Kora: Also 13, Xellous' wife. She's currently pregnant after being raped by her (now dead) father Altus, and owns a ridiculously powerful bow called Pyra, made for her by Xellous. She killed the Behemoth of the Apocalypse with Xellous' help, so she's feeling pretty good about herself.
Pyra: Kora's bow, made for her by Xellous. it is capable of vaporizing practically anything.
Telos: A man from another place, another time. He's currently mortally wounded from his fight with the Behemoth.
Michael: Kora's younger brother. He'd summoned a Flammeous Lad before, but has no memory of doing so. He just walked up to Xellous and proclaimed that he knew the truth about his mother, Threen, and currently has her at knife point. He wants to summon his brother, Charles, who is now a Flammeous Lad, to deal with Threen.
Threen: Kora's and Michael's mother. Michael claims she killed her firstborn, Charles.
Ikuinen Lampo: The star of the local area, who had sacrificed herself to keep the area from crawling with undead (referred to as a Rot Zone). She has made Xellous her champion. She lives in the Observatory, which is the center of her power.
Seeing the black aura possessing Michael Xellous declared that he was done with seeing his family be messed with. He reached out toward Michael, star metal stone in hand, and tried to exorcise Michael. A force far more powerful than Xellous repelled him, holding its ground. Xellous charged Michael and tackled him. Xellous hit Michael in the chest with the star stone, demanding the Khen-Zai leave Michael immediately.
The black aura flew away, forming into a smaller, black version of the red Khen-Zai Xellous had fought earlier. It removed its mask, to reveal a shifting, horrific mess. Everyone froze in place but Xellous, who charged the Khen-Zai with the stone. He stopped it from breaking Pyra by shoving the stone in its face. Repelled, the Khen-Zai dropped Pyra, grabbed Kora, and began to phase out of the material plane with her. Xellous tried to restrict the Khen-Zai's aura like he did with the red Khen-Zai, but the black Khen-Zai was far too strong and Xellous failed.
The Khen-Zai took Kora. She was gone.
Xellous fell to his knees. Tears streamed down his cheeks. After a moment he stood up, wiped his eyes, and vowed to save Kora, no matter where she was. The rest of the world snapped back into focus. Threen was screaming and crying, tearing out her hair and clawing at her face. Xellous glared at her, and Threen stopped.
Michael told Xellous that Threen had drowned his big brother, Charlie. The Khen-Zai had shown Michael. Xellous told Michael, over Threen's sobs, that there was more to that story. The Khen-Zai had set up everyone, manipulating them into this horror. Why Michael thought the Khen-Zai were telling him the truth was beyond Xellous. He then told Michael and Threen he was going to rescue Kora. Michael told Xellous he was coming with him, and Threen said she was coming too. Xellous told both of them no, that there needed to be a home to go back to. Xellous and Telos would come back.
As they loaded the unconscious Telos onto a stretcher, Threen told Xellous she had adored Charlie. She wasn't conscious when he died, but only came back to afterwards. She saw him drifting down the river, face down. His legs, which almost never stopped moving, were still. She told him to get the fiends that had done this to her family. Xellous nodded.
They took Telos to Ikuinen Lampo's Observatory. News of the Behemoth's advent and demise had spread quickly, and The Observatory was only too happy to take in one of the heroes of the event. They gave Xellous a place to sleep as they tended to Telos.
Xellous was back inside The Observatory, standing opposite Ikuinen Lampo; she was crying. Lampo told Xellous that she was sorry for the ripping apart of his family. Xellous asked to know everything, to finally understand the big picture. Lampo apologized for not telling him all she knew at first, but she thought he'd want to focus on saving his family, that saving the world wasn't exactly something he should have had on his plate.
Xellous saw Threen, her pitch black aura identical to Michael's, drowning Charles. Charles loved his mother, through all the confusion, the pain, the awfulness until the end.... and then something snapped in the little soul, and he became a Flammeous Lad. One can only take so much betrayal before breaking. Xellous was then shown a Lad subduing his mother.
The Flammeous Lad ate his mother.
Xellous was then flown out of the world. He was looking at a giant disc, held up by red and white titans. A red titan grew up on the disk and stepped off, walking toward a white titan. He ripped the white titan open and stepped within its corpse. The area above the red titan became a rot zone. Xellous saw millions of undead rise from their graves and massacre the living. And above the frozen planet, with red and white titans holding up a disc of earth, floating an enormous ship, cold, caring, unfeeling. it was a Khen-Zai ship.
Xellous was back with Lampo again. He told her he would have wanted to have seen it at the beginning of this whole thing. Lampo told him about how the Khen-Zai were trying to return to their home universe. They had been been fighting a foe called The Nameless... and were losing. The reason why the Khen-Zai didn't directly try to take the planet was because their presence would attract The Nameless, who Lampo knew nothing about. They needed to be ready for the Nameless to appear, since the Khen-Zai had come to the planet. Lampo apologized again, but she didn't want to take away his choice beyond saving his family. Xellous told her this was a no-brainer. Smiling, Lampo asked if he'd like to start saving the world.
For those of you confused: a very long time ago the Khen-Zai ruled the known universe, until they encountered The Nameless, a collection of eldritch horrors. They left the material universe to combat The Nameless. Thousands of years later, they have retreated back to the material world... and have found that others have taken over their planet. The Khen-Zai are unable to act directly, as The Nameless have branded the whole race of Khen-Zai and can follow them wherever they directly manifest. Having discovered the Flammeous Lads and the means of their creation (mother drowns son, son returns and eats mother, to support the disc everyone is on) they have decided to create a system where more Flammeous Lads are created. This is because the sanctified earth is deadly to the Khen-Zai, forcing them to exorcise the stars from the earth so that they may live on their land once more.
Underneath the disc is inhospitable and horrifically marred earth. Nothing has gone down there in millennia, marred as it was by The Nameless.
END OF ACT ONE
No comments:
Post a Comment