Desolate March

Jack had emerged from the caverns. Jonah was nowhere to be seen and he had a strange cast fused to his arm. One made of stone, presumably this cast contained the fresh augmented limb that the blood mage had crafted on. It would require some time for incubation it would seem. So that was one of the secrets. As tempting as it was Jack had to resist tearing off the cast and checking out jus how the work had been done in the first place. His trip was after all two fold. To obtain the arm, but also to help him learn the secrets of transplantation. Once he had access to his own arm again he could begin those experiments to uncover the secrets behind that blood mages art. However if sleep was an important part of the process, then he was going to be in trouble. He needed to find someway to both do it, and get the surgery on himself in order to implant the augmented dragons heart into his chest.

Jack clambered out and forwards into the bloody barren terrain of Barathrum Regnum. Wondering just where he was in this place, Jack had after all brought Jonah along because he wasn’t all that great at directional tracking. He really needed to start learning where he was going. But he knew certain standing points at least on the way back to Terra, so he would try to find his way back onto that road in an attempt to find his way back to the Seat of Pride.

EXP:276
pwc:261

The desolate march continued and Jack didn’t seem to much care about the time that was passing or indeed the dangers that were transposed unto him in this. Before he had dealt with the problem of only having one arm to fight with and it had been no issue. So he would deal with this task until his new and better arm had hatched from its proverbial cocoon. It didn’t take him al that long to find the path once more, it was simply a case of looking out for the landmarks that heralded the return path to the gates of hell. From there it was only a point of following it backwards. And thus it was that Jack began to make his way back into Pride’s bastion. In this march of his he thought of many things. Primarily on his mind however was the situation of Sera. There was more than the betrayal and his feelings of concern at play here. Sera had seen the seat of his power. The seat of Pride. No one had been down here to know that. She could lead his enemies here. She knew all too much. If indeed she was not loyal then he was faced with no choice but to extinguish her fragile life once and for all.

And as much as he did not like to admit. It was not something that he was going to relish. The words of the hybrid Run made him begin to think and wonder whether or not Iskra was going to be back. It was likely that she would be, the girl never stayed far away from her home.

EXP:278
PWC:277

There were things beyond that darkness that not even Jack would have wished to permiate. Jack was on his march and well with the vast open wastes of hell laid pout before him it gave one a lot of time to think about things. For Jack it had been his experiements and the demonic lore that he had been recording. The stone cast on his arm had begun to crumble ever so slightly and it had not gone unnoticed. But his mind was distracted by other things, by thoughts of the man behind the door and the darkness that he had dwealt in. Jack had come to conclude that the darkness he lived in was the legendary Sheol that was spoken of by demons. Well not spoken. Ominously whispered was more the description. The place ws something of horror. A darkness that was hungry and ready to consume all who entered it. For spirits it was the thing that existed beyond death. Iskra had called it the darkness. And it was in this that her species had found a way to avoid it. By making their decendents and themselves wvessels for the souls of those that they had consumed. Jack had to wonder though whether or not the remains had to be fresh for the soul to be consumed. Surely after so long a soul would depart for that darkness and would not simply recide in the body. Or was it that the body existed as a constant anchor to the world? When devoured the soul would be pulled out of Sheol. Jack wasn't sure. But he knew someone who knew more about that blackness than any other being alive. Or dead. The yellow eyed demon. The man behind the door.

EXP:307
PWC:293

But just his luck that the man behind the door was both a madness demon. And incredhbly dangerous. The former because it was difficutl to work any sort of sense out of him. The latter because well, Jack was never too found of being possessed by the man behind the door. It left him with a bitter after taste. THe equivalent of what humans might call a hang oveer. Two souls existing in one body wasn't natutral. Well. Two souls coexisting. When a hybrid was formed those souls entered a joint union of sorts. But the man behind the door, and Jack. Their souls were united in the possesion. But ultimately seperate. Borders existed between one and the other. A border best exemplified by the scarreed and burned wooden door that he was thinking about.

Jack wasn't sure if the man behind the door actually existed within Sheol itself. But he was sure that he existed on some form of it. That blackness was most certainly a form of sheol. But the very idea that the man behind the door was capble of staying seperate and existing from all the other souls merely mindlessly screamining within Sheol either said something for the power that he had, or that hee didnt exist in Shoel proper. Merely on the edge of it. A ship on the edge of a waterfall. Staring down at the rocks of its inevitable demise.

EXP:270
PWC238