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theeaglemansstory · 2 months

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The Eagle Man (Plague Doctor)

In the heart of a small town shrouded in mystery, there existed a figure whose presence defied comprehension. Cloaked in the dark robes of a plague doctor, his form obscured beneath layers of cloth, he appeared as if conjured from the depths of night itself. The townsfolk whispered of his coming, of how he materialized out of thin air, his footsteps silent as the grave itself. Some claimed he was not human, that he wore the guise of a man to conceal his true nature. Yet, none dared to approach him, for his presence instilled a sense of unease that lingered long after he had vanished into the shadows.

The children, however, saw him differently. To them, he was a guardian, a protector who watched over them with silent vigilance. They gave him the name "Eagle Man," although in truth, he resembled more of a crow than a majestic bird of prey. But alas, the children couldn't tell the difference.... Sarah, a young girl with eyes as bright as the stars, was among the first to encounter Eagle Man. She found him standing alone in the park one evening, his form outlined against the fading light of the setting sun. Intrigued by his mysterious aura, she approached him with cautious curiosity.

“Eagle Man,” she said tentatively, “who really are you?”

The figure turned to her, his brown mask betraying no emotion. Without a word, he extended his hand, offering her a sprig of lavender plucked from the folds of his leather cloak In which came all the way down to his heeled shoes. Sarah accepted the gift with a grateful smile, unaware of the darkness that lurked behind the masked visage. Despite the unease he instilled in some, to the children, he was a friend, a protector. They would giggle and play around him, giving him silly names and presenting him with drawings and trinkets they made themselves with their tiny hands.

As days turned into weeks, Eagle Man became a familiar sight in the town, his silent presence a source of comfort to the children who sought solace in his company. They would gather around him in the park, their laughter echoing through the night as they played beneath the watchful gaze of their enigmatic guardian. But beneath the Cover of innocence lay a darker truth. For Eagle Man held in a deep-seated hatred for those who would harm the children, a hatred that burned with a fierce intensity in the depths of his soul. He is cautious of the adults, he finds them unpleasant.. especially the males despite possibly being one.

One fateful night, he learned of a child living in torment, his home a prison of abuse at the hands of his own parents. With a resolve born of fury, Eagle Man slipped through the night like a whisper in the wind, his cloak billowing behind him like wings of darkness, there was no doubt that he was furious.The house stood silent in the dead of night, its windows darkened against the world outside. The Eagle Man approached with silent purpose, his heart heavy with the weight of the task that lay before him. Inside, the child slept fitfully, unaware of the danger that lurked just beyond his door. His parents, consumed by their own demons and hate, paid no mention to the silent figure that crept through the darkness toward them. With swift and practiced hands, the Eagle Man subdued the unsuspecting parents. They awoke to find themselves tied to a tree, their arms cut open and their veins exposed to the nights cold air. They cried out in terror as The Eagle Man approached, his blade glinting in the moonlight as he prepared to deliver justice upon them. With a final whisper.. “Shhhh....” he silenced their pleas for mercy, his actions driven by a righteous fury that brooked no dissent.

As the first light of dawn broke over the horizon, Eagle Man disappeared into the shadows once more, leaving behind only whispers of his presence and the faint scent of lavender lingering in the air. But though the town remained hidden in darkness, the children knew that as long as Eagle Man watched over them, they would always be safe from harm. And so, they whispered his name in hushed tones, their voices carrying the echoes of a guardian lost to the shadows.

Throughout his silent vigil, Eagle Man leaned on a wooden cane, a companion that aided him in his travels through a forest, whom was a seemingly male figure who wore a Carhartt jacket with a black collar & a white mask with some designs drawn on it, the companion then asked of his age, he merely shrugged, implying that the passage of time held no meaning for one such as him. Despite his grace, he sometimes stumbled over his robes, a reminder of the frailty that lurked beneath his stoic exterior.

When the children called out, He'd be there. Wherever he might be now...

#creepypasta #story #creepy stories #creepypasta stories #marble hornets

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aspiring-bl-writer · 3 years

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Flash Fiction: Drukhari & Necrons

Hello again! I want to thank Tim aka TauMan over at Cold Open Stories for giving me a lot of helpful feedback on my last post. I also highly suggest checking out Cold Open Stories if you too are interested in writing or reading 40k fiction (they also have audio dramas). In today's story, a Drukhari raider stumbles upon a Necron tomb that has recently reawakened. With some of Tim's feedback in mind I tried to focus more on imagery and used a first-person POV to give the story a little more punch.

We gush forth from the Webway, a swarm of coal-colored locusts, our intentions cruel and wicked. We are the Kabal of the Flayed Skull, the raiders of the Poisoned Crown. I grip the controls of my Reaver white-knuckled and teeth-gritted, testing the limits of the jet-bike’s acceleration. The Reavers lead the war party and I lead the Reavers, both as their leader and in formation. To outdistance me would be to challenge my authority. I brook no dissent. I cannot show weakness. Only the strongest thrive in the Dark City.

I do not know this world’s name. I do not care. We raided it long ago, then left it to recreate its wealth and population for our future plunder. Most of it is underground, built into caverns, the great halls and corridors of this subterranean race. For all their skill and knowledge of excavation, their weapons are woefully primitive, all but useless against our own. Even more brazenly than is characteristic for me, I dive and glide low over rows of what this species calls “soldiers.” Their globular heads fly off in fountains of magenta-hued blood as the blades attached to my bike slice through their necks in one pass, my conveyance unimpeded by even the slightest resistance. I let out a whoop as we fly deeper into the recesses of the subterrestrial city, taking breakneck turns around tight corners, weaving through compact lanes and passages. The further we go, the fewer defenders we see, the streets empty, the buildings abandoned. Everything is silent.

“They’re hiding!”

“No!” I shriek. “We came in too fast!”

They could not know we were coming. Even with the odds in our favor we never surrender surprise. There is something else amiss here. My curiosity spurs my bravado.

Then I see it. The streets end and buildings conclude where a wide fissure begins, a fracture that is miles across and even deeper. As we circle it, I see an eerie yellowish shade of green emanating from below. I assume it to be coming from some natural gas, but there is no vapor, but patterns, glyphs carved into rock by some strange intelligence.

I see the result of the shot before I hear the blast. One of my followers explodes in a flash of bright light, his bike detonating beneath him. Rising from the crevasse are two floating figures, skeletal heads, arms, and torsos lodged onto hovering platforms. They hold energy weapons alive with the same vivid yellowish-green as the glyphs, pulsing with destructive power. They stare at us with cold contempt on their metal visages.

I veer to avoid another blast, only to steer into another. I jump clear, and the cries and shouts of the other Reavers fade as I fall into the crevice. I plummet, limbs flailing without purchase. Only briefly do I glimpse the grandeur of a throne room. A lord, old, terrible, angry, patient. I feel relief that I will not live to see the doom he brings.

#warhammer 40k #warhammer #40k #40k lore #40k fiction #40k fanfic #wh 40k #drukhari #dark eldar #eldar #aeldari #necron #necrons #tomb world #reavers #games workshop #black library

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obsidianmichi · 7 years

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I was reading @feynites fun fic Looking Glass. I was struck to play with young Solas on a lark and to help with character development, though my Solas is nothing like her Pride. He came out much more... knightly. Plus, our Falon’dins have little in common. Still, thanks Feynites for this fun bit of play! I enjoy your writing quite a bit. ^_^

Fen’Harel growled in frustration, kicking his legs up on his desk and balled another memory fragment in his hands. Mythal’s lush gardens spread below his tower window and he knew the girl was somewhere in the rock building nearest the octangle compound’s far corner, potentially looking out on the same wilds. Whatever Falon’din had done widened the girl up to more and released more too, realized the ever present sadness lurking at the edges of her sorrowful eyes. Uncontained, her pent up pain was enough to wrench at his heart. The images came quickly, inundated him with fits and starts. The strange wooden boats moving across the ground and drawn by Ghilnan’nain’s halla, strange feral elves in strange, simple leather clothes about campfires and wearing the vallaslin of the People. The same dead vallaslin she had worn when she arrived. If they enslaved the halla, there would be swift vengeance delivered on them. Yet, he did not think so. Instead, his memory fell to the moment before when he’d escorted her back to her room. Her back stiff and unyielding, and she never leaned on him regardless of the pain.

“Thank you,” she’d said in the same quiet way she did every day before closing the door.

His heart thundered then, and he’d almost caught the rough, wooden slab with his hand. Demand to know what he might do, know why she looked at him with such sad eyes. Those sky blue irises, unlike those of his fellow elvhen. Whenever they found him, he felt as if joy fled from the world. His world of bright colors turned to dark and gray nightmare.

He understood why Sorrow and Misery lingered close to her, as did Compassion, though he’d seen no immediate signs of its presence. The other spirits wandered near her on occasion, but he suspected they were waiting until she was ready to speak with them. Of them all, it was Solace, Wisdom, and Regret who never left. Wisdom’s presence surprised him most.

“Young in body, old in pain, and kindred in ken,” was what Wisdom said.

That answer proved unsettling as the others.

He turned as the door creaked behind him.

“Still at it, eh?” Asharael said. The older elf strode into Fen’Harel’s private room at the top of his glass tower, eyes surveying the scattered red shards littering the floor. He rubbed his mouth, all amusement.

Fen’Harel cast him a dirty look.

“Your powers of poetry fail you?”

He sighed. “Try as I might, nothing comes right.”

“Yet you managed a rhyme scheme this time,” Asharael chuckled. Without invitation, he swiped one of the shards up off the floor and held it up in the light. “To whom is this pretty ditty of yours meant? A lucky elven lass, I’m sure. Perhaps Tana in the markets or the sorceress apprentice Lyvaea whose been eyeing you, the one transferred to Mythal’s service out of Dirthamen’s schools.”

“Neither,” he said stiffly.

“Neither?” Asharael spun the inert shard between his fingers. “Tell me you’re not hung up chasing some noble lady in the high casts? Or a raven wench with Falon’din’s delegation?” His upper lip wrinkled. “They’re hardly fun in a tumble.”

Fen’Harel studied him, remembering the girl… Eirwen pale in his arms. Her cold fingers extending, eyes full of strange relief and wonder as she reached out to touch his face. Solas. She’d whispered his name. His first name from when he’d been a spirit of Pride, when he’d had no other. A name he barely remembered. The air around her dead and unfeeling, but her soft eyes filled with an emotion he could only call love. He... whomever she’d seen in his place was someone beloved. Her beloved, he reminded himself. He’d seen the same expression in the eyes of enough young maids enough to know, yet nothing like hers. Their loves were not so precious. Even now, months later, he’d barely the words to describe it. Those eyes were a candle’s flame in the forest, burning brightly and gone again in the wind’s sputtered gasp. They knew nothing of timelessness, only endings. Yet, the swiftness of the coming end left her love all the sweeter, all the more fierce. Like a brilliant star in the overhead sky, he wished it would burn on forever.

In the moment, he’d been struck with envy. Envy, of all emotions the most selfish he might feel. Envy for the unknown male who bore his name, gifted with a love born in the shadow of death. Wherein the end would come, but each moment clung to as precious. Brief, brilliant, wildly passionate. A momentary love, come and gone again before one might blink. Yet in her love’s shadow all his turned to pale. Her love echoed in him even now, rattling bars of a cage he never knew contained him.

Envy.

Ridiculous, he thought.

“Ah,” Asharael’s tone darkened. “That one.”

“I’ve no intention to pursue her,” Fen’Harel said and heard it for a lie as the words left his lips. “She is… fascinating.”

“Severed from the Dreaming, almost in entirety,” Asharael replied. “To hear the Sorceresses tell it, she will never truly be restored though she may find some semblance of elvhen life as a construct.” The older elf studied the shard in his palm. “Falon’din has laid his claim, wolf brother. You would do well to avoid that storm.”

“Her vallaslin was inert,” Fen’Harel offered. He knew Falon’din’s intentions all too well, knew too Mythal humored her eldest. She had not given the girl up in part because the child proved an easy means to vex him.

“His mark is on her,” Asharael said. “Whatever that means, Linali won’t tell me.”

Fen’Harel nodded, remembering Asharael’s latest conquest among Mythal’s Sisterhood. “Mythal has promised not to give her up easily.”

“But never promised she would not,” Asharael countered. “I feel for the little lass, much as anyone can. Poor thing cannot feel as we do, she is half a creation. Flesh with but a whisper of spirit.”

Fen’Harel shrugged. “I have been seeking to understand.”

“You know the spirits better than I, Dreamborn,” Asharael chuckled. “Mayhap you will.”

Irked, Fen’Harel traced the lengths of his fingers. Eyes moving to the collection of research piled on the far table on the opposite side of his quarters. Even with Wisdom’s help, researching her condition proved a daunting task. He was younger than Falon’din, and the other legendary. He knew spirits, yes. He had been drawn from the Fade by Mythal herself to serve at her court, but so had Falon’din and Dirthamen. They were First among the Children. Falon’din’s knowledge of a spirit’s transition into a mortal body was second to none. Mythal was correct in calling to him for aid. Yet, Fen’Harel frowned, Falon’din offered no favors for free.

His eyes returned to the gardens below. Swinging to the verdant jungle in the east, twining vines and the ancient trees with their wide fronds. Spirits swanned down the paths, conversing freely and eagerly with their embodied counterparts. His gaze fell to a couple, far below, in a secluded grove beside Gardenmeister Karina’s favorite babbling brook. They curled together lazily in the fading light, looking up or down every so often to plant a gentle kiss on the other’s lips.

Coolly, Fen’Harel reached for another memory shard. He’d enough work to do overlooking Mythal’s forces, and reviewing training for his contingent of Wolf Brothers. He was not a general, not truly. He was Champion, overseeing the training of the elite and serving under the more seasoned Hamilin. A glorified bodyguard as the elder commanders so often reminded him. Still, his warriors would be on the training floor tomorrow. The girl had intimated she’d some sort of combat training, though he privately doubted its efficacy.

With a flick of his thumb, he called up her image. Her bare face, stripped of Falon’din’s offensive markings, stare back. She was tiny, especially when compared to the elvhen. A smaller frame with thinner bones, a round if hollow face compounded by massive doe-like eyes. She’d been half starved as a child. That much was obvious to anyone with eyes. Her visage remained ridiculously childlike, though her expressions showed an aged maturity. Yet she’d lived no longer than twenty-six short years. Impossible! Fleshborn at twenty were cradlebound. He turned the image over in his hand.. Her magic came and went in whispers. A teasing breeze taunting him with wisdom born from pain, and some unspoken knowledge half-remembered in dreams.

Fen’Harel banished it again, his mouth set in a firm line. Such a child could not have combat training, much less experience. It is my duty to test out all potential threats to Mythal, therefore I must test her. If he knew how well she defended herself perhaps he would stop worrying, and if she could not then he’d have a beginning.

Asharael’s hand settled on his shoulder, and gave him a warm squeeze.

Fen’Harel glanced at him.

“You will get past this,” Asharael said. “All comes to its end, brother.”

“Except us,” Fen’Harel replied.

Asharael smiled. “Even us.”

Fen’Harel sighed. “I must wait these emotions out then.”

Asharael gave him a knowing pat. “The feelings will leave in their own time, and you will be yourself again. You are young yet, Fen’Harel. You shall see.”

“Too young to be Champion?” he asked, voice wry.

“You earned the honor accorded,” Asharael answered. “Only Mythal in her mightiness may take it from you.”

Fen’Harel sighed. “What brought you to me, Squad Leader?”

Asharael chuckled. “Back to business, then? Well, the soldiers are requesting their leader’s presence at the drinking hall. They wish to celebrate, as such they could not begin without you.”

Laying the memory shard back on his desk, Fen’Harel stood with a sigh. “Then we’d best not keep them waiting.”

“They prefer you cheerful to melancholy,” Asharael said, waggling his bushy black brows as they walked together toward the door. “When you’re happy, you ease off drilling on the practice field.”

“I promise nothing,” Fen’Harel replied, hands tucking behind his back. “They ought to know by now a night of summer spirits gains them only a morning grouch.”

“Ah, but there is always the chance you’ll stumble off to find a nice bar lass who’ll work the tension out,” Asharael said. “If not, an embarrassing moment for blackmail.”

Fen’Harel laughed. “I do not believe I have ever been quite so drunk.”

“Well,” Asharael grinned, “there’s always a first time.”

Following Asharael out the door, Fen’Harel descended from his tower. He intended to spend time with his warriors, or perhaps only watch their revelries. His mind turning to the morrow, and a plan regarding the girl formulating in his head. He realized, long after the sun had set and his mind drowsy with spirits that he should get used to calling her by name.

#solavellan #arlathan #solas x lavellan #solas x eirwen #young solas #fen'harel #this is not a new AU #I swear #it was just a bit of... heart wrenching fun

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