Round 1 Veteran: Monster Vs Ciato Orlouge

[Silence Sei]

Battle begins tonight at Midnight CST. Good luck!

[Ciato Orlouge]

The blade had thrust forward, skewering its prey without warning. A pool of red crimson floated up to the surface of the water as the victim struggled against the tip of the weapon. The more he flailed, the worse the wound through his lungs began, tearing through his body and causing further damage. When the small being was finally removed from the shallow waters, the flounder had all but died upon the blade of Ciato Orlouge.

The cool water of the beach rushed over his legs, his black pants rolled up to just above his knees for his fishing adventure. The Mystic had always found that floundering was a great way to relax when he was anticipating a hard fight ahead of him. Most fishermen used lanterns and other lights to search for the bottom feeding fish, but Ciato found such advanced methods to be troubling. Instead, he relied purely on his senses to find his meal and his blade to capture it.

His senses and his sword were the two things he could always count on.

The Magus Cup was no doubt starting, and he had a feeling his opponent would soon arrive. No doubt it would be some boisterous veteran concerned with continuing a legacy nobody cared about. He sighed as he reached for the fish, peeling it off of his rapier and tossing the corpse into a simple white bucket filled with several of the deceased’s brethren. The waves of the beach slowly made their way to shore, and retreated almost as soon as they had come. It was a quiet night, one that would soon be filled with bloodshed and violence.

It would be the perfect backdrop to his stage of slaughter. The actor of Anarchy would soon once more reprise his role to some unfortunate understudy. These so called ‘veteran’s thought that they had seen true violence in their time on Althanas. Perhaps they had seen some atrocities, maybe even been the cause of said atrocities.

But there was nothing that could prepare them for Ciato Orlouge.

[Monster]

Abel absently rubbed at a fading heat blister on the back of his deathly pale hand as he trudged down the sun-bleached sands, the fishing shack growing closer with each sliding step. He'd woken too early at dusk, and the sunlight had scalded him before he could duck back into the dirty little cave he'd curled up in that morning at day break. Thankfully, it had only been peeking over the horizon as it died, the last threads of its beams matching the shade it had turned his skin; forge-hot red. He'd only just recovered when he'd reached the beach, flakes of crackling, dry skin falling from him, nearly the size of sheafs of book parchment. Still, the brush with the sun hadn't been entirely his fault; a certain someone had jolted him out of slumber with a flash of icy fire to find the folded paper on his chest.

Grumbling, he pulled his vambraces from his back pocket, tucking his left hand in first, before lightly pushing at the small bulge beneath his jacket in the center of his chest. Underneath the brown leather, the Coldfire Orb pulsed and glowed dimly with a crystalline cyan light. His Coalition contact, Foo, liked to wake him up with small licks of the frosty flame when it was time to meet. It was the same as tugging on the leash of a dog. A reminder that he wasn't free. The skin around the orb was still black and tender from the small pulse Foo had commanded from it. Some mornings, before he drifted off to sleep inside of the pit he would dig himself, he would gently cradle the orb between his claws, fantasizing about plucking it free. Tearing the leash off. But if he did...there would be only frost and ashes left in his shallow grave bed. Only one man could open the buckle on his leash.

That man sat inside of the shack, not bothering to look up as the door opened with a crack, then a long creak, sand sifting from the door frame. The doberman at his side didn't flinch either, and Foo reached out with one blue gloved hand and rubbed the narrow head of the animal between its pointed ears. Abel took off his hat and tugged down the scarf covering his face, giving the dog a deep frown. Oh, how he wanted to dig his claws into its belly and rip its guts out and stuff himself with beast-blood and flesh. But, the orb...

"Abel. Good to see you found your instructions." He could only see Foo's thin, bloodless lips under the brim of his fedora. That gloved hand kept rubbing the dog's head. Most people shuddered out of pure instinct when Abel came near, but if Foo batted a lash, the vampire couldn't tell. The dog stared at him. He curled his lip up and bared his teeth at it.

"You'll be participating in the Magus Cup Tournament. Your papers are in order, your first round is imminent."

"Papers?" Abel chewed lightly at his lip. Beads of foul, dead blood burst out of the clammy skin, but he ignored it. It would scab over in a few minutes. Often enough, he was arranged papers and the like when he had to keep his head low, and he had never been good at the cloak and dagger. His way was flashy and messy, the more blood the better. Leaning against one rickety wall of the fishing shack, Abel's feet shifted nervously on the old, sandy floor planks, long since destroyed by the shore moisture and salt water air. "What, these people don't want things like me in their fancy tournament?"

The chest of Foo's black wool coat shuddered; either a suppressed cough, or a silent laugh. "No, no. There are stranger than you this year. But the Coalition agreed with me that you would have drug your feet on purpose if told to do it yourself." Moonlight shining through a broken roof slat caught the flash of fangs as Abel sneered. "We want you to do as you do, Abel. There's a man in the tournament that we want dead. It's not your first opponent, this Ciato. You'll be informed when you are to face your target."

"So then...I can..." Abel trailed off, then licked his dry tongue across his many fangs. The hungry expression conveyed his question far more effectively than if he had spoken it. Foo lifted his hand from the doberman's head, and the dark, lean dog stood as the man retrieved a chrome fob atch from the inside of his long, black coat. He nodded, and Abel caught a faint smile on his white lips as he opened the watch and pressed something on the face.

"With prejudice. Your first drink is only a short walk southeast down the beach. Don't disappoint." If Foo had been smiling, it took to the vampire like a vehement infection in a gulp of bad blood. Abel's cheeks stretched, and nearly every fang shone in the cold moon light, glistening with saliva. Foo tapped the watch, and he and the dog vanished without a bang, a puff of smoke, or even a flash of light.. With dark jubilance, Abel threw open the door of the shack and started down the sands, hooking his colorless scarf with a claw and tugging it back up over his face.

He slowed when he smelled mucid, briny blood in the air. Some people romantically imagined vampires living off animal blood, but the thought of ever being forced into that extreme made Abel prefer the thought of falling on the broken legs of an up-ended wooden chair. Even at his thirstiest, he'd snatched up a rat or a dog - though he'd happily make an exception for Foo's dog. He gagged at the fishy stink and squinted. Another few steps and he came into view; thin, sharp, and as silver as the moon shining on the waves he stood knee-deep in. Abel drew closer, sand shifting under the heels of his boots. Sea-spray was quickly making his scarf damp, so tossed his hat onto a tiny dune and pulled it down, making it all the easier to see his burning eyes, thin nose, angular thin cheeks, and blood crusted lips. Ever so slightly, he spread his feet apart, frowning deeper at the beach making every movement fel clumsy. His hands spread at his sides, long gray claws hanging like guillotine blades over a noble's neck.

"You Ciato, pretty boy?"

[Ciato Orlouge]

He turned to face the man who had the audacity to approach him on his serene stage. The Mystic noticed that as this man spoke, his sharpened teeth glistened in the moonlight. He nodded to answer Abel’s question, pulling the fish off of his rapier as he did so. The waves rolled softly over his lower half while a nice spritz of sea air wafted around his nostrils. Ciato had thought at first that his first opponent in the Magus Cup was going to be a nobody. However the nobleman was starting to have his doubts.

Pointed teeth. Demon, perhaps? Ciato’s eyes overanalyzed the features of Abel, trying to exploit any weakness the man would be showing. No, some of them seem a bit more jagged than the others. That was a job he did himself. The canines are immaculate. Those two weren’t done by him. His feet. They shift ever so slightly back when the waves get closer to him. Moving water, he’s afraid of moving water. No. The posture. He’s not afraid of it, it’s like he physically can’t go into it. Vampire. He’s a vampire.

The Mystic’s lips curved upward, his legs taking a couple of steps forward as he grinned. His opponent was a creature of chaos, much like Ciato. He always had an admiration for the damned bloodsuckers. His wife had fed on the flesh and blood of others to survive, though Asterodeia had been more demon than actual vampire. The fact that these creatures could have such a sophisticated society among a species that for all intents and purposes should have died out eons ago was enough to earn the ‘Lornius Reapers’ respect.

“I am.” Ciato spoke aloud just for clarification towards his opponent, “And whose blood do I have the honor of painting my Asterodeia with today?” Ciato did not wait for an answer from the vampire, using his left hand to throw the dead flounder he still held towards the beast. It was both an insult and a show of respect from the nobleman; he wanted Abel to think that he amounted to no more than a scavenging animal in his mind, but also wanted to keep said animal fed well enough to fight.

He would make a good pet for the litter, after all.

[Monster]

"Yeah. Thought so. You don't look like any fisherman." Something flashed in his head. A memory through a haze of red gauze. A two week march across the Coronian countryside, full armor, full of sweat and anxiety. A river nearby, and older man with short cropped blonde hair with a little boy, fishing poles in their hands. Smiling. Abel remembered smiling too. He remembered his sword in his hand, the way the rocks clicked and clacked as they slid down the bank under his boots. A confused boy's, then the sweet feeling of steel plunging into flesh. A child's wails and a corpse in the river. Five months playing weapon polisher for a "mistaken enemy identity".

Abel blinked.

The fish slapped wetly into his chest, pulling him away from the memory before he could relish it. The vampire looked down to the slimy, wet spot on his jacket, then looked back to Ciato, thin lips pressed together into a knife slash of barely suppressed anger. It flashed through him like hateful sunlight. He would have flushed red with the fury if he wasn't so cold. He looked down at the flounder for a moment, the moon glimmering wet on its bloody scales, then back to the mistake, and felt a smile pull at his half-dead lips. Oh, you'll pay in pints for that, he thought, stepping towards the man. His boot heel pressed down on the fish's head, and its glazed eyes pupped out of its angular head with a muted, moist squish.

But then he stopped. He felt like he'd stepped against a wall - magic? Foo's papers were vague, half scribbled chicken-scratch in charcoal, and they had said something about glass. Nothing about any spells though. When the ocean water splashed on the toe of his boot, and he felt himself shoved back, he realized it. "You have to be kidding me..." He snarled down at the tide, feeling the invisible force ebb, then return as it lapped against the beach again, turning white sand to gray and his mirthful mood into one of dark hate. If Ciato had some sort of bow, or even throwing knives and a good eye, this match was going to be over soon.

Emotion drained from his face like blood from a torn jugular and Abel's thin, pale body sliced across the beach, red eyes staying on Ciato. He circled the mystic in a broad, shallow curve, hoping the man might think he was going for a stashed weapon buried under the wind lashed dunes. Anything to pull him out of those dark, shallow waves.

"Metzger." The 'z' was drawn out into a hiss between monstrous teeth, bloody eyes narrowing. "I'll tell your darling Asterodiea that when I finish using her and tear out her throat."

[Ciato Orlouge]

His feint had worked better than expected, the blood sucking beast rolling over in a rage at the insulting assault. The cold water rushed over Ciato’s legs with each wave that found its way to shore. His taunt and the chill of the liquid around him sent delightful chills down the Mystic’s spine. He knew that his opponent would not be a pushover; vampires usually were clever, powerful creatures after all. The distance between them kept Ciato at a slight advantage, however temporary it would be. The Mystic had no long range techniques to call his own, and judging from Metzger’s roar of anger, the vampire possessed none either.

If Ciato approached the beast, he had no doubt that he could very well be ripped to shreds. On such a beautiful night, the aquatic audience below did not deserve to swim in a river of blue blood. Ciato knelt down into the waves, his hand feeling around in the grainy mud below for something. His clothes had become fully submerged in the salty sea by the time he rose up, a solitary hermit crab shell in his hand. “Unfortunately for you, my Asterodeia passed from this world years ago. You are welcome to try and revive her, though I suspect you would have your own throat ripped out before you could blink.”

Ciato threw the shell into the air, a whistle echoing in the air as it made its way back down towards the Mystics. The sea rock came within an inch of slamming into the nobleman’s head before it stopped, the crap within the shell peeking out to make sure the coast was clear. The animal fell back into the water with a ‘plop’ sound as tiny fragments began to sort of ‘crack’ around Ciato’s perThe small cracks soon became like spider webs surrounding the man. The air around him shattered without warning, sharps of clear glass floating casually in the air.

“I think I could make a fine necklace out of his fangs, don’t you?” Ciato looked to the shattered fragments, the glass speeding off towards his opponent. Their target was Metzger’s teeth; an attempt to remove the most dangerous weapon from the bloodthirsty barbarian before Ciato even dared get close to him. “You face the son of the Genocide Giant today, Metzger. If you wish to taste azure liquid tonight, you must earn it!”

[Monster]

Sour, saline water poured, then trickled off the man, silvery and alabaster, looking like the very avatar of the moon itself. Confident and unshakable, Ciato merely smiled as the vampire's barb glanced off his pearly form without leaving a scratch. And there was Abel, waxen and ghastly, scrabbling in the sand. He stopped his sprint at a crouch, digging his long, sharp fingers into the cool sand. He couldn't quite believe this wasn't the man the Coalition wanted dead, though perhaps that was his own jealousy towards a man with such living, beating vitality and vibrancy that he had lost when that bolt had punched through his spine. Sometimes he could imagine the hot phantom pulse of life rushing through him, like the itch of fingers long lost from a severed hand. If not this one, then who was Foo told to order his thirsty dog to feast on? Maybe it was Ciato. It hadn't been the first time his contact had misinformed him.

"Pity. Its fun when they fight back. Then again, wouldn't be the first time they were dead before I got myself in them." He flashed a sliver of knife-like teeth in a shadow of a sneer. He liked to trash talk, he liked to get others worked up before he sank his teeth in. It made the blood hot, it made it pound through the veins and gush into his mouth to spill over his lips and down his throat and coat his chest and gullet in delicious, sweet red life.

Abel curled his fingers in the sand and leaned forward, waiting for Ciato's feet to clear the sea-foam, ready to spring forward toward the thick veins under his pale neck. But he didn't lunge when the mystic stepped onto the beach. He rocked back slowly onto his heels, watching the slick rock in his hand with curiosity. He lead with it, held before him like a talisman, his smile bold and his poise immaculate. Why wasn't he holding that rapier between him and the monster waiting on the dunes?

He tossed it skyward. Abel snorted derisively; one of the oldest combat tricks in the book. Misdirection was something a child soldier could do, even if they couldn't lift their conscript sword. His softly glowing red eyes seemed to brighten as he kept his eyes on Ciato's misted face. The smile grew to a grin - he was going to enjoy every drink.

Then the rock came down and stopped and all of that hungry mirth left his face as the air cracked around Ciato. The sound of shattering glass -

"-glass! You hungry still? Yeh can eat some of this!" He was in the Furnace. A guard in heavy leather armor had his knee on Abel's thin chest. His mouth was smeared in cooling blood, hands still wet from the throat of the youngest guard whom he'd just lunged at. The knee on his chest, digging into his sternum, the pitted stone floor grinding into his back. Two other guards stood at either side, gray talismans of Draconus hanging from iron chains looped through the their fists. The tallest of them, with a permanent sneer from a wicked scar slicing from the corner of his lip to the bottom of his left eye, leaned down and jammed and rusted funnel into the vampire's mouth.

"Hungry piece of shit. Gonna git all you can eat." The shattered shards of glass tinkled and hissed as they slid down into Abel's red crusting maw. He struggled, shuddered, squirmed. The glass sliced into his gum, tongues, jammed themselves between his teeth, and filled his mouth with the taste of his own putrid blood. He whipped his head to the side, shaking the funnel, but the Sneerer just pulled his boot back - and slammed it into the vampire's jaw. "CHEW!"

The glass was coming at him, wickering through their, flashing in the light. Something ugly and serpentine coiled in his guts. Abel lunged, not backwards or to the side, but forward - straight into the stream of glass. He remembered how the shards and slivers had cut through his cheeks, left his tongue hanging by a thread, all the maddening agony that had left him unable to drink blood for nearly a week, and he pushed himself faster. He snapped his arms up in front of his face, and the first of the shards bounced off the iron plates on his vambraces. But more came, and they artfully cut through the air and found his cold flesh. They sliced open his cheeks, giving him a hideous grin that stretched literally from ear to ear. They took three of his razor sharp teeth. The glass cut shallow stinging ribbons of flesh off his fingers and neck, and one ricocheted off his glove and sliced a shallow furrow across his eye, shutting out the silver light. The air filled with the fetid stench of his dead blood.

But he still came. The echoes of the glass in the Furnace, mixed with the very real stinging and aching pain of cracked teeth and filleted flesh seemed to fuel that monstrous, hungry fire down inside of his gut. Abel sprinted directly at Ciato, a low growl building in the back of his blood slicked throat. He didn't know what the mystic was calling out to him. He didn't know a Genocide Giant, and he didn't know what azure liquid was. He knew two things; blood and death, and now he was starved for both.

He lashed his foot out, but his boot came short. A plume of sand billowed up toward Ciato's face, and before it fell on him, Abel hurled himself forward with supernatural speed, hands curled, claws extended, his face a hideous mask of ruin and murderous intent. He slashed out, hoping to rake his claws across the mystic's chest, not hoping to kill, but to wound.

Abel didn't want him dead yet. He wanted him crippled and squirming in the sand.

[Ciato Orlouge]

The grains of sand pelted him like an unsophisticated barrage of inconvenience. The Mystic quickly raised his arm to avoid the cloud created by his bloodied nemesis, only to be on the receiving in on a rather devastating blow. Ciato’s vest provided absolutely no defense for the brutal claw that raked its way across the nobleman’s torso. A cascade of blue mist washed over his opponent as the Mystic stumbled backwards, eyes wide and the free hand he had used to shield his eyes now touching the azure mess that poured out of the hole.

The dolphin that was Ciato Orlouge had only angered the shark that was Abel Metzger.

With each beat of his heart, he could feel his wound rhythmically throb. A smile that teased just the smallest amount of teeth pasted itself across the Mystic’s features. The curtain had drawn to a close on the opening act, and now the star was prepared to reach the climax. He flicked his wrist, the steel of his rapier glistening in the moonlight. He pointed the weapon towards Metzger, thrusting forward towards the vampire’s heart. Asterodeia was not made of wood, so Ciato had serious doubts about his technique killing the fool.

The rushing waves had drowned the sound of the blade tearing through flesh, so the Mystic knew not whether his feint was successful. He quickly used the opening his attack had created to back step back into the rushing waves, retreating into the sea with the water itself. His blood dripped down his body and fell into the water below to create a sadistic watercolor on the surface. As the waves carried his life essence to shore, the yellow sands became stained with his blue. The salty air of the beach stung the slash in his chest, but now Ciato was back at an advantage.

While he had to fight close range as well, Asterodeia gave the nobleman another few feet over his foe. All Ciato had to do now was barely stay within an arm’s reach of the creature, and the battle would be his. The waves washed over his shins as he spun his weapon around his hand, almost taunting Metzger to attempt another lunge. The water rushed to and fro around him, crashing around his feet before retreating once again. The vampire would have to be careful and clever in his deathblow delivery now.

And so the players began their determined standoff. Would Ciato give into his wounds or would Metzger find himself on Asterodeia’s steel by the end of the night?

[Monster]

A slash of steel burst through the falling sands, shining like polished lightning, and Abel had a scant second to react. For all of the issues his new no-life presented, the simple shore line pushing him backwards like a phalanx of shield men on the battlefield, he could do things no man with a living heart could do. He started to crouch, the definitions of his body blurring ever so slightly, and the rapier's tip sank into his shoulder, missing the gnarled knot of useless meat it ad been aimed at. His leathers slowed the blade, even as sharp and well oiled as it was, and while it still drew blood, it certainly wasn't the death blow Ciato had been intending, surely, to deliver. Abel widened the flesh wound and threw himself further on the blade, hoping to trap it inside of himself so that he could get his claws on the Mystic's throat, but the blade slipped away, and the sands slid unevenly under the tow of his boot.

It had been only a second and a half, and now both were bleeding, one the color of the afternoon sky, the other a discolored brown, leaking lazily down his shoulder.

Abel blinked. Blue? He raised his claw to his face, and saw the strange blood. He had opened a lot of throats, but none of his victims ever bled anything but red. Turning his hand to catch the color under the moonlight, a thin, dry tongue flicked out, licking away a sample from his middle finger. He smacked his lips, paused, then frowned.

What a bloody disappointment.

"You look like a damn proud man. I gotta ask. Whats it like to know you taste just the same as some whore I ripped open in Scara Brae?" The rapier wound had pierced his ego as well, but he felt a spiteful little surge at his words. Ciato certainly cut an impressive figure, but under that creamy, white skin, the beryl blood surging through all of his plump veins was just the same as his had tasted to his red headed, fanged angel, The mystic was in the water again, the rapier held towards him, as sharp and unrelenting as his poise. Abel seemed to relax, one hand falling to his side as he licked blood off his fingers. Now he was smiling lightly, glowing eyes on the smears of indigo covering his ghost-white skin.

"Figured out the water thing already, eh? Dunno why that's a thing. Maybe something about the purity of water. Either way, go ahead and stay out there." He bent down, scooped up some of the cerulean muck forming at the edge of the waters and sands, then seemed to thing better of it and let it drop onto his boot with a soft plop. "You'll bleed out."

Abel snagged the edge of the tear Ciato's rapier had made in his jacket, tugging the hole open. The clean silver of the moonlight made the wound look more disgusting that it truly was. Small hideous scabs of mustard yellow and gangrenous green rimmed the edge of the wound. He was still bleeding, but it was evident that he was healing. A light steam rose from it, and it stunk of moist, hot, rotting flesh, a cloying, thick stench that could reach the mystic even over the clean, briny smell of the sea.

"I won't."

[Ciato Orlouge]

Ciato growled as Metzger’s words reached him. He could feel his energy already starting to leave his body, the salty sting of the water only a temporary reprieve from the pain. The vampire stepped away from the area of attack, almost daring the Mystic to come back out. Ciato knew better than that; another blow like the one Metzger had delivered and he would be no more. He looked around, trying to find something to patch himself up with.

He kneeled into the water, feeling around until he had grabbed enough seaweed to be sufficient for the task at hand. He placed the weeds over his shoulder as he grabbed at clumps of mud below, standing and wincing as he thought about the next step.

Desperate times… Ciato slammed the mud into his wound, allowing for just the tiniest of scream to escape his pale lips as he rubbed the grains across his chest. The pain from the salty mud was immense, but the nobleman knew that he could not show weakness in front of this strong opponent. After the mud had been evenly placed he grabbed at the seaweed hanging on his form, placing it roughly against the mud and rubbing the grains further into himself. The hole would get infected; he had come to terms with that, but for the time being, it was a makeshift bandage.

It was in no way a permanent fix, but it would keep Ciato alive long enough to let him think. Metzger’s wound had all but sealed up, a fine trail of blue running down the lips of the demon as he stood on the shore watching his opponent like a cat watches a bird from a window. The significance of that blood, his blood, brought a smile to the refined man’s lips. Metzger was just as dead as Ciato.

“The difference in my blood and a prostitutes,” Ciato said, taking his muddy hand and washing it off in the waves, “is that their blood won’t kill you. You see Metzger, Mystic blood differs from human blood because it has the potential to utilize light and shadow magic.” Ciato pointed his blade at the beast like a teacher would a ruler towards a student, “Pay attention because this is important. That potential for light magic, the same light magic that gets its power from the sun. Sun fueled light magic. You seem like a rather smart man; you decided to take out your hardest competition early, after all, so I’ll let you think on that.

If Ciato were to die from his wound bleeding out, Metzger was going to suffer a truly horrible fate thanks to time. As that Mystic blood coursed through his system, it would start burning like the sun’s rays, at first the feeling would be akin to indigestion, but as the time slipped by, the vampire would find himself crippled as his organs literally melted away inside of him. Vampires may have been immortal, but not even they could survive the power of the sun burning them away from the inside out.

“Looks like checkmate, monster.” Ciato grinned as he held his chest ‘bandage’ with his free hand.

[Max Dirks]

Monster advances to Round Two!

Ciato Orlouge is alive in the Loser's Bracket.

Word count came in at 5199, thus I'm disinclined to offer rewards for this battle. Sorry.