Markition-Necrovius

 The survivors are treated. Their wounds are bandaged and they are given time to rest. A day and a night go by with little word from the guards charged with their care, or from the troll behind it all. The contestants that will move on to the next round are left in the shambled remains of the first blood bath, wondering what will come next. Some will notice, if they care to return to the arena, that the staff has been busy. There is no longer a neutral pond-and-forest scene awaiting their next series of battles. The arena has changed, either by brute work or the technology of drones, to emulate a dense swamp. There are a few patches of semi

 The Slaver is not happy with the Hunter. Everyone in the lounge knows this, has known it since the night they began this charade. But things are worse, now. Much worse. “Could you $$$ay that again, $$$ugar? I don't think I heard you right,” the Slaver drawls. He's looking at his glass but all of his attention is on the seadweller standing across the room. The sarcasm falls dead between them. The Hunter ignores the Slaver's temper with a sublime skill and repeats verbatim what he just said. “! rregrret to !nforrm you on shorrt not!ce, but ! w!ll be tak!ng my leave w!th!n the hourr.” There is a reason the trolls a

 At the end of a very long, monotonous corridor stands the welcome hall and roster room. The thirty two contestants are herded in by a slew of guards that, even while obeying their orders, seem to be just as confused as the contestants. As soon as the last contestant enters the hall a set of solid blast doors close behind the group, effectively locking them off from the corridor...and the rest of the ship. A giant screen dominates one wall of the roster room. It is composed of several screens, each flashing a different set of information at the viewers. On the far left is a floor map with a scrolling list of room assignments. It reads: Fir

The Main Hall is designed to be imposing. A wide floor penned in on one side by a balcony where the guards stand restlessly, and on the other is a four story tall window looking out into the vast abyss of deep space. Thirty two trolls, none of them old enough to leave Alternia on their own. They stand in the center of this hall that's much too big for them, and they've been here for quite some time. The first ones to arrive have been here for nearly six hours; gathering them all has been a difficult process. But now the last troll has come stumbling through the double doors and they can begin. The lights go down and the doors leading to t

 Imagine a gentle death, a peaceful descent, spiraling into the great unknown. A sense of completion, of absolution, a painless end to a violent life. There is an enlightenment in the face of ultimate demise that exists nowhere else in the world, nowhere else in the universe, or the multiverse for that matter. There is nothing quite like facing the end. Loki hadn't thought about that moment for a very long time. What had been months on one side of the universe had been years in another and that event seemed long behind him. When he'd set about conquering Midgard that particular memory had been a faded thing, like worn fabric or paper left i

"You know what it's like to be unmade." -Clint "Hawkeye" Barton The brothers landed where the bifrost used to be, at the very edge of the broken rainbow bridge at the feet of Heimdall. Loki didn't know if it was because there was some residual force of the fallen bifrost still lingering in the area to attract the Tesseract, or if it was out of sheer habit. The entrance to Asgard had always been the bifrost, and it always would be—even if the structure itself lay in ruins, it seemed. Loki watched Heimdall bow to his future king and he smiled beneath the crude muzzle. Tradition would be Asgard's undoing. It was the bifrost, the cerem