Drexel said:Kaybee said:Drexel said:Kaybee said:Drexel said:Kaybee said:Drexel said:In the city of Noxus, the High Command was troubled by the recent rumors of attacks on the nearby villages, the attacks was said to be erratic in manner, according to the villagers who had managed to fled, there are times the attacks would be in form of a raid but sometimes a massacre. Also the people were really horrified that the attacks were not made by humans but by some strange creatures that came from nowhere.
After weeks of investigation, the High Command finally learned about the origins of the creatures that were responsible for the attack. So the High Command's decision, instead of sending a handful of infantry, they will only send one assassin to finish the job. They send one of their most notorious assassin, Katarina, to venture into Icathia where the abandoned dungeon-city is situated.
Right now, the denizens of the dungeon were all but awake and dying to feast on any surface dweller...... especially female humans.
But for now the magical barrier on the dungeon is up again, so there won't be any tour on the outside. But Katarina must hurry, should the magical barriers of the dungeon fade, then there would be no stopping for the monsters.
The assignment was... Unusual to say the least. Katarina was a killing force to be reckoned with in every sense of the word but even since her family had fallen from grace following the disappearance of her father and the transformation of her sister the Noxian High Command still preferred to use her to get rid of hard-to-reach political targets within the city-state's borders. Occasionally she was sent abroad to Demacia or Ionia to deal with various undesirables but Icathia...
Technically speaking, Icathia wasn't even a part of Valoran. It held some physical space on the continent sure but the place was so corrupted with the void that parts of it had begun to slip into the void without warning, flickering back and forth between the two dimensions constantly.
It wasn't the first time Kat had wondered if High Command might have decided she was no longer worth keeping around and tried to kill her, but she went ahead with it anyways. What they'd heard of, spilling out of the dungeon they were sending her into were mostly shambling corpse-like creatures and occasional large beasts. She'd had a look at most of them and was confident they wouldn't pose a threat to someone of her ability.
Still, as the redhead set one leather-clad foot at the edge of the stone steps that led down into the place and the barrier hummed into being behind her, sealing the dungeon so that nothing could get out for the next few days while she worked to clear it out, her hands brushed nervously over the hilts of her twin blades. Taking a deep breath, she took another step, and began walking down the stairway, raising a torch in one hand, one blade held loosely in the other as the hallway levelled out into some sort of complex, hallway full of barred doors cells of some kind.
Holding her weapon forwards and keeping her torch behind her so it's flames wouldn't blind her, Katarina began to advance down the hall, eyes alert for any sign of movement.
The first level denizens of the dungeons were awakened by the torchlight emanating from Katarina's torch, but seeing her as a well armed individual, the creature didn't made any sudden moves, though its eyes were focused on her. The denizen of the prison ward section is called the "Prisoner Horde", its composed of a union of numerous corpses of the once prisoners of the said ward, they were pasted together by an unknown energy of the void.
The ball of living con corpses were all quiet just as Katarina is, observing her from the ceiling, watching her get close to their falling space, if Katarina steps to their shadow, then it would be a one lucky pounce for them.
By the time she was a third of the way down the hallway Katarina's instincts had gone from a faint whisper of wrongness to a full scream. Despite the fact that the reports had told of dozens of creatures participating in the attacks the place was entirely silent. There were a few possibilities of course, the monsters lurked on a lower level before coming up, the monsters were sleeping (Though from the images she'd heard they seemed to be undead, and she knew undead don't sleep.)
Another step forwards, and another. There was a sense that she was being watched now, but nothing so much as stirred in the darkened cells, and the flickering light of her torch illuminated only mossy and lichenous stones, rusting bars, and occasionally splinters of rotten wood that might once have been cots of some sort. "This really is a prison... Or it was..." She muttered under her breath, tightening her grip on her weapon and looking ahead, taking another step, then another...
As an assassin, Katarina was well versed in the dangers of failing to look up, mostly because she was one of those dangers. Despite that, she wasn't used to looking up herself.
She didn't realized her mistake even as she stepped into the lurking Prisoner Horde's reach...
The tale behind the said prison ward isn't a commonly shared story like a typical prison would have, according to the lone historian of Icathia, Kassadin, the prison is said to only house the most fiendish of rapists of Valoran, men comming from different nations like, Demacia, Noxus, Zaun, Piltover, Freljord and Ionia were all sealed to die in this forsaken dungeon.
So for the Prisoner Horde, Katarina is a very ripe victim for them, but astonishingly, the corpses don't fight each other for the sake of the getting the most succulent meal in sight. It seems that the powers of the void relinquished their memories and intellects as humans, so it would look like that the Prisoner Horde works as a hive mind.
Once Katarina steps into their mark, the forward most corpse let out a disorienting screeched to cause a painful ache to Katarina's ear and head so that she would be stunned in place.
Just after the screech, the ball of corpse let itself fall above the alluring assassin.
Katarina had heard of the prison but she didn't know where it was an had no reason to associate it with the dungeon she was now walking through. Truth be told, she might never figure it out unless someone better in the know were able to tell her later. As it was, she was unaware not just of the danger lurking above her but of the precise nature of that danger too. Her instincts told her to fear for her life rather than her womanhood after all.
The Scream was horrible, shrill and unnaturally piercing even as Katarina clapped both hands over her ears. The torch and blade fell, the former still burning as it rolled, allowing her to see the writhing mass of corpses as the painful sound fades away and she finally has a chance to look up.
It's only a glimpse, a tableau of grinning emaciated faces, their eyes glowing with some inner fire.
Then the horde surges down at her, and Katarina forces herself into motion, leaping backwards to try and evade only for a grip far stronger than such a skinny arm has any right to exert catching her by the arm, arresting her attempt to back away before it really begins. Her mind working furiously, she reaches back, trying to grab at her other blade with her free hand.
Just as before Katarina was about to get pounced by the ball's mass, she made a quick back flip which granted her perfect evasion from the creature. This made the creature infuriated with intense rage and hunger, like a dog going feral for a long wanted meal. The corpses were all drooling profusely with disgusting sticky looking fluids no longer recognizable for a human saliva, they were all staring at the voluptuous assassin, they look at her with intense malice and lust, especially at her half covered bosoms. Each of them desired nothing more than her soft body.
Without further hesitation, the ball horde rushes to the beautiful assassin, using, the many arms and legs on its bottom part. While rushing, some of the corpses were slashing everywhere, not minding whether they hit something or just the air.
The third Mistake Katarina made was standing her ground rather than trying to evade the charging horde. She was used to facing humans that would try to avoid a counterattack, creatures that could be frightened by pain or driven off by the threat of injury.
She realized that the horde would do no such thing about the time she lashed out at one arm that slashed too close to her, severing the limb quite neatly.
The mass of undead prisoners didn't even slow down.
A second reaching limb went flying, and a third as Katarina backpedaled desperately but the horde had too much momentum to be slowed and was too numerous for her to guard against the sheer multitude of attacks. Ragged nails scraped at her leather top, tearing pieces from the garment, rendering it into scraps in the space of a few frenzied moments while further hands seized at her weapon, uncaring for how it's razor sharp edge cut into their fingers.