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It's time to D D D D DUEL! Well, if you're up for it, i'd like to give you a whirl, I'll use Anaje since Video's in another fight. I propose we use

The sea of ice. A large body of freezing water with floating chunks of ice, some islands in themselves, others barely enough for a foot hold. That's it as far as the eye can see, excluding whatever lives in that water.

for the battlefield. What do you say?

Hm. Yes. I like it. Two things, though.

1. Mind if I take creative liberties with what lives underneath the water?

2. Will you post first?

I don't have any problems with that, just make sure the nasty fishies find your character just as tasty as mine.

First post following ....

Anaje stood in the cold contemplating the situation he'd gotten himself into. His thoughts distracted once again by the... cold, boy was it cold. Although thanks to that there was ice to stand on, imagining what would happen if Anaje were to fall into the icy cold water was enough to send chills down his spine. Still, a few floating ice chunks were hardly what one could call safe footing, even a slight movement could mean slipping and plunging into the depths.

Anaje was not without some protection from the harsh environment, his homeworld was very cold, up until it went up in flames that is, it was probably very hot right before it exploded, but that's a story for another time. His people had a thick coat of blue fur, but as Anaje pondered his situation once again, he couldn't help but wish it was just a little bit thicker. The outer layer of his Red power Armour was growing cold which could only mean it's environmental shielding was on the fritz again, not too difficult to fix, but only evidently broken when it's needed most.

Anaje tightens his grip and looks towards his opponent. He'd never met this being before, but some feeling about him deep inside anaje rubbed anaje the wrong way, and what better way to distract yourself from freezing to death in the middle of an ice cap than beating a random stranger senseless? Odd things one does in dire situations.

Anaje braces his Staff against the block of ice he's standing on, a strange curved piece of wood with no aerodynamic potential at all with 3 Crystalline gems set equidistant to each other along the top half of the staff, and calls out "I don't suppose you've got any hot drinks?"

All right, wonderful, my post will come down the pipe sometime tomorrow (I am busy with another at the moment and it is quite late).

Wish I could change my displayed name, I'd change it to "Monster Wyborn"....

The woman who sat there on the ice - because woman it must have been - did not look up, knife sliding along the belly of the leg-long fish that lay on the ice before her. She was squatted over it, muttering to herself, white hair cascading down her back and pooling at the base of her spine. She was the color of old leather, and shared much of the same cracked texture, but her face seemed soft and smooth in comparison to her hands, so callous that there was reason to doubt she could have cut them with the fish knife she was using then. She was clothed in the furs of bears worn over some simple cloth woven from a material that was almost impossible to place.

A glimpse of the knife showed the nature of it, bone of some tremendous monster bleached white, decades old but sharp in spite of use. The handle was a simple thing, another bone or perhaps the root of a tooth wrapped in layers of hard leather that had been shrunk by dryness and age. The weapon was old and hard, but it lacked any sense of brittleness; this was true of the woman, too.

She looked up, then, and Anaje recoiled at the sheer severity in her gaze: she was fantastically old but seemed somehow untouched by her age, vital in spite of what may well have been over a century of life. Fire burned in her dark eyes as she glared at him, and menace crackled in her voice as she spoke long syllables which he of course did not understand. It had been a question carrying a threat, and he stuttered without being able to answer, and she screamed the question again, rising to her feet, and Anaje suddenly realized how big she was.

The Ancient Woman stood a full head taller than he, narrow at both shoulder and hip but with a square set ot her frame that lent a sense of long-dormant power. Her arms were long, reaching down nearly to the knees of her long legs, and Anaje saw she stood barefoot on the ice without any apparent discomfort. His eye was drawn inexorably to the knife she was carrying, and as he realized the size of her he saw of the size of it, the blade eighteen inches long and seeming to glow in the light. The wind blew her white hair around her face, and in that moment she looked like the grandmother of all winters.

She raised her knife at him, tip pointed at his breast, and shouted her question again in that alien tongue. He did not answer, could not answer, and the Ancient Woman sneered.

The ocean crashed behind her, and Anaje saw two massive chunks of ice thrown momentarily into the air far in the distance.

She waited.

Gripping his Staff tightly and taking a deep breath Anaje clears his mind of the fear This woman's sudden "transformation" as she stood up had brought upon him. Standing at a little over 4 feet tall, he was used to being dwarfed by the creatures around him, his oldest friend Gunther alone was well over 8 feet tall, but something... savage about this woman sent a chill down his spine.

The ancient look to her face despite her vitality could be deceiving, comparing one species to another almost always leads one to make mistakes, however, it was unsettling nonetheless.

But none of that mattered, whoever this woman was, Anaje could sense hostility in her voice, and the knife she was pointing at him made the possibility he was mistaking that too seem far off and inconsequential.

Anaje closed his eyes, clearing the last of his fears, focusing the power of his mind into the weapon he'd trained it to become before opening them once again, eyes glowing with a white light like a fire had been lit inside them as the crystals ingrained into his palms and forehead began to glow with a similar shine. In this state there was no woman, there was no knife, everything that is was merely threats, targets, and objectives.

Anaje's mind reached out to that of the womans and connected, and the presence of a being Far larger in mental power than the physical stature of this giant woman made itself known, his presence amplified so much that it seemed as though Anaje stood 100 times his actual height. A moment later A booming voice, if you can describe it as a voice, Blared inside the woman's head, the intent coming across despite all language barriers. "I am not someone to be trifled with. Do not test my power."

Anaje felt with his mind, became aware of the thoughts of the Ancient Woman, and for a brief moment he got the impression that he was attempting to talk to a block of ice, an unyielding presence that no more cared for his threats than it did the arrangement of the hair on his head. But his message had already gone out.

"I am not someone to be trifled with. Do not test my power."

Later he would look back on those words and regret them.

She was upon him in an instant as if carried by the wind, her knife a flash of ivory lightning that tore through the plating of his power armor and bit deep into the yielding flesh beneath it. Blood leaped from between his lips as the knife was yanked straight back out (perhaps she was not strong enough to wrench it while it was embedded in his armor, gods let that be it), and his first reaction was to hold his opened gut with his free hand.

The old woman's treebark mouth was next to his ear, and she spoke some word that he did not understand, the simplest incantation in the world, and the cold that had been biting at him before seemed to drive itself down his throat, filling his lungs and coursing through his veins as if it were a new additive to his blood. The cold seized him, for a terrible moment it was the entirety of his being, all he knew was the cold.

A massive hand clouted his ear and he was sent sprawling on the ice, trailing blood and dripping water, eyes wide and his body shivering to the point of convulsions, the cold would not leave him.

The Ancient Woman stood over him, as if weighing him, and then knelt next to Anaje, her knife falling quickly to his armored belly. She would gut him, it seemed.

The womans speed had taken Anaje completely by surprise, one moment she had been there, and the next she was upon him, her knife cutting into his armour like it was made of cardboard, a fire burning inside him as precious arteries were torn asunder and his blood began to boil.

The woman's hand to his ear only surved to quicken the rate he fell to the ice, Anaje's powerful psionic state broken, his mind in chaos from the pain, the cold providing a soothing numbing at the same time as a gnawing shock, his entire being was consumed by only one thought. "Away."

As the woman comes in to finish him his mouth opens and lets out a blood filled shout.
"Stay Back!"

Immediately the woman finds herself unable to move, an unknown force making her every motion seem meaningless. The water is the first to go, the ice anaje had fallen upon dropping into a newly created vacuum before crumbling into powder and flying away from anaje in a powerful storm of debris. Despite all this anaje floats in the air, not falling into the dome shaped vacuum beneath him, preventing any water from entering.

Finally the full force of the power centers on the woman, the knife in her hands begins to tremble, bending towards her and attempting to fly free by it's own will, the pull amplifying it's weight a thousand times. Her own body feels an intense pressure squeezing in on her from all sides before suddenly coalescing at her head and blasting her downwards at tremendous speed toward the front of a platform of ice 200 ft. away.

Anaje entire body is glowing white now, as if the psionic energy within him is attempting to take on a life of its own and leap from his flesh as he looks at his hands stained red with his blood. His staff floats in front of him, point towards the woman as Anaje screams out in pain and anger. 20 blocks of ice of various size lift out of the ocean and high into the sky before raining down at the woman, a meteor storm of giant ice chunks falling from the sky.

As soon as the ice blocks began to fly, the Ancient Woman fell backwards and into the water, disappearing into the icy blackness. The frozen monoliths slammed into the spot where she had been standing only a moment later, still more crashing into each other at the point where she had disappeared into the depths. The crash was deafening, and the gentle lapping of water against the platform was almost like silence afterwards.

Anaje was still suspended in the air, nearly bursting with his own power, his staff floating before him. His bloodied face was twisted in contortions of wrath, and as he looked around his consternation only festered and grew; where was the foul woman? If she had died he should have sensed her corpse by now, and if not then she was spending far too long under the water. Seconds passed on into minutes, and those into more minutes, and surely the old woman had sank too far and died. But he feared that this wwas not so.

Eyes drawn up by a distant crash, Anaje saw the waters in the distance rise in a wave that suggested something like a cresting island. Worse, this wave was moving towards him, tossing away icy platforms the size of his own like toys in a bathtub. Whatever forced moved through the water, it was tremendous beyond reckoning. He steeled himself, told himself he was ready, but in his heart he doubted.

Before it would have struck the wave suddenly sank, as if whatever leviathan was approaching had found better fare in the depths and thus dove; Anaje did not understand, entirely, but he appreciated his fortune.

Surely the old woman was dead, he thought.

In answer, the old woman burst from the water like a leaping dolphin, hair trailing glittering shards of ice behind her head, lips pressed against the knife still in her powerful hand.

Anaje roared at the sight of his enemy and with his mind he heaved, hauling the ice blocks up out of the sea and hurling them at his enemy with all the considerable force he could muster.

The Ancient Woman pulled the knife away from her lips, and the weapon passed through the air as if it were a vacuum when she hurled it at Anaje. It spun almost too quickly for the eye to follow, but when it struck Anaje it punched through his psychic shielding and bit deep into his flesh again.

Anaje howled as the old woman's body twisted and the wind pulled at her, sending her hurtling downwards just as the ice blocks crashed together in the space where she had been. Ice seeped from the knife like heat from a white-hot poker, he felt his flesh firm and freeze around the blade, in that moment he lost his concentration and was standing on his feet again. His staff clattered to the ice.

The Ancient Woman was before him as the ice crashed down all around them, shattering and sending shards that should have killed the both of them spinning outwards into the sky and the sea. He could see every line of her face, felt her breath as she exhaled through her nostrils, was arrested by the untouchable serenity of her eyes. The hardness in this woman...

Her right hand wrapped around the hilt of her knife, and she leaned in close when she placed her left palm against his chest. So sudden was her action that he did not realize what was happening until he had been shoved backwards and the knife pulled free, taking with it a chunk of frozen flesh easily as big as Anaje's fist.

He howled, then, and his power flared and he lashed out at where the woman was, invisible force scoring the spot into powder, but she had already moved, deftly spinning on her left heel and breaking into a run. As her head turned her hair hit Anaje in the face, the shards of ice cutting his cheeks and his eyelids as if they had been razorblades. He lashed out again, this time at her back, but she leaped into the air as he did and apparently braced herself against the force so that she was sent hurtling to another floating island, where she landed with no apparent harm done.

Anaje roared. The ice blocks rose again, the whole ones and the slivers, and hurtled at his attacker.

There was a sound, great and terrible, as a wall of titanic flesh breached the surface of the arctic waters.

In the brief moment where he looked up at the thing, Anaje realized that this was what had caused the wave before, and that the accursed woman had probably lead it to that spot. She had intended for that to happen, the whole exchange between them, down to his shove at her back - because the beast that pursued her thoguht she was still standing right next to Anaje.

The creature itself was huge beyond normal descriptions of vastness, its belly a field of armor plates that the ice blocks shattered against without scratching its surface. Anaje looked up and thought that its head, a tapered thing like a crocodile's with teeth as large as cars, must have by itself been over a hundred meters long. Its body was not fully visible to him, but it could have smashed the greatest tower that man had ever built, its sheer weight in defiance of every law of nature - how could such a thing leap so high? How could it breach the water? How could it move at all?

The living mountain crashed down on top of Anaje's platform, and the force of its impact created a wave that flung neighboring island into the air, sending the Ancient Woman spinning like a thrown doll. The creature disappeared into the blackness.

The island crashed back down, some breaking apart but a handful maintaining their shape.

The woman hit the water without a splash and moments later was pulling herself up onto one of the floating hunks of ice. She sat there, watching to see if Anaje still lived.

She waited.

OOC: I didn't want to resort to this, but you really are a monster.

IC: Anaje lay on the ground, his eyes closed, his body inert and motionless. Frozen as it were.

I can't move a muscle... I feel so weak... I just want to pass out, sleep for eternity... no... that's not me... that's just my body... my mind is all I need but... my body is too weak. It's going to die and take my mind with it... That's it, I'll just leave it behind. I've done that before... I'll do it again.

And after a few eternal moments the body on the ice Glows with a blinding white light before going out as the body evaporates. Anaje's psychic energy surpassing his body's ability to contain it.

A strong vibration passes over the area, and everything begins to hum, resonating with some unseen force.

Suddenly the water beneath the woman comes to life as the Ice beneath her feet explodes, all resistance it could have given her to let her jump away from the all consuming wave exploding with it.

The water hits with such force as to appear solid, pushing the woman up it's center while Ice chunks batter her as they pass by, flowing up it's center like magma bursting through the earth.

The woman continues upward, the final push up dwarfing the strength of the push that sent her spiraling away from Anaje not moments before, as the water stops rising. More and more ice chunks gather into it, a Golem of Ice and Water possessed by psychic energy forming, walking on the water as though it were land.

The Golem looks up at the woman as she reaches the peak of her ascent, standing directly beneath her. There's nothing to push off to change her course, unless she has some way of flying, she'll be helpless before the barrage that follows.

Thousands of ice needles mixed with and equal number of blasts of raw psychic force pepper the woman as she falls, as she gets within arms reach of the Golem, the two fully formed arms swing upwards, Two massive balls of ice forming the hands and slam into the woman at the same time, proceeding to crush her into the center of a Glacier.