[Tartarus]

((Can I just say this person is genius and I am 2000% more excited about this now?!?!!))

((Sorry, go ahead. *sits down by campfire and listens raptly*))

[Kristopher]

Ian stood on the edge of the toxic fields. Mother had often scolded him for playing too close, but today was no day for games. Today was the day he would follow in his father’s footsteps to become a brave hero.

Mother told him every night about his father’s brave deeds. Some monster he had fought, or some person he had saved. Mother ended every story the same way. A kiss goodnight and a promise that tomorrow Father would be coming home. Yet every morning Mother woke up with tear-filled eyes. Father had been gone for a year now, and Ian was going to find him.

Ian had heard the myth as had every child in his small dilapidated village. The stories seem to leak from the wind, the trees, the very ground beneath you. Everyone had a slightly different telling, but some things were always the same. There is shop keeper who wanders the plains like a ghost. Selling you whatever you need for whatever you have.

Some of people claim he demands “coins” for his supplies. Why anyone would want the worthless pieces of scrap metal scattered around his village eludes him, but Ian collected them nonetheless. He had finally collected the magic number of coins after hours of shifting through sand and searching unused buildings. With 200 coins in a bag he had stolen from Mother’s kitchen, he stood waiting on the edge of the plains. Ian squeezed his eyes shut and wished. He was so close. All he had to do was hand over the coins and he could rise to the level of the heroes. Fight back the evil monsters and save his father.

Eventually the relentless rays of the sun began to ware him down. He opened his eyes and scanned the plains. Nothing moved. No animals scurried or plants swayed in the wind. The village behind him was quiet. Ian held his breath… then released it in rage. He tossed the coins to the ground as tears began to form on his face. ‘This is it,’ he thought, ‘it was all a myth after all.’ He turned to head back to the village.

Ian hadn’t taken a step when he felt the icy finger tap once on his shoulder. He turned around and saw a horse drawn carriage loom over him with no horse in sight. The paint was old and chipping. A small hatch cast a cold shadow onto Ian. The hatch revealed a small room filled with piles of boxes. Sword blades, bows, guns, and arrows, stuck out at odd angles from every box.

A tall slender man stood in front of the carriage and loomed over Ian’s child frame. His large eyes scanned Ian top to bottom as if trying to find any flaws then finally came to rest on his face. After a moment, in a voice far colder then his touch, he said,

“Well, kid? I have to go soon, so get your first weapon quickly.”

[Kristopher]

((“Top that.” said the vagabond before leaning closer to the warm fire.))

[Tartarus]

((“Heh. pretty good…” The soldier paused for a moment as he watched the flames lick at the dead raccoon they were roasting. “Oh! I know!”))

[Tartarus]

Well, I’m not saying it’s true, but I heard it once from a man down in Louisiana, he says he knows how they made the toxic waste. And he said it wasn’t an accident at all.

He said he worked at the factory when he was young, back when it was a sewage treatment plant. Said the government bought the place out just after we joined the war. All of the workers were fired except for a few certain people; The Night Shift, they were called. The building sat empty for a long time, or so they thought. But then, little by little, people started saying they saw strange things near the old plant. They said that the Night Shift had come back, working at SOMETHING in the deep hours before morning. That the lights turned on, just for a second, and flickered off again. On. And then off. The pumps had started working again too, if you went down to the end of the pipes, where they emptied into the river, He said you could smell there was something wrong with the water, that it smelled burnt, almost like it was still burning. And if you stood there in that water for too long, then you’d get The Fever.

I heard that no one thought too much of The Fever at the start. It was some teenagers that got it first, they’d been out skinny dipping by the runoff pipes, and the next morning their parents found them crying, saying their insides were on fire, writhing and convulsing in their beds. The boy was the lucky one, they found him by the sink, where he’d drank himself to death, six gallons, I heard, and he just kept drinking until the last second.

They took the girl to the hospital, everyone was worried at this point, even some men from the government came down. But they never found out what happened to her. I hear she just disappeared, right about the same time those government men left. She wasn’t the last one to vanish, and she sure wasn’t the last to catch the fever. Soon more than half the town was feeling it, and it wasn’t a surprise. You couldn’t find one faucet, not in the whole area, that didn’t have water smelling of fire. Some of the richer folks bought bottled water, and only drank, only bathed, with that. The rest of them, well, of course there was the group that said it was God, punishing the wicked. And there were those that thought it was the Russians, trying to weaken the war effort. But he knew, this man said, he knew who was behind it.

And just as the supply of clean water diminished, as more and more people either died or disappeared, just as the people grew the most desperate, his theory was proved right. The people fleeing the town were stopped on the highway, locking in by a barricade of armored cars. The sky was clouded by black helicopters. And the mayor announced, through the mask of his hazmat suit, that the town had been chosen, entirely randomly of course, ‘to be the site of a new bomb testing site, isn’t that exciting?’

They must have used a lot of bombs, that’s all I can say, because by the time I came by, all that was left was that one man. Not one house, not one other person. Nothing, but that man, and a tall, boarded up building labeled ‘Sewage Treatment Plant’. I stared at the building for a moment, and I was going to ask if he’d ever gone in again. But when I turned around, he was gone. A black helicopter whirred past. I’m not ashamed to say; I ran.

[Kristopher]

((The vagabond could tell this man had heard more then a few stories. He scratched his chin for a bit before saying “Ah, I think I know something you’ll like.”))

[woodfeather the patchwork]

what???

[woodfeather the patchwork]

this sounds epic :3