Fate and Freedom XVIII: Where All Monsters Go To Die

The Necropolis Boneyard- a gloomy place, where the tormented screeches and howls of lost monsters' souls never ceased, a disjointed cacophony of twisted suffering. It was clear that whatever monsters had been sent here had not been laid to rest.

As the portal closed behind Gale, Mizu, Gigas and Altair, they took in the depressing goulishness of thier surroundings. The sky was a dim green, the colour of mucus, with slowly waving, brighter green ephemera in the sky, not unlike the legendary "Northern Lights" (which none in the and had ever actaully seen). The ground was slightly obsured by a translucent sage-coloured fog, and all that lay before them was bones, bones and more bones. They seemed to be in some kind of coliseum, as huge walls of bones lade like brick (with a disgusting-looking, brown-black muddy substance acting as natural cement) were all they could see in every direction. The floor consisted of the same icky "cement" as the walls, and it squelched with each step they took. The four had spent a few seconds coughing, lie in the dusty justice section of the Citadel in the Lost City, but after those few seconds they had grown accustomed to the thick, foul-smelling smog that blanketed the bleak place. A few rotting monster corpses were sparsely situated around the wide ground area of the "arena"- some where just fully decomposed skeletons, while others were still rotting (which most like played a major part in the stench), and some were even still crawling with worms and maggots (strangely, there were no flies, but the group had assumed that the foul air must be toxic to the fully grown insects).

Suddenly, Gale shrieked in alarm as a frightfully ugly, alabaster worm-like creature, about the length of an average forearm, sprang out of the muddy earth with a high-pitched squeal and latched onto her left leg, oozing slime and pus all over her Kirin X legging(s), it's eyeless face rimmed with sharp, thin fangs, which drooled all over the place. She frantically shook her leg as if kicking th air, desperate to remove this utterly grotesque abomination from her. After a few kicks the thing finally came loose, rocketing through the smog like with a screech. It flew so far throught he air that it evetually faded from view, as the smog further away obsured the view of stright ahead entirely (bar the walls,w hich were quite high), it's unending whine slowly fading away, as if the smog istelf had atually consumed it.

"Ugh! This place is disgusting!" Gale spat, her voice a little higher in both register and loudness, still shocked by the unnaturally large maggot...thing.

"And it stinks like shit, and more!" Gigas said, coughing a couple times- the smell semeed to have intensified when the maggot-worm-thing rupture the earth. There was probably a whole swarm of the creatures below the ground. One or two, they could handle with ease, but ten? Twenty? Thirty? A hundred? A thousand! Who knew what the odds would be if the little things all sprung out of their hovel at once?

"I hope this "rebel leader" arrives soon. This...odour..." Altair began, pausing to mince words to describe the smell, holding his ragged green cloak over the bottom half of his face with his hand, like a vampire trying not to breathe in poison, "...is intensifying by the minute. I fear that, while it may just be an irritant at present, it may be toxic to us if it reaches a substantial intensity. I don't particularly feel like dying in a cesspool of maggots and toxic smog, and I don't think any of you do either."

Suddenly, a wretched howl of prideless agony echoed throughout the entire plane of existence, richocheting off od the walls of the "arena" like a gunshot. It was made ever more terrifying by the layers it consisted of, the same howl over and over, sveral times, as if multiple souls were waling like wolves a second after one another. But it was from one source. And, judging by it's wolven characteristics, the four had an awful, sickly feeling that they were about to find out exactly what that source was.

The group, starteled by the noise, turned thier bodies ninty degrees clockwise sharply, to see a huge wolven creature leap over the bone wall with the same accursed howl that they had heard just moments ago. It's dead flesh had mostly been eaten away, with no blood stains or anything-some places bared bone, while others displayed rotting tissue. Only a select few areas were fully covered with it's usual dark grey fur. It's face was almost like tow sides of a coin-one was covered in fur, albiet very frayed and thin, with some tissue and decaying muscle showing, while the other ahlf was almost entirely sinew and bone, a few tendons intact where the jaw was kept in place, although one or two had rotted away, and the jaw was ever-so-slightly slack and slanted. The left prominent front fang, the two fnags that were larger than the rest of it's teeth, was broken. It's right eye had miraculously remained untouched, pupilless and neon blue, shining with undying rage. It's left, however, was gone, although, judgin by the heavy scratch amrks on the skullt around the rim of the empty socekt, it had been gouged while the creature was still living. It was these trademark facial wounds that made the group gasp in shock and suprise. The rotten monster howled again, the stecnh of a thousand rotting corpses nearly making them pass out as it mixed in with the already nigh on unbearable, sickly green smog of the Necropolis Boneyard.

"That night...in Janguru Forest when we had left Sukai for Chikyuu...!" Gale exclaimed.

"It's...!" Gigas began, but his raw suprise muted him.

"It can't be!" Mizu gasped.

"It is," Altair said flatly, with a tone of melancholy resignation. "It's the Black Beast...the Yamiokami."

To Be Continued in: Fate and Freedom XIX: Abyssmal Vengeance