Medieval fantasy, cursed plot -
 

A gloved hand pointed down the misshapen steps to a rough and imposing archway that lead the way into a corridor of stone.
"Ah, we're already here." The corridor itself was in disrepair, enough to see the snow at a distance in the openings between the blue-grey hue of its blocks in the long abandoned building. Rubble heaped about the outside of it before that too fell away down the crags and pale slopes. Looking further down the slope, one could pick out slabs of what once was the adjoining watch tower itself.

"And the only way out is that cliff face, but I don't think he cares to run or hide." The other man remarked, noting the fresh tracks made below. It was rare to ever catch
wind of a collector, or anyone spending any length of time in the old district which had been reduced to a series of ruins such as the one before them.
Both of the hunters were covered head to toe just like any of the other citizens in Wystorn, in their thick robes and furs with the sturdiest of boots. In this part, the most exposed of all the districts where the snow became a fearsome ice, they wore their face masks beneath their hoods. Upon closer inspection, anyone could see they wore garments that were more refined than the commoners could afford. They were compact yet tough, stitched to make a tailored fit, so they moved freely and nimbly as they descended the steps toward the old watchtower.

"He won't come easily, not when he has a penchant for making brain soup. Or so I've heard." The first, known as Roak, spoke but they both knew the risks long before they came here, and as such they had come prepared. They already knew that the man was abnormally large and muscled. The fact that he had other 'gifts', which they most likely thought were in his stamina and tolerance of pain, just made him all the more of a foe to be treated with caution. Roak and Philes had put a good number of those with cursed blood to a premature rest, to the dismay of some of their nearest, but this was one creature that would not be missed by anyone. It made life a little easier in that sense; the man didn't need to be persuaded and drawn away from any family to meet his end.

"Of course." Came the other, lower pitched voice of Philes. "He doesn't want this one fresh." Even though the beast's heart would not be eaten later they'd still need to retrieve it, as their master took grave exception to anything less than proof of a job done.

As they drew near to the crumbling archway they fell silent. The pair didn't have any gifts of their own, but had become especially good in identifying and capturing those that did. Philes circled around the side of the ruins, away from the crag, while Roak entered the ruins directly. Phile's footfalls were soft and practised, though as he approached nearer to where the stones began to fall away, he could see deep swathes of snow shunted aside. Curiosity piqued, he edged nearer to them and when he inspected further, he could see the ground had been churned up nearby. A scuffle? The cursed one was definitely here, and didn't make any attempt at secrecy; he probably thought he didn't need to.
 

Carefully, he made his way to the lip of the slope, and listened. Between the whip and whistling of the ever present northern winds he could hear nothing of his quarry. With another tentative step forward he chanced a look downward. Finally he saw the thick and copious flood of fresh blood. Immediately he wondered, whose? He remained still, letting his senses feed anything to him, but the ground below was deathly calm. Shifting his position, he then caught sight of...a limb? 
Ah, foolishness.

He waved urgently for Roak to catch up to him and then gestured to the mess below. Roak's eyes first widened in surprise, then creased, perhaps with a hopeful smile. 

What they didn't expect when they scaled the rocks to meet their prey, was to find their prey dead, and not just dead so much as cooked. There was no mistaking that this was the one they sought, now turned into an ugly form that hardly resembled a man, his skin crisped and charred in some spots and wet with blistering fat in other places. The rank smell of singed flesh made itself known and Roak wrinkled his nose in distaste, examining the body as Philes searched close by for the former owner of the leg.

"No good." Roak commented in harsh frustration, seeing that their prize had been destroyed, he cursed under his breath, looking about with suspicion. "Now we have to haul him back for nothing. How? Who could have?" It often took weeks, months, to track down individuals. They'd hear a tale from a stranger with a grudge, many of those would be false and some true. Then they'd travel near and sometimes far and begin their search, grow to understand their prey and eventually, they would then commence with capturing or killing as needed. Admittedly, this beast was quite a simple affair...but when the reward would have been so great Roak couldn't help but be angered. "I'll bet it's some damn purifiers again. Don't know what they're dealing with."

 
"Hey!" Philes called out, over his shoulder. "Get over here." He regarded the woman dispassionately, though with interest. Remarkably, she was still alive; he could see the rise and fall of her chest, but they didn't have time to waste. 

"Gods. Shit!" Roak exclaimed; it wasn't hard to connect the dots. "Her?" He looked at the corpse of the beast again in disbelief.

"Definitely." Philes confirmed. "There's no other way, and furthermore, she's one of them." He lowered himself down and tugged at one glove, freeing his hand, he touched her forehead, cheeks, then her neck. Not cool or merely fading, she was innately and vibrantly warm. The smell of smoke and burnt tissue lingered about her. "So then."

"So...that's a second body to take back."
"Alive."
 

​

Dystopian, old plot -

​

Marcel moved with haste out into the walkway, his eyes boring holes down where a bullet had already done the job, then flitting back up to the other levels of the building, the other lengths of metal that bridged the height over him. Those levels were already secured, though not without difficulty. In the end, all it appeared to have taken was a sudden assault at just the right moment to topple their, frankly, superior enemy. The hounds of the government were well equipped, trained hard, disciplined to a T…every inch clawed from their forces was an inch worth grasping onto tightly. Still, even the best could be brought down with the perfect attack of precision, executed in just the particular way needed in the moment. Luck had been with them then, since this was far from perfect.
He cast his eyes down to the spread of rebel bodies and then one of the enemy, still languishing pathetically.
“Hold fire.” He barked to the floor beneath him. Peace followed his order. It wouldn’t do to have their adversaries completely ruined, not when they still held value in life. “Christoph.” He then spoke.

“Sir.” The voice returned through Marcel’s headset, and then as an echo beneath his feet. The man emerged from under the walkway, out from the shadow of one side. Unscathed, he gave a nod of recognition.
“Alright, we’re short on time to get out. It won’t be long before they get a handle on us. Status now.”

Regrettably, it always seemed to take the head of the spear to make any progress in these scuffles, and today the sharp end of the spear was Marcel Trent’s team. A team equipped in the finest second hand garb that any rebel could hope to salvage. The man himself may have held little in the way of true responsibility but, to his faction, his team was hardly expendable.
Reinforced body armour that had seen better days, pilfered night vision goggles, an impressive array of aging assault rifles, in fact, it was also one of the few teams that was not entirely composed of civilians that reckoned themselves soldiers, all too eager to pay in blood for the wages of freedom.
Marcel may have gladly shared this vision, but he was not prepared to pay such a steep price, instead, stealing was much more to his liking. He was under no illusions; the success shown today was another theft.
He held his weapon ready as he cycled through the team, tying up the loose ends.

“Nassar.” He spoke into the mouthpiece, still scouring each inch of his surroundings as he did so. Although ‘anxious’ was hardly a word that Marcel identified with, the longer they stayed in the midst of this advantage gained, the sooner it would be lost. Their staying power was nothing to brag about.

The man’s voice came back, heavily accented with the tones of Lamirian.
“Last two out here are down Sir; made some ground, twenty yards due south of the office block. I have good cover to get them. West flank is clear.”
“Gaber, Black.” He sounded, throwing a look back into the torn room, housing another body of one of the Aldosian forces, but that one was done for. The man was sprawled unceremoniously over the floor, his blood curdling on the cement.

“We have control of the east side. Dead, no sign of any further activity. Zahed fled the rendezvous point. He’s back in the vehicle with another tailing. They’re heading east.” Lawrence Black answered.
A delay followed as Iyas then grunted into his speaker, the distortion of a wall of static staggering his voice.
“Yeah….He has his guard in spades with him…I don’t see a threat.”

Satisfied as he could be, the whole of it going better than expected, Marcel gave his commands. All of them already knew the plan, really. Just as much as the rebels couldn’t afford to stay long, they also could not afford to leave anything of value behind.
“Christoph, Gaber, Black, clean the building and move out with Khan’s team; we’re taking PWs. Nassar, wait until you have support from Forest’s crew and retrieve with support.”
Marcel left the catwalk briskly and assumed his role in the ‘clean up’. More urgent a thing to concern themselves with than reinforcements or scouts tagging onto them right now, was losing weakened bodies to the blood that crawled away between the dust and cracks of the floor. Fighting the enemy was one thing, but keeping a hold on them was another entirely.

When all was said and done, what the leaders deemed to do with their ground here or there was beyond Marcel’s immediate concerns. It was him and his crew that would return to the nearest base to the east known as ‘Wideland’, which was neither near nor an especially secure location. If nothing else, for what the name lacked in inspiration, it made up for in accuracy. Many miles of desert spanned between the base and its companion base to the south; ‘Pharahl’ which stood much closer to life, as it held the city as its namesake. The base was a hub of activity for the young, the vibrant and the brave…and to the cynical, the ‘blind’.
 
They would be depositing their prisoners, stocking up and replenishing their losses and then, as rituals deemed fit, they would prepare for the next day, one day at a time.
Much of their time of late had been spent in surveillance over the vast swathes of parched land that surrounded Pharahl and more importantly, the area of the abandoned city that lay far north of Wideland. The city itself may have been devoid of life, yet it always rested on a bloody hairline, the tension fit to rupture into gunfire at a moment’s notice if they failed to remain watchful, if they allowed the enemy to get so close.
When it wasn’t surveillance, they were often tasked with safeguarding those that had fallen out of favour with oppressive Aldosia. This meant protecting and sheltering the escapees and the land itself at the Lamirian border. It was an entire activity that had become affectionately known by many as “corralling”, the hotspot for it having turned into an unofficial marketplace of would-be-soldiers and supporters of several factions.
Sceptics had much to say about it, the government branded it as radicalisation, but Marcel knew it for what it was; the only true hope of a future that would give way to freedom for those that were taken in. As everybody knew, it was also the only reasonable means for many of the escapees to find a place to live that was relatively out of harm’s way. That included being safe from the sharks that cruised the Lamirian border, trawling for fit bodies of any kind to drag back into the lawless corners of the once-was state. Yes, the sceptics and government collaborators had much to say about the rebel’s protection of innocents, and the movement of rebels as a whole, yet they remained curiously silent on so much else.
What was new?

 =X=

Penn could always be relied upon to be an efficient woman, ever unperturbed, effective as she could be at any given time. She rattled off the facts as she guided Marcel to the clinic.
 “She’s in a stable condition Sir. Truth is, we weren’t sure what we were dealing with when she was handed to us in such a state. The points of entry and exit of the cartridge were clear, but the haemorrhaging was significantly less than expected. Her scapula has been fractured, but the swelling has eased quickly.” She always spoke in a brief way, always sounding vaguely disappointed or underwhelmed with the news she was delivering. “The extent of internal damage is unclear at this point…” She began, a small sigh passing her lips as she continued. “…and will probably remain so. We don’t really /have/ the expertise or the equipment to help her at the level she needs. Gods know what’s been done to her gut. And yet, she’s alive. Hydration has been an issue, but we’re working on it.” She stopped in the bare hall, one bend before the arch that opened into the room of the clinic.

“Oh, and the others,” She started again, this time cocking her head to one side, pursing her lips. “Unfortunately there’s not much we could do for them. The wounds on one man’s leg was too much. Too deep and too open, we’re sure he had lost too much blood long before he made it to our table.” She paused in thought and then continued steadily. “And as for the other. He’s alive but completely unresponsive. We’re waiting to hear from you on that count.”
Marcel snorted, mildly vexed. To put in so much and still get back so little, but he had guessed as much. When he had last seen the prisoners before their exit, it had been quite obvious that their time was up. Yet, one had still survived.
“No; don’t do anything hasty. Not until you know for certain that he’s not coming back. We need them all if we can get them all. All two of them. They might be just what we’ve been waiting for.” He said matter of factly, /hopefully/. Just as he was about to move on and see the disrepair of patients in Widefield’s clinic, he was stopped again by Penn, but this time she sounded completely intrigued.

“No doubt Sir. Actually, we found something /interesting/ on one of them. Her, in fact. I think you had better be careful with what you decide to do with that one...She’s got the enhancement barcode and ID. We can’t let her go by any means, of all of them, for her to die would be-”
Without needing to hear any more his eyes flashed vibrantly, though his stern expression did not change.
“That is beyond you to consider, Crest.” He said flatly, leaving no room for discussion. Talk of body augmentations was beyond anyone to consider; it was government work but it gave that diamond edge to those that were otherwise already razor sharp. No mistake about it now, they hadn’t captured just any government lackeys that day. That was a specialist RAT team.
He turned back to her, blocking the way to the room, his voice was low.
“You are dismissed.”
“Sir.”

Marcel passed the translucent screen into the room. The buzz of the overhead lights was a numb sensation in his ears as they flickered into life. He looked about the silence of the clinic, undisturbed for now. This place had no windows, and neither the passage leading into it from his side nor the other leading off at the opposite end let any natural light come into it. It was its own vessel within the walls of Widefield.
Pacing one way he came to the bed that held a man, /that/ man. On closer inspection, he appeared significantly older than many that Marcel encountered on the field. Apparently, this guy might have been the enemy squad leader, that’s what Ahlem had said, anyway. So much for that now. He was comatose and with a dwindling hope. If he didn’t get his act together soon then he’d be meeting his former team mates again sooner than he’d ever planned.
Passing him on by, Marcel’s eyes traced quickly over the stark metal shelving nailed in to the walls. Everything about this place was precisely stacked, contained, sterilised, wrapped and ready. It was a shame that so much else of Widefield left this much to be desired.
He walked over to the other patient’s bed, looking her over from head to toe as he approached. She seemed to be sleeping for now.
He leaned over slightly, inclining his head one way to look, but the gown that she had been dressed with obscured the location of the tattoo.
So, if this was the real deal, then they had been in combat with RATS and they hadn’t even known it.
Once again it dawned on him how lucky they had been. He spoke aloud to the air, though he hardly raised his voice.
“So, why don’t you tell me what you are?” This was one for his leader to hear about.

 

Medieval fantasy, old plot -

​

Dealing with uncertainty was something most did not like to do at the best of times, but for Nebor, it was a way of living whether he wished it to be or not. He had been born into the Saruya tribe, a well-known number of roamers in the plains of the Myrn nation, which also meant that a great deal more of his life was left to fate than with other folk that were bound by, but also protected by, their walls and masters.

Yet there he was, sitting in a husk of a once-proud temple belonging to desecrated gods, willing away his misfortune and waiting eagerly for the night to pass.

The provocative actions of the Darethi here, only weeks before this night, had incited a quick response from Myrn. That had been easy enough with them having the upper hand in this highly defensible position, yet the same could not be said of Myrn’s other lands to the north west. There, the Darethi advanced with certainty and the Saruya had been forced to come south sooner than usual to escape. Even so, a full-blown attack from the Darethi on Myrn’s southern stronghold of Asini was unprecedented when the Myrn had such a powerful presence, but it had come less than a full day ago and it was just enough to set Nebor, already trailing behind his kin on a barren hunt, a whisper too far from the tribe that had already passed through swiftly. Now he traveled alone, comforted only by a notion that criminals might fear for their own lives too much to be nearby.
 

The old temple was more or less a pile of stones set around an outcrop, making a clearing in the otherwise dense woodland, with one corner just in tact enough to act as a shelter. The rain fell to make treacherous torrents of mud on the slopes of the forest, but this small portion of the ground was still dry and firm, and it was there that he had set his fire. Close by he leaned on his one companion beside a crumbling wall of the ruins, a bay mare named Rowan. She had not failed him yet, but when he had to leave the camp at sunrise, then even her sure-footedness would be no match for this terrain if the rain still fell, and then he would be left waiting even longer and become an easy target for anyone bold enough to skirt the borders of an ongoing battle and still look for prey.
 

Finding a spot of relative safety in the forest had been his main concern, as well as making his way back to the body of the tribe as soon as possible, but now that his hands were tied, his mind wandered to other things, concerns that had been following him for months now. Just when everything seemed ordinary, something would occur to remind him of the curse that followed him. At a time like this, he wondered if the gods were using this night as a way of exacting judgement on him. Nobody knew but him, and speaking would at the very best lead to exile. But then what? Being cast away to to lead a life of working the land? That would be cruelly ironic.

Even when he thought of all that, he could remember each time he had felt the sensation pass through him, and he knew he didn’t want it to go, not completely. It always started like a knot inside his gut that moved to his hands, winding its way to the surface of his skin before being released. This power, whatever it was, could not be seen except in a hazy distortion like rising heat on a midday horizon, but its effect was always obvious if not always fast. A leaf would wither, an apple would rot, a small bird would die. At least Rowan was content; anything much larger than his palm seemed to escape his malefic ‘gift’ and for now nobody had noticed it, as he had painstakingly kept the knowledge of it to himself.

Nebor wasn’t given much time to consider it after that. A sudden orb of light danced out from the side of the outcrop as a body quickly came into view, illuminating the Darethi colours in flames. At once he jumped to his feet, feeling his heart leap with him. As he hastily reached to draw his sword, the embers then exploded causing Rowan to startle while making him jump again gracelessly to one side with a shout of confusion, his face a picture of shock.

Still, he grabbed at the pommel of his sword this time even more urgently, though he could see his opponent was quite small, he was not about to give over any mercy. His eyes darted to the surrounding forest left and right, seeing only a patchwork of black, grey and crimson from the fire. Surely she had not come alone. He could already imagine the picture of others jumping from the pattern of trees into the clearing to fall on him, and then it would be finished. He saw as the figure looked to the fire, this woman, had also been surprised by its explosion. Seizing the moment with no further thought, he took two quick steps and swung his blade with complete intent.