Flashback One Rotten Apple Spoils the Hunt [Gore]

[Lydan Verdjak]

490 AV, 13th of Winter, Morning
The air ranked of ash and smoke, laden with the campfire from last night. Lydan rolled around in his sleep and yawned, grasping the very messy and disorganized cover as he pulled it over his slightly freezing body. Albeit, the bed was drenched in his sweat and stench, for time passed since his last session of bathing. He rolled over for several moments, hearing snoring coming from the other boys' tents.

Minutes passed by, and then suddenly a scream echoed from outside his tent, this of course caused a rush of adrenaline into his body as he flung the blankets off of his body, and his youthful palm grabbing the nearby wooden Lakan. He dropped to his feet and crept out of the tent, peering out to see Xastan straddled atop of Mal'thrick. Xastan's palms were balled up into fists, it only took a single, quick glance to tell Xastan was beating the living shit out of Mal. "You fat, lazy piece of shyke! I'm going to shove your Lakan so far up your ass it's going to leave a mark in your throat!" He continued the obscenities as the others simply stared at the brutal scene.

All except for Lydan, he wasn't going to have any of it. He gripped his Lakan strongly in palm and moved over, sending a boot straight for Xastan's side, causing a very audible "Oof!" To emit from him as he collapsed over to the left side of Mal'thrick. Lydan then bent down and grabbed Xastan by the collar of his undershirt, lifting him up to force him to face Lydan. "If you do something like that again, I'm going to make you regret it." Xastan was a medium-muscled Akalak standing at 6'3", he was agile and quick, and this indeed helped him in this case. "You think so you arrogant helioc?" He said before a fist collided with Lydan's right cheek, causing him to drop and release Xastan to the floor as he backed up to recover.

Lydan had dropped his Lakan, he had little time to recover before Xastan called out with fierceness and charged at him, he was caught off-guard but not ill-prepared for repercussion, he grabbed onto the plates of Xastan's shoulders and shoved him back with enough force to knock him to the ground a distance. He gritted his teeth with rage as he went to mount Xastan, landing his fists across his torso and face, leaving a bloody nose and several bruises to remember for a while. And suddenly as the other's around him begun cheering him on, a blood-curdling scream came from the other side of the small camp.

Two pairs of eyeballs along with grey matter landed on several of the youth boys as they screamed out in disgust and startle, Lydan had pulled away and grabbed onto his wooden Lakan now. Xastan slowly emerged but moaned with pain, and then more than a handful of Glassbeaks were charging for the Akalak youth. Several were unready and weak as limbs were torn off, permanent marks were left and many were dead. Xastan, Mal'thrick, Lydan and two others had fled the scene in the same direction immediately.

It felt like days had passed, the two other boys, Drenin and Fede'rike were their names, the only few to carry flint and steel, along with basic trapping equipment. The group eventually found an empty space, and they all had a seat. "We have to search the camp for survivors." Mal'thrick declared, "And risk being slaughtered by those Gods damned things?" Xastan said. "We'll starve to death otherwise, we need to find food at the camp." Lydan had retorted. "We can hunt." Xastan glared towards Lydan. It was noon by now, "Yeah? But what the shyke with?" One of the nameless boys had spoken up. "Fine, petch's sakes, we'll go." It was settled by then, they made their way towards the camp.

As they glanced upon the horrifying scene of the entrails and limbs of their fallen companions, Mal'thrick had thrown up. "Search the place." Lydan said as he and the rest moved to scrap through the camp, each presumably at his own tent. Lydan's made his way towards the middle, and plopped down to one knee to reach and dig through it. Upon standing he found a dagger, a flint and steel, a hunting knife, and a handful of silverware along with a flask of wine. The others turned up with similar equipment, including a map, a compass and food. There were also weapons and trapping gear, however this mattered little as two of the nameless boys moved to set the map about and on the ground, nodding now.

The one who spoke up before did so once more, "Alright, so we're somewhere along here, and Glassbeaks managed to get the jump on us due to poor planning, now I don't know about you bunch but I'm not willing to take on an Alpha Male Glassbeak, let alone one of the bastards with a pack to back him up."
The rest nodded in agreement, "It's best we take on a straggler hunting alone, we can check over -HERE- for a cave." Lydan had pointed at a spot directly south of them, "But we'll need the two of our best scouts for the job." Lydan had eyed Mal'thrick and Xastan, "Never with this Venhrehk." "I think it's best if we don't." They both protested. "Alright, we can send either three of us brutes, and probably get caught weak in number and then killed, does that sound good? This is a question of survival you two, not one of foolish disputes." Xastan heaved a sigh out, nodding his head. "I'll do it."

An hour or so of preparation passed by in the camp as the two dressed up, and were handed instructions and a compass, eventually they settled off and left.

[Lydan Verdjak]

13th Of Winter, Late into the Night
It was hours before Xastan came back yesterday, Lydan had learned the two other's names in that time, Zaed and Nalei. Zaed and Nalei weren't particularly fit for Akalak, but they were nor skinny nor obese. Xastan told them Mal was killed during the scouting, by the Glassbeak they found in the cave nearby. He said the poor bastard served as a distraction before the elderly glassbeak pecked his brains out. Lydan knew that wasn't true however, he knew Xastan's lying nature. Late that night Lydan grabbed his Lakan and tip-toed out of his tent, unbeknownst to Xastan who had volunteered to keep watch that night. By then it was simple as sneaking over as Xastan's eyes slowly drifted shut, they widened suddenly as those pair of eyes noticed a wooden slither over his neck. He gasped and sucked in his last breath before blood dripped out from his neck, he fell over. Tucking his body over Lydan's shoulder, time passed along as he dug a grave with his palms a distance away from the camp, and tossed the body in. Lydan kicked dirt over it and snuck back into camp to catch sleep.

[Lydan Verdjak]

14th of Winter
Without a trace of what happened to Xastan last night, the group set off to look for the Glassbeak, it was not long before they came across an overlook that then expanded to gaze down towards the empty space, Zaed nodded. "All we have to do is find some wildlife, anything made of flesh should work although we can try a rodent of sorts." And so they set off to set a small trap, placing some dried up vegetables of sorts in the spring trigger, it was not long 'fore a small rodent was entangled in a net. Zaed nodded and along with the three before setting the entangled creature in a small grouping of grass just bordering the visibility of the cave.

Only a handful of minutes had passed before it eased out to snap its beak over the rodent, killing and devouring some of it easily. Unfortunately this would not last as a net grappled one of its foot and then tugged it up in the air. Oh but this simply didn't work and the youth discovered it weighed a lot more than the trap was meant for. Zaed and Nalei had already sprung out to their temporarily trapped prey, before it stood up and charged over both of them, bones had audibly snapped as it charged over the two of them. Lydan eased his way over softly as his companions screeched for his help, standing behind the Glassbeak as it had bent down to finish its opponents. It was a millisecond before Lydan had embedded the wooden Lakan into the Glassbeak's neck, some of the blade of it had broken off now as the beast screeched in anger. Lydan's eyes widened as the Glassbeak turned to him now, it sank its long jaw into his shoulder and caused him to howl in agony. He sent two fingers over and plunged them straight into the Glassbeak's right eye, pulling his now-bruised fingers out as he then used his other hand to pull the Lakan out of the Beak's neck then stuck it through the Glassbeak's other eye as it screeched once more. The then-blinded Glassbeak spread its jaws wide to remove most of Lydan's skull - And then it collapsed after the sound of steel colliding with flesh a final time, two wooden Lakan's stuck through the back of its head.

[Lydan Verdjak]

16th of Winter, 490 AV
Days later passed as they arrived back into Riverfall, Lydan later found out his shoulder was patched up, he couldn't use it for some time and had trouble moving his arm for a while. All was well later on as the two managed to bring the Glassbeak's body back to Riverfall and a feast was prepared for the three families.

[Magpie]

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Hi there! I'm Magpie, AS of Riverfall. I noticed some parts in your thread that don't quite fit with the lore of Mizahar. You'll have to correct them before you can receive any grade. If you have any questions or concerns about anything I mention below, please don't hesitate to message me and we can work it out.

• Killing Xastan: While the below points are all minor, this is the one that made me fully stop and realize I couldn't grade your thread. Riverfall is not a city of thieves and murderers where killing someone is a common thing. Even adults killing each other for legitimate reasons is extremely rare, and always done in a structured format in the arena. Lydan would have to be pretty unbalanced to slit the throat of one of his peers, for so small a reason as he suspected the guy didn't protect another well enough. You can have him be a psycho if you want, but there's nothing in his CS or the post itself to indicate this.
• Height: You mention in your CS that Lydan was big for his age, but then you say Xastan was 6'3" at 15 years old. This is enormous for such a young man. Given how easily Lydan took down Xastan in the beginning fight, I assume you mean that they are both this size, which is even more unbelievable.
• Lydan's Calmness: This relates to my first point, by Lydan comes across throughout as extremely calm about seeing people killed and ripped apart. At no point does he panic, stress out, or essentially mess up in any way during what is a very stressful situation. He's a 15 year old boy, and while he has been training his whole life for this moment, he is nowhere near a seasoned warrior at this point.

You may choose to rewrite the passages with respect to my above points, or to scrap it altogether and start a new thread. If you choose to rewrite this one, please PM me once it's finished, and I'll remove this intervention and grade it. Thank you in advance for your cooperation!
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