Arden Urtica - Limitless

[MelonNinja]

Dark. That was the first concious thought that came to him, after hours lost in thought.
It had been morning, hadn't it? They'd struck at dawn. He looked around the cottage. Half covered in shadows. Unnerving shadows. The windows were darkened with soot and grime. He stood and wiped it clean. Outside, he could see the sky slowly turning, clouds streaked red as the day slowly gave way for the night. He -had- been wasting time.

He turned back to face the cottage. It was a pitiful thing, really. It could have housed perhaps two trappers during the winter seasons. Poorly furnished and poorly kept. As the case was, it housed not trappers, but corpses. Five in all, though really, only two of them were his doing. He spat on a corpse. Brigands all, they deserved this and no less.

It was not the deaths that disconcerted him. Nor the damage to the cottage. Ammends would have to be made, but such is the way of things. The way of war. Orcs and goblins, these beasts had threatened several towns in the vicinity. While he'd expected it of the halfers in the band, the fact that there were humans among them pained him. They should know better, shouldn't they? Still, even that he had seen before, and he had learned to accept it.
No, it was the way death was dealt. He'd always wielded knife and crossbow. Good ways to kill. Clean. Simple. You pushed something sharp through your opponent, and that was the end of it.
He looked at the corpse at his feet, his second kill. It most certainly had not died so... cleanly. The halfer's face was blackened and blistered, as though heavily burned. In some places, the skin had given way entirely, leaving only bone, equally scorched.
He'd heard of mages, of course. Men and women who could kill and maim with but a wave of their hands and a word. But he wasn't one. He was regular old Arden. Just a nameless man in just another mercenary band on the Sword Coast. Gods, he didn't even remember saying anything.

Just... The halfer's face. Unmarred. Still ugly, though. Grinning wickedly as it came at him. Swinging a miner's pick it'd probably filched somewhere. He'd cast his crossbow aside, but couldn't draw his blade fast enough, and his companions were busy with the other creatures. He'd raised his hand in a pointless, feeble attempt of shielding himself. He'd cried. Cried in rage. Cried in defiance. He'd simply... refused. He refused to die in such a manner.
Then a light, radiant and warm burst from his hand. Mesmerizing to him. Molten lead to the halfer. It cried. It writhed. It died in agony. And to him, it felt good. It felt right. The creature got what it deserved.

His mates had, by then, dealt with their own opponents, and were silently staring at him. They lingered but a moment before turning to run, possibly due to the grin still on his face. He'd sat then. To contemplate. What this power was and what it meant. He'd sat there most of the day, well after the fighting had ceased, abandoned by his companions. Cowards. Still, no answers had come to him. Perhaps he should travel farther south. Perhaps he could find answers nearer to Baldur's Gate. Gods knew all those bloody adventurers drifted there.

And now, with this... thing... He might risk the journey alone. If he mastered it, it could be a tool. A most useful tool indeed.

[MelonNinja]

So. Now he had a name for it.

"War... Lock..."

He said to himself, feeling the word, tasting it, then letting it roll off his lips.

"Warlock."

He repeated, listening to the sound as it escaped him.
It sounded... Ominous.
It tasted... Foul.
It felt... Accusing. Damning. Almost like a slight.

He sat pondering on a stump, not that far from the road. Far enough to not be seen immediately, however. The one who called him that "did not take kindly to his sort".
He wondered why. Had he done anything to threaten the girl? If he had, it eluded him.
Given, perhaps she did not enjoy having his blast missing her by a hair... Well... Less than a hair. Scorched hair smelled awful, he'd learned. Yet, it was that or let the bandit come upon her while she wasn't looking.

"Warlock."

She had most definitely meant it as a slight. Also as a provocation. As an excuse. He'd never run quite as fast as with her on his heels. He'd never faced magic used against him before. It was... unnerving. No, he was lying to himself. It was frightening to the point it chilled his spine. So why? Why did his magic frighten her to the point of her unleashing her own?
It was like a man drawing his sword because he saw another man wielding an axe. It made no sense.
It gave him pause. Would others react in such a manner, too? Would the majority?
Would they turn away a strength like his if their lives hung in the balance? Would they welcome him then throw him upon a pyre when peace had returned?
Either way, he would have to tread careful in the future.

"Warlock."

He couldn't pronounce it -without- sounding damning.

[MelonNinja]

He closed and opened his fingers. He held wood. Light, yet sturdy. He tightened his grip.

"Hold back," he told himself "don't let it flow. Use the proper tool. Hold back."

It had suprised him how swiftly the power that had come to him had become second nature. How easily it flowed from his digits. How easy it was to kill at a whim.

How hard it was to surpress it.

He heard the air whistle as the creature struck at him. A blow aimed at his thigh. A rusted hammer, held by a hand so decayed, by rights it should not be moving. The whistle came not from the weapon, but from a crack in the bones. He swung his own weapon, the wood he held the haft of a handaxe. Not the most impressive weapon he'd ever seen, but he wasn't exactly the world's strongest man. His haft blocked the hammer. The rings of his chain shirt clinked. For a moment, he was jarred by the blow. How quickly he'd grown accustomed not to step into melee anymore.

He had to hold back. Not be tempted to end this quickly. For his own sake. This had become obvious in his arrival to the city proper, and the looks people gave him. Distrust and disgust. Thinly veiled hostility. The only ones that seemed willing to associate with him were oafs, brutes, brigands and people he could tell would become mad cackling wizards if the adventures the Sword Coast offered did not cull them.
And then he met her. One of the many adventurers that seemed as gods to him. It was a strange meeting, indeed. She spawned from thin air, right next to him, though he could not sense any magic being used. Chided him for standing all by himself, then immediately warned him that he did not really want to be seen with her. She explained some of the land, and what would or would not get him in trouble. He noted that his magic would get him there. Then she handed him more gold than he'd ever seen in his life, told him to get better equipped and sent him on his way, fading once again into thin air.

He'd felt like a pet project, somehow. Still, a gift horse and all that. And now he stood here. Toe to toe with a skeletal creature, armed and armored by the grace of a stranger. Trying hard not to just blow the piece of filth away already. The weapons at his side, the armor on his skin, and the overlarge foppish hat and cloak. All to create an illusion. An illusion of normalcy. It disgusted him. He should not have to hide his strength. Some day he would not. No, some day he would...

He grinned faintly as more of the pitiful walking dead surrounded him. He could not beat them all with the weapons at his side...

"Oh well..." He said to the cold night sky and the fog surrounding them. "Nothing else for it now..."

He lashed out, laughing. Blast after blast flew, creature after creature fell. When they all stopped moving, he simply sighed in satisfaction. He hung his handaxe through its loop at his side, then walked back to the city, pointedly stepping on a skull. He'd show more patience next time, he was sure.