catch him. The man then jumps to the side doing a reverse roundhouse kick, hitting the beast's jaw with his heel. The creature was surprise by the counter as it staggers a bit. During that, the mysterious man jumps back gaining some distance between them. The beast walks slowly towards the man being revealed by the moonlight. It was a total mess...the creature was a hybrid between a dire wolf and a bear...a belf. But that wasn't the most disturbing thing. The creature's flesh was rotten and decaying and there were quite a few places where the bone could be seen. A part of it's face was falling down as a bit of the jaw and skull could be seen and his spine spine sticking out.

The creature charged towards the man, as he continuously dodges the attacks of the beast. "This is a pretty troublesome beast." The creature charges towards him once again, but this time, he takes off his cloak covering the beast's field of view and takes a log from near him, raising it up with his foot, and spins 180 degrees swinging the log which was thicker than both his arms in total, and almost as long as him, hitting the beast to the side of it head, the log breaking in the process. The beast was staggered and the man took his opportunity to leap towards it and do a rising kick under the jaw of the creature, making it fall down stunned.

The flesh was decayed and soft, as pieces fell over when he hit the thing. He took a broken branch which seemed sturdy enough to pierce trough the flesh. But just then, another belf charged from the bushes towards the man. He was surprised since he didn't expect to be another one and with a swing of the paw, it claws the man back. He gets a pretty nasty wound as blood gushes from the wound. The same paw swings backwards, hitting the man in the chest area with the back of the paw throwing him a few meters until he hits with his back to a tree. The other belf slowly approaches the man who now has blurry vision from the impact, and while staring closely at him with blood injected eyes he leaps with his mouth open to bite him.

Three days pass from the incident, and in a forest village near the incident's site, people go on about their business, lively as usual without even knowing what lurks in the forest.

[Ethereal-Star]

Looking around the dark forest with a growing sense of unease, light blue eyes glanced back over to Groot, her bodyguard worriedly. The latter stood at attention, still as a statue equipped with his greatsword and clad in heavy steel armor, ready and alert for anything. Saffron looked back at the woods before them a bit nervously, swallowing down her fear. "I hope this is the right place." she whispered, still not sure that they should be here.

All around them the forest was sickened, as though some kind of blight had struck the area. The sensations of death and decay seemed to fester in Saffron's mind, and she found she greatly disliked the feeling. "Groot? Do you think we took a wrong turn?" she asked the armored man beside her.

"Hurgh." was the only response she got, which Saffron guessed to be a no.

The healer continued to look around. "Well, the person whoever he was, did say my help would be needed here. He seemed like a shady sort of fellow though." Pushing back a lock of wavy honey-colored hair behind her ear, she took a step forward. "But if someone is in need of my help, then I have to do what I can to aid them. No matter the environment." She took a deep breath. "And once again, I am grateful for your services Groot." she told the big, muscled man. Groot said nothing, only giving a brief nod of the head instead.

"Well, we might as well go on in. The longer we are idle, the worse the person may become. All we need to do is look for a large black gnarled tree bent in several places as that's what was told to me." Saffron sighed. "Although to be honest, most of the trees here look exactly the same."

So the two continued on, healer and bodyguard together, Saffron in the lead. Passing by many more of these decayed trees and foliage, they made significant progress. The lack of animals here was also really worrying as anyone knew that wasn't normal in a forest. Once again doubt creeping into her, yet the Connloathian woman continued her purposeful strides.

A clearing soon came into view. Heading towards it, Groot still following as always, they reached the aforementioned tree as requested. But what caught Saffron's attention was the dark cloaked figure slumped back against it as though asleep. Or dead. Saffron brushed that thought away and walked over to the prone figure cautiously. Putting her hand on the person's shoulder, she immediately could feel the fever raging through their body. Poison, and of a strange, unknown type as well. But they weren't dead as breaths still rose and fell from his or her chest.

Pushing back the hood, the healer saw it appeared to be a young man of no more than twenty-five at the most, his eyes closed in a deep comatose state. Sweat prickled his brow and he seemed to shake on occasion with the poison that ran through his veins, but was otherwise mainly still.

"It's alright now, I am here to help." Saffron told him softly, even though she wasn't sure he could even hear her or not. But sometimes those in such a state could. Putting her hands over him to once more assess the gravity of the illness, she then began to unleash her healing magics, hands glowing in a bright white light from her palms. The task would surely drain her though, but she had no other choice. The healing would take as long as it needed to and so Saffron would do everything she could.

Groot continued to watch their surroundings, remaining ever vigilant in the quiet woods. So far, there was no sign of any trouble and both of them hoped that would continue to be the case.

[Ranganok]

Ranganok was in a very bad state. By the time he was discovered by the woman and her guard, his skin was already light green with a few darker shades. Most of his flesh became rotten from decay and even started to fall off revealing tendons and bones to certain areas like arms, ribs, legs and knees, and his left cheek fell off revealing his teeth. The smell was also bad due to the rotten flesh it smelled like...well, rotten flesh. On his left shoulder a big bite wounds could be seen where flesh was peeling of around the fang marks. But even in this despicable state, Michael was still alive...barely but he was still alive even if he looked like a freaking zombie.

The venom was deep in his system and his death was near. The woman came to him and started to use her healing powers on him. The disease started to react to it as it was alive. It started to shake itself and become more aggressive trying to fasten it's development in order to defend itself against the healing which it is clearly perceived as a threat. As the healing would continue, the virus inside him would become more and more agitated. Occasionally, green goo spurts out of his body splashing things around. As time passes by, the interval of the goo spurts lesser and in case it touches the healer, she will be infected and attacked by the virus. The goo will burn the skin and be absorbed trough skin, but the attack would be much weaker than normal, unless it goes on an open wound into the blood. It can easily be cleansed and destroyed, however if she would weaken her healing and focus on the boy, the disease might take the opportunity to mutate and become more resistant which will just endanger Ranganok further.

The intelligent disease goes into a certain pattern, basically it spread out into his body trying to cover as much as possible and thins out at the place where the woman put her hands, like it is running from her healing touch. This disease also wasn't looking natural...not something found in the world by natural means, or maybe it's not even from this world. Suddenly, a wicked howl could be hear into the distance, coming from the deepness of the forest. Whatever caused this may still be around. The light seems to become dimmer as mist starts to descend on the forest., covering the ground and reaching until below the knee. Above it, the mist is much thinner, just giving a small white-ish blur.

Only after some more time and healing, the pale green skin starts to slowly fade, going to normal, as the body starts to spurt out more and more green goo, like it rejects the virus. However, there is still more to do after all this since Michael is nowhere near being healed. A slow progress could be seen in this violent battle between healing and disease but that is all.

(OOC: Sorry if it's low quality...I had a lack of inspiration so I tried to improvise as I knew best. This should be rectified in my next posts...I think)

[Ethereal-Star]

The situation was bad, as Saffron well knew. The healer continued to pour massive amounts of healing energy into his body, focusing not just on one area, but moving her hands around in order to better combat the intelligent venom so it had less places to go or fester more than it already was. Moving one hand over the bite marks on his shoulder, the other moving towards his heart, the white light of life magic continued to envelop throughout his bloodstream and body, trying to thwart and kill the invading pathogens that were wreaking so much havoc here.

After a significant amount of energy and few minutes later, Saffron moved her hands again to other parts of his body, still attempting to cure the man of this unholy disease. For it seemed to be both a disease as well as a poison, which was definitely not natural in her eyes. But while she could do something about it, it would require far more effort on her part than normal. Her hands were not actually touching his body, but hovering just a few inches over the skin, moving them closer and further away as needed to, but still not actually touching. The green goo that spurted out did in fact hit Saffron, but most of it she was able to avoid. It did not touch her skin but rather her cloak and white robe that she wore, the goop quickly trying to burn through the fabric to infect her as well. But the woman did not cease her healing. To do so would mean the man's death and she could not have that on her conscience. With the output of so much energy from her, the disease would find it harder to infect the woman, but not impossible either. Saffron would have to make sure to tend to herself as well afterwards, after this was all done. And if she had enough strength left in her to do so. But for now, her focus was on her patient. Noting with relief the green pallor of his skin seemed to abate more and more, the smell also starting to give way as well. But there was still so much more to do.

While Saffron was busy with her charge, Groot stood rigidly at attention, senses on high overload as he searched through the misty gloom trying to spot the source of the growls and howls he was hearing. Gripping his greatsword like a true master, he stood a protective watch over the Connloathian woman as he had promised to long ago. He would defend her with his life. No harm would come to her while he was here to guard her.

((OOC: No worries, it's alright. ;) ))

[Ranganok]

The healing was progressing slowly, but well. The healer was starting to move her hands all over Ranganok's body after knowing the virus pattern. The disease seems almost startled about these movements as it confuses it. It starts go act and move chaotically not knowing what to do so it's scatters everywhere. For a little time it worked as it was diminishing more and more until one point. The virus evolved once more and learned about those movements the girl was doing. It started to to concentrate in several points on his body moving in a certain pattern in order to protect itself by sacrificing a a bit from it's viruses. Thus the problem became more complicated.

A gathering of viruses could be entirely annihilated if she would concentrate on two points(one for each hand) however, by doing so means the other points would develop more and more putting the boy in peril. But in the case she moves her hands from those points, they would regenerate in time, recovering and maybe even developing further. This was truly a problem as it tries more and more to regain it's control over the body. As time passes, another peculiar thing happens...

In the darkness of the night, a certain entity makes it's appearance. A certain mystical presence could be felt by those with magical roots, as his presence is completely undetectable by the others. In the bushes behind the healing woman, a creature is moving completely silent until two blue eyes appear in the dark. Those could be seen by anyone, a blue piercing gaze looking at the woman. However, by inspecting this gaze further one could notice that the mysterious creature doesn't look at the woman, but trough the woman. Coming further into the clearing, his shape and body is revealed. He was a black dire wolf with blue eyes. No hostility could be felt from him as he look more like he is observing and asserting them rather than thinking about attacking them.

The wolf remains silent and stays in place at 30 meters distance from the group. For a few minutes he stays motionless, not showing any sign, just staying there and looking at them. During this time, Ranganok's health was becoming worse nearing death. But then, when the line between life and death was truly met, the wolf's eyes started to glow with a powerful blue light. Michael's body seemed to have reacted to that as it's immune system starts to kick in much stronger that it should. The immune system quickly isolates all the concentration points of the disease, halting it's development, giving the woman's the ability to cleanse each point without fearing that the others would develop further.

After finally managing to heal all the concentration points, destroying the virus from his system, his color became normal again...however a bit more of healing would be necessary to heal the effects of the virus like the rotten flesh, and regenerate it where if fell off. After the virus was eradicated, the black wolf turns around and goes back into the darkness of the forest, vanishing completely in it. By bringing the body out of the danger zone, to a state where it can sustain itself, the man starts to drift back into his consciousness, slightly opening his eyes. His vision is very blurry but once he manages to focus he sees a woman in front of him. Due to the virus that infected him and because he wasn't fully conscious he had a hallucination...he saw a girl with golden hair that somehow resembled the healer and seeing the woman from his distant past he says with a weak almost whispering voice: "Alice..." after which he goes back into hibernation.

[Ethereal-Star]

Several trying hours passed, while Saffron used her healing magic on her charge. Sometimes it seemed like things were progressing for the better, then without warning, the circumstances changed for the worse. No matter how much power she expelled from her hands, trying to weaken and cleanse the man's body of this disease which ravaged him from the inside out, it seemed to continually worsen. The Connloathian woman had figured out the pattern of this virus some two hours back, but even that didn't seem to be enough, as the more she tried, the stronger the disease seemed to become, as though fighting her magic every step of the way. Still Saffron refused to give up.  Concentrating her energy wherever and whenever it was needed the most, the virus just seemed to react that much more violently, and as a result, Saffron's worry and frustration grew inside her, as surely as the poison inside the man's body seemed to.

Just when it seemed all was lost, a strange presence made itself known. Saffron couldn't see it as she had to concentrate on the task before her, but she could definitely feel it. Groot on the other hand, could actually see the mystical wolf with vivid blue eyes. He watched it warily, weapon ever at the ready, but it did not seem to want to attack, just observe the scene before it. Still, despite this he never took his eyes off of the dire wolf, waiting and watching for any hostile movement to come. But the wolf never did attack. Instead it melted right back into the shadows of the darkened forest around them, all evidence of its presence now gone, including the magical signature it had been giving off in waves. Loyal as ever though, Groot said not a word, his jaw twitching in concern and anticipation of any other happenstances he needed to beware of and to protect Saffron from if anything of the sort went down. But nothing did.

Whatever the wolf had done, it seemed to have had a positive effect on the man the healer was spending so much time and effort on helping. The virus was destroyed, completely and utterly, and the woman soon set her attempts on healing the residual damage that remained, flesh regenerating and reforming on the man's body, skin closing up and the smell of foul decay finally abating for good.

As she was finishing up, the man opened his eyes briefly and muttered a name that Saffron did not recognize. Confused, but she supposed that was normal as likely the man by all accounts would be delirious and disoriented from such a grave ordeal that he had just gone through. After all, he had been right at death's door, and she had been very afraid for him then, fearing that all her work had been for naught and the stranger would die anyway. But thankfully, that was not the case. Whatever force had decided to intervene, Saffron was greatly thankful and appreciative of it. She would have to thank it later, if the opportunity ever arose to do such.

The man had fallen back into unconsciousness though, and Saffron herself was extremely weary. So incredibly tired as the healing had really drained her. The woman had just enough energy left to tend to her own self, before she too, collapsed on the ground from sheer exhaustion. Seeing this, Groot cursed in a gruff tone and promptly picked her up, situating her upright on the forest soil, making sure she was comfortable before straightening up, and resuming his watch. Glancing only briefly at the once-ill man, the bodyguard noticed he looked much better now. But he was much more concerned about Saffron as usually such healing sessions didn't sap her strength like that, unless whatever it was had been super deadly and taxing. The green goo that had once been on Saffron's clothing had also gone away after she had used up her last bit of healing magic, leaving only several holes and tears in her once pristine attire.

For now, the forest was quiet, no more howls could be heard. The darkness however remained as strong as ever, the mist in the air still prevalent as well. But there was still a certain gloom in the atmosphere despite the false tranquility evident at this time. Saffron lay there deeply asleep, as her body struggled to recover from all the strain she had just put it through and would most likely not awaken for several more hours, which could be a problem here.

[Ranganok]

Ranganok fell into a deep sleep in order to regain his energy, since the entire ordeal left him exhausted. While he was sleeping his consciousness started to drift into the dream world...

On the battlefield there were two armies clashing one with another. One had banners, and all sorts of human knights, magicians, archers and so on while the other was full of demi-humans, monsters and dark wizards. Above them all, on a cliff looking from a distance was a lone man wearing ancient black clothes and a black cape...a royalty. He was Ranganok, which was observing the battle.

The dark forces clearly were pushing back as they outnumbered the humans and caught them in a surrounding attack. The fight ended with the dark army's win, forcing the few remaining survivors of the other faction to retreat. Then the scenery suddenly changes...at some distance from a citadel, a war encampment was full of dark creatures. Inside one of the tent, many high ranking officials with Ranganok at it's center were strategizing over a map an how they should capture the citadel.

After a bit of time, another person come in, he was rather young and tall. Wolf looks at him with a cold and a bit irritated look, asking "What do you want?" The man smiles and answers with a soft and a little mocking voice: "Well hello to you too, little brother. Thought you wanted to know that your little woman sneaked out of the camp and went into the woods." The irritation became even stronger and could be noticed in the boy's voice as he responded "She is not my woman...and why did you let her leave if you saw her? You always make more trouble than you're worth."

The man grins even harder, clearly being amused by the situation as he talks once more "Well, she seemed in a hurry, and she was carrying a wounded soldier...from the enemy faction...I didn't wanted to involve myself in her affairs." Ranganok gets up from his place to say something when one of the officer there interrupts him with a low and demonic voice "Apologies my lord...but what will we do with the citadel?"  The boy clearly had enough so with a hurried voice started to explain the strategy pointing on the map "Fine...take a small vanguard with 3 very known officers and attack the main gate...you will lose the fight and retreat. By doing so, the enemy will want to have your heads and score a great victory against us so they will open the gates and go into pursuit. The other troops will wait hidden in the forest and when the army gets out and attacks you, keep them distracted until the main force charges in and surrounds it...those are the hiding spots, split the army according to these. Once to taken them by surprise and surrounded them, use these two split companies to secure the gate while the main force deals with their armies. Once the small army was taken care of, go into the citadel and conquer it...try to keep the inside damage to a minimum since we will use that citadel ourselves. Now prepare your men for battle, I have to go somewhere."

Ranganok then leaves the table with the map and goes at a hurried pace towards the exit of the tent, telling the other man at the entrance "Take care of the rest, Kherubim." The man bows with his hand on his heard and replies with a devilish smile "As you wish."

Once Wolf gone out of the tent the scenery changes once again...now being in the fores. He looks down and sees some small human tracks. Ranganok's eyes shine red as the shadows inside the forest begin to move...his vision moves goes trough darkness until he gets a visual on the girl, the injured man and 3 other. Something is happening there since they are talking and her face isn't a nice one.

The boy hurries and by the time he reaches visual range of the girl, the other man is gone and the knight in the center imbues his sword with light and does a ranged light slash towards her. Wolf then sprints towards the girl, augmented by his darkness and pushes her, with his left hand which is hit by the light slash. The arm is cut off from the shoulder and flies trough the air. Once it fell down and blood spills out from Michael's wound, the other 2 wizards accompanying the knight use a sync spell to burn the arm to a chrisp, making it impossible to reattach it.

The eyes of the boy, glow red as darkness burst from his body..."You three have quite the death wish to come here alone and try to kill my property... The two wizards enhance the knight's sword with fire and lightning as the sword wielder uses the same attack but enhanced this time. The light hits Ranganok, however the darkness around him repels it all without much effort. "Now it's my turn." Michael raises his hand, pointing his palm towards the three and releases wave of darkness towards the now terrified men. The fight goes for a minute while the enemies were heavily overpowered by the boy and get reduced to nothingless.

The blond girl that was with his was shocked, of everything, that the men lied, wounded that boy and used him as bait to lure her out to kill her. "I told you to stay in the camp and not wander off" said Michael with a scolding voice. She looks at Ranganok with teary eyes and clearly sad because she caused him so much trouble and says "You are right...because of me...you had so much trouble. I am too much of a burden to you...you should have just let them kill me...maybe then you wouldn't have so much trouble.

Ranganok looks with his usual cold eyes at her and replies "Shut up...let's go back now." The blond girl looks even more sad as she talks back "But...you lost your arm because of me.". Ranganok seems unaffected by all this as he speaks "It's not a big deal. It's just an arm after all."

The woman shouts "Stop!" as she goes to Ranganok. The boy stands still and looks at her, as she put her hands towards the wound. Then a bright light covers the entire wound and extends down, being as long as the missing arm. The wound starts top glow and the line of light start to move trough where the arms should be, leaving behind a part of the arm. After going on all the arm's length, the entire limb being regenerated. Now Ranganok looks at his bare new arm thinking what a convenient power this girl has..

After all this, the boy's dream forces him out, waking up, without remembering anything about what he dreamt. The vision focuses on the outside world as he sees the branches of a dead tree. He gets up to see that he was in the forest, the forest he was attacked and beside him was a sleeping girl...a girl he didn't know. He looks around more, scanning the surrounding and notices another man, a big man with a big ass sword standing guard. Without saying anything he sits in the lotus position at the girls side and stares at her thinking "Where have I seen her before?"

(Sorry for my absence...holydays, college, work and finals took pretty much all my time. Now I am able to post again. :) )