LCC - R1: Plane Curiosity VS Skullfuckers

Mordelain was, to say the least, quite surprised by Luned’s survival instinct. Though it was kith and kin in human nature to survive, to prolong life at all costs, there was much to be said for the plucky scribe’s flight from the gazebo. The troubadour, agog, could only watch as she bounded away.

“Why did I listen to you…” she said to Resolve, though the sound of sword against air and fist against jaw told her all she needed to know about her companion’s ability to hear, never mind to respond. Begrudgingly, Mordelain glanced fleetingly over her shoulder, to check her ears were not playing tricks on her, and then stepped down onto the gazebo’s curved aperture.

“Are you frightened, little mouse?” she bellowed. Her lungs cracked wide, giving her a rush of blood to the head she had not felt in years. She had spent too long in the dark, cold depths of nowhere. Resolve had been the first person to truly make the Troubadour feel alive in two centuries. It felt…riveting.

“I’m not scared of you!” Luned bellowed, a meek voice mighty in the meaning. She held her arm still close to her, though Mordelain was not experienced enough in the many forms of magic on Althanas to know what danger it posed to her.

“Are you injured, little mouse?” she said, a thick Fallien veil falling over her Tama tongue. She slipped from Tradespeak to common, quite unable to keep up with herself. Her head was beginning to race, her fever rose, and her heart beat like a drum solo – loud, proud, and deafening.

No reply came, except in the form of cupping, caressing, and fondling her arm.

Mordelain’s feet came to a natural end-stop when her toes cupped the edge of the last step. One more advance, and she would be reunited with the buoyant lawn. In such an exuberant state, she could not trust her concentration to carry her safely towards her opponent. She could end up anywhere in the nine worlds, lost and adrift, set at odds with the universe because of a foolish need to end a life, to survive.

“If you’re injured, then why are you running?” she said, a sudden softness lulling even her cold, alien heart into a false sense of security. It seemed futile to run from a prey injured, “I will follow you, across the stars ablaze and the cracking universe as it decays through time.” She cocked her head to the left, just as Resolve and Flint clashed heavily behind her. “You stand and die, or you stand and rise triumphant.” She took the Partisan, its length longer than even her tall form into both hands, and levelled it in a left weighted stance so its tip aimed for Luned’s forehead.

She charged, with all the might of her conviction, feet eschews, knees taught, and eyes ablaze with murderous intent. If, when she arrived in Luned’ vicinity, either of the women were alive, the spider silk shaft would thrust forwards; it would be a headline worth reading in Salvar’s cold heart.

The scribe knew, deep in her heart, that the only way she could possibly inflict any damage on this imposing woman was to accept the fact that she was probably going to die. Things were going to happen that would hurt a lot, and there was nothing she could possibly do about it if she wanted to make the most of the tournament. This may have been a time to second guess her reasons in coming but she had to think quickly, losing any chance of tangental trains of thought.

In desperation, Luned frantically sought the power within herself to grow a pair and join the skirmish with everything she had. She wasn't like Flint, she wasn't tempered in the darkest depths of violence to the point that it simply became a state of being; she was, unfortunately, painfully aware of how easy it would be to break someone like her, to the point that it hindered her from trying. She mumbled something under her breath as Mordelain charged, a chant too low for the other woman to hear, and dodged the blade of the partisan as it aimed to skewer her face by jolting her upper body, not fully stepping aside as one might expect. It clipped the side of Luned's head, sawing off part of a tightly pinned braid and sending loose chestnut hair into her eyes, and before her opponent had a chance to draw it back, the scribe did something she didn't think she had in her: she grabbed the shaft with both hands, moving in an instinctive and fluid motion she didn't know she was capable of, and yanked the partisan toward herself and down, attempting to pin it under her arm and rid the enemy of her long range benefit. She wanted to get in close.

This plan went mostly as intended, at least; Mordelain wasn't expecting such a gutsy move and was almost tempted to let the little scribe simply have it after that effort, but the opening was too obvious not to take advantage. The woman jerked the partisan back, just enough to wedge the base of the blade under Luned's arm. Within that same action she twisted it, one of the impossibly sharp hooks digging firmly into the side of the smaller female's ribcage.

Luned cried out piteously, nearly losing the strength in her knees as the blade sliced effortlessly through cloth, skin, and muscle, but she only clenched the weapon tighter. Hunched under the gravity of excruciating pain, the scribe glared up at Mordelain as her hold on the spider silk grip sizzled, wisps of smoke curling into the air and marring the fragrance of the surrounding roses with burnt bitterness. When she drew her right hand away, flames swarmed her palm, and she whipped a dense, grapefruit-sized fireball directly at her opponent's chest.

Mordelain was in close enough quarters that Luned was able to aim quite accurately, and thanks to the woman's costume change, she was bedecked in a high volume of delightfully flammable, flowing fabrics, not to mention that beautiful, loose hair.

"I," the scribe growled, finally letting go of the partisan to lurch forward and send several more spheres of flame into Mordelain's person, "Am fear!"

Flint recovered more quickly than Resolve expected, she had to give him kudos that he was fairly quick for man built such as himself, and she was sorely disappointed as his left fist met the soft flesh of her side with a potent strike. It wasn't incapacitating by any means but the girl couldn't help but gasp, grateful it didn't knock the wind out of her, but she was forced to take an involuntary step sideways to maintain her balance. She stumbled, her left ankle still tangled in his, but as she did so, she found an unexpected opportunity.

Her right arm now free, she attempted to hook it swiftly around the front of Flint's huge neck as she turned her unanticipated sidestep into a swoop that could allow her to grab him from behind. Using her left arm to brace the back of his head, preventing him from cracking it backwards into her face (she rather liked her cute little nose as it was), the exorcist endeavored to lock him into a tight chokehold. If successful, she'd squeeze as hard as she could with the fanciful intent to pop the skull right out of his head. Somewhere in the back of her mind, her subconscious even pondered his team name and jested how she might be inspired to commit some humiliating act of irony when she and Mordelain won.

Whether this maneuver worked or not, Luned's voice met their ears as she hollered something from the green.

"I am fear!"

Resolve cursed, her concentration disrupted. "Shit, Luned!" she grumbled, doing her best to hang onto her own opponent, but afraid to end things too quickly lest she be forced to face her friend.

I am fear!

The ropes of muscle in Flint’s neck strained against Resolve’s arms, resisting the crushing force they steadily applied. He had scant seconds before her strength overcame his, heartbeats between that first press against his throat and the moment when fatigue and a lack of oxygen rendered him powerless.

A steady resistance would avail him nothing, so Flint relented and pushed himself back against Resolve half-heartedly. She had the better position and resisted his push – a natural response in this situation, and one she was prepared for. It was far less predictable when Flint reached up with one hand and instead of trying to pry her free as she expected, he clutched her arm to him.

That could only mean one thing, so Resolve had two options: lean her weight against his to try and keep him down, or let him loose. Flint supposed her too bold, too strong to relinquish a superior position, and he was proven right. Her weight pushed him forward. He smiled, despite the veins standing out on his head and the distressing color of his face. It was a shame to be so close to someone so fascinating, and to be utterly incapable of catching her scent. In fact, nothing about this was as pleasant as it should have been.

With his free hand, Flint reached out and curled his fingers into the minuscule gaps between the tiles, and pulled, surging up from his legs and shoving out away from Resolve. She was stronger than even her lean physique implied, but she was not heavy, and between her weight, her grip, and his hold on her arm, there was nothing for her to do but catch a piggy back ride and hope he burned himself out quickly.

That was becoming increasingly likely. The corners of his vision were beginning to close in, and every muscle burned for want of precious oxygen. His legs felt rubbery and lame, and beads of sweat began to flow into his eyes, and Resolve was feeling heavier by the second. Adrenaline was his ally now, adrenaline and fear of suffocation. Flint remembered the anger in those incongruous blue eyes, and suspected she would not quit squeezing, even after he stopped moving.

So Flint ran, as much as he was able, now clutching Resolve’s arms with both hands. He ran and, just as she figured out what he intended to do, he committed both of them to it by leaping into the air and twisting. The pressure on his neck loosened, and then Resolve’s back collided with one of the pillars supporting the gazebo, and then Flint’s weight compressed her, and then the pillar snapped in a spray of splinters and deafening noise.

The brawlers tumbled through the air on the other side of the now-shattered pillar, and then they hit the ground rolling. Flint took a handful of grass to stop himself and wheezed, sucking in air desperately. He blinked furiously, both to rid himself of tears and to chase away the flashing spots and darkness that dominated his vision. His first instinct was to put his eyes on Resolve – he couldn’t afford to get caught like that again – but every need fell away behind the alarming groan of failing wood behind him.

Flint turned just in time to watch the gazebo lean toward him, left unstable by the loss of one of its legs. It paused, as if to reconsider failure, and then it promptly decided that failure was a sound option. It collapsed, and as the roof struck the grass it collapsed into shards and splinters under its own weight. Years of accumulated dust and pollen surged forward in an all-consuming cloud, and that cloud rushed first over Flint, and then Resolve, and then continued until it ate up all sight of their respective allies as well.

For the second time in as many months, Mordelain Saythrou was assailed by malefic spheres. She was, for want of a better way of putting it, completely taken off guard by the plucky girl’s assault. The conflagration illuminated the whites of her eyes in the few fleeting seconds she had to acknowledge what was happening to her. Her head reeled in the surprise of being so easily out maneavoured, and in her partisan being so easily rendered blunt and worthless.

Mordelain, however, had survived Woompus Beasts and Praying Manti.

She had survived aeons of isolation in corners of worlds unspoken, and most certainly unimaginable to the paltry comprehension of Althanas’ citizens. She would not be undone by fire.

“I will not be undone by fear…” she roared, a bellow of defiance that plucked her, quite literally, from the world.

The fire and flame and brimstone rushed through the space where Mordelain had been, could have been, and should have been. It spent its impact against the gazebo, just as it began to teeter and topple down atop the scribe. It began to teeter and topple down over where Mordelain should have been, would have been, and could have been, had the Void not called to her.

With vomit in her gullet, and fear firmly burnt into her retina with a cheeky smile and a mismatched outfit, the planes walker appeared three hundred light years away on an all too familiar battleground. The infinite horizon awed her, its yellow sands rolling over gentle dunes as far as the eye could see. The sky was ochre, like burnt eggshells, and the wind in the air was soft, but riddled with the stench of decay and death and desolation.

“Hudde…” she whispered. There was reverence for the land on her tongue, and despair at the back of her throat for the ordeal to come. The Tama walked between worlds, by all means, but sometimes, it was a long and arduous path that could shatter the mind and body alike.

With a pensive thought, Mordelain placed herself in relation to the sun, the distant tower to the south, and the reeling sensation of being millions of miles away from where she had been seconds ago. The cracking sensation she felt when she slipped into the Void still tingled in her shins and soul. She rested the partisan’s stoic butt on the sand, and it sunk a few centimetres below the ancient desert’s surface. Once, this land had been a metropolis the likes of which would have dwarfed Althanas’ greatest civilisation. Now, after millennia of war and abandonment, it was the last place a criminal would suffer – a punishment some would say was worse than death.

“We meet again.” She said with a snap of motion. She trudged forwards, sweat forming on her brow beneath the ill-suited attire of the Troubadour. Though she would re-appear within a few seconds, minutes at most of her banishment from the arena, the journey for the planes walker would take the better part of the day. She trudged towards the tower, the only landmark for leagues, her heart sinking into her chest, and her eyes narrowed to blot out the glare of the seven suns, each more radiant than the last.

She cursed Resolve under her breath, wishing she could, for once, but whatever friendship or politic the two women shared, and gut the little wretch before human kindness got the better of them both. She glanced up cautiously into the glare every few hundred feet or so, because if her own heart didn't kill her, then the Rhymer Wurms and the Giant Vultures would almost certainly cut her participation in the Lornius charade short.

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One use of her 'emergency' planes walk used - for the time being, Mordelain is currently on Hudde.

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Mordelain vanished, narrowly avoiding Luned's assault, and the scribe let out of a stream of curses that was cut short by the realization that she would probably do best getting out from under the path of the gazebo. She turned and dashed to take cover behind the closest rose bush, her clothes catching on the thorns and reminding her to keep clear. Upon closer inspection, the spines on the plant were considerably larger than any she'd seen in person before, almost creating a sort of razor wire that effortlessly shredded the hem of her dress. She winced just thinking about what they'd do the flesh, then winced again as she turned her focus to putting pressure on the wound at her side. She did her best not to heed the crash of the gazebo not far away, nor give into the wish to check on Resolve and Flint. She didn't want to know.

There was a lot of blood, most of it soaked up by Luned's dress in a growing crimson blossom against the slate blue cloth, the rest coating her hands and arms. She gripped her side as tightly as possible with the feeble pressure of her hands and wished she had something to brace herself against, too afraid to give herself a real moment of rest. As she pulled up the side of her skirt and wedged it tightly against the wound under her arm, foregoing modesty for something to stop the bleeding, the cloud of pollen descended and turned the vibrant emerald of the green into a sick shade of yellow.

The scribe sneezed several times in succession until she was out of breath, her sinuses immediately flaring in the fragrant mist. Disappointed and endlessly frustrated by Mordelain's flight while straining to ignore the pain, Luned was at a loss of what to do next, and so she hesitated perhaps a little too long.

By the time Resolve's feet were off the ground it was too late to prevent whatever her opponent had planned, so she hung on with the fortitude of a professional bull rider. Her grip lasted about halfway through impact but the slam of Flint's weight in the sandwich knocked the wind out of her, a cry muffled through clenched teeth as at least two distinct pangs in her chest heralded the impairing pain of freshly cracked ribs. Between the lack of ability to breathe and the feeling of being crushed alive, the exorcist barely registered the sensation of going completely through the support post, the world blurred until well after she landed hard on the grass. For a long moment it was all she could do to lay there and wheeze, gasping for control of her uncooperative lungs, clutching at her chest as if expecting to find it flattened.

The falling gazebo occurred in the peripheral of all her panicked senses, and it wasn't until the mushroom cloud of pollen settled over the green that Resolve finally caught her breath again. She allowed herself a luxurious few seconds to lay there and simply breathe, taking as deep of breaths as she dared, before struggling to her feet. Immediately her ribs acted up and she groaned as she stood, wavering slightly, and a fresh heat in her right shoulder alerted her to a rather serious injury that she must have obtained when she landed, but she couldn't remember. Her head felt fuzzy. All she knew was she needed to get moving.

The girl didn't know what she was up against in Flint, if that was all he had or he was keeping some tricks up his sleeve as she was, but she did know that she had an advantage in low visibility situations. If she caught him off-guard, she could get in an attack that would compensate for her injuries with surprise.

Resolve was surprised, as she felt out the area around her through her astral radar, that there were only two others present in the arena. The pain broke her concentration and she couldn't feel the presences well enough to know who was who, but someone was gone, not dead. Did Mordelain go for a walk? She cursed, hoping the woman made it back in a timely fashion to avoid any uncomfortable showdowns between friends, and staggered in the direction of the closest person, crossing all her fingers and toes that it was Flint.

And, of course, it wasn't. The exorcist grew out of the fragrant golden cloud like a phantom and discovered the little scribe hunched next to a bush, presumably attempting to find a better location from which to defend herself when Mordelain returned. Blue eyes met blue in a moment of unhappy recognition, and as Resolve inspected her friend and found her covered in no small amount her own blood, she suddenly felt all that anger return.

Luned simply looked up at her, wide-eyed. She was obviously terrified of her self-proclaimed best friend. She knew what this girl was capable of, she was the one who helped her learn how to control her abilities as a kid. And then, in a moment of heroic defiance, the scribe sneezed.

"Idiot," Resolve spat in exasperation, and she drew up a long leg in one graceful motion that sent Luned flying back into the thorny embrace of the rosebush behind her in a burst of white dust. The act of punting her gored friend into the shrubbery didn't soothe any of the frustration, to her disappointment, and she turned to chase after the second poor soul on her radar: Flint.

There was a place in the grass, deep in the grass, where the choking cloud of dust and pollen did not reach, and that was where Flint buried his nose. He focused on filling his lungs and soothing the burn of his muscles: in slow through the nose, savoring the overwhelming smell of green and the rough tickle on his face, out faster from the mouth. The agony abated and his mind cleared. He was a little lightheaded, and his neck ached, but he was whole and breathing.

He tested his limbs before he put them to use, and found that with the free flow of oxygen, so too had his strength returned. He expected more harm to have befallen his back, but Resolve made an exceptional cushion. All-in-all, Flint counted it one of his least-worst brushes with death, and he might have been pleased except that when he narrowed his eyes against the brown-yellow haze, he could not see where his Amazonian foe landed. She was still mobile.

Flint snuffed in an effort to free himself from the pervasive tickle of too much pollen in his sinuses, but that was futile. He trudged toward the collapsed gazebo, combing his fingers through his beard to remove loose blades of grass, and found that his hand came away dusty. It seemed cleanliness was also futile. The stuff coated the inside of his mouth, turning his saliva into a grainy paste. He spat and made displeased faces.

The dust cloud was significantly thinner on the other side of the collapsed structure, the force of the impact having driven a majority of the cloud outward before its momentum was spent, and the barest hint had since begun to seep backward as the cloud dissipated. Flint hesitated, eyeing what was once the roof of the gazebo, now a pile of partially-collapsed wooden rubble. It took a moment to realize that the thin pillar of smoke rising from the wood was in fact smoke and not some strange configuration of dust and pollen, but the brute could not imagine how a fire was sparked.

Luned.

Flint felt his shoulders tense and he glanced back toward the cloud, brows furrowed, and then he shook it off. Resolve was not a danger to her, they were friends. Best friends. If anything, the slim bruiser was checking to make sure Luned was alright. What kinds of people did she associate with, if she had friends that would team up with strangers to outnumber her?

And then it occurred to him that Luned considered him a friend.

“Damn it, Luned,” he growled. He began tearing through the rubble with his bare hands, ignoring the cuts and splinters that got him, and then he yanked a long beam free. It was easily half his height, and three inches thick, which made it heavy but awkward to handle. It would have to do.

The brute crouched behind the once-roof of the gazebo and let his mind work. If Resolve had broken away to help her partner overwhelm Luned, the deed was done and rushing in blind would avail him nothing but a swift beat-down. No, he had to be patient, and bide his time. He would wait until…

He peeked between a set of cross-crossed beams, shattered like broken bones under their own tremendous weight, and saw a distinctly feminine figure emerging from the smoke. He mistook it for Luned at first – was that a skirt or…? But no, this silhouette was too tall, too confident, and it was not sneezing. One of his enemies, then.

Flint slowly slid back and waited, visualizing her approach. He listened, strained his ears, but knew it was unlikely he would be able to hear her footfalls on the grass. He risked another peek, and decided she knew where he was. Somehow, she knew. His mind raced. If he could not hide, this would not work. Unless…

Flint sighed and rolled his eyes at himself, shifting uncomfortably. He thought about it for a second, digging up old memories. What ridiculous things did people say and do after he broke them? It was hard to recall, he was in the habit of ignoring them once the grisly deed was done.

He attempted a loud groan, which to him sounded almost like a question. He hoped Resolve would hear it more as an injured man crying for help. Injured men had a habit of doing that. Maybe she hadn’t seen him after the collapse of the gazebo. Maybe she would believe he was crushed under it – pinned. He wondered what kind of person she was. Certainly one that finished a job: certainly she would come, but would it be to gloat, to help, or to take advantage?

He tried another fake groan, attempting to suggest Luned’s name in it this time. He imagined her laughing at him, and sneered. He risked another glance, just the briefest peek, and thrilled to see his enemy ever-closer – close enough that he was sure it was Resolve now. Just another moment or two…

And then he hissed, lunged out from behind his jumbled shelter, and swung his makeshift club, aiming high for Resolve’s legs.

A spear tip appeared in the arena. A shaft, spider-silk grip, and the associated hands followed it shortly after. As far as fate went, the partisan had materialised just in the nick of time. Mordelain flashed into view, more or less where she intended, and instantly regretted it. After a trek that had lasted the better part of four hours, the last thing she needed was to be thrown directly into conflict.

She barely had time to grit her teeth and brace herself for the inevitable collision between club and meticulously arranged attire. The image of Resolve flashed before her eyes, her companion prone on the ground, clutching her shins, and screaming in an agony that went far beyond pain and suffering. She heard the bone crunch, and the muscle falter, and a heartbeat skip in the battered ribcage of its owner. It skipped again when the club clashed with the pole-arm, and her body weight teetered as she tried to adjust, with a dancer’s guile, to take the force of the blow in the correct manner.

Every part of her body jolted.

“Resolve!” she roared, her sweat beaded brow glistening in the still glaring sun. Her word was part command, part concern, and part declaration. Somehow, her companion understood exactly what she meant, or perhaps, she just had common sense.

She leapt backwards, Flint’s eyes darting to the left at the newcomer, and swearing without the need for words and spit. His surprise and the relative lack of change in the daylight and battleground told Mordelain that it had been only a few seconds since she had disappeared. She did not need a fancy watch to tell her she was an unexpected guest.

“Where the hell have you been?” Resolve cried, her aggression, blunt and direct, turned to the very person she was trying to defend. “If you disappear one more time…” she seethed.

Mordelain had gone through quite the ordeal in the few ‘seconds’ she was gone. Her attire, sparkling and joyful when she walked, was now dusty, turned in places, and devoid of its splendour. Her arms, taught and muscular, were covered in scuff marks and minor bruises. She was dehydrated, hungry, and no longer in the mood for playing with coy little foxes, and their bestial, wolf like protectors. She was less in the mood for Resolve’s stoicisms and fervour, but she could wait to contend with that until after they emerged from the rose garden victorious.

Her eyes widened.

“The flowers.”

In her determination to uphold Resolve’s request to contend with her so called friend, she had forgotten about the tournament organiser’s message to her as she had crossed the threshold between ante chamber and amphitheatre.

“What about them?” Resolve asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. She stood, legs bent at the knee, arms splayed in a defensive stance, uncertain about wherever or not to interfere with their lock.

“They’ll mark your graves; that is what!” Flint said, pushing into Mordelain’s feeble barrier with a burst of strength that bellied and dashed the entire troubadour’s hope. The club rose so quickly, and so swiftly, that all she could do was leap backwards.

She vanished.

She re-appeared again ten feet away before the skull-cracking tip got the chance to crush her abdomen and render her childless.

Resolve and Flint both snarled in unison.

“Deal with your own drama,” Mordelain snapped, spinning her partisan about full circle as the vibrations of the Void brought her weary traveller’s body back to life. Suddenly, she was renewed, invigorated, and ready. She had spent too long running from the Desert Wyrm, and longer still fighting harpies in the Aerie of the world she had fled from to avoid fire and fear to be undone by petulant squabbles. She double checked Luned's whereabouts, and gave the little brat no more than a second's attention before turning back to the real opponent in the trestle lawn and madness.

She raised a hand, pressed the palm flatly at Flint, and then beckoned for him to advance. She took a deep breath, rolled her neck in its socket, and let the sound of the bells in her hat wash over her. She smelt of lavender. She smelt of blood, and she would come out of it all smelling like roses.

“Come now, junta, and try me on for size!”

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Junta is the Fallien word for, to be crude, female genitalia.

One use of her Mordelain's combat escape utilised.

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The oversized thorns tore into Luned's arms and back mercilessly, and as she wrestled herself out of the bush, she succeeded in goring herself even further. The pollen was in her eyes, nose, and lungs, her throat swelling, and planting her face in a cluster of the white roses only seemed to make it worse, though she couldn't help but notice even with her seared sinuses that they didn't quite smell like the ones at home. She tore several holes in her dress as she struggled free of the branches and onto her feet, revealing the puncture wounds beneath, coughing and wheezing all the while.

Something odd happened as she stood –– a shift in the world around her, a subtle darkening as if the sky suddenly went overcast –– but Resolve's scream of agony seized her attention, her gut lurching. Luned recalled the fact that they were in the midst of a tournament and the memory felt vague, her head fuzzy; how much blood had she lost, anyway? But that was enough to spur her into action, and she circled in a loose orbit toward the cluster of opponents. She caught glimpses of her crimson-clad friend on the ground between the swaying bushes, the other standing with a makeshift weapon, and they both shouted in the same direction at some unseen villain.

The air was nearly clear again, the cloud of pollen settled over the glen in a way that turned the grass a murky yellow-green, and the sky continued to darken, washing away the vibrant jasmine and replacing the world in drab browns and grays. It reminded the scribe of Ettermire and she nearly convulsed in utter repulsion, shivering in remembrance. The only good thing that came out of that horrific experience was meeting Flint; she would have preferred to leave the post-traumatic stress back in the sewers with the corpses and rats.

Luned's dress was in tatters, blue cloth mottled into a gruesome calico as her wounds drenched it in blood. Her upper body was coated in a fine layer of pale dust, something separate from the pollen, and if she was in her right mind, she might have deduced the fact that it must have been deliberately added to the bushes before the match began. She stepped out from behind a rosebush, looking very much like a ghost behind Mordelain's imposing, partisan-bearing figure.

And there she was in the sewers again, one of the mutant creatures standing between her and her friends. The old Luned would have wept, helpless and useless in the face of peril… but she was reborn, and for the first time she truly felt like fear itself.

Fierce and distraught, the scribe charged at the back of her opponent. Any semblance of recognition was gone from her features and she threw herself at the monster, losing control of the ability she forgot she even had. As fire raged from her dagger-bearing fists it caught everything in its path, her blood-soaked clothes smoldering, and she tore after Mordelain with full intent to take the woman and her wilted ensemble down with her in one last extreme expenditure of remaining energy.

The thick blanket of pollen on the ground caught flame and burned away in a dramatic ripple that burst outwards across the green, leaving the grass singed in its path and the air filled with a sour black smoke. It sizzled at Flint's boots and crackled at the remains of gazebo, and soon the collapsed structure would rise like a funeral pyre.

Lost to the world in her delirium, Luned went out with the fury of a kamikaze phoenix.

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The dust is mallaku'akta, a poison mentioned here. Going in Mordelain's initial Hunger Games theme, we can assume it was planted by the organizers to make things more interesting.

The guide says "this will cause intense hallucinations as well as nightmares. The victim is usually trapped within a realm of their worst nightmare and the illusion is sometimes so real they will scare themselves to death."

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