Round 2: Team Devil's Outcasts v Super Awesome Fun Time, Best Pals Go!

[Dissinger]

The Revenant left, feeding the rage that simmered in his form. Part of him wanted to give chase, but he knew William Arcus was lost to him today. It was time to go back in the ship for Skie and go. The Wrath Engine demanded he spend this mana, lest it burn out from inside him, his anger at seeing the traitorous snake leave demanded he express that anger, and so he turned inside ready to find some way to channel the mana in him into spells that would surely scorch an already destroyed ship. It would be petty, an abuse of his power, but certainly it would take the edge off his anger.

Moving below decks he moved with a surety, and found more burning. Had William Arcus' farewell attack burned this low? It made no sense, as he was too high up and the floors were showing scorch marks. Suddenly adrenaline flushed his system, even as the scorched burns continued to blister his body and cause small spikes in the pain he felt. It was discomforting, and surely he'd heal it later with his magic, but the priority was finding out what happened.

Seth moved towards the galley and found the source of the scorching, Talen Shadowalker. Eyes narrowed as he saw him raise his sword in an executioner's attack, speaking of how his victim was lucky. Already he was in motion, his eyes burning with a cold fury. His body made it in time to grab Skie's hair and tug her back even as the sword came down. He could feel the cold bite of the steel, even as he gripped the Gift of the Magi, the sword splitting his flesh easily and gutting the Lavinian. Pain coursed through him at the execution meant to take his pupil.

His grey eyes closed as he flinched in pain, feeling the blade easily cut into him, before they shot open. He made eye contact with his opponent and hissed, “Penance for your sins.” Purple energy coursed through him, arcing around the thief, through his hair even as he reached his hand forward, shoving it towards the shadowling. He then spoke, “That's my pupil you're fucking with. You want her life, its through me bed wetter.”

Two spells down. He could feel the engine starting to give, the fuel running out. His anger was beginning to sate, he didn't have much longer with the boosted magic. Talen of course didn't know this, but he had words for the general if he insisted on pursuing this course. Still, first the Lavinian Demon had to survive throwing a Sin Harvest in the kid's face and taunting him.

[Hysteria]

Talen’s blade struck flesh, the undeniable resistance that holds for a moment then relents against the blade with a sickening squelch. It was however not the neck of Skie dan Sabriel but the body of Seth Dahlios. The sudden moments of Seth were powered by pure adrenaline and Talen’s eyes opened wide with surprise at the sudden change of fate as the literal sword of Damocles missed its intended target. It was in that moment that Talen forgot what he knew of Dahlios, and the iron truth that he should have realised. In that moment Talen made eye contact with the Lavinian demon.

“Shit….” muttered Talen as the first cut scraped across his cheek. The youth floated backwards from the pair and held his sword in front of him warily. There wasn’t much use fighting what was about to happen, Talen knew enough of Seth to know that. Another gash travelled up Talen’s bare arm and the now often exposed blood of the youth spilled forth. Another and another appeared, his cloths were quickly soaked red.

“I doubt you beat Arcus with this trick. Which means he probably either dropped into the ocean and headed to the cliffs. Am I right?” asked Talen, his voice thick with his own blood, but calm none the less. Until that moment he had managed to hold himself in the air, but that changed as the first chunk of flesh splashed into the water beneath him. The cuts were too many to find fresh purchase on his skin, and where they doubled up the skin simply slid off.

Talen flicked his sword into the wooden roof above the trio. The blade pierced the ceiling as Talen fell into the water. His body couldn’t move anymore. Ligaments were cut, flesh fell from him like a carved leg of lamb. Despite it all he didn’t scream, didn’t even grimace as he literally fell apart. The blood of the child spread out in a large pool beneath him as the mess of carved flesh lost all resemblance to a person.

“But you know, sometimes things don’t go quite as you planned,” came a disembodied voice.

Above the matted corpse a blink of light, not dissimilar to the flashes of lightning that echoed around the ship, appeared. One moment space, save for the sword and the small white cat that remained floating in the air, the next was Talen. The youth was older, his body filled with long lean limbs and bare chest. He had at least put in effort to maintain his dignity with loose pants that sat around his waist, even if his feet were bare. His skin a blistering ivory white, no longer covered by the smear of blood that his child form had taken. Every time Talen died he came back a bit different and just a bit at that. It was enough to chase away the demons of his last life and move guilt free into the next. This time though his sins had been truly exonerated. The whole spectacle of Talen’s death and rebirth had taken less than a minute and now he floated in front of Seth as if he had never been anything else.

“I believe this is where I exit stage left, unfortunately I need to keep an eye over that fiery fool Arcus. A warning though, to you and that chit of yours. There are bigger shadows coming out of Lornius than mine. Don’t go stumbling around like a pair of drunken fools.”

With that said Talen pulled his sword from the roof and placed it on his shoulder. A large crack echoed through the ship as his shadowy summon faded away and the deck lost its support. Talen gave a condescending bow and then disappeared.

Above the rapidly sinking Cudlitz Pride Talen appeared. The rain pelted his bare skin as he arched through the air towards the coastline with Snacks in tow. His hair became quickly slicked back and his eyes were narrows as he approached land. Death always had a way of settling his mind and ordering his thoughts. Right now he wondered of the isolated island, and of the strings that pulled and played him and countless others. This was further into the mystery than he had gotten last time, but there was no promise that he would get any further.

[Max Dirks]

First, I'd like to personally apologize for the delay in judging your thread. After a series of unfortunate events, the responsibility for judging fell to me. I actually had the thread judged before I left for vacation last week, but I wanted to go back and normalize scoring to make it as consistent as I could with Logan's prior LCC judgments. So, without further ado, here is your long awaited judgment.

Overall, this was an average thread. It was clear from the opening posts this was the middle entry of two planned three part stories, so while I was disappointed I didn't learn more about the Lornius corporate overloads I did not discount your scores for it either. As a standalone battle, there were some interesting parts, particularly the reunion between Seth and William, but ultimately I was underwhelmed due to your abrupt conclusions.

Below are your individual scores in no particular order:

Revenant

Story - 6/10
Setting - 5/10 (This thread had a major setting continuity problem. From your opening post, particularly the part about swimming to shore with some difficulty given your character's prowess, I suspected the storm was further along than the others acknowledged. As this is a community issue, you all lost points here. Individually, Revenant, I felt your descriptions of the setting were concise and helped paint a significant picture of the boat).
Pacing - 8/10
Character - 7/10 (You had the strongest character development of the bunch. William's disdain for the other passengers, his hatred for Seth, the increased control over his furnace and decision to leave everything - while underwhelming - was well written).
Action - 6/10 (It was incredibly unrealistic that William's fire would not immediately begin burning through the hull of the ship once activated. Even if William can direct his powers, you should include that in your writing).
Dialogue- 5/10
Mechanics - 8/10 (Except for some misspelling of canon locations, your mechanics were sound).
Technique - 8/10 (You showed a good variety of literary techniques in your writing, but you significantly overused the sentence fragment. While undoubtedly this helped your pacing (sentence fragments tend to give the reader the impression time is passing more quickly), it ultimately prevented you from getting 10s in the writing categories).
Clarity - 8/10 (Some of your actions were unclear, but otherwise your writing was concise and written in a good active manner).
Wildcard - 9/10 (All of your posts were timely, but I did not appreciate the meta jab you took at Dissinger after he had Seth metagame your attack strategy).
Total: 70/100

Hysteria

Story - 6/10
Setting - 5/10 (Again, in your opening post you noted the sailors barely cared about the swell, but any time a boat is anchored for a storm, I would suspect the storm would be severe enough to put them on alert).
Pacing - 7/10 (The price of being omnipresent was poor pacing. The times you broke from Talen's interactions to focus on Snacks significantly detracted from otherwise solid pacing. Talen could clearly see the ship was falling apart. A reference to Snacks was unnecessary.
Character - 6/10 (Though the ending line of your opening post foreshadowed megalomania from Talon, I was disappointed that he required visual proof of a conflict between Seth and William VIA Snacks to let loose on Skie. I was also curious as to how Talon knew Skie.
Action - 6/10
Dialogue- 5/10
Mechanics - 6/10 (Your writing was littered with spelling and grammar mistakes. At time, it didn't seem like you were reviewing your writing. This included misspelled canon mistakes and even an its/it's error in your 4/21 post).
Technique - 7/10
Clarity - 6/10 (All of the spelling/grammar/usage errors significantly detracted from the clarity of your writing. I can provide specific examples if you'd like, but after a quick review they should be readily apparent.
Wildcard - 10/10 (All of your posts were timely)
Total: 64/100

Team Average: 67/100

Skie and Avery

Story - 5/10 (The fact you were unable to write a conclusion hurt your score here. We discussed this previously in chat, so I will not go into much detail here).
Setting - 5/10
Pacing - 8/10
Character - 6/10 (Your opening few posts were your best for character. The intimacy with Seth really drew me in as a reader. However, after the two separated, Skie became relatively one dimensional. She sought to save Seth and did very little development on her own. I suspect this might be because you relied heavily on the physical connection between Seth and Skie to advance your plot.
Action - 6/10
Dialogue- 5/10
Mechanics - 8/10 (You had a couple of misspelled words, but most were usage errors and not outright spelling errors like Hysteria and Dissinger. Nice work).
Technique - 8/10 (I enjoyed your variety of literary techniques. However, like Revenant went overboard with sentence fragments, you over used metaphor. It truly felt like darkness overwhelmed Skie in nearly every post).
Clarity - 8/10
Wildcard - 10/10 (All of your posts were timely).
Total: 69/100

Dissinger

Story - 6/10
Setting - 5/10
Pacing - 8/10
Character - 6/10 (In general, I think Seth had the biggest opportunity for character growth in this thread. However, whereas Skie focused almost exclusively on the chase to get to Seth, Seth did not even consider Skie while battling William. If it was your intent to either play Seth off as overcome with emotion while seeing his old adversary or just not into Skie, you could have at least made veiled references to her. You put in a line, Seth "remembered what he was fighting for..." I was hoping it was Skie, but alas it was not).
Action - 5/10 (I was disappointed that Seth was so easily able to read through William's feigned rage attack so easily. I took off a point here because even if you didn't intend it as such, it was essentially metagaming)
Dialogue- 5/10
Mechanics - 7/10 (I wasn't able to glean any spelling errors, but you had a number of usage and grammar errors in the post. There was also some odd spacing of letters. I didn't take off for those, but you should still read over your writing before posting it in a tournament).
Technique - 7/10
Clarity - 6/10 (Several of your actions in the thread were confusing. This was particularly common when you were re-writing an action from Seth's perspective. For example, in your 4/17 post, you wrote "William Arcus charged after flinging away his cloak unclasping it." There are several different ways you could write this to make it more clear).
Wildcard - 9/10 (You posts were timely, but I took a point off for the metagaming).
Total: 64/100

Team Average: 66.5

Congratulations to Super Awesome Fun Time, Best Pals Go! for their narrow defeat of Team Devil's Outcasts.

Logan has been doing EXP and GP, so I will defer to him for calculations.

[Logan]

Revenant receives 4900 EXP and 100 GP
Hysteria receives 4900 EXP and 125 GP
Skie and Avery receives 1300 EXP and 75 GP
Dissinger receives 1300 EXP and 75 GP

Congratulations to the winners!