Backdated to just after this thread.

Also, rated Mature for gore, vomit, and self-harm. Uh oh.

The weight of the bone club was foreboding, feeding a deep-seeded, dark urge to her mind. Such impulses were presently unconscious, unknown to the centaur. Aged, rusty chains creaked ominously as she shifted toward the rat-boulders; Elyon's father had shown her, in the past, that they were a common nesting ground for cave rats. She sighed deeply, ruff bristling. The Collector had said the weapon would grow with the blood of even Lessers. As long as it took in flesh and blood, it should be fine.

This was just like any other hunting expedition, Elyon reminded herself warily.

Gangly limbs carried her, casting her shadow over the stones. A number of small critters moved about just in front of her, panicked squeaks signifying their attempts to hide. They weren't successful. She crouched, then settled down onto her knees. Bowing, Elyon sighed again and steeled herself. Hoisting the club over her shoulder and steadying it with her right hand, she wedged a hand beneath one of the lighter stones. Burying her dense claws into the boulder, she heaved.

The moment her gaze caught the dull glint of a rat's, a surge of adrenaline coursed through her entire body. Her mind detached from her body, dissociating from the sudden, extreme stimulus. In a way, she seemed to have blacked out.

-[]-
A pleased sensation rolled up in her chest, spreading down to the two hands that now clutched the flail. Her fingers were tight about its narrower end, breath heavy. Bright eyes blinked once or twice as she laughed. Despite the sore weariness in her arms and whatever was slicked over her ruff and upper half, Elyon felt fantastic. Until she looked down, Elyon was completely unaware of why she felt so good. Perhaps, she had just gone for a really good run, pushed her limits, gone climbing up a great mound of bones---

Oh.

Oh, no.

A mess of gore, barely recognizable as a mischief of cave rats, lay where the stones had once. Bones, cracked and twisted beyond belief jutted out from all of the sanguine waste. Elyon's breath hitched, then wavered. She couldn't breathe. A pleased sensation seemed to thrum from her hands, stemming from the club in its grip. The centaur glanced to and fro, then staggered to her feet. No, this wasn't--- this wasn't right. She had just been hunting but this was--- this wasn't how you hunted. Even through the smile plaguing her face and the urge to do it all over again, the hybrid felt herself begin to sob. No tears came, but her throat swelled.

Buck-toothed remnants seemed to be attached to the flail's end, coated in viscera, even still.

She threw the club to the ground, scrubbing at her arms and her hands as if it would dissuade the foreign feeling of pleasure. Elyon picked at the joints of her fingers and her wrists until they bled, heaving. Rather ungracefully, she staggered backward. Nausea rolled through her being as the high wore off; she then vomited into the pile of disgusting and wrong. Sucking in big, ragged breaths, she steadied herself by the knees.

There she stood, for a time.

At last, though, she spared a wary, dull-eyed look at the flail.

Softly, almost imperceptibly, she groaned, "Co-- Collector?"

@Game Master Dark

No response came. Elyon was left alone with the bones, old and fresh--alone with the results of her massacre. The silence of the cave was intense: was she being watched? Judged? ...Urged to continue? Or perhaps nothing at all.

@Elyon

And there was nothing.

Not even a whisper.

No breath stirred these old bones but her own.

Elyon sucked in a deep breath, and called out again, "Collector?" For the first time in her life, she was well and truly afraid. She ran a hand through the front of her ruff, feeling out the yellow orthoclase that gave her life. Her fingertips dug at the edges of the gemstone, grounding her in the pain that it gave her. This was all still real.

The centaur straightened, shakily. Bright eyes glanced down at the flail, sinking into the bloody mess. They then scanned over the mounds of bones, head and body turning as if to search for the tall being. "Collector, I don't---" a sob "--- I don't want to do this anymore. Take it back, take it back, please." She was just a child, and she felt like it. Elyon felt as if she was going to throw up again, but could only heave up the cloying dryness in her throat.

Her limbs pricked, thumb claws unsheathing. Run, her mind offered, pitifully. Suddenly, her body felt much too large for her skin, as if everything were about to burst out and utterly destroy her.

Elyon responded in kind, an equally pitiful whimper, "I will."

Off she went, deep into the chambers, leaving the Final Flail in her wake.

;exit Elyon

Long minutes passed. The region fell into silence, and once Elyon was well and truly gone, the robed, cloaked figure of the Collector stepped neatly from the shadows.

To Agragon's Final Flail he paced, bending down to pick it up. Scarlet pinprick eyes flicked over the carnage left in Elyon's wake. This one holds more strength than the last. She will never know what could have been.

Bone mace was slipped into the cloak, and the Collector disappeared back the way he'd come.


______________

Agragon's Final Flail has been repossessed by The Collector.