The Second Tournament of the Red Lions: Volume 1

[LOOT]

I expect a few more pages before this round is over.

I will try to make my judgment prompt. Also, can I call the execution this round? I know the Host usually does, but...

[Scripture]

Thellis never took his dotted vision off Scrit, even as he spit out a tooth through numbed lips. Scrit’s eyes flashed their brilliant cobalt, as blinding as headlights for a split second, and then his remaining good hand sought out a number of hanging vials on his belt, slipping them loose and cradling them as his other hand itself cradled the gaping wood in his side, splinters of bone visible through the running ichors.

“That,” Scrit coughed, “was pretty ballsy.”

He grasped the vials harder.

“But I’d like my hand back,” Scrit said, punctuating those last words with a low charge, his stump of a forearm pulled away from his bleeding side – blood trailing out behind like a streamer - and brought to bear in front of him as if wielding it like a sword. Thellis grinned, having not noticed Scrit’s sleight of hand in snatching the vials from his belt, and moved subtly into a stance meant to spin into a side-step and deliver a crushing blow with his polearm to Scrit’s already open and bleeding side, hopefully crushing a lung and driving the edge into his heart.

But Scrit was quick, quicker than the finishing move his opponent had outlined in a warrior’s second in his head. Thellis was resigned to slashing diagonal across his opponent’s approaching form – right into Scrit’s stump of a forearm, sinking barely a quarter into chipped bone and metal, but lodged there regardless.

Scrit roared and jerked the weapon away from Thellis’s grip, bringing up his other hand and shoving the vials into his face, breaking them on his already bruised flesh. The sound was not unlike water boiling over the pot, hitting the stove and sizzling into steam, as the chemicals reacted together and became acidic, chewing up the stuff of Thellis’s face and making his flesh run like mud down his face, steaming his eyes and filling the air with the scent of burnt hair and burnt flesh alike.

Scrit stepped back, and in three agonizing moments, pried his opponent’s morphing weapon from his arm. He hurled it like a javelin into space, hopefully off the edge of the platform on which they were fighting, and turned his attention back to the situation at hand. His vision blurred, that cobalt hazed vision, but then he blinked, shook his head, and sprinted off towards Thellis once more, wrenching his scabbard from his belt, and then his bludgeon-sword from the scabbard. It fell to the side.

Thellis was beginning to adjust to life with a melting face, snatching around blindly instead of clutching at the mess of his profile, ruining his fingertips in the process, when suddenly Scrit’s weapon, of a make similar to his patch-work armor and looking like a club shaved to an edge on both sides, collided with his knee.

Thellis reflected he had been wishing to hear that pop minutes ago when he first entered the brawl with this mechanic oddity. The weapon came up, unbeknownst to Thellis, as flesh had bubbled over his scalded eyes and blinded him, and came down on his collar-bone, lodging itself there in the odd workings of its design – Scrit wrenched it slightly, as if to say to Thellis, ‘This is going to hurt,’ and then tore it loose, ripping cloth and flesh and arteries and letting blood in splashing rivers.

Scrit stepped back a pace, then hop-skipped forward, slamming the weapon into Thellis’s diaphragm, pumping the air from his lungs – whistling it out, really, as his mouth wasn’t in the best of shape – and shearing the flesh from his stomach. He stumbled backward, fell, and Scrit pursued intent on painting this nameless pillar in this nameless world with the brains of this nameless warrior.

[Wyborn]

"Bitch! You're gonna die this day!"

The sword came at him in a stom of blows, tracing the shape of a ring the size of his mouth with its tip as it danced in front of him, and the woman fell back, blood gushing from her leg but apparently unheeded otherwise. Her face was a mask of pain, of agony, but the only reason she stepped back at all was to renew her attack on him. What the hell was wrong with her?

She came at him again, her swing wide and wild, and he swung his pickaxe in an attempt to parry; she retreated at the last moment and he swung too far, losing his balance just before the sword plunged between the joints of his armor at his left elbow, lancing the tendon there and twisitng, snapping and popping. He howled in agony and fury as she withdrew and attacked again, and he swung on the offensive, going straight for her head.

Her sword hit the ground first, pulling her head unceremoniously behind it so that the dwarf's weapon caught only air. The sword came up again, the wrist leading the ar leading the torso, and slipped between his codpiece and the armor covering his thigh, sinking into meat and meriting a howl that was almost purely a sound of agony. The sword withdrawn, the woman placed her right foot behind his left ankle, wrapped her free hand around his head, and pulled him forward, smashing him face-first into the top of the stone pillar. His teeth shattered and his mouth filled with blood as he hit, and then her heel came down on the back of his head - once, twice, thrice, over and over and over, trying ot break his neck or just crush his skull, he couldn't be sure. He reached out with his hand and grabbed her ankle, and with a twist of his fingers her ankle snapped like dry kindling.

He did not see it as she danced away, once more leading with her sword, but her head was thrown back into an unearthly, silent approximation of a scream, eyes wide and the ragged corners off her mouth bleeding. She was allowed this respite of agony for only the briefest moment, however, as Alfred was on his feet again, limping but furious, axe held with the sharper end ready. He was bleeding profusely from his thigh - she had not managed to severe any major atery, but she had come damn close, and he knew it, and the mixture of pain and the potential threat to his life fueled the fire of his wrath.

He came at her, axe singing, and she came at him again in a swtorm of blows that were much mroe controlled, more precise than anything he had seen from her thus far, and it was suddenly all he could do to fall back and bring up the haft of his axe to turn the blade aside, over and over and over. He caught a glimpse of her eyes and what he saw confused him more than anything ever had in his life, she was terrified of him, she looked like she thought he was some kind of monster crawled up out of Hell, what was going on?

The sword bit into his foot, unexpectedly, and then into his off-hand, tearing through tendon and bone alike. The axe swung, the woman ducked, and the hand holding the blade's grip came up and punched him in his already gruff fac, braced by the unyielding metal of the hilt. As the force of the punch took him off of his feet, he wondered if she had broken every bone in his face. When he hit the ground, it was with the sound of thunder.

The sword came down, was turned aside, and cam down again, and again, and again.

[KirbyBoy2000]

OoC: Sorry about taking so long... too much work lately.

Letios looked at the white-haired swordsman. He brings his claws to his side, concealing the twin daggers within his cloak to prepare for his attack. He steps forward slowly a few steps, before breaking into a full dash toward Raji.

The swordsman readied his blade in defense, ready to counter any attack the serpent threw at him. Letios stopped a few feet away from Raji, tossing both of his daggers at him, one aimed low, the other high. Raji deflected the upper dagger with ease as he rushed towards Letios, ignoring the pain from the other in his right leg.

He slashed down at the serpent, his sword swinging down towards its head. Letios crouched downward slightly, taking a slight step forwards as he did. Out of the black cloak, his clawed arm springs outward, slamming upward at Raji's chest with an incredibly force. Raji left somewhat surprised, as there was over three feet between the warriors.

The warrior was thrown back from the force of the attack, losing grip of his blade as he did. The blade fell down towards Letios' back, striking the center of it with a clash. It bounced down to the ground, cutting through Letios' cloak, and leaving a somewhat deep gash across his side. Blood drips down to the ground from the cut, but Letios ignores it as he begins to move towards Raji, who was now getting up from the previous attack.

[michaelmacinnis]

EL - F*in' PARDACK!

The angel shook and thrashed, burning, seething. The pain overwhelmed his senses, his sense of being. The creatures bore into his soul, clawing and feasting on his essence. Madness

His being was without logic, only purpose. In the bible, the angels were like the animals that walked the earth. They were left without free will, and all logic to them was without purpose for anything that would question God’s will was wrong, such as the morning star. Infested, overborne with beasts, his mind wandered back and forth. His stone flesh tore like curtain, fraying to the onslaught of claws. The immaculate blood, blessed the creatures as they tore into their foe, cleansing their bodies of existence, redeeming their souls in exchange.

But in the melee of it all, his body closed up. The creatures were rejected and the holy fire from within the archangel burst out in its own ecclesiastical scene. Tongues of flames blue and gold licked at the beings around, searing their flesh and bodies together, caking the angel in a burnt mass of ash and gore. Their fallen bodies twisted and coiled together like hair to a flame, all the while, Asp watching in a cautious amusement, evaluating and assessing what was to become of the angel. And then from beneath the husk shell of burnt flesh, like a cleansing sweep, column of light poked and pierced through the dome of sickening char, and suddenly, in a violent display of power, the skies burst a flame and the pillar on which they fought shook. Lightning shot from the sky and met with the holy being, fraying like spider webs alive, displacing the air and throwing Asp backwards, flinging his body across the stone, peeling the flesh from his face. Bloodied and burnt, the druid shakily rose to compose himself and ready his state for battle. The angel left no leeway. Rushing the druid, his wings beating furiously, lunging him into a charge, he arched back his sword and thrust it forwards. The ash and charred remains streamed off his body as the distance separating the fighters closed instantly – Asp was left without a chance to throw himself out of the lunge of the sword. The archangel flung his arm out, driving his hand into the druid throat, bringing the sword point to his face. As the intant etched by, the tip approaching the druid’s face, his flesh peeling back from his nose, the air building underneath his skin, blistering, was fraying the meat from the bone. Asp’s knotted figured in it’s last chance, twisted, throwing himself downward underneath the blow, giving him enough time to roll his head beneath the point, narrowly missing the point from crushing his head, the blade, run up his cheek, setting his face aflame. He fell to the ground rolling as the angel dropped leg heavily, crushing stone in every attempt to displace his foe’s existence. Thrashing about for his life, Asp rolled about; dodging blow after blow only to roll into heaved thrust of shin into his stomach. He bellowed in pain, his body a wreck. The archangel peered down into his eyes as he winced in pain, regaining his sense of self. ”You are a man. I am an archangel under Michael and Raphael, and Ishmael alike. I am Haedriel.Your feat, though defiant against the heavens, remains no lesser than a great one. But unfortunately, I cannot allow you to continue your existence on this plane. I shall honor your passing in battle…”

[Mushi]

The woman was now beating Alfred with her blade, each blow felt like a ton of rocks had been dropped on him, and then lifted by some telekinetic power to fall over and over again. Alfred, now covered in the blood of both himself and his opponent, was getting tired of falling over. He used his uninjured hand, still gripping the pick axe, to deliver a blow that knocked her back about five feet, she coughed up blood from this heavy blow to the abdomen.

Alfred, still lying down, grabbed his flask and drained about half of the thick black liquid inside, but before he could do anything, the un-named woman had gathered herself and had gone into another flurry of attacks, forcing him to go on the defensive again. His movements had changed, they seemed much more fluid and natural, and his blood-lust seemed to be fueled. He blocked each blow, and then countered with a flurry of his own. His speech was muffled through blood and sweat.

"GIMME WHATH I CAM 'ERE FOR!" He brought his pick down with a force that was not to be denied its goal: Blood shed. It plunged into her left shoulder, completely shattering the shoulder bone, and leaving her left arm useless and in excruciating pain. When he dislodged his pick, pulling it towards him and bringing bits of bone and flesh alike with it, it splattered them both with the woman's blood.

This move didn't go without consequence.

[Wyborn]

The sound that echoed then, that split the heavens and was heard by every combatant for hundreds of miles around, was a scream so unearthly that it could not have been produced by human vocal chords - and, indeed, was not. Alfred's hands flew to his ears, his pickaxe dropped to the ground as the woman flung herself backwards, falling on her back and writhing, going into shock over the red horror that her shoulder had been reduced to. She would never use it again. But she wasn't making the sound - her face was blanched the color of her bare teeth, which were clamped together as if her jaw had been wired shut. The sound was coming from the sword.

As the woman writhed on the ground, expressionless and bleeding, the sword was still held straight up into the air like some kind of warding symbol, and it sang, vibrating at a frequency that split the air with sound and threatened to deafen Alfred where he stood. That sound was one of bloodlust, of rage, of wrath, of a killing that was coming up from behind like the gentle swelling of an ocean wave housing a thousand knives. Alfred looked and saw how the sword was tearing at th air while the body that held it was limp, and on some terrible level he began to understand, began to know.

The woman was jerked to her feet, still leading with - or following? - her sword, her face twisted once more into fear and agony, the shock driven away by whatever force it was that was sending her once more into the carnage. No, she mouthed, but that was all, and the sword sang a sweet song as it came for Alfred again.

The dwarf-man's axe moved to parry but the blade pulled back, too quickly for Alfred and too quickly for the body behind it. When the sword thrusted forward again its tip hit his breast - and the armor cracked, and moaned, and split, and the sword sank into Alfred's chest, and his voice came out in a wet gurgle

The woman's body followed her sword and she slammed into Alfred as if she had been running at full speed, not hard enough to knock him down but hard enough to plaster he against him, to bash their heads together. She got the worst of it, couldn't have gotten anything else, but then she reacted like a frightened animal and her teeth sank into the flesh of his cheek and ripped.

Then he roared, a bellowing sound of indignation, and back-handed her so hard that her grip should have broken - but it didn't, and the sword came out in her hand, meriting its own fount of blood, and when she hit the ground the sword was back up in the air, and she followd it again. At this point she looked listless, as if she had no idea what was going on. She might as well have been dreaming.

The two warriors rushed at each other again, and Alfred struck, but the lithe quickness of the woman and the sword let them slip past him, and with a quick snick he had been ham-strunk, his left ankle suddenly collapsing uselessly. Alfred roared his drunken fury again, shifting all of his weight to his right ankle as his blood pooled aorund him in a puddle, but the lack of balance did him a disservice when the woman's foot connected with his back, sending him hopping forward and once more crashign the ground.

The woman - the sword - did not come again, not immediately, but stood poised over the puddle of blood that marked where Alfred had been wounded. The tip of the blade sank into the top of the puddle, and after a moment the red liquid began to run up its length with the most sickening hiss in the world. The sword was drinking.

The pommel slammed against the ground, and the woman was brought to her knees. Slowly, agonizingly, she lowered her head, and Alfred watched with a mixture of horror and disgust as the woman hesitantly darted out her tongue and began to lap up his blood.

She looked back up at him, and her eyes were red, and the sword began to sing a song of triumph. All expression left her - pain, fear, everything. The sword kept singing as the blood ran up into its hilt and disappeared, it kept singing as the woman rose to her feet, and it sang so beautifully as the two began to move like a single entity - not one who was being dragged or one wo was wielding a weapon, but a single thing, a creature whose claw could severe the veins of the world.

Alfred rose. The woman - the sword - waited.

[michaelmacinnis]

OoC - This is Erdawn's post.

Blow fell after blow and Haedriel's words fell solemn upon the air, filled with righteous fire and outline in scintillating ochre light. Asp's hacked up a dark gob of something and spasmed as another blow from the archangel's sandaled heel thunked meatily into his gut and flank, but those words - spoken from this celestial being no less - anguished him far more than the mere physical chastisement delivered unto his corporal form. In the dark labyrinth of Asp's mind, a feverish red sun of rage rose from a dark hoirzon to blot out everything else to shadows.

He rolled his body away from another blow, which resounded loudly across the upthrust arena of swamp and stone, and plunged his right arm downwards through to the dark womb of earth beneath him once more. Haedriel walked easefully towards him with the calculating purpose of a beautiful monster, his expressionless face like cold limestone with killing intent. The mud was cool, caressing with wet soil, the juice of rot, the comfort of dead things. Dead things. Immmortal things.

Haedriel slowly lifted his powerful, muscular leg, poising the heel steadfast into the air, forsaking his blade for the satisfaction of crushing this unearthed demon like the insect the morning star's demons were in actuality.

"Ia!" Asp whispered, spitting blood, the red outlining his creeping grin a harlequin portrait. "Ia, my old friends, come to me."

Haedriel stomped downwards, his leg a freight train of weight and muscle. Many things happened at once in the next few seconds. All are significant. One of them is that opposed to defending himself against the angel's finishing blow, Asp merely rolled himself casually to one side and stood up. With the sequence of events that had been set loose around him, however, this was appropriate. There was high-velocity motion and mass again, heavy and fast like the passing of a speed-train, suggesting only grace despite enormous bulk and speed.

From the wet earth erupted a horizontal forest of cephalopodal tentacles that slammed into Haedriel's precariously poised figure and carried him writhing and sliding between them across most of the pustulant mire in the spacings of instants. More of these immense, Cyclopean feelers swayed upwards from the ground, caked with rancid grit, pushing mud and upturned debris aside from their quivering foundations. They broke open, releasing sprays of stagnant fluid and noisome odour from rubbery flesh turned white with decay and gooked with juice like the produce of overripened fruits.

Asp walked upright and casually towards Haedriel. There was no suddenness or rigidity to his movement, and the apparent ease in which he held himself despite a ***** narrowing of the eyes smacked of dread. It was the contrast that was terrifying above all else. In the deep recesses of his eyes, there was no light, but the glimmer - or movement, rather - of a great and teeming and murderous, merciless anger, lashed down like a caged beast inside his skull. Above all else it was the perfectly reasonable way he carried this anger that was terrifying.

His adversary the archangel was mute with effort - the cordes of his neck striking out from alabaster flesh like tendons of cream marble, sinews bulging from his arms like white lengths of rope, his wounds open and misty with the releasing of sacred blood like fiery ichor. Looped around his torso and limbs, bisecting him at the waist and stretching his arms so far back behind his spine their sockets were practically visible through the muscle constricted them numb, idiot feelers of undead squid. There must have been a hundred of them, scabrous and flayed with decay, sleeping in the dark places beneath their feet and awakened to the oppressiveness of the living. He was practically lifted into the air with the force of it, and the creaking of his bones was audible and an offense to the senses.

Asp wiped his flayed face with the back of his hand. It came away a red mess and he whipped the gore from him disdainfully, his nudity and nature belying the sophistication of his mannerism. His eyes thrummed, colourless and pitted with emancipation. With the unholy grace of a ghost he slipped up to the archangel and curled his offending palm beneath his jaw, forcing him to meet his dooming gaze. The flesh met, and where it was expected Asp might catch fire and melt away to ash and vapour before it there was only a sickly, airborn vibration. Visually it was like light being held at bay by the shadow, the terminal line between night and day, and where Asp's flesh might have burnt in the presence of the purity of the empyrean, Haedriel's might have become bloated, corrupt, and rotten in the face of something older as a concept.

Asp brought his macabrely damaged face to Haedriel's ear, close enough so the angel could feel the cold release of his breath against his neck - enough to make him shudder in revulsion.

"Do mine eyes deceive me," His tongue darted outwards and licked the celestial being from collar to hairline, sizzling and bubbling against the immaculate corporeality of the cherubim but leaving its own trail of peeled, dead skin. His knuckled whitened around Haedriel's neck. "Or do mine ears perceive you a false thing?" The intensity of his grip heightened, until Haedriel's skull shook against it and Asp's words trembled.

"By what brazen pair of lungs do you vex me, O Prince?" He interrogated, trembling, and his eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets with the force of his stare. "You call me 'but a man' and dare to speak to me as an equal. 'For I am like God, and He, like me. I am as large as God, He is as small as I. He cannot above me, nor I beneath Him, be.'" He paused, as if in contemplation.

He lifted his opposing arm with surgical swiftness.

Haedriel's burning orbs met the cold deadness of Asp's stare and a dawning realisation spread over him like a fallen curtain. There was no longer the weakness of words now, only the forecast, raw element of his emotions. And this time, a new emotion. Fear. And the rain fell around him in torrents of bubbling pitch, and the light of the sun shrank to a pitiable obliqueness of shadows above them in that fear.

Asp forced back Haedriel's skull until he was looking behind himself, and the strain of it was mute but enormous, and the archangel howled with that immaculate... voice of his, against the shackles of the undead krakens beneath him and the immediate realization of his own fate. Asp sang. Loudly, and clearly, in a low voice.

"Hark, the he-rald angels sing -!" With muscular, serpentine speed, Asp's other arm and hand were rammed into Haedriel's gaping mouth, choking off the scream to a muffled sound of agony. They brushed the hallways of his throat and touched the fleshy, pulsing root of his tongue, which thrashed madly between his gums. Haedriel's burning stare flickered out as his eyes were squeezed shut. "Glo-ho-ree to, the newborn king..."

He pulled his arm back, his muscles standing out with the strain, and there was a wet, slippery tearing muffled as if wrapped in cotton. The aureate ichor of the angel's blood sprayed upwards from his mouth, flooding his throat and retched out in a dropleted mist as he choked and drowned in it. It rained down his broad chest and was a haze on the air.

Asp turned around, clutching the most powerful muscle in the angel's body like a grisly, sacred trophy. He crushed it between his fingers and it blackened, curdling, before disintegrating into wet dust. He whipped it disdainfully from him, and spat out a nameless word of command to the crypt-depths of the earth beneath him.

The powerful, cephalopodal feelers tightened, rotted boughs constricting and sliding across Haedriel's frame, his bones creaking, grinding, and cracking in protest as he was slowly dragged downwards into the meat of the earth. He might of screamed, had he the means.

[Scripture]

Erdawn, vicious. No love for your brother, man.

[Mushi]

Through the haze of alcohol and injury, Alfred made a connection. The sword. It's the damned sword. His ears ringing from the earlier screech, Alfred ran forward, saying nothing for he could not say anything. The woman and the sword knocked him back down with such ease and grace, it was as if they were two parts of the same soul. Alfred only grumbled more in his mind, the sword didn't pierce his skin with that blow, but was more of a sweep aside. Alfred was on the recieving end of punishment in this phase of their battle, but he refused to give up.

Although Alfred was human in body, he was a Dwarf in mind and in spirit. His home, his upbringing, his very existence, was that of a Dwarf. He fell to his knees, the woman didn't hesitate to rush towards him to make the killing blow. He made no movement, his mind was in another world. His dwarven ancestors and even his human ancestors gathered around him. In his mind he was surrounded by Knights, blacksmiths, squires, farmers, wisemen, and Kings of both races. Beyond them, he saw a thread. The thread of his life, and he saw the singing sword about to sever it.

"NOOO!!!" He stood, his eyes filled with a rage that could kill even just by setting them upon you. He raised his pick, and brought it down, his strength was not just his own, but of that of his ancestors. The very stone tower on which they stood, split, with a large piece now hurdling towards the ground. The woman, who was standing on this piece, seemed to fly over to the part of tower still left intact.

He greeted her with a powerful jab from his pick axe, this would have incapacitated any other opponent, but that sword. It kept her from falling, and allowed her to stay concious, only to feel the wrath of more blows to her face.

"WHY. DON'T. YOU. DIE!?"

[Alex]

Leona was pounding on Fang without any sign of slowing. The dragon manipulator was going through a bit of trouble. He didn't know how he was going to get out of this perdicament. Then, he thought of an idea.

Fang, even though it pained him to breathe or talk with a stone tentacle-leg through his torso and others wrapped around him, managed to utter under his breath a few dragonic words. He began to vibrate and glow slightly. The fabric of his being began to split into to two different bodies. They phased through the tentacles in opposite directions. Leona somewhat surprised as two different creatures stared here down with matching wounds. To her left, a human who looked exactly like Fang without any dragon features. To her right was a small, winged dragon about the same size as Fang. The dragon's eye's glowed blood red with evil. The human held the same blade the Fang did when he was whole. Before she could blink, Leona was attacked by both the dragon and the man. The dragon, with its quick reflexes, agility, and high pain threshold, instanly leaped onto Leona's head and latched on with its teeth. Its jaws sank into the tentacled woman's skull. In addition to biting her, the dragon also began clawing away at her body.

The human's plan of action was more on the protective side. He began chanting a few amateur dragonic healing incantations that would stop internal bleeding from his earlier impalemant. This would then be carried over to his fused form. Unfortuanately, the wound would still be visible and would need treatment after the battle if he survived.

After patching up a few fatal internal wounds, the man took his blade and joined the dragon in slashing the daylights out of Leona, who was already covered in cuts and deep scratches. He walked up to Leona's dangling body and slowly shoved the blade into her back. The combination of a dragon clawing her body about ten scratches per second and a sword being shoved into her brought imense pain to her. Eventually, it overcame her and she collapsed to the ground. This gave Fang's two halfs the oppotunity to refuse into one. The same process that they had used to defuse happened again, except in reverse. They were once again Fang, the Dragon Manipulator.

He simply stared at Leona as she lie on the ground, clothes ripped and covered in blood.

-----------

Sorry I couldn't get to this sooner. I've had sort of a bad week. Between project papers, course selections for next year, and other things I couldn't find time to make an attack.

[Repster]

Leona's breathing was hard and fast. Slowly she rose on her hands and kness, her body barely functioning. She giggled.. There was pain, but more then that was the ecstasy that pain brought. She turned and rushed Fang.

The Dragon Manipulator's sword lashed out and caught her in the chest. The woman just kept on running and kissed him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Fang's eyes went wide from shock, and then again as a part of his very life essence was drained out rather painfully. Leona drew her head back slightly, and smiled sweetly at him.

Here is where fang would had done something in retaliation, but he found it quite difficult with all fourteen tentacles and both Leona's arms wrapped around him, squeezing him much like a large snake would. One arm pinned to his side, both legs wrapped together tightly, his other arm unable to release the sword lodged firmly in the woman's ribs. Bones from both warrior cracked from the mutual pressure.

Leona arm unwrapped itself around Fang's shoulder and shoved his jaw against her shoulder. He could taste her biter sweet blood, mixed with his own saliva, and he felt more pain as she applied more force his jaw opening wider around he soft flesh. More pain awaited Fang as Leona's teeth went to his neck. She did not just bite him, her fangs tore into his neck flesh and ripped out his jugular.

Leona drank of Fang's lifeblood deeply as she continued with her crushing grip, the dragon manipulator and his weapon firmly trapped withing her own flesh. Her blood mixed with what of his escaped her thirst in a growing pool at their feet.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: Tonight me and Pardack will try and crank out as many posts as we are able. I will be unable to post Friday and Saturday as I will be at Basic Training. Not sure when this round ends.

[Acradius]

Erdawn = military? Somehow I find that to be an extremely unexpected turn of events. But then again, I suppose I don't know you all that well. Have fun, and don't contract Pneumonia like my friend did getting into the Navy. Would have made SEAL if he didn't get that stuff.

[michaelmacinnis]

I...I think I'm back

Scripture wouldn’t record it, for scholars knew not the words to describe it. It was an agony beyond that of man. A pain so indescribable that a mortal would lose his self. The angel was left without that luxury. His body stressed and tore as he cocked his head over to meet the stare of his deity opponent. The tendons in his neck twisted and popped, and the strain on his muscles as he forced his wings in a spike towards the sky almost seemed to hum.

Though the pressure, like sails his wings speared outward, tearing open and sending feather and blood alike into the surrounding air. Tendrils shot at them, enveloping and raping them, tearing the flesh from them as the angel thrashed in his attempt to escape. Like the bark of a tree, they stripped his wings to bone. The angel had fallen from his pedestal in the skies.

He arched and flexed his back, throwing the bone back and forth through the air like an ivory blade, slicing through the rotting flesh, spraying viscous ichors of blood and festering meat. The tendrils pried at him still in a relentless attempt to de-limb the heavenly creature like branches from timber. They grabbed hold of the naked wing, snapping the appendage off, causing the angel to convulse in pain. Haedriel let out a throaty yell, blood spilling from mouth. He twisted over, clawing at his separation. In his pain he threw over and grabbed the broken wing and tugged till he let it out in a swing. It arched around, cleaving through the rubbery flesh maniacally. Gradually he cleared the beasts, slipping back n forth, losing his footing in the amounting ichors that oozed upon the stone platform. Through the mass of beast and flesh he saw the druid and let out a howl. The reverberations from his throat were so deep that the below loosened meat from boned.

The beasts flopped to the ground in a disgusting mass of oozes and rot. And from behind it emerged to the druid an adversary unheard of. His wing clipped and the other stripped, it mattered not, Haedriel towered proudly. His chest no longer bare, but leafed in gold plate. Ringlets of silver hung from the cladding sheets of armour that enveloped his torso, the hide of fantastic beasts fell studded from his shoulder and waist, and his sandaled feet were strapped in polished greaves. His robes had disappeared and the broken archangel was found garbed in the plate that was proudly worn during the first Elysium-Hades war. It was as though made of dreams.

The druid’s stare focused and he snorted sceptically, sending a mist of blood and snot into the air, but as he did this, bolts of holy fire, like lightning from the clouds descended upon him the angel’s hand. Briefly the flames consumed his vision and the druid anxiously patted and clawed at his face in an attempted to douse the fire. He quickly regained himself dextrously, but fast as he raised his stare, he was met with the heavenly steel of the polished gauntlet.

Flung backwards, Asp threw his arms to the stone, sending up shards of earth and fire in arching spires and crescents of molten rock towards his ecclesiastical foe, but Haedriel beat away them with an effortless backhand, driven by the ceiling fuelled rage of the very thunder which cracked the air. The angel marched onto his victim as though a soldier of duty. His attempts at words were muffled, but the actions that would follow had clear intent.

His furious stare filled the mind of the druid; he knew he had wronged a power unknown to him. “YOU DARE COMPARE YOURSELF TO THE CREATOR!? TO PUT YOURSELF, A MAN, ON HIS LEVEL?! FEEL THE WRATH OF PUNISHMENT UNKNOWN TO YOUR FEEBLE BEING!” The veins in his neck bulged with tendon and muscle. Blood sprayed and oozed from his wounds, his rage so powerful it would even destroy him. His eyes glowed and flared with his passion. The broken wing dove into the druid’s flesh, nailing his body to the stone. Haedriel’s perfect expression twisted to one of judgment and disgust. The trial and authority in his eyes would bring a nation to its knees in forgiveness.

In a defiance as powerful as the heaven’s stare, Asp tore himself from his stake, snapping his collar bone as ligaments pulled and tore. But his freedom was short lived, the holy blade met with his flesh again. The tattoos on his bodies curled, and rushed to his abdomen were the sword punctured and pierced through his stomach, bursting out his lower back spilling ichors and blood from his abdomen. The oversweet smell of festering meat and rotting flesh poured from his wound as the angel twisted the mighty blade. The familiars etched on his skin could be seen working and fighting the holy steel, the tattoos alive, circling his body franticly.

Violently, Haedriel ripped the sword from his gut and Asp puked blood. Quickly his familiar did their work as they clogged and plugged the hole, but the wound was more than torn flesh. The sword had scarred his soul, reaching into the decaying plain from where it resided. The punctures unleashed an agony that left his very conscious empty. The creatures which his body housed sacrificed their being to his wounds, leaving his surface more naked with every moment, his flesh beneath, soulless and decaying, a horrendous shade of brown and mars black. The damage was done, but the archangel was far from.

As the druid fell to his knees in an attempt to physically recollect himself, the archangel heavy gauntlet fell onto his skull, a loutish blow that snapped back his neck. Firmly Haedriel grasped his head and raised the druid’s skull to meet his stare.

Asp squinted, his vision lost in drunken haze of pain. The exposed nerves of his face let off a fire to his mind which numbed his consciousness. The dust, the sweat, the blood, all of it contributing to the agony which plagued his being. But in his pain he thoughtless tried to focus, the two orange orbs, glowing ochre were revealed as the angel’s judging stare. It bore into his soul and mind, but more o, he could feel his eyes crust over slowly as though in an oven, the gaze baking his face as though exposed naked to the sun.

Asp screamed. He couldn’t look away…

[t3hDarkness]

Ooc: Fighting a battle against superior opponent is simply a matter of misdirection. If this makes no sense to you, just send me a PM and I can explain.

The pierced figure attempted to cry out but only managed a garbled moan. Its masked head twisted and its form started to melt into a bloody twist of flesh and cloth. It billowed toward the samurai only to be cut down with his invincible technique. The liquid being dripped off the edge of the pillar leaving only that brass mask behind to stare up at the fighter.

The thing spoke to him, its voice an unnatural mix of masculine and feminine tones. It is nothing personal, but you need to die now.

Not to be insulted by an animated piece of metal, the samurai of null stabbed it right between where eyes should go. The voice stopped for a minute and the cracked mask exploder into a billowing cloud of purple vapor.

The fog of the battleground mixed with the gas of the psychic poison. A form much like a shadow The blithe voice of the true warlock, in the form of a towering man, rang through. "You killed my homunculus with surprising ease. I must admit, this pain is exquisite." The voice suddenly turned much more serious "Your mind is strangely beyond my access, so instead, welcome to mine."

The monstrous version of the arcanist subliminated into a gas and launched at the warrior. Forcing his noxious form deep into the Asiatic fighter's lungs.

[Bomby]

Less than 49 Hours Remain

[t3hDarkness]

Hmm... This poses a problem. I will not be here on Sunday and possibly not on Saturday. Asnabel and I will just have to be as bloody as possible tomorrow then.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

His focus had been irrevocably shifted from everything but those perfect circles of aureate mandarin, hung in space, their radiance baking the juices from his torn visage into a rank mist about his head. Their seemed nothing more in the world but that pain, that heat, and coyly Asp smiled. His anguished, ravaged body slowly recollecting itself despite the ruthless marrings of its structures was a numb, distant thing to him now. Only the eyes mattered, and the agony of looking into them. In that moment, staring at that bountiful amalgalm of heat and colour and fire and beauty, Asp felt naked, and cast out. There were only shadows here.

Then he remembered Lucrece. Her face. And his eyes widened against the fire.

Where the flesh creatures had retreated to heal and stitch his corporeal wounds, his body had returned to a natural state of decay - sloughing from the bone in pulpy, ligamented tatters of old, colourless meat, sweating gaseous liquid from collapsed pores. His skull had fared worst, physically - the skin had peeled away from the carapace of his skull to reveal its mottled, fossilized face, and where his eyes had stood narrowed and pitiless now gaped open, sunken sockets and the shadows of that abyssal recess. His jawline, cheek, and nose had been carved away by Haedriel's blade and left him flayed grotesqyely at the upper-lip, revealing cracked teeth and gum-lines in the half-crescent of a grin curtained by shifting strips of bare flesh.

The most horrifying of these aspects, however, lay in the way the empty sockets stared back with an equal intensity to the archangel's righteous gaze.

With a single, deft movement, he raised his arm, sketeal malgres what womb of rot cloaked its framework from elbow to finger-tips, as if to caress his adversary's face. There might have been a poetry to this moment - in Haedriel's eyes - as inch by inch Asp's form was eroded into ash and vapour, blackening what poor continuum existed as a body, his last movement one of unrelenting piety for the Father.

Asp's fingers darted forward, sinking into Haedriel's upper-cheeks like hot steel through butter, the immaculate sculpture turning black around the wounds and releasing dark, puerile gas like evaporated jets of tar. Haedriel's throat convulsed in a mute scream, the amputated muscules therein writhing in a handicapped agony. From Asp's decayed palms burst small, gleaming forms, segmented and many-legged, unearthly in a grotesqueness of the aesthetic. The beetles swarmed from Asp's infected hand and colonized Haedriel's face, and where they went, unseen multitudes of pincers opened and closed and cut open feverish, bleeding lines across the angel's face, moving inexorably upwards.

The last thing Haedriel saw as he snapped his head back, thrashing it side to side above his shoulders, was the focusing, unfocusing image of those pincers - blurred between fine details and the oblique suggestion of minuscule movement as his pupils frantically worked to pinpoint their intrusion - opening and closing and opening and closing until his sight went watery with blur and then red and then blind, irrational shifts of black as they sliced into the meat of his eyes and dislodged them from them sockets. His inability to scream was more awful a thing. The bugs continued their destructive quest, trigonometrical sections of facial flesh peeling away from their grisly bussiness in minute sprays of elycian ichor while Haedriel (having spazmodically dropped his blade to beat, claw and tear at his flayed mess of a face in a futile attempt at extinguishing his miniscule assailants.

"'No more entreating, dog, by knees or parents.
I only wish my fury would compel me
To cut away your flesh and eat it raw
For what you've done.'" Asp cruelly hissed, the illogical workings of his mangled jaw and mouth a visual paradox and nightmare.

The bugs continued their path of destruction, swarming into every naked orifice, infesting the insides of the angel's nasal canal, destroying the flesh there to enlarge their path of entry, flattening and stretching their bodies to mold their way through his ear canals, rupturing his ear-drums in the process in red, deafening explosions of pain that rang shrilly from the insides of his head with enough force to drive a man insane.

" 'No one can keep the dogs
Off of your head, not if they brought me ransom
Of ten or twenty times as much, or more…'," The druid continued, his voice a heavy, demented purr. "'And thus shall you wander the underworld - blind, deaf, and dumb, and every man shall know you there, as the fool who thought he killed Achilles.'" Asp pursed his lips. The archangel fell to his knees, the isolation of complete sensoral immolation wrecking him mind, soul, driving him to the ground. His face was a freshly carved nightmare of famished butchery, whole sections flayed open to reveal the working of muscle and the framework of bone, these even falling apart in gouts of golden blood as the bugs continued their grisly task. They poked up from beneath the flesh like migrating herds of dolphin, festering about the eyesockets.

Asp moved forward with a sinuousity that belied the muscular atrophy of his body - and slammed his hands into Haedriel's skull with enough force to hurl him on his back, ripping out from flesh and bone, his hands curled viciously into claws. There, cradled thoughtfully upon the cusp of each palm, lay his adversary's amputated ocular orbs, still blazing, sat in pools of gore. He chuckled, ignoring the crackling the wracke dupwards from his body and the mental pain - peripheral but punctuating itself sharply - something the sword had removed of him. With a single deft movement, he plunged both orbs into the holes of his own skull, and when he removed his hands, they burned indigo like the dying embers of artificial fires.

He sneered, grasped his left forearm, and gritting his teeth, pulled. There was a nauseating creak as bone grinded and seperated and flesh - what flesh there was - stretched and squished - punctuated by a single, dry popping (the entire arm moving away from the body in a jerk of movement), followed by the wet, tearing noise of flesh and the splintering, crashings of the actions as he torn the entire thing away from him with his other arm and dropped it to the writhing, mud-festered quagmire of the swamp beneath. It began to sink, and as it did, decayed, and festered, and Asp grinned. "'And on the first day, God created.'" He looked at Haderiel's with the archangel's stolen eyeballs. And he grinned again. And it was a horrible thing.

OoC: Thanks Ac I plan to pursue this. And bro, nice post - was actually noticeably better in wuality. you're getting back into this. I plan to at the very least post Sunday night (being gone Friday Saturday). I'm not doing the math so I... think that gives me enough time for another post?

[Lycrios]

Scrit bounced off the wall that had sprung out between him and Thellis. How Thellis managed to control the bending of the mist, he did not know. The pain was pushing him ever closer to the brink of unconsciousness. He had managed to bend away the acid away from his remaining eye, with effort enough to make his knees buckle, but he stayed up from sheer strength of will. Skin and could be bent back, but not now, he had to concentrate on staying alive, which meant focusing on his more important injuries. The wall would not hold forever. He felt the warm fluid of his lifeblood pour out of the wound as he put a burnt hand to it. A wave of nausea washed through him as he fought back the blackness that took over his remaining eye. Skin took much more effort to mend than most things, and in his weakened state, he was could not fix the damage inflicted upon the bone beneath. He felt much pain as he moved his arm, his shoulder sending jolts of pain throughout him, making him clench his mouth, now devoid of teeth. The snarl came out in a gurgle of blood.

The wall lost it’s solidity, and in an instant Scrit was there to face him. Thellis barely avoided the weapon, cringing in pain as with every odd step. He hated being on the defensive, but was not fool enough to try an offense so unprepared. Then the plan sprung into his mind, almost washed away by the pain as he pushed his body to roll out of the way of a deadly swing that would have either cleaved off his head clean or broken his neck before ripping it off. The dice rolled. He lunged forward, both hands wrapped around Scrit’s handless arm, and used his momentum. First the loud pop Scrit’s shoulder rang in his remaining ear, then the sickening sound of tearing flesh. When he felt the thing free of it’s former owner, he spun fast, catching Scrit across the face with the end of the arm previously attached to his shoulder. Blurry and spotted vision didn’t stop him, as he bend what he could. The tip of the arm where hand used to be was now a spike, which he promptly rammed into Scrit’s previous wound. The bracer on Thellis’ arm flashed, and a force propelled both fighters back, spinning and tumbling on the ground. Thellis lay there panting, the sound a mockery of what it used to be. He coughed up more blood, his vision dimmed then return. Not yet. He forced himself to a knee and reached into the earth, pulling a staff which he quickly used to lean on. It took everything in him to not empty his stomach right then and there, but instead he forced himself to his feet, ignoring the sickening grinding of broken bones throughout his body.


((Hectic week here too. I realize I've been away from this place too long. Hopefully I'll be able to get another post in before time, if not, it's been a pleasure.))