Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be [Open; Please Read]

[Noah]

[OOC: Open to any character who participated in the Undead Raid on 8/20/2020.]

"You know children, always playing with the forces of darkness."

-Kelley Armstrong, The Reckoning

FIRST FLOOR

It is Noah's sixth day in Harper Rock when he kills a rogue necromancer and claims yet another relic. It is Every who tells Noah of the event. A rogue necromancer, which he understands to be a sort of feral vampire obsessed with power, has overtaken a building in Coastside. She tells him it is a "raid", a building full of dead things, and there will be multiple vampires tackling the structure. She informs him as a warning to stay clear, though invites him and the rest of his family to try to get past the first floor.

Noah has the impression that she, and many others, use it as a way to measure and test themselves. But for the Levesque patriarch, the incident means much more. In his short time here, it has become abundantly clear to the man that the city is in desperate need of help. Not just for the vampire populace, but in a more general sense. Monstrosities roam free and both the human and vampires are undermanned and under-armed against their continued assault. That a vampire known to none was able to storm a building single-handedly and spawn undead creations for his own amusement is indication enough to Noah of the troubles that plague Harper Rock.

When he walks in armed with Invictus, the beautifully crafted assault rifle gifted to him by Every herself, and the Theodosian Spear he found on his first day here, it is not to test his strength or loot the area. It is to solve the problem.

Noah is one of those people who does not believe in problems, but only challenges. But even to the warm, optimistic, freshly-turned vampire, this is a ******* problem.

The scent of death washes over him as he steps in, making the Allurist gag and almost stumble back through the door. Before he can seriously consider the option though, his gaze happens across what are colloquially known as ancient zombies, beings that are more bone than flesh. He had met his share of them already in the Catacombs and was more than proficient in disposing of their kind by now.

With a grimace, resolve solidifies in Noah's spine and he sights down the barrel of the gun.

"Let's rock and roll," he mutters to himself as he squeezes the trigger.

[Noah]

FIRST FLOOR, CONT.

The interior of the building was a Hell of a sight for someone who had been human just a week prior. Dark, necromantic magic had twisted the once gleaming, spotless corporate offices with corpses, blood, and the pervasive smell of rot. Everywhere he turned, Noah stumbled and tripped over another body. Every foot past the entrance seemed to greet him with a new stage of rot and the stains of blood splattered across the walls darkened slowly to mark his progress.

He did not have the luxury to process this eldritch horror, however. Around every cubicle was a new threat, skeletons with bits of flesh rushing to meet him with steel, each fueled by the same callous, arcane magic that had invaded the building. Funny, these skeletons. Whether it was cinema or modern media, Noah had always imagined that the skeletons of dungeons would present with shining white bones and entirely intact skeletal structures. Reality greeted him with a rude awakening. The skeletons were in as varied states of decay as the dead bodies they guarded, their bones were a rainbow of colors in the darkest spectrums of black, red, yellow, and even a sickening green. Some were missing limbs but pushed back against the vampire, dauntless and unthinking of their imminent demise.

Because in truth, there would be no other option for them before Noah. Bullets worked as well as his spear, sprayed against frail bones and shattering them to pieces. The end of his spear collided sharply against eyeless skulls, the void in the sockets threatening to engulf him.

One at a time, he battered countless of their forms. He saw other individuals doing much the same on this first floor, a veritable riot erupting through the halls as other brave souls clashed steel and flashed fire at their foes. And though he knew none of them, he watched one by one as they all came to their own standstill, exhausted.

Noah dug down deep into himself, drawing on reserves he did not know he possessed to summon more stamina from some unknowable source. He would not stop until this foul energy had been cleansed from the place. Until finally, as he cracked his foot against an exposed ribcage and sent the individual ribs skittering across the floor, he looked down to see a key.

The key, he deduced, was to open the door he had been unable to earlier. Noah nodded to himself as he pocketed it and bolted back in that direction, sweeping and dodging past the various ancient zombies to greet whatever new threat would find him on the second floor.

[Noah]

SECOND FLOOR

Noah was the first to breach this level. The corridors he found himself warped and twisted down haunting stretches and the only sound he could hear was that of his own footsteps. A chill crept up his spine as he inched forward, an eerie, foreboding sense of being watched lurking at the edges of his senses. Being alone here was the furthest thing from calming or exciting that he could imagine.

The sounds of muffled fighting from the first floor eventually faded as Noah strode deeper into the complex, turning a corner, and the absolute solitude of the entrenching evil and darkness here threatened to consume his sanity. With every step forward that he took, his gut reeled and screamed at him.

Run, those primal, ancient instincts of long-forgotten ancestors who had feared the dark before they had discovered fire told him. Run and do not look back.

But Noah's willpower was stronger than that. Or perhaps he lacked the common sense to obey that fear. If he were a betting man, he would have wagered on the latter. Despite all his luck with owning casinos though, Noah himself had never been a gambler. He saw it as a weak vice, meant to ensare only desperate fools, and so he gave no consideration to his lack of caution.

Another corner turned and---

"****!" He cried as he was slammed against a wall. Noah barely had time to process the feral, snarling teeth of the decaying form in front of him before he raised his arm to its throat to hold it back. Feral vampires, he had heard of these. It was a misleading term. Despite their names, the beasts were simply zombies who had ingested vampire blood, not full-blown vampires themselves.

Not that the distinction mattered at the moment. Zombie, vampire, or rabid bunny, the threat of the creature's snarling, monstrous maw in his face was the only thing Noah cared about. With gritted teeth, he managed to lift his leg up between the two and shove a knee into the beast's abdomen, sending it crashing back.

It was quicker than Noah thought it might be. By the time he had drawn his sword, the feral vampire was leaping towards him again. Noah swung wildly, carelessly as it lunged, drawing a gaping wound across its torso. And such became the melee: not a duel of finesse and grace, but a clumsy, frenzied brawl. The feral beast came at Noah again and again, unflinching and uncaring of the wounds laid upon it. Noah swerved, ducked, and dove to escape its claws, each strike he made with his blade a wild, desperate attempt to keep it at bay, until eventually -

Noah met the monster's next lunge head-on, charging it in return like he was a linebacker despite never having had the build for it. As the beast opened its mouth to feast upon Noah's flesh, it was not a sword that met it - in fact, the aforementioned blade lay five feet away on the ground - but a blinding muzzle flash as Noah shoved the barrel of his rifle beneath its jaw and opened fire. The skull of the creature shattered and exploded, blood and sinew erupting against Noah's face and suit.

He held the corpse of the creature there for a second longer, catching his breath and centering himself before letting it drop.

"So that's how it's going to be," he muttered to himself as he wiped a sleeve across his face and grimaced as the blood stained his freshly pressed suit. With an aching groan, he knelt to retrieve his sword and place it back in its sheath before slamming a new clip into his rifle and pressing forward to find more of the beasts.

[Noah]

THIRD FLOOR

The door closed behind him softly as he entered the next floor. He had no idea how many more levels he had to go, but he knew one thing for certain: he was alone now. Noah had long ceased to hear the sounds of fighting beneath him. It was sheer luck that he had been one of the first in the building. If luck was what you could call it.

Noah took the moment to sink to the floor, his back to the door, and catch the breath he did not really need. He wiped a sleeve at his forehead and realized it was not sweat dripping - you don't sweat anymore, he reminded himself - but blood. An uncharacteristic scowl formed on his normally soft features as he realized the costly Brioni was now stained beyond repair.

Noah made a mental note to wear more comfortable attire the next time he decided to wade wait-deep into a fight against undead monstrosities.

Next time? You've grown comfortable with the idea of violence, old man, he chastised himself. A part of the man wanted to turn back now, leave the fighting for those with the taste for it. But Noah did not believe in half-measures. Now committed to the path, he had no choice but to see it through. Such evil as this building was infested with could not be permitted to continue.

He was rising to his feet with a tedious groan when he heard it. The sound of at least three pairs of shuffling feet, turning the corner to the hallway he had sought his brief refuge in. Noah checked the clip of his rifle with a weary sigh and sighted the barrel down the hallway, dropping to a crouch to steady his sight.

But his hands were anything but steady as the beast turned the corner. Beast, singular. Not the multitude of zombies he thought he would have to wade through again. The deceptive sound of multiple feet had not come from their ilk on the floor below, but a single entity spawned from some unearthly, long forgotten nightmare.

It seemed a thousand body parts had been mashed together; gaping, horrified jaws stuck in silent screams, limbs sticking out in broken, sickening angles from the mass that Noah could only assume to be a torso, and a set of eyes that could have been human in the way they wordlessly begged for mercy, but that had found themselves attached to its own personal Hell.

Noah barely had time to process the overwhelming pity he felt for the creature and the anger boiling up inside him at such a demented, sadistic being that might create it before the Mooncalf was upon him. As sorry as he might feel for the beast, Noah knew that all he could do for now was to release it from its earth-bound torment.

Swallowing hard, he kept his gaze down the sights and squeezed the trigger.