Hokey Pokey [Closed | Zero]

The host of sin would stand up on its hind legs. Holding its head in the air and closing its eyes for a moment. Its jaw opening wide as it let out a bellowing howl. The toxic miasma spewing forth from its back. Across its body its bone like plate chattered as it adjusted. Solid looking hollow forms slowly broke from under the sands around him as its war cry sounded out louder and louder. The sand starting to shake under a spire rose up from the sand under him. Raising the host up into the air as the walls of that tower were lined in an obsidian black texture. Though the outer walls of it seemed to be crawling at a distance, something close by would notice it had hundreds of heads, torsos, and hands reaching out of it.

Each of his puppets at the towers base slowly marching out from it. After a short while of marching one of them would see a hollow floating in the air that looked like a ball and a head. Turning its head as it howled back at the tower. The pack in the distance slowly turning their attention to it as the base of the tower started to lift out of the ground. Its steps thundering the ground with each step as it loomed in the distance. The howling of the pack and the tower only sending waves of the spirit energy from the mass into the air. Slowly the host would move to the edge of the tower and look down from it, watching the mystery hollow as it turned its head to the left and right examining its form.

For now all that the host was focused on was its ritual hunt through the wastes for more souls...

---

WC: 299
TWC: 299

The hollow's march toward his next possible meal wasn't a long one. As he made his trek through the dunes of sand, the thing he'd been approaching began to take shape. Its limbs were what the hollow had come to consider normal, a set of two arms and two legs. What was unusual, though, was that the thing seemed to constantly shift from being bipedal to walking on all fours. It made Cayo giggle that the thing was so unevolved that it couldn't seem to make up its mind. He did think it was a shame though, he'd been hoping for another playmate.

There had been something that sounded thruogh the air just before the beastly little thing came into view, something that the boy didn't understand. It was almost like the cries some of his plaything made but... it wasn't full of the desperation that theirs were. This one was different. His lips pursed beneath the glittery mask as he tried to shrug it off. The beast was getting closer and required his attention.

"Hello!" he called, still a distance away from the beast. It was even uglier up close. Saliva, or what could pass for it, dripped from an open, panting maw. What looked to be an amalgamation of blade and fingers adorned the ends of what the hollow guessed were its arms. "Hel- Hello?"

Something was wrong with it. It looked at him, he could feel it seeing him, but it didn't respond. It just stared at him as it advanced at a slow shuffle toward him. The saliva made a trail as it walked, stretching back and out of sight toward a lumbering black structure in the distance. The black thing only held his attention for a moment as the beast before him got much too close for comfort. 

"Stop." the word was less a request and more a command, his voice losing a bit of its childishness. It would seem the beast didn't comprehend this, as it still progressed toward Cayo. Without a moment's hesitation his own bladed appendages appeared from within his sack already primed to dispatch the mongrel. "Last. Warning."

Seeing it still didn't listen, static filled the air as he lept to reach the thing's throat. The feeling of his finger across the flesh wasn't as satisfying as it had been in the past. It was too easy. Too wrong. Though the child couldn't explain how or why, he knew he was missing a piece to the proverbial puzzle.

[WC: 417][TWC: 796]

From the tower the host of Sin watched.  Going inside of it just enough to be out of vision it began to focus. Its body pumping out thick waves of its miasma. Slowly the room it confined itself to flooded. Then openings were made inside of the tower. Filling it more and more until the tower itself sealed off all its chambers and sections from the outisde. It was near hollow inside with the exception of a winding staircase and a room up top. As the forward puppet drew in closer to their target. The tower had become airtight, and was filling with more and more gas, building with pressure inside of itself.  The two flanking puppets would start to charge out going  to surround the child it seemed but at a distance. Their forms breaking into a full sprint even though they were still a ways off. Re-morphing their shapes  as they each sprouted a pair of wings to fly in faster now that they had picked up speed. 

The puppet that was stuck stood there. It felt the other hollow's claws rip through its form. It began to mutter in an ancient language, "Intelligent... conscious...". It turned to face the child as its body reshaped  after the blow. It looked as though it was some advanced form of regeneration before it dropped back to all fours charging at the child. Its form getting into reach before bursting into a cloud of gas that fell into the sands. Everything would fall silent for a moment before black spikes started to erupt from the sand. Each one looking like it had the intent to hit the child but leaving enough room for him to dodge each and every one if he noticed it.  With the last one the spike would go high into the air above Cayo only so that they rest of the spikes would dissapear as the puppet's body seemed to emerge from the air trying to drive those blade like fingers in from above. Its form and method of attack sloppy but each one seemed to pack more than enough strength to compensate for its lack there of. 

The calls of the flying puppets echoing back and forth.  "What we have done is not written in books. In the chain it is written" The other chiming in. "What we have seen as never seen the light of day. Only the shadows of the eternal night" Their voices only seeming distant but loud enough to hear. "Our pain is eternal, and we will never forgive those... who cursed us" Resounded out of the one in Cayo's face. Each voice coming out this time in the same one the hollow had used before. Their voices seeming to come together as one in the last few words. "This is not what we deserve" 

---

WC: 473
TWC:772

The surprise of the mongrel living was short lived as it ran toward the boy. Apprehension took hold as he waited to see what it would do but was shocked to find that it simply dispersed like an illusion. He could have almost laughed and clapped at the show if it weren't for a distant pain that erupted as the first spike tore through the hollow's sack. Sickly viscous liquid spilled from the wound as entrails were pulled and subsequently severed on the spike's edge as the child danced his way around the others rising from the sands.

In his short life, if he'd learned one thing it was that nothing was ever as easy as it seemed. He followed the thing with his eyes as it propelled itself into the air in preparation for another attack. The pain he was in should have been debilitating, he knew, but as he body absentmindedly mended itself he paid the pain no mind. At most he only needed to instruct his organs to mend themselves. The other more superficial wounds would take care of themselves with enough time.

As the beast began it's fall back toward Cayo he let himself loose in the tides of his hunger. Anger had already been lapping at the banks of his mind and the beast's mistake was to injure the boy. Injuries, more often than not, sent the boy running into the emotion's arms. Reiatsu poured off the hollow's small frame full to the brim with his malice and intent to kill. His skeletal hands and feet made an appearance too, as if to further display his seriousness in the matter. He had found the thing a curious mystery. Now, he found it little more than a nuisance. It was funny how quickly a child's mind could change.

"Die." the child's hands and arms began to circle it's sack, the grisly bits of flesh that clung to the skeletal arms becoming a distorted blur. His feet didn't move as he'd resolved to stand his ground and let the beast fall to its fate. Something else pinged his awareness too but it was much too faint for him to pay any mind. If it were another hunter, he'd deal with it when it came. For now, the prey before him was all he cared about.

[WC: 388][TWC: 1,184]

From its dark tower its mind reached out. The tower itself growing massive legs above the surface of the sands. Moving its enormity closer with each passing moment but it was in no rush. Within its depths Sin clutched its makeshift throne with a claw and cracked part of the chair. The tower itself seeming to reel in pain from this small if not insignificant flesh wound and it doubled its pace forward. Slowly spikes at the top of it would form into the shape of a two pronged fork before a hollow's mask grew between the two prongs. Though this mask only consisted of what could be seen as an eye. The gaze of the eye falling onto Cayo, seeing for Sin as her continued to approach, each moment getting closer and closer. 

The puppet fell from its jump with reckless abandon. Its own jaw distending as its mask seemed to crack in order to reveal a grin that stretched far to back of its head. Every inch of its form screaming out in madness. Though it would be struck by the boy and his claw would rip through the puppet's fragile form. Its body dispersed after he had pierced it with what would have been a fatal blow. The flesh falling into air as every inch of its body broke down, starting with the flesh going all the way to its bones. Each part seeming to fly into ribbons.  At the core of its form a soul clutched in that same dark matter it had fallen apart and into. It was a weak soul stripped of everything and left hollowed out to its core.

One of the flying beasts swooping down as its own jaw opened and grabbed the soul and some of the sand from the ground around it before swallowing them both down. Their forms twisted from the mutations as they looked like twins With each one only having half of the same mask. Crow like wings reached out from both of their backs. Their hands were similar to a humans but they were different. As they circled a spike looking as though it was made of bone would erupt from their hands at the palm. Each one staring back at Cayo with the same eyes the first one did yet their style seemed different circling and waiting, their feet never touching the ground as their wings kept them aloft.

---

WC: 404
TWC: 1176

The child's mind seemed to progress even in the midst of combat. As the beasts on wings came into view, the child took note that the pinging in his mind's eye followed their physical location. It was curious but something to consider at a time when anger didn't make him see red. As it was, instinct drove his body and the power tied to it. What began as a simple shimmer beneath his feet solidified into reflective glass and his form plummeted into its depths.

He could feel the beasts circling above the mirror's surface and all the air that stretched between them. They weren't like the sheepish prey he so typically found, despite their apparent lack of consciousness something had to be driving them. The pair didn't stay close enough together that one could dispatch one and immediately begin to dismantle the other. No, it would take repositioning. Planning.

Tiny sacked feet pushed off and moved the body, beginning the propulsion that would force him out of the realm of reflections. His first target would be the one who'd seemingly eaten what remained of the non-avian mongrel. A second panel materialized in an instant behind the thing's wings and not fractions of a second later, Cayo came bounding out with fingers splayed and ready to flay the beast's back in their fall.

A feral, guttural scream clawed its way out from the child. This was malice. This was anger. This was hunger. This was right. This was nature. Something about it seemed so normal. A beast locked in a brawl with another thing that seemed equally as feral. He didn't care if his swipes at the thing's flesh tore through skin, if the first set didn't there was another already on its heels. He would dirty them. He would defy them. They would touch the ground. First, this one then he would set his sights on the next. What happened in the distance was in the distance and while he heard commotion, he couldn't bring himself to care. What was happening before him was something so much more satisfying than anything else could be, at least for now. If his fascination should fade, he would no doubt investigate the advancing structure. 

[WC: 372][TWC: 1,556]

Wrath was an ugly sin. The way it twisted someone's personality and distorted its view. Though as Sin looked down upon this specimen through his puppet's eyes he noticed it. Wrath had not consumed him, nor was it Gluttony as his form could have lead an accusation. Searching his mind for a brief second as he searched the boys figure from head to toe with memories of what there were like it in reality. Taking note of the mirror he tried something unique. Making the skin of a puppet flare up. Though it was the one you weren't focused on its body began to literally glow brightly. Getting brighter and brighter to almost where the light was burning to the eyes. All of this lead up to the beast igniting in a flame and falling to smolders in what would have been a brief moment. Though most of his attention was focused on how the child reacted to this for just a singular moment, looking at his mask and the mirrors

As the solar flare of a winged beast lit up the other would turn in the air. In time to look look at Cayo. Its body dispersing whole into a cloud of smoke. Although as Cayo would have cut through it, the smoke clung to his flesh. Slowly it would seem as though someone had popped a sack filled with creatures designed to eat the refuse left by the world. It crawled up his skin as it started to take the form or worms and insects that dug their forms tightly against his limbs. His claws and kicking shredding some of them but they seemed to relentlessly crawl up his body. Each one exuding fragments of soul energy as they clung to him. Every bottom feeder of life that was there bit down and did their best to stab into bone and flesh alike as though they threatened to tunnel inside of him. 

Gripping onto a part of that throne with its clawed hand. It lowered its head for a moment. Sin nodded slowly. "This one... it is intelligent... It thinks.. It fears..." Standing up slowly from its throne and raising its head as its for-claws pressed against the wall within the tower. Taking one of the talon like fingers and scratching his own flesh with it. Dragging it down along the cracks in its face as it growled out in some sick and twisted idea. "This one... it is not food... it is fodder... It will suit us.. but first we need to bring it up... and that curious little freak will be more than enough to start the chain..." Swinging its arm back within the miasma pressurized tower as a small fraction formed a chain around each wrist it had. Wrapping further and further up his arms before embedding the ends of it into his own shoulders. Their lengths rattling on the floor as they grew longer and heavier.

The tower itself was looming closer and closer with each moment. The eye gazing down on the child began to lighten up the battle. To Sin he was throwing pawns at the hollow testing it... examining it... Within no more than ten minutes if the battle continued at this pace the tower would be just within an arm's reach of this fight. 

---

WC: 554
TWC: 1730

Angry eyes focused on the space where his target had just been. An explosion of light vied for his attention but rage demanded he find a new outlet for his fury. He could feel that one of his targets was already done away with as his feet touched down on the white sands. Mid glance the unfocused eyes caught sight of a small army of maggots trying to scale him. A lip curled in disgust as a few of them began to try and burrow their way beneath the layers of his sack.

At the realization of what they were doing, the boy's body began to respond. Layers of the sack began to grow, pushing the outer ones a further distance from the vital organs and bloodstream. Malformed lumps of tissue began to bud, studding the sack with hills and creating valleys for the worms to fall into and become crushed in as he hills grew. Eventually the beast's body began to slough off the outermost, dying layers of itself. His head still pivoted in search of a target while his limbs began to pick off the straggling insects that still so desperately clung to him. A few of them managed to burrow their way beneath the skin but little could be done about them at the moment.

The boy's eyes fell on the thing in the distance. It loomed, even from that far away, tall and dark. A tower, he guessed. Something had to be there. If it wasn't connected already to his anger it soon would be regardless of its involvement with the beasts he'd dispatched. Small feet began to carry his body in a march across the sands toward it. As he moved, he noticed that the thing was actually moving toward him. It was mobile. Even if he hand't been on his way to it, it was on its way to him. 

[WC: 316][TWC: 1,872]

The tower raised itself higher off the dunes of sand only to hold itself still for a moment. The dark winds around it swirling and whistling as it made a crater in the sand. Setting its base down in the center of it as each leg one by one slowly dug into the sands and buried beneath it.  At its core a puppet like any other before had started to form. First came bone and flesh, wrapping and building the base of this husk down to the most minute detail. The amalgamation being born had strips of human flesh woven into its features. Black ichor lined hollow tissue packed its arms and legs, darkening the flesh that lay above. The trained and toned body of a reaper adorning its abdomen and chest. The monstrosity was headless at first but had its body packed together from all of the spirits inside of him. From the swelling torrent of spiritual pressure and souls swelling and flowing through the tower a skull and head slowly formed. It was human in shape but the jaws depicted a monster who had the sole drive to hunt, slaughter and kill. It screamed out in a throaty roar as it took its first breaths, holding out its open hands. 

The souls inside the tower echoing as many started to be woven and bound together. Thick metal plates being formed and slapped into one another making thicker, stacked, full plates out of nothing. Slamming into the monstrosity across its form and sealing into its flesh like a second skin. This armor adorned its body covering from toe to neck to finger. Upon its head a spiked crown formed and sheathed its face in utter darkness to hide what it truly was. The armor screaming out as it was woven together with it only for another set of bellowing souls to cry out as their forms were forced into the shape of a cruel mace. The monster stood waiting just behind the door of the tower, standing almost eight feet tall and incomprehensible weight. Its body holding together through the screams of pain that were slowly dieing out. "Rise.... my first born son, it is time... to test you... and this beast alike... do not disappoint me.."

The monsters head jolted up and its eyes sparked to life with a fiery ire as it stood there, its body moving slowly at first though it was still adjusting and it was getting used to its new form faster and faster by the moment. By the time their guest would arrive he would be ready and it would be a fight to go down in the brief history that this monster would write.

---

WC: 452
TWC: 2182

His passage over the sands was rather quick, a screech of static sounding as the child bound from dune to dune. At the beginnings of the trek there'd been a thick trail of blood but as he dashed over the barren landscape his wounds stitched themselves closed. Little green eyes sized up the tower, noting that it was fairly tall but childish overconfidence told the brain behind the mask that he could tear it down if only he could first tear down the person inside.

"Henlo?" he called, setting himself down some distance from the base of the structure. His feet hardly sank into the sands as he craned to look for the top of the tower but it was as dark as the eternal night sky above. The thing before him didn't give Cayo nearly as much anxiety as the castle of Las Noches did even before he'd been imprisoned. "Wonder come out and play!" 

The grisly skeletal arms made an appearance again as the child beckoned with his fingers, sinew swaying from the blackened bones. He knew he was playing with fire but he didn't care. It was fun. He'd make the person behind the attack suffer as much as he could. 

[WC: 204][TWC:2,074]

From inside his mind the voices rang out. Bouncing off of the walls of the tower's insides. All of these voices only rousing up the monster that lay just inside its belly. Awakening the first born and stirring it to fuse and adjust to their new shape. The metal clad sabaton esque boots rang out with the first few steps it took, each one heavy but forceful as it drudged itself forward. Muscles seizing up and spazzing as they came to life only to move more freely with each step.Making its way towards the gate inside of the tower, the voices inside quieted down to but a mere whisper. Doubts and worries being drowned out hopes and dreams of those locked inside them. 

"We are.... we are accession..." Slipped from the mouth of the monster before its very own lips were stitched shut. Standing just behind the gate as its fingers rolled along the handle of its mace. The eye upon the tower opening back up and looking down at the hollow outside. Watching his movements for but a moment as the monster inside lifted its foot. "Break the sins of the world our son... and right the wrongs drowned upon us" Its foot kicking on the  gateway door once and making the tower itself shake and the door barely held. Its shape bent and dented outward from just the first hit. From the edges of the door it whistled out with escaping gas. The thick streams of gas making the door itself buckle and warp to let more out.

Lifting its foot one last time it kicked the doors. The hinges that held it in place snapping off from the tower as the gasses trapped inside it spilled out in a torrent. Taking the gate with them and slamming into the sand near Cayo as the gasses billowed out around the tower from that hole. Flooding the once empty dessert with a thick and dark gas that seemed to match the sky above. The ground under the gas callusing over as flesh seemed to form on the sand itself. Warping and twisting the dunes as smaller spires at about the hight of ten feet rose up of pure darkened flesh. Arms and faces reaching out from them as the same thing started happening across the ground itself. At the edge of the gas it sank into the sands only to weave and work its way up spiraling around the tower like a giant snake wrapping and twisting around its extremities.

The monster inside its depths hunching over for but a moment only to propel itself out with force. Its feet breaking the floor of the tower as it slammed into the sand and flesh like ground just to stand there. Looking at the child as it raised that mace for a moment and stared right back at him.

---

WC: 479
TWC: 2661

The silence that followed his query was less than ideal. As such, the child began to pout before the tower in hopes that whoever was inside might see. He was about to give up and barge in to look for whoever was responsible when the silence broke. The commotion began with a distant, dull clang. Something very hard had just hit something harder, much harder and it was trying to get through it. It was likely one of his own kind too stupid to realize there were other ways of getting to an objective rather than through the obstacle. As it was something seemed to be leaking out of the tower now. It drew itself up into the vast sky and wove itself around the immediate area, riding on the air itself. Whatever it was, it  stuck to him and stunk. Therefore he knew he must stunk, if it had stuck to him which only furthered his anger at the culprit. He listened as the clamor picked up again this time with one more crash, followed by a series of fainter sounds.

Something big had been moved with a lot of force and whatever it was hurtled through the air, of course, toward Cayo. The thing landed beside him as the hollow managed to sidestep it just in time. As his focus lay on the now discarded door more of the gas escaped from the tower, now blanketing the surrounding white sands and mingling with the night sky. The ground itself seemed to bend under the whim of the gas as it gave way to a new faux life wherever the gas touched. A sickening would be replica of flesh erupted from between the grains of sand and rose to stand a fair bit taller than the child did. As it grew the flesh birthed appendages and faces, ugly amalgamations of limbs and tissue.

As the child watched the land devolve into fleshy chaos and the presumed champion of the tower emerge, he couldn't help but giggle. This was new! This was exciting and he couldn't wait to see how it would end. Hunting was no longer his priority for the time being and his anger was almost forgotten. In fact, if the champion proved to be worth his while he supposed he could even forgive the transgressions.

"Hello!" he called, not in the slightest bit concerned that it was easily twice his height and held a mace as though it were a paperweight. It seemed interesting, at least. The weapon could be dealt with when the time came. If the time came. "Want play!?"

[WC: 435][TWC: 2,509]

All it took was but a flinch. Muscles tensing and twitching before it happened. There was no sound, just deafening silence from inside that armor while the corrupted and twisted ground called out in agony and pain. The hand reaching out of the ground trying as they might to grab onto the hollow like they were going to drag him into the sands and mass of flesh but their grips quickly losing any hold each time, it was apparent for now they were simply there as a distraction. The monster that held the mace slowly raised up its free hand as it looked at the hollow for a moment as if debating something in its head for that moment.

Within the tower he nodded slowly figuring the hollow had not figured what the gas was just yet at this moment. A wicked grin curled around its lips as its mind raced for a moment before deciding on something most interesting and vile. "Why waste the show of physical might if i might toy with the beast a bit more... Yes... Lets play with our food and watch them squirm... heal as they may...They will never forget the pain... I will teach." His voice was quieter than a whisper inside the tower as trails of the gas flowed throughout its interior only to hook into the ever spreading blight here upon the dunes.

The amalgamation clenched its fist. Forcing all that gas that had clung to the dear little hollow's body with the door's removal, to cling even tighter to his from. Crushing him in a sense with shear force from all around his body. To make it worse as it clenched the hand tighter spikes began to protrude from this prison on the inside like an iron maiden. This was the first time he had used his ability in this way, and it made the bonds of this makeshift prison weak, but it was growing stronger as her memorized each way a spike dug into the flesh or the constricting weight of force. It may not have been the most humble of opening moves, but in this wasteland nothing was ever pretty.

---

WC: 362
TWC: 3023