Round 2: Paragon Vs Symbiosis

[Symbiosis]

Symbiote watched the little man fly away like a bird, his body disappearing into the brush with a distinct thud sound of where he landed. A grin of satisfaction crossed his face as he narrowed his eyes, chuckling. He was now able to pull the spear out of his gut with ease, twirling it in his hands as he debated on throwing it at the youth. Instead however a more sinister idea formed in his head. He rotated his wrist and brought the spear to his good hand, and held it at the ready as he moved forwards.

“Come on out little froggy,” The demon taunted as he neared where he dumped the boy. As he was about to close in on the dry land, he saw movement fly upwards and in a dazzling display of athletics Symbiote watched him leap all the way from the ground to the top of the net of vines, branches, and leaves. He looked to the spot and the distance he managed and with a low whistle of impressed feelings he shook his head. “Maybe froggy is aptly used,” he muttered dryly.

He advanced forwards in a full stride now, the last of the water falling off him like rain. To be free from the murky waters actually was a freeing feeling, his feet slapping against the dry rock as the dirt felt nice and crinkly under his toes. He moved towards one of the few tress that actually grew vertically in this blasted swamp and with a snarl he lifted his hands up and slammed his talons into the bark. They dug into the wood solidly enough for the demon to be happy, and with his other hand he slammed the spear a bit higher than his other hand, jumping to do so as his clawed toes raked the rotting tree. Shavings fell off in clumps as he started to crawl/climb up the tree quickly. The higher he got the less wet wood there was. His talons ached to be abused to badly, and at twenty five feet they refused to dig into the tree anymore. Still, he was high enough that he was hitting the taller branches that created enough of a platform for him to get his bearings correctly situated.

The stench of the bog was the first huge change. Being higher elevated the stench now lingered only to what he had brought with him from the brown depths. He could hear birds chatting away as they darted in and out of trees, the central net entanglement like the port hub. It was there he found the boy looking around slowly, his eyes moving in a very methodical manner. He lifted one hand out carefully, then retracted it only to bring out his other hand just to grasp a branch correctly and Symbiote wondered just exactly how much damage the boy took from his mule like kick.

Still, this was a tournament after all and the demon had no intentions of going easy. The fact his opponent was now acting slow and showing signs of mental trauma meant nothing more to him than the casual breeze against his skin. In fact, if nothing else, the boy now had a giant bullseye painted on his body. When Symbitoe reached the top and managed to walk onto the ceiling net, he let out a wet leopard like growl, drool dripping down his maw and falling all the way to the depths below. His eyes zeroed in on the youth and he carefully pulled the spear to the front in one hand like a barbaric tribal.

The young lad had little in terms of movement, and even as the demon neared him he still showed no signs of life. Ensuring the boy had no more secret tricks up his sleeve, the demon at last broke into a trot, bounding from branch to branch as he roared loudly like a tiger on the hunt. He brought the spear back over head and tossed it forwards, sticking the bark that his foe stood on startling him. With one white knuckle punch at the ready he made the last jump, moving to the opponent’s left. He did not dodge in the right direction, moving inwards when he should have moved outwards, and Symbitoe’s fist connected hard with the boy’s stomach. He spat out liquid that sprayed all over the vines and leaves, doubling over as Symbiote snarled twirling to stand right behind the bent over child.

The demon grabbed him by his somewhat curled, matted hair and jerked hard to the right, causing him to turn violently as his other fist came in and walloped him a good one in the jaw with a haymaker. With little fanfare he collapsed out of the monsters grip, dropping to the netting below and rolling near the edge of the longest horizontal branch left before the plunge to the disgusting depths below. Symbiote stalked him carefully from his now elevated, walking with a hunter’s grace as he knelt down and freed the spear from its prison, getting ready to deal the final blow.

[Paragon]

The monster laughed uproarioughly as casually strolled towards the many crushes branches he flung the young man through. Whatever fight the guy was putting up was clearly gone, as thottling him felt like kicking small woodland creatures until they fell apart.

"What are you doing?" asked Baxter.

The symbiote replied, "The hell? I'm in the middle of something here, can you talk later?"

"I've been watching what's going on here, and that guy is clearly done for. I think you knocked a few screws loose when you kicked him earlier."

"What's your point, Binky Boy?"

"Don't kill him. Just let him go. You've won."

"You crazy? These guys are like gnats; If you don't squash them, they'll be all up in your sweet potatoes and PICNIC RUINED. I'm going to take his own spear and and jab his meaty flesh bag a few times with it until it's nice and tender."

"Not if I have something to say about it!"

"He-hey! Stop that!" The arm holding the spear started losing its grip, and he couldn't walk forward anymore. "I know what you're thinking, and I'll assure you that this IS part of the deal. It's been part of the deal since the moment you left that room." He jerked his arm back and lifted his leg up, stomping downwards and growling. "There, better. Now be a good boy and sit tight while I clean up. Honestly, the ingrates I put up with!"

As Dorian laid on his side coughing blood, he could still hear Fallow's feverish screams of panic. The dragonling was not enjoying the pummeling of his nearly defenseless friend. There was not much he could do about it, since every time he tried to dodge, he lost track of where he was, where the monster was, and the next thing he knew he took another hit. It all happened so fast. Now he was down here, and what's more he was staring at the mud-caked feet of the old woman.

"Why do I keep running into you?!" she wondered out loud. "I shouldn't have to put up with this- I'm a professional swamp hag!"

"Y-You," Dorian stammered out between breaths. "Get p, paid for this?" He coughed.

She gave him a sour look. He could see her face out of the corner of his one good eye. His opponent's haymaker had made the other too bloody to open. He was expecting it again; The curse. He couldn't believe his bad luck today.

Wait.

He rolled over to his front, his ribs feeling like broken glass as he pressed them into the branches, and lifted up his upper body with an elbow. This time, instead of being speechless and taking the curses, he decided to speak up.

"You k-know, it's pretty unlucky that I keep running into you, eh?" This time she was silent. He smiled as well as he could with his injuries.

She paused for a moment, and then with a grimace waved her hands around and disappeared for presumably the last time. Dorian noticed the change immediately as his sight returned to normal. As he painfully pulled himself back up, he took one last look at his surroundings. The old mangrove trees rose high up into the sky, the width of their trunks so big that they could be seen miles away. Vines hung all around, and the sounds of the frogs, bugs, and birds filled his ears. The smell was not as hideous up here, either. He imagined that the smell was almost gone near the top of the massive trees. He tried to take a deep breath, but the sharp pain in his chest made him double over in pain.

"There you are!" Fallow's voice entered his mind. "I thought I lost you after you were knocked through so many branches... You need to quit right now. You're covered in blood and bruises! Surely this is enough, right? You've proven yourself!"

"Sorry, little buddy," Dorian smiled, patting the dragonling on the head. "I can't honestly say I'm done when a thread of victory still remains. Make sure no two-headed alligators eat me if this doesn't work, okay?"

Fallow couldn't object any longer. The dragonling was at his limit as well. He always trusted Dorian, even in the most uncertain circumstances. He wasn't about to start doubting now, no matter how much it hurt. If the young man was still cursed with bad luck, standing on the edge of a large branch while a muscly monster encroached upon him with his own spear would sound really bad on paper. In practice, it's not so bad.

"Run!" urged Baxter.

Symbiote snapped back, "Shut it, you! Sorry about that, now it's nice for you to stand for this stabbing, it'll make it much more enjoyable."

Dorian didn't understand what was happening, but he went through with his plan regardless. He opened his right palm, and waited. Symbiote made no signs of stopping, drawing ever closer to the cornered young man.

Suddenly, the spear was knocked out of the demon's hand. A small dragon figurine had come flying in from the swamp and hit his hand on the way to Dorian's. In that moment, the young man grabbed the spear just under its blade and pulled it back. Symbiote roared, but Dorian was fast as work collapsing the spear, putting it back into his belt, and turning the dragon figurine back into The Hydra Lance.

"I'm sorry," said Dorian. "I never introduced myself: My name is Dorian. Again, sorry."

He lifted the lance over his head and held it with both hands, charging forward at the monster, who couldn't believe his luck. At Dorian's completely inconsequential speed due to the injuries, Symbiote could easily just grab the shaft of the lance and stop the young man dead in his tracks, but Dorian never gave him the chance.

The Sesthali was holding the lance backwards. He slammed non-bladed end into the ground, launching himself into the air above Symbiote, where he quickly pulled out his spear, extended it, and stabbed straight downwards. The monster, shocked by this event, tried to redirect the spear since there was no room on the branch to dodge, but the blade went right through his muscly hand, ripping through the skin that connected the thumb and index finger. It kept descending and stuck itself between the monster's neck and shoudler blade, causing immense pain. The force of the downward stab was incredible, much more than the stab into his belly from earlier. The branch cracked beneath them and gave away, sending the two fighters spiralling down one hundred feet toward the swamp.

Dorian had let go of his spear and tumbled on his own, no longer having the strength to readjust his body for the fall. He crashed into a wet patch of moss, which still caused a lot of damage to his back. He couldn't find the strength to get back up, instead preferring to roll over and breathe as much as he could. He didn't know if that was enough to do in his opponent, but that was all he had left.

"Hah... hah... is that enough for you? Have... have I p-proven myself?"

All he could think of now was freeing Fallow. To let the dragonling experience the world firsthand was worth all of this, and as his eyes closed he heard the dragon whelp's whimpering in his mind. He felt safe, knowing that Fallow would watch over him. He was a naive, scared little guy, but he was reliable when it counted. He deserved to see and love the world as Dorian did.

[Symbiosis]

The beast’s chest rose softly as the whimper of a dying dog escaped his maw. Talons raked the ground, digging shallow trenches as his soulless milky eyes looked to the body of the boy. This was not fair. He had won, he had earned his victory. He should be standing over his corpse and debating on how to continue his fun, not shivering at the cold chill of death’s embrace. He focused his hate, used it to pump adrenaline, yet the muscles did not drink the energy. He had no ability to move at all.

His hate soon focused inwards.

“This is all your fault, Binky Boy!” The demon spat, blood and drool mixing in the dirt where he had bit the tip of his snake-like tongue clean off. “I could have finished him off and moved us forward in this tournament!”

“There is your way, and mine. I will never allow myself to degenerate to your levels, Symbiote. Even if the deal would never permit it.” Baxter replied coldly within his own subconscious. The demon growled attempting to retort, but instead he wheezed and coughed up more blood. “Besides, I don’t think you have anything left to argue with me.”

“What do you think to accomplish standing in my way?”

There was a long silence, save the panting of the dying demon as the swamp bog let a few air bubbles pop on the surface. The demon closed his eyes for a moment, letting all his energy slip away. At last Baxter gave an answer.

“I think each time I do I grow into a stronger human being. It takes a strong sense of will to be able to push you aside, Symbiote. Knowing that I’m going to try and defy you at every turn and grow stronger until one day I can rid you from me forever.” The two sat in silence, the demon never expecting that answer. It was the most profound thing he ever heard out of the man’s mouth and the demon had to admit that his spine was behind those words.

“You’re getting to be more of a hassle than it’s worth,” The demon grumbled. “What will I ever do with you, Binky Boy? And what do you think you’ll do without me? You are getting stronger, but you’re forgetting something…”

“Oh?”

There once again was silence before the demon’s body began to shriek in agony. The jaws of the beast widened as the teeth shrunk in size, his huge cable like muscles retracting to normal human size. His lungs, filled with blood, began to choke as they were no longer expanded to full size. His heart beat incredibly fast as he reverted back to his normal form, and the subconscious mind of Baxter Arlington forged back to the surface. The agonizing pain of the injuries forced the human to silence as the pen write silently screamed.

The demon merely floated to around Baxter’s heart like a fish in the sea, lazily dwelling at the base of his ribs. He laughed at the man’s plight, before he settled down and spoke in a commanding, final tone.

“I make the deals, Binky Boy, not you. You only gain strength when I give it to you. Without me you’re as weak as you were before. Let this pain settle deep within your mind, let it pickle, Binky Boy. I want you to know what awaits you when you think you can be rid of me.”

Baxter Arlington wanted to retort. He wanted to get in one last tooth grinding comeback no matter how much it hurt. He wished to show defiance to the demon, that his will was not so easily crushed. He prayed for the strength to teach his companion a lesson, for all he wanted was to be rid of the thing. But try as he might he had not the strength to do these things. Instead, all he managed to let out was a warped cry of pain, tears streaming down his face as the demon at last released all his healing precautions, letting Baxter feel all the wounds from the battle.

And to accompany his screams, the demon howled with him, always to remind him that he could never be anything without him there.

[Silence Sei]

Symbiosis/Paragon



Story 6/5: Both of your stories were a bit shaky, from Paragon’s intro (which should have established a bit more to make the reader feel for Dorian’s plight) to Sym’s rising action (Hidehidehide GONNA GETCHA!). Symbiosis gets an extra point here because as far as the conclusions go, he did a better job of wrapping things up.

Continuity 6/7: I believed each of your motivations, though I honestly expected more from Symbiosis other than the equivilant to a college prank (Why did Baxter just go ahead with the tourney anyways?)

Setting 5/7: Paragon did a better job in his descriptions of the layout, whereas with Symbiosis, I just had murky, nasty water to work with. Paragon gave us enough of an ecosystem to have a pretty vivid image.

Creativity 6/7: The voodoo lady beats out “SPEAR IN ME NOITSNOT!”, though I’m still rather confused about how Dorian managed to turn his bad luck around with just one phrase to the old lady. Maybe it went over my head.

Character 7/6: Symbiosis did better in making us relate to Baxter’s plight. While I could not really sympathize for Dorian’s want to make his invisible dragon friend ‘whole again’ as it were. A good tip is to make sure that you’re conveying your emotions more thoroughly, try to describe how you yourself feel about the character as you type.

Interaction 5/5: Interactions were there, but there was nothing that should have warranted extra points. There were several missed opportunities to use the environment as weapons, or even decoys, that I never saw really. Dorians escape to the ‘net’, and Sym’s makeshift tree climbing were the closest I came to seeing anything like that,

Strategy 5/6: I liked Dorian’s strategist mentality, as it were, to try and step back and think his situation through. Symbiosis was mainly all about pressing the attack head on, which is fine, that’s the character, but even vicious barbarians can use cunning from time to time (Hint hint, Gehngis Khan)

Mechanics 4/4: Both of you had several spelling errors all throughout your match. Examples include Sym missing the I in his italics coding, Dorian missing a whole word (I believe around the end of post 2) and a couple of words that seemed to be missing/adding a letter.

Clarity 6/5: Sym was clearer than Dorian, mostly due to his minimalist environments, but I still needed to read a paragraph here or there, the same with Dorian. Another good tip could be to type out each individual paragraph, and then reading them out loud before continuing on to the next one. Worth a shot, right?

Wildcard 4/4: Para suffers here because his descriptions tended to reuse the same words over and over again, which was quite jarring and made me have to read again to make sure I wasn’t constantly reading the same line over and over. Sym, you could have gotten a 5 (as nothing impressed me, but nothing deterred me from the thread either) but you missed one of your posting deadlines.

Total:

Symbiosis: 54
Paragon: 56

Symbiosis gains 250 exp, 200 GP
Paragon gains 800 Exp, 100 GP

Paragon Goes to Round 3!

[Silence Sei]

GP-Exp added.

Eddie Brock ---errrm, Symbiosis leveled up!