08-16-2013, 07:39 PM
Rune barely heard Hood's warning chasing after her. She was focused on one thing and one thing only: catching up to the beast sprinting into the shadows.
Her boots pounded the floor while she rounded corners and flew through rooms. At one point she lost track of Hood all together, but kept on sprinting. The bloodbag bounding away was quick as a fox and he clearly knew where he was going. Rune was never able to get him in a good line of sight to shoot, and she wasn't about to stop long enough to try unless she had a sure shot. If she lost him in this maze, she'd never catch him again.
But loaded down as she was she couldn't keep up the pace and soon enough she was led to a collapsed wall on the opposite side of the bath house. A collapsed in flight of stairs led upward over to the left, probably to the level below the surface or the basement of whatever building was overhead. Ahead the collapsed wall made a sort of round portal that flickered with far distant light and sound. This was probably the main way in and out of here as opposed to the giant drain pipe the three of them had crawled up to get in. Had the beast run out?
She turned to the right, scenting the air as she did, and catching a far gone scent. But the humidity to the air muddled her senses, and she cautiously explored this direction just as that womanly sixth sense told her that he was probably hiding and hoping that she'd barrel out the hole on the assumption he'd gone that way and lose him altogether.
She was led to what she thought was a shower room. It reminded her of locker rooms in truck stops. There were communal showerheads stuck out of the walls. Lots of broken tile fell in bits of shattered ceramic on the floor. Metal lockers were covered in rust and grime. A deep freeze, what was once white, was situated in one corner and plugged into a generator-sourced energy outlet. She did not want to look at what was in there. Having made the mistake to look in times past when cleaning out rougarou fox-holes. To be fair, Uncle Seth had warned her.
She wished she'd taken more time to learn the functions of the glasses, because there was probably some setting she could use to scan for heartbeats, body heat, movement, or whatever to give away the creature's position. However, she held the SMG at full-ready to pop whatever jumped out, and couldn't afford to fiddle with the glasses settings and lower her defenses.
She took a hand away briefly to shove aside the half-fallen down plastic lining that dangled from the ceiling. The rusty wheels scraped loudly in the old tracks overhead. Rune cringed.
She rounded a corner, silent but for the cracking of tile underfoot and the occasional rustle of plastic sheets. Rune heard a faint purring sound then. A low-frequency vibration that she thought was due to some malfunction in that ancient freezer in the far corner of the locker room. But as she froze, listening, she could have sworn a heard of bees were buzzing around. Or maybe it was a cat? She frowned and cautiously continued the search.
Just as she rounded an aisle of lockers, she felt a rustle on the side of her neck, like the barber blowing the clippings from her recently shaved scalp delicately from her skin. Chills shot down her spine and she rounded the corner in a hurry.
And screamed.
The beast she was chasing was strung up from tracks in the ceiling. At least, what was left of him. His skin had been peeled from his bones from the top downward. A tuft of hair remained on top, followed by a dripping, pink mass of muscle and tendon, and the peel of his inside-out skin was puddled on the floor around his still in-tact shoes. His eyes were bulged huge and white.
Rune spun to run away and she encountered the most malicious, wrathful spirit she'd ever seen in a lifetime of seeing spirits.
It had an amorphous shape, but was black as unspent charcoal with skin that split around all the joints revealing a glowing red core. As though magma itself was floating in front of her in the shape of a person. There were rumors of bathhouse spirits, but... but! Rune had never heard of a hunter actually meeting one before! Or of one flaying people alive!!
Close as it was, she could feel the heat radiating from its center of mass, and Rune backed up instinctively afraid. She didn't realize how far she'd stepped until she backed straight into the swinging shape of the dead rougarou. She screamed defiantly and started shooting.
Edited by Rune Marx, Aug 16 2013, 07:40 PM.
Her boots pounded the floor while she rounded corners and flew through rooms. At one point she lost track of Hood all together, but kept on sprinting. The bloodbag bounding away was quick as a fox and he clearly knew where he was going. Rune was never able to get him in a good line of sight to shoot, and she wasn't about to stop long enough to try unless she had a sure shot. If she lost him in this maze, she'd never catch him again.
But loaded down as she was she couldn't keep up the pace and soon enough she was led to a collapsed wall on the opposite side of the bath house. A collapsed in flight of stairs led upward over to the left, probably to the level below the surface or the basement of whatever building was overhead. Ahead the collapsed wall made a sort of round portal that flickered with far distant light and sound. This was probably the main way in and out of here as opposed to the giant drain pipe the three of them had crawled up to get in. Had the beast run out?
She turned to the right, scenting the air as she did, and catching a far gone scent. But the humidity to the air muddled her senses, and she cautiously explored this direction just as that womanly sixth sense told her that he was probably hiding and hoping that she'd barrel out the hole on the assumption he'd gone that way and lose him altogether.
She was led to what she thought was a shower room. It reminded her of locker rooms in truck stops. There were communal showerheads stuck out of the walls. Lots of broken tile fell in bits of shattered ceramic on the floor. Metal lockers were covered in rust and grime. A deep freeze, what was once white, was situated in one corner and plugged into a generator-sourced energy outlet. She did not want to look at what was in there. Having made the mistake to look in times past when cleaning out rougarou fox-holes. To be fair, Uncle Seth had warned her.
She wished she'd taken more time to learn the functions of the glasses, because there was probably some setting she could use to scan for heartbeats, body heat, movement, or whatever to give away the creature's position. However, she held the SMG at full-ready to pop whatever jumped out, and couldn't afford to fiddle with the glasses settings and lower her defenses.
She took a hand away briefly to shove aside the half-fallen down plastic lining that dangled from the ceiling. The rusty wheels scraped loudly in the old tracks overhead. Rune cringed.
She rounded a corner, silent but for the cracking of tile underfoot and the occasional rustle of plastic sheets. Rune heard a faint purring sound then. A low-frequency vibration that she thought was due to some malfunction in that ancient freezer in the far corner of the locker room. But as she froze, listening, she could have sworn a heard of bees were buzzing around. Or maybe it was a cat? She frowned and cautiously continued the search.
Just as she rounded an aisle of lockers, she felt a rustle on the side of her neck, like the barber blowing the clippings from her recently shaved scalp delicately from her skin. Chills shot down her spine and she rounded the corner in a hurry.
And screamed.
The beast she was chasing was strung up from tracks in the ceiling. At least, what was left of him. His skin had been peeled from his bones from the top downward. A tuft of hair remained on top, followed by a dripping, pink mass of muscle and tendon, and the peel of his inside-out skin was puddled on the floor around his still in-tact shoes. His eyes were bulged huge and white.
Rune spun to run away and she encountered the most malicious, wrathful spirit she'd ever seen in a lifetime of seeing spirits.
It had an amorphous shape, but was black as unspent charcoal with skin that split around all the joints revealing a glowing red core. As though magma itself was floating in front of her in the shape of a person. There were rumors of bathhouse spirits, but... but! Rune had never heard of a hunter actually meeting one before! Or of one flaying people alive!!
Close as it was, she could feel the heat radiating from its center of mass, and Rune backed up instinctively afraid. She didn't realize how far she'd stepped until she backed straight into the swinging shape of the dead rougarou. She screamed defiantly and started shooting.
Edited by Rune Marx, Aug 16 2013, 07:40 PM.