[Irn League] The Zen Of War

[Philomel]

Naturally, of course, she was ready. Indeed, she had been this entire time. Her nerves were on fire with tension, sending ripples of ember-like energies through every muscle and alerted joint. Each sinew was eager to respond at the shallowest whim, ready to work upon the subtlest of gestures. Vivid and aware she felt more alive than she had in a long time, extradionary amounts of passion, desire and aspiration screaming within.

Instantly Philomel felt the earth zoom to meet her as the writhing purple fog drifted towards her on wings of eager urgency. Spiralling out it touched the form of where the faun had been a single half second before, curling and hissing into the air. Onwards, still it drove, acting like a famished and bewitched entity, longing only to feast on her flesh, bones and magnificence. But the woman blessed by the tree-goddess Drys had given herself the time and the patience to extend greeting, converse with her dear friend - and prove a point.

She had not attacked first. Instead she had teleported away, sucked into a portal on the ground and appeared some feet away now. On a rock.

But now ...

Now Philomel stood atop the stone itself that Mao sniffed around, her hooves gripping naturally with their softer undersides and steady grooves. It was easy to stand atop here, surrounded by grass and an entire sea of dirty sand, simply standing there, concious and functioning, staring at the now slowly massing of violet mist that had erupted from Maddison's mouth. Rapidly Philomel began to work on the little-used crossbow at her side, savagely fixing a bolt upon it as she watched the swarming smoke mass of hatred, horror and death. For Philomel knew what it could do - it was a shame in a way, for the spectators, if there were any, not to see the power of the flesh-eating horror. A heavy condition would set into the victim, and an intense period of vomiting, general ill health, tiredness and pain would settle in - at least, these were things Philomel had seen.

Behind the wall of the teahouse she felt the presences of Delath and Veridian waiting, tails twitching and mouths agape, eager to join. But she shook her head, and she insisted:

Stay back. For this moment. Let me ... let me ...

The poison rolled for a good twenty feet, stopped only for the wall of the tea house itself. Upon her rock, Philomel was safe, for she had gone far enough to keep out of the way of Maddison's bane, and truly she had no desire to ever be in the briarheart's shadow for the rest of this fight.

As the miasma began to dissapate, the faun, her systems reigned by readiness and willingness, clicked the bolt into place and drew up the end of the crossbow to aim it at Maddison's heart. Into the bolt she intentionally sent a thunderwave of her power, intensifying its power to be one of equal potential to the fog. A steady suck of breath in and she released the bolt, sending both a length of iron and an earthquake to the centre of Maddison's being. One that would begin at where the bolt landed and savagely ricochey out in a wave of energy and shockwaves that had the potential to shatter buildings.

Or shatter a briarheart, should it land.