-
Shadar knew he had made a mistake. Seth rose, enduring the stings of the wire as he drew even more blood from himself. Not even a masochist would be as pleased with this situation as Seth looked at that moment. Then, Shadar looked from that bloodied hand back to the face that was nearly his own.
Ooooo… you blew it.
With Seth’s words, pain filled the cage. Shadar’s illusion shattered like glass around a volcano. The last shards of it, nothing but wispy blue comets, ran ahead of the white light like a halo. And at the center of it was Shadar, howling as he endured an inferno from his already deadened nerves. Helpless, he collapsed onto his stomach as the tense wire net fell from his hands, its edge springing to a rest a few inches from where his outstretched hands lay. He was motionless, simply grunting as if to take in breath that his body didn’t need. It was all his tortured mind could do to prove to itself that it was still alive. Ripping apart and burning, but alive.
There was another scream above him. Brigitte, his mind twitched. Fumbling within himself, he found the lights of his senses. Darkness encompassed more of them, not from calming thoughts but from desperation. The torrent of pain barely faded, but he found enough of an opening to lift his head and see Brigitte’s body crash down upon the barbed wire in front of him. See it was all he did. Hearing had disappeared along with as much of his tactile senses as he could force out. Fire seemed to ring his vision as he watched her writhing and kicking, her feathers shredding on the weapon of his creation. Though he couldn’t hear her wordless screams, he felt them from her soul. It was breaking under the flood.
He pushed away more, nearly every last tie to his senses. She became nothing more than a sun-wreathed outline. “It’s ok,” he manage to squeak out in a surprisingly calm voice as he thrust one hand forward and slammed it down upon the wire. Immediately, steel turned to liquid. The reflective silver droplets of it gleamed for only an instant as the matter of the wire condensed. The next moment, Brigitte’s frantic kicking scattered the droplets near her in a wild spray that suddenly seemed to panic. As if truly sentient, the droplets of metal quivered and darted about in the air until they located their source. Then, the rush of cool molten steel flooded back into Shadar’s gloves. So strong was the force that he was spun onto his side and kicked a few feet back.
Brigitte still thrashed from the pain that was in her head. It was pain that she didn’t deserve. Pain that Shadar would pay Seth back for tenfold. Harder he pushed at his senses. In the last moments of vision left to him, he formed the sheet of mythril chain mail from one quivering arm and slung it over toward the struggling, nearly mindless harpy. His last image was of it landing squarely on her. Thank you! he thought heavenward to whoever might be listening.
He flopped over on his back, completely unaware of the sensation. He was far from his body and drowning in a lake of fire. One thought remained as the waves hit him over and over again. You’ll pay… for hurting her. Somewhere far away, he knew that he was raising both arms skyward. From them, all the steel within the Void poured upward. It began as a silvery burst that seemed to fill a spherical ball of air, then it rippled into defined ridges and soon a collection of four foot long metal slivers wound as tightly as a ball of yarn.
He thought his body laughed, then, as he released his hold on the metal. Immediately, it exploded with the tension of a hundred metal shards bent and barely holding each other. Outward the shrapnel flew, though some of it pierced his body. He was too far under the fire to notice as the skewers pinned his right leg, right shoulder, and left torso to the ground. He would care when he awoke from hell.
If he awoke.
((There are roughly a hundred steel shards, about an inch by four feet each, shooting away from his location. Enjoy.))
-
A savage grin almost seemed to appear on the cat boy's mouth as he opened it, large pointed teeth appearing where normal flat human ones would have rested. The brown skinned man, Leon's prey now, pulled on the yarn biting into his skin. It slipped out of the grandmaster's hand easily, not so much as a rope burn on his paw to boot.
Despite the small trick, his prey still managed to retaliate, his fist slamming into the boy's teeth in time to stop any truly major damage. The cat's arms closed in anyway, the flesh splitting before his claws as if it were water. His body fell quickly, thumping hard on the ground and tail. A hiss escaped him as he skirted back, surveying his attack.
While not nearly at the scale that he would have liked, small droplets of blood had already began to fall from the man's arm. He couldn't tell how many of his claws managed to rend flesh, but enough to create a small stream at least. He spat from his mouth one of his teeth as he did so, proud that there was a small enough nick on the end of his arm. It was minor, not even worth fussing over, but he was still proud for some reason nonetheless.
Whatever thoughts he had, whatever actions he was about to perform, quickly were thrown away from his mind. To his eye, millions of steel spears had just flown passed him, Two cutting through the excess cloth that hanged from his legs. Another few, the boy couldn't tell, cut the top of his body like a farmer's scythe. One hit him the side, though it managed to only his the yarn returned to his side, stopping the shard enough so it would not kill him.
He groaned, getting to his feet slowly as he did so. Enough damage had been done to ruin his balance somewhat, though he may have taken a blow to the head to help. He stumbled, hand grasping on of the more smooth steel shards that now littered the arena. The cold steel bit into his hand, but not enough to make the cat boy drop it. The shard was pulled from the hard ground, coming loose easily and into the boy's hand. He smiled, losing his balance slowly as he turned, nearly tipping over as reeling. The wall was his saving grace before he fell, steadying himself on with his free hand. He still had targets, all seven apparently. The grandmaster tried to catch his breath instead of going back into the fray, all the while blood dripping from where his tail used to be.
((Abeneki's bunny allowed. If I went too far, I can edit if you want. Also, Ow.))
-
Komosatuo blinked and stared.
Blinked again, then stared some more.
The daemon had disappeared.
Not disappeared in a sense that he had vanished from sight by blending with the rest of the people in the cage, but disappeared in a sense that he really did, vanish. As if into thin air. Komosatuo had never seen the like in his life, ever.
Sure he had seen men disappear, as if into thin air - as a Horachi’Lykn Ninja he knew much of the technique used to perform such a feat - but never this. He stared, like a helpless animal trapped in a steel teeth and clamp trap, as the coat the daemon had just used to effortlessly block his thrown darts, settled heavily to the ground. The sound that it made when it hit said that it was probably coated with some sort metal lining.
Smart, Komosatuo thought as he reached up to touch his broken nose. It was definitely broken, but luckily not shattered. He winced as he placed his thumb and forefinger against the bridge and shifted it. There was a grinding noise as the broken piece of cartilage slid back into place and when it did Komosatuo noticed that it was suddenly easier to breathe. The pain had subsided a little as well.
He tried sniffing and wiggling his nose. That ended with a sharp inhale and grunt of pain and he instead settled with a shake of his head. As he finished shaking his head he noticed something about the dark masses that were wrapped around his ankles.
They were gone.
There was something odd about the way those shackles worked, something that Komosatuo was still trying to slid into place. For one they didn't feel at all like real shackles. There was just, there. Kind of like the trousers he now wore. He couldn't feel them against his skin, his suit being in the way, but he could still see that they were there. He couldn't feel them, but he knew they were there. That was kind of how those shackles worked, at least, in his own experience it was.
They were gone though and it still felt as if he was still shackled. Although while he was shackled, it still felt as though he were still free. The thought process confused him and he evidently let it slip from his mind as he stood and dusted his knees. It was a useless action; it had become more of a habit than anything else. After he had finished straightening he walked over to the daemons discarded coat and bent to retrieve it.
It felt as though it weighed a ton and Komosatuo had to bend his knees and nearly sit on his ankles just to get into a position to stand. Standing was the easy part, as he used his legs to do most of the lifting and when he was finally upright again, he turned to face the center of the cage. As he did he saw something most unusual happen.
For one, there was a rather dark looking mist hovering in the center of the cage. Secondly, there appeared to be two figures fighting in the dark mist. And thirdly, he thought he recognized one of them.
Of course he should, it was that spider freak from a few seconds - or was it minutes? - earlier. Komosatuo's eyes suddenly peered upward and he caught sight of the creature that had attacked him. It didn't look too well, but it was still managing to hold onto the ceiling so he guessed that it mustn't be too badly hurt. Still didn't mean it wasn't a threat but he decided to ignore it this time - he didn't want a repeat incident. He let his eyes once again settle onto the two figures fighting in the mist and squinted to see if he could get a better look.
That was when things go real nasty, and Komosatuo would look back on that point as well, and wonder how it was he survived.
He couldn't tell but he thought that one of the figures had gained an advantage in the fight and was moving in for the killing blow, but he couldn't be entirely sure. It was hard to see through the mist and he -- there was abruptly a very bright, white flash of light and Komosatuo blinked in confusion as the after affects left dark dancing spots in his vision. He was about to shake his head to clear the spots when his skin suddenly tingled dangerously and then erupted into a searing pain he had never felt before in his life. It was like he was being squashed together by small wires riddled with thousands of spikes. He only lasted a half-second before his mouth opened in mute surprise and pain and his legs gave way beneath him, landing him in a heap partially beneath the heavy coat.
His breath came in ragged gasps as the pain cut deeper into his flesh, overtaking his entire body in the form of white hot pulses. Never before had this kind of pain been inflicted upon him. In the past he had endured many kinds of pain, from broken bones to cuts and crushing blows that should have killed him, but those had all been from a source that he could see. This, this pain, was from no where and every where at once. The fear of it was enough to magnify it ten fold. He knew that soon, should the pain continue, he would pass out.
Then, suddenly, as if on cue, the pain subsided and faded to nothing more than a dull ache in his flesh. Almost like a memory of a pain from long ago. Komosatuo's breath came and went easier now that the pain had subsided and he had just gathered himself enough to push himself up from the heap that he was on the floor when the world exploded for a second time. This time however, it wasn't an explosion of light.
Hundreds of metal shard like spikes erupted from a body lying on its back in the center of the cage. Komosatuo, in the split second it took him to realize what was happening and duck back behind the coat, saw that it was the spider freak. He also noticed that the cloud of mist had vanished but the observation was lost in the panic of trying to duck and cover to avoid the barrage of metal shards.
He had just managed to get most of his torso beneath the coat when something slammed hard into the thick leather, right between his eyes. A bright white light filled his vision and he abruptly lost all recollection of the next few seconds as he was hurled into unconsciousness.
-
Jada watched in grim fascination the bright red droplets of his own blood as they fell steadily from his fingers. The cat's claws had gouged several crimson snakes into the red-brown flesh, their ugly puncture-mark heads hissing at his shoulder as their tails curled down to the wrist. He tried making a fist, but only his thumb and pointer-finger responded to his silent command. The other three hung limp, broken, and the flesh on his middle knuckle was raw to the bone where fist had met tooth...
The Snake's Defiance, the scar-like glyph on the back of his neck, was warm; a warmth that flowed through Jada's limbs and numbed his mind to the pain in his arm. The mark had been one of his parting gifts from his elder shaman, and it was the only armor he really had. Though the rune could not protect his body from the weapons around him, Jada was more than grateful for the pain-deadening armor it could offer his mind...
"It ends." The warrior said simply in the direction of the cat. At this moment in time he wasn't entirely in the mood to trade idle banter in a language he could not fully comprehend. He was here to fight; kill or be killed, and he wasn’t totally aware of just how true his words were about to become…
Cold metal impaled him in the back, a horrible pain radiating from his left side, just above the hip despite the pain-blocking effects of his rune. Nda! No!, Jada thought, suddenly regretting a perceived mistake. He could almost visualize one of his other opponents standing confidently at his back, a smile on their lips as they held their blade in the young warrior's back. Always look behind you... was the lesson Jada learned to late...
Yet, the cat didn't look very pleased at all. He was pulling at something lodged into the arena floor, blood dripping onto the ground around him. He held in his hands a length of metal roughly similar to Jada's sword, but this metal was cleaner, shinier. Jada fell to his knees as the cat reached for the wall to hold himself up, and the warrior turned his head to look over his shoulder. There was no one behind him. No sneering or grinning foe with his hands on the tool of death lodged in the warrior's back. There were only more of the shiny metal blades, dozens of them, scattered across the floor of the arena.
"Gagwi yo?" Jada said out loud, a small trickle of blood dribbling out of the corner of his mouth and down his chin. His breathing was shallow and quick; his lungs working double-time to keep up with the sudden frenzy of his heart. The simple warrior was trying to comprehend; trying to figure out what had just happened. Where had all these blades come from? Who was responsible for this? These were questions that the warrior needed answered, but they were second in his mind to more pressing concerns. Could he still fight? Was he dying? Was this what death felt like? He had come close to death once, as a young adult on the banks of the river. That day his spirit had struggled to leave him; the same day he was chosen to be a shaman. It had felt different then, with the water filling his lungs and choking the life out of him...
It had been different then, but strangely, the feeling was somewhat the same...
-
Deep in the shadows the world of Althanas was left behind. The empty expanse of the void was easy to shift through for the demon, and was more secure than wandering about the cage. Through the darkness, too, he could watch what was taking place within the cage. Light and darkness flickered on the end of every random spell, and people fell one after another in the chaos of battle.
Steel shards were scattered throughout the arena, just overhead of the shadows. It was by pure luck, and blessing of the shadow goddess, that Modrue had not been prey to the attack. From the depths he could see the people falling. One after another. First went the human who he had attacked earlier, attempting to use the demon’s own trench coat to escape the attacks. Then another human, then another. It was a massacre, and the one at the epicenter had fallen also, the spidermage.
“The target is compromised,” the demon thought as he floated through the void, picking a new target to attack. “A new target is necessary, and quickly”
Without waiting for a response from the goddess Modrue released himself from the void and returned to the melee. The cold shadows were shed and replaced by a thin cloud of dirt, a veil of dust. It was almost enough to make the demon wish to shift again into the darkness. But his target was directly before him, and time was against him.
A grunt due to the force of the attack escaped his thin lips. Titanium fists arched in hooks that were aimed directly for the side of the cat-man-thing. It was an abysmal beast that was second on the list of opponents to destroy. He was already injured, but it mattered little to the demon.
~+|+~
The high priestess’ finger was pushed out of the orb. A hiss crossed her lipless face. Something had gone wrong with the battle; someone powerful had interfered with her control of the demon. The black needle at the end of her finger dissipated as she twitched her head back and forth. The others within the damn cave scuttled back towards the entrance, not wanting to be caught in her fury.
“{Contact the Avatar’s, send a message. I want the demon here, now. I will not play any longer with this orb.}” Immediately the spidermagi towards the entrance turned and ran through the long caves. The Avatar’s were those that were controlled by the spidermagi voluntarily, those that gave themselves over to their lust for power enough to take the side of the Dark Queen. From deep in Concordia the Children of N’jal had more influence than most of the other Thayne combined.
They would be able to send word to the demon. They would bring him to the lair of the spidermagi and then the Dark Queen’s will would be done.
-
Everything happened so fast. The barbed wire fell away, along with the creation of the spikes. When the spikes began to penetrate his body, causing him to shudder with each one he coughed, blood began to trail down his lips. Part of his was satisfied with the ending he had come to in the cell, but part of him thirsted for more. It wanted to continue the fight, to clutch the Gift of the Magi and be reborn anew, to kill maim and destroy once more.
Looking at the falling body of Shadar the steel blades that extended through his body looked like needles carefully placed as they skewered him through his chest through a lung, through his legs, through his arms. They were everywhere as he clutched to life with his one good hand, the other hanging uselessly as the blade had punctured through his shoulder. He looked upon the fallen thief and coughed again, the blood flowing freely from his lips as he smiled.
A wet gasp escaped his lips as he contemplated his goals in the cell. He wanted to prove he had control over himself. He had fought admirably against the man before him, only using two of the tricks in his arsenal, one of which replenished. So, when he grinned he winced at the pain and coughed once more, "Yes, I win..."
Those simple words caused more blood to pour from his lips, the blood trickling down his body forming a rather demented picture of the man many referred to as Demon. Reaching up with his good hand he groaned as he pulled one of the slivers from his leg. A spurt of blood ejected from the torn limb as she convulsed and fell forward. Using the four foot shard as a crutch he pulled himself to his feet as he ignored everything else. His sense of hearing having gone to hell as his body began to shut down.
Hobbling towards Shadar coughing as he did so, he loomed over the downed thief blood dripping on the fallen figure, surely giving him ample time to notice the thief's actions. Seth however, was a man hell-bent on revenge. Trying to stand on his own two feet he rose the shard in his hand up, almost above his head before he stabbed it down with enough force to puncture through the skin, and possibly devastate the insides of the man, if he even cared anymore.
Once the act was done he fell over onto his side, before he groaned, more blood flowing into a pool about his body. He had proven he was in control, now he had to prove it again. As he shut his eyes and played dead, he could feel the fatigue overwhelm him. He was so close to finishing his job. With a wet gasp he clutched the Gift, and remained silent as slowly, one by one the shards of metal began to slide out of his body, as it ejected the vicious intruders.
Playing dead he only hoped no one wished to pursue the thief while he tried to recover.
-
((Bunnying of Seth was given the ok.))
Shadar saw nothing, felt nothing, as the lake of flame stirred about him and he sank into its dark depths. He was too numb to feel any pain or sorrow. The only sensation that arose in his mind was a deep longing. He knew he was leaving for a time. It felt as inevitable as the sunset. But, if he had to leave, he’d give Brigitte one last pulse of positive thought, even if it was weakened by the distance between life and death.
- - - - - - - -
As she had watched from the ceiling, it was like every fiber in her body was twisting in on itself. Motion, thought, even her will to live disappeared under the strain of knotting flesh. She didn’t know that her claws unlocked from the mesh, or that she landed on the hungry bed of wire. With a mind as fresh and fragile as hers, it became numb instantly. She wasn’t a sentient creature, not even an unthinking animal. She was more like a fallen leaf, wilting and crunching under the unforgiving heat of a cruel sun.
Thought returned to her slowly as her environment changed by layers. The floor, which she was only vaguely aware of now, seemed to become smooth. Then, the light of the sun was blotted out by a blanket of cold metal. It wrapped around her soothingly, the residual thoughts on it reminding her of him. Finally, the overwhelming pain faded, leaving only the ache of being slammed into the wall and then the floor.
Only then did thought truly return. With a gasp, she remembered the image of Shadar screaming the instant before she herself had been struck. Reflexively, she tried raising a wing to lift the chain mail, his chain mail, from her. She only succeeded partly, for the movement sent a new wave of pain through her. In her few months of life, she had admittedly experienced little despite her distinction as a fighter. Just this much was enough to send her wing twitching back to the floor.
The faint spots of light that filtered through the links was just enough for her to make out the mess of feathers around that wing, many of them perforated by something that was no longer there. Perhaps it was because of that concealment that she did something for the first time in her life. She wept. Quivering, she let the drops of hopelessness fall silently from her eyes. I’m useless to him, she scolded herself as she lay limply between the metal blanket and a small pool of her own blue, wispy vitae.
As long as you’re ok, said a comforting, if distant, voice in her head.
“Shadar?!” she squawked excitedly. There was emotion in the thought, emotion that seemed to warm her stomach and give her the strength to rise. Forcefully, she threw the blanket off and sat up as her blood floated from her scratched back like clouds in a dream. Shadar had to be there, and he was. But, he wasn’t safe.
The harpy stared in horror as Seth drove the shard into Shadar’s already pinned and massacred body. There was no sign of resistance from his cold, empty face as he stared unblinkingly at the sun. “No…” she whispered.
He had told her in the beginning that they would be revived at the end. But, that didn’t stop the streaks running down her anguished face. Screw the future. At this very moment, Shadar was laying in front of her, a bloody red mess. He was her partner, her source of life. No, she thought resolutely to herself as she slowly stood, her form shaking with both sorrow and rage. He’s not just my source. He is my life! It was such a deep emotion that filled her that she could barely comprehend it. But, it was still real. Like an extra set of wings, it lifted the strain from her and set purpose into every muscle. Almost silently, she lifted herself from the ground as the sorrow faded and the rage washed through her. Her face seemed to twist into something almost monstrous, and she rushed forward to the fallen man whose own hideousness still outweighed her own by leagues.
He might have been dead there on the ground, but that didn’t matter. If he was just a corpse, he would be a ruined one. Heavily, she slammed into his back and her talons found a home among the flesh and bone. Then, with one mighty sweep, she lifted him upward and drove him toward a shard sticking up from the ground only a few feet away.
-
I am... Jada thought despondently. The circumstances were different, as was the overlying pain, but the feeling underneath was the same; the conclusion was the same. The Snake's Defiance was a red-hot brand on the back of his neck as it tried to hold back the rising tide of agonizing pain welling inside him...
I am...dying...
Jada sat back on his heels heavily, his weapon forgotten on the ground beside him as his hand fell lazily from the hilt. His arm was a crimson mess, blood pooling beneath his fingers on the right side of him as his lifeblood oozed into a rapidly growing pool on the left side. The sticky red substance was warm on the bare flesh of his back and on his bare calf where the stuff seeped from his stained shorts on its way to the ground. Jada felt dizzy and lightheaded, and the weight of his limbs seemed to increase tenfold…
All around him was the smell of dirt, of blood, of smoke, and the metallic odor of cold steel. The arena was spinning in front of his vision, and the coppery taste of blood was in his mouth. Jada tried to focus his mind, reaching desperately for the one word that would fill his body with the unnatural strength he needed to continue the fight. He couldn’t find it, however, nor could he even focus. All of his senses were beginning to fail him, blurring into the black clouds that were gathering at the edges of his vision…
Jada’s eyes rolled back slowly into his head, and his whole body went slack as if the last of his life had oozed out of his wounds and onto the ground. Darkness crashed over him, and Jada was gone before his body slowly pitched forward into the dirt…
-
I'm dead.
This is it, I've finally died.
Pushed myself too far and this is my final price.
I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead I'm...
He sat up with a startled gasp, his hands immediately reaching for his throbbing head, and croaked out a single, astonished word.
"...Alive?..."
He sat still for a moment, gathering what scattered thoughts that he could, trying to remember exactly what had happened. It was a dim haze, like an early morning fog resting just above the surface of the ground, and he felt as though trying to penetrate it was like trying to walk through a brick wall. There wasn't a way around it or under it, the only way was to go through. Unfortunately, that was impossible. He shook his head again and opened his still closed eyes.
For a moment, after his eyes had opened to complete darkness, he thought he was still dead and panic gripped him, causing his breath to come in quick short rasps and elevate his already racing heart to an even faster pace. He quickly realized however that he was in fact not dead, just covered by some sort of heavy material. A quick scrutiny revealed that it was leather and he reached out to test the tension strength of the material that was wrapped around him.
It moved with ease and it took another moment to realize that it was merely draped over his head. A wave of relief washed over him as he pushed the fabric up and over his head, pulling it forward over his skull. Pale light washed over his eyes, causing him to squint in its ferocity and it took a few seconds before they fully adjusted. When they did, he almost wished he was truly dead.
Blood was everywhere. The crimson substance of life coated the area like dirt in a field. Pools and wild streaks of the dark color dotted the floor, whether from someone simply laying to long or being dragged across the ground he couldn't tell. A quick count told him that three were dead for sure. One impaled unceremoniously on a metal shard sticking straight up from the ground. A second laying motionless, its eyes staring blankly up at the source of the light, a shard driven deep into its body. The third lay face down, blood pooling from a shattered arm, a sword laid forgotten by its side.
It was like waking up to a nightmare. A horrible, horrible nightmare. One that you wished you could simply just wake up from and forget about, never to have to see it again. He recoiled, throwing one of his arms up in front of his body and scampered backwards until his back hit something semi-solid behind him, causing him to stop. He snapped his head around quickly, fear welling up inside him and prepared to jump back the other way only to pause in bewilderment. The semi-solid mass behind him, it was semi-solid because it bent a little when he hit it, was really just a tightly wound mess of wire formed into a sort of fence.
It only stalled him for a second.
For any man, every man even, the will and the need to run away in fear far surpasses any known emotion. A man will do anything, everything he has to do, to get away. Even if it means giving up his own life, he will hardly hesitate. In this case the need to get away, the feeling of immense fear, was the headlamp of his thought process. With fingers interwoven into the wire mesh that was the fence, he did the next best thing he could.
He began to climb.
What he would find at the top he didn't know, didn't care. The fear drove him, and what he feared was strewn across the ground beneath him. Death where before he had thought there had been none. Blood where an instant before there was simply dirt.
He coughed and a small amount of blood frothed at the edges of his mouth and he slammed his fingers between the mesh, not caring if they got cut or ripped, and pulled himself higher above the death and carnage below.
-
"Rapscallions!" Chumley roared as he was tossed from the amphitheater, his legs and arms bound behind him like the most surly of hogs. "You'll never get away with this!" The guards who had tossed him out chuckled, deriding the poor pachyderm, and one of them threw a rotten tomato at him. "Ironic that my own projectile should be turned against me," Chumley grunted, seeing humor even through his rage. "You foolish fellows have no idea what you've done! Seth Dahlios is nothing short of a heinous villain, and stopping me from ending his reign of horror will make you nothing short of infamous evildoers, yourselves!" The guards laughed again, giving each other high fives.
"Maybe you should have jumped through the hole in the top of the cage!" One retorted, his grin showing that he was missing three teeth. "Aye," one of his one-eyed comrades seconded him, "'Twas the easiest mode of attack, m'boy." Chumley scooped up a handful of mud with his trunk and slung it in the fellow's one good eye.
"You babbling baboon!" he cried, "Even the most skillful trapeze artist would have been cowed by that drop. And although I am an artist, I have never been on a trapeze!" The mud-strewn guard, his ears and neck turning red, jumped at Chumley, a dirk appearing in each hand. Two of his fellows leapt in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him back from the elephant.
"We ain't got no bidness ta be attackin' him out here!" One snarled. The one eyed man bared his teeth, but didn't say anything. As the guards were engaged in their own fracas, Chumley noticed a shadow spreading across the ground, and smiled from tusk to tusk.
"Gentlemen," he addressed them, "I bid you farewell. I am sure, however, that we shall meet again!" The guards turned to see the elephant levitating into the air, as if by magic. Mouths gaping, they looked upward at the hook and chain looped into Chumley's rope restraints, and followed them up to the hot air balloon above. "Guy, you old dumpling!" Chumley cried upward. "Once again you come to the rescue! Oh frabjous day!" As he was drawn ever higher by principles of pressure and volume he did not fully understand, the elephant laughed a hearty, booming laugh.
"Oh yes! Who knows what evil lies in the heart of evil Irishmen? CHUMLEY KNOWS! I will never rest until Dahlios is brought to justice. Mark me by it, sirs! Mark me!"
And then, Chumley floated off toward the last round of the LCC, towards a fight he had inexplicably advanced towards despite any discernible positive qualities.