theredknightstruggler

[theredknightstruggler]

Leap of Faith

    The Maw was a place of the truest hell that Morddred had ever witnessed in both his mortal life and now in his rebirth. There was a pulling feeling inside the Knight’s gut the moment he and his wife stepped foot from out of the rift that Mord tore open in order to bypass the keepers of Oribos. It was a deep feeling that gnawed at his steeled nerves and he was sure Agatha could sense it. She would often give him looks of concern, but he assured her all was well. Before long the Knight found himself standing outside the gateway to the prison known as Torghast. He had heard rumors of such a place from the ethereal traders that he would often run into when traversing the In-Between. They would elaborate on how it was only meant for the most wicked of souls that were thrown into the Maw by the various beings of the Shadowlands. Mord was lost in memory for a moment:  “What makes them free of wickedness to cast such judgement? The denizens of this place are not free of sin. No one is.” The Knight said to the trader. “You ask questions that would get you thrown in there yourself, my friend.” The trader’s essence lit up as he chuckled as something ticked his twisted sense of humor.  The Knight narrows his crimson eyes, “When all worlds and realms are free of wickedness, only then will I rest. Pass this along in your travels, trader.”  

    By the time Morddred brought his focus back from his tugging memory Agatha had disappeared from his side. He was now consumed by the heavy fog that pulled him deep into the halls of Torghast.  “Agatha?” He called out while taking a slow look at his surroundings. There were no walls, no sky or roof overheard; only a metallic floor for the Knight to stride his way across. His footsteps thumped loudly as the only thing he could do now was head forward, or whatever direction he was going in the fog, in order to find Agatha. Only from there would he be able to fully think straight and formulate a plan with her. The concept of time was hard to grasp for the Knight in a place like this. Normally his internal clock was spot on, but in here it felt like there was nothing inside him to keep track of how long he was walking for. “...Red Kni-...” A whisper started to speak in the Knights ear, but before it could even finish Morddred had unlatched Dreyrugr and slammed it into the metallic ground beneath his feet after turning on his heel. The dread axe screamed and was wedged into the now dented metal ground. The Knight’s eyes were strained wide with stress as he normally would not have had such a knee-jerk reaction. His grip on Dreyrugr’s hilt was so tight to the point that his gauntlet trembled ever-so-slightly. There was nothing to be seen. With some effort Morddred hauled the buried axehead from the ground an slung it back under his cloak where the enchanted strappings would wrap around Dreyrugr’s head and seal it away once again. The Knight huffed through his nostrils in annoyance, “My nerves are on edge...” He thought to himself while he turned back around and continued to walk into the clouds of thick fog. 

    There was no telling how long he had been walking for and to the Knight it really had no affect on his physique, but his psyche was certainly taking a toll. An end to the endless wandering seemed to be in sight when Morddred focused his gaze ahead. A rather large grated gate blocked the way. With Agatha on his mind the Knight didn’t waste time and made for the barrier. *Thump, thump, thump, thump* went his steps until he halted and held up a hand to the bars made of an unknown metal. Mord wrapped his hand around one of the bars and gave it a firm shake and then another one with his other hand for good measure. “This will take some effort and time.” He exhaled through his flared nostrils like an annoyed bull. The Knight took a few steps back and crossed his arms over his chest to think how he would proceed from here. It wasn’t long into his planning before he heard the pitter pattering of two bare feet behind him. The flopping of bare feet against the metal ground got louder little by little and right when he felt the presence upon him he turned! His cloak swooshed loudly as he turned and his crimson glare was met with that of a child.  

    She stood in ragged clothes with a wispy essence reeking off of her. “Have you seen me mum, sir?...” Morddred said nothing. “Sir?...Please, me mum!  I miss her!” Tears welled in the child’s eyes. After a long moment of silence and glaring the Knight spoke, “No child of my world has four fingers and eight toes on their limbs.” His frayed nerves at least didn’t affect his perception.  “But sir...We just want our mum...Please sir...” The tears that welled in child’s eyes now trickled down her cheeks in streams of black ooze. Her hair began to fall out in clumps as she sobbed and her voice became more and more distorted with the sound of several other feet pitter pattering behind her. The child’s fingernails extended out into several inch long claws along with her toenails and her mouth was now a row full of fanged teeth. A dozen or so of them rolled up behind the original that first approached the Knight, all of them staring with wide dilated eyes. The other-worldly stand off was buried under a heavy silence until one child stepped forward, and than another, and another....They began to swarm him. 

    “Help, Help, Help, Us, Us, Us, Sir, Sir, Sir...” They all repeated until it turned into screeches of hunger. One leapt and clung to the Knight’s backside where Dreyrugr was strapped into and began to snap its jaws on Dreyrugr’s hilt. “Mmmm..Yummy!” The pure Anima that the runeaxe was made of may as well have been a holiday feast with all the trimmings to these gutterlings. Mord reached up and snagged it by the nape of its neck. It flailed and clawed at the Knight’s armored forearm like a deranged cat, but it was unable to even put a scratch on the pure Saronite plate. “Be free of your curse.” Morddred mumbled as he raised the creature up and promptly slammed it face-first into the ground. Black blood splattered across his boots as the gutterling’s skull was completely caved in like a dropped cantaloupe. Seeing this only threw the others into a blind range and they all jumped the Red Knight at once. One on each leg, one on each arm, two on his back, and several others scampering to get a piece of that Anima if they could. Morddred grunted and flailed to just get some space away from them, but they clung on for dear  life as their bellies rumbled empty. He managed to slam his back up against the large gate behind him and squeezed the two on his back until their skeletons cracked and squished through the bars from the sheer weight and strength of the twiceborn. 

   He slammed his right foot into the ground and shook off the one  munching at his armor’s straps that kept it in place, but it clung right back to him within seconds. “Not good.” He thought to himself, knowing he had a bit of time before his armor would be stripped away by these gutterlings. An image of Agatha battling crossed his mind and it sent a surge of emotion up his spine. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up and Dreyrugr began to awaken to aid its master. A gory symphony halted the  munching of the creatures as bone spikes impaled each of their chests except for two that leaped off the Knight before he could catch them. The remaining ones that were impaled started to have their forms drained of essence. Their pale-skinned bodies soon fell to the ground as a loose bag of skin and bones. There he stood surrounded by loose skin and bone, his crimson eyes glaring with raw power as Dreyrugr started to funnel its essence into the Knight. Runes across his armor began to pulse and glow as well, but the Morddred was still in control. The bone spikes retracted back until they were just barely visible across his upper body armor. “You’re mean, sir...MEAN!” The remaining pair of gutterlings screeched. A rumbling in the distance made the pair turn around and look, “Oh...Mummy’s here...Hehe...” 

      The pair joined hands and scampered towards the rumbling, leaving the Knight to wallow in the black blood that pooled from his feet and directly into Dreyrugr that he has yet to unsheathe. Quite quickly the grotesque sight of an amalgamation of flesh and bone with an army of gutterlings at its flanks was rushing the Knight! “There must be hundreds...” He said to himself while shaking his head. “Too many.” He turned and looked back to the gate that had those two gutterlings wedged between the bars. Mord reached up and grabbed Dreyrugr’s hilt to unleash it from its bindings, letting the runeaxe scream with freedom. With it being recently fed the Knight could feel his body being fed that raw life essence; his muscles enlarged, his reflexes felt sharper, and his focus was almost robotic. He lowered his stance and brought the runeaxe into two hands, closing his eyes and mustering up all the emotion he could even under the stress of an army trampling towards him. There it was, that feeling he was looking for, “You will not stand in my way of her.” The dreaded axe screamed through the air as the Knight cleaved with life essence whisping off the axehead. The bars fell loudly to the ground and a traversable sized opening was made in the gate. Morddred quickly ducked through with runeaxe in hand and began to lightly run away from the gate. 

    The army SLAMMED against the large gate with ‘Mummy’ at the head of the charge. A large mass of the gutterlings were just squished under the weight of their siblings behind them, but the ones at the very front began to funnel through the opening that Morddred created. Soon the few turned to many and they all began to crawl through the hole. Seeing this only sped up the Knight’s hustle, turning his light run into a full sprint away from the army. The heavy Saronite-plate clad Knight sounded like a locomotive  running on all the coal it had in its reserves. He huffed and puffed, but even he could not outrun such a vast foe. The metallic ground beneath him was coming to an end as he looked off ahead of him and saw a disruption in the walkway. A sheer drop separated one side of the walkway from the other. There was no way for him to tell from this distance how far the jump would be, but at this point he didn’t have much of a choice. He slipped Dreyrugr back into its sheath under his cloak, closing both of his hands and pumping himself into an inhuman sprint given how heavy he was in armor. Power began to course through every inch of the Red Knight that sourced from Dreyrugr and with a grunt of extreme effort Morddred pushed himself off the edge of the walkway on a full sprint. From the perspective of the charging army the Knight disappeared once he leaped...he didn’t appear to make it to the other side. 

    The leader of the gutterling army lodged itself through the hole regardless of it being much large than the opening. Its mass squished through as if it had no bones of its own and was reformed to its two-legged state once it was on the other side. It pointed one of its limbs forward to signal the army to charge the leaping Knight and with Morddred came a wave of gutterlings falling to their doom into the endless depths of Torghast. Panning up from the fallen gutterlings the Knight could be seen clung by one hand to the other side of the walkway’s edge. He grunted and struggled to get a firm grip with a single hand as his other hand strained up inch by inch. Morddred gritted his teeth until he heard his jaw pop and at last his other hand had a hold on the edge. With both hands he’s able to more easily pull himself up and stand at the edge of the walkway to look back at the eerily still army. The gutterlings all foamed through their fanged mouths, but they stood still and made space for ‘Mummy’ to come through. Flesh and bone flopping over each other can be heard as the large creature approached the edge and took a few deep whiffs of the Knight’s permeating essence. She let out a guttural roar and spat out bits of organ and blood that were clung to her teeth. With no way to cross the leader turned back around and slithered from whence they came. Mord watched the army and their leader disappear into the thick fog, but off in the distance above on an upper floor the Knight could see a figure standing in an opening.  Apart from the outline of an armored figure there wasn’t much Mord could make of it until it had walked off away from the opening. “Morddred...” Agatha’s voice chimed out of thin air. Mord narrowed his eyes and turned around to continue on his way through the fog. She was still somewhere in Torghast, that much was for certain and hearing her voice just then confirmed it. The Red Knight disappeared into the fog away from the climax of his escape and back into the hell that was Torghast. 

   Some time had passed since the Knight’s leap of faith and standing at the edge of where he lept was the armored figure he saw in the distance. A hood and cloak covered most of the figure and only the slit of it’s helmet gave off any semblance of someone inside the armor as a pair of white glowing eyes looked across to where Morddred jumped. The figure knelt down and brushed its leather-gloved hand over the broken edge. “He’s strong you know...” A voice strung up behind the armored figure. A row of fanged teeth flashed as the mysterious Venthyr floated in his hooded robes. No response came. “You hate him, yet you’re just like him. Silent, brooding. Annoying.” The Venthyr flicked a dismissive hand before fading into ash. The armored figure stood and turned away to march off, the thick black-steel shield strapped to its backside bearing a faded sigil of an era long past; a closed fist that no longer held its crimson color, but the meaning of it the same nonetheless. 

An enemy for another day, the struggle of the Red Knight continues in his efforts to bring balance back to all realms. Does the Knight really drive his own fate or is he merely a pawn of the threads of destiny?

@agathadalkeron​

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

i think the ideal life form is a fat paleolithic horse. just a tremendous, rotund equine. when i see one of those round motherfuckers painted on a cave wall i know that life is worth living

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

Badass

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

[theredknightstruggler]

Preparations

     The Knight gazed down at with concern at Agatha’s face as she seemed to be struggling with some kind of internal problem within her psyche. Her face scrunched and tears streamed from her eyes, but the Knight held her firm to his Saronite breastplate while he sludged through the think marsh of Drustuvar. After what seemed like hours of trudging Morddred saw a cave in the distance that looked like it hadn’t been occupied in quite some time. The wet sound of boots dragging through the marsh faded and now the heavy echo of his steps stomping on the stone floor of the cave’s entrance filled his hears. The Knight stopped for a moment to listen for anything that might be stirring deep within the cave itself. Suddenly a low growl comes from deep within the abyss of the darkness, but Morddred held firm; ever stalwart in the face of any danger, even if he couldn’t see it.  

      A glowing pair of eyes being refracted from the moonlight teetering into the cave showed themselves to the Knight and behind them was a hulking mass of fur that stomped towards Mord and Agatha. Heavy breathing followed with each step until the face of an elder bear was face-face with the Red Knight. Patches of his fur were starting to turn grey and the age showed in his cloudy eyes as he met the gaze of those glowing red eyes of Morddred. The two hulking figures stood in silence as they gauged each other only standing mere feet apart from each other. The bear gave out a tired yawn and turned away from the pair before returning back to the the very far reaches of the cave. A mutual respect was formed between two in their few moments of silence, but as the bear disappeared out of the sight, the Knight focused his eyes on its life essence that lingered in the air. “He is dieing....Hm.” Morddred dipped his head forward with respect as he heard the last of the bear’s steps bring him to his domain in the back of the cave. “Rest well, old one.” His deep voice grumbled out. The Knight gingerly set Agatha down against the cave wall, unclipping his worn cloak from his backside and draping it over her. “I’ll be back, Agatha...” His eyes lingered on her, but then into the darkness where the elder bear had slumped back into. “Keep her safe for me.” He would say before turning to leave the cave with Dreyrugr strapped to his back. 

       The Knight returned after about a half hour of gathering several large logs and small bits of kindling wrapped up with a bit of rope and he wasted no time in getting a fire started as the cold knight began to settle in and the residual warmth of the cave was fading. A roaring fire soon lit up the cave entrance and warmth enveloped the two sitting by it. The Knight would remove his helmet and set it down by the fire, joining Agatha’s side by the cave wall where it would be the warmest. His long dark hair draped down now that it wasn’t bunched up in his helmet and the grime of a tiring day showed on his grizzled face. His mind was racing with what he had seen in the Shadowlands while he stared into the crackling fire, trying to come up with a plan, but there were too many risks with each scheme he tried to come up with. Agatha stirred against him as she fought through her internal struggle and the Knight in turn wrapped his arm around her so that she could feel him beside her.

      “Morddred...” He heard her voice finally whisper out with ears in her eyes. A smile came across his lips, “Hello, love. Welcome back...” His larger hand engulfed over hers. “Prepare yourself Agatha Scytheel, the world will be in need of us now more than ever.” He pointed off to the sky in the very far distance of the North. Ripples of reality being shredded could be seen over what was presumed to be Icecrown. “The sky has opened and hell has come with it.” He narrowed his eyes on the tear into the Shadowlands. “We will have to make decisions we never thought we’d have to....Are you ready?” The Red Knight looks down at his soulmate with a fire lit behind his crimson eyes, a fire that would be snuffed by anything that would dare cross him.  

[theredknightstruggler]