• Open • [Byblos, Kephallonia, Helice] Sifting through the rubble

[Varthakh]

65th of Ashan 719, ~11am - Continued from here

It was quiet, far too quiet. The voices of their totems had been silent since what had happened and the screams of the Ithecal had long since faded to nothing. The rain forest that surrounded the ruins of Byblos was void of any of the usual animal calls or insect choruses. All was still in the wake of the devastation that Fridgar had brought to the ithecal.

They were kneeling there with their clenched, broken fist pressed into the shattered and blasted ground. Despite their steel muscles and armored scales, their reckless use of strength had destroyed their arms and rendered them unusable. They didn't dwell on the pain of their bones, though. They didn't think on their injuries, nor all the innocent lives they'd ended. Their thoughts were fixated on them, on Fridgar, Orson, and Bruce.

Their beloved totems, mercilessly killed by the demon lizardmen. They'd watched Fridgar die in his guardian state, riddled with arrows and bleeding. They'd heard all their totems scream and wail when they were set ablaze. Orson, the Willow Redbear totem that they had collected with Alistair all those arcs ago, and Bruce, the shark totem they had fought alongside Moon to acquire.

Fridgar, Fridgar was the totem that had been with them the longest out of any of them, they were born with that form, and it grounded them. it bound them to this world, this life. All his emotions, all his memories, they felt so distant now with no aspect to hold them. Alistair, Bjorn, Kaelrik, they did not know them, they only knew Fridgar. What did this mean for their future in Helice? More than ever before, they were alone.

The Lurker's gut twisted into knots and their throat burned with misery, their eyes threatened to water, but no such moisture came. Lurkers were not able to cry, they were built as sadistic monsters that prowled the plains with no humanity in them. It only felt like they were crying out of reflex, memories of functions that existed within their lost Lothar totem.

The rest of Idalos was lost to them; they could never have a life with the others. They couldn't even speak properly anymore, let alone craft new totems. That was it for the Protean; the end of the line. In despair, they shifted to lay on their side amidst the broken ruins of Byblos; a field of scattered stones and bodies. They laid there for some time and pleaded in the recesses of their mind for death. For all his flaws, life was not worth living without Fridgar, without Orson and Bruce.

[Varthakh]

Sometime later, the lurker woke to the throbbing pain in their hands. They looked upon their injuries to find that their mangled flesh had swollen significantly, heralding the presence of broken bones. The beast growled as they rolled onto their back and turned their gaze to the blue sky. The sounds of the rainforest had returned, and the sound of the ocean was audible in the distance. There, they laid and counted their memories, their scars, and battles. All they'd been through since they'd taken the becoming spark.

Could it really all end here? Could they just give up after all the blood they'd shed? No. They'd taken far too many lives to make it this far, only to give up? They owed it to the fallen to see their life through, to those that died so that they might live.

They shut their eyes and cleared their mind, which came far easier with the silence of their totems. Once they were meditating, they cast chrysalis and took the form of Terrance, their solghannon form. Their totem was hesitant to show themselves after what they'd experienced, but the creature ultimately trusted the Protean and drew from the confines of their flesh.

Their arms repaired themselves and their scales set themselves right as their shape changed, and they were left laying on their back as the massive crocodilian. With struggle, they shifted their weight and threw themselves about the rubble until a stone gave way enough for them to roll to their feet with a slam. Terrance was heavy, despite the speed that he could run at. Totrial, though, they felt unnaturally heavy; it was hard to move. In truth, they knew they hadn't grown weaker. If anything, all their runes of strength and speed were still active.

No, the cause of their lethargy in all their forms was universal, they all mourned their losses. It was a dark trial, one they couldn't simply shrug off. All of them were quiet within, festering in the crushing silence of their mind. Not one of them dared speak.

Nothing could replace what they'd lost, nothing at all. But their mind was so empty, so lonely. They needed new totems to fill the gaps, to be made whole again. The silence would drive them to madness, otherwise. So, with reluctance, they took a step forward and stole themselves to move as they dragged their heavy, armored body through the rubble.

With their massive jaws and clawed feet, they began to dig through the debris of brick and soot. They needed a temporary form, one capable of crafting totems. For that, they would need to use devour on one of the ithecal they had slain. So they continued to dig and search for all the Ithecal bodies they could.

[Varthakh]

Before long, they'd gathered all the Ithecal they could find; or the majority of what was left of the bodies. The crumbling buildings had not been kind to the lizards, especially the smaller ones. The larger of the species seemed much less damaged than the smallest, which they found curious.

Through examining the bodies, they found that there were three separate species of ithecal. There was the smallest with thin scales and dextrous, clawless fingers. They found their bodies far more flexible and easier to move around as they dragged them through the beach, though they found that their scales tore far easier in their jaws than any of the other species. There was the middle-men, who weren't quite the largest, but had thick bodies with large arms, they appeared stockier than the largest ones and smallest ones alike. Their scales were tough and much less easy to accidentally tear while they were dragging them, then there were the largest members of the species with v-shaped jaws, likely the strongest, too.

They had a broad choice of totems to take, but the decision was obvious which species Fridgar would take. They crawled forward, then bit into one of the legs of a Wyvarnth Ithecal, the smallest variant. Fridgar was taking this totem expressly for creating totems, the larger variants were too large to work their fingers intricately.

Strong jaws crushed the bone within the foot and broke the limb from the body with significant ease. They began to chew the dusty appendage with their powerful jaws and crunched the bone with tremendous force. Once satisfied, they lifted their head and swallowed the pulp of meat, scale and bone fragment. Once it was in their stomach, they cast devour, and the foreign material dissolved quickly. They used the sovereign substances as a reference and pulled them onto their current form.

They shrunk massively and their skeleton changed shape and size. Their whole form rippled as the crocodilian took a more humanoid form on the sand, then settled into place as the thirty-trill transformation finished.

It had been perhaps two arcs since they'd taken a new form, a shape that they weren't familiar with. It had been so long since a new voice entered their mind; since a new personality joined the collective, and this one sung songs of honor, pride, and strength. Something about the form resonated with their spark, though what that was remained unclear. The Protean reached to their head and felt their long jaws, which stretched outward from their face. They opened their mouth and licked about their teeth with their tongue while they felt their individual teeth with their clawless fingers. There, they found a pair of fangs that seemed suspiciously venomous in their experience with reptiles.

They were quite well adjusted to having their mouth so far from their eyes, but it would take some time to adjust to the shape of the jaws. Carefully, the protean pressed into their feet and rose to their full height. They were far taller than Fridgar, due to their mutation. They stood a full eight feet with an additional nine inches tall. the ground didn't normally look so far away while they stood on two legs. They tensed then as something brushed along their leg. With wide eyes, they bent forward and pressed their chest to their unbent knees to behold their tail, which curled slightly around their leg.

They blinked, then experimented with various muscles in their posterior before they found that they could, in fact, move their tail. It took some concentration at first, but they could quite firmly grasp their own leg with it. Already, they were learning so much about this species. Their scales were white with red runes carved into their arms and legs, just as Fridgar had been. They reached behind themselves and took hold of their tail at the base. It was wide and took up the majority of their posterior, but tapered as it stretched outward.

"Testing," they said with a distinct voice. It was drier than Fridgar's, coarse as though they were hissing or croaking as they spoke. It was also feminine in tone and pitch. Fridgar's sense of smell was gone, there wasn't a way for them to identify the gender of the Ithecal before taking them as a totem. they rolled their eyes, then hazarded to move their feet. With a soft exhale, they turned, then walked across the beach to fetch their domain bag, which laid in the scorched scraps of their old war outfit.

They gazed at the scene, the spot that Fridgar had died, before they turned and returned to the ithecal. They had to find some males of the species, and their resolve helped stop them from thinking of the situation.

[Alistair]

Fridgar

Knowledges

Becoming: Devour.
Becoming: Devour: An ability which allows you to turn into something by eating the materials needed to make a totem.
Becoming: Devour: Using the ability to become something with opposable thumbs, thus, able to create more totems.
Becoming: Devour: Devouring Ithecal parts.
Becoming: Devour: Could be used to obtain the three sovereign substancesto make a totem of later.
Meditation: Easier without as many totems.

-

Ithecal: Have three sub-species
Ithecal: All subspecies have their own strengths
Ithecal: Hard to tell gender without a strong sense of smell
Ithecal: Wyvarnth: Double jointed
Ithecal: Wyvarnth: Thin scales
Ithecal: Wyvarnth: Potentially venomous fangs
Ithecal: Wyvarnth: Prehensile tail
Ithecal: Wyvarnth: No claws
Ithecal: Wyvarnth: The smallest of the Ithecal species

Loot: N/A
Injuries: N/A
Renown: N/A

Points 10

Comments: Due to the extreme backlog of threads in need of review, I won't currently be leaving comments in order to save some time. Please PM me if you have any questions and enjoy your rewards!

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