hey, Sylver wrote something. Another one-off Fable with no major significance to anything, save for that I may use the parasite for something. Yeah, the ending is abrupt and all, but I decided I didn't really feel like writing it out so what you see is what you get. Enjoy. —————— [b]Hybrids, Horseshoes and Handgrenades; a Twilight Fable[/b] Luck glanced to the sky as cold rain broke free from heavy clouds. He had already been wearing a hood—mostly for dramatic effect—but this made the effort feel more genuine. He adjusted his hood one more time before glancing at the quickly-soaking environment. The trees hung low, and a quiet fog filled most open spaces. The dreary landscape, mixed with the hard downfall, painted the world gray. Luck grinned. “Ooh! How gothi-” he cleared his throat before altering his voice to something more deep and gravelly. “How… gothic.” He grinned once more under his unkempt beard; the beard wasn’t something he was used to, but it fit the character. Said character being a bloodletter—this planet’s equivalent of a monster-hunter or witcher. The people, here, were currently in their Medieval period, and were plagued by creatures of the magical disposition. The strings of fate had taken Luck to pick up a contract on one such creature; unbeknownst to the bounty-setters, the rot-drakkon they’d put money on was only a good few months away from stumbling into an underground sanctum and incarnating an eldritch god-thing. Luck’s impeccable sense of reason had come to the conclusion that such an occurrence might be labeled a [i]bad[/i] thing, so he had set himself to the task of preventive extermination. In honesty, he was eager for a good monster hunt, and he couldn’t wait to put his toys—or, rather, tools— to good use. On his back were two weapons—one, a short-hilted and brutal one-sided axe, and the other a gleaming silver longsword. The longsword’s silver would do good against most monsters. The axe, of iron, was primarily for fae-beasts; Luck knew he’d have little use for the axe, but he had wanted to complete the collection. On his belt was any fun-loving alchemist’s dream, and any “proper” alchemist’s nightmare. Luck’s waist was adorned with crude oils, acids, and bombs. He’d reasoned that he had no way of determining the nature of the rot-drakkon until he’d lain eyes, so he might as well prepare for [i]anything[/i]. “Anything” including the drakkon being made completely of salt. Said drakkon’s lair reared its ugly head a few hundred paces away. Luck supposed hills of any size, even ones this large, didn’t really have heads to speak of, but he liked the metaphor. Mayhap the hill itself could be considered a head, and the yawning stone hole in its center a mouth. The trees of the forest gave way in advance to the opening, leaving a muddy circle at the base of the hill some three-hundred feet across. Some might argue it was the rot-drakkon’s pestilence that drove away the trees, but Luck knew it was nothing less than fate’s creation of a boss-fight arena. Luck’s boots slammed, heavy and loud, against the floor of the muddy clearing—admittedly by his own design. He glanced about and waited for some kind of roaring or other drakkon-y thing. The silence prompted him to clear his throat. “Hello?” Nothing. “Hellooooo? Scary dragon monster?” Luck’s words sounded silly coming from his now-gravelly voice, but if he realized he didn’t care even a little. He cared more about the big dumb beast with the audacity to [i]ignore him[/i]! “Come on! This isn't dramatic AT ALL!” Luck grabbed a round fabric pouch off his belt. He ran his fingers over a dangling piece of string—a fuze—and it caught fire. The fuze burned down with a satisfying hiss as Luck hurled the bomb into the cave. Presently there was a boom, followed by a roar, followed by Luck maturely yelling, “Asshat!” The hill itself seemed to shake as it’s inhabitant crawled out. The creature that crawled out was a rot-drakkon beyond doubt, judging by the sulphurous smell that came with it. What Luck hadn’t expected was for the drakkon to be a little bit more—well, he actually had expected that, but he thought a surprise would sound more dramatic. The drakkon’s half-rotted body, covered in a patchy mixture of short fur and rough scales, was also coated in a foreign substance. Sticking out at random angles throughout the drakkon were bony, jagged formations, like the beast’s skeleton was crystallizing. As interesting a concept of crystallizing bones were, Luck knew what was really going on. The rot-drakkon had hybridized with a parasitic fae-beast, leaving it with the formations covering its body. Presumably, the drakkon was now stronger, and, like most hybrids, resistant to both iron and silver. Ideally, against a hybrid, Luck would use something like orichalcum or titanite. Unfortunately, he had only had the foresight to bring an orichalcum skinning knife, something arguably less effective than a master-craft silver longsword. Luck fumbled through his cluttered belt, searching for his knife, up and until the rot-drakkon’s tail took him across the chest. It was an unpleasant experience. A rocky formation on the creature’s tail had turned it into some horrifying (and impolite) parody of an ankylosaurus, and the drakkon had made sure to get a good twirl in while Luck was in the way. He felt two, three… [i]four[/i] of his ribs break as he tumbled across the clearing. “[i]Akthre[/i],” he swore. “Now I’m covered in mud. God damn it.” He also supposed—yep, his skinning knife had flown across the clearing, and the drakkon was standing right on top of it. Figures. Luck dredged himself out of the mud. His longsword had come loose, so he ripped it the rest of the way off and tossed it away. In the short moment he took to approach the rot-drakkon, he formulated a masterful plan to get his knife back. “Look, a distraction!” he shouted, pointing off to the side. That wasn’t enough to make the creature so much as break eye contact, but slamming the flat side of his axe into it’s big ugly face like a baseball player looking for a scholarship sure seemed to work. As the ungodly beast’s head whipped back, Luck leaped forward and snatched his orichalcum skinning knife. He spun as he stood, thrusting the weapon backward and into the dragon—or it [i]would’ve[/i] been into the dragon if not for the wonderfully inconvenient shard of rock he had rammed his knife into. Before Luck had time to grumble his obscenities, the rot-drakkon took a swipe with its front leg. He ducked under it, of course, and this time made sure to ram his knife into an uncovered portion of the drakkon’s belly. The drakkon growled, which wasn’t the sound he had been going for. “Come on!” Luck yelled, ramming the knife into various spots. “Damage phase! Damage phase!” Finally, he hit what had to be a sore spot, as the drakkon reared back and roared. Luck quickly moved back for a clear shot, snatched a bomb from his belt, and hurled it into the drakkon’s mouth. “Haha, idiot!” he shouted before being covered in viscera. He almost gave himself a pat on the back for a job well done, before realizing his back was covered in drakkon...stuff, and he really didn’t want to touch it. He collected his weapons, along with a portion of the fae-parasite, before dismissing them to somewhere greater—the very extent of higher magic he was permitted to use in this place. He presently realized that his outfit might be a little incomplete without weaponry, but he quite liked the idea of seeming to have slain the beast with only his bare hands. Luck disappeared from that forest and the history of the planet, never more to be seen. ————— yeah, I use em dashes too much. sorry. edit: aagggghhhhhh how do I get paragraphs to work on this site