Previous post.This post marks the beginning of my mission using these storyboard elements:
- Scout potential threats (2).
As if to put a grotesque bow on her journey, it seemed the Outer Lands had one more spectacular site to bestow upon Musashi. Like what she saw at the Heart of the Titan, here in a large clearing sat an incredibly large, fleshy mass.
Almost the size of a small building, the conglomerate mass of gore was intertwined - penetrated by - the same ashen vines that Musashi had seen throughout the island, though they seemed much more...active here, as if they writhed like small snakes, feasting upon this fallen hunt.
Or...feeding it? She wasn't really sure.
The air was deadly silent, as not a soul besides Musashi was present in this area, and the trees and surrounding flora all were sapped of life, and withered and died. This place might as well be a foot deep into the impure world: the underworld brought to the surface.
She couldn't place why, but much like the other, this strange amalgamation brought Musashi a great deal of unease. She surveyed the area, and took a moment to detail the surroundings of this area - so close to the Foothold! - and the strangeness it held.
She approached the mass, her senses on high alert; but with the barren, emptiness of this area it almost seemed like a more basal reflex. While Musashi herself was in good health and awareness of her own being, if she didn't know any better she would say that it was as if this thing was yearning to reach out and steal the life from her, as she was an aberration in the area, almost as distinct from the surroundings as this disembodied heart was.
Musashi couldn't help but feel there was some sinister connection between this mass and what she saw in the Heart of the Titan, and thought back to what Marzan told her when she visited the venerated smith's forge.
"There are beings in this world who, simply put, sit upon another level of existence than us. Whether through being born with it, like with Marduk and his Pantheon, or stolen through unknown means, which if what we've been told is what the Voidlords have been doing, they are all but immortal. To make things worse, they use their powers to interfere with the lives of us 'mere mortals', as though we were actually lesser beings. It sickens me to think that there are 'people' capable of such abhorrent acts, controlling others as a means to their own ends, but it is simply the nature of the world we live in, and the people that inhabit it.
Even the most powerful among us cannot lay so much as a scratch on a God if they cannot circumvent this fundamental difference. My works, the God Slaying Tools, carry this power to cut through this unfair advantage the Gods possess, but it can only reflect what is already there to begin with. It was my works that allowed Humanity triumph over Tiamat and her endless brood millennia ago. The instruments for humanity's will to overcome such hopeless odds. In the right hands they can tear the God's plans asunder."
She had not had any exposure to what Marzan talked of: Marduk, Voidlords, Tiamat, or any of their ilk. But she did wonder if they were tied to whatever this thing was. A part of her wondered what would happen if she took Myōjingiri to this mass, or the network of strange ashen vines that crawled and crept all over these lands...
...but the swordswoman knew better than to wantonly trifle with things in the realm of the divine, especially when one did not have a good handle on the nature of said divinity. And while Marzan's warnings painted the divinity of this world in a blighted light, even if it was appalling to Musashi...she would gather her strength and what knowledge she could before facing them head on.
She gathered her notes and map, taking recollection of what all she had gathered in the short adventure she had undertaken thus far. It was refreshing to venture about again, and even more so to do so in lands uncharted. But, it seemed Musashi's sightseeing was to come to a close.
There was much going on that Musashi felt she should educate herself in. She had explored this land well enough - and now, she would aim to wrest from it its secrets.
Even further, there was always the matter of the strange Oni that needed to be dealt with, though she had been fortunate to not encounter on in the Outer Lands thus far....
