It wouldn’t be long now.
The tiefling grinned viperously as the jaws of the trap sprang shut, seizing his opponent in a rush of void-black flame and searing, intolerable heat. The scars adorning the half-devil’s own palms could attest to the kiss of that Infernal fire, and he knew from experience that it could turn steel to butter in mere minutes. Give the cutter his credit, the blue-blood reacted quickly and tried to retaliate with more of his cheap tricks, but he couldn’t hurt Hellfire. With little more than a thought, the warlock sent the towering inferno back, coiling through the grass around his opponent; the hydra devouring its own tail, form dissipating to become one unbroken ring of flame. Higher into the clear, azure sky it clawed, choking the small circle of blue visible above with streamers of smoke and the violent shimmer of heat haze.
Fell for it ‘ook, line and bloody sinker, he chuckled inwardly, running his forked tongue across his teeth again as he felt the grinding of ribs in his chest. He could smell the end was near though, and the prospect of a new plaything had his hungers stirring enough to shrug off his wounds. After all, his body was a catalogue of worse.
Aurelianus stalked forward, the curtain of roaring, unholy flames parting before him with a wave of a wire-bound hand. The fire dropped back into place as soon as he entered the open area, sealing both combatants off from the world at large within the slowly turning maelstrom. Teeth bared in something between hatred and elation, the charnel house stink of burned meat sang through his senses. Rivulets of saliva wormed their way over his ragged lips, clinging to the steel rings binding his chin together. A soft, liquid growl burbled in the back of his throat, like boiling honey, as he inhaled the familiar scent. The temperature soared more by the moment within the circle, only the tiefling’s inhuman will and mastery of his invocations keeping the worst of it from affecting him. The grass was smouldering around them, flower petals curling as they burned.
The beaten and scorched human before him wasn’t faring much better, he noted with dark amusement. The burns up and down his leg had been cauterised by the ungodly heat of Aurelianus’ magicks, but even without bleeding him, the wounds were taking their toll. Even as the tiefling closed in, the “noble†planted his fists and started to drag himself to standing. A sneer tugged the corner of the half-breed’s already lacerated mouth, showing a flash of slick, wet muscle beneath.
“Lookin’ a little shaky there, cutter,†he purred sibilantly, his eyes – both the one still pinned open and the one half-hidden behind torn eyelids - taking in the tremors and tics of agony dancing across the human’s body.
As the greying figure finally regained his feet, Aurelianus could see the pride in him. He could mark the tenacity, and the will to keep on fighting. It would be admirable to some men, the tiefling knew. But he wasn’t one of them. He could taste bile as he regarded the politician, a feral snarl hiding in his smirk. His fist tightened around the knife handle, skin squirming and peeling as his knuckles started to feel more like teeth. With a shiver up his spine that set his attire rattling and jingling, he fought off the protean energies reshaping his form. It was getting harder to keep them at bay, and as Aurelianus’ boots pounded the now-baking earth towards his plaything, he decided to cut short the foreplay. He had other things to be doing, and while this little scrap had been good for giving him a laugh, the tiefling’s attention was already starting to roam.
“There’s times I feel like I’m rattlin’ my bone-box to m’self,†he smiled, shaking his quill crested head sadly and hanging his blade back by his side. With a careless gesture, the warlock threw an eldritch blast of raw, arcane energy at the man. Like a blade of sheer force, it smashed into his already injured leg, with enough strength to fold a kneecap the wrong way and turn bone to gravel.
“I told you to kneel,†the sadistic planetouched barked, blood-stained spit stringing between his teeth, the Hellfire still swirling languidly around them flaring angrily in response.
As soon as his enemy’s legs buckled, Aurelianus was on him. His infernal heritage granting him speed far in excess of the merely human, he blinked across the open space between them. Another eldritch blast took one of the blades from his opponent’s hand, like a forge-hammer to his fist. There was the satisfying hollow snap of bone. It barely registered to the ashen-skinned devil though, as he threw himself into a tackle at the dazed spellcaster and bore them both to the ground.
Whether it was skill or reflex, the wizard hammered his remaining knife up at the blade-clad deviant on top of him. The tiefling’s preternatural reactions, and a life-time of close quarters knife fights saw him turn his shoulder into the blow, the dagger sinking into the meat of his right arm before he locked the man’s wrist in his iron-grip. His serpentine eyes flared lambently as the struggle twisted the double-edged blade inside him, and he swore freely as the tip grated against bone. Blood flowed down his unarmoured right arm, splashing both of them with inky black. But he had the weapon trapped now, and with his other pale hand he grabbed the front of the stormcaller’s tunic. His armour tore into the soft meat and cloth beneath him, and with a howl of savage satisfaction, Aurelianus dragged the human up into a vicious headbutt. His sweat-streaked brow smashed against the man’s skull with a sickeningly wet crunch, bouncing it off the dirt beneath, blood running from the gashes his crown of horns opened there.
Again.
His head thundered into the bridge of the man's once-aquiline nose, smearing it across his cheek in a wash of crimson.
Again.
Finally, the rain of blows leaving his opponent’s face a bloody mess, Aurelianus let go of the now scarlet-speckled collar and let the other man’s head drop to ground that held a desert’s heat. His own was ringing mildly, and he could feel a length of fine chain dangling from where it had been torn loose in his scalp. That paled in comparison to the sensation of biting, cold pain as he slid the dagger out of his arm and tossed it aside. He would feel that for a few days. The wound continued to weep a stream of black tears, trickling down from shoulder to wrist.
An eye flickered open amid the blood and bruising and broken teeth beneath him, rolling blindly for a moment before locking with his own cold, ophidian gaze. The wizard’s mouth opened, bleeding, but Aurelianus put a stained finger to his lips.
“Shhhhh, now cutter,†he whispered, leaning in closer to the man’s ears with his serrated teeth almost brushing the skin. “Just got one last bit of business to finish up, then we can go on our merry ways, eh?â€
With no further warning, Aurelianus rested his fingertips against the swollen, bloody eyelids and started to exert his will. The lightning-mage would feel the pressure build until finally, terribly, the fleshcrafter’s fingers burrowed through his skin and bone. It moved aside like burrowing through tallow, the agony indescribable as the tiefling delved and dug. It took a few awkward moments, and he would put money on the human bearing a grudge if he survived this, but finally with a triumphant flourish he pulled free his prize.
Forcing himself back to his feet with a grunt of discomfort, Aurelianus finally banished the ring of Hellfire from around them. The sunlight poured back in, shining down upon the scorched circle in the grass and the ruin he had made of the poor bastard at his boots. But while it glimmered cruelly from his outlandish armour and piercings, it reflected almost mournfully in the shiny, wet object clutched in the tiefling’s hand.
The eye of Storm, the clouded grey of a tempestuous sky, looked back at him.
