Zain
As he moves back between the rising flats of Pangea's canyons his pit less eyes are vigilant. He needs the perfect place to raise such a shrine for his God.
His gaze follows the layered rock that surrounds him. Finding a beauty in the way the earth had been crushed to create the various colored veins. He wonders which layers were stained with his own blood. Which ones he poured his legacy into.
When he reaches a fork he stops, considering just which path to now follow. There is a slight unnerving twist in his gut, and he thinks it to be an otherworldly pull to the left. The left was always the wayward choice, right?
There is no thought in his consciousness that indicates him to a sickness brewing within him. That the feelings he was having were not that of his purpose, but of a cellular manifestation of disease coursing through his sickly appearing form..
Rounding a bend in the rocky outcrop the land begins to ascend as the walls around him become shallower. His steps, slow with intent, draw him out of the suffocating confines of the stone hedges and out onto the barren plains.
He stops, looking right and then panning to the left. The flat desolate earth is dusty and dead. It creeps a smile onto his lips just as a shadow begins to circle around him. He looks skyward, finding a large black buzzard inspecting him hungrily. A scuff erupts from his lips in a sort of snicker. He was neither dead nor dying, so he thinks.
It is in that upward view that he sees a capacious tabletop plateau in the distance. “Perfect,” he sneers as again he finds a steady pace within his long stride; each hoof cuts an imprint into the crusted surface.
The spring Pangea sun was a bit more brutal today, he thinks as he moves across the open terrain. Not even thorny brush offered shade as he traversed the lands. Sweat began to froth across his gaping wounds, dripping a thick yellow substance that dried to a crust along what remained of his bay coat. Flies begin to congregate, but he hardly takes note as his focus is elsewhere.
Soon he finds himself at the base of the raised platform. He stops, appraising it for a moment. Tasting its worthiness on his tongue. It wasn't too tall, an acceptable height to drag an unwilling victim up. Conveniently a conjoining elevation of land stretches from its top, curling around its pedestal and leveling off to the cracked desert soil.
His eye catches the vulture now perching itself on the edge as a silent omen. He nods as if Carnage himself had manifested into the scavenger and was confirming the location.
Maneuvering around the structure and coming to the bottom of the stone path he looks up with a devious grin. The breeze picks up as he approaches the incline, casting away the stench of his festering wounds.
As he climbs to the top his breath becomes shallow and labored. Not unexpected for such an incline but definitely not normal for the undead thing. He shrugs it off though fore nothing would stop him from completing his higher purpose.
Reaching the top he pauses to steady the rattling in his chest. His red glowing eyes were a bit dimmer than customary for the bay stag. An indication that all is not well. He feels the piercing eyes of the vulture upon him, like a cougar waiting for the right moment to bounce upon its prey.
Suddenly he feels it, the heat, the infection, the breathlessness. He had been so distracted by his ambitions that he hadn't felt the disease sweeping through him. But atop the plateau, the air now stagnant and suffocating, he can smell the vile stench of the worsening wounds. He can hear the crackle in his lungs, feel the weight in his chest. He coughs, trying to relieve the building pressure. Blood spatters from his mouth, landing upon the stone of His altar.
He thinks of the layers of blood tinted rock of the canyons, and the layers that held his own. This would be a new legacy to add to that of Pangea, the dark Gods kingdom. And then his thoughts go to his servitude to his God. Was this another test? Surely it was all some part of a grander plan. He would not be forsaken, not when he was such a loyal subject.
A faintness begins to consume his mind but not before he sees the dark shadow of something lurching nearer. That's when his knees buckle and his body crumbles to the dusty slab of rock. Blood and pus seeping into the layers of Pangea as he lay there upon the sacrificial altar. He would be the first of many he is sure of it…
---
Death had come for him that day and he had been all too eager to give his blood to Carnage and Pangea. Little did he know that the creature that had watched him, that had descended upon him, was not about to let him go so easily. The shadowed figure reaches for his soul before it slips into the black nothingness of hell. Dragging it back and sewing it securely into his festering body.
You're not finished yet Zain. Return to the land of the living and bring forth the sacrifices in which you promised. You will be given an eternity as long as you spend it in servitude to the underworld.
There is a surge of energy that courses through his body, awakening him to the world just as it had been before he collapsed. Lifting his head, he looks across the stone flat to where the buzzard had been sitting in wait. It is not there.
His legs gather beneath him, lifting him from the ashes. The wounds across his body no longer festered with infection of disease, the only hint that he had returned by a magical force.
Word Count: 1003
Combined thread posts word count: 2,020
The disease Oaks created kills him on the altar he has claimed for the dark God Carnage. Is resurrected by a mythical vulture.
Possesses health transference
and may steal your health.