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[Gustav]

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Gustav, as some have seen, took an immense interest in everything pertaining to the bygone mysteries of this world. For every vague rumor he heard Gustav made an attempt at pinning it to its source. His exploits lead him to visit various museums and libraries to unravel accounts of history that as of yet remained unsolved. He made no concealment of his curiosities, and shared the somewhat amused skepticism of fellow scholars on the various theories that surrounded one such as him. In another world he would have been a genealogist or an eccentric seeking fame in ancient Mummy tombs, but in this one he was a gypsy often spoken of as being ‘of an uncharacteristically curious demeanor’.

Only days ago he overheard the talking of a pair of men dressed in peculiar attire with wide hats and bagged pants that made them out to be of the oriental variety while their eyes suggested otherwise. Their talk of random gypsy appearances sparked the desire of investigation, once more, Gustav was a curious sort. He confessed himself quite baffled by this case, since it presented oddities of a general metaphysical as well as psychological improbability. It was as if a cosmic force tugged at his curiosity and with willingness he took upon his being the mystery before him.

Presently there seemed to lurk in Gustav’s bearing some sardonic if not cryptic arrogance as he ascended the hills of some northern woodland without the cumbrance of maps. His loose fitted gypsy attire waved against a coming wind that seemed like a robust splash of water upon his visage. It was then that he had felt a curious resolve to look back as if something unseen and unmistakably ethereal had passed by with the breeze. Upon his rotation he was met with a baffling obstruction.

The environment unraveled before his eyes as he captured a rising canvas from the dirt of earth he had trotted only breaths ago. The indescribable geometry of the forming thing connected at a peak from which the colors: teal, blue and green rained with dreaded determinacy to collide with a ground which now had the strangest stillness against that ethereal breath which seemed to swirl about it. There was a part of Gustav’s mind which at that very moment could do nothing but digest the oddity and horror which had overcome his soul. Through his imaginings he foresaw a frog like head peek from the darkness of a cave on some other world, breathing with its hellish Lovecraftian maw which as unlikely as it was had the same probability of being the instrument of this dark and incomputable sight as anything else.

Things – presences without a voice of any sort – were drawn from the tent like structure before him. Now Gustav had in his past indubitably come across unknown things in his readings, though never had he felt the gravitational press of the unexplainable upon him to this incalculable degree and witnessed life that while moving showed no emotion or sense. These beings which came from the mysterious tent walked about in Gustav’s garb; in every sense they appeared to be gypsies. Their manner of movement was unexplainable for they walked without purpose and in randomized directions as if controlled by nothing but a level of intellect unperceivable from a dreaded and cosmic place that could never exist in Sosaria.

Understanding nothing of the situation Gustav at once and with determination approached the scene with slow steps being true to his uncharacteristically curious demeanor. While sardonic in his character he could not gather himself to tread past the pace of a toddler and went about with a pale and worried face. A sense of monstrous fear crawled on his arms, and out of the abyss between the tent, which stood like a beckoning obelisk of dread swept chill currents that would make all men shiver in dark and lonely places save the gypsies which spawned from it who incidentally appeared to express nothing at all even though an ornate chest appeared among them.

It was then that Gustav would hear what would be his very undoing. An arrow let loose form the thicket of the forest struck one of the strangely alien gypsies in the heart and the rest, like trained dogs to the sound of the dinner bell suddenly gained a direction and pursued the source of the arrow. Before the sight became a battle Gustav felt himself falling to his knees, a sharp pain coursed through his back and ascended to his head the same way a murderous spider would scale its webbing to digest a victim at the epicenter of its domain. This indescribable hurt removed every sensation but that of anguish from him.

Gustav’s screams were silent yet gargled with the course spit of red ochre-like vitae, his head tilted forward only to see the front end of a spear extending from his chest and feel the strength of the man that held it behind him. The blood which accompanied the wound was like a fountain would be in the bowels of hell, coating everything in a layer of red. Every breath was a countdown to the last until Gustav’s face was upon the grass. He could feel something perusing through his lifeless body. The intruder all grasping and searching with undignified determinacy pilfering tenaciously with a set of hands that were akin to slick tentacles of a kraken with the way they pilfered his backpack to emptiness, the very same emptiness which now inhabited the corpse of a once curious now entirely deceased fellow.

(Extra thanks to Isk!!)
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It wasn't nailed down, was it? They must not have wanted it.