The Aislinn Chamber

[Silence Sei]

Round 2 will began Friday Night/Saturday Morning at 12:01 AM. This chamber will have the following competitors.

Warpath
Amber Eyes
The Hound
Aurelianus Drak'shal
Resolve
Roht Mirage
Hysteria

Ladies and Gentlemen It's......Showtime!

[Silence Sei]

The rats scurried away as they heard the approaching footsteps. Dozens of people, some spectators, some Mystics, and at least two enforcers. The six that had advanced to this Chamber had proven their mettle, and such tenacity meant that more firepower would be needed to quell any upstart who tried to attack the crowd. There was just enough light to make out someones features from about three feet away. The Ixian Knights dungeon was typically home to the Reformation Team; criminals trying to do right to redeem themselves. The members had been asked by Sei to remove any valuables and personal belongings so as not to lose them in the coming melee. This time, the barrier would erect after all of the combatants had entered, sealing off the two outermost adjacent cells on each side, and the steps that lead above and below the dank chambers.

Each jail cell was twelve by twelve feet, the barred doors left wide open for competitors to duck in and out of. The cages were each sealed off by a thick, four by four foot room that held the bathrooms. Most men would condemn Sei Orlouge for giving known criminals and thugs the luxury of private restrooms, and even something as extravagant on Althanas as indoor plumbing. Sei had spent weeks, if not months, out in various wildernesses, however. He knew how bad it was to not have such accommodations. He had even provided small sunroofs for his prisoners, the beams of light pouring in the dead center of each cell. The bars had been refined to fit criminals of different abilities. Some would sine the purple glow of prevalida if magic neared it, other would hold some of the strongest Althanas offered with their titanium bars. The cells themselves would be nigh impossible to tear down, a challenge Sei was confident that some of his fighters would put to the test.

"If you can hear my voice," Sei's telepathic messaged boomed to the six competitors chosen for the Aislinn Chamber, "It means that you have advanced from round one. All combatants should now be fully healed, their abilities restored, and are to report down below for the second round of the tournament."

The space between each cell was a good ten feet, and within each of the rooms contained a bed, a door leading into the restrooms, and a single steel bar connected from wall to wall in case the prisoners wished to work out. While it was a change of scenery from the flat, empty arena above, the cells and the tight space within the 'Blue Mile' (As Sei had come to name it) would provide ample challenge for each fighter. It would soon begin again, the horrible bloodshed, and the spectators who would be blocked off by the Mystic barrier piled in, sitting on the stairs above, and walking down the mile to the stairs below that lead to the catacombs known as Sei's Tomb. Each of the two protected cages of each end were filled to the brim with people ready to take bets, and watch.

Today, there would be blood.

[Hysteria]

I don't know why I decided to visit The Cell. I told myself that it was to see inside the Ixian Castle, watch some of the heroes of Corone compete in martial contests of skill and experience to show who was stronger. Looking back I feel like a child, crawling between the legs of adults and thinking I stood tall.

My name is John, I run a weapon shop in Radasanth. I won't bother to tell you any more about myself, that’s not why you are reading. I was just some guy wanting to see what all the fuss was about. The first battle I watched was the one with the most Ixian Knights. I am a fan of them, well at least I was. I am not sure what I am not. I had expected to see chivalry, to see the weapons that I spent my days making and selling used in beautiful combat. Instead I found blood and gore. It was messy, it was dirty and there was no honour to be found. At the end I was nearly sick with the amount of blood and limbs strewn across the ground.

I remember walking with the crowd, looking back I was in some sort of zombie stupor. The dark halls under the Ixian Castle were a claustrophobic's nightmare. Dark, damp and there were so many rats. There were many people moving on to watch the next round, their feet echoed down the small stone corridors until the walls broadened into the line of Cells. I considered myself quite knowledgeable in the Ixian Knights, my heart skipped a beat when I realised that we were standing in the reformation lodgings. I wasn't one to think that a man could change his spots so easily, once a thief always a thief in my book. The fact that this sort of thing even worked at all I felt attested to the strength of Radasanth's saviour.

The first of the fighters walked out towards the centre of the room. The easy, slow foot falls clicked with each step. He was so small, dressed mostly in a pair of black pants and a t-shirt. I can't say I approved of his informal attire. The simple cloths were unmistakably that of Talen Shadowalker. The youth had fought in the last battle with a mask on, but it was him. What I knew about the kid captain was mostly rumours. He couldn't be any more than fourteen years old, and a skinny one at that. It was a sort of morbid curiosity that made my eyes lock onto his small frame. I had seen him up close near the end of the last battle before he disappeared, there were worlds of difference between that monster and this child. The rumours were thick and fast. Monster, a living shadow that stalked through the streets and exacted Ixian justice on those that would do them wrong, they stopped short of suggesting that he was a supernatural goat. I blinked my eyes, trying to see something that wasn't there. At that moment as he walked passed the cells he looked like a child that needed some milk and a bed.

I found out later that two of the healing mages that had fixed everyone up after the first battle had lifted their hands into the air near where Talen disappeared. There was a flash of light and bam! He appeared. Talen ran a small hand through his hair as I watched. He failed to carrel the wild tufts into anything more than a black mess. He walked easily, I wanted to cuff him over the ear for being too nonchalant. His casual attitude was juxtaposed with his attire. I meantioned before his t-shirt and pants. Slung across his back were two swords, nearly as tall as him. Two thin chains were coiled around his belt, just behind his right pocket and he carried an odd looking repeater crossbow. The hand that ran through his hair was bare, but his other was covered from shoulder to finger tip with a gauntlet. The fact that there were long blades, cruel even, jutting from his fingers sent a chill down my spine. On his left leg, almost as an after thought was a pouch with the tips of bolts just visible.

He didn't stop walking until he had reached the far side of the arena. He twisted on a spot, a small flourish of his limbs that I did not approve off. The kid lifted the crossbow across to his right hand fresh from being defeated by his wayward hair. I guessed that he had decided that he needed his right hand free of the black gauntlet to operate the crossbow. I got a good look at his face for the first time. It was cold, not aggressive, just cold. I felt like I was looking at another mask, this one moved when he did. I felt another shiver go down my spine. Who were these people?

[Roht Mirage]

The darker halls of Ixian Castle rumbled with footfalls, shaking loose what little grime was allowed to collect on the stone walls. Stranger still, the air hummed with excited voices, tempered only a little by the fact that many of the spectators were entering a dungeon for the first time in their lives; temporarily, of course. Yet, a few seemed unusually wary. Their eyes scoured the dark corners or traced the bars. Seeing those bars from the wrong side would forever change a person, some said, make them squirm in tight spaces or jump at the sound of a lock. The sudden sound of wood bouncing off stone had the same affect, apparently. A few furtive-eyed men visibly jumped among the dozens that streamed down the hall in their out-of-place celebratory attire. Some wary glances were shot their way by the other spectators, and everyone held their gambling pouches a little tighter. The fallen staff rolled lazily underfoot, rousing a line of whispered curses from those who nearly tripped on it. They were further incensed when they had to walk around two woman standing statue-still in the middle of the hall.

“Wha- what are you...,” Raylene croaked. Her eyebrows climbed as far as they could against the burn scar that claimed her forehead and part of her scalp. “Roht?” she added when the tattooed woman who hugged her responded only by hugging tighter, fingers clenching in Raylene's long dark-brown hair. Her own hands were stiff at her sides, and her fingers were splayed as if someone had poured water down the back of her festival dress.

“Astarelle,” the Fallien woman said quietly as if she had been crying, “Call me Astarelle.” With a sniffle, she released the Coronian woman and stepped back, her grey eyes wet and suddenly timid. “I don't know why... I barely remember who you are. Raylene, right? I just- I thought I owed you a hug.”

Raylene inched a hand forward to feel Astarelle's temperature, but it hung in the air as if the intricate design on the woman's desert-kissed forehead might shock her. “You're sure you're okay?” Worry lines creased her face where they could.

“Pardon me,” Astarelle heard someone say sweetly as they bumped her into the wall. She blinked away a remembrance and turned to find an old woman shuffling past on the froth of increasing traffic. If not for the large, frilly hat above her holy-day best, the woman would have been diminutive. She nodded and apologized again as heavier feet and broader, less-adorned shoulders bustled her along the crypt-dark hall.

Finally, the Fallien woman blinked the last of her reincarnation fatigue away. “This place is insane,” she mumbled under the din of eager spectators, “Grandmothers dress up for festival days, not bloodspo-”

Raylene grabbed her arm. Her cheeks colored in exasperation. “You're the insane one if you don't get out from underfoot,” she snapped, then quickly pulled her hand back. “Over here.” She ducked down a side passage occupied by a solitary enforcer. The darkness reigned stronger, turning to near-pitch behind the broad man as if he guarded a pit. His armor rattled and his helmet creaked up as he raised a hand to redirect them into the flow. “A moment,” Raylene requested with a hint of venom in her voice.

“I do sound insane, don't I?” Astarelle sighed. She pressed a bare shoulder to the wall -cool and just a bit clammy- with her back to the enforcer's shadowed eyes. “This is going to sound very strange. But, I don't know why I'm here. I remember you a little. I kind of remember Master Kotra.” She read the recognition on Raylene's face. Good. So I'm not just spouting random names. She smiled, which strangely made Raylene's worry lines return. She dropped the smile self-consciously and looked down at her empty hands.

With wide-eyed concern of her own, Astarelle reached out one hand toward the human river. A bracelet of woven reed rattled against the bracer that encased the rest of her forearm, and a line of surprised shouts rang out, particularly from one woman whose dress suddenly flared. A staff, made of the same reed and as tall as a man, shot from amid harried feet and into Astarelle's waiting hand. Annoyed faces turned her way before passing, the enforcer gave an amused grunt, and Astarelle shot Raylene a sly grin. It was returned.

“I remember you tying my braid,” she said as she reached back to make sure the Ai'Brone hadn't ruined the intricate work. It bit her. “What the!” She brought her hand forward. Blood ran from a deep prick in the soft pad of a finger. The ball of forbidden memories shivered, and a small morsel fell. “Barbed wire,” she whispered. The ribbon woven into the braid hid a length of barbed wire. “Bury me, did I make you-”

“It was a good idea! If they grab your hair, you know,” Raylene said with hands raised expressively, “I didn't mind.”

“Your hands,” Astarelle breathed. The poor woman's fingers looked as if she had spent an hour picking nettles.

“It's nothing,” Raylene snapped awkwardly. She hugged her hands to herself.

“She's experienced far worse,” Master Kotra intoned in fallien as he extracted himself from the roll of bodies. His plain white shirt, long enough in the arms to almost cover his hands, was rumpled from moving against the flow. Effortlessly, he switched to tradespeak as he turned to Raylene. “The brothers and the ferals are in the next side hall.” He gestured with his brown, balding head. “The brothers might not be able to keep them from running out.”

“On it,” Raylene chimed a little too eagerly, stepping back toward the crowd. At the last moment, she stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Good luck, Ro- Astarelle.” Then, she disappeared into the flow of blood-seeking brutes and here-to-be-seen socialites.

Astarelle waved weakly as her mind roiled. “I remember the ferals,” she muttered. The ferals were the most recent group to stumble into Kotra's school. They had been a gang of miniature pickpockets that operated more like a swarm of locusts. These days, they reserved that behaviour for meal time. Supper at The Hawk of Zaileya always had at least one split lip for desert.

“And the brothers,” she continued in a daze. Dahvim was the younger, a round-faced boy under a scrap of unruly hair. She remembered him reaching for her hand once, and her own hand viciously swatting him away. Disgust stirred the contents of her stomach. The memories of Tabin, the elder, were disjointed and, shamefully, even more violent. “Did I fight Tabin?” Astarelle asked, her cheeks coloring where they could be seen through the dune-like tattoo that ranged from cheekbones to elbows to corseted bosom.

“You 'sparred',” Kotra said pointedly as he stepped closer. The language of their shared homeland sounded almost unfamiliar. Even his appearance seemed alien after all the time she had been in Corone. This close, she could make out the deep lines of his face. They looked as if the vicious desert wind had shaped them, only for him to re-purpose them as a permanent display of some wry, personal joke that he dare not voice. “I ended that match when you kicked him through a wall.” Those wry lines deepened at Astarelle's gasp. “It will be a long time before he forgives you for that.”

“I thought the stories of last night were bad...”

Kotra coughed and waved one billowy sleeve. “What a grown woman does in her leisure is none of my business.”

“... but to abuse children.”

His stern gaze locked onto her's, making her shrink back against the wall. “Roht, listen to me.”

“Astarelle,” she squeaked.

Kotra blinked, then continued as if she had said nothing. “Those children all experienced the worst this world has to offer before coming to my door. Jya herself knows, I'm no father to them, and you were no friend.” He added softly, “Though Raylene seemed to think so. Broken girl.” He spoke as one would regarding an overturned cart or a blunted axe. Astarelle had to remind herself that, in all likelihood, she was the only one who could understand him. The enforcer's head creaked forward, nonetheless, as if he was curious. Kotra crossed his arms over his wiry chest. “What you are -were- was someone who would conquer the Cell in their name. That would have meant a great deal to them. Whether or not you can do that as you are now...” Astarelle already knew the answer.

“What happened to me?” she interrupted.

The master's old eyes scanned the faces around them as if he just realized they were not alone. Still speaking fallien, he stepped closer and whispered, “Kaleidha.”

Astarelle leaned in, desperately inquisitive. “What does that word mean?”

“Unbound. A technique used by my tribe. My old tribe. It takes a fighting man and removes the 'man' part. I don't know how you crossed them, or why they didn't... tend to you themselves. But, you somehow made it across the ocean and found me; the only person in Corone who would understand it. Fortuitous, no?” The final question hung dangerously in the air as his eyes dug into her's.

Astarelle tried to meet his gaze. “I remember... I wasn't 'unbound' in Fallien,” she said meekly. His eyes widened, smoldered, and drew the rest of her words out in a torrent. “It was in an alley. Radasanth. Someone had men looking for me. I stopped one, but then -he- got me.”

“What did he look like?” Kotra drew closer, his words almost a blade against her throat.

“I- I don't know! I just saw a dark glove in front of my nose. He snapped.” She lifted a hand to demonstrate, but froze. She looked at it warily, then lower it. “And I woke up in round one of this travesty.”

He searched her face for one hot, too-long moment, then turned. “Go home,” he ordered quietly, “Wherever that might be.”

“Wait!” she grabbed his loose sleeve. “We have to stick together.”

He shook her off, but refused to look at her. “I brought you here to give you a target for your aggression. The mystics made that unnecessary, somehow. Probably just stupid luck that their magic undid the effect. Go thank them, then be on your-”

Astarelle seized his wrist as tightly as she could and hissed, “Listen to me, sand-brain, you're-”

Just as quickly, her own arm was twisting in Kotra's grip. Her elbow was pinned high against her suddenly-heaving chest. She tilted sideways and gave a whimper, her eyes pleading. “You really are no longer Roht Mirage,” he said. His voice rattled with surprise, perhaps even disappointment. He released her and let his sleeves fall back down over his arms; too late, though. She had seen. From his wrist to his elbow, if not farther, his sun-browned skin was darkened in spots. It looked like an infection or a reaction to some itching plant. She knew the truth, though.

Bruises... the Cell was a last option to find me an outlet. What in the depths have I been doing?

Astarelle stepped closer, almost on his toes. The shame welling up in her stomach had yet to extinguish the determination in her face, and she clung to it. “I have my own 'tribe' problems. The Kar'Roh are hunting me. I was able to hide, but then this... Everything Roht Mirage has done publicly is an insult to them. Her -my- behaviour last night, these clothes.” She gestured to the dark corset and long skirt, a slit cutting so far up the front that it might as well have been a stage to showcase her legs. Kotra rolled his eyes. “Even the name is designed to taunt them.”

“I will deal with my history. You deal with yours,” he growled.

“They plan to stick a knife through my heart and march me back home.”

Kotra rolled his eyes again. “You have the order wrong. Don't tell me I remember our language's form better than you.”

Astarelle stepped around him, blocking his escape into the crowd. She saw the enforcer emerge from the shadows. A gravelly, “Take your blood feuds elsewhere,” emanated from his helmet.

As they were jostled into the current, she hugged her staff to her chest and spoke with all the authority she had in her. “When the Kar'Roh claim their kills, Death himself has to wait to scavenge the scraps.”

The old master squinted and looked away. “By the depths, girl, if my tribe could find water the way you find trouble, we wouldn't have need of the kaleidha.” He didn't stray from her side, though. With a burly ox of a man on their right and a gaggle of harping teenagers on their left, they let the flow direct them. The stone above glistened slightly in the limited light, making it ripple as if they were just two morsels being fed down a stone beast's gullet with the rest of the meat. “How far away do I need to send you for them to leave me and the children alone?” They passed the next branching in the castle's bowels. Two passages yawned darkly at either side. Kotra raised an arm and waved, then quickly lowered it before the sleeve fell too far. The faces of scarred Raylene and lanky Tabin, glaring as usual, appeared to join the crowd behind them. The presence of the younger brother and the ferals was implied when the bodies behind them shrank back as if toothy dogs had been released around their knees.

I hope he at least bathed them, Astarelle sighed. The ferals resisted water as vehemently as they resisted individual names. That memory had come back so quickly that it seemed remarkable she ever forgot it. Her eyes played back over Tabin's face -his glare was utterly justified- and Raylene, who still seemed very bewildered. I'll be a snake for this, Astarelle thought with another sigh as she turned back to Kotra.

“If they know that Raylene was close to me...”

Kotra did not look at her, but his shoulders tensed as the cunning seed took root. “I'll watch over my own. What will you do to help?” he rumbled. They were still speaking fallien, but Astarelle saw from the corner of her eye that Raylene's worry turned to suspicion at the mention of her name.

“I'll keep being Roht Mirage,” she offered with a bitter grin, “I'll keep their attention on the match. You watch for anyone who seems 'off'. Don't go anywhere alone.”

All she received was a dark glance. “There's no Roht Mirage left in you, Astarelle.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, inhaling a breath of older, unfogged memories. “I've spent more years than you would expect just... becoming whoever I need to be.”

~

Astarelle had to imagine the echo of her footsteps down the nearly-empty hall of the prison block. She had to recall the dankness of Zaileya caves just to approximate what she expected of the setting. It was too surreal, too unnerving, to see the bars and empty beds while listening to the relentless din of spectators and smelling the distinct lack of staleness. The powerful of Corone were displaying one of their darkest pits in its most pristine and most dishonest form.

I guess, to someone, this is more than just a bloody game. It's about sending a message. I can play that, too.

She turned a slow circle in the center of the hall. Cells stretched down either wall with light shafts beaming down into them, saying “come in” just as surely as the barred doors, deceptively ajar, said “keep out”. Astarelle looked up to the higher level where bodies lined the stairs. She could make out Master Kotra. His brown skin clashed with his white shirt in a negative reflection of all those around him. Small, beady eyes leered from around his knees. The ferals really did seem more gremlin than human, at times. She looked away from her... allies? At the very least, those who had tolerated her at her worst.

To the rest of the spectators, she gave a long, expressive inspection while perching her staff across her shoulders. With one hand, she pointed straight into the air, then lowered it to point at her forehead. The mark above her brow looked like an extension of the rolling brown-to-gold-to-white tattoos. They seemed to have actual dimension, as if they were more than just a mural of dunes running over her slim shoulders and framing the flesh pouted up by her corset. Only the Kar'Roh would know where the sand tattoo ended and the divine Roht mark began, and she wanted them to know that she knew they were there. Or, rather, Roht Mirage would have wanted that. Astarelle Set'Roh's stomach, ever the terrible actor, was doing flips like a groom who had taken a horse kick to the face.

Sighing, almost shuddering, she lower her hand to the outstretched end of one open cell door and clasped onto it. She feigned it as a test of the hinge as she squeaked the door back and forth by small degrees.

One opponent so far, she warned herself. However, a glance to the far end of the block did not reveal the young man she had glimpsed on her entrance. The few torches were too sparse to call the arena's central hall 'lit' by any measure of the word. Warily, she kept an eye on the shadows. Others would surely arrive who could use the cover better than her, if they hadn't arrived already.

[Arden]

Arden Janelle was old.

He had walked the long road for five hundred and thirty six years.

He was created, not born. He thus valued life for its simple fact, and not the onset of inevitable death.

He would live forever.

He would always be.

“So why am I afraid?”

His words echoed through the cell. He opened his eyes, stared upwards at the poky hole in the roof, and sighed. His pupils, deep, crimson, and glistening, picked out the detail of the chamber’s solitary light source. The daylight danced with gold and yellow, but gave nothing away as to where he was.

“…why am I so very afraid?”

His question echoed in the cell, danced out into the beyond, and faded into the immensity of the underground arena. After his success in the surface dome, the swordsman has simply sat, meditated, and reflected on his actions. He was still uncertain how he had gotten here. He took a deep breath, and in the stale air, he tasted the Aibron’s all too familiar scent.

The same magic stitched bone and sinew back together in the Citadel. He felt admonished, born again, and ready for whatever madness awaited him. He pushed himself upright in a mix of curse words and armour scrapes, and began to stretch. His swords were resting lengthways on the cell’s bed, and his gauntlets rested next to them.

With the thought of failure fresh on his mind, a fate far worse than death, he clicked his spine into place. He lengthened his crimson cloak with a mental whim, and stepped towards his beloved Kerria. In the gloom, and the silence, and the unknown, the Hound prepared himself to commit to the hunt. He had advanced without killing another but now, he was free of those chains. As he pictured his blade cleaving muscle and bone, he shuddered.

Now he knew why he was afraid.

“I’m afraid of the Hound I will become in the madness…,” he muttered.

He pulled on a gauntlet, flexed his fist, and tightened it until the skin whitened.

[Amber Eyes]

She was running. City streets stretched before her and each step splashed cold water against her thighs. Panic filled her heart as she reached the end of the lane. Which way to go? She glanced down the street to her left, then quickly turned right, making her way into an alley she’d never seen before. Her breathing seemed to fill whole city and surely her heartbeat could be heard for miles. She looked back, sure something would be there.

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A hand grabbed her arm and Kyla pulled it from the unknown grasp with all her might. Her eyes were clenched closed with terror and her stomach churned as though she might vomit.

“Get up! You’re going to be late!” The mystic opened her eyes bit by bit, afraid that at any moment she would be again on the cold streets of Radasanth. Three faces came into view, each one wearing a different expression; each one expecting something from her.

The voice belonged to Anita, the second-eldest sister. She was a pretty thing, shining hair falling half-way down her back, her curves hidden beneath her typical blue dress, a ribbon tied in her hair that made men think they should feel guilty for noticing her. She was old enough to catch the attention of a man, but Kyla wasn’t going to be the one to tell her---Or Sei for that matter.

Emma looked tired, Kyla was sure she’d been up all night playing possible scenarios of the battles in her mind, and would surely want a recap of each blow from her big sister. She was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, a beauty in her own right. She took after Kyla a bit more, showing some skin from time to time, but mostly she was focused on becoming the greatest warrior Althanas had ever known.

Ella just looked like Ella. Full of joy at all the things life might have to offer, that innocence that so many lost too early still evident in her eyes. Sei had made sure she was sheltered from most things, unfortunately he had neglected to shelter her from Kyla.

“Leave me alone damnit! I died ten minutes ago!” The girl sat up, throwing the feather-filled white blanket off of her much harder than necessary.

“Swear jar!” Ella’s voice squeaked, filled with entirely too much pleasure at the thought of her and Akiv’s spending money growing.

The mystic’s head screamed at her with each movement, something she’d come to expect after being healed by the Ai’bron. The girl was convinced it was a personal vendetta, no one else had ever complained of the same issue. Of course no one else blew themselves up quite as often as Kyla Orlouge.

“Oh, screw your damn swear jar.” Kyla mumbled, fumbling her way out bed and quickly throwing on her battle gear. She had never seen the need for armor, it made her feel clunky and slow, her clothes were just thicker fabrics in her typical style. She pulled on her boots, lacing them slowly as Emma began to tell Ella to shut it.

The younger two bickered as they headed down the stairs. The girl’s stomach began to knot, tighter with each step. Emma opened the large white door that led to the courtyard, the scene of this morning’s defeat. The sunlight hit the still-drowsy mystic like a punch to the face, and the screaming of the crowd seemed to find a home just at the most sensitive spot in her head. Anita steadied her, leading her by the arm into the crowd.

As they entered the square one of the newer recruits brought her a glass of something green that Sei always insisted she drink before exerting herself. The mute had done his best to force the concoction on the whole army but it was one of the few things the generals had drawn a line in the sand about. It tasted how she imagined the bottom of a swamp would, but she wasn’t going to push it today, not in Sei’s own tournament. She gulped the thick slime down, attempting to pretend it tasted like anything else. With a final swallow to rid the feeling of goo from her mouth Kyla attempted to focus on the task at hand. “What’s the name of the Cell?”

There were people crowding around the cellar door that led to one of the many entrances to the tombs below the castle, fighting for a glance at those inside. Kyla’s mind raced, trying to take in the chaos. Two boys dueled with wooden swords, their father too busy placing a wager to notice. She pulled her eyes away just as the smaller boy slammed the sword into the other’s mouth, drawing blood and a few screams from those nearby.

Emma stepped forward to take the glass and smiled. “It’s Aislinn.” She seemed to think it was a good omen. Kyla had never believed in such things.
The mystic pulled four coins from her pocket and handed them to Ella, giving her a pat on the head for good measure before focusing on the thick metal door that stood between her and what would prove to be the battle of her life.

Ella counted the coins—“You gave me one too many…” The elder sister held up a finger to hush the child.

“Anita” Kyla turned to her sister, “Make sure Aislinn is the one to patch me up after this, not those damn monks.”

Ella smiled, content that she’d earned her monies.

“You’ll be great Kyla!” Emma handed her a tie for her long curly hair which she quickly pulled up. A quick tug at Sophia’s Mane and a deep breath were all the stalling she could get away with while everyone watched.

The mystic entered the dungeon doors, eyes quickly glancing around to see who she was up against today. As she took careful steps down the steep cement steps, familiar faces came into view, “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

“Swear jar!”

[Warpath]

Rauk became aware of the light first.

It filtered into the room through a sheer curtain, casting everything in a golden haze that cooked away the night’s chill from the outside in. The air smelled like ancient tomes and the knowledge therein, and the faint hint of fried eggs. Luned knew his habit of eating a dozen eggs at a time, and accommodated his tastes without complaint. It happened sometimes that she woke before him, though he rarely slept so late into the morning. The kitten napped in the sun, curled up between and beneath his pectorals, tiny and trusting.

And then he lurched suddenly to the side, and when he opened his eyes in furious panic he saw that there was no sun and no books and there would be no eggs. He retched in agony, and then gallons of warm black rainwater poured out of him over and over again, splashing against the uneven brick floor, spreading outward and tracing the mortar lines. Finally, when the last of the water was expelled, the man dragged in air and shuddered. It felt as if someone had lit an inferno in his chest, and it would consume him. Despite the pressure in his head, despite the thundering of his heart and the blackened edges around his vision, he did not want to try and breathe again. The air only fed the flames.

“You must breathe, young man,” someone far away said. “You’ve had no taste of oxygen for some twenty minutes. It will burn mightily, but it is a good pain. It will fade as you become reacquainted with the living world.”

He reminded himself of who he was. Not Rauk, but Flint. What was pain to Flint, good or bad? Flint forced himself to breathe, taking in the deepest lungful he could manage. He reveled in the burn, cherished it, and called it a cleansing flame until it faded. He had lifted his hand to catch the kitten when he’d suddenly turned, but of course it was not here. It was safe in Luned’s library, blissfully ignorant of this place – of all places beyond those sun-warmed walls.

Flint touched his fingertips to where the phantom kitten had slept. It was the same place that Joshua Cronen had forced the point of a blade through Flint’s body. Just as there was no ball of fluff, nor was there a gaping wound. He lifted his eyes again, the blur fading, and saw four robed men there. Three of them were younger and visibly exhausted, pale-skinned and sweating, and they looked at him with thinly veiled annoyance. The fourth man was older, bearded, and looked down on Skovik magnanimously.

They were in a small stone room lit by low torchlight. He was draped over a plain cot, and the thin sheet beneath him was soaked through. His skin was clammy, half-dried, and he could not remember ever feeling so numb. When he ran his fingers through his beard, they came away wet. Gradually the true memories came back to him.

“I drowned,” he croaked.

“You were also impaled,” the greybeard said. “It is difficult to say what took you through the veil, exactly.”

“Citadel monks,” Flint muttered, doing little to conceal his disgust.

“Yes. I must tell you, there was…some doubt to the outcome here today,” the greybeard nodded at the three exhausted men opposite them. “You seem to have enough breath now, Miles. Go inform the good master Orlouge that this man yet lives, after all.”

The boy crawled to his feet with some difficulty, cast one last baleful look at Flint Skovik, and then left the room on unsteady legs.

“If I might be so bold,” the greybeard continued to Flint, “it may behoove you to…erm…take further precautions against the veil. While we of this esteemed order are practiced, we are sadly not infallible. Here, this will help you recover.”

One monk handed a mug to the greybeard, who in turn tried to thrust it at Flint. He dismissed it with a cruel slap, which sent the mug airborne until it exploded against a far wall. “I’ve had enough water,” he growled.

The old monk rubbed his hand, and had difficulty concealing the outrage in his eyes. Flint ignored him, reaching up to press tentative fingers to the left side of his face. The skin was whole again, and it didn’t feel as if he was deformed. Indeed, even his beard was grown back evenly, and when he covered his right eye the left went on seeing. He touched his shoulder, and there was no scar where a knife had entered him.

He might have thought the first round of The Cell a peerless nightmare or an illusion, if not for the proof that it wasn’t. His skin smelled of rainwater, and there were stubborn streaks of dried blood on his stomach, and he could feel mud on his back.

If you can hear my voice, it means that you have advanced from round one. All combatants should now be fully healed; their abilities restored, and are to report down below for the second round of the tournament.

Flint flinched away, turning his head one way and the other to figure out the source of the voice, but the volume and voice never wavered or changed.

“Ah,” the greybeard said brusquely. “You hear the summons. It appears you have been chosen for another bout. Be sure to heed my advice, lest you end up in our hands again.”

Flint sneered, but otherwise ignored the threat. “A mistake,” he guessed. “I died.”

“That is of little consequence. You were an amusement, and as such you will be expected to go on fighting until you are the last one standing, or you cease to be amusing.”

“Twisted southerners,” Flint muttered, swinging his legs around. The soles of his boots squished when he pressed them to the floor, and he felt water well up between his toes. “Cronen?”

“I believe he also advanced, yes.”

Flint grunted and lifted himself up. The numbness was fading as his blood began to move in his veins again, and he felt as capable as he had when he first woke in the morning. He flexed his fingers and tightened them into fists, relishing the way his muscled forearms strained against the inside of his gauntlets. The needles bit deeper into his veins, and he squeezed a fresh rush of blood into them.

“Good,” Flint said. “We have something to settle, he and I. Show me to him.”

The greybeard shrugged. “I do not know the way, I’m sure. There is an armored enforcer outside, however. He will escort you to the appropriate place.”

The brute looked the greybeard over. On the cot the old man had been tall and looming, dangerous in his confidence and his mysterious wisdom. Now Flint had six inches on him, and was broader across than the man twice. He was tempted to snap the old conjurer’s neck just to prove his magic lacking, but thought better of it. Part of him would rather die than have magic worked on him again, even to restore his broken body, but a larger part of him wanted every opportunity the world could give him to throw his might against the Breaker. Flint would re-earn his old moniker, and render Joshua Cronen the Broken.

Without another word or action against the monk or his lackeys, Flint quit the room and left wet footprints to mark his passing.

The two remaining apprentices exhaled when the door swung closed again, and looked up at their teacher. “There’s something wrong with him,” the first declared. “I did not botch the incantation…not once, certainly not twice.”

“Nor I,” said the other.

“Be assured, my students,” the greybeard said kindly, “you both performed admirably, as did young Miles. No, ‘twas not any failing on your part that caused this peculiarity. Indeed, I fear that if not for those strange machines he wears, even our combined powers would have fallen short to the task. He would have stayed beyond the veil.”

“But we were taught that no body resists life, Master.”

“And no natural one does,” the greybeard said. “No, ‘twas not life this one resists. Indeed he cleaves to it. No, not life…but the forces we wield to give it.”

“How…?”

The greybeard almost laughed. “Stubbornness.”

----

The crowd parted as much as it was able. Men and women pressed their backs to the walls on either side of the staircase, and Flint had to turn himself sideways to slip past many of them. He was blind to their faces and finery, deaf to the children who asked their parents about him, insensible to either awe or distaste. He stared forward with single-minded intensity, seeking out only one face.

Cronen.

The crowd suddenly stopped and the enforcer stepped aside to let Flint pass. He straightened his hulking back as he examined his surroundings, and he let himself think. It was dark here, and dank, but he could see a long hallway in the gloom lined by barred cells, all open to receive. Flint scoffed. A trick?

“No cage can hold me,” he announced to the enforcer, just in case Sei Orlouge had thought to revive him only to contain him.

But no, there was an audience here, and the brute became aware of other silhouettes standing apart in the shadows. This was an arena then, he gathered. Flint smiled, thinking back on all the times he’d struggled and killed in cell blocks just like this.

But where was the Breaker?

[Resolve]

Bunnying privileges extended to Warpath and Aure.



Satisfied with the dark elf's cooperation and Aurelius' grisly fate, Resolve allowed herself to sleep.



The darkness lifted slowly, chill of cold earth giving way to the warmth of the sun. She felt softness against her skin, sheets, and a gentle hand brushing hair from her face. "Mm, Rosie," she sighed contentedly, rolling onto her side and stretching out with a long leg and an arm to pull the voluptuous woman into her cozy embrace.

The cot was narrow and she would have rolled off face first if someone didn't catch her, smaller girl struggling to keep them both from going down. "Resolve," she said, her tone soft but insistent. "Wake up! You're in the infirmary."

Pale eyes blinked open to meet a flustered, freckled face, and her jaw dropped. Securing herself, she propped herself up on an elbow and donned her most unimpressed glare. "You said you weren't coming," she sneered, "you said––"

"Of course I was coming," Luned sighed, the ghost of a smirk teasing at the corner of her lips. "I just didn't want Flint to know."

The exorcist pursed her lips. "Why? Shouldn't you be with him now, nursing his wounds?" A picture of maturity, she laced the latter comment with a heavy note of pure smarm.

"He'll be fine, I'd just distract him. I wanted to see you," she said, barely containing a smile. "I'll admit, when I saw Aurelius in there, I just about lost it –– but that finish? I just… wow," she laughed, burying her face in her hands. "Thanks, Rez. It was beautiful."

"Wait," Resolve said, sitting up. To her delight, the monks had done their job well, and no hint remained of the tiefling-induced trauma. She stretched luxuriously before crossing her legs, leaning forward with suspicion toward the scribe. "You watched my chamber? What about Flint's?"

Luned frowned, hands drifting to smooth her chestnut hair over her blouse in typical anxious fashion. "I started there," she said sheepishly, fidgeting. "But once things got rolling, I realized that I wasn't sure if I was mentally prepared to watch him get hurt. After all we've been through, I should be used to it by now, but it never gets easier to see him like that."

"Aww, Lune," the exorcist fawned for a moment, then rethought. "But… does that mean you don't mind watching me get torn to shit by some asshole? Thanks, thanks a lot. Good friend."

The girl rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. You were fun to watch. And I truly appreciated the gesture," she smiled, reaching out to straighten her friend's blood-stained sari. As she did so, Resolve glanced to the ceiling, all of her friend's words lost to the telepathic interruption. The exorcist found herself fully enveloped in the congratulations and instruction of the announcement, welcoming its good news with heart. Maybe that Sei wasn't so bad after all.

"Second round," she muttered, then looked back to Luned with wide eyes. "Second round!" She hopped up off the cot and dragged her friend into a bouncy hug in one fluid motion, her squeeze as rib-crushing as it was joyous. "Please come watch, please! Oh, Lune, you have to!"

Luned gasped, ineffectual in her attempts to to pry herself away. "Alright, alright! I can't breathe!"



As Resolve descended the stairs into darkness once more, she breathed deeply and steadily in an attempt to calm herself. The exorcist knew well that anger made her stupid; this vice had been the cause of her downfall mere minutes ago. She couldn't let it happen again. Wouldn't.

It was of small consolation to her temper that, with Aurelius' participation in the tournament, Resolve found herself a bit less focused on concocting some gruesome fate for Flint. She had a new arch nemesis, one she shared with her best friend, and it inspired her to channel her energy into something which might allow the last of the rift between her and Luned to finally heal.

But what were the chances of seeing either of them this round? She had no idea if Flint had moved on, nor any inkling of his performance in the first, and to be paired with Aurelius again would be more fate than coincidence.

Still, she couldn't help herself. Feeling cautiously optimistic, she entertained the thought of being able to kick both their asses, and it painted her lips with an unsettlingly vicious grin.

The shadowy dungeon might have cowed some, but it offered her a stark advantage. Resolve's smile grew as she entered the prison, forcing the bustling throngs of spectators from her mind as she buckled down to concentrate. Immediately, she reached out with her sixth sense to scour the battlefield for presences, memorizing each of their signatures so she could track them through the mayhem. A row of prevalida bars hummed violet as she strode past, their glow drawing out the contrast of the white designs scrawled across her bared skin. For the briefest of moments, she ceased being a woman and became a specter, ethereal and ominous as it flickered, then fled back into the darkness.

Some of the competitors were new to her: a child, a woman, a soldier. Some were familiar: a mystic, and, to Resolve's delight, a brute. An idea pulsed through her consciousness, a deliciously mischievous ploy, and she grasped it with enthusiasm. The exorcist brushed off nearly all extraneous presences on her way to greet him, offering only the other Fallien female a cursory glance of curiosity before she approached Flint.

"Been a while," she grinned, pearly teeth Cheshire-like against her dark skin as they glinted from the shadows. "What do you say we double team these sorry sons of bitches to clear the field for a proper showdown? I've been waiting for a rematch."

[Arden]

Taking a deep breath, the growing anxiety began to subside. Pulling on his second gauntlet, the swordsman began to find himself. The cell he occupied was dark, damp, and fetid, but he felt life and vibrancy begin to seep into the Cell.

“You can have something better to chew on this time,” he said softly. His lips parsed, his eyes danced with fire, and his chest pounded.

His pauldron, ensorcelled with the spirit of a mastiff, growled in a low hubris of contentment. Its edifice seemed to move in the shadows, despite it being nothing more than steel hammered into a cruel mockery. It would serve as Arden’s inspiration, mascot, and companion for the remainder of the tournament. He would abandon him no longer to whims and ideals of his supposed masters.

“Let’s walk,” he clucked.

He picked up the sword, sheathed it across his back, and turned towards the cell’s door. With slow, cautious steps, he advanced out onto a promenade. He turned left, and sighed. He turned right, and sighed. In the gloom, he could see shadows. Distant and silent figures began to appear, some close, some far apart. The openings leading to the other cells, all open, were far from inviting.

With a brief pause, he extended the crimson cloak around his shoulders until it almost touched the floor. It curled around his shoulders and veiled his armour, a dog shaped bulge on his shoulder the only indicator he was anything more than a weary traveller was. He approached the nearest shadow, a creature darker than the arena itself, and prepared to temper the fire of the Dragon Oni that consumed his heart.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

I deleted and re-submitted my post, seeing as no-one else had posted after me yet; This was simply to reset my 24hr limit to a later time, so I don't get DQ'd if I'm delayed at work tomorrow.

Wake up, you pikin' lazy bastard!

C'mon, get your sorry sod arse up and move!

Consciousness returned slowly to Aurelianus, emerging from the darkness like a corpse surfacing in a lake. Endless nothingness surrounded him, a complete lack of sensation hard to imagine unless one were experiencing it themselves.

Bugger off, he thought calmly. I'm dead.

He remembered, with perverse satisfaction, taking his own life to rob the Mage Hunter of the honour, the privilege of killing him. It brought a warm smile to his formless, drifting mind. He was brought out of his reverie by the.. voice? It didn't speak, didn't express itself in any way recognisable to the paltry human senses.

You're not dead, you pikin' addle-cove.

Course I am, he reasoned, waving a non-existent arm about in front of where there should have been a face. See? No body. Dead as a door-nail.

There was a brief pause, and Aurelius was overcome with the feeling of an irritated sigh somewhere close to.. whatever space he currently occupied in the nothingness.

We both know where you're 'eaded when you wind up the dead-book, mate, and this ain't it.

Another pause - Aurelianus let that thought wash over him, stark realisation hitting him like a slap in the face. A single thought resounded through the core of his being.

This isn't Hell.

Now you're catchin' on, the other presence pulsed. So, now 'ow about you be a good lad and--

"Wake up!"

The tiefling shot bolt upright in a creak of leather, his senses returning in strobe-light flashes of memory and sensation, hitting him like the waves of the ocean. He groaned, raising a hand to his head, seeing the black blood congealing on his fingertips. Bright light stabbed his eyes, making him wince, hissing softly between clenched teeth.

"Bloody 'ell, that was rough," he spat, tasting more thick clumps of blood on his tongue.

"Easy now, take it easy," reassured a voice from nearby. When the black spots cleared from his vision, Aurelius turned his inhuman eyes, glancing up and down the two men standing next to him, swathed in monastic robes, their faces gleaming with the tell-tale shine of sweat.

The youngest, his face looking weary, chest rising and falling as if he had just finished a sprint, lowered his hands, and looked over the warlock's body. Drak'shal did the same; he could see the ragged holes and tears in his armour from where Resolve had shot him, but through the punctured leather he could see his own alabaster skin, covered in the intricacy of his tattoos. He was healed.

"You're alive again, back here at Ixi--"

"Piss off," the half-demon snapped, swinging his heavy boots off the hard cot he had been lying on, the white sheets stained black by his own blood. "I know where I am, and I remember why I'm 'ere."

The man looked up at his colleague, who offered a simple shrug in response. The young monk, his face tight with irritation at the curt dismissal stepped back from the cot, wiping his brow with a small piece of cloth.

"Alright then. In future though, you may want to show a little more gratitude to the men who saved your life," he added as he started to walk away, off to tend to another of the casualties in the little stone room.

The plane-touched was on his feet faster than the man could follow, a blood-stained fist catching the front of the robes, twisting them in a knot as the monk was dragged closer to the tiefling's fanged visage. He swallowed lightly as he watched a forked black tongue trail over the top row of sharp teeth, the harsh light of the room reflecting from the four glossy horns emerging from the creature's brow.

"An' you might want to watch your pikin' mouth around someone who could take you--"

If you can hear my voice, it means that you have advanced from round one. All combatants should now be fully healed; their abilities restored, and are to report down below for the second round of the tournament.

Staggering from the force of the thoughts, surprised and even a little dismayed at the ease in which they penetrated his mental defenses, Aurelius let go of the monk, turning his cold gaze to the rest of the room. A wry grin spread across his mouth, hideous in its utter joy. So, I made it through after all. No surprise there, he smirked. Giving himself the once over, making sure his weapons were all in place and summoning a ball of black fire to his palms before banishing it with a thought, he nodded, satisfied. Everything was in order.

The door at the far end of the room opened, admitting an Ixian guard, resplendent in his gleaming armour as he pointed to the mohawked-malcontent.

"You there, report to Aislinn Chamber at once. The round is about to begin."

Tracing his fingers lightly along the sides of his shaved scalp, the warlock nodded back to the man, gesturing for him to take the lead.

The man led him through the corridors of the castle, never once even deigning to look at the tiefling following behind him. It was only when he realised with a start that the man had stopped that he turned to face him. A manic grin was plastered all over the.. freak's face, a posting of the competitors in each chamber held tight in his hands. Aurelius turned his eyes over the paper one more time, making sure this wasn't some sort of practical joke. Their was a name there he recognised. A name there that sent his pulse racing through his temples.

Flint Skovik.

Laughing merrily at the synchronicity of the planes, the Anarchist set off again towards his chamber, literally shaking with adrenaline. Again and again his tongue slid hungrily over his fangs.

The guard led him to the top of a staircase, and pointed him down while trying his best to clear a path for the blade-festooned tiefling. Not that Aurelius took any notice; he simply barged through the people who didn't move for him, the barbs and hooks adorning his armour snagging more than a few of them. Curses and taunts followed in his wake, but his pointed ears never registered any of it. The murderer's mind was entirely focussed on what - or more precisely who awaited him down here.

He marked the cells instantly, bringing himself out of his knife-point concentration and glanced around.

"Well," he grinned, having a good look at the arena from the edge of the crowds, "'ome sweet 'ome."

It was yet another little irony, having Aurelianus Drak'shal of all people fighting in the cell-lined dungeon. How many times had he seen the inside of places exactly like this? How many times had he found himself in places worse than this?

Resting a hand on the hilt of one of his Baatorian knives, he did a quick scan of the crowds, basking in the atmosphere - the gambling, the excitement, the tangible bloodlust of those gathered was intoxicating, and the half-demon drank it in like wine. But, much to his sadistic amusement, his eyes alighted on a slender, pale figure, her face shining in comparison to the dank dungeon. His eyes easily cut through the gloom, but he knew it would be difficult for a mere human to make out much in the sparse spatterings of light present in the underground chamber.

Sliding through the crowds, approaching the chit from the back, Aurelius' keen senses perked up at the hint of her scent; he had first sampled this particular little beauty back in his jaunt in Ettermire (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25044-Child-of-Darkness), but he had taken to torturing her like a duck to water, savouring her misery like it was the sweetest nectar. Leaning in close, his fanged mouth almost brushed the girl's ear.

"You 'ave no idea 'ow 'appy I am to see you," he hissed sibilantly into the ear of Luned Bleddyn.

The girl whipped round so fast, her eyes so full of disgust and sheer loathing, that it made Aurelianus' mouth water. He had changed his appearance slightly since last they had tangled, at the parlour of Agnie, a mutual acquaintance of the pair, but there was no possible way she could not recognise the subject of so many of her nightmares. She opened her mouth, more than likely to form some sort of scathing retort, but he shushed her with a finger pressed against her lips. This close, to his heightened senses, the musky smell of Flint, and the slightly spicy scent of Resolve stung his nose. So she had seen them both, and recently. It had to be more than mere coincidence; the pair of them, here with him? The powers worked in mysterious ways.

"No need to say a word, luv. I'm not 'ere to toy with you today. In fact, I'm much, much 'appier knowin' you're 'ere to watch your man-toy and your little bitch friend."

He took his finger away from her lips, chuckling at the small fingerprint left marring her pristine skin with his inky blood and the way she viciously wiped it from her mouth. Luned turned her head away just long enough to spit, trying to clear the bitter-sweet taste from her lips.

But by the time she turned back to face him, Aurelius was already gone, leaving her to curse him under her breath once again.

Slipping into the shadows as naturally as one who'd been doing it since birth, the plane-touched guttersnipe made his way through the arena. The darkness was no impediment to his demonic eyes, and he had in fact been lurking in shadows like this since he could remember. His nose led him to his intended victim like a bloodhound, the scent burned into his memory from their encounters.

Standing there, talking to Resolve, was the man himself. Shorter than Aurelius, but easily twice as thick, stood a Salvaran legend in the flesh.

"Well well," he crooned from the darkness, ignoring the presence of the chit who had shot him not an hour ago, "if it isn't my favourite bald basher."

His smile was anything but friendly, serpent eyes shining a lambent yellow in the darkness.

It was time for the fun to begin.

[Amber Eyes]

She fell. Her feet hit something hard and soon she was flying. The mystic’s arms fell before her to catch the fall, and sharp pain radiated throughout her body as gravel imbedded itself in her flesh. She pushed hard against the ground, willing herself to continue.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There were familiar faces in the dungeons, some she hoped to defeat, some she hoped to fight alongside, and some she hoped to avoid altogether. Kyla took it all in, swearing not to touch Arden unless given no choice. Not only was he a good man who was well respected within the knights, but Kyla owed him everything after he stopped her death at the hands of William Arcus.

When the barrier lowered the combatants began to square off before Kyla could adjust to the rainbows that filled the room. The mystic stood stunned for a moment as the crowd began to pile onto the steps behind her. The young mother played the possible scenarios in her mind, figuring her best shot would be to bide her time.

The girl made a mad dash for the cells lining the back wall of the dungeon, swinging open a heavy iron door and entering the space. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Arden making a move for Talen, a former teammate. She had no ill will towards the child-sized man, but even her own life meant less now than The Hound’s. For now though, the man seemed capable of handling himself.

Across the cell she noticed two players from the first round, a terrifying creature and a young girl. Kyla’s mind immediately raced with thoughts of revenge. If she accomplished nothing else in this battle, Resolve’s soul would inhabit Sophia’s Mane by the time the walls fell.

The girl stepped back, hidden behind the bars, but left the door open. It was unclear who might have seen her enter, but hiding was the least important part of her plan. This round would be different, Kyla would not be caught off guard.

On the steps Anita whispered, “So she’s going to hide in a cell inside the cell?” Her disappointment was obvious, her face showing clear disgust.

Emma smiled, “I think she has a plan.”

Ella sat with her brow furrowed, staring at her lap. Her voice was deeper than normal, tinged with anger and sadness. “I hope she dies already, she owes me a coin.”

[Warpath]

Flint stood in the dark watching the shadows move – bloodthirsty silhouettes feeling out the killing ground, looking for soft places to stick sharp things. As before, he only watched for the moment, eyes narrowed, arms tense. None of the shades had the reckless confidence he was looking for, the deadly self-assurance. Cronen wasn’t here.

The figures began to choose one another, circling like wolves, and the tension on the cell block grew into an almost audible thing: it was like somebody was drawing a dagger blade slowly across a violin string. Flint heard it in his soul, the coming of something bad, and then it snapped.

The darkness relinquished a swaggering shape in the peripherals of Flint’s vision, and the naked confidence in its body language gave him a thrill of fear – Cronen, he thought at first, but no. Shorter but still taller than Flint, narrower, coffee-skinned and decidedly female.

Resolve announced herself with a smirk, and Flint straightened his back and gripped his belt. He looked her over, and for an instant he considered taking a swing at her. The fact that she hadn’t done it already was a revelation, and it gave him pause.

“Well?” she said.

“Forgive me,” Flint said, in a way that implied he did not want or need forgiveness. “I am confused. I was not aware you were capable of waiting for anything.”

“Okay, if you’d prefer a broken jaw now instead of later, just keep talking.”

“There you are,” Flint said, smiling with something predatory in his eyes. “Perhaps it would be better…”

And then the brute was interrupted by a cold thrill humming up his spine, a chilly vibration struck by another familiar voice. He tore his eyes off of Resolve’s face, which was now mirroring the disquiet on his own, and he gazed into the dark. Dancing yellow balefires bobbed out of the shadows and solidified into reptilian eyes, set in a smirking visage.

“Aurelianus,” Flint said evenly. “A moment, if you please.”

The brute turned quite suddenly and crossed the block to one side where he had, at that moment, caught sight of a skulk slipping into one of the cells. He walked as if unaware of her presence, and then he lashed out and grabbed hold of the cell door, and with a furious twist he slammed the cell door shut with a thunderous metallic crash.

He couldn’t see Kyla Orlouge, nor did he even know to whom that briefly-glimpsed female silhouette belonged, but he spoke into the dark anyway: “My lady,” he said, “please make yourself comfortable. We will become acquainted presently.”

Satisfied that there was one less immediate threat, the brute stepped away from the now-locked cell and returned to Resolve and Aurelianus, each poised to strike out at the other. “Two of my very favorite people in one place,” he told them as he approached. “I cannot decide which of you to kill first.”

Bunnying approved, obviously.

[Hysteria]

The competitors entered the arena, my eyes straining to take in the varied, and frankly, confronting visages of battle. The barrier rose up in front of the crowd, and I was more than a little grateful for the protection it offered. The irony of being accidentally taken out by a rouge spell or bolt would not temper my death. My eyes flashed back up, crossing over the monster, the women, brutes and warrior. One of the women ducked into a cell, while an armoured man moved towards Talen.

The youth lifted his crossbow up towards the man I recognised as Arden, another Ixian knight. Talen's eyes were cold, a slight hint of recognition passed over his face, but no warmth accompanied it. He spoke, his voice shallow and slightly husky. He sounded annoyed and tired.

“Arden,” Said Talen, “Are you planning on attacking me? I'm not really in the mood for fucking around. I'll happily postpone a proper fight for another time. For now how about you follow my lead and we clean house?”

The uppity kid didn't wait for an answer. Arrogance seemed personified as he strode towards the bald warrior and horned demon, his feet clicking purposefully with each step. I find the next thing that happened hard to explain. Darkness seemed to leech off his body, seeping from his cloths and skin as if he was melting. I felt cold all of a sudden, the darkness seemed to draw in the light, draining it. The shadows started to wash outwards, their dark waves forming a foot high sea that filled a surprisingly large amount of the arena.

“Its good to see you Kyla.” Talen's words bit through the air, “But you are resigning yourself to defeat if you stay in there. You, me and Arden, thoughts?”

The words were directed to the woman who ducked into one of the cells, but his eyes were locked on the brute and demon. The shadows whipped up against anyone who approached whom he considered an enemy, a fact that I found out later. In that moment the woman Kyla and the man Arden were considered allies of some sort. Talen lifted his crossbow up and pointed it at the demon, a tiefling apparently. He didn't fire, just stood their watching.

The cell emanated with sudden squeaks of alarm. Rats poured out of hidden cracks in the floor and cells around the youth. Their little furry forms scurried across the ground; feeing the nefarious shadow magic. The ominous sign was punctuated with several larger squeaks and I could just make out a few small rats lying motionless through the shadow waves. They had their strength pulled from their body, what little endurance they had sapped. People would take longer to effect, but I was certainly glad I was shielded behind the barrier.

Talen's skill drains endurance for everyone within 25 metres (three posts to have significant effect), I've written it as being linked to the shadows, so if you move outside the circle around Talen you won't be effected. At the moment Aur, Flint, Resolve and Arden (if he follows) are within range, but Arden is not effected.

[Roht Mirage]

Astarelle didn't see the invisible wall drop, but she heard it. The rumble of the anxious spectators upstairs suddenly stilled as if an earthquake brooding nearby had jumped halfway across the continent. It was still there, of course, an ominous awareness in the back of her mind, but the sound of shuffling bodies took its place as the dominant stimuli.

This is it? Astarelle wondered. Aside from the youth that had faded toward the end of the corridor, she had only seen one other competitor; a Fallien woman. She might have not seen her at all if not for a section of bars that thrummed to purple-hued life at her passing. Resolve, the ball of last night's debaucherous memories told her. She didn't get the sense that she had inspired any vendetta in the woman. That, at least, was a welcome change from the familiar 'strangers' she had run into in the first round,

The woman disappeared into the shadows after the bars' bruise-toned glow faded back into darkness, but reappeared as she passed Astarelle. There was one moment of eye contact in which Astarelle could read nothing of the Fallien woman's intentions, which proved benign -for the moment- as she continued on. Those painted dots, though, traversing her desert-kissed cheeks like a line of snow-white freckles in military lockstep, stirred the memories.

~

Smoke hovered in the air, tainting the overpowering smell of perfume with an acrid aftertaste. Lights flashed as if the boisterous night itself was blinking a thousand times over. Whether that was the work of magic, engineering, or just the writhing shadows of bodies on the dance floor, the memory couldn't make clear. Roht Mirage -Astarelle was an old, inferior name- sat on a bar stool that reverberated with the bass beats of some bestial, throbbing music. The vibrations filled her body, tingling all the right places physically as her partner at the bar did the same for the cerebral side of her lust. Those grey-blue eyes whispered secrets and promises more sensuously than any poetry in tradespeak or fallien ever dared. Roht was enraptured, though her body hummed with the intent to make good on those promises. Resolve took a slow, luxurious drink of some dark, biting liquor in a short glass, then offered it teasingly. Their fingers brushed as Roht accepted and pressed to her lips the exact edge that was still warm from the desert temptress' own.

~

“Wow,” Astarelle whispered. In the last few hours, she had been accused of forcing a giant dangerously close to a 'mating session', as well as recovered her bracelets from a woman whose creamy white legs had enabled the theft during the mercifully-foggy evening, but that... That was a taste of home she wasn't sure even existed on her palate, though it did bring a heat to her cheeks that threatened to draw sweat.

With a shake of her head and an awkward chuckle in the back of her throat, Astarelle inched into the center of the corridor. She took care with each step, for the toes and heels of her shoes were reinforced with iron plates and only the soles would afford her silent passage. Unsure of what she planned, she looked in the direction that Resolve had vanished, but spotted only a large shape silhouetted against the torchlight of a gambling cell at the hall's end. Hands were raised and mouths clicked like baby birds awaiting a meal, yet the earsplitting wagers were muffled into nothing more than the staggered rush of a far-off wind. The bulk of what must have been two people side-by-side blocked out most of the light. I'm outnumbered if they both go after me, she thought dourly. Then, the edge of Resolve's silhouette entered the scene, and Astarelle realized that there were only two legs underneath all the bulk of the person she approached.

An ill-remembered sexual dalliance and a mountain of muscle that could undoubtedly tie her in a knot: that was not the way to go.

She turned to examine the other end of the corridor by the backing light of the other gambling chamber, but a sudden creak and slam of one heavy cell door caused every vertebrae in her spine to jump almost independently. Without thinking, she scuttled into the nearest cell and pressed herself into its back corner as if the light shafting down would burn her. Bury me, she cursed as she found her hands empty again. She extended both toward the open door and willed her staff back to her. It slid with only a scraping whisper as far as the opening, then stopped on a whim that tickled the part of her mind that wasn't focused on taming her rapid heartbeat. Though she could barely make out the long shape, she estimated that a quarter of the staff's length still extended into the hall, its exposed end almost touching the thick vertical bar that the cell door would latch onto should it close. With a hesitant catch of her breath, she lowered her hands. The staff would function as an iron-strong doorjamb should anyone try sealing her in.

Then, the dark shape of her first-glimpsed opponent moved past. Darkness welled as if to eat away what little vision she had, and a throng of bright-eyed rats welled up with it... and cried in pain. Whatever blackness had taken sway in the corridor was unnatural even to them.

What would Roht Mirage do? Astarelle asked herself desperately. No grand tactic came to her. That other self was a drunk-flirting, child-beating blurred shape in the distance, while Astarelle was just a woman cowering in the corner of the afterlife's depths, or some place indistinguishable. She willed her tattoos to roll until the darkest browns hid the brightest whites, then spread the dark mask over her exposed face and shoulders. After that came the difficult task of remembering how to breath.

[Amber Eyes]

She rose. Her arms aching from the cold. Her clothes were soaked through and the muddy water pasted the cloth to her skin. She could feel him in the shadows. He inched closer and once again she contemplated running.

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The cell door slammed shut and Kyla cursed under her breath. The thunderous boom filled the small space, bringing the girl back to reality. Disappointment clouded her mind for just a moment. Why aren’t people ever as stupid as I want them to be?

“Time for plan b, I suppose.” She whispered the words, a smile forming on her lips.

The mystic felt the shadows running through her and a solid form filled her right hand. The shadows of the dungeons seemed to feed her, offering her unlimited options. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of melding into the darkness. Just as she began to shadow step she heard Talen speak. The journey was cold as always, her body felt weightless, tied to the ground by only the tiniest of strings. Sophia’s Mane glowed, the souls of the room bringing the weapon to life, and the mystic tensed her hand, allowing the glove to release its claws.

“Its good to see you Kyla.” The mystic perked at her name. “But you are resigning yourself to defeat if you stay in there. You, me and Arden, thoughts?”

The girl’s heart leapt. She could ensure the survival of both the men she hoped to help while still accomplishing her own goal in the tournament.

In moments she was in the main chamber directly behind the brute who closed the cell door. She saw movement towards another cell, and taking notes from the burly man, she focused her energy on the door to the now occupied chamber. The mystic noted the staff sticking through the doorway, pulling it into the main room before forcing the door to slam shut.

As the metallic clang rang once again Kyla looked at her would-be captor. The mystic paused for the tiniest of moments when she noted just how large the man truly was. You aren’t alone in this. The young woman lifted her sword and brought it down with all her might. “I thought you’d never ask!”

[Resolve]

Resolve's nerves piqued upon Aurelius' appearance, her wiry form tensing as she forced herself to calm with slow, steady breaths. As glad as she might have been to see him, having both the tiefling and the brute at her disposal in a fight to the death, she couldn't allow the rage take over. She needed to keep her head.

As Flint stepped aside to lock a skulking figure into one of the cells, Resolve nearly laughed, recognizing the mystic's astral signature right away. After Kyla screwed her out of a clean kill with her teleportation in the last round, she knew such a move wouldn't prove itself particularly effective, but the notion was amusing enough. Still, she kept watch on the others in her peripherals, noticing another creep into one of the divisions as others collected in the hall. The smirk renewed on her lips as she kept vigilant, just waiting for someone to think they could catch her off guard.

And then Flint returned, offering an arrogant line which coaxed a sharp laugh from the exorcist. She braced her hands on her hips with a sashay. "Yes, kill me over him with Lune watching, that'll go over well." She could feel their mutual friend's presence nearby, a comforting, familiar warmth within the shadowy tangle of spectators.

Upon hearing this, the brute's composure flickered with nigh imperceptible question. She imagined him as a mirror of how she felt in the LCC, when she first met the man who'd stolen her closest friend. Who was Luned keeping secrets from now? She relished it with a gratuitous, premature sense of triumph, quickly severed by the sudden eruption of rats. They surged up with a flood of shadows onto the floor as if from an abyss, and with them came a strange sensation, one she couldn't quite place. This newer, inkier darkness settled over her skin like soot, dingy and ominous. Some distance behind Flint, she noticed the child spectating with an unsettling sort of patience, and she knew it was time to act.

But no –– she hadn't finished with Flint yet.

"I forgot, she didn't tell you, did she? Lune visited me during recovery, told me to say––" She faltered, noting Kyla's appearance behind him as if she could see straight through the hulk of a man.

Not cool. As far as Resolve was concerned, Flint was hers.

"Move," she warned Flint, perhaps a bit too late, and drew her own sword. Conjuring a shield of wispy energy, she charged the mystic, shoving aside the brute if need be.

Kyla owed her a good death, and the exorcist was determined to cash in.

[Arden]

Arden curled his lips into a cruel, sadistic smile. The moment Talen and Kyla turned their back to him he lurched into action. There was an urgency to his movement, but also, a determination instilled by biting his tongue for far too long.

“No thanks,” was all he said in reply.

He raised his right foot. He rotated with a snap of his heel. His cloak shrunk as he spun, shrinking with a whip of the cloth to shoulder length. He slammed his foot down to steady himself, and then shoulder charged the air. The pauldron, revealed to the dim light, flickered with umbra energy and came to life.

Ahroo!

A wisp of smoke darted from the mastiff’s head. It danced around Arden in a maelstrom of darkness, formed a hound that danced through the air, and then charged Talen. After a few feet, it solidified, dropped to the ground, and continued in a trundling, slavering gallop. Free of the beast’s burden, he immediately felt lighter, untethered, and unrestrained.

Ahroo! It growled, its teeth gnashing, its tail wagging, as it made for Talen’s right leg.

“I saved you once…,” he whispered, glaring daggers at Kyla’s back.

He had returned her from the precipice of death in the siege of Ixian Castle. There, she truly was threatened. If he had not plunged his blade into her chest, she would have died. Sei Orlouge would have hunted him. Jensen Ambrose would have tormented him for eternity.

He waved his hand through the air, fingers dancing, and fringe wavering in an unseen breeze. A blue light formed around his fingertips, signifying the presence of magic, and a sphere of silence formed around the mystic’s head.

Here, however, when his sword ended her life, it would only be a fleeting bout of suffering. He grinned. He charged. He raised his blade to thrust through her spine, and roared with canines glinting in the light every step of the way.

[Warpath]

Flint’s face went slack, and he resisted the urge to look toward the crowd. Had Luned seen him during the first round? His mind raced over his actions, dissecting them from a better person’s point of view. What monstrous things had he revealed about himself? He couldn’t recall breaking anything soft or helpless or undeserving, but had she seen him mangled? Had she watched him die?

The fallieni fighter was still taunting him, but his eyes flicked over to Aurelianus. Now the tiefling knew she was here, too. Things were becoming complicated, but his decision was quickly made. If the monks’ ability to resuscitate him was in question, Flint could not fall unless he’d somehow dealt with Aurelianus Drak’shal first. Resolve was the lesser of the two threats – she, like Flint, would protect Luned without reservation. This transformed her instantaneously from aggressor to asset.

Flint was tense, poised to lash out at the smirking guttersnipe, oblivious to Resolve’s continued taunts. It was only that tension which saved him. When Resolve suddenly snapped at him to move, lunging forward herself, the brute was already primed to action. He spun and twisted at the torso with speed and agility that defied his chiseled bulk, raising his left arm high and his right arm low on honed defensive instinct.

The she-mystic was committed to a dramatic, fatal downward slash – a forceful blow, but one that required a few more precious fractions of a second to resist gravity and then, afterward, to build downward momentum. Those instants were enough for Flint to swing his left forearm up and out to meet that executioner’s slash, aided by the momentum of his full-body turn. The singing edge of the young lady’s sword impacted the impenetrable barrier of Flint’s left vambrace, spitting sparks into the dark and illuminating both their faces for a blink of the eye.

There was no time for thought or tactics now. Flint relied on instinct tempered by foreknowledge. He had fought Resolve twice, and was a strong proponent of the idea that one truly learns the nature of a person by struggling against them – he knew she would charge into combat with the slightest provocation. His heart was quickened, but hadn’t yet had time to beat since the sword met his bracer, and already he lashed out with his right forearm with the intent to hammer the blade upward and aside while simultaneously twisting away and to the right. Ideally his attacker would be left off-balance, incapable of bringing her sword to bear before Resolve skewered her, and Flint would be out of harm’s way regardless.

Only after he was committed to the escape did Flint see an armored youth charging the swordswoman from behind.

The brute pushed aside the instinct to wince sympathetically. This was like to be bloody.

[Roht Mirage]

Unbeknownst to the adults, the “ferals” did have names. Private names, formed within the vocabulary limitations of the abandoned young, and always spoken in a whisper when the tall ones were around. These children knew who they could trust. It was a small group, both in size and stature.

While the majority of them climbed the railing to get a better view of their promised champion, a peculiar trio sat far back on the steps, heads together. Bash, Dog, and Pond had been the quiet ones ever since coming under Master Kotra's care. They weren't always that way. Bash once ran the gang in that long ago (to a child) time. Dog, Pond, and Coin were what the adults might call lieutenants, but they just called each other best friends. Then, one rainy morning behind a butcher shop, the new kid arrived. He gave Bash a lump on the head and claimed a fitting name for himself along with the throne. A week passed under the new leader until the old man found them -what remained of them- after a fight with an adult who smelled like shit and blood. He healed them, but Coin... They didn't talk about Coin anymore. They also didn't like to see blood.

“I hear the old man gives Lump candy. That's why Lump won't let us leave,” Bash whispered.

“I want candy,” Dog whined.

“Don't take adult candy,” Bash warned.

Pond, normally quiet, chimed in wisely. “Adult candy is a trap.” He shook his head warily, slapping droopy strands of hair against the others' faces. They had all suffered the indignity of the tub, but escaped near the end of the ordeal and were spared the trauma of Raylene's brush. Their long hair lay stiffly in whatever position it had dried. Dog had taken a nap on the lawn immediately, so his hair stuck all to one side and bore streamers of green.

“Hey!” Lump bellowed like a half-inflated balloon. He stepped onto the tier above them, boosting his height advantage. His girth also had an advantage; especially strange for a child of the alleys. “Look what I got.” He beamed a devilish grin as he brandished a coin pouch that took both hands to hold.

Dog and Pond stared in amazement. Bash jumped up, almost knocking them over. “No picking,” he hissed, “Old man's rule. You made us promise.”

Lump squared his shoulders. “I didn't take it,” he said, hugging the pouch as if it contained a week's worth of candy coin and a delicious secret. “Someone gave it to me.”

“You picked it,” Bash almost shouted, then shot a wary glance at the backs of the old man, the almost-adults, and the adult-loving little brother. They all seemed absorbed in the fight. “If you can break rules..” he finished as he walked away, his two friends at his heels.

Their leader called after them in a loud whisper. “I didn't pick it. I can even get more.” They ignored him as they disappeared among the forest of excitedly twitching knees. Lump pouted and kicked the stairs, then held the pouch behind his back and went to join the other Hawk of Zaileya students.

“This is embarassing,” Tabin growled high above him. The teenager was leaning dangerously far over the railing.

Clingy Dahvim had a hold of his pant leg. “But, she's nice now, right?” he chirped, “That's good.”

Tabin snorted in disgust while Master Kotra let out a contemplative sigh. Raylene, on the other side of the old man, seemed too distracted to hear them. “You can do it, Roht,” she whispered.

~

A ghost of a long dead prisoner was teasing her, Astarelle thought at first when the staff pulled away of its own accord. Then, the door slammed, and she jumped halfway up the wall. Someone's locking me in!

She slunk toward the door by way of the cold wall, trusting that her dark-brown camouflage and black clothing would keep her form discrete. Dust motes danced as she passed the shaft of light, hinting at her presence. She dared not doubt that, somewhere out there, there were enemy eyes adept enough to notice. Nothing shot at her, though, as she reached the door and pressed a hand to its solid bars. She touched her other hand to the covered mark over her brow, then pushed. The door creaked open. Blessed be our mother, she prayed in spite of herself, then chuckled in the back of her throat. Roht Mirage wouldn't care of Roh heard. Blessed be our bloody sand-blasted mother!

In the corridor, the young man from earlier was suggesting a truce with some others she couldn't see. She could barely even see the youth. Somehow, the shadows around him were darker than they had been when she stood there. He reminds me of Tabin, her mind chirped wistfully, reading some fragment of memory that she couldn't consciously recall. Whether due to his voice or his shape, it was a certainty that tugged at the freshly-sprouted guilt.

“No thanks,” came a doldrum reply. She couldn't pinpoint the origin until a beast sprang from the air. The armored form that had summoned it ran off in the direction of Resolve and the twice-wide man while the dog, a vile thing truly at home in this unnatural darkness, charged for almost-Tabin. Without any thought at all -Astarelle would have cowered and Roht would have enjoyed the show- she forced the door all the way open and burst into a run. The bars were strangely heavy, and her feet felt sluggish, but she forced herself forward without questioning it. The hound was so fast! She barely had time to recall her staff from the ground, let alone form a plan. So, acting on a whim, she levelled one end of the staff with the dog's approaching maw and willed sand to pour from the reed's pours in the form of a short yet wicked hook. A flicker of conscious thought told her to get into a dancer's ready stance, weight on her toes and spine limber, because -by Jya's left tit- was this partner going to lead.

Three Oliver Twists are making their way through the audience with sticky fingers. If your NPC "happens" to be in the way, all the merrier. Bunny them as you wish.

Hysteria, I'm giving you bunny permission, including her handling of Fido. Also, Astarelle is in the weakening field. Let the countdown to naptime begin.

[Hysteria]

I felt my hands tighten and my knuckles turn white as I dropped the stone rail in front of me. The first attacks were thrown and despite my reluctance to admit it, I felt a jolt of excitement.

Despite myself I felt the now familiar chill run down my spine. I was aware of my hands aching, I lifted them up and was surprised to see the white of my knuckles. I hate to admit it, but I was excited. The first blows had been thrown, the metaphorical glove thrown down. This was no butchery like the last fight, alliances were already forming, and crashing. I lifted my eyes back up to the scene, my hands finding solace resting on the stone rail in front of me.

“Wait what?” Talen's voice was higher than before, his face even looked a bit surprised. I remember a smug grin spreading over my face. The kid's stoic resignation was dwindling.

The youth twisted back towards Arden, the conjured hound bounding across the stone floor with feral intent. Talen lifted his crossbow, but it was for naught. A staff shot forwards and the hound latched onto it instinctively. The next part was almost comical compared to the heavy atmosphere of in the small hall of retribution. One of the other contestants, Astarelle came sliding out of a cell, hands grasp firming around the edge of her staff. She moved surprisingly gracefully considering, her feet slid across the ground as a slave to the hound's strength.

The hound moved to Talen's right, slowed but not stopped by the weight of the woman it dragged. I saw the briefest pause in the kid's actions. It was as if he took everything in within a glance. The potential ally, the fact that Arden had shunned his offer of acceptance, and the strategic opportunities of the slowed hound. The moment was over and the ground in front of Talen erupted in a spout of darkness. The shadowy tentacle, the same ones that had adorned his back in the last fight lifted into the air. It lashed out in a second, striking the hooked hound in a single powerful blow. The beast stumbled sideways, remarkably resilient against the blow. Judging by the force and speed, I'd say it would have been enough to knock out a normal man. Talen didn't miss a beat, he pushed off the ground, covering the distance in a second and levelled his crossbow at the beasts head. With that same cold stare he fired, embedding a bolt directly into its temple.

Talen turned slightly and looked at the woman Astarelle. The shadowy mastiff faded from sight, leaving the bolt barely visible on the ground. I was surprised when Talen picked it up, giving the woman an opening to attack him if she so desired. I could only thing that it was some gesture of trust. The woman seemed too shocked to act, at least for a moment. I chuckled to myself, it wasn't the first time that I'd seen a woman hide what she was thinking, and I hoped not the last.

"That was a real sand-spit move on his part. Shall we carve him a new mouth to apologize with?" her words made sense to me, if a little colloquial, but it was easy to see that the kid was confused.

“Yes?” he offered weakly, and for the second time during the fight I felt like cuffing him over the ear. There were few things I lived by, one was never turn down a woman's advances, even in a fight to the death.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Some minor bunnies. If anyone has any problems, feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to edit as required.

And they're off!

Aurelianus smirked to himself, dancing back a few steps and watching the opening act of the bloodbath. A shiver ran up his spine and he growled deep in his throat, the sound thick and wet as he tasted the magic caressing his skin.

But from where. Or who? he wondered.

He rattled through a quick mental list of the other competitors, making sure to mark their movements, trying to make sure and watch all of them at once. A lifetime of paranoia, in this instance, proved extremely useful. Earrings and charms rattled all over his bladed frame as he swung his head between the other occupants of the chamber, leathers creaking as every muscle tensed and relaxed. He wanted to start gutting them, but he couldn't decide for the life of him where to begin. They were all such juicy little morsels, just waiting for his blades to put them in the dead-book.

Deaders, deaders everywhere, and not a sod to nick, he thought, a grim chuckle on his lips.

Aurelianus recognised the chit from Emma chamber who had spectacularly made herself explode - hard to forget someone like that - as she took a sneaky swing in at Flint's back, even as he moved to block the attack and Resolve dived into the cluster-fuck. It was only then he noticed the competitor, little more than a boy, by all appearances, standing off to one side with his crossbow trained on the tiefling. Though actually making out his appearance was exceptionally difficult, with the way the shadows clung to his frame like.. like a cloak.. Talen's scent touched his nostrils, and Aurelianus licked his fangs with a vicious smirk. Here was another cutter he recognised.

"Tails (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25777-The-Ferocious-Flight-of-the-Freedom-Fighters)," he hissed, wondering if this was yet another sod likely to turn on him. Already, the list of people in this room who likely despised him was rising with every passing moment.

Behind the mystic, he marked the tell-tale gleam of faint sunlight on armour and only his demonic eyes allowed him to make out the swordsman at the rear of Kyla and the creature he knew as Tails. A small smirk played out on the plane-touched's face as he recognised what he was watching; no-one could see a betrayal in the making like the half-breed con-artist, and he was glad to see that, for the moment, the shadow-creature and his apparent ally would be preoccupied.

The tiefling found his eyes drawn back to Flint above the others; he had marked the expression on the basher's face when Resolve had let slip Luned was in attendance. For a man feared, or downright just dismissed as an urban legend by the nobles of Salvar, Flint Skovik had looked worried.

Like the predator he was, heart and soul, Aurelius had locked on to that. Now, not only did he have something to use against the grotesquely over-muscled little brute, but he had a plan. A cruel smile split his features, all yellow eyes and white fangs in the darkness of the dungeon. He slid one of his twin knives from the sheath at the small of his back, and wrapped his fingers lovingly around the demon-hide grip. Every vicious serration along the green-steel blade caught what little light the holes in the ceiling allowed, glinting much like his own smile.

Flint blocked the mystic chit's blow and dodged back, making way for his dusky firecracker ally's attack. That was all the opening Aurelius needed.

Darting forward in a blur of black leather and sadistic steel, the tiefling sprang into the air - just as Astarelle sprinted past on her way to aid Talen - and caught the bars of the cell before him. Keeping his Baatorian knife held loosely in his right hand, the half-demon scurried up the wall of bars and landed lightly on the roof of the cage. Right above Flint.

"A quick word, mate," Aurelianus hissed from above, grinning down as the human turned to face him. There was a hint of hate on that chiselled, hard face, but for the most part the Salvaran kept a rein on his temper.

"I've got two in mind right now," Flint shot back with a deadpan voice.

"Cute," the tiefling smirked, leaping gracefully down to land in front of his.. companion? Enemy? If he had tried to actually label the relationship he had with the man before him, Aurelius might have realised he actually had no clue how he would class it. But, he had other things on his mind.

Keeping his weight kept on the balls of his feet, even inside the heavy, buckled boots he wore, Aurelius gave his opponent the once over, noting the new gauntlets. And the speed at which Skovik had turned to defend himself against the sword-bitch's blow had not escaped his notice either. Still, with an air of arrogant calm, the tiefling stopped a few steps outside the brawler's reach, his knife held casually low at his side. The glyphs etched along the blade pulsed in the gloom, from deep black to arterial red and back again, the bleeding enchantment on the already savage weapons making itself known.

"There's no doubt in my mind that right now you'd love nothin' more than to break me in 'alf," Aurelius stated merrily, cocking his head and setting the many earrings jingling. "Am I right?"

Flint nodded, allowing himself a tight smile.

"An' I 'ave no doubt you could at that," the cocky Cager allowed. He saw the tension humming along every tendon and muscle on the muscle-bound man's arms. Forestalling him with a raised hand, the snake-eyed deviant stepped back. Back in Ettermire, Flint had seen firsthand the hideous magicks Aurelius could call forth from those hands, so the gesture may not have been quite as reassuring as he might have hoped.

"Wait! I 'ave a proposition you might be interested in," he said. He could see the doubt in Flint's eyes, almost as bright as the small spot of light shining on his bald pate. Aurelius was also keenly aware of the limited time he had to work in as well, casting a quick and peery glance at the other occupants, mostly occupied squaring off against their chosen opponents. For the moment.

"You turn those wreckin' balls," he gestured to the human's metal-clad fists, "on every other sod in 'ere 'cept me - and that includes 'er," he added with a nod at Resolve's back coupled with a sly grin.

"More than that, you watch my back 'til we're the only two cutters left standin', and I'll wipe the debt clear.."

Flint started to move, to bring his fists up; no doubt to make good on his offer of breaking the smug bastard of a half-breed like a toothpick. He knew better than most not to listen to the honeyed words of the murderous hellspawn.

".. for Luned."

The Salvaran stopped cold, registering the words that were penetrating his ice-cold killer psyche. Aurelianus flipped his knife to his left hand with a little flourish, running his fingertips across the hydras inked on either side of his bloody-red crest of quills.

"Do we 'ave a deal?" the warlock asked, the loathsome joy in his voice telling Flint he already knew what the answer was going to be.

[Warpath]

“Yes,” Flint said at once. His harsh, unblinking stare narrowed for the briefest instant, and then he turned his gaze elsewhere. He did not like to see glee on the devil’s face, as it was becoming increasingly common for aforesaid pleasure to be at Flint’s expense.

This was not the first bargain he’d struck with the tiefling, but it had been a great deal easier to stomach. The first had been the result of his own weakness: a necessary evil to preserve his life in the direst circumstances. He had secured his deliverance in return for a favor, to be decided by the half-breed on some future whim. He only later learned that Aurelianus had inked a similar deal with Luned. While the collection of his own debt was a heavy burden on his mind, it was nothing beside the fear of what depraved service the fiend might ask of her.

He had long entertained the notion of hunting down and murdering the plane-touched reprobate. Of course the notion of reneging on the deal in simpler and less violent ways had occurred to him too, but the concept seemed somehow perverse and impossible. It was like deals with Aurelianus were blasphemously sacrosanct and absolute, beyond even him to betray. This was a two-sided blade: it meant there was no chance that Aurelianus would forget or forgive or let the deal lapse, he couldn’t, but it also meant that he was bound by his word in equal measure.

Flint felt the weight of his decision like a black mark on his soul, but didn’t care. He feared some loophole, some clever trick – expected it even – but he did not care. As with the first deal, there was no real choice.

And there was one ray of off-black sunshine to the situation.

Flint turned his back on Aurelianus. Despite the tiefling’s proximity, Flint Skovik was relieved of a nagging fear that had been haunting him for months on end. For the first time since Ettermire, he didn’t have to worry about a cold blade being sunk into his spine or a snake-tongued whisper in his ear. As long as he was the devil’s pawn, there was no benefit to betrayal but mad and self-destructive gratification. Aurelianus was many things, including self-destructive at times, but self-defeating? No.

They were, for all intents and purposes, allies.

“So,” Flint said to the tiefling, fingers twitching at his sides. “Who dies first?”

[Amber Eyes]

Her feet refused to move. She willed herself to run but her body defied her. Like a statue she was rooted to the spot as he approached, his blood-red eyes seemingly looking into her soul. He reached out a hand a touched her cheek, his freezing flesh burning against her warmth as he caressed her skin.

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Just as she brought her sword down the mammoth turned, catching her weapon with his armguards. As he moved Kyla caught a glimpse of the girl known as Resolve, moving much too quickly in her direction. She tried to scream, but no sound left her lips. Somehow her voice was gone, and Arden once again saved the mystic's hide. Had he not silenced her, her screams would have blocked out the echoing of boots behind her. The sounds of footsteps seemed to surround her on all sides, and she waited until she could feel the wind of the weapons on either side before stepping quickly into the shadows. The cold enveloped her and her heart raced at her near loss. She dropped to a squat and held her head in her hands, allowing her breath to return before re-entering the chamber in her former cell. Perhaps she should have stayed there in the first place.

The mystic raised her arm and ran her fingers through her hair, her ribbon was lost somewhere in the shadows. She looked to the stairs where Anita sat staring straight at her, her eyes focused on the cell before her. Kyla could see her lips moving, and with much effort she made out the words. “If you can’t beat them, make sure they will never forget your name when you’re gone.” It was something she had heard before, almost a slogan of the great Ciato Orlouge.

The girl smiled from behind her iron cage, gripping the bars and looking into the chamber. She closed her eyes and let the warmth from the light inside her take control. In seconds bolts of lightning filled the room, aimed at those she considered foes. Resolve would be the first one hit, followed quickly by a strike on the behemoth. The next bolt would find its way to the demon, and finally Arden’s mutt would have his turn. As the bolts swirled in the air Kyla formed her bomb, shadow-stepping even as the ball of light formed. She missed the view of the shadow tendrils suffocating the light, squashing it to near non-existence before the entire thing exploded, sending shots throughout the chamber.

Kyla exited her dark sanctuary, quickly grasping Talen with one hand and gripping the arm of the strange female mage with the other, Sophia’s Mane purred as she made contact with skin, but Kyla focused instead on the words she spoke. As the blow from the bomb shot towards the trio the sound of breaking glass hit her ears. She looked at the two she touched, safe inside the glass that began to shoot outwards, burning bright blue as it filled the chamber.

[Resolve]

The mystic's response didn't surprise Resolve, but it did leave her seething. "Coward!" she hollered, her voice resounding against the dense walls of the Ixian dungeon. Somehow, her arms already seemed to tire as they lowered her sword. What had happened?

Further down the floor, the soldier, child, and vaguely familiar woman engaged in their own skirmish. She couldn't see them in the darkness, but she could feel them. And then she felt Kyla, huddled back inside her locked cell like the criminal she was after robbing the exorcist of a real fight.

The distance allowed Resolve's concentration to loop back around to Flint and Aurelius behind her, engaged in some sort of conversation. Her eyes narrowed as she listened, twisting at the waist. "What––"

And then it hit. The world exploded in a flash of white and she convulsed, falling to her knees. She might have hit the floor, girl trembling red amongst the scattered sea of rats, but she forgot everything but the sick realization of helplessness in her gut.

No. No, no, no…

Milliseconds passed like eons, but the stun proved blessedly brief. Resolve knew she'd been weakened and she knew what Kyla was capable of. As she came to her senses, she knew she needed out. Now.

And so she, too, vanished into the shadows.

As she rematerialized, she blinked away the aftershock of lightning until the spots became one with the patch of sun which shone through a meager hole in the roof. The exorcist allowed herself a luxurious moment to recuperate, body limp against the cold, hard floor of the last cell on the right, furthest from Kyla and well past the barrier of Flint's impossibly muscled girth.

And then the bomb blew, shaking the floor of the prison with its potency, mystic shield hot –– quite literally –– on its heels. Resolve watched as the blue fire burst from the dark in a sizzling flash, shards of glass popping like fireworks. As the force of the magical blast traveled, it strummed the prevalida bars, playing the entire prison like a harp as its power reverberated through the chamber.

From her hiding place, she barely felt a breeze, and she couldn't help herself from laughing. Twice now she'd narrowly avoided the mystic bomb's brunt. She choked back her mirth, unwilling to give up her position quite yet as she crawled to her knees, then her feet. Her limbs functioned, to her relief, though shaky. Time to assess the damage.

Resolve crept to the wall of the cell's privy, using it as cover as she peered cautiously around the edge of the open door. In what state were Flint, Aurelius, the others?

... and what on Althanas had they discussed while her back was turned?

[Arden]

Cursing loudly, Arden stopped dead in his tracks. Kyla, in much the same manner as he was accustomed to doing, simply vanished. Suddenly denied his quarry, the ferocity in an otherwise civil form appeared full force.

“A coward like the rest…,” he intoned, referring to the mystics, and their kin.

He dropped low, raised his sword arm fully extended to the right, and twisted the blade forty-five degrees. Like a hunter stalking his prey, he turned on the spot, and turned back the other way, searching, sensing, and seeking another to attack. He did not need to look far. Even at distance, he could smell Aurelianus Drak’Shal. The resonating sickness of his particular charisma permeated every cell in the arena.

“I do not want him.” He said flatly. The tiefling would make a terrible member of his team.

He set eyes on Talen, and sighed. Once, perhaps, he might have sought the youth’s affectations, but he had gone too far into darkness. There, his mind clouded, and great beasts would crush him, long before they felt his ‘might’.

“I do not need him,” he said.

He turned a few inches, feet tensing to keep his weight balanced, and set eyes on Resolve. This was a newcomer to his radar, a woman of power, he could tell, but one with complicated relations. He shook his head, peered out from beneath the crimson veil of his fringe, and decided.

“I do not see it in her,” he said. Perhaps he did, but it was desperate idiocy, rather than fearless loyalty.

At last, he set eyes on someone he did wish to test. If Kyla Orlouge denied him the chance, then he was certain this figure would prove a worthy member of the Ixian Knights. That was his sole purpose here today. He was to test others. Even as his hound, cruelly beaten black and blue by an unsurmountable tally of foes faded into nothingness, he felt life anew in his heart. He took a deep breath, broke into a sprint, and vanished.

A bolt of lightning cleaved across the arena, crackling with the ferocity of titans and the zeal of kings. He smelt the air burn long before it got the chance to strike, and re-appeared a few foot forwards, two seconds lighter, and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“Stand and fight!” His words resounded through the gloom, carried by anger, and lifted by simmering, emotional rage.

With his blade swinging in deft, deadly cleaves, the Hound advanced towards Astarelle. As he crossed the distance between them, his cloak all but vanished. His armour, clunky mithril that slowed but sealed limbs away from blades and bombs, glistened in the lacklustre torchlight. In all his foes, the swordsman saw conflict. In all save this particular adversary, he saw weakness. In her divine step, and blind charge of the Mastiff, he saw exactly what he was looking for.

Bravery.

No amount of lightning, middle-aged balding and sexual deviance would get in his way now.

[Hysteria]

Before I continue I feel the need to point out that at some point during the next series of events some little twerp, or twerpette stole my wallet. I distinctly remember placing my hand in my pocket as Kyla disappeared. It was probably one of the ratty looking kids that I noticed working their way through the crowd. Little ferals, should be locked up. Who steals a wallet while watching people fight in a prison? Honestly...

I digress. Talen was standing next to the female mage, then Kyla appeared near them. I knew that the mystic was powerful, but as she unleashed the blasts of lightning the air crackled with mystic energies. The sound was unique, a thousand roaring birds. The lightning shot over Talen and the youth was visibly shocked. His pale skin shone brightly, even his pale blue eyes visible in the din. It was only a moment later Kyla grabbed the kid and Astarelle. I couldn't believe my eyes as a glass shield formed around the mystic. It was the pinnacle of Mystic tradition, the signature spell. I pumped my fist into the air as the thrill of what I was seeing coursed through my veins.

I caught sight of Talen through the glass for a moment, a slight smile on his face. It looked like he was finally enjoying the battle. Whatever metaphorical stick was stuck up his bum seemed to have dislodged, at least partially. Before I realised what was happening I had lifted my hands up in futile protection as the glass smashed into the barrier. I wasn't the only one, everyone crowded around me either did the same or ducked. I have this oddly distinct memory of a tiny old lady with a big hat standing firm as the only one not to flinch as the flaming glass smashed into thousands of pieces against the barrier barely a metre from her face.

I quickly regained myself and my view, Talen was walking towards Arden. The small smile still sitting on his face, perhaps even a little bigger. Through the cheers and roars around me I could barely make out his words.

“Sorry dude, turns out this is a team sport.” he said.

The ground between the pair erupted in a wall of shadow. The dark mess lifted up back down towards Arden. I knew the tactic the moment I saw it, you don't survive long as a shop keep without knowing a diversion when you see one. Talen had already kicked himself along the ground towards his right, his crossbow losing two bolts into the black mess where Arden had been. I guessed that the shadows were an attempt to conceal his movements, then the two shots, wide enough that only one would strike would hopefully catch Arden as he tried to react, however he did. It was quick, it was simple, and it could prove deadly. I approved.

The tentacle that Talen had called moments before to help dispatch the hound was little more than an afterthought at this point. The tattered mess of shadowy flesh that was left after the flaming glass had given a few weak movements before disintegrating to nothing.

[Roht Mirage]

The darkness no longer weakens Astarelle. Friends forever. <3

Astarelle was hit with varying levels of amazement as solidly as if she were bouncing up a flight of stairs. The realization that the shadows didn't just exist near the boy, but responded to him as her sand did to her, was quickly eclipsed by the fact that he had accepted the alliance. He's on my side, she assured herself as she watched the shadow tentacle writhe. All those months of masquerading in Corone and all those years acting as Faroh's many-faced agent across the expanse of Fallien felt minor. In a dark pit of a prison with bloodthirsty eyes looking down like vengeful stars, Astarelle Set'Roh had befriended the shadows.

If not for you, Akee, she prayed to dearly departed Akashere, still her source of strength.

The next tier of amazement was heralded with bolts of lighting. Astarelle flinched. The layer of sand around her eyes twitched nearly shut like a second pair of eyelids. “Bury me,” she breathed as she saw -through the narrow slits- a ball of light and dark spring into existence, then shrink under invisible, inevitable tension. She guessed that an explosion was coming and raised her bracers out of a sheer lack of options.

The last surprise, the final act that truly set her jaw to swinging, came with a soft touch on her bare arm. A mother's touch; but she did not know her own mother's touch enough to realize. Then, the world exploded, breaking apart into shards of blue fire as the sound of breaking glass filled her ears. How fragile the world was... of course it would sound like glass when it finally broke. But, she did not break. And it turned out, neither had the world.

The sand that had been her mask and her shield against the glare faltered from her lack of attention, returning to its tattoo form. It tickled against the smaller woman's hand on her arm as it crept underneath. “That- I-,” she stammered, blinking away the spotted afterimage. The woman's blue eyes said, “You're welcome,” so clearly that no words were necessary. Regardless, Astarelle cried out, “Thank you!” as she dropped her staff and hugged her -second!- new ally. The staff bounced once, just long enough for her savior’s spine to jolt in surprise. Then, the staff was back in her hands, and Astarelle was darting into the fray on the heels of her young shadowy friend.

The armored hound-summoner, who later she would learn was named Arden, had turned back on them, enraged. “You who would turn aside a kind hand,” she had a flash of her -no, Roht's- guilty memory, “Deserve nothing.” The wall of shadow erupted, startling but not scaring her. It's manipulator, soon to be known as Talen, was on her side. Following his lead, she ducked to the right as well, pausing only to throw her staff up and to the left. It clanged high against the bars, hopefully pulling Arden's attention from where Talen slid. In the split second that the reverberation of the bars masked her grunt, Astarelle jumped, going high where the boy went low. “Better squint,” she hissed as she passed over him, then landed in a crouch. Her tattoos burst off of her, creating a cloud of fine grit as far as two meters out.

As Talen's bolts fired, she raised one hand toward the darkness-wreathed Arden and put all her will into recalling her staff straight into the back of his head.

~

Bash first noticed the hat when, amid a mass recoil of bodies at some horribly loud explosion, it did not move. He crept toward it underfoot, as tentative as a ship approaching a darkened lighthouse. He did not know where his friends had gone, though they were no doubt enjoying a return to the old ways. He did not know that the woman's wizened face had shed a single tear for old memories while her body stood strong against the destructive display.

He only knew that he wanted that hat.

[Arden]

Arden had already lost one eye to a crossbow. He was not about to lose another. Even as the shadows engulfed him, and all hope became purposeless, he found meaning in his own, peculiar sanctuary. He heard the piercing whistle of a feathered shaft, and once more, into the breach he went. He vanished from the abyss, and the projectiles pierced only empty space. Blue ribbons glowed in the gloom, spiralling fecklessly through irate rotations, before, and with heart, they burst into flames.

The swordsman opened his eyes. He stood at the end of a jetty, far from Althanas, and far from the Cell. He loosened his limbs, and let out a long sigh of relief. Though he would be gone for split seconds in ‘reality’, he would have time to gather his thoughts before the calming waves. The sea was mercury, as far as the eye could see. A dark cloud formation gathered overhead, perhaps a storm of ideas, more than rain and thunder.

Maybe she is not so brave after all, he mused.

The Aria, the heart of all creativity and magic in the world, danced with tension. The salty wood beneath his heavy boots creaked. The air rushed over the swordsman. Despite the fallacy, there was nothing but silence. No matter how loud Arden shouted, or how much devastation he wrought here, nobody would hear.

If she were, she would not cling to such… his thoughts failed him, lost in the attempt at describing some of the people that the Cell had summonsed. He dare not go down that path, lest he tar himself with the same brush.

He folded his arms across his chest, his sword absent from the other world, and cocked his head to one side. He appeared in the Aria as he had the day he came to exist. He had shoulder length, auburn hair. His upper body was naked, save for beads and talismans around his neck. He wore a simple pair of brown trousers, and a red, bloodied sash around his hips. His boots were hobnailed, battered, and well worn.

If they had decided to align themselves to a trite notion of ‘team work’, then he would gain nothing from testing that bond. Desperation made the unlikeliest of enemies into the strongest friends. All he had to do, asides find someone to take his place, was survive. He had grown up in the streets of Scara Brae a thief. He had worked in the Tantalum troupe, which some might say was the harshest of environs. He had slaved away in the mines of Akashima, and fought wars with the gods themselves in the upper steppes of Berevar.

How difficult can a few upstarts and idolaters be?

He disappeared, and left the jetty alone, the sea sparkling, and the entity named the Tap to its contemplation.

“Try that again!” he bellowed as he reformed.

Though astute, calculating, and mercantile, Arden Janelle had counted on everything bar the obvious. The crossbow shots were a trick, the shadow a diversion, and the dancing woman the sword unsheathed in the night. He was heavily armoured, on all accounts, and his blade could ruin the toughest of men. His head, a crimson mop sweated to a furrowed brow, was one obvious weak point.

“Gladly,” was all he heard as something solid, but thankfully not razor sharp twitted him over the back of the head.

His one good eye blurred and he jolted forwards. Kerria dripped blood, mimicking its master’s pain. His cloak danced upwards, as though the wind rose from the cobbles beneath him. In a swirl of blue ribbons and the songs of ages, the occupants of the Cell would get their solitary opportunity to avoid toe to toe with the The Silent Swordsman.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

And with that simple little exercise in control, Aurelius turned the tides of fortune back in his favour again. He licked his fangs contemplatively for a moment, his eyes hovering on the brute's over-sized back while letting his fingers dance along the grip of his knife. He could have quite easily ended Flint then and there, but as Flint well knew, there was nothing for Aurelianus to gain from the treachery. But it was more than just that, which stayed the Cager's hand.

Despite the other's obvious hatred of the tiefling, Aurelius almost respected the sharp-minded thug. They were more alike than Flint would ever give them credit for, and the warlock longed to actually test out his skills against Skovik - face to face, fist to fire, no cheap tricks. Basher like that'd give me a fight to remember, he mused.

"Take your pick, basher," Aurelius answered, smiling wetly from the shadows.

Flint moved away from the murderous half-breed, and Aurelianus backed up himself, his head swinging slowly to regard everyone else in the chamber again. They all seemed to be engaged in their own little dramas, everyone ignoring him for the time-being. And that was exactly what the tiefling wanted; he was going to wait for someone to expose their backs, and he would be there to stab, burn and kill.

It was this brief respite more than anything else that saved him from what happened next.

He saw the retina-scarring bolt come down from the ceiling, hitting Resolve and dropping her like a sack of potatoes, followed quickly by one striking out at Flint, a few feet in front of the now-concerned warlock. It didn't take a genius to follow the pattern, and without even having to look, he knew with the myriad piercings, buckles and blades adorning his attire lightning was not his friend.

Hastily, Aurelianus willed Freki's Shield into existence, the swirling mystical flames swathing him in their infernal embrace even as he moved further back along the cell-block. He had managed three rapid steps, his steel-toed boots hammering heavily on the worn stones of the floor, before his shadow was thrown out in front of him in stark contrast. The lightning hit the Shield with a hollow boom that set his pointed ears ringing, filling his field of vision with floating after-images.

Aurelianus skidded to a halt, whipping round in a flash of sharp steel and diminishing fires - Freki's Shield had taken the hit, but it couldn't survive any more, and faded away with a thought. Aurelius' white-knuckled fist readjusted on the grip of his weapon, fingerless leather gloves creaking as he scanned the melee..

Just in time to see the glass shield surrounding Kyla, and her two companions explode in a violent burst of mystical energy.

"Oh, will you sod off with that!" he barked, unamused as for the second time in this damned tournament he was faced with a wall of flaming glass shards whistling towards him through the narrow chamber. After the first time he'd seen it, however, there was no way the canny plane-touched was going to get caught out by the same trick.

Utilising all his preternatural speed, the half-demon drew his second knife and parried the few shards that came at him after making their way through everyone else. His blades seemed to dance in his hands, small bursts of light in the darkness marking where the Hell-forged steel met the magical glass. One managed to get past the whirling defenses, slicing a neat line across Aurelius' cheek, but he ignored the tiny sting and brought his arms down to his side once he was sure there were no other threats. A few small splinters of glass had managed to pepper his right arm in a fine dusting as they broke on his knives, but the damage was negligible at best and the segmented armour on his left could turn a sword, let alone something as mundane as the glass.

"Fool me once," he smirked to himself, straightening up and shaking off his muscles. Looking over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Luned, glaring hate at him from outside the barrier and surrounded by the rest of the crowd booing and hissing at him. Blowing her a kiss, he turned on his heel and started back towards the storm of violence that was drawing everyone in. With a practiced move, he slid his chivs back into their sheaths at the base of his back, freeing up his hands for what he planned next.

Bouncing lightly on to the cage to his left, Aurelianus scurried up the bars, kicking off when he was about halfway up, twisting in the air. He had practiced such acrobatics for the majority of his young life in his home city, so leaping from one side of the cell-block to the other took no more effort than walking. Grabbing the edge of the right hand cage, he swung his legs up and over, rolling lightly on to the roof and coming up in a feline crouch. He was highlighted for the briefest moment in the shaft of weak sunlight, haloed by dust-motes, his spike and blade coated leather shining like the sun.

And then he kicked off and was gone, dancing along the top of the cages with inhuman grace almost as fast as the eye could follow. A vicious gleam hit his sadistic armour again and again as he went, but the tiefling hoped the rest of the combatants were too distracted to notice him.

In a heartbeat he was past them, and with a cruel grin, Aurelianus dived off the cell, letting his momentum bring his boots over his head. Twisting in mid-air, the guttersnipe tucked and rolled, hitting the ground boots first with a dull thud. Bending his knees to take the brunt of his landing, Aurelius turned to face the backs of the group. He had marked the various competitors popping in and out of existence, but there were enough of them there to make him hungry at the thought of the pain he was about to reap from their flesh. Flint was on the other side of the group.. but if he got hit, that was his problem.

Throwing up both hands, smirking even as he summoned up the fury of Shahab's Lash, Aurelius unleashed three torrents of roaring black Hellfire - one from each palm, a third from his fang-lined maw - down the corridor at the enemies arrayed there.

If they wanted to play with fire, the half-demon was happy to oblige.

[Amber Eyes]

She moved. Her hand shot quickly upward, attempting to brush away the man’s palm. The demon caught her hand, quickly moving his other fingers to her throat. He pushed forward, near throwing the mystic into the brick wall behind her. Her back screamed with the pain of impact, and a tear rolled down her cheek as he leaned in a whispered with freezing breath into her ear.

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Kyla tensed as the girl wrapped her in an embrace. Physical outbursts were so practiced in the mystic’s life that it took her off guard. The mystic had done only what she felt her duty. From attempting to lock the girl away before the bloodshed started, to hiding her behind the wall of glass, Kyla would do her best to ensure the newcomer withstood the chamber. Kyla attempted to focus, lest she be caught off guard, but the tiniest of flashes pulled her eyes upward. As soon as the movement was noticed, the air was still once more and Kyla shook her head, sure that Sei’s potion had somehow pushed her past just feeling better and into whiskey territory.

Suddenly there was a sound to her rear, followed by the most intense heat Kyla had felt outside of hell-realm. She couldn’t see what was coming, but knew it was coming quickly and she did the only thing she could think of.

A solid prevaldia door flew towards the occupants of the chamber, finding its home with a huge crash. The makeshift shield quickly turned colors as the fire hit its frame. The mystic threw herself to the ground, her back exploding with pain as the fire hit home. She rolled over, suffocating the flames between her charred flesh and the cool cement. Each tiny movement sent waves of torment through her body, but she forced herself to look to the side where her allies were safely behind a metallic wall.

Emma screamed outside the barrier, “Who’s a fucking coward now?” She rushed towards the arena, intent on aiding her sister when a familiar voice filled her mind.

”Another outburst like that and you will no longer attend events. Now sit down and give Ella a coin.”

“Yes sir.” Emma’s face fell, rage seething through her veins. She should be out there at Kyla’s side instead of in the stands watching her fall…again.

[Warpath]

“Take your pick, Basher,” the tiefling said, and Flint expertly concealed his relief. Had Aurelianus wished to torment him, he would have demanded that Resolve be the first to die. Flint was by no means friendly toward the coffee-skinned exorcist, but he was fond of her in his own twisted way. The fact that she’d proposed an alliance was sign of something intriguing and new, and even Flint Skovik found the betrayal of that in poor taste.

The brute clenched and unclenched his fists, padding on sodden soles toward the fray while he chose the unfortunate recipient of his attentions. The boy was creepy but slight, and Flint could only imagine how easily that little spine might snap across his knee. Not him, no, Luned was watching. The other dusky-skinned girl he recognized now, squinting against the dark, and he knew she was a little scrappier than her bearing suggested. The sword-wielder would have to be pried out of his tin can to get at the soft bits, like a shelling a crab – not difficult, but time consuming. Perhaps the blue-eyed mystic girl, standing…

Flint’s grin went slack, and his mind rebelled against itself. He told himself it wasn’t possible, that he’d just locked her inside a cell, and he turned to check just in time to catch an eyeful of blinding light, and then the pain started. It was a pain that would have been new to him, this man who prided himself on all the myriad varieties of pain he’d endured, except he’d suffered this torment not an hour ago. It was familiar: the searing heat in his skin, every hair standing on end pregnant with indescribable power, the agonizing and uncontrollable tensing of his muscles, the disquieting sucking sensation in his guts.

This time, Flint was dogged in his efforts to resist. In his heart of hearts he thought he could overcome electricity’s grip, will his muscles to obey him instead of the monstrous force chewing through him. He tried to roar but instead emitted a loud, rapidly oscillating croak, and no matter how furiously he wanted to curl his fingers into fists they went on shivering of their own accord. He decided he hated electricity.

This tireless struggle against an absolute fact of nature probably saved the brute’s life. When the electric shock finally released its hold on him, he was thrown bodily backward through the air, either as an aftereffect of the paralyzing energy or because he was struggling so ardently against it – or perhaps a combination of both. He struck the stone floor hard on his back and rolled, which in turn carried him safely away from a concussive rush of heat and light.

The brute was struggling as quickly as he could back to his feet when the deafening crash of shattering glass pierced his already-bleeding ears. Instinctively he curled upon himself and raised his armored forearms to protect his lowered head, and a rapid-fire series of sharp screams ran up his nerves from the fleshy muscle of his back. He’d been stabbed many times before, but never in such quick succession, and this time Flint did roar.

His choice to march into the cell shirtless was proving a lamentable one. He choked his vocalized fury into a hard, throat-rending growl and opened his eyes, flexing his overabundant musculature against the pain. So great was his blood-rage born of anguish that the world had been passed through a red-tinged filter, and he was so desperate to share his discomfort that he had the honest urge to start punching himself just because his was the nearest body to batter.

He reined himself in, and instead assessed the damage. There were large, steaming shards of glass half-submerged in the rolling flesh of his shoulders and upper arms, and he could feel dozens of their like running down his back. If not for the exceptional depth and density of his thews the shards might have pierced something invaluable, but despite the considerable suffering Flint went on breathing. He had some concerns about blood-loss, but after a few seconds of close scrutiny he realized his wounds had been cauterized around each impact site.

So the shards stayed and the brute endured the pain, a monstrous porcupine with glass quills.

He had an overpowering compulsion to share how he felt with someone, to pound and bite and stomp until bone cracked and crumbled and tore the surrounding flesh in its failure. It was so irresistible that he was nigh on frothing at the mouth, arms quivering, his new bloodstained accoutrements swaying rhythmically in the open air, glinting scarlet. If he had Kyla Orlouge in reach, it would not have been enough to merely kill her.

He spat and turned, and marched toward his enemies in one smooth motion. His boots were thunder, and every breath came with an inhumanly ragged growl. The arena was chaos, all sandstorms and shadows moving in ways that implied impossible physicality, and rat bones crunched underfoot, but he saw none of it.

There were only a handful of faces that could nudge Flint Skovik out of his relentless blood-fugue. The most obvious was Luned, but Lady Pain was the jealous type and her caresses had finally succeeded in pushing all thought of the scribe from Flint’s mind. The second was Aurelianus, who made his reappearance with a look of sadistic self-satisfaction, and that was enough to make Flint stop walking. Indeed, he took a step back, wisely expecting something dramatic and horrible.

The unnatural sandstorm mingled with and fed a sudden three-pronged black inferno. Flint didn’t know whether to laugh or dance or get angrier now that the objects of his odium were again out of reach. He chose to get angrier, and hollered wide-eyed at the unholy flames. His voice was loud enough to compete with the deafening clatter of a cell door being ripped out of its moorings and flung across the arena and into the flames.

The third face capable of giving the infuriated brute pause now materialized in the smoke and shadows, ethereal and strange: an incorporeal Resolve. Her odium was quieter, more focused, but no less intense, and it was directed on the tiefling. She glanced in Flint’s direction and did a double-take, momentarily taken aback. She made eye contact with him and he subtly shook his head. Not him. Not yet.

Resolve’s immaterial eyes scanned the bedlam and locked onto something beyond Flint’s ability to see, and she pointed emphatically. If not him, then this one?

Through the wavering flames he could see a figure that remained on the wrong side of the metal shield, suffering the heat exposed on the ground. Kyla Orlouge, prostrate and helpless and inside a wall of hellish fire. Flint stomped one foot and lost his proverbial shit, growling and twisting his head this way and that, and then he whipped around and crossed the block in a stomp and a leap.

Flint stepped up on the low horizontal crossbar holding the rest of the vertical cell bars in place, took hold of one bar, and yanked, and yanked, and roared, and yanked. The bar broke from its moorings at the top, sending loose stone and shards of metal and sparks raining down past the raging brute. He was oblivious. He kept pulling and struggling, twisting this way and that, his entire body straining, his veins standing out grotesquely against the skin, and then the bottom of the bar snapped loose and Flint violently tugged it free.

He turned and twisted and took a step, hoisted the bar high and back like a javelin, and then let it fly with tremendous force directly at the hapless she-mystic.

[Resolve]

Skittish, Resolve only allowed herself the briefest of glances, just to confirm that her intended meat shield hadn't gone down. Just the opposite –– there he stood in gory splendor, a massive, angry porcupine smelling of charred flesh, on the dangerous brink of a charge. His silhouette hulked stark against Aurelius' rain of hellfire, a beast bathed in darkness as the rest of the chamber went up in flame.

For half a heart beat, she almost understood how Luned found him fetching. She could vaguely empathize an attraction to that sort of sheer power. That was, until she remembered his ugly face pinched against his bald head, and any semblance of understanding washed away. Gross.

At this point, as she considered her options, Resolve became painfully aware of how unprepared her body was to fight. Her legs shook under her weight, muscles twitching in the aftershock of the magically-spawned electricity. She hadn't felt much for pain in the moment, but a trickle of blood from her ear surprised her as it ran down her neck to stain her belly-baring blouse. The mystic's lightning may have simply intended to stun, but it clung to her in a static of hurt. The residual wear of the boy's rat-scattering tactic only worsened the effect.

The girl slipped away and into the blessed privacy of the tiny washroom, crouching and tucking herself snugly into the corner next to the sink. If her body needed a break, she simply wouldn't use it. And so she did what exorcists do: she exorcised… herself.

In that moment, her consciousness manifested by her unlikely partner's side, catching his attention. When she actually got a good look at his face, its fire-stricken ferocity nearly made her shudder, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of earning such a reaction. She glared over at the tiefling, devising something as he bathed the hall in flame, but Flint caught her eye. Not yet, his expression said, and the girl almost couldn't believe any human reason survived the bestial bellowing. She scowled.

But there were plenty of other bodies to mangle, and with Aurelius occupied with a relatively helpful task, Resolve took it upon herself to seek the others. Her mind went to Kyla first, her next greatest source of frustration, and directed Flint's attention toward her prone body through the wall of hellfire. She would use him first, since her current form didn't allow her to influence the game.

The exorcist watched as the brute tore a bar from one of the cells, his bare back glistening with its vicious implants, then turned, hurling it toward the mystic. The grin returned to her lips as "team work" entered the good side of her vocabulary.

"Psst," she hissed at him, drawing his attention once more. She left the form of her astral projection transparent, only just substantial enough that he could catch her visual clues. The sight of her half-formed image floating in the chamber was enough to earn a double-take, like catching oneself in a dusty mirror out of the corner of an eye. "I can see all of them," she informed him. "Listen for my warnings."

And then she vanished again –– or did she? A blur flew through the haze as her specter gauged the situation, seeking visual confirmation of those on the other end of Aurelius' attack.

[Roht Mirage]

A smile like the proudest mother hen in the barnyard stretched Astarelle's face. The reverberation of the staff off the back of Arden's head, a sharp tong that rattled the iron-hard reed, was absolutely beautiful. With skirt-flaring speed, she bounded to her feet and plucked her returning staff out of the air. She gestured for Talen to take the lead toward the downed man. “You fir-”

Another rush of magic reached her ears, and the corridor took on a preternatural light. Black, of all colors. The veil of grit behind her popped and sizzled as hideous dark flames intersected the cloud and were sucked in by the cloying grains. Panicking, she forced the cloud to collapse to the ground around her feet in a pile that sang and sparked with residual combustion.

Only then did she look toward the source, a figure some distance down the corridor. She could make out the spikes on his head, as well as a sadistically gleeful grin that seemed to glow in the black light. The flames still sputtered on the ground in patchy lines that radiated away from him, but it wasn't without obstruction. Like the unploughed earth in the shadow of a stone, her and Talen, perhaps even Arden, had been saved by the magical, blue-humming bars she had seen earlier. “Again,” she breathed, attributing the miracle to the savior she did not yet know as Kyla. She felt another thankful outburst welling up in her, but she couldn't see the woman. Where she had been standing, there was only dying flames and torched stone, some of it looking almost like...

No.

Kyla looked at her with eyes that seemed, at first, too still. Astarelle felt a rage catching in her breast, devouring the dry tinder of fear and too-short companionship. Then, she saw the anguished rise and fall of Kyla small form breathing. Alive, she assured herself, but the rage did not subside.

A roar sounded behind her as if the depths had finally opened to reveal countless hungry mouths. She spun toward the sound, her vision playing over but discounting the other dark bodies. The smell of brimstone filled her nose, making her gag. Finally, she found the howling man. The shards of glass in his back sparkled in the flames' last almost-light like gemstones extruding from a broad cavern wall. His outline, even more ludicrously proportioned than she had once thought, rocked against the backing light of one cell's sunlit heart. He fought the bars with all the noise and fury of a caged animal trying to escape, though he was already on the free side.

With an equally loud protest, the horizontal crossbar came free in his hands, and his beady, monstrous eyes focused in Kyla's direction. His meaty arm reared back with the javelin, casting his form as a gladiatorial tableau against the shaft of light.

Astarelle's rage flared into a full blaze. “Look out!” she screamed as she lunged to intercept. Too far... if not for the staff. Her burnt sand jumped from the ground and surrounded her hands. The heat was still enough for her to smell a hint of cooking meat as the sand became a skin-tight oven, sealing her two-handed grip to the staff as straight and solid as if it were a piece of her body.

Shrieking, she brought her staff down on the airborne bar, catching its tail as it blurred past. Her thin body jolted, taking the full force of the glancing impact through her hands, up her arms, and into her spine. With a squeaky, fragile end to her shriek, she collapsed to her knees and cast the smoldering sand about her like a splash of paint. Her staff rattled against the floor, and her darkened hands slapped to the cool stone. The comforting sensation raced for her brain, a hopeless distance behind the pain that struck her. With her shaking body still bowed down on the floor, she whimpered.

~

Lump eagerly approached the knees of the man who smelled like his father once had. Particularly, those nights when his father would fall asleep, empty bottle dropping from one hand as it swayed over the arm of his chair.

“Can I have more?” he called up to the heights where the man's shadowy face resided. His long coat shifted, falling forward like a holey, dirt-encrusted curtain as he leaned down.

“Did you show them?” he asked in a voice like a broken cart dragging across cobblestones.

The man's breath smelled as strong as a hundred of Daddy's bottles. Lump smiled faintly, then looked away. He didn't particularly enjoy the smell. “Yeah,” he said sheepishly, hugging the coin pouch once more.

“And you didn't tell them where you go it?”

Lump's pudgy cheeks colored, imperceptible in the dark underbrush of the leg forest. “No,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster.

One black glove reached down, beckoning. “How about a deal?” the dirty mountain asked. “Give me back the pouch, and do me just one small favor. Then, I'll give you three times as much.”

The boy's eyes beamed like a cat sighting a fly. “O-okay,” he said, jittery with excitement. He pushed the jangling pouch into the man's hand. The bargain was sealed.

[Arden]

Bunny permission not obtained, hopefully liberties are not too excessively taken. PM me if edits required before next post.

“Oh that just about fucking does it!”

Composure, decorum, and tact went firmly out the window. Arden stood upright, rubbed the back of his head, and took stock of his surroundings. By virtue of his position, the fire had narrowly whipped past him, and devoured the heart of the wide, cell-lined arena. He could smell the malice in the air, and he saw the devastation to suit.

“I think Arden’s pissed…,” Duffy chuckled, observing the bedlam from the stands. The bard was enjoying himself far too much.

“He was doing so well…,” Ruby, forlorn, could only sigh with deflated enthusiasm. She leant back into her chair, folded her arms across her chest, and slouched.

Down below, Arden turned with a snarl to face Aurelianus. He received implicit instructions to test the occupants of the Cell as potential candidates for the Monster Hunting team. None, as far as he was concerned, would do. Now, all that remained for the crimson haired swordsman was pure, exalted pleasure.

“Er-mm,” Duffy mumbled. He jabbed a finger through the barrier, mouth half open, eyes sparkling with realisation. “Didn't we tell him not to do that?”

Suddenly, Ruby regained her interest. She sat upright, watched Arden stream towards the tiefling with the blade called Fang held high, and gasped.

“Oh Miss Bleddyn is going to be so angry…,” she said, shaking her head.

Arden let lose his inner hound, throwing his ideologies and pedagogies to the wind. In the darkness, and the hellfire-spangled cavern, he had no more restraint. He would cleave something, and indeed, someone in half before the day was done. As he vectored in on the glass-tarnished tiefling, two things happened he had been waiting for. Somebody paid him attention, true, aggressive, and passionless focus. Then, somebody levelled a sword at him, and the sound of blades clashing rattled through cells, bones, and souls.

“Hello, ‘cutter’,” he barked over their crossed swords. He leaned in, piercing gaze picking apart quill and quirk, and pushed as hard as he could into the tiefling’s stance.

Aurelianus, on true form, pushed right back.

“That’s…,” he said, straining, “my line!”

Feeling his weight give, Arden hopped back, swung his sword to the right, and brought it back with a riposte into Aurelianus’ thrust. He knocked it aside, continued his swing full-circle, and cracked the blunt edge downwards onto the half-demon’s hand. Metal chimed against unholy skin, knocked the hand down, and the sword with it. It left an opening Arden was all too happy to capitalise. With the Mastiff snarling rabidly in the gloom, his metal maw shifting in the limelight, Arden delivered a tight, steel clad fist to the cocksure smile of the last man in the Cell he was supposed to hit.

Nobody else was playing by the rules, so why should he?

[Hysteria]

I chuckled when the staff struck Arden in the head... but I gasp at the fire. The hellstorm conjured by the demon was more than I had expected to see, and the resulting mayhem was mostly a surprise because no one was killed. The roar of flames was surpassed by that of the crowd. Woops and hollas punctuated the tightly packed crowd. With some effort I maintained my position at the very edge, I couldn't bare to miss anything.

Talen had responded quickly, his eyes whipping towards the demon the instant he landed. I caught what seemed to be a look of confusion, whatever history was there was hidden from me. The kid bounded backwards from Arden and his allies. His feet kicked the ground again, launching himself against the wall. It was the second time that day I saw him defy gravity as he ran up the side of the cell and launched himself into the air. It was an inhuman leap and he moved through the air even weighed down with his weapons and hit the ceiling of the barrier. His similarities with a bat were noticeable as he stood handing upside down. With a practiced patience he pulled three bolts from the pouch on his leg and jammed them into the crossbow.

The kid was just above eye level with me and for the first time I got a good look at the weapon. It seemed to be a repeater of some kind. There was clearly space for four bolts at a time. It dawned on me that was the reason he had been able fire the bolts without loading. I made a mental note to acquire some for the store. It turned out to be a good idea, I made a tidy sum of money after the publicity the weapon received from the Cell.

The fire passed under Talen like a wave. It washed against stone and flesh, beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The youth seemed unfazed by it, an eerie look of calm on his face punctuated with the small smile. His eyes shot to the source of the fire, but quickly flicked back and settled on the brute attacking Kyla and Astarelle. Talen was off like a shot, running across the barrier with his arms and crossbow training behind. In a mind-bending leap he left the barrier and twisted in mid-air to right himself. His body landed on the charred ground and continued toward Flint at a sprint. From my angle I could see darkness welling up on his back. The youth lifted his bow, aiming towards the mammoth of a man. As soon as the youth fired the bolt his body lurched to the side. Moving between Astarelle and Flint the youth released another bolt towards the man's body.

Talen hit the bars of one of the cells with a thud. A tentacle had formed on the youth's back and whipped out to latch onto the bars. Using the appendage Talen had rocketed sideways and launched the attack. With his side pressed against the wall the youth trained his aim on the man. The foolish youth should have continued moving, but he just stood still.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

The stink of charred flesh hit the warlock's nostrils, making his mouth water all over again. He ran his forked, black tongue over his fangs, taking a step toward the now downed mystic chit, the myriad charms and talismans tied round his neck and wrists catching the bizarre unlight of the Hellfire he'd summoned.

He could see the girl writhing on the floor, smothering the flames on her back. The thought set his depraved lusts roaring through his brain-box. He glanced at the heavy door that had landed in front of his invoked inferno, before his serpentine-eyes slid back to the wounded meat lying in front of him.

"Cute trick," he smirked, but his amusement was short-lived.

The tin-man swordsman appeared, his sword flashing out to try and impale Aurelius, robbing him of the right to roast the bitch alive where she lay. The half-demon snarled as he whipped his knives out in a heartbeat, green-steel flashing as he parried and struck back at the swordsman.

If he was concerned by the fact this new fighter obviously new of him, Aurelius didn't let it show.

The tinny ring of metal on metal echoed through the narrow cell-block as the half-demon and the valiant knight exchanged blows, neither managing to land a telling blow against the other - they both came close, and more than one of the kill-trophies hanging from the planewalker's outlandish armour were cut to pieces, or completely sliced clear of their ties. Aurelianus had the advantage of sheer speed, and though the pair seemed matched in their mastery of their respective weapons, his opponent had the benefit of being clad in armour from the neck down. That severely limited the back-stabbing guttersnipe's options, but he had overcome worse.

It just meant he had to aim for the--

His momentary distraction cost him dearly, as his opponent's hilt smashed the knife from his left hand. Aurelius hissed viciously as the serrated blade skittered into the shadows. He didn't have time to react as the mailed-fist appeared out of nowhere, taking him cleanly in the face, smashing across his cheek and tearing the gash there open wider.

Starburts of white exploded across Aurelius' field of vision, the metal cracking his cheekbone, accompanied by a spectacular burst of black blood. It took him like a hammer-blow, sweeping the tiefling off his feet.

Still, a lifetime of brawls and dirty fighting left Aurelianus more than capable of handling such an injury. Even as his throat filled with thick rivulets of his blood, head snapping to the side, he threw himself into a spin letting the momentum of the punch carry him. His boot whistled round up to smash across the swordsman's jaw, whipping his own head aside with the inhuman speed behind the hobnailed boots.

The breath was driven from the half-breed's lungs as he hit the stone floor, bladed-ensemble scraping loudly as he rolled away from any follow up attacks. Moving with all the speed his demonic blood would allow, Aurelius got back to his feet, wiping the thick clods of blood from his face with the back of his right hand, the left still throbbing. He couldn't see it due to the black fingerless gloves covering his hands, but there was nasty bruise swelling there, and one or two of the bones were cracked.

Spitting a mouthful of his own bittersweet life-blood, Drak'shal shook his head to clear the worst of the black-spots from his eyes, marking his opponent. 'e ain't gettin' another shot like that in, the half-breed snarled to himself, spitting another sticky splatter of blood at Arden's shiny feet.

The tiefling must have looked a grim sight, black blood coating the lower half of his face thickly, gleaming wetly in the sparse light, fangs shining from the gory mess.

He was having the time of his life.

Aurelius paused only long enough to offer his opponent a curt nod, as close to a mark of respect as anyone in this hell-hole little dungeon was likely to receive; his horns shone above his snake-like eyes, a brief flash of sunlight on the obsidian rings across his right brow, and the contrast of black hydras against his alabaster skin as he dipped his chin. His quills hissed softly as they scraped against one another.

Before the swordsman could continue on his offensive, Aurelianus raised his free hand, feeling the sharp sting of his pulse echo through the nasty bruise. With the barest flick of his wrist, the bloody and bruised warlock hammered Arden's sword hand with an Eldritch Blast. The heat-haze of pure arcane energy lashed out with more strength than Aurelius could ever hope to hit with himself, with the hope of disarming his playmate.

Even as he raised his hand, however, the tiefling was bringing up a gout of Hellfire in the back of his throat, feeling the clinging, corrosive nightmare lapping at the back of his throat.

As soon as the Eldritch Blast left his palm, Drak'shal opened his blood-slicked mouth and unleashed the blast of soul-sickening black flames.

Let's see 'ow the tin-man likes me turnin' up the 'eat, he thought.

[Arden]

The blast struck true, and only a hastily conjured sphere of silence stopped Arden roaring in pain. It veiled his head, and dragged the sound from his lungs. All the same, his body reacted naturally, and he opened his fanged maw with a contortion of agony. Instincts kicked in. Hatred grew in his stomach. His heart skipped a beat. He would give his opponent the luxury.

Kerria fell from his grip, struck the stone, and span away with a raucous rattle. Had he the gall, Arden would have risen, and pummelled the tiefling’s bloodied maw repeatedly for the transgression. He had grown up on dirty streets and risen high in the ranks of the underworld too quickly to fall for that. The gobbet of fire in Aurelianus’ mouth gave his game away.

“Come now,” he rasped. The sphere vanished.

Arden, sweat pouring down his spine, bent at the knee and rotated clockwise. His cloak erupted into life, swirling in his wake to obscure his movements.

Whoosh.

Hellfire burnt the air blacker than midnight, and tried to make the Hound wear it as a death robe. It ripped through the space Arden had been a split-second prior, but singed only the ends of his hair, and warmed only the cockles of his heart. All the same, he grit his teeth against the urge to roll haphazard out of harm’s way, trusting his judgement to have been enough.

“We’re gentlemen here,” he continued, but only when the fire stopped and the cackling resumed.

Some of them where, anyway. Bereft of The Oni Slayer, Arden resorted to another old friend. As he rose from his stoop, he reached under his cloak and unsheathed a short sword. Newly forged not two weeks prior, in the name of peace between Scara Brae and Corone, he snapped it upwards in a rapier sharp thrust.

“That so?” Aurelianus clucked. His speed, an edge over Arden he was too easy to abuse, allowed him to side step the gambit. “Not what the chit with the red hair told me.”

Up in the stands, Ruby Winchester rolled her eyes. She was rather hoping that particular incident had fallen by the wayside.

“He really does know how to put his mouth in it,” she sighed. Duffy chuckled. “Arden is…well,” she shuffled in her seat, an uncomfortable, writhing mess of noble incivility, “defensive over us.”

At that precise moment, he did just that. With deft footwork, and keen senses, he engaged with Aurelianus on equal terms. His blackened knife, a blade he had heard much about, was there to greet his sword every time. All around them, exploding in chaos and calamity, the fighting in the Cell continued. All Arden focussed on was his opponent. Every twist, turn, and pirouette they entered and left a part of a long war, a delicate dance.

The tiefling found an opening, stepped in and around an earth-piercing thrust, and brought the dagger down into the Mastiff. By some small grace, a miracle for a demonic usurper, the tip of the dagger went through the eye mould, and embedded a good inch of its bite into Arden’s muscular shoulder.

With a howl that broke the moon, the Mastiff’s enchantment shattered. It resounded in Arden’s head, feeding back agony and guilt to its master. With a gruff, revenge driven maneavours, he stumbled back, kicked up to feint, and then slipped the tip of his own blade casually through Aurelianus’ cocksure, nauseating wall of loathing. His legs buckled, but he had been tortured, maimed, and hounded for centuries – this was nothing.

An eye for an eye was the normal exchange, but Arden was happy enough with an intestine.

[Amber Eyes]

She shivered. The mystic herself could not pin down if it was from his words or the frigid breath, but a chill rand down her spine. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the darkness while his blended in so perfectly the girl thought he was fading away. The force holding her against the brick lessened, proving her eyes were not deceiving her after all. Just as quickly as he had approached, the man faded into nothingness, leaving only his words playing in her mind.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sounds seemed to float past her ears, never quite connecting with her mind. She was vaguely aware of the clanging of swords, a scream, a swooshing sound, but the first true sound she heard was a loud clang as a huge metal bar landed inches from her head. Kyla wasn’t sure how long she’d lain there, only that the view had changed since her last conscious moment. The door stood still, proof that she’d accomplished her goal, at least for the moment, her allies lived.

Even as the realization hit her that something in this damn tournament had finally gone right, the bar fell. Her leg found itself in the path of the large metal rod, and pain shot through her. Kyla’s instincts forced her to sit, ripping open the melted flesh in her back. She could hear the sickening tear, feel the pull of the skin as it tore, but there was very little pain. In this fact the girl should have found comfort but it only brought about the realization that the burn went deep enough to destroy nerves. Organs were just beyond, probably damaged at best, and destroyed at worst. Still, for the moment, she lived.

The young woman lifted the bar, pulling her leg free and holding her breath. She tested her movement, nothing seemed to be broken. Had she by some chance managed to escape unharmed? She pulled herself to her feet, the charred remains of her shirt slumping to her arms as her exposed back came into view of the spectators.

Anita screamed, Kyla’s back was for lack of a better word, disgusting. Her flesh was blackened, the back of her ribs poking through what little skin remained. It was the kind of injury you saw on the dead or dying, not on someone walking around.

The mystic took a step and collapsed to her knees, the leg would bear no weight. Adrenaline rushed through her, and the pain was manageable, but there was little she could do about the damaged limb. She removed the rest of the shirt, tying it as tightly as possible around her ankle. The girl felt the shadows building inside her, this time though instead of a sword her hand was filled with a metal rod. She pushed up upon her makeshift crutch, her body screaming for her to stop. She reached her feet, a momentous feat, and the crowd began to scream.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Aurelianus grinned ferally as he felt his blade bite deep into flesh, the glyphs on the blade pulsing faster, flashing scarlet as they tasted blood - the nasty little enchantment would keep the warrior's wound weeping crimson tears. He tried to twist the blade, the muscles on his forearms straining taut as he tried to pry the rent in the armour wider. But it was stronger than he by far, and the tiefling settled for viciously tearing the knife loose as Arden stumbled back, sending a fine spray of droplets across the floor.

Running his tongue up the flat of the blade the degenerate shivered in rapture as the hot, metallic taste of his opponent's blood flooded his taste-buds. Oh, but it was sweet!

His bloodlust surged, victory singing through his veins, but as it had often done before, it made Aurelius too sure of himself. So when the swordsman's leg came up in what should have been an obvious feint, the half-demon fell for the move and brought his blade down to impale the shin..

Only for the red-headed warrior's sword to whip up and down for a perfectly executed stab.

The warlock tried to dodge back, but he had over-committed himself, and he only managed to turn his torso and take the edge of the blade across his ribs. The keen edge of the weapon scored a deep furrow across the tough leather, but the hides it was crafted from were exceptionally resilent against such weapons.

Sadly, while his flesh had been repaired after the first round, his armour had not, and the blade cut a channel across the tear opened up by one of Resolve's gun-shots. A bark of pain burst from the plane-touched killer's mouth, a thin trickle of blood from his ruined nose spilling down his chin in thick ropes. The sword slid clear, a splash of liquid darkness smearing the gleaming face of the blade. Arden smirked magnanimously as Drak'shal danced back a few paces, his right hand coming up to press against the wound, the knife passing fluidly to his bruised left fist. The wound wasn't exceptionally deep, but the sharp sting was definitely proof it was more than a paper-cut.

But the Knight wasn't the only one with a few tricks up his sleeve. Hissing in a deep breath and preparing himself for the pain he knew was to follow, Aurelius willed a small burst of Hellfire into his palm, the ebony flames searing the lacerated blood vessels shut in one almighty flash of agony before he willed the flames out of existence.

It took a heartbeat, but by the Powers, it hurt like a cast-iron bitch.

He allowed himself a brief scream, the stink of his own cooking flesh permeating the air around him. His vision blurred around the edges, but he would gladly take the familiar torment of his own fire than risk bleeding his strength out dribble by dribble. Knowing he could take more physical punishment than most bodies, the Cager deemed the on-the-spot cauterisation a fair trade. The half-breed's eyes glared hatefully from under his brow, shining in the gloom like two pinpricks of gold. The hydras tattooed along his scalp hissed their silent fury at the bastard before them.

His opponent staggered back to his feet, sword raised ready to press his advantage. And the plan was a good one, Aurelius admitted. It might even have worked.

But Aurelianus Drak'shal had never been one to play fair.

Taking his hand away from the burned gash, his gloves still smoking at the edges from the heat, leather dry and cracked, the warlock pointed his palm at Arden with a smug smirk twisting the corner of his blood-smeared mouth.

With a surge of sheer willpower, Aurelius summoned up the full force of his Eldritch Blast, launching out a bone-smashing wall of raw, unadulterated arcane power. The blast filled the majority of the narrow corridor with the heat-haze of its passage, roaring silently towards the Ixian and lifting a few of the rat corpses from the floor in its wake.

Even as the surge left his hand, the quilled hellspawn was sprinting after it, bloodied knife in his fist. A heartbeat after the Eldritch Blast hit Arden, Aurelius launched himself into the air, reversing his grip on the Baatorian blade with a graceful spin. The pain of his charred flesh tore through him, but he drove it out of his mind, every ounce of his ego-fuelled will focussed on the kill.

He came down at his challenger, fangs bared and knife flashing in a cleaving downward arc, hopefully to bury itself in the swordsman's throat.

[Warpath]

Flint let the momentum of his titanic throw carry him forward for a step, one arm stretched straight and empty in front of him. His eyes followed his makeshift spear in its flight and gradual descent – a beautiful throw, promising a satisfying impact. But then the sand-wielding witch leapt dramatically into his frame of vision and intercepted the airborne bar with her own reach-enhancing weapon. Normally the brute would have been impressed.

Today he stood up straight and choked on his disbelief, head cocked to one side. His eyelids drew back alarmingly, and he was the very picture of quivering outrage for a lengthening moment in time. He got past it eventually, and jabbed his finger at the fallieni woman from across the room, even as she dropped to her knees.

“YOU,” he boomed. “YOU!”

The unholy inferno evaporated when Aurelianus fell into combat with the swordsman, freeing Flint to being marching into the dissipating heat, hands clenching and unclenching. Every step sent a hundred surges of pain up his spine, like needles jabbing the place from whence all anger came, and it fed the mind-bending urge to break living things. The scorched mystic was entirely forgotten now, and Flint had entertained a dozen troublingly violent scenarios involving the priestess when he was still a dozen steps away from initiating a single one.

And then he caught an alarming blur in the peripherals of his vision, and his frustration redoubled over top itself. Every time he found an outlet for his ire, another gnat appeared to nip at him from just out of reach. This one was the darkling youth, who could move. Between his dark dress and hair, his sheer speed, and gravity’s lack of authority over him, it was nearly impossible to track his motion as he darted up and across the dungeon.

Flint growled and flexed his fingers as he watched, eyes shifting rapidly this way and that in a frustrating effort to follow the youth’s trek – an effort rendered moot. He dropped from on high and landed right in the brute’s path, and for an instant Flint smiled and lunged forward to meet him.

…and then the boy lifted a crossbow and let a quarrel fly, even as he broke away to one side.

Now, Skovik knew himself better than anything in the world. He was aware of his height, his strength, his weight, and more than anything his breadth. His torso was uncommonly huge, and so it made an excellent target for archers and knife-slingers and gunmen. Even somebody with gods-awful aim could take a shot at Flint Skovik and find it reasonable to expect to hit flesh somewhere.

Armed with that foreknowledge, confirmed a few dozen times in Salvar’s underground gladiatorial arenas, Flint reacted with practiced speed. He curled and turned, and his armor-clad forearms came in just in time. A bolt intended for his guts instead impacted his right vambrace, driving his wrist into his abdomen and shattering the quarrel.

Adrenaline flooded the brawler, a thrilling buzz that spread from his naked scalp down along his spine and out into every vein, strumming his nerves from behind his eyes to the ends of his toes. The shadowy youth was suspended in midair like a marionette, short hair billowing, one leg outstretched, cold eyes calculating his next shot in super slow motion. Beyond him the fallieni woman was still on her knees, and Flint could see individual droplets of sweat on her scalp even from this distance, in the dark. The world throbbed, the shafts of sunlight like searing blades thrust downward from the heavens, and every subtle color was newly intense and supersaturated.

The crossbow loosed another bolt, and Flint could see it coming, spinning, trembling as the air resisted its passage. It seemed so fragile, and yet he knew it was going to kill him. If he did nothing it would find his throat, a lucky shot that would lodge the dart right in his spine from the far side – the only thing preventing it from passing clean through. Despite his enhanced awareness, Flint moved no faster than anything else. He twisted, straightened, and pushed up with his knees, but each individual motion took an eternity to initiate, and all along he could see the projectile bearing down on him, dooming him. The notion of half that speed was audacious, inconceivable.

Some sounds faded, and others surged forward into stark relief. He heard a droplet of water, the clink of a single link of chain somewhere distant, the voice of a child begging, a gasp, a ragged breath, the crackle of charred skin. The crossbow string sang, and the whip-click-twang of it raced the bolt itself and won.

Time snapped back into place, the bolt became a featureless blur, and Flint twisted and cried out as a cloud of blood sprayed into the air behind him. He went down on his knees as his would-be murderer collided with a cell wall, and when he inhaled he shivered, and felt blood and grit on the back of his throat. He reached up with his shaking right hand and gripped the quarrel protruding from his left bicep, and hissed passionately as he dragged it back out through the meat of him.

The blood rolled down along his arm in rivulets, tracing the curves of muscle, caressing the outside of the veins it had occupied the inside of fractions of a second before. He felt it pooling on his bracers, seeking out even the smallest gap between skin and metal and finding no accommodation.

Flint was exhausted, watching dully for a half-beat as the blood smeared and mingled with a fine layer of soot on his arm and shoulder. Had he already lost that much blood? He dismissed the notion, grinding his teeth. Had his rage taken so much out of him? No, he could quake and thunder for hours. Perhaps he was just inured to it all, battered by decades of violence until now, this very moment, when he finally felt fed up with the unending attempts on his life.

If they’d only listen when he spoke. If they only obeyed when he commanded. If only they’d stayed out of his way, respected him, feared him as they should. If only they’d all just…

“Die,” Flint snarled, twisting and rising up to his feet again in one smooth motion. He threw the bloodied quarrel at his attacker – ineffectual, but nobody likes having sharp objects thrown at them.

Relying on that basic truth, the brute surged forward at the shadowy youth, kicking himself up off the horizontal crossbar again, lashing out with his one good hand to try and smack the crossbow out of the murderous kid’s hands.

[Roht Mirage]

“Get up! Get up!” Raylene bellowed. Bouncing with her fists white-knuckled on the railing.

“Do it, Roht! Just like her!” Tabin shouted, pointing at the rising form of Kyla. He wasn't the only one.

Master Kotra frowned. Nothing more than I expected. He gave his two elder students each a glance, catching them as they shared a look of begrudging camaraderie. They're getting along, at least.

Unmindful of the spectacle and the crowd's rolling cheers, he shot a cautious eye over his shoulder for the hundredth time. The ferals that lined the railing to either side kept most of the other spectators far enough away to be featureless against the meager torchlight. But, he needed only to identify color. Where are you, my tribesman? he pondered into the crowd, Are you trying to draw me out? Aside from Astarelle and one other combatant, he had seen not even a shadow of anyone from his homeland. They were either disguised or... he dared not suspect it. Is it you, boy? If you're alive, oh how you must have grown.

A sudden movement caught his eye. While the crowd leaned ever farther forward, threatening to spill onto the barrier like birds into a clean window, one shape moved away. He caught just a pale, soft-featured face. Short. Hair in a high tail. A woman? His tribe would never share their secrets with a pale woman. But, if Astarelle's tribe was as serious about keeping its secrets as his was, or worse, truly as dangerous as she warned.... It was long said, from many wise mouths, that Fallien secrets rarely survived beyond the desert. His heart tightened as he started to turn back toward the bloodsport. Burn you, woman. If your showiness brings assassins down on us-

He hadn't even spun completely around when the crowd gasped and pointed to some spectacle above the arena. “He'll fall!” a woman shrieked. Kotra twisted to look farther along the railing. A lone feral, one-third of the quietest bunch, was wobbling on the very top bar like a drunk acrobat, and on his head was the most ridiculous, over-wrought hat that had ever been birthed into creation. A wrinkly hand shot from low on the crowd, seizing the back of the boy's shirt as an old woman's furious face followed like a troll mask floating in a sea of bodies.

For one brief, serendipitous moment, the boy looked down upon all the lowlings, his crown waving opulent frills and fake flower petals. He gripped the brim in both hands, tilted his head back and -with passion to overshadow the most downtrodden of revolutionaries- crowed something absolutely unintelligible. The old woman reeled him back like a guppy, her other hand already raised to swat his behind, but the battle cry had been sounded. And it spread. All the children around Kotra, save Dahvim, returned to their primordial, gutter-crawling forms with loud woops and screams. They disappeared under the surrounding bodies like poison leeching into a thousand open wounds.

“Horseshit,” Tabin breathed, then looked at his master expectantly. Dahvim reached up for his brother's hand.

“Their dead mothers will be mortified,” Kotra intoned with a sardonic sigh, then turned to his lanky student and belted out orders above the rising screams for violated pockets. “Round up as many as you can. Promise them candy, no bedtimes, or that we'll throw away the tub, anything. We're leaving before our hosts pin us down.” Tabin bolted in one direction with Dahvim scrabbling as his heels. Kotra went the other. He gave only a cursory glance for Raylene and found her gripping the hands of the pudgiest feral. No orders needed. Good girl.

What he didn't realize, as he set about plucking beast-children off pant legs and shouting them into obedience, was that Raylene was not leading the child. The child was leading her. They both disappeared quietly into the dark entrance hall as the scene dissolved into utter purse-clutching chaos.

~

Astarelle knelt, frozen. The pain of her cooked fingers luxuriated all up her body as the flesh began to swell and blister. “Please be worth it,” she whispered as she forced herself to stop looking at her hands, forced herself to ignore the thick man's threats, and looked up through the flame-licked gloom to see Kyla using the tool of impalement as a crutch. She looked as if she had turned her back to a dragon, but she stood. Astarelle smiled as a tear -either from pain or relief- rolled down her sweat-glazed cheek.

Then, the battle's heartbeat kicked in again. Explosions wooshed beyond Kyla, sending a dead rat skipping from the shadows to stop in front of Astarelle. One beady eye pointed at her ominously. A blur of shadows shot by, making her look up from the rat hopefully. “'I'm with you, Shadow,” she promised as she shifted her feet under her. In that moment, the behemoth who, it seemed, would have liked nothing more than to run right over her, recoiled on the force of Talen's bolt. A wing of blood sprouted darkly from the man's back and continued on to spray the bars.

Astarelle gripped her staff in one charred hand and stood, her voice rising in an anguished scream. The pain pulsed through her anew like a second heart beating fire and shrapnel into her veins. In step with that new tempo, she ran. The twice-wide man was closing on Talen, swiping at the crossbow. Astarelle's split skirt swept wide as she planted her left foot and launched herself over the carpet of stinking ash and blood. Her right shoe, iron-plated at the toe, arced toward the man's face, and her staff whipped overhead imprecisely. She was not trying to strike him with it, but to scrape it down his back where glass still protruded like prehistoric plates.

Cover me, she willed toward Talen as she realized that her underside was totally exposed to the monstrous arms. He hadn't moved, even as the man's swipe came dangerously close to disarming him. Instead, he just disappeared, crossbow and all, back to the shadows from whence he came. Astarelle's mind staggered, Or don't.

Bunny was approved by Hysteria. Bunny permissions have been granted to Warpath for his next post.

[Resolve]

As Aurelius' flood of flame dissipated in the wake of his confrontation with the soldier, Resolve scoured the hall, discovering the two other women prone on the floor. The makeshift spear had missed its target, to her dismay. Kyla's back appeared as if it had simply melted away, charred flesh offering unsettling glimpses of white bone, and she cringed. As much as the exorcist's competitiveness inspired her anger, she felt a brief pang of pity for the girl, yet again reminded of how she'd met her in the first round. They weren't all that different, and that could've been herself if she hadn't been so lucky.

But the lapse of moral weakness was a short one as she realized something significant: the gun. She looked to Flint, wondering if she should warn him, but rage had taken its hold; as she watched him roar and charge, she knew communication was a lost cause.

There, floating above the mayhem, the she realized that she felt left out. Incorporeality had its benefits, but Resolve wasn't there to watch. She was there to kick some ass. And so she vanished, transparent form flickering and disappearing as she returned to her sorry carcass still stuffed in the corner of the tiny washroom.

The girl jolted awake, lurching upwards, and immediately hit her head hard on the sink. "Fuck! Ugh," she gasped, dropping back to her knees and allowing herself a moment to nurse her aching brain. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," she berated herself, but as with most haphazard incidents, the throb lessened with the allowance of a second or two to breathe.

Yes, breathe. Resolve continued her exercise of slow in, slow out, forcing herself to take stock of what she had to work with. Something had happened in that strange fall of shadow in the beginning and she'd felt sluggish ever since, but she could manage. After all, she had no choice.

Staggering to her feet, the girl continued to breathe in conscious steadiness, keeping her sixth sense trained on the other presences in the chamber in case any came near. None did. How long could she have kept that up? Perhaps this was stupid of her, perhaps she should've waited for them all to kill each other off and simply faced the victor. It could have led to a win, if the other had been mangled enough in the end. But she had to be honest with herself: even if such a sneaky thought tempted her, she didn't have a patient bone in her body. The wait would kill her if the competitors didn't.

To her relief, all in all, she felt relatively fine. The tremors from Kyla's lightning had fallen away as she'd allowed herself to sleep, as if that was the break her body had needed to recuperate from the literal shock. So she steeled herself, smoothing the skirt of her sari, and––

"Luned?" She said her friend's name in a hoarse whisper, as if someone might hear, and immediately sought her in the crowd. That reassuring warmth hadn't moved from where she'd last captured its presence, and she drew the sensation close in a desperate attempt for emotional support. The crowd had risen up into cacophony, initially in triumph, but as the swell of cheer briefly ebbed, she had thought she heard the cry of a familiar voice. Had something happened to Flint?

"Gods damn it," she sighed, took one last deep, nurturing breath, and dashed out from her cage and back toward the fray. This time, she would stay. She would kill, and the mystic would be first.

The exorcist's sleek form nearly flew as she ran toward the heat, footfall confident even with her wavering endurance as she navigated the precarious mess left by the strange shadow magic. She drew two palms of crackling energy, one at the ready and one in reserve, as she swept down the hall. Again, the prevalida bars strummed as she slipped swiftly past, her approach seemingly silent under the crowd's thunder.

She dashed past Aurelius and the soldier, past Flint and the boy and the woman, and barely registered the startling increase of blood as she aimed for the mystic. It may have made Resolve appear the villain, attacking the Ixian's beloved daughter as she struggled to stand, but she knew better than to underestimate her.

As soon as she came within a twenty foot range, she threw two blasts in quick succession, bone-shattering in strength and viciously accurate as she aimed to take care of the pest.

[Amber Eyes]

She shook. Her body still felt cold in all the places he had touched, the tiniest proof that he had in fact stood before her moments ago. The dark street stretched before her, the moon shining off the street leading toward Ixian Castle much like a protected pathway. The mystic breathed deep one last time and ran like hell towards home.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kyla tried her foot once more, limping quickly off it once pain shot through her leg. She turned to face the other in the chamber, just in time to see everything happen at once. Arden and the demon were locked in battle, the female mage flew through the air towards the barbarian, and Resolve was heading straight for her.

The mystic leaned against the rod that supported her right side, pulling her pistol from her left. Before she aimed, the girl shot a mystic bomb towards the behemoth, careful to place it on the side away from her newfound friend. The orb began to suffocate, the shadows creating images on the stone floor as it danced its way closer to detonation. The mystic quickly pulled her arm up, shakily aiming her weapon towards the brat who had tormented her through both chambers and fired.

The first shot echoed through the chamber and Kyla’s heart raced.

The second shot made her breathing still.

The third shot marked the explosion of the mystic bomb, and Kyla Orlouge laughed.

She breathed deeply remembering the words of the strange man in the streets of Radasanth. “You will find in the Cell an unlikely ally and a forever foe. Choose carefully.” The sneer in his tone would never leave her, one more clue on the road to the death she’d agreed to so many years ago.

The prophecy was just beginning. No matter how hard she tried to fight it, each word would come true. Soon, the girl would be no more.

[Hysteria]

The sight of Kyla's flesh peeling off her back is not likely to leave me any time soon. The black, charred mess attached to a person, and it was horrific. I struggled to stop myself from vomiting. A few dry wrenches lifted into the air from the crowd. Around me many felt the same. I forced myself to continue watching, the horror of war was a spectre hanging over every battle. I knew now that the macabre play of the first cell fight had been just a precursor to the inevitable end of every true fight. There were no rubber swords here, no safe padding and calling uncle.

Talen's bolt struck Flints arm, the youth painfully uncaring about the agony of his ally. Perhaps it was that he respected her sacrifice too much to let it go to waste? I hoped so. If he actually didn't care I didn't know if I could continue to watch. I took solace that the smile had slid from his face. His pale features hard, his eyes focused.

The crowd had ridden the waves of battle up until this point fairly well. The flames had caused a roar, the lightning gasps and the charred flesh revulsion. All of a sudden however there was chaos as children lifted out howls of wild abandon. I grabbed one as he attempted to slide its hand into the pocket of my coat to get at my second wallet. Its an old trick when out and about. Carry one wallet with a bit of money, enough to make it seem that you don't carry much, but not so little as to cause suspicion. When it gets taken, and it will get taken, you have your reserve. The fact that the kid was so audacious as to attempt getting into my inner pocket spoke volumes about the depths they would go.

“Get out of it!” I roared and the child disappeared.

My heart nearly stopped when I turned back. Talen had disappeared and Astarelle was attacking. My eyes flicked around wildly. A woman appeared from one of the cells, but no Talen. I realised then that she must have used some sort of projection before, the ghostly visage some sort of spirit embodiment of herself. I didn't really care, I had decided to follow the moments of Talen and somehow I had lost him.

The question was answered as darkness rippled into existence behind Flint. The youth appeared, only a few metres from where he had been. His hands were wrapped around one of his swords, his other still strung across his back. The crossbow, even the bolts on his legs were gone. I was impressed that he had the wherewithal to maintain the composure for such an attack. The youth moved forwards quickly, his body hunched low as he came from the opposite side as Astarelle and the projectile attack from Kyla. I had to admire it, they worked surprisingly well together. Their three way pincer attack against the brute was far more than I'd expected to see in the brawl. The kid's sword flashed out in a wide arch aiming towards the back of Flint's legs. From what I knew about anatomy he was aiming to slice tendons at the back of the knees. It wasn't an attack to kill, it was one to disable. Was his child-like body just for show? No child would act so ruthlessly.

[Arden]

The knife cut the aorta before Arden could raise a defence. The irony of the Silent Swordsman finding silence was not lost on the crowd, whose fever pitch rose more freshly still as death finally filled the arena. Unceremoniously, he pushed himself free of the tiefling’s blade, and stumbled back sputtering.

“You should be dead, cutter,” the fiend quipped. He stepped away, knife spinning, grin flashing, and mind racing.

Instead of falling, Arden remained upright, but limp. Something kept him standing, and empowered his blood to move. It rose up, not down, and spiralled together into knots, and then into threads, and then…

“I don’t think this will end well…,” Duffy sighed. He could sense the presence of blood magic, even from his vantage point. He felt around wellsprings of the Tap the same corruption. The same devastating power had all but ended continents and kings.

“He can control it…,” Ruby erred. She leant forwards, trying to get a better view, and hide her rumbling stomach from the crowd. Her nerves were getting the better of her.

The threads arced back, and Arden looked skyward, open wound oozing blood, but reforming as his new limbs expanded. Feathers flashed into view, made of blood, but as real to the touch as bone. A second wing flipped upwards from the blood running down the small of his back, where the knife had penetrated through his back, and together they beat one feral beat.

“Each time you knock me down,” Duffy mouthed, remembering Arden’s atypical line in times like these, “I rise higher still…”

The beat scattered blood in a thick wave across the tiefling, and back in two long arcs across the charred, acrid stone of the Cell’s central promenade. It washed over Kerria, still and dormant feet away. With one, defiant gargle, Arden lurched, fell forwards, and cracked jaw to slab. The wings fell over him, shrouding his corpse, and then dissipated into a fine, dancing mist. Only an unpaid act of salvation in the darkest of debauch nights could save him now.

[Amber Eyes]

There were many in the crowd who turned their eyes from the bloodshed. Instead they watched the faces of the sisters of the now weakest contender in the cell.

Anita’s face wore an expression of horror. Her heart raced as Kyla took one wobbly step after another.

Emma looked angry, her frustration at being unable to help her sister was so clear that Sei felt compelled to whisper comforts to her.

Ella was fast asleep on the cement step, the slow rise and fall of her chest the only sign of life. Her golden locks were spread upon Anita’s lap, while her feet were nestled against Emma’s leg.

Kyla did her best to remain standing, each painful limp forward more of a challenge than any training session for the Ixian generals. Her eyes were focused, her goal clear. She could not fall before she completed her task. There upon the bloodied ground lay one of the most powerful weapons Kyla had ever seen.

That blade had pierced her heart on the darkest of nights. Its metal had sliced through her, its power had saved her. Kyla could think of nothing but Kerria. The girl reached the place where the magical blade lay, its hilt resting peacefully in the midst of the bloodshed. Her heart raced as Sophia’s Mane began to glow, sensing the power that the sword held. She reached down to the blade, careful to keep most of her weight from the bad leg, and picked up the glaive.

As she held the weapon Kyla looked down upon its fallen owner. The man who had saved her life. The mad who had cast her aside. The man who proved he had no allies in this tournament.

The mystic swung the sword, enjoying its perfect balance, something all too often mussed up by average blacksmiths. The weapon could certainly help her in surviving this fight to the death. Arden was a competitor, he had to fall before she could win. He would walk again, but for now he could only get in her way.

Kyla held the sword tighter, turning to see the crowd. Ella rubbed her sleepy eyes, opening them just in time to meet those of her sister. The innocence there made Kyla’s heart stop. Could she truly walk away from Arden while those eyes watched? Was she capable of taking a slain man’s sword and using it for her own purposes? She wanted to be.

The mystic lifted the sword and turned once again before bringing the blade down with all her might straight into the heart of the hound.



(((Arden has permission to bunny Kyla as needed in his next post.)))

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

The blade bit deep and true, every serration tearing the gash in the swordsman's throat into a wider red smile.

Aurelius forced the weapon in, giving it a vicious twist before ripping it free in a wash of crimson. A fine mist of blood sprayed over his already gore-soaked features, making him an even more horrific sight to look upon. He didn't care; he was too wrapped up in the heady intoxication of the kill, his senses roaring to new heights, every pulse thrumming along his veins singing sweetly of the bloody murder he had perpetrated.

And then Arden stood up.

Aurelianus bit back his rapidly surging fury, fangs bared in an ugly snarl as he watched the impossible sight before him. Arden staggered back to his feet, gurgling through the rent flesh, pouring thick streams of blood down his otherwise pristine armour... except they weren't. The tiefling blinked once in astonishment as the vitae flowed together, threads of liquid running together and entwining until a pair of hideous wings emerged proudly from the should-be-deader.

The half-demon scanned his opponent, not sure quite what to expect after what had just happened, but as the wings gave one powerful flap, he threw up a hand to cover his face from the deluge of blood that followed.

The irate tiefling turned his head away from the soaking, seeing the vivid streaks arcing up the floor, only parted where his body blocked the flow. Pausing for the briefest second to make sure no nastiness was to follow, Aurelianus turned back to his opponent, shaking a thick rain of red from his limbs, running a hand up his face and through his quills to try and clear his vision.

Arden was already lying face down on the floor, wings quickly disappearing as the blood broke apart back to the natural way it was supposed to act. He looked a pitiful sight, but the degenerate who had murdered him was completely immune to such a feeling. He felt nothing but elation at his accomplishment, and he licked his lips to savour the heady taste of the deader's life-blood, chuckling softly at the undignified splash of colour under Arden's swelling chin.

Seeing everyone else already engaged in their own little scuffles, the Cager turned away and walked a few unhurried steps along the cell-block corridor. Bending at the waist and hissing as the burned flesh on his side pulled tight and with a low sussurating hiss, he knelt down to collect the knife Arden had knocked from his hand earlier in their bout. Giving the blade a quick wipe-down against his thigh, which actually left it more bloody for his troubles, Aurelianus re-sheathed the weapon and turned back to pick a new target for his ire.

Only to find it standing right in front of him.

The she-mystic stood there, her back immolated by the blast of Hellfire earlier, her hand wrapped around the hilt of Arden's sword... which Drak'shal was perturbed to see, she was about to bury through the swordsman's heart.

Whatever she had planned, whatever she was trying to do to the Hound's corpse, the incandescent wave of mind-numbing rage that roared through the fiendish warlock was not going to give her the chance. She had not only had the audacity to survive his earlier invocation, but she had passed up the chance to run him through when his back was turned.

She. Had. Ignored him.

NO-ONE IGNORES ME!! the cry echoed around the confines of his brain-box, trying to tumble to a logical reason, and explanation, a possible justification for underestimating him. But a single thought instead kept flashing white-hot against the background chatter of his brain.

Burn her.

The half-breed let his ego feel the full brunt of the insult; that the girl didn't even deem him enough of a threat to dispatch while his attention was elsewhere! The affront to his almighty arrogance would not.. could not be ignored.

He slammed his other knife back into its sheath, freeing up both hands as he stomped forward, his face a mask of sheer bloody-minded hate.

Raising both palms, the warlock barked out a string of profanity in the guttural, serpentine tongue of the Nine Hells as the sword hammered into its owner's own flesh. His ego screaming inside his head, adding fuel to the fires of his powerful will, the Anarchist unleashed two shrieking, black gouts of Hellfire over the chit, and the deader at her feet.

Let's see the bitch walk away from this!

[Arden]

With every trundling heartbeat, Arden’s grievous wounds struggled to recover. His blood took on the role of healer, bubbling over cut and graze to try to bestow just enough life upon him to perform. As he wrenched the sword from his chest, the fetters of his blood magic fell away in one final torrent of carnage.

Standing by Kyla’s side, he was a mess. He clenched his sword tightly, and deftly, and with intent. He glared at Aurelianus as his rage boiled over. Ideas raced through his mind. Plots, thick and fast formulated in his head. Smoke smouldered from his tattered cloth. His steel breastplate was mottled with dirt, battered with brutality, and singed by searing flame.

“Duck,” was the only conclusion.

Kyla did just that, a movement, which would save, but offer no salve to the abuse her body had already endured. Arden made no effort to avoid the hellfire. Instead, he embraced it, rising to his haunches as though he were falling into its throng. It wrapped around him, forming a tourniquet on all the other beautiful little agonises his body writhed with. When the flame grew hot before his chest, he fell forwards with hands pressed a foot ahead of his body.

He vanished.

By simple cause and effect, he dragged the brunt of the hellfire down with him. It flickered around, as though snuffed by a finger and thumb, but still rolled chaotically towards the mystic cloyed behind. Blue ribbons of light, elements of the Tap itself spiralled out of the hellfire, roiled up into the dark, and flickered out of existence.

Arden appeared, face on the floor, and hands catching his fall. His cloak caught fire, and burnt away into blackened ash and sorry excuses for regents. He grunted. What little endurance he had begun to pewter out. The blood magic was all that kept him going, a legacy from Akashima that used his burning, dying soul as energy.

“The Red Hand means death…,” he roared.

The whole arena felt his anger. In his chest, the dragon oni coiled around his heart roared along with him. The resurrection came with a great cost. His fangs elongated painfully, and his morality faded. Though blood magic would slowly consume a man reckless with its opportunities, the act of resurrection sent you immediately over the edge.

Though Arden's body approached, the silent swordsman had died with Aurelianus' knife thrust.

The Mastiff, on all fours, snapped, snarled, and gibbered. Whilst he still conjured his blasphemous mantra, it held Kerria forwards, and before the tiefling knew, a hound at death’s door, with nothing to lose, set upon him.


Arden’s death charge is an upward thrust, from the Fang.

Full bunny permission given to Resolve to kill Arden.

[Warpath]

The rage bubbled inside his guts when the darkling boy faded away into nothing, and the brute’s hand passed through air where he expected to find a crossbow. His first thought was to scream and lash, the second was to pound his fist repeatedly on the unyielding bars in front of him. Caution won out, however: a crossbow bolt through the arm has a way of instilling the fear of more crossbow bolts.

Flint whipped around at the precise instant that the fallieni priestess left the ground with a gracefully executed kick, her skirt flaring out around her hips. The brute gave every impression of being dumb and slow, and a dullard should have been struck dumb by the sight of so much flowing material and scandalously bared thighs. Instead his right hand came up in a blur and snapped around the girl’s ankle, preventing her from knocking a single tooth out of his mouth. At the instant skin slapped against skin, bruising the shin, Flint twisted at the hips and drove the front of his right shoulder into her stomach, viciously smashing and pinning her between his bulk and the cell bars. Thankfully, none of the glass shards were protruding from his skin in the front, narrowly averting a series of truly admirable stomach scars.

The girl had proven herself lithe and acrobatic, and now tough and bloodthirsty. She recovered from her rib-cracking impact with the cell bars instantly, and swept her staff down through the stained glass forest on Flint’s back. He let out a lung-rending cry as a majority of the larger shards ripped their way out of his flesh and shattered on the stone floor behind him amidst a rain of dark vitae.

The red haze was back now, blinding the brute to fear or reason. He forgot about the shadowy youth, dropped the girl, and then immediately lashed out and lifted her high by the throat, shoving her back against the cell bars behind her. He shuddered as his exertions forced blood to pool and flow from the newly-opened wounds on upper back and shoulders, but his fingers tightened, threatening to rend the girl’s trachea even through the dusky flesh of her throat. She was taller than he, but his arm was long and the thews within like steel, so her feet swung free a full two inches off the ground.

A voice called out from somewhere beyond the veil of hate and pain, familiar and feminine and insistent, and Flint might have disregarded it completely if not for the look on his victim’s face. She saw something from over his shoulder – something that gave her hope at first, and then panic. Sand was flowing between them, against the pull of gravity, and it was gathering around the girl’s torso and packing in unnaturally tight – like armor.

Resolve. It was Resolve’s voice, a warning – a firm, immediate, very serious warning.

The pieces clicked and Flint growled, twisting his body away from the cell wall and pulling the girl with him. He caught a glimpse of the strange anti-light-show that heralded the worst of the she-mystic’s power. He lifted and shoved his captive away with one arm, directly into the path of that deadly projectile, but a new and more immediate threat prevented him from seeing what might happen when the priestess met the spell.

The teenager had returned, having found a large sword in the intervening moments when last Flint saw him, and was now coming in fast and low with a slash at Flint’s knees. He had mere seconds to react, and he did the only thing that seemed reasonable: he leapt up into the air and brought his boots up with the intent to bring them both down on the boy’s thin frame. Only once he was in midair did he think to fear the blade, which could be easily angled upward. Flint was liable to end up impaled on sword-blades twice in one day.

And then there was a thunderous flash of light and a concussive pop, and then all sound faded and for an instant Flint was blind. He was sent spinning and tumbling, casting a dozen streams of blood into the air that spiraled out from him in tight, abstract patterns that burst and splattered on the stone floor and the wall-of-bars on impact. For a moment frozen in time all the agony and emotion faded, and he wondered quite peacefully what became of his attackers now that harm was beyond him to give or receive.

[Roht Mirage]

The warrior in her fought bravely. But, she had seen the magical bomb over the brute's shoulder, and she knew what it meant. Her chest-full of armor was already forming. As he jumped, throwing her toward the bomb, a burst of sand surged from her fallen staff to form a blinding plate over her face. It was thickest at the brow, as if sentimentally protective of the divine Roht mark.

The explosion assailed her, crushing everything that had not already broken on the man's shoulder. Her body jolted away in a spray of magic and sand burning anew. Her back met the bars once more, deforming as if she might split into three sections and slip through. Limply, she slid to the ground.

Astarelle's head lolled back against the bars with a soft thud that was imperceptible in the melee, but rang back and forth in her skull. Her vision swam like the view from a crow's nest on a ship; a ship sailing in a sea of indistinct pain. Did we get him? she tried to ask, but could not wring the words out. Whether or not her allies had already fallen, she didn't know. It seemed an impossibility that she couldn't wrap her head around.

Looking toward what should have been the wide open sky, she saw the silhouetted heads of spectators against their torchlight. They rolled with cheers, or what seemed to be cheers at first. The motion had a point of origin, and it moved across the crowd, stirring them into a dance of frantic twisting. A small body climbed up onto someone's shoulders and vaulted over the crowd. He flew for one brief moment like a dark angel arriving to take her away, but was snatched from the air by a lanky, lunging form. “Tabin,” she breathed, her voice wet with blood. Her mind clicked in recognition. The ferals. They've gone wild.. wilder. She was almost amused, even content to spend her last moments in the arena just watching the comedy of dark bodies hoisting small, flailing shapes high and shaking them until pilfered goods fell out. It was picturesque. Perfect.

Too perfect.

A distraction, she reasoned in a spasm of logic as she gulped blood-moist air. If I were hunting me... Bury me, I have to go. A trickle of sand drifted toward her along the ground, either from her far-flung staff or scattered by the explosion. It played around her fingers -a sensation read with her mind, not her burnt digits- and formed a slender blade. She lifted it on jittery muscles to her throat, but couldn't push it home.

~

Raylene allowed the child to lead her a good twenty paces into the dark hall before jerking to a stop. “We're going back,” she told him as a tidal wave of outraged shouting rolled through the narrow corridor, “Your friends are making a mess. If you're going to behave, just stick with me and I'll make sure the master doesn't blame you.”

The child wheezed, his eyes shifting side to side, and shouted, “But! But! It's important!”

“You already said that without telling me what it bloody was,” Raylene snapped. Her eyebrows narrowed as much as they could against the dead pull of her scar. She shook free from his hands and spun to grab the solitary torch from its holder above them. “Come,” she ordered as she held the torch back the way they had travelled. She wasn't about to walk through those shadows again. Her nerves were already twitching after passing the now-unguarded black passages once. Before the screaming had begun in earnest, she had heard things dripping and scurrying in those maws. It shouldn't have unnerved her, but it had been so long since she'd known the dark, vermin-filled life of the alley children.

The boy keened like a funeral widow. It echoed down the hall as an otherworldly chorus.

“Stop that!” Raylene scolded, not bothering to look back at him. He would follow when he finished filling Ixian's bowels with tears.

Between the cacophony of the arena and the child's wails, she didn't hear the heavy, measured paces behind her.

“Look at what you've done to the poor boy,” a gravelly, smoker's voice whispered in her ear with a puff of breath like a distillery burning down. A tall, muscled chest in grime-crackling clothes pressed against her back, an unseen hand seizing her shoulder like a vise. The other, covered in a black glove, snaked up her arm faster than she could blink to clench her fist over the torch. “I bet you're his favorite,” the voice crooned as softly as shrapnel could. She felt something else pressing into her back.

Anyone may finish her off. Bunny it as much as you need to for your own pacing, even to the point of clear death.

[Resolve]

I had trouble figuring out where to pick up this post as Amber Eyes didn't fully respond to Resolve's assault, so please bear with me.


Resolve had nearly reached her target when she saw the move for the gun, something she'd anticipated and planned around. The exorcist readied herself mid-run to jump planes a second time when she realized Kyla wasn't shooting first –– she was creating another one of those wretched bombs. And then, to her disappointed horror, she sent it flying toward the brute, unaware in his rage as he prepared to break the woman in his grasp.

As much as it irritated her, she had to remind herself: this show she put on was for Luned. No matter how reluctantly she did it, smoothing things over would be much more rewarding in the long run than any quick satisfaction she might get out of seeing the grotesque man's head explode.

"Flint, behind you!" Resolve shouted sharply in warning, and then she vanished into thin air for the last time. The pistol's shaky fire and second mystic bomb claimed naught but her afterimage.

The exorcist promptly reappeared within the doorless cell situated behind Kyla, ready to rain pain upon her horrifically disfigured back, fists of crackling energy lifted at the ready. This time, when she glimpsed exposed bone, she felt no pity. She only saw reprieve from her unending frustration in tournaments by the hands of the infuriating family of mystics.

But then, to her disgust, plans changed. As Kyla had taken her brief moment of freedom to stab the lifeless body of the soldier with his own weapon, Aurelius had turned on them with his hellfire once more. The audience echoed Resolve's surprise in a resounding gasp when it appeared that Kyla had resurrected the soldier, the terror charging for Aurelius with its last might.

That was a distraction the exorcist would capitalize on.

With the tiefling occupied with the bizarre attack, Resolve slipped out from the shadows of her cell and closed in on his back with the blasts originally intended for the mystic. In such close range, she went for his head and torso to claim multiple hits, aiming to take him down. If she couldn't have the mystic, the tormentor of her dearest friend would be a fair consolation prize.

[Hysteria]

I was breathing shallowly as I watched; fast and shallow. I took a moment to calm myself, letting several deep breaths calm my racing heart. The pounding in my head faded, leaving only the intense concentration. I had dropped all pretence of unbiased observation, I wanted Talen to beat the giant muscle bound man. I wanted success for the kid and his allies. Unfortunately it seemed fate was working against me.

One ally was near death, lying on the ground with all the ability to defend herself as a baby after several beers. Kyla looked no better, she was facing off against the demon. I held no illusion that such a fight would end up with more blood spilt. Given the respectable torrent from the animalistic Arden, that was saying something.

The youth's sword cut the air, a clean slice through nothing. The brute leaped, leaving the youth looking upwards with those cold eyes. His hand twisted and his sword rocketed up towards Flint. I thought he was going to slash at the man's legs, risking taking the force of the kick to satiate his own desire to inflict pain. Instead the flat of his sword caught the kick. The youth let himself be pushed backwards.

It took only an instant for him to regain his footing, boot hissing across stone as he recovered. It was instantaneous as he recoiled and lunged forwards. His blade lifted, pointed towards his enemy. It was obvious that Talen sort to catch the man before he could land and react. The timing was close, too close for me to know the outcome before it happened. Despite myself, despite forcing myself to regain some semblance of breathing normality I held my breath.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

The pleasure was like the sweetest wine - he watched the Hellfire pour out from his palms, engulfing the pair of sods before him in its infernal embrace. He made sure to lay it on hot and heavy, prolonging the blast for a good few seconds to really roast the bastards. The tiefling had learned his lesson from the first round; don't pull any punches.

The black flames swathed the cell-block before him, obscuring any chance of getting a look at the other competitors, making the bars of the cells flanking him glow a bright cherry red. Still, he doubted the muscular mountain that was his only ally would be a deader this early on in the fight. Nah, that tough bastard's too leather'eaded to lay down an' die, he thought with a grim smirk. With that thought, he banished everyone else from his head for a second, allowing himself time to breathe. Sweat trickled down his brow, and between his shoulder blades, dripping off his frame only to evaporate with a hiss in the heat of the conflagration Aurelius was unleashing. The brief storm of blades between himself and Arden had been short, but intense.

Finally, satisfied with his outlet, the warlock lowered his hands, gloves smoking heavily with two large circles scorched into their palms. He allowed himself a moment to bask in the cathartic release of incinerating the other fighters, letting out a slow sigh of contentment as he watched the writhing magickal flames worm up the walls, scorching the stone with their controlled fury. The burn on his side pulled tight drawing out a little grumble of discomfort, but it was nothing compared to the outraged roar that exploded from his gore-stained visage..

When Arden emerged from the fire, sword at the ready.

Aurelius roared, eyes wide with fury, "Don't you people 'ave the cuntin' decency to stay dead!?"

The Hound charged in, his gleaming sword stained with soot from the unholy heat of Shahab's Lash - heat that should by all rights have turned his armour to a pile of slag by now - tip trained on the enraged half-breed. The warlock had lost all pretenses of patience now; he wanted everyone in the dead-book, and he'd be damned (again) if he was going to stop before he'd achieved his goal. He didn;t even care if he advanced to the final round of the tournament at this point, so long as he got to bathe in the gore he could rip from the collected corpses of everyone in this powers-forsaken dungeon.

The swordsman thrust with his blade, still on the move as he fully emerged from the pyromantic blaze. He was clearly seeking to run the tiefling through, but he was sorely underestimating the Cager. This was far from the first time an armoured opponent had tried to bullrush him, and if it hadn't worked for the juggernaught Otto Bastum, it sure as shit wasn't going to happen for the Ixian Knight.

As soon as the sword sang towards his chest, Aurelianus did the smartest thing he could do under the circumstances - he fell backwards, the blades mounted even on the back of his armour screeching against the stone floor. And with his furious charge at the half-demon, Arden's bulk and speed carried him forwards as inevtiably as the tide.

The Anarchist threw himself into a roll, his inhuman speed making the maneuver easy enough, and as the armour-clad warrior ran in trying to halt himself, he ran straight into the Cager's clutches. Rolling back as he was, Aurelianus lashed out and grabbed the armoured vambraces, planting his boots firmly against Arden's gut as the human was dragged forward by his own momentum. Overbalancing, the Hound unceremoniously lurched over the top of his opponent.

With a smug grin in the brief heartbeat of eye contact, Drak'shal gave a growling heave and released his grip on Arden's wrists even as his boots kicked the should-be-dead sod head over heels, launching him airborne.

What Aurelius didn't know was that he had just fired Arden straight into the path of Resolve's devious energy blasts.

[Resolve]

The Hound's death scene has only been written with his express approval and instruction re: Kerria. Cyd, if you need any bunnying adjustments, please let me know and I'm happy to oblige.


As Aurelius dropped and flipped the frenzied soldier over him, Resolve's shots struck true, albeit not upon the body she'd intended. First she hit him in the shoulder, shattering bone with an audible snap as the crackling energy slammed against his armored flesh. The second struck him in the torso as she attempted to aim around him, going for the bastard tiefling underneath.

The possessed man cried out not in any human voice, but with the mangled bane of a feral dog –– one in need of putting down. Resolve cringed and obliged.

The last blast struck him point blank in the head, so fiercely concussive at such a range that he immediately seized, wavered, and crumpled face first to the ground. Blood poured from his hair into a dark, slick pool on the cold ground, mingling with the trampled rat carcasses –– a beast fallen amongst lesser cousins. The exorcist shivered with the adrenaline of her first kill, no matter how incidental it had been.

But even if the soldier lay dead –– truly dead, with no hope of untimely resurrection by a friend –– his sword did not. Kerria slipped out from under him and into the air as if equally possessed, though by spirit wholly separate from whatever had inspired the bestial fury. It glimmered and spun through the air, a bright flash of metal in the shadowy gloom, and nearly struck the roof of the barrier in its precise arc before flinging itself back downward. It fell with a purposeful clatter at Kyla's side, choosing its owner as a weapon of legend properly should. Whether the mystic could wield it at this point, however, was an entirely different matter.

But either way, at this point, Resolve didn't care. Her attention had been fully stolen from the pest to fixate on her new arch nemesis. "Slippery son of a––" she seethed, redirecting her attention to the tiefling who'd deflected her attack so cleverly.

While the exorcist acknowledged the effects of her fading endurance, she refused to relent. Fresh seeds of destruction manifesting in each of her palms, she didn't hesitate, lifting her hands to immolate Aurelius under a fresh rain of those brutal blasts. In the back of her mind, Resolve knew she didn't have much left in her... so, before she fell, she wanted to make sure as hell that she would have the half-demon's horrendous head on a pike.

[Warpath]

Everything happened so quickly that it was hard to keep the events in proper sequence. He had bodily hoisted the fallieni girl into the path of the mystic’s spell, and in that moment had seen that the boy had returned with sword in hand intent upon hobbling the brute from behind. Flint had reacted hastily, leaping into the air with the intent to crush, and the darksome lad had shielded himself from the majority of the blow with the flat of his blade.

Skovik subsequently lost sight of his foes when the magical attack detonated, presumably on impact with the hapless priestess. A rippling wave of concussive force sent the once-gladiator spiraling away from all of his enemies and their potential revenges, spraying his own blood in expanding patterns before the droplets succumbed to gravity.

Fortunately for Flint, the source of that explosion had been some distance away and the vast majority of its power was absorbed by the woman’s body. When he was sent airborne, it was without the burns and flesh-ripping forces he’d suffered at the Breaker’s hands some time ago. Getting blown up was becoming distressingly common for Flint Skovik.

He was musing on the fact that this had been, comparatively speaking, a much more pleasant experience than the first time. That was before he hit the ground and left a large crimson smear on the stones, and then he went rolling with a series of pained grunts and wheezes. He came to a stop far from where he’d been just two or three scant seconds before, battered and still, the cuts on his back oozing so freely as to be individually indistinguishable. His flesh was one big red liquid garment, which seeped continuously onto the tiles beneath and behind him.

The warrior lay still for a long moment, battered, dazed, and insensate.

His mind did not wander. He did not think of old loves or the wisdom of his betters, once dismissed but now embraced too late. He did not regret the events that brought him here, or the choices that made him the monster he often was. He had no special thirst, no soul-wrenching revelation, and he felt no certain compulsion to change everything within and without if he just went on breathing for another day. There was nothing going on behind his eyes until there was again: a dull unblinking stare suddenly made hard and intense again.

Flint groaned raggedly and laid himself out on his stomach, and then he pushed himself up with his one good arm. He rested on one knee, spitting blood and then wiping more blood out of his beard. He stared at his subtly shaking palms and then turned them, and saw that there was little point in trying to wipe himself clean. Everything was hot and red and glistening, everything was throbbing pain and fatigue. He decided that he was only still breathing because he was too stupid to stop, which seemed a fine reason.

He raised his gaze, blinking away the sting of sweat, and saw only flashing lights, dancing colors, and blurry shadows. The cold-eyed boy was nowhere to be found, but that was becoming increasingly normal: he only seemed to exist when it came time to make an attempt on Flint’s life, and faded into nothing otherwise like Flint's own personal grim reaper. What had become of the priestess and the mystic was a mystery obscured by distance, a cloud of sand, and wafts of smoke and dust. The brute wanted to feel satisfied at the dusky-skinned girl’s fate, fair revenge for her meddling, but the pleasure would not come.

He tried to push up from his knee once, but his thighs failed him and he felt a fresh river of blood gush out over his back. His vision swam and he tipped precariously, muttering disbelievingly at his own frailty. He tried again and swayed heavily to the right, slapping his palm against the bloody stone floor to maintain his balance, and his arm quivered. His chin dropped to his chest and he exhaled through his teeth, laughing wryly as he always did when he found his limit. Not even the fear of the stripling’s sword could put enough juice in him to stand.

A tremendous clatter pierced the ringing in Flint’s ears, enough to draw his eyes up again. Silhouetted against a spear of sunlight in the cell beyond, he watched as a powerful but feminine shape executed their armored enemy. Resolve, the brute realized, and his heart fluttered for reasons he did not immediately grasp. It came to him quickly enough though.

She’d come face-to-face with Aurelianus. The half-demon’s silhouette was unmistakable, and Flint could only imagine him smiling like a snake with a mouthful of wolf teeth. Luned. Flint’s eyes wandered in a moment of confusion, even panic. He glanced out toward the crowd of faceless shadows, breathing a little shallower now. They had a deal.

Flint felt the tiniest surge of something, a spark in the deepest part of his gut. He exhaled, and then he breathed in the reek of stale air, sweat, and so many dead rats. He only need think of the consequences of his inability to act. If he failed, the tiefling would meet Luned again and again and again, until he thought of some sufficiently unholy act and then demanded it of her. The brute’s fevered imaginings were only interrupted by a click and a whirr that echoed off the cell walls, the muffled sounds of mechanical failure.

He raised his hands again, slowly recognizing that the noises were being emitted by his vambraces. He tightened his fists and the pain screamed from his back and left bicep, and then it steadily dulled until all pain became a distant rumble instead of a spine-shattering scream. His vision cleared and came into stark focus, and the ringing in his ears gradually subsided.

Shasande’s gifts had failed under the weight of his need, and the Swaysong surged through him, plumping his veins, hardening his thews, and fueling his endurance. He needed no blood, no breath, no sleep. He was a god.

With a ragged growl, Flint shoved himself off of the ground in a series of heavy, swaying motions. He shook his head violently once he regained his feet, and he flexed his arms and back and shoulders and relished the fresh rivulets of blood that warmed his skin. He cast another wary glance about for the skulking boy, and when he could not find him he surged forward with purpose.

Victory no longer mattered, only the deal.

The vambraces hissed, venting twin clouds of steam in their efforts to reboot. Flint raised his battered arms – the right came up faster than the mangled left but rise it did – and then he plowed into Resolve bodily before she could unleash her wrath on the tiefling. Against all logic and likelihood, Flint Skovik had just come to the rescue of Aurelianus Drak’shal.

The exorcist had been aware of his approach, but she had only just realized that he was coming to aid the tiefling and not her. She turned and let out an outraged shout as Flint tackled her to the ground, already raising one fist. She let out a harsh grunt as her back struck the cell block floor, but pain did not prevent her from getting one leg between them. Before Flint could throw his punch, Resolve shoved his weight up and back until he found himself on his feet again, spending the force of her push on a few slow backward steps.

He had feared a question from her, but such concerns were rendered moot. Flint could see it on her face already: she didn’t care why he was doing it; he was going to die for it.

Hysteria: I am aware that it appears that I'm ignoring your attack after you blocked Flint's kick. This is unintentional, I'm basically trying to reconcile the end of my last post with your reaction to it. It wasn't your fault, after a second reading I realized how vague my writing was there - I hadn't adequately described that the grenade had gone off and thrown Flint away from everyone. Basically, I didn't write Flint getting cut in half because he was already getting blown away.

Otherwise: all bunnying of Resolve was approved. Flint postponed bleeding to death by doubling his endurance with his vambraces. All bunnying of Flint by Resolve is approved from here on out. Good game, ladies and gents.

[Roht Mirage]

Astarelle saw Allennia's face for a moment. What would the noble woman -not just a noblewoman, but a noble woman- think? Allennia had been one of her first friends in Corone. They had met in the Citadel, each experiencing their virgin match. It. Was. Pathetic. Astarelle begged for a contest of unarmed grappling just to avoid the woman's sword. She shared secrets the Kar'Roh would skewer her twice for just to have bring some conversation to the nerve-wrenching death-play. Finally, she took a strike to the chin and bit her own tongue clean off, and the woman -the friend- executed her on request to prevent a last meal of her own blood. They left together, swearing that Coronian bloodsport was not for them.

What would you think of me now? Dying twice in the sand-blasted Cell. If the blood in her body wasn't pooling low in her ruined network of innards, she would have colored in shame. Allennia's voice whispered through Astarelle's head in her typical, taciturn way, like every word was a carefully selected brushstroke. Direct, concise, and thick with purpose.

Protect them.

Astarelle stopped fidgeting the blade against her throat and looked once more to the increasingly-smudged shapes above. Roh. If your puppets so much as a scratch any of those children, I'll... I'll... She angled the point straight at the pulsing vein in her throat, cocked her elbow and -with an internal scream of torn muscles throwing themselves against broken bones- made herself slump over. The bloodied ground drove the blade true, and the sand's last airborne puffs descended to tuck her in.

Work fast, Ai'Brone. Please.

~

The old master's hand reached for Bash's hair, but he was too fast. He scurried under pants and dresses like a field mouse among the corn stalks. That looming presence began to fade. Maybe -if he was lucky- he had escaped. Maybe he could still retrieve his hat from the ugly old woman, and maybe he would swat her behind. It was only fair.

Just then, two huge trunks of meat descended to either side of him and closed under his armpits. He was thrust skyward, squawking, by a man who had to specially order his door frames. “Got'im!” the giant bellowed into his face, then held him outward, “Pass 'im back to 'is daddy.” Bash was rolled onto his back and placed on a moving carpet of hands, skimming high over the crowd with arms crossed and and bottom lip stiff. He would not flail in his last moment of freedom. He had his dignity.

As he glided along, he looked over the edge of the crowd, into the blood-and-fire painted arena. Amid the mess, a familiar person tumbled flat against the ground. She was the mean lady that they hid from at the school. But, she didn't look mean anymore. She looked... like Coin had. Bash tried to hold in a sob, but it was squeezed out of him when he reached a very familiar iron grip. The old man held the boy out from his chest and rumbled, “No dessert for a whole-”

“Sir,” came the curt, heavy voice of one of the five enforcers surrounding them, three of whom had a child squirming in their gauntlets. The old man scowled the most old-man-y of scowls. “You and your party are being detained. Be ready to empty your pockets.”

~

Raylene's free hand tensed at her side, fingers straight and deathly rigid. She had a good idea what the stranger wanted. Memories that had been locked away when she fell into Kotra's care came crawling back; grasping, pawing, overpowering. “I don't belong to anyone, now,” she breathed.

The stranger's throat began to rattle with another breathy quip when the child's voice filled the hall. “Can I have it now?” he chirped excitedly.

With the noise from the arena hitting her face, Raylene could barely make out his shuffling footsteps as he approached from behind. “Run,” she tried to say. But the man's body jolted, and she heard the boy squeak and smear away on the unseen kick. From what seemed an incredible distance, she heard his breathy sobs.

Before the man could settle his foot, Raylene wrenched her shoulder down from his grasp -it felt like he had been griping the bone- and rotated toward her hand that was still crunched around the torch. She struck over the immobilized elbow with a knife-hand to his throat. There was the sickly pop of gristle, and her face paled. Every finger curled back as if she had struck a wall.

The man huffed in amusement, then hoisted the torch high, twisting her around to meet his unshaven, deep-eyed face in the quaking light. Supported only by the bones of her hand, cracking between the wood and his horrible grip, she finally opened her mouth to scream. His hand snapped to her face. Her voice locked as she expected him to clamp it over her mouth. Instead, he held his gloved finger and thumb between her eyes like a fire striker. “Good,” he hissed, “You'll put on quite a show before the mystics catch you.” Breath stopped and sweat ran as she felt the tension of an agonizing wait collapse into a split second. He would snap his fingers, she knew, and then... something horrible would happen.

Below his arm rose an elegant line of metal, grains of golden sand wreathing its surface in a sliver-thick storm. Her heart thrummed one-eighth of a beat. The blade was suddenly above his arm, and blood splattered against the high ceiling.

Near-death perception left her. The weight of blood-damp air seemed to rush in as she was thrown to the ground. The torch slapped down in unison, cracking while her side compressed and bruised from knee to shoulder. Breathless, shaking, she looked up at the sound of tearing metal. The man's fingers were buried to the knuckles in the abdomenal plate of an Akashiman woman's armor. He contorted with a bestial rage too strong to be given voice. The foreigner just stared, stone-faced, even as he twisted his hand, shredding the thick armor like foil and doing Thanes-know-what to her innards. A howl of fury and spittle blasted from his mouth as he wrenched the hand back, spraying twisted metal wreckage and myriad organs over the downed girl. Raylene's mind seized in shock. She didn't even realized that the viscera was dry as dust.

“What are you?” the man growled, vibrating.

The woman simply said, “Kar'Roh,” but not with her mouth. Her lungs were deflated sacks hanging into the gaping cavity of her torso. The voice came from a scar over her bare breast, an old wound in the pristine flesh. It gaped like a cavern through severed ribs and into the space where her heart should have been. Vacant; its inner walls lined with golden, obsidian-speckled sand. She swept her sword at him too fast for Raylene's wet eyes to see, but he dodged and kept on moving like the flicker of a ghost. In the span of a single, shuttering breath, the two inhuman beings bolted down the hall, their wind extinguishing torches as they passed.

The rumble of the crowd reached her again, feeling like silence. She stared through the nightmare blackness. A small figure staggered into the light of her broken torch, the child mercifully not trodden in the warriors' supernatural flight. “Rayleeeeeene,” he cried.

She didn't respond. Before her, seizing her gaze as solidly as it had once seized her shoulder, was the man's severed hand. Blood seeped from the stump, saturating the shorn edge of the glove and spreading into a pool that swayed in the broken light.

“Kotra,” she whispered before pain and shock stole away her senses.

The End. It's been a pleasure.

[Resolve]

"What is wrong with you?" Resolve accused, spitting hate at the brute as he staggered, dull with blood loss. Such an impairment earned no mercy from the seething girl. "How could you–– when he?!––" she shouted, gesturing toward the tiefling.

As she moved to lift herself to her feet, instinct recognized Flint's reaction: he was going to stop her. She was trying to kill Aurelius, the one villain who bound them together as allies, and he was going to stop her.

She had never been so angry in her entire life, breathing exercises be damned.

With a cry of exertion, the exorcist tore to her feet, conjuring a menacing dagger of delicately articulated energy in her right hand. She charged at the brute, not a far distance to go, and swung it directly up and into his abdomen for a blatant stab.

He let her.

As the blade sunk in, she released her hold on the energy, and the weapon vanished in a fresh wash of blood. He might have winced, but she didn't notice as one impossibly strong hand –– a serpent lying in wait –– lashed out and grasped her by the upper arm in an inescapable vise. With his own lame arm, he wrapped her limb with his elbow braced against her neck, and then he pulled. She struggled, but with her resources dwindling, her efforts were of no avail.

Resolve screamed, blood-curdling and weeping, as he tore her shoulder from its socket. She fell limp against him, balance and breath forgotten as her senses focused on the inaudible tear. As she bathed in his blood, a terror seeped in with the coagulating crimson: he'd done it so easily, as if she was nothing but a doll. If he wasn't so irreparably worn from the others, he could tear her apart without breaking a sweat. Since when had he become stronger than her? He had finally surpassed her, the greatest transgression he'd committed against her yet, but it paled in comparison to the crime of having lost any chance of a real fight between them this round. The disappointment stung nearly as much as her wrecked body.

Pale eyes bloodshot with tears of defeat, Resolve found her footing once again. The slowing brute may as well have gift wrapped the opening he'd given her, and only now she realized it had been on purpose. He'd let her stab him because he knew he was dying.

She took it upon herself to assist him the rest of the way, with the honor of a physician practiced in ill-advised euthanasia.

The dagger rematerialized in Resolve's left hand and she plunged it, without hesitating, deep within the other side of his abdomen. Though she didn't use her dominant limb for the attack, with the leverage of her body weight, it didn't matter. She attempted to tear him open, yanking across with the implement, but he pulled on her dislocated arm and she lost her momentum with another scream. She felt him drop her, his arm drawing back as if to strike, and her stomach sank; she wouldn't allow him the satisfaction of more of her pain. Dropping the knife, its form receding into a crackling orb of energy in her palm, she conjured a blast instead.

It hit him under the jaw, shattering teeth as enamel-laced blood sprayed from his mouth. In the heat of the moment, it hadn't occurred to Resolve to give him a pretty death for the sake of their mutual friend. As he reeled, she struck again, this time with a freshly crafted dagger. She skewered his trachea, twisting the blade until it caught his artery and a geyser of hot crimson washed over them both. He grasped for her in his last moments of consciousness, pitifully ineffectual. She shoved him and he fell backwards, heavily and unceremoniously, to join the soldier on the bed of rats.

Thrice Resolve had beaten Flint, but for the first time, it was a win without victory. She'd been cheated, and she knew exactly who to blame.

"Aurelius," she muttered, the poisonous name a guttural growl in the back of her parched throat. Resolve spun to face the tiefling, arm hanging limp at her side, tunnel vision impeding her awareness of the chamber and the crowd. She'd only just earned her first injury, but she'd exhausted herself in her constant evasions, and it showed as she wavered on her feet. "What did you tell him?"


She hasn't got much left in her, so I hereby give Aure permission to put her out of her misery. This is Resolve's last post.

[Warpath]

It wasn’t the wounds that bothered him.

The pain was just a mess of white noise now, too many demands to acknowledge so they all faded into obscurity. He didn’t care about the sucking hole in his bicep or the dozen gaping rends in his back now full of soot and matted rat hair. He didn’t even feel the gashes in his abdomen anymore. He was struggling lamely to pull the skin closed over the jagged opening on his throat, and when the blood made his fingers too slick he just tried to seal the flow. It wasn’t because it hurt – it was because he hated drowning.

His body rebelled against him. He just wanted to die, but his dumb corpse kept struggling to suck in air so that his lungs filled with blood. His lungs tried to expel the blood, which was messy and undignified and uncomfortable. His brain demanded air, and the tension built and built in his skull and behind his eyes, and his vision blurred and faded though his eyes were wide open. He was going into shock, trembling and kicking despite knowing the futility of it. The mind just wanted to let go, but the body refused and would continue to refuse until after the end.

Flint choked, blind but desperate. They had to know, and only he could warn them.

He was gone now and his own personal grim reaper was loose, more dangerous than all of them combined.

He tried to wheeze, to breathe out just one last sentence, but he only gurgled. He mouthed the words desperately, but the panicked misfiring of his nerves forbade any sure shot at communication.

The boy, he wanted to tell them.

But he’d gone still and quiet, and his last lingering thought was of the monks and their near-failure to revive him once already.


He's dead, Jim.

[Hysteria]

So much happened in a short time, the roar of the crowd was deafening as more competitors fell to the cruel nature of the cell. I felt mildly cheated. Talen had yet to do any real damage to anyone, instead fleeting movements, attempts and escapes filled his plate. He swung his sword at Flint, but the blade cut through empty air again. This time Talen's opponent was carried away by a concussive force. The behemoth of a man shielded Talen mostly from the attack. A look of annoyance passed over his face as he was pushed back, his feet skidding against the charred and blood flecked ground.

Perhaps I was reading too much into the tiny amount of emotion that showed on the youth's cold face, but he seemed disappointed. His eyes flicked between Kyla and Astarelle when they should have been on Flint, or at least one of the remaining competitors. The youth took slow, deliberate steps towards the side of the cell and then, despite everything he just stood there. It seemed an affront to the whole fight. How could he not charge in? How could he just stand there watching?

It hit me then that he might be trying to work out what to do. Flint and the previously incorporeal woman fought and though the woman emerged victor it was not without serious consequence. The sound of her arm being wretched out of the socket could be heard even through in the crowd, I felt a shiver run up my spine at the thought. Even now I find it disconcerting.

I hoped that the kid was planning something, something at least better than run in and failing to do anything. I could have cuffed the kid over the ear. He was supposed to be a general, not just some no-name competitor.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Aurelianus kept moving after tossing Arden over his head, swinging his boots over and rolling back to a crouch. But before he'd even had the chance to turn his quill-crested head his ears rang with a savage series of crunches; it sounded like some monstrous creature was chewing on a mouthful of rocks.

Spinning on his heel as fast as he could manage, the tiefling didn't quite know what to make of what his eyes were seeing.

The swordsman lay, quite dead, his body broken and another pool of blood leeching out of his battered frame across the worn stone floor. It edged out quickly, flowing into every crevice and crack along the ground, only changing course when it met the furry corpses of rodents. All of this registered in Aurelius' mind in the space of a heartbeat, but he still wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

And then he saw Resolve, and he tumbled to what had happened. The irony of it was just too delicious; not only had she killed the stubborn swordsman for Aurelius, but Arden had saved his life while trying so doggedly to end it on the tip of his weapon. Each of the sods couldn't have done him a better turn if they'd tried.

The arrogant chit was winding back her arm, a crackling ball of energy in her palm, her formerly crimson sari now stained, bloodied and marred by a dozen other stains and tears, but she was still very much alive, and she still evidently hadn't had enough of trying to murder her best friend's favourite person to hate. It was almost flattering in its own way. Aurelianus licked his lips, tasting the full flavour of his own blood and Arden's mixing on his ghostly white skin, feeling the salty sting as a bead of sweat rolled down into the gash on his cheek. It was far from the only drop of sweat running down his ravaged body - the day had been hard, and even his temporary death had proved to be of little restorative value. Each left a stinging trail underneath his leathers, the tiefling's body being wracked with minute spasms as the rolling beads brought about itches he couldn't scratch.

The tension in that moment crackled with the hatred Resolve bore for him, drawing out that gloating, infuriating smirk once again. But even as the lightning-fast half-demon made to dodge the blast, the coffee-skinned chit disappeared under a scarlet mass of heaving, sweat-lathered muscle.

Another second passed before Aurelianus registered what had just happened, and as he realised what.. who the glistening, bloody behemoth was, his mocking laughter resounded in the chamber. Flint had stayed true to his word, and was watching the bastard warlock's back. Resolve hammered him back, her small size apparently not indicative of her strength. Aurelianus himself well knew the force the grotesque muscle-bound basher could bring to bear, but Resolve seemed to be holding her own regardless. With the brief reprieve in bodies trying to pen him in the dead-book, Drak'shal tried to catch his breath, drawing his knives smoothly from their sheaths. Every exhalation burned the back of his dry throat, and the half-demon would happily have killed in that moment just for a water-skin - for a drink, to pour over his sweat-soaked body, and to try and cool the feverish itch of the burn along his ribs.

Still, despite the mournful lack of hydration available, Aurelianus was able to take a certain amount of nourishment from watching Flint and Resolve go at each other tooth and nail.

The crowd gasped loudly at this turn of events, but the warlock only had eyes for the pair of rubes in front of him; he tried unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter behind his bruised and swollen fist when he realised Luned was going to be watching all of this from her vantage point.

His laughter reached newer heights as Resolve, against all odds, finally managed to get the upper hand and plunged her conjured blade into the brawny Salvaran's meaty throat. His blood flooded out, coating the pair in a sticky wash of red, and Aurelius could smell the coppery tang of it even from where he stood. There was a hint of something else mingled in with the blood.. something familiar, but before he could follow the memory train, he realised something.

Resolve was talking to him.

"Sorry, luv," he grinned, running his tongue across his fangs habitually, "was a 'undred miles away."

"What did you tell him?"

The tiefling's smirk got a nasty edge. "Told 'im I owe you and that knife-earred bitch a thank you. I 'eard 'ow they 'ad to patch me up after the first round, and lemme tell you - I 'ave been tryin' to get me own cock in my mouth for years! You pair of sods did me a pikin' favour."

It was clear she wasn't going to get anything even close to a straight answer, and like a clever girl, she gave up trying and instead lunged at the loathsome creature before her.

Her dislocated arm hung limp at her side, bringing a pained grunt from between her clenched teeth even as her working fist whistled toward the cocky Cager's smug face. But the blow was as obvious as it could possibly be, and he dodged back, not even deigning to move his feet. He simply swayed back, letting the attack pass by a finger's breadth from his jaw. It looked impressive, drawing an audible gasp from the assembled spectators, but they might have been less impressed if they'd known the warlock never intended to let it anywhere near that close to connecting.

He replied with a quick jab at Resolve's exposed torso, his left fist coming in under her ribs to hammer her with the knuckle-guard on his knife. The chit saw it coming and despite her wounds, managed to move to defend. But Aurelius was a cunning, vicious bastard, and had feinted hoping she would do exactly that. As soon as she turned her body to deflect the force of the punch, her opponent's other arm came in, smashing the pommel of his weapon down on to the dislocated shoulder. It met flesh with a satisfyingly solid thump, tearing a raw scream from the exorcist.

But, even as the half-demon moved in to capitalise on Resolve's pain, she caught him completely off guard. The chit, despite being shorter than him, and less naturally equipped for such a maneuver, charged forward with a nasty headbutt. The crunch of their brows colliding echoed through the chamber. Both of them staggered back, Resolve with four neat little gashes along her head mirroring where Aurelius' horns had split her flesh. The warlock himself staggered back, black spots flashing before his eyes. The girl saw her opening and took it, smashing a cross into her stunned enemy's face. Bone cracked under the force of the blow, making Aurelius lurch back, roaring as he felt his cheekbone collapse under the insane strength the slender girl was dishing out. Pouncing on the blade-clad tiefling and bearing them both to the ground, a vise-grip on his neck as she raised her hand to bring down another fist.

There was the briefest second in time, when she had to release the tiefling's throat. In that moment, dropping both his knives as afterthoughts, Aurelianus lashed out, and with one violent, sharp jerk, he snapped Resolve's neck like a twig.

It was that quick. One quick twist and the life left the girl's eyes. The dry, hollow crunch echoed loudly in the relative silence of the chamber, drawing a shocked cry from several of the audience. But Aurelius was having trouble seeing Resolve clearly through the static haze her hammerblow had laid across his vision. His breath was coming in ragged, pained gasps from between his clenched fangs as the sharp throb in his shattered cheek came and went in agonising waves.

He didn't even have the strength to heave the deader off the top of him, instead letting her slump onto the bladed armour that covered the vast majority of his body, her blood flowing liberally as he took a breather. Honestly, Aurelianus wasn't sure how much more of this he could take.


All bunnying approved.

[Hysteria]

I blinked a few times, my eyes sore from staring at the fight unblinking. I registered for the first time how tired I felt. My throat was dry and sore, I'd been yelling without realising. I chuckled to myself. If I felt tired, how did those out in front of me feel? I pushed my silly concerns aside and focused back on the fight, hoping that Talen would finally make a move.

My prayers were answered seemingly, as just seconds later the youth disappeared. He had been focused on the fight between Resolve and Aurelianus, refusing to look away or make a move. The fight had been quick, but brutal. The moment that the pair were forced to the ground Talen made his move. The boy's body puffed out of existence, the tiny cloud of shadows dissipating into the air in a moment.

My eyes moved around the cell, searching for where he was going to materialise. The answer should have been simple, and I cursed myself for not realising it sooner. Darkness materialised, a tiny cloud pre-existing for a moment before Talen appeared. He had chosen, of course, four metres above the grappling pair.

The youth's sword was in his hands, aimed down towards the ground. His body was bent, holding the sword between his hands, but also steadying the blade with his feet. It wasn't something I had seen, or even considered before. The kid's hands ready to force the sword even further down should the contact be successful.

I wasn't the only one to see the moment, the whole crowd realised what was happening. There was eerie silence for a moment as people watched the small form fall towards Resolve's back. The room exploded with a roar, half the room wanting the kid killed for taking a cheap shot, half wanting to see the fighting pair skewed together. I just held my breath as he fell.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

The tiefling lay there for a few moments, letting himself catch his breath, trying to fight down the nausea-inducing agony of his pulverised cheek-bone. Though it was hard to tell with his inhuman eyes, most of the blood vessels in his right eye had burst, but black blood on an already black surface rendered the damage invisible. Sadly, the hideous, rapidly expanding bruise on the side of his face was becoming more visible by the moment, his cheek caved in, in the rough shape of Resolve's knuckles.

On top of the painful burn on his ribs, the shards of glass embedded in his right arm, the gash on his left cheek and his grotesquely broken nose were all making themselves known. His face looked like he had tried to kiss a mace, and felt much the same.

With a painful twist of his neck, Aurelius hawked another mouthful of thick blood across the already gore-soaked floor, his inky splash mixing with Arden's and Flint's on the grimy stones.

Finally, the half-demon realised he was a sitting duck where he was, and gave a heave to shift the literal dead-weight of Resolve off the top of him. The blades adorning his leathers slid free of the chit's body, releasing warm splashes of red to run over the amount of exposed flesh showing through the tears and slashes all over his armour. He savoured the warmth of the fluid as it touched his battered flesh, but he didn't have any more time to waste lying on his back. He had Resolve raised limply above him, her hardly-impressive bosom dripping wetly in his face as he tried to work up the energy to throw her aside... though the temptation to sample her flesh before he did was definitely there. There was something else vying for his attention, though.

And with a lurching sensation in his stomach, Aurelianus realised what it was; the crowds spectating had fallen completely silent.

That struck the tiefling as a wholly bad sign. The distraction cost him, as Resolve's body slumped back across him, impaling herself with the barbs and blades once again. This is gettin' pikin' ridiculous, he thought with an irritated sigh. The chit's lank, sweat and blood soaked hair was plastered across Aurelius' face, and he shook his horned brain-box trying to dislodge the strands.

It was right as the crowd started roaring again that he finally succeeded... just in time to mark Talen as he started to fall towards them, sword catching the weak light thrown off by the skylights.

"Oh, shi--"

The Cager never had the chance to finish his sentence, as he found a new burst of energy to dislodge the deader but there wasn't enough time to try and get out of the way. Not completely.

With a herculean effort, Aurelianus lifted Resolve's body off his chest, gasping with effort as his lungs could finally work. The girl's chest was balanced precariously on Drak'shal's fully extended arms when the blade hit. It pierced the chit's back cleanly, emerging from between her ample breasts a split-second later to come down at the pinned tiefling. Rolling as hard as he could, while the shadow-creature was still in the air, Aurelius sought to unbalance the boy using the sword in Resolve as a lever.

It was a decent plan, as far as on the spot solutions to imminent death went, but it was definitely not perfect. He had a moment to reflect on this as the blade came down with bone-skewering force. Sweating heavily, every muscle and tendon taut with effort, the half-breed managed to turn the blow slightly, but with the full weight of 'Tails' on top of his already devastating wounds, the tiefling didn't achieve all that much, other than shifting the point of impact away from his heart.

Instead, the razor-tip of the sword hit the plane-sourced leather and for an indeterminably short instant, it looked like the armour would stop the weapon from piercing the tender flesh beneath... but sadly this was not the case, and after smashing into his right shoulder with enough force to crack his humerus, the weight behind the sword finally went through the leather, sinking deeply into Aurelianus' shoulder. A scream of utter agony was ripped from his raw throat, as the black blood welled up around the end of the weapon. With a tinny ring, sounding distant and muffled in the warlock's ears, he heard the unmistakable sound of the tip hitting the stone floor underneath his body.

Black spots exploded across his field of vision, the foul taste of bile rising in the back of the impaled tiefling's throat. But even through the agony, though every breath felt like someone was sand-papering the inside of his lungs and every beat of his black heart pumped acid through his veins, Aurelianus flailed out his arm. He smashed his left fist against the floor, trying to alleviate the pain dwarfing all other sensations.. and felt his fingers brush the hilt of one of his previously forgotten knives.

A single, shining moment of clarity shone through the pain-induced fugue. Trying to avoid blacking out, his chest shuddering as he tried to draw in enough breath to stave off unconsciousness. His fingers touched the rough demon-hide wrapping the grip, left arm straining to bring the weapon within reach as Talen's feet touched down. With one final surge, Aurelius managed to grab the serrated weapon, even as the shadow-made-flesh tried to rip his sword out of the pair on its length.

Not.. ugh! Not so fast, mate!

The tiefling, bloody saliva running down his chin as he held back the screams, whipped his right hand up to grip the blade sliding out of his shoulder. The edge instantly started biting into his palm, but his efforts managed to stall the blade for a fraction of a second. Hissing, jaw clenched tight against the slow, drawn out torment of the razor-edge parting his flesh like cloth, Aurelianus forced himself up the blade in a sudden surge. It tore through the muscle and bone, a torrent of blood pouring from the wound as it was torn wider, but Aurelianus knew he wasn't in much of a state to fight off this competitor anyway.

Uncaring for the damage he was doing to his own right arm, the guttersnipe lurched up at Talen, his green-steel knife lashing out to stab the "boy" savagely in his man-parts.

If he was going to lose, he was at least going to rob someone of their dignity before he did.

[Hysteria]

Success! I allowed myself a moment of joy through the rage fuelled viewing. The thought caused me a moment of pause, now I have accepted that there is something primal about watching a fight, something that sits in the back of your mind and calls for more. Apart from the few moments of disgust, granted the scene still looked like one of those horror tales, I had enjoyed the fight immensely. The carnage, the thrill and of course the fact that the person you were rooting for had yet to die.

The blade pierced Resolve, and down into Aurelius. The rising tide of the audience a fitting crescendo to the coming end of the battle. No one expected it to go on for much longer. Either the kid won, or he made a mistake and was undone. Either way it was clearly all or nothing now. The blood that moved across the floor seemed a fitting poetic allusion as it moved over the charred stone and flecks of other people's blood.

Whatever qualms I had on the ethics of desecrating a fallen warriors body to take out another seemed redundant, it had worked, and the crowd loved it. As the Tiefling fought against Talen the youth released the sword. Unceremoniously he kicked Resolves limp body and sent himself backwards. His feet caught the ground, his body low to maintain balance. His eyes flicked back up to the prone demon and his second sword flashed from his back into his hand.

Two steps. That was all he took as he brought the blade back down towards his opponent. There was nothing on his face. The cold pale features matched with a stoic determination to finish this. His blade moved through the air, coming down towards the Aurelius's neck. I held my breath as I watched the blade move towards its target.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

He felt the vibration singing through the blade as Talen jumped back, releasing his grip on the weapon through the tiefling's shoulder. It brought another spasm through his right arm, a low hiss sliding out.

But as the sword was released Aurelianus felt the dull blanket of haziness that was starting to encompass his senses, and knew he was in trouble; he knew from experience that cool numbness was a very bad sign. It meant he was dying.

For the second bloody time today, he mused sourly.

Despite knowing it would be a temporary demise at most, Aurelius' monstrous ego still would not let him go down without putting up a fight. As far as his senses could determine, the two of them were the only fighters left standing.. figuratively speaking, in his case. The Anarchist malcontent would be damned if he was going to come close to being the sole survivor of another chamber, only to end up spitted by this thrice-damned man-boy-thing.

As soon as the creature stepped back from Resolve's now quite abused corpse, Aurelianus was on the move. He marked Talen circling round to his right and couldn't suppress the attempt at a smile - the shadow-beast was doing exactly Drak'shal would have done in his situation; capitalising on the opponent's weakness, like a predator should. Still, the cheek of the whelp, thinking of the planewalker as prey.. well, that was an insult he'd answer for.

A steady stream of profanity emerged from the tiefling's mouth as he forced his body and Resolve's to roll, twisting his torso to the right. It put weight on his wounded shoulder and he felt the sickening sensation of the blade parting more of his muscle. The whole sorry catalogue of wounds made themselves known with every single movement, but the half-demon forced himself through the pain, his iron will driving and sustaining him beyond what even his inhuman resilience could.

Putting Resolve's corpse between Talen and himself, Aurelianus took a deep breath trying to prepare for the stupidity of his next move. In hindsight, it did not help one jot.

With a surge of willpower channeled through him, the warlock sent an overcharged Eldritch Blast into the chit's body, the wall of raw arcane energy ripping her slender frame off of him even as Talen brought another sword down at the tiefling.

The body was sent sprawling at the boy like she was trying to tackle him from beyond the grave, ripping the sword out of Aurelianus' shoulder in a spray of black blood. He screamed. Again. Nothing could have contained it. But as the blood started flowing down his arm, the half-demon rolled away from the strike, whether his diversionary tactic had worked or not.

He forced himself to his knees, clamping a hand to the gaping wound.. but a quick glance at the gash told him a quick cauterisation wasn't going to cut it this time. With a feral growl burbling liquidly in his throat, Drak'shal stumbled unsteadily to his feet, swaying from blood-loss. His right arm hung limp at his side, inky blood running from the fingertips in a more or less steady trickle, staining the crimson puddle his boots were sloshing in; his face was a ruin, cheek-caved in, nose smashed across his face and right eye swelling shut as the two wounds pressed in from either side of it.

A more abused creature it would be difficult to picture.

But, despite the fact he was almost dead on his feet, the plane-touched guttersnipe still had his fanged blade clutched loosely in his cracked hand. He staggered a few steps, trying to blink away the dancing white flashes in his eyes, and trying to avoid choking on his own blood as it slid down the back of his throat.

"C'mon then yo--" he coughed violently as a thick clot caught in his windpipe. "C'mon you smug little prick!"

He tried to raise his right arm for an obscene gesture, but it was useless, swinging dead at his side. He settled for bringing his left up, blade held as ready as he could hope to make it in his state. But, a spasm of agony freed the weapon from his grip, and it landed at his feet with a clatter.

His face might have dropped, had he had enough face left working for the movement. He settled for hawking up another mouthful of black, but it wasn't his own blood this time despite appearing that way. Oh no.

With a smirk to himself (inside, at least) the warlock opened his mouth and breathed a searing cone of Hellfire at his opponent, even as the ability to stand deserted him and he collapsed onto his knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Whether it did any damage or not, Aurelianus was going to go out fighting.

[Hysteria]

Talen's sword sliced through neck and spine, separating a slightly stunned looking head from its shoulders. The spray of blood across the ground was red, dark and weak. The youth's face looked almost as surprised as the fixed look across Resolve's as hit the ground with a dull thud. To Talen's credit, he managed to keep his footing as the decapitated corpse hit him. After a momentarily stumble he was back, his eyes locked on Aurelius. The smell of blood must have been unbearable, as a clear line of dark red had been splashed across the youth's face. The pale skin flecked with crimson, his eyes unblinking pale blue.

The kid lifted his sword, the momentarily reprieve in the middle of battle allowed me to catch my breath. The headless and twisted corpse at Talen's feet still had the sword sticking out of her back, protruding through the centre of her chest.

The sight of the Tiefling fighting against his own wounds was commendable, that is, if you pretended like he wasn't hell spawn. The words of abuse, spat through falling black blood, it seemed oddly poetic. I thought him done for, but then I had continually been wrong the whole fight. With a gesture of defiance the Tiefling let lose another blast of hellfire.

Talen reacted quickly. His hand grabbed the sword still protruding from Resolve's body. The boy barely strained as he lifted it, and her up into the air. The fire smashed into the limp, headless form with a roar of burning flesh. Talen was bracing himself behind her, using his smaller size as an advantage under hers. The youth didn't wait for the fire to stop, he charged forwards, body being torn asunder in front of him. He wasn't completely untouched, I could see flames licking the sides of his arms and legs as they flowed around the girl. The youth's dark pants burn in places and thick red burns appeared.

The flames dropped and Talen threw the body to the side. The desiccated mess shed charred flesh as it bounced across the ground. It was no longer recognisably as a body. I again felt a sick sense rising in my stomach, but I turned my eyes back to Talen. Both his hands gripped his blade. The youth threw another swing towards the Tiefling's neck, for whatever reason he sought to cleave his head from his shoulders once more.

[Aurelianus Drak'shal]

Once again, Aurelianus felt the loss of his ability to smile, his facial muscles twitching and spasming as the torment wracked his body. Using Resolve's body as a shield was not only a canny move on the cutter's part, but the tiefling knew Luned would still be watching from the crowds.

As if watching her best friend murder her fuck-buddy was not enough, she had then had to watch he creature she so loathed snap her neck, and now.. well, there was very little left of the exorcist's corpse besides charred meat and the gleam of exposed bone. The trauma that was likely to cause the scribe was a wonderful little upside to Aurelius' day.

Not that he had the time, or the clarity of mind to dwell on the small pleasure.

He couldn't smell the hideous reek of roasted flesh through his ruined nose, and by now his right eye had lost vision completely. True, Aurelianus had taken many a severe beating throughout his life, on occasion even worse than this one, but if not for the demonic blood flowing through his veins.. and down his flesh through the many tears, gashes and scrapes, then he would have succumbed to unconsciousness long before now. If not death.

As it was, on his knees, with Talen raising his sword for the second decapitating strike in a row, there was the temptation whispering sibilantly in the back of his mind to just give up. To just take the blow and wake up soon enough, bright eyed and bushy-tailed.

But a survival instinct is a hard thing to quell.

As the sword sang toward his neck, the tiefling, moving as slow as treacle to his own perception, brought his arm up even as he allowed gravity to take hold of him, collapsing to his side. The warlock lashed out a hasty Eldritch Blast at the weapon, but with his lack of focus, and blood for that matter, he barely managed to alter the trajectory. Ironically, his raised arm did more to deflect the blade than his magick had.

He watched with his remaining good eye as the blade took his arm off cleanly across his forearm just above the elbow - a flood of sticky, glistening blood jetted from the wound, spraying across the boy-beast as he closed in again for the kill. He seemed adamant he was going to take the half-demon's head. As his body collapsed heavily to the floor of the chamber, Aurelianus didn't imagine there was much he could do to stop him. He didn't even feel any pain from the wound. Aurelius only felt cold, his body shivering violently as shock set in, robbing him of muscular control.

There was only one choice remaining to the insurrectionist at this late hour in the fight. He could try and cauterise the neatly bisected stump of his arm to stem the massive flow of blood pouring out.. or he could try for a single last attack before he wound up in the dead-book.

When you put it like that, there really was no choice for the Cager.

But in the end, his choice became irrelevant; with one arm dead from the shoulder down, and the other gone from the elbow down, he couldn't summon up any more scouring Hellfire. Instead, Drak'shal lifted his head weakly, neck straining from the effort and spat a mouthful of his own blood in Talen's face.

Satisfied, the half-breed's head thumped back into the collective blood-pool on the floor with a thick splash. He was dead before the sword came down at him again, the fanged smirk still plastered across his face.


And that would be the end of Aurelius for Round 2. Congratulations to the survivor.

[Hysteria]

The movements felt slowed. The blade rang as the blast of smashed into it. The sudden movement caused a flicker of concern across Talen's face, I could guess that in that instant he imagined if it had been aimed at his head. The sword continued its path, catching Aurelianus's raised arm and slicing it off. The limb fell limply, the now familiar spray of blood a moment later.

I could barely believe what I was seeing as the Tiefling lurched dangerously. Talen lifted his sword backwards, ready to take another swing. The kid was refusing to celebrate, refusing any movement that might put him in a disadvantage from some desperate attack. His sword caught the light, but even with the flashing steal he looked like a dark avenger rather than a saviour.

A final kiss goodnight, the demon spat blood across Talen's face. The youth stepped backwards, expecting the paint that never came. Aurelianus collapsed and Talen paused to wipe his face against his sleeve. The mishmash of Resolve's and Aurelianus's blood painted his face red, highlighted with streaks of soot. His armoured arm was darkened by dirt and grim, his other with slight burns across pale skin. I could imagine the coppery smell entering his nose, a foul mixture of charred flesh and blood.

That then was it. The youth had won, and slightly dumbstruck he stood amid the corpses. His small frame was hunched and exhausted. His eyes made slow movements around the bodies, checking to make sure everyone was as dead as they appeared. For a moment I pitied the youth. What life does one live where you instinctively check to make sure people are dead? Where you grip your sword as tightly after the final call of battle as during? After the battle ended I could go home. What of this kid?

[Silence Sei]

Hysteria
Roht Mirage
Resolve
Aurelianus Drak’shal
Warpath
Amber Eyes
The Hound



Story
7
8
6
8
6
5
6




Setting
7
7
6
5
6
7
5



Pacing
6
8
4
4
4
7
9



Communication
6
7
7
7
7
7
8



Action
8
7
5
6
7
7
7



Persona
7
8
6
5
5
6
9


Mechanics
4
6
7
7
7
5
9



Clarity
8
8
5
5
4
6
6



Technique
6
5
5
5
5
7
8



Wildcard
8
7
4
3
0
0
7


Total
Total
67/100
71/100
55/100
55/100
51/100
57/100
74/100
[td]





Now for some bullet point notes on each of you.


Hysteria
I thoroughly enjoyed the second person perspective of your writing this round, but it was slightly confusing at times
Your conclusion was not the greatest, and if it had better, it may have warranted an 8-9. The rest of your story, however, balanced this out.
Remember that Talen isn’t a God; he can take hits, you know.

Roht
I found myself generally concerned for the well-being of the kids in your side story. It was a nice change of pace from the confused girl who caused a bar brawl last round.
You’re writing was clear, and I could understand your actions just fine. Furthermore, Roht became the Aislinn Chamber punching bag while still being belivable.
I would suggest writing more literary techniques to your writing. Your foreshadowing was good, but using more literary devices would have helped your score there.

Resolve

You basically did nothing until the last parts of the Cell. I am surprised nobody took advantage of your prone body in astral form sooner
Your conversations lasted more than a couple of seconds, which in essence bunnies every other character around you. They can’t say they attacked during the conversation because then you still have to respond to it in your next post, and it becomes a whole clusterbomb.
Remember that using multiple energy blasts should start taking its toll o Resolve, especially considering she teleported twice, and went astral.

Aurie
While Aurie plays the part of a sinister bastard well, he really did nothing super sinister this round and just came off as ‘atypical villain #3537’
It took an Aurie 4 posts from ‘not knowing how much more he could take’ to die. The ‘go out fighting’ approaching loses its appeal once it has been mentioned more than once by a character who’s supposedly on his last legs.
Remember my advice to Resolve, about bunnying and Endurance. You also did really well respecting the abilities of your ICly more powerful opponents, and your conclusion was gold.

Warpath
You took a 0 in Wildcard due to posting 4 minutes late.
There was a lot of questionable activities going on with your character. While your character is powerful, I just couldn’t believe a few of the miracle moves he had pulled off.
[*The cautionary tale for Resolve/Aurie applies to you as well. Flint is a very interesting character, made for combat, and I hate to see him bogged down with bunnying conversations that prevent him from doing what he does best; clobberin.

Amber Eyes
While I understood that your Mystic Bomb should have canceled out Resolve’s energy blasts towards you (I –think- that’s what you meant to do), it was a bit confusing to read at first.
You also took a 0 in Wildcard, as well as a DQ, for your completely missing your deadline.
Kyla always has interesting storylines, and the dream predicting her as Roht’s ‘savior’ was an awesome side story.

The Hound
Arden is just full of unpredictable surprises, isn’t he?
As usual, your writing techniques and mechanics are your big number crunchers, great job!
Be careful with that silence bubble though, the writing in the profile is pretty ambiguous, so be careful on its use.


Hysteria, The Hound, and Roht Mirage advance to the finals!

[Mordelain]

Aurelianus Drak'Shal receives 500 experience and 100 gold.

Roht Mirage receives 3000 experience and 200 gold.

Hysteria receives 2875 experience and 300 gold.

Warpath receives 375 experience and 100 gold.

Resolve receives 500 experience and 100 gold.

Amber Eyes receives 500 experience and 100 gold.

The Hound receives 3000 experience and 200 gold.