tanadin: The silhouette of a dragon clinging to the silhouette of a tower against a night sky. The windows of the tower and the eyes of the dragon are lit up. (Default)
[personal profile] tanadin posting in [community profile] mindcracklove
I'm back home! I wrote this chapter after arriving very exhausted, so if it's a bit underwhelming I apologize.
I completely pulled pretty much everything in this out of my ass, so it's kinda weird. Woops.

blah blah blah excuses blah blah blah tired Tanadin blah blah blah here's the chapter in which Vechs and the others have a very bad day. (Damn specific, I know.)

Chapter list: http://tanadin.dreamwidth.org/382.html

Chapter Four

Kingdom of Traz’madar, Mincraftia. September 8, year 373. Time instance 483Z.

It was two whole days before all hell seemed to break loose.

On the morning of September eighth, the Mindcrackers awoke to see great plumes of smoke in the sky on the western horizon. Those that noticed in the early hours of the morning went to find and wake the others, worried.

Paul knocked on Vechs’s door and then, not receiving a reply, came in through the broken upstairs window. He came down the stairs when he didn’t find Vechs in his bed and smiled slightly at what he saw, momentarily forgetting his concern.

Vechs and Aureylian were asleep together on the couch, leaning slightly against each other. Apparently they had fallen asleep and not awoken again to move to their respective sleeping arrangements.

Paul sighed slightly, not wanting to wake them up but knowing that it was necessary.

Before doing so, however, he pulled out his camera (an ingenious invention of Seth’s, one that there were very few existing models of) and snapped a picture.

Perfect.

That done, he slipped it back into his pocket and put a hand on Vechs’s shoulder, gently shaking him awake.
Vechs grumbled and shifted away, swatting at Paul. Aureylian mumbled something and curled into the couch.

“I hate to awaken you two, but there’s something going on out there. Smoke in the sky.”

Vechs quickly came to his senses and sat all the way up. Upon seeing Aureylian he quickly jerked away, turning bright red. “U-uh…”

Aureylian had noticed as well and turned red too, looking away. “Um…”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Smoke. Outside.”

“R-right.” Vechs jumped up, put his helmet on, pushed his goggles over his eyes, made sure his toolbelt was on, and darted outside.

Aureylian looked at Paul with an expression reading ‘please don’t say anything.’

“I have a picture.” Paul said helpfully. Aureylian groaned and followed Vechs out the door. Paul shook his head, amused, before following them out.

He was definitely going to win this bet with Blame.

Vechs was snapped out of his embarrassment when he saw the plumes of smoke in the distance.

“What the hell…”

“Only fires of a massive volume could cause that much smoke.” Paul muttered.

Vechs shot a look at Blame and saw him stiff, eyes locked on the smoke.

“Blame. You okay?”

“Fine.” He paused. “We need to check that out.”

“I don’t know what you guys are doing, but I’m already ready to go.” Jsano pointed out. He was indeed already on a horse with various rescue equipment.

“How the-“

“Wait for me!” Paul hauled himself up on the horse behind Jsano.

“Hang on, you two aren’t going alone.” Chad protested.

“We’ll all come along.” Aureylian reasoned. “Paul, Jsano, you guys go ahead, we’ll catch up.”

“Right.” Jsano nodded before urging the horse ahead, towards the smoke rising in the west.

“Come on!” Blame set off at a jog, the rest of the Mindcrackers scrambling to keep up.


~~~
When they finally reached the source of the flames, they stopped dead, only able to stare at the devastation before them.

They had reached the western Traz’madar border and Vechs suspected that what they saw burning was the small jungle kingdom known as Sunspire. The jungle in the center of the continent was small and entirely encompassed by Sunspire. Not much was known about those that lived within it, and with Vechs’s patchy (at best) education of the world, he wasn’t sure that anyone lived here.

Well, they certainly didn’t anymore.

The jungle appeared to be mostly burned to the ground in their area, parts still smoldering. Towering flames were visible in the distance, but there would be no stopping them at this stage.

The Mindcrackers could only stare at the ashes and charred remains of the jungle before them. Vechs had never seen the place himself, but he had seen drawings of it, and if they were at all accurate, then Minecraftia had suffered a terrible tragedy today.

Blame especially seemed bothered, completely stiff.

“Fires this big don’t start on their own.” Aureylian whispered.

“Where are Paul and Jsano?” Chad asked quietly.

“We need to find them.” Vechs noted, also quiet.

“We need to help them get everyone out.” Blame spoke up, breaking his trance. “Come on! We need to move!”

“Blame? What kind of people are here?”

Blame’s dark eyes met Vechs’s blue ones.

“Skullblades.” he said briefly, before setting off at a run into the smoldering remains of the jungle.

The Mindcrackers followed.

~~~

It wasn’t long until they reached the flames and found two familiar figures trying to help large amounts of panicked people out of their burning treehouses. A large crowd of burned, coughing people wearing white skeleton masks were gathered away from the flames, back where the fire had already burned out. They were trying to figure out who was alive and who was fit to go back into the flames to rescue the others, but were mostly too injured to do anything.

Upon closer inspection, there were other Skullblades doing their best to rescue others from the blaze, but many were being caught up in the inferno. Many trees reached high into the sky, and the flames danced all the way to the treetops.

“Paul! Jsano!” Nebris called. “Are you two okay?”

“Fine! We’re fine!” Paul set down a small child, no older than three and lacking a mask, at the edge of the group of the injured. “We need to get these people out of there! They’re being burned alive!”
No sooner than he had finished speaking, Blame was pulling himself up a burning tree to where he could hear screaming.

Remembering the end of his own people.

The Mindcrackers quickly scurried to get the white-masked Skullblades out of their burning homes. Vechs received a nasty burn to his left arm getting an injured man out of an extremely tall tree and set his pant leg on fire a couple of times, but managed to avoid injury other than that. He was thanked through coughs and wheezes by those he pulled out, but more often than not reached the buildings above to find only burned corpses.

It was a horrible, harsh set of hours filled with smoke and flame for them all. Vechs was thankful for his goggles, protecting his eyes from the stinging smoke, but they did nothing for his burning lungs or his aching limbs, nor did they do anything for the dying and burning people around him.

There was no way for them to get all of the Skullblades out. The entire team was only about seventy people, and there were at least a thousand Skullblades caught in the inferno.

The survivors were forced to watch as their jungle home burned, and as their people died in agony and screams.

“That’s enough.” Jsano said quietly to Vechs, stopping him as he made to return to the burning jungle after setting down someone he wasn’t entirely sure was alive among the ashes of the brush. “We can’t do anything more.”

“There’s still more! What if-“

“The rest of the jungle is largely uninhabited outside of this area, I’ve been told. Anyone there with any sense is already out. If you go back in there, you won’t have the energy or the oxygen to get out.”

“But-“

“Vechs. Don’t you think I want to go into every damn tree and make sure they’re all out? There’s nothing more we can do for the jungle! All we can do is try and treat those that did make it out.”

“How many?” Vechs asked hoarsely.

“How many lived?”

“How many died?”

“Too many.” Jsano shook his head. “Too many.” He knelt by the nearest person to see what he could do for them.

Vechs scanned the crowd for Blame, but encountered Aureylian first. She was shaking violently and looked about ready to puke. He was immediately worried.

“Aurey, are you okay?”

“No. Too much…smoke.” She coughed, shaking her entire body and causing her to fall. Vechs barely caught her and carefully set her down on the ground, sitting beside her and trying to ignore the stench of burned flesh that hung heavily in the air.

“You’ll be okay.”

“No, I won’t! Vechs, don’t you-“ she interrupted herself with a cough, “-dare tell me it’ll be okay! It won’t be okay! Look at all these…people! They’re burning, Vechs! They’re dying! And think about the ones that didn’t get out! Don’t you worry about me! Physically, I’m fine, but…Vechs, I can’t unsee the things I’ve seen today. I can’t forget the horrors...that…Vechs, what…why? Why is the world this way?”

“I don’t know.” Vechs’s mind wasn’t entirely there. He couldn’t focus on this.

He’d never seen such things, not on this kind of scale. Not the deaths of hundreds if not a thousand people, in a flame that, deep in his heart, he knew was no accident.

Somehow, he felt responsible, even though he knew he had nothing to do with this fire. He hadn’t done anything to cause it.

Had he?

He wasn’t really that surprised when the shadow fell across them and the monster landed before them.
He was almost relieved to figure out what had caused it.

The creature was huge, and unlike anything he had ever seen before. It had a centaur-like build, but that was about were the similarities stopped.

Its lower body was that of a dragon, with four strong legs, each with a black-clawed foot set upon the charred ground. Its tail ended in an arrowhead tailend, also black. The scales of the creature were dark red and orange, similar to Draemae’s colors but several shades darker.

The creature’s upper body was humanoid, but covered in the same scales. It possessed two arms, each with clawed hands matching the feet. On the back of each of its hands, it had a long, black spike that curved forward past its hands to create another ‘claw’ formation, this one longer and sharper than the actual claws. It had a dragonlike head, with two dark and razor-sharp horns curving up and forward out of the back of its head. Spines ran all the way down its spine, beginning at the nose and ending at the end of its tail. Its eyes were the same angry and horrible, burning red as the other creatures’ from before, pupils scanning the crowd before locking on Vechs.

The monster’s wings connected at its humanoid shoulders but were massive, large enough to lift the creature (it must have been as long as Spalor) into the air.

“We knew you would meddle here.” His voice was loud and angry, shaking the ground just as much as his footsteps. The injured Skullblades drew back from him, recognizing it as the demon from the sky that had burned their home to the ground.

“I am Saltar’vesque, lord of flame and bringer of your end!” he roared, flapping his wings and blasting flame towards the sky from his mouth before looking back at Vechs.

“I am your nightmare.” Saltar’vesque informed him as Vechs stood, helping Aureylian up. “I am the one who will destroy this world and reforge it in flames, in my image! Specterveil has his plans, but once he has finished with his designs, I will rule here! You will pay, Vechs Davion! You and this world will burn!”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Blame melted out of the crowd and stood beside Vechs, gray blade drawn.

“So the Ashenhorn has come to play, has he?” The serpent from the lake- Draemae- swooped out from behind Saltar’vesque and hovered in front of them. “Would you like the end of your people to come now, or later?”

“Back off, Draemae! They are mine!”

“Tsssh! You are as deaf as you are stupid! Specterveil wants them alive, for now! You have done your job! Leave!”

“You do not order me, Draemae! You are insignificant!”

“Do not claim all the credit for this inferno, Saltar’vesque!” Draemae warned. “You did not create it alone!”

“Are you trying to steal our credit?” demanded another voice.

“I think he is.” hissed a second. The two circled around to where they could be seen. Saltar’vesque looked like he had been unaware that they had walked up behind him, and annoyed that three of his cohorts had shown up to steal his thunder.

Both were about fourteen feet tall and had the same basic build, but with one massive difference.

The one to Vechs’s right was skeletal, while the one to his left was flesh-and-blood.

The one to his left was covered in orange scales and dark spikes. He was build vaguely humanoid, but had a definite dragonlike appearance, with claws on both hands and feet, a dranonic head, two horns, a tail ending in an arrowhead tailend, and a hunch to his back that most bipedal dragons (which were few in number) possessed. One claw on each foot was long and hooked, like a raptor’s. His eyes were the same burning red as the others’.

The one to Vechs’s right looked to be a skeletal version of the one to his left, but the bones were charred and burned and he lacked most of the spikes that the creature to the left did. His eye sockets glowed faintly red.

“How many goddamn monsters are there?” Vechs demanded, looking at the four now standing before him.

“Twenty-one.” the skeleton clattered. “I am Arcvain and that is Arcbiter. You remember me, don’t you?”

Memory stirred somewhat.

“I don’t-“ Vechs began.
“I was your first creation.” Arcvain continued, stepping closer. “You don’t remember? You don’t remember poor Arcvain, Glar’ren, Altair, Shara, and Duntar? We were your first five creations! And then we were scrapped! Abandoned! Arcbiter took my place…Glar’ren was never replaced, you forgot about him and put Spalor where you once treasured him! Altair was replaced by Aurora, Shara by Kyilld, Duntar-“

“I know you.”

“Do you?” Draemae hissed. “Does the amnesiac mapmaker finally remember those he created? Those he abandoned?”

Vechs ignored him in favor of looking into where the eyes of Arcvain would be.

“You’re Sea of Flame.” he said quietly. He looked around, blue eyes taking in the four around him.

“You’re Super Hostile. And you want me dead.”

Date: Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 03:13 am (UTC)
thezombineer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] thezombineer
Yay plot twist everyone saw coming in the first chapter! :p

I assume everyone else did too anyway. Or maybe it was obvious or explicitly stated before. My brain isn't working tonight so I dunno.

Good job, etc. Want moar, etc. Have a coo--no, that's Ecljpse's thing. Never mind. Have a cinnamon roll. *hands you a cinnamon roll*

Date: Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 04:47 am (UTC)
thezombineer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] thezombineer
:D

Date: Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 09:51 pm (UTC)
eclipse3: (Default)
From: [personal profile] eclipse3
FINALLY! Vechs that took you way to long to figure out.

G.C. (::)(::)(::)(::)(::)(::)

Date: Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 10:37 pm (UTC)
eclipse3: (Default)
From: [personal profile] eclipse3
Tushay.

Date: Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 11:39 pm (UTC)
dragongirl810: (Default)
From: [personal profile] dragongirl810
much love as usual (even if im a bit late reading it) <3

Date: Wednesday, April 8th, 2015 01:25 am (UTC)
subliminalcircles: Drawn by me! (Default)
From: [personal profile] subliminalcircles
I don't think it's sloppy, good work as usual! :D I love the shipping in this one :333

Date: Wednesday, April 8th, 2015 02:29 am (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
ohohoho! can't wait to see that in the future. :D

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