#rekker

IT'S SPOOKY MONTH LADS!! Wasn't a fan of last year's logo with how over-detailed it was contrasting with the simplistic facial bits, so I decided to revisit Spectre and dumb him down some. Sill used the space brushes but dialed them back to like 7% instead of last year's 80%. MUCH happier with this rendition. I might have taken a bit of inspiration from how The-Miniscule-Task draws his characters' faces by accident. His art is good. Go give him a follow. -Done in CSP

Group sketch W.I.P.

Rekker’s bad day continues!  Oh his poor, poor face.

   Later, Rekker walked the third level down from the top.  Bluelips? That’s a new one… he thought of that vampire, Metsylana.  She angered quickly. Hmph… only after the proper respect for her like.  Vampires, he had heard more than enough stories.  Bats like in damp caves and hollowed out trees, feasting on the raw organs of kidnapped innocents while living on the riches of the Djupar trees.  He scoffed. One these days the forces of order and justice would smite such evils, by Empress’s hands, or his.

   The boom of an explosion burst into the air.  He turned. Off on the opposite end of Ninstels from where he stood, a mile away, a tower of black smoke rose into the air, darkening the sky as it spread out.

   “No! Not this early!” A voice yelled from behind.  Two hands snatched against Rekker’s collar and spun him around.  He looked into the the bright yellow eyes of the vampire, her fangs glinting in the sunlight.

   “Hi again, I’m sorry, and I hope you die by falling on your own sword.  Okay, now that that’s off my chest, wanna feel special blue boy?”  She grinned, wide, all her teeth fangs of varying lengths.  She looked past him, pressing a finger to his lips as he opened them to speak.  “Sshh. I can the answer in your eyes. We’re a team now, got it? You go do your favorite thing: smacking around people you think you’re better than, and I’m going to make sure what I’ve been planning for… one, two, three, five years doesn’t blow up like those shops over there.”  She let go of him, and pushed through the crowd of people running in all directions, covering her ears. “And don’t die!” She yelled, disappearing as she jumped down to the levels.

   “Hold on, wait!” He called through grit teeth.  The thumps of hundreds of footsteps, yelling and screaming, doors slamming, and wagon wheels rumbling down stone drowned out his voice.  People hid behind stalls and fled into caves, him standing in the middle of it all as the crowd around him thinned, dozens bumping and shoving past him.  He grumbled, jerked his sword out of its sheath, and sprinted down the third level toward the smoke still billowing into the air, spreading to shade the markets from the sun.

   He looked out ahead.  Figures with steel helmets obscuring their faces, dressed in piled up black and brown furs with straps studded with rusty spikes, leapt into Ninstels from the grassy plains above.  They swarmed into the levels, brandishing, axes that flashed as they caught the light of day. Raiders? Definitely. He smiled, spinning his blade in his fingers, his hand getting hot.  Fiends of the forests, striking neutral lands, with a force so large. This one was going to hurt a little.

   Grabbing the first one he ran into by the collar, he slammed them to the ground with a clang of their helm hitting the stone.  He cleaved his blade through the space between furs and helmet as an axe came for his head. Jerking his sword up to beat it away, the raider staggered back.  First mistake! Pain ripped into his arms and lightning surged from his hand to his sword, buzzing, crackling, sizzling.  He stabbed into the raiders chest, kicked them off his blade, and caught a fist flying at his jaw.

   Wrapping both arms around the hand, he slung them over his shoulder, grunting.  They crashed into another that had been running at Rekker axe high. Ahead, more charged.  “Hells is the only home you’ll know!” He burst toward them, ignoring his hands searing with pain as the bolts of blue and yellow crawled over them.  

   A tower of flame exploded into the crowd of raiders.  It roared, cracking and spitting, eating at their fur armor.  Rekker skid to a stop as the fire disappeared into the air, leaving the raiders coated with leftover flames.  “Hmm…” a man stepped into view, tapping at a fallen raider with his sandaled foot. “Odd, wouldn’t you say, they’re not screaming.”  He put his hand on his chin and turned to Rekker. He dressed in a smooth, light blue robe that ended at his knees and elbows, a pulled down hood resting on his shoulder.  Dark skinned with a short full beard, he tossed a fist sized ruby up and down in his other hand, and the front of his robe was lined with pockets.

   “Sage, what are you talking about these raiders-” The took Rekker’s sword and raised it up into view, unfazed by the lightning.  “No blood,” they said in unison, Rekker’s eyes widening as the Sage’s narrowed.

   The Sage pointed back down to the Raiders, their furs crumbling off into piles of ash, revealing pure white bone.  “Solved that mystery.” The Sage turned back to the pillar of smoke ahead. “Still, that does not fix the problem. Quite the day.”  The outlines of the raiders scurried all over, axes smashing down onto stall and breaking down doors to caves. More fires rose, some raiders holding up torches to the sky.  The Sage tossed his ruby up again, but it stopped in mid air above his shoulder, glowing bright crimson. “Keep it up, soldier!” He ran, leaping down to the lower levels.

   Skeletons?!  That Vampire, the fiend.  Rekker snorted, running again toward the first explosion, the path near deserted by civilians.  Someone less kind than I might have killed those vampires on sight.  On Ctaph and Order, why does the righteous path lead to this? He kept going, scowl deepening  and teeth grinding together as he saw the sacked stores and bodies on the ground pooled in blood.  He cleaved through more undead disguised in furs, the pain from the lightning crawling up to his shoulders.  Another group of them came, axes dripping with red. He growled.

   I. He lopped off one’s head.  Will.  He ripped the helm of another and crushed its skull on his knee.  Kill.  He jammed his sword back into its sheath, letting the lightning envelope both hands, webbing them with clawing blue and yellow, and grabbed a skeleton until the furs caught flame.  Her!  He lift the burning fiend as its armed flailed and threw it into the rest of the crowd, the flames spreading as it crashed into them.  He ran through them, stomping down on flaming skulls.

   A hand jerked behind an abandoned fruit stand.  “Change of plans, okay?” The Vampire peeked over the stand, then crouched back down.  “You need to help me find someone.” She slipped a bag off her shoulder, dug inside, and shoved a sketch of a woman with long hair and a face painted with scars, smiling with her left canine tooth missing.  

   He bat the parchment away.  “On Ctaph, and Order, for your crimes today, on-”

   “‘On top of the crime of your birth, heresy, and having big teeth, I hereby put you under arrest.’  Is that it? We’ll do that later. Talk less. Hells, why did you have to be the only one able to swing a sword around here?”  She looked up to the sky. “Where are they?  Oh, you’re still here.  Remember: tall lady, lots ‘a scars, really, really, really loud, keeps a shield around.  Got it? Great!” She shoved him out into the open.

   “What is going on?!” he yelled as she made shooing motions from behind the fruit piled up on the stand.  “What did you do, you started this didn’t you?!”

   “No, oh and you’ve got a little something uhh…”  Rekker through his arms behind him and pulled the skeleton over his shoulder, stomping its head into bits as it hit the ground.  “Nice catch, now go on, shoo shoo.”

   “Listen, I know what you are, and I know how you all are.  I should have-”

   “‘Killed you when I had the chance,’ gotcha, this is getting a little old though.  Want to know what I know? I know someone, Hells, a lot of people are out here dying and…”  She sighed, “it’s partially my fault, a lot my fault. But right now stay here yelling me to death, and believe that does hurt, or you could listen, look around, and do something other than parroting your little words of wisdom while as long as those Night troops are out there, more people will die.  Now, Mister Rekker, you can keep fighting me here, or find that woman and just maybe save a few people.” She ducked down under the stand.

   He opened his mouth, then shut it.  Looking back down from where he came, and where he was going, he shook his head.  Then, he conjured up the image of that woman in his head, turning back to the tower of smoke, now just the first of many.  He ran, jumped, and fell deeper into Ninstels.

   He could not get her out of his head as he cut through more groups of skeletons.  Trust her?  No, he knew what they were like, he knew for sure…  But what else was there to do now? The skeletons kept coming, kept killing, and whatever he could save was either already gone or going.  All Nine levels around him were now decked with skeletons breaking stalls and rushing into more caves, almost as if… searching.

   Were they looking for this woman as well?  The vampire, Metsylana, mentioned something about plans.  Why need him if the skeletons were hers. He sped forward, shooting his eyes around.  But there had been two vampires, and the skeletons followed the other. Only when she was gone did Metsylana speak to him…

   “Sage!” Rekker skid to a stop, seeing the man another level below, running with his ruby floating beside him.

   “Soldier!  Manage to save anyone?  I think a few escaped but-”

   “No.”  Rekker jumped down to the fifth level.  He shook his head. “No listen, Sage, I…”  He looked at this man, user of soulgems, from the islands that once were the lands of evil before the second refinement.  He almost scowled. But not right now. “I have to ask, do you know about what’s happened here?”

   “Sadly not, I arrived just today, Otsylmain, he wanted to meet me here…”

   “I met a vampire, two of them, one told me to find someone, a woman with a shield.”

   “Vampire?  Did he say anything else?”  The Sage grabbed Rekker’s shoulder.

   “No, it was a woman, they both were, they came into the bar on the first level, with six skeletons.  They all followed the other one, but I didn’t get her name.” Rekker looked at his feet, arms pulsing with pain.  “I don’t know what is going on here either. But can you… help find who I’m looking for, we might find this Otsylmain too.”

   The Sage smiled.  “Well soldier, helping one of you would be a first.  Yet, I will not be the one to not take a hand extended in need.  Otsylmain, if he’s here at all, can handle himself.” He shook his head a little.  “Now, it looks like I go where you go.” Rekker turned his frown into a slightly upturned line.

   -Darkgoman

Finally decided to open up my multi-viewpoint epic fantasy project to this new platform.  Hi.  I got nothing that’s really all.

This is a story about some guy, and the day that changed his life.  Where does this lead?  Who will he meet?  Will he grow a beard?  Why did I say that last one?

   Rekker shouldered through the crowd, the mixing smells of sizzling meats, scraping iron, and sweat hanging in the warm air.  He pushed his way through clumped together people, ears filled with disparate chattering broken by the yells of shopkeepers to his right.  Even with his white uniform, with the emblem of the guiding hand on his shoulder, shaded the same, almost black purple of his trousers, lips, hair and eyes, he grunted as he still had to force people out of the way.  

   Ninstels.  On Ctaph and Order.  Damn. Ninstels. He could look down in the crowd and not see the white of his boots, even with the sun burning down from the clear, crystal blue sky.  Every other step, his leg brushed up against somebody’s tail, and he had to keep dropping his hand to his sword’s hilt, making sure it hasn’t been pilfered, yet.  This was only the first level. Each layer was a ring of flattened stone, getting tighter the deeper down into the earth. Steps carved into the rocks connected the levels to the plains above.  Shops decked all of them, some stands and stalls furnished with bright colors, others set into the stone wall, with wooden signs plastered over the doors to the small cave stores. He just had to find the right one as the conversations in dozens of languages hammered his ears, his head pulsing a little harder with each passing moment.

   He pressed on, bumping past other humans, Miskers with their long skinny tails wrapped around their waists like belts, weasels, workers hefting crates with sweat filmed muscles bulging, prowlians eyeing shop wares with vertical slitted eyes, and more.  Everyone was of disparate skin tones and dress. No other Aiesthians, or the auburn haired Aiesthia from back north in Aiesborne. Neither the structured, artful sounds of high Aiesthi, nor the free flow of low Aiesthi met his ears. He had to work of what he knew of lower tongues.  By Dayn, if only the rest of Sector Twelve, Squad Four was here, what he could understand out of any speech here was not much.

   After a half hour of shoving, futile apologizing, and ducking under crates and weaving around wagons.  On his right above a cave entrance, he made out the image of a wooden keg surrounded by round, rough studded Djupar melons under symbols that to Rekker looked like haphazard slashes on a training dummy.  Djupar Grove? He thought.  Well, even if it’s not I’ll get a break from this noise.  He turned the frown set on his face to lip smile.

   Walking inside, it bustled with full tables.  Still quieter than back outside. A few heads turned, eyes looked him over, before they fell back into conversation.  He head toward the long bar stretch. Where in Hells is Fayn? He did not catch sight of the merchant yet, but a grey eyed, auburn haired Aiesthia would not take too long to find.

   All the tables were packed with glass ale mugs, the dark orange of Djupar wine bubbling inside, the famed purple fizz threatening to spill over.  People sipped, gulped, chugged, and demanded more rounds from the servers, brown skinned humans like him, with shaggy dark hair where his was short and curly.  Still no other Aiesthians, who, no matter skin or hair, would have the deep dark purple of lips, eyes, and hair from birth, and would have been trained by his creed, set out back home in Aiesborne.

   He took a seat at the bar, back straight, hands folded.  Shooting his eyes down the line of the bar, he saw the people to his right were dressed in padded black clothes, their boots steel toed like his.  Small daggers hung from their belts, the blades half black, half crimson, and they sat hunched over, leaning their heads together. Sighing, he tore his eyes away.  This was not Aiesborne, no authority. The Captain would tell him to hold off too.

   The bartender came up, looked Rekker up and down.  “Drone,” the slang term for Aiesthian soldier, sometimes the only term.  “What’dya want?” The man grumbled.

   “What everyone else seems to be having,” Rekker replied, his voice a soft, low rumble.  

   The bartender nodded, turned to go, then stopped.  The man rolled his eyes, he snapped his fingers in front of the huddled together group to Rekker’s right.  “Hey! You all need to pay up!” Their heads did not even turn to the bartender as their hands dove into pockets, came out with nothing, then dovefaster into their leathers, coats, and boots.  Rekker shook his head. One held out a single finger to the bartender and six voices said: “one moment.”

   A hand whipped across a face with a loud smack and one of them slammed down to the floor behind Rekker.  “By Haph! You didn’t bring any halves!” A weasel, pale with black shading around her eyes, with fluffy ear tops poking out over her hair, the same brown as her mid length tail.

   The man on the ground, a young human around Rekker’s age, snapped back.  “So!? You didn’t either dome ears!” He leapt from the ground and threw his fist into her gut.  She reeled back, then tackled him, sending them both to the floor, kicking and punching. Another woman, a dark skinned weasel with a grey mask shading around her eyes, with dark hair and ears, knelt to drag them apart, but got snatched into the floor scuffle.  Two more weasels still standing started yelling back and forth, pointing the the scene on the floor before grabbing each other by the side of their heads and crushed foreheads together. They sailed down to the ground, unconscious. That left one more.

   They wore a belt, but a black cloak obscured their face view while black gloves covered their hands.  The bartender’s eyes widened as he looked down at the others on the floor. “Listen,” he said to the cloaked one, “someone has to pay for your… nine rounds of milk.”

   Rekker slapped a pile of coins onto the bar stretch.  The righteous path is hard, but just… he thought.

   A hand rest on his shoulder.  “There you are.” It tried to pull him away, not budging him till he got up himself.  His eyes met the darkness under the cloak, the three on the floor still fighting and screaming.

   Finally it was Fayn.  He wore clothes of disparate bright colors, but he wore his auburn hair long and unstyled, tucked behind his ear, like all Aiesthia back north.  His skin was tanned slightly, and he wore a flat cap made of dark red leaves woven together. They came up to a table and sat down.

   “Been good?”  Slight and thin where Rekker’s was toned through the years, the young man must have been a couple than Rekker’s twenty five.  He wrapped both hands around a mug bubbling with wine brought it to his lips. Rekker reached out and yanked the mug from Fayn’s lips.  “Come on!” he sighed, rolling his eyes as Rekker gulped the wine down in one swig, and frowned. Ugh… He shoved the mug away.  Hated the stuff already, and the years of tolerance training made most drink weaker than water.  Still, he and Fayn needed to talk, and he did not feel like dealing with a drunk.

   “We leave tomorrow, mid day, North road connecting to the third northwest path.”  Rekker looked Fayn in the eyes, frowning.

   “Alright, alright.  Tomorrow.”

   “And you will have your wares gathered up by sunset, tonight.”  Escort work, highlight of calm times.  Hells.

   “By Ctaph’s hand why the rush?  Do you drones ever relax?” Rekker did not respond.  “We’ll go on time, Hells, can I just get some wine?”

   “No.”

   “I can’t belie-”

   “No.”

   They sat, not speaking.  The cloaked figure dragged the other five out of the bar, and the chatter in the bar continued.  

   Silence blanketed the bar.  Two women stood in the entryway.  Dressed in red, they had what seemed to be big, fluffy scarves of white fur around their necks, but Rekker knew better.  Their skin showed the color of a overcast sky. One had a cape draping over them from their neck fur down, the other’s top was studded with iron bits, fitted with folds of knives to web like mail, sleeveless to show toned arms like a soldier training with log lifting.  Both had large ears. The pointy ears of bats.

   Vampires.  Rekker’s hand moved to rest on his sword hilt.  The one in the cape led the way inside, smiling without letting any teeth show, eyes forward.  The other trailed behind, hands on twin stabbing blades on her belt, darting her eyes around the bar, locking eyes with Rekker for a second.  Two seconds. Three. She looked away, and a scowl grew of Rekker’s face. Behind the two came a chorus of thumps. Skeletons, bones pure ivory in the light, marched into the bar in two lines of three, hefting large crates, wearing boots and fur shirts.  Their bare skulls gave the illusion of wide grins, and a violet glow burned in their empty eyes sockets.

   The group went straight to the bartender, who shivered in place.  The one with the swords exchanged words with him. The skeletons marched into the back and returned empty handed.  She seemed to mouth some words to herself, but the other nodded, heading out with skeletons in tow. She stayed, grabbed a mug, and sat, next to Rekker.

   “Greetings,” she addressed his in high Aiesthi, his language.  He ground his teeth together. “Tell me, soldier…” she looked back at the exit.  “See anything, just a little, wrong around this place?”

   “Other than two monsters coming into a bar?”  He mumbled in low Aiesthi, knowing she would hear it.  As if I’d let your blood laced tongue speak Ctaph’s words!

   “Listen, I’m being serious.  I could use your help. My name is Metslyana.”  She switched languages too. Did all that blood help with that too?

   “I’m serious too, bloodsucker.  I’ll humor you with my name: Rekker.  I’d usually give your like that much respect before I end your blight on the righteous of this world.”  Fayn had fallen asleep, head resting on the table.

   Her eyes widened, narrowed, then she smiled, baring teeth, rows of fangs on fangs.  “Funny. Really-really funny, bluelips. Funny and fitting.” She took her mug and let all the wine flow down her throat, then slammed the mug back down on the table.  “I’m dying, no I’m on the floor laughing, right now! Hells. You. Are. Like. All. The. Other. Mindless. Drones. I’ve. Had. The. Pleasure.  Of.  Dealing.  With!” She growled out the words, smile growing, teeth glinting in the light.  “Exactly the same! ‘Righteous path’ this! ‘For the Empress’ that! Same old cycle, buzzing like the brainless bee you are.”

   She stood.  “And one more thing…  I CAN ONLY EAT FRUIT!”  She smacked him clean across the face with her mug, and left.    -Darkgoman

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