#the enemies in this world being actual cultists and not just shadows - they bleed and go down

[the-kipsabian]

Alan Wake 2 Gameplay Reveal

[nixalegos]

With Good Intentions

AUTHORS NOTE: I put a read more, as this story blurb has alot of squick in it, and it’s also likely my LONGEST story to boot, and nobody wants their dashboard cluttered up. Body horror, death, all that. Darker then usual for me, maybe not for most of you, but wanted to give the heads up anyway.

Somewhere in Jade Forest

“Never had to knock to be let in before, why is the whole town locked up and boarded?” He asked as he was finally let inside. “Oh, we’ve got troubles.” The barkeep said with his warbling tone, the Jinyu who owned the joint coming to double lock the door behind the familiar warlock. “One of the gatherers came back running, saying a dark ripple was spiralling in an open field, not less than half a day away.” They explained. “A dark portal? Is that why the call came out for the willing to get to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms? Are void portals forming on Pandaria? What of the Shado-Pan, surely you called for their help.” The hooded elf said as he pulled back a chair at the bars slightly damp counter. “Oh sure, sure, the mayor did...but they didn’t say when they’d be able to help.” Nix considered, the Shado-Pan were notoriously curt and dismissive of outsiders, and not without reason...and if a general call for -anyone- to come aid the Golden Fields...it was likely Pandarias shadowy defenders were already out-manned and unable to respond to something as petty as a small village way out on the coast. The hooded man looked at the Jinyu who for the first time since he met them, nervously washed and cleaned a glass, over and over. Such expressions had only recently been seen, the fear of the Sha manifesting from such negative emotions more than enough reason to suppress such displays in the past. “We’re just a fishing village..” “Tell you what, I’ll go check it out, make sure nothing crawled out, see if I can’t close it.” “You will?!” The jinyu replied, hope in their tone. “Sure, and in exchange, you have an order of that fried calamari waiting for me, alright?”

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“Oh hells, thats a larger portal then I expected.” Nix said outloud. “I’m measuring seven by six, and it’s stable.” He said as he clamped the spyglass shut to look over to where his Shivarra was still cloaked by magic. “But no cultists, no monsters...no ritual implements. Thoughts?” “Reality is weaker than you imagined, and whatever is going on in this Valley you were suppose to head to is a dire situation that is starting to spill out as far as out here, like ripples in water.” He grumbled and looked back they way they’d come, to the lush rich healthy greens that gave the forest its name. Then back towards the portal. “I keep my bargains.” “You should abandon such foolishness.” Nix considered the demons chastisement, then looked back again. “What better way to cause havoc then opening a second front with only civilians in your way? If a single void creature crawls out via this hole who knows what ruin they’ll bring after finding it. No. I’m shutting it down.” He said with an air of finality. “How, you said it was stable?” The demon said as it strode after its master. “I’m going to go in and sabotage whatever is keeping it open on the other side. There’s nothing out here powering it.” “You are not one of the Faithful, you’ll go mad.” The demon stated. Nix scoffed. “Still think the Big S had the right idea huh? Protected you from the nightmares? Weird to think we actually share an enemy.” “My first coven sisters died being dragged into such a portal, I am not following suit to die along a mortal fool I want to gut myself.” The demoness snarled with contempt dripping in its voice. “I can’t summon Negatrax to hold this end. Anyone else who stumbles on this portal with a Voidlord standing guard might do something stupid. You at least can’t be seen and the portal is still more a curiosity than a threat, and Vilynn would throw herself to follow me, which does me little good if the portals set to close behind me.” He explained. “So what is your plan?” The demon countered. “I jump in, destabilize it just on the other side. If it starts to close early, you reach in, and pull me out.” “And if there is the might of the Void on the other side?” “Then I leap out and we warn the village to evacuate.” Nix looked over himself, gauntleted hands roaming over his gear, double and triple checking his armaments. “Ok. Here goes nothing.” He stepped forward.

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Somewhere....Other

He was expecting shadows. Nightmares. Monsters. What he wasn’t expecting was stone walls that seemingly reached higher than the sky. He wheeled around..only to be met with another wall boxing him in. There was no portal to jump out by. “Oh fuck me.” He swore to himself as he realized he just how much trouble he might be in. He raised his hands, fingers curling as he sought to cast his own magics back to the real world. And nothing happened. He reached for his emergency teleporter. It wouldn’t turn on. His dimension rippers too bore no power. Even his hearthstone lacked its normal cooling blue glow. He was stuck. He turned around and slowly, carefully made his way down that seemingly unending corridor.

Hours passed. Even his pocket watch, the first gadget he’d built and been proud of had frozen still. He tried to keep time by counting in his head. He soon realized that the hall bore an end, but it was a maze, an oubliette, lefts and rights and over again.

Hours turned to days by his best guess, and it wasn’t until hunger drove him so that he made due with lichen that clung to those too high walls, and fetid water that pooled in low spots on the stone floors to soothe his thirst. He gagged, his body tried to hurl it back up, but it clung and slid into his gullet like lead. But it wasn’t enough after the week mark. 

Even starving, he walked, he was half tempted to chew some of his own flesh clean off, if it meant keeping the hunger down long enough to get out. Something had to be keeping him here, something had to be aware enough to keep his magics and means from working.

That was when the torture started. Light filled his vision. Colors that were -wrong- somehow. Colors the warlock had never seen before, never considered possible danced and strobed and cavorted inside his eyes, penetrating his thoughts, and as he discovered as he tried to sleep, his dreams. His hands covered his eyes and it did nothing. He slammed his head against the wall for unconsciousness and it did nothing, even as he felt his blood running down his face still those foul colors were all around him, forcing him to walking by feeling the closest wall for support. ‘Do you remember how many of our Eyes you blinded?’ A voice just like Nix’s said in his mind. The warlock, throat too dry to scream gave a dry hack, and he fell to the stone floor as his vision returned after days of being flooded with light. He sputtered and tried to push himself up, tried to blink the memory of those awful distortions away.

The sound of a hundred hundred goblin designed cannons went off next to his head when he realized he couldn’t cry, leaving him falling back onto the stone floor. ‘Do you remember the words you silenced from the mouths of our Speakers?’ That voice said, louder now. Loud discordant sounds flared and whizzed and banged in staccato misrhythm. Worse was when they stopped, and snarls and chattering sounds of claws scraped along the floor behind him, half starved warlock limping his way faster despite how tired he was. He didn’t want to stop and let the sounds catch up to him, knowing in his heart it was worse then moving forward. Time passed, and Nix shuffled his way onto stone colder than the crispest mountaintop. The air so frigid his breath spooled out in white waves, and his lungs hurt from trying to take it in. Only to stumble into a literal oven. Despite the fact the stone corridor never changed, showed no heat distortions, he knew his flesh was cracking from the temperature. ‘Do you remember how many of our hands you broke?’ The voice taunted now.

“I’ll kill you.” The warlock whispered between cracked and bleeding lips, still going forward despite the effort.

A day, or a month had passed. It was impossible to tell when he stumbled upon the others. A woman holding two bundles in her arms stood with her back to him. Despite knowing it was a trick. Despite knowing it would hurt him he reached up, tried to call out, to hail them.

The woman turned around, both it, and the ‘children’ it held were faceless. Nix stopped then, paralyzed on his journey for the first time at the otherness they radiated. A sickening parody of something that itched in the back of his mind, like Deja Vu. The children melded into piles of bloodied jelly and teeth as the thing pretending to be a woman glowed from the center of her forehead, red hot. Its skin turning to ash around the new thumb sized hole in its head, flaking away and floating towards him. He tried to lift his arms up to cover his face, but his gauntlets were too heavy for him now to react in time. He could only meekly sputter to keep the remains off his lips and chin. ‘Yes, kill is all you do isn’t it.’ The voice said again. ‘It’s all you ever wanted to do.’ The stone floor and high walls suddenly weren’t. He was free falling, his ash covered limbs splayed helplessly. Even the dark was wrong, the inky blackness he was streaking down was off color, echos of that first torture glimpsed in that midnight that he prayed was delusions brought on by adrenaline, the oily rainbow caught in a storm drain. ‘If you do not serve us, then we will hollow you out...and let the new you crawl out.’ That voice boomed in mocking parody of Nix’s own. He was falling faster now. Dust perhaps, slapped and strung across his paper thin skin to leave dots of his blood trailing behind him. His robes slowly, grew tattered, flecked, ripped by the micro impacts of invisible objects too tiny to possibly see. If they even existed. ‘We will give you purpose.’ The voice Nix couldn’t tell was his own head or not said as he landed in water. He knew he tried to scream as his legs broke upon impact the pain had been so great. ‘We will fill you with vision’. The escaping content of his lungs was the only screen he had from a sickening gaunt face staring back from those liquid depths. Its eyes a frenzied red, but its face...was the same one Nix had seen in every mirror, but drained, withered and thin. A mockup of flesh and skin that clung cheaply to the bone under it, but not mistakable for anyone else. ‘We will give share our words with you to speak’. A tendril of mightnight the color of oil slithered up and pried the warlocks mouth open, its tip gripping his tongue. He felt pincers cut his frenulum and insect like legs crawled along the inside of his mouth from that oily tentacle. He wanted to thrash. He wanted to fight back. Some instinctive animal part of him tried. Other whip thin shadows now raced up to join the first, hideous abominations of tendril and eyeless piranha and beetles, coiled and bit into his flesh. Each one nibbling and devouring in tiny all too painful bites from sphincter like mouths with too many teeth. ‘You cannot fathom how long we have waited for this’ The voice spoke so loudly in his mind he couldn’t think straight. ‘You’ve barely touched what eternity feels like’. Nix’s eyes widened in horror as he tasted meat upon his tongue as one tendril burrowed into his stomach with a sickening glee that wasn’t his own. He was being fed the taste of his own entrails, and the enjoyment the tendrils had for it. He couldn’t even weep nor drown properly as that gaunt face floated closer, more flush with stolen vitality. You will soon be me, don’t struggle. It’s not as if a single soul would have ever come to rescue -you-.’ That self same voice said smugly. He lacked the strength to even bite down on the crawling horror filling his mouth, no last biting remarks, no threats. He felt himself convulsing from the pain the bites and their psychic torment was inflicting, that sick gooey rush of pleasure from his own flesh. He was going to die here, alone, forgotten at best… And at worst another monster to be killed on the other side. A strong hand gripped him by the shoulder, narrowly by chance alone not grabbing where a tendril dug in, hauled with infernal strength. The gaunt face contorted in sheer rage and bellowed “NOOOOOOO” as Nix was dragged out. The shivarra grunted as she retched her...screaming, convulsing, sweating master from the closing portal to the glades lush floor, the shadowy edges of manifested darkness swallowing upon itself shut. Only to look and see he was throwing up what looked like coffee grounds...and a thin line of blood from his nose. Every one of his gadgets blaring in warning, discharging and failing and then she realized as Azeroth faded from their perception, his grip on her the only link she had to Azeroth, that she was back in the Nether…what had happened? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Jade Forests northern climbs was rustled with a cool breeze and the occasional falling leaf. The corpse, clad in dark purple robes laid there undisturbed until pin pricks of light started to show in the sky. The corpse coughed, sputtered, and wretch on itself as what was dead by foresight of magic alone brought it back to the world of the living. He tried to scream as he awoke, but could do little more then empty the contents of his stomach onto himself, and collapse on his side into the pile of dried long dead grass that encircled him. He spat his mouth clear of backwashed acid, and reached for his stomach...where he was whole, even his robes, despite their foulness, was still intact. The man lay there, and tentatively checked the rest of his body between breaths. He rolled over back onto his back and sat up, looking at the nearby corpse of dead trees near the glades edge that met the dead circle he sat in. He reached up and snapped, a flicker of will behind it as hellish fire lit between forefinger and thumb, and was just as quickly dismissed. His tools, intact, but mostly useless. Everything that had boasted a battery was drained. The warlock came to lay back down, grip the dead grass and leaves between his fingers and idly tossed a small handful of them up. He wanted to cry, to scream in rage, to burn everything around him to cinders and soot...but he needed to know. So he dragged himself, half pushing with solid legs up til he back was against the tree, and called upon his only witness to ask a single question. “How long…” He asked as soon as his summon went off. “What do you mean how long, you didn’t go anywhere.” The demon replied. “Didn’t...go?” The warlock asked as his blood ran cold and his stomach dropped. “You leapt in, the portal started to close, I pulled you out. Three, maybe four seconds. Then you seemingly suffered a heart attack, a stroke, and suffering from hypothermia and you died? What happened in there?” The warlocks reply was a half mad laugh, that broke into sobs as he slid onto his side. “Well, get up, you’ve your calamari to collect.” The demon said exasperated. The warlock threw up again in reply. He didn’t leave the glade until the morning light.