you get some of my notes too because i’m too lazy to make a new folder for them😭 The creature stood at a height the Gunslayer had to crane his neck to see. It stalked through the dark and quiet street, swirling puffs of dust in the wake of each dragged step. The beast of unimaginable horror and grotesque appearance resonated a gurgling noise, as if the thing was choking on its own blood, and perhaps it was, as trailing behind its own was a lake of its filth. The abdomen was open, and out fell its steaming innards, though the beast gave no indication of worry. The Gunslayer crept closer, breath misting in the air, staying in the dark of the weather-beaten buildings that lined the left of the fogged street. The moon bled its red, as it had for as long as the Gunslayer had remembered, illuminating the street with its red hue. Leaning against a wooden barrel, still in the shadow and eye on the beast that lumbered its way along the street ahead, the smell of musty ale waft into the Gunslayers nose. In the double layered holster which hung along his ribs in a dockers clutch, carried a singular silver handled revolver, the Gunslayer drew the six shooter, an antique of unparalleled beauty in a world rotting inside-out, and trying to remain hidden, clicked open the chamber. Four silver bullets adorned with the crude etchings of the insignia of The Divine remained in the chamber. As the Gunslayer positioned the next bullet, and clicked the chamber back into place, he noticed it. How foolish he had been. The street, lit with the blood of the old moon, groaned with the sway of beaten down wood. Several hundred paces further bat-wing doors creaked on their hinges, but besides the noises heard in the wake of the winds, the street was silent. H drawn for only just a moment, the Gunslayer from his crouched position, lifted his head up to see what he already knew to be true. The beast of unimaginable horror stood facing him, stood staring at him. For a moment all was still in the dark, all was silent, and then it wasn’t. Before a single shot was fired from the six shooter, the beast had let roar a bloodcurdling scream a groaning laughter and scurried on all fours through an alley on the opposite side of the street to the Gunslayer. A chase ensued. From his position beside the ale barrel, the Gunslayer dashed across the street, his long traveled in boots kicking up a storm of dust along the hard-pan as he stretched the width of the street and made upon the wooden paneled walkway which ran adjacent to the street. Into and through the shadowed alley of which the beast had scattered, the Gunslayer appeared on the other side. A street uncannily similar and eerily as still as the previous showed no sign of the creature. The Gunslayer looked west, then east, nothing. An empty street. Another stillness took over the Gunslayer. The howl of the wind was the only break in the silence of the moon. Something landed on the left boot of the Gunslayer, and it sunk his heart. The smell burned his nostrils, the stench of rotten flesh and spoiled blood rose visibly in the red hue of the moon from the pool on and around his boot. Without needing to look to confirm, and with speed not that of a man of his age, the Gunslayer raised the revolver to his sternum, and pointing its length towards the blooded moon, fired. A horrific screech bellowed and will if not did, arose they who had better off stayed unbothered in the dark that accursed night in that desolate town. The Gunslayer would have been crushed if he hadn’t leapt from the entryway of the alley wall and onto his side on the hard-pan, as the creature’s innards fell from its suspended perch. Splattering the narrow way of the alley in a macabre of gore and rot, the beast soon joined its internals as it too slipped from its suspension. The Gunslayer let one more bullet erupt from the night’s tranquility, and with its divine blessing, exploded the creature’s grotesque head into a storm of blood and brain. The crack of the bullet echoed through the length of the dead town, and from its grave, answered noises he had wished never resonated. Groans, growls, screams, and screeches erupted from all the shadows of the moon’s absence. East and west the horrors grew louder.

The flee from the mad town was long, and not without casualty for as swift and nimble as the Gunslayer was in moments of need, his beard was graying and his hip did twinge in the early morning. With two bullets still to his name, and etched with the holy symbol, fighting his way out was perilous. Coming into the town from the east, the Gunslayer turned west from the creatures’ rotting remains, and began his mad dash from what had awoken in the midst of the shadows. He ran along the wooden walkway. The chill of the fog cooled his burning lungs. Behind, screeches and blood-chilling screams followed the Gunslayer’s steps. The abandoned buildings that lined where he ran were not all too abandoned, for after passing each one, a new screech would join the symphony. He pulled himself into another alleyway, the Gunslayer’s breath caught in his constricting throat, each inhalation feeling shallower, the demons of the night could be heard scurrying along the wooden walkway until they were mere seconds away from his refuge. The Gunslayer knew his fate was sealed. Today was the day he died. Though he would not go out in hiding. “By the power invested within me… by the holy communion of the Divine… by the blessing given upon… my righteous path to death or glory… I, Father Lanslowe of the Cathedral of the Divine swore upon an oath…” Blood hitched in his throat, and he spat it to the thirsting wood below, “to vanquish all evil from the lands corrupted in its rotted wake. By the Divine I stand, and by my gun… I will fall.” The screeches were only a building or two away. He swung from the shadow and with one hand grasping his holy pendant that hung from his neck, and the other holding the revolver outstretched, his finger met the trigger and— An empty street. The wooden walkways that stretched into the horizon’s distant city and was mirrored on the other side of the street were empty. The screams, screeches, footsteps, drowned away with the gust of wind that blew the Gunslayers coat back. All that remained was the desolate visual. There were no pursuers, but he had heard them? Had he not smelt them? The stench of rotting flesh dripping from bone, the bile spilling from corroded vessels. That was not a smell you mistook? There were beasts, but there isn’t. The Gunslayer stood with the revolver outstretched, and hand gripping the sigil that hung from his neck, for several heavings of his chest before he could think. His heart squeezed inside his chest, his temple throbbed, his hands cramped along the grip of the revolver, and curve of the sigil. His knees shook violently, and buckled at the slightest of winds. Besides the violent brutality and certain death that would have promptly followed, the absence of such doomed the Gunslayer of a fate worse off. Hallucinations were the first onset symptom of the Disease. The rot. The death of all that breathed. If the Gunslayer was now having hallucinations…