My resignation, my goodbyes, my Bloody, Fiery Farewell

[Wyborn]

Blood burst from Terror's mouth as the sickle plunged into his stomach, twisting as it was pulled up. His fist lashed out, striking Fury in the mouth, and the latter was sent flailing. Too late, though - he had to tear out the sickle with his own hand, and hurt himslef badly doing it.

His black fur was matted and burned and bloody, and he seemed injured in every part. He was dying, and his indigo eyes were growing dimmer with every moment. His muzzle was bloodied, and normally it would have been with his enemy's blood, but there were just too many of them now.

I can't kill one?

Horror's clenched fist collided with his stomach, doubling him over before her elbow came down on the back of his neck. He hit the ground face-first, grabbing at her ankle before being forced to let go when she stomped on his wrist with her other foot. He roared - not in pain, but in rage, and in frustration.

Knives plunged into him from what seemed like every angle, but he had barely any blood left to draw. He pushed himself up to his hands and knees, and literal hammer blows connected with his ribs. In two seconds they had all been shattered, and he ceased breathing. His vision blurred and he rolled onto his back - and then a sword plunged into his chest, between his ribs, scraping the protective bone just over his heart. He felt it skip a beat.

The sword was withdrawn and plunged in again. The tip met the shell over his heart, and he thought he heard it break; he felt it when the sword sank into that organ.

He was only dimly aware of the next several seconds, and then there was nothing.

Knives were drawn across his throat and plunged ino his chest and body, slicing every major artery in his anatomy. Someone - no one remembered who, later - had grabbed Terror's own axe, and brought it down on his neck. His head didn't roll when it was severed, or when the blade was pried from the ground.

They still didn't stop. Hammers and stones and blades and fists fell on him until he was no longer recognizable. By the end of it he was in pieces, and few of those were truly recognizable.

"GET BACK!" That was Wyborn. All of those who still struck Terror's corpse leaped away from it as Wyborn, who stood twenty meters away, threw aside his monk's robes, revealing his Gerudo-styled armor underneath. His green eyes were glowing, and the wind swept his matted brown hair in many different directions.

Wyborn raised his hands over his head, arcs of lightning dancing between his fingers, and he began to chant as the others ran further and further away from Terror's body. He did not chant in words from any recognizable language; they were mostly just sounds, guttural and without consonants, but as he spoke them something began to happen. A blue light creapt from his mouth, running down his jaws and over his shoulders, flowing up the lengths of his arms in patterns mimicking his blood vessels, and finally reached his fingers. Points of light erupted at the tip of each finger, growing more and more terribly intense as the fingers were brought closer together. He lowered his arms, cupping his hands behind his back, and his chanting reached a screaming crescendo.

He brought his hands forward, palms outwards and fingers splayed, and there was an eruption of blue light: for the first time in recent memory, the Chrono Tear was unleashed, and the blue beam of light was too bright to look at as it struck Terror's corpse.

There was a moment when nothing happened. And then the world was bathed in whiteness.

A rip in the very fabric of space and time opened over Terror's body, and all the hellish energies of creation erupted form it, drawing Terror in and churning, erupting, sending out shockwaves of energy that would have shattered diamond like plexiglass but dissipated only feet away from ground zero. The body was burned, cubed, rearranged and obliterated, pulled back together and sifted, as if it were sand. Nearly any living thing would have died before being put back together, and if that did not kill them then the sheer mental shock of being pushed through the very heart of creation would have, but no amount was enough to alleviate the warriors united.

The earth shook, the wind howled, and lightning erupted from the spot where the rip had opened, blasting across the ground and cutting fissures deep into the earth. There was a roaring sound, like a continuous nuclear explosion, and all of creation began to scream at the strain placed upon it.

All at once the rip collapsed, the sound stopped, the lightning disappeared, and what was left of Terror's body was dropped unceremoniously onto the scorched Earth. There was not much to speak of.

Wyborn let his hands drop, burns already rising on his palms, and stared at the spot where the remains lay. His eyes were glowing, and every other face was looking at him.

After a moment, he nodded. "He is dead." He licked his lips. "He is gone. This part is over. Let's go, there's still more to do."

He turned, and an opening appeared in the air, a waving blue surface that undulated like liquid. Without hesitating he stepped into and through it - and everyone else ran to follow. In under a minute they were all gone, and the field was silent. The portal snapped shut, and the field was empty save for Terror's remains. Endless plains of green grass stretched out in all directions.

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

Some time later, there was a sound - like a single beat of a massive heart - and portals opened in the air all over the field near what was left of the once-monstrous Terror. A call went out, one that was noiseless and wordless but full of meaning, and struck the minds of every warrior that stood on the other sides of those portals. Their minds took the meaning and translated it, and for most who felt it, it came out something like this:

There is a great danger here.
Come and stop it, or perish in inaction.

And there were some who turned away - but there were many who came.

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

OoC: Okay, if you're confused, thi is actually pretty simple. This is my final battle, my goodbye to the BF, my resignation as mod and my retirement from the battlefield. I'll say my goodbyes at the end.

This is pretty simple: just have your character or characters (you can bring as many as you want, as many as you have if it pleases you) feel the call and respond, stepping through a portal that will open in front of them. They will come to the field where Terror's remains lie, and I don't think I have to say that there is not much to them.

People will keep entering as the fight goes on, but sometime tomorrow I will start it up.

If you're confused about the situation or what happened baove, don't worry, it doens't matter. I'll eplain what needs to be explained in my next post.

One more dance, my friends. One more dance. -OoC

[Link The Survivor]

OOC: Well well, your time has come too eh?

LTS watches from a distance, intrigued by the events before him. Perhaps he'll join, perhaps not. But either way, he'll be watching.

[Metal Man]

* Metal, an ancient veteran of the battle, thirsted for battle. For while he had fought terrors beyond this realm, it could never give him the satisfaction of fighting a devoted opponent. Interdimensional travel was normal for him; and when he heard the call and saw the portal appear before him, all he did beforehand was put on some pauldrons and step in, eager to destroy all that was unjust and imperfect. *

"All who dwell beyond this portal... prepare to meet your match!" *WARP*

[Vapor]

Vapor heard the cry.

The portal appeared, a glowing hole to parts unknown.

"Well.....this is interesting. Yay, heroics." the serpentine figure said.

He bounded through the glowing doorway through spacetime, and saw the beauty and wonders of the Cosmos as he flew through Space thrice the speed of light. He then saw an explosion of energy, and landed in the mysterious field.

He saw the other warriors.

He saw that an ultimacium of a battle was on the brink of beginning.....

Edit from beyond the grave: lol, "ultimacium"

[The Willful Wanderer]

This was an End. Something major. Something not to be equalled though one could travel untold immesurables through all realities trying to seek the like.

This was a confluence. Combatants from hither, thither and yon coming together in one superclimactic clash of.... what? None of them could have said.

**********

For Akki, it was a simple matter. She raged. Hands of scaled carmine swept through air and rock with near-equal ease, flame trailing from every motion, bursting at each impact, smokeless, forceless. Her shoulders were almost eternally hunched, a function of muscles tightened too far. Three eyes with kite-formed blue irises glanced hither and yon, viewing everything around.
But all they saw was painted in the glow of rage. All they percieved was existence ripe for destruction.

Inasmuch as Akki could be said to feel anything other than blazing fury or smoldering anger, one might claim she liked to fight. For some reason, rending and smashing things was just so much more satisfying when they attempted to stop her- though nothing would completely sate her rage. How could it? Rage was what she was.

Broad, draconian wings flapped from the second pair of shoulders where her scapula should have been, the rage demoness hovering midair despite the slow, steady beats. Her environs was a total wreckage, a magmatic hellpit excavated from where a mountain range had once stood. This world was barren, empty. Moreso for the damage she had inflicted. There was nothing left to destroy that she could- not even her own clothes. She did not wear clothes. There was no need- eyes, nose, and mouth were the only breaks in her scaling, the form of a gaunt, wiry woman with razor-clawed fingers and toes rendered in the purest shade of heart's-blood red that could be believed. A stubby, reptilian tail extended her spine, marked by a single row of even spikes, the angularity emphasizing the wildness of her eyes, one set into the midst of her forehead.

A mass of unruly, straight, sky-blue hair trailed from her head, unbound, as she charged. She did not know what she charged at, nor did she care- she only knew that she was angry, and wanted to destroy.

Which is how a mass of scales, fire, and irritation exploded through one of the portals into the battlefield. Not even pausing to look around, Akki dove for the ground, and started smashing and slashing at it with her claws, the beginning of what would have been another hell-pit- if not for the one who halted her.

Floating above Akki by a good eighty feet, enclosed in an impenetrable translucent-green bubble, like some cosmic marble, the short young woman with the oaken staff and floor-length brown ponytail gestured. A brief incantation, and a pass of her hands, trailing conical green sleeves, and the rage demoness halted, temporarily held in stasis.

With no wind within the forceshield, Kirala's high-collared cape did not shift, nor did the green skirt draped about her legs. Glancing about with hazel eyes, she spotted the other portals, much like the one she had followed to investigate. A murmur of interest came to her lips as she beheld them, followed by a slight frown, a tightening of the pale brow and pursing of the lips. A gesture of the staff shifted her down, closer to the demoness. It might yet be safer with her than with what could come through those portals.

********

Indeed, if there was ever an unsafe thing in all Reality, it would have to be Mo.

Tumbling through the portal, looking for all the world like a young woman caught in the midst of a short walk, Mo completely ignored the fact that gravity was a different direction from the one she was using as 'down'. It could be excused- she *was* a chaos demon, after all, even if she was stuck in the form of a young Pilipino woman. Opening her mouth to comment on the rudeness of being interrupted, she found herself instead spewing out a stream of a dozen goose-eggs. While it had stopped her tumbling and allowed her to stabilize (upside-down, but that's a minor detail), that hadn't been quite what she meant. Straightening her sleeveless turtleneck and tapping the toe of one workboot on the heel of the other, Mo cleared her throat, ignoring the fact that a dozen marshmallow squares with bat wings were flying a halo around her.

"Well, isn't *this* interesting?" She commented in a soft soprano tone. "I wonder if- .wonk I enoyna ees ll'I"

Producing a handy trout from her simple, black purse, she wrenched it open and shook it, forcing the hapless piscattid to disgorge a hockey puck, three license plates, and a complete copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"?lewot taht s'erehW"

******

Duska was not what one would consider an adventurer. She was also not typical, but that can be excused. After all, she was a cat.... sort of.
More specifically, she was a catgirl, with pure-white skin, white-irised slit-pupiled eyes, black-furred tail and ears, and one hell of a hairstyle. The main mass of her hair was black, soft, and straight, cut short to hang close about her head. But sprouting from that were a series of foot-long corkscrews of hair in black and white, defying any attempt to tame or dye them.

At a glance, one would have assumed that she was a goth, given the leather jacket, leather fingerless gloves, leather pants, and immense leather boots with excessive metallic buckling, all in pitch-black. That would have been an incorrect guess. One might also have guessed that, as a nekomusume, she would be somewhat airheaded, flitty, excessively cheerful, and overly cute. That would also have been incorrect.

As Duska herself liked to put it, she was 'Not Your Kitty'. Oh, she was a cat alright. Capricious, generally uncaring, detached, demanding, and overall rather fickle. And she had the habit of unleashing the most unnerving stare on people for no reason at all.

She had been, before falling through the portal, attempting to reach a good vantage point to catch the next week's food from. The axebeaks were utterly unaware, and she'd had her bow unslung. Just as she was drawing an arrow from the leather quiver strapped to the left leg of her pants, one of her feet had slid out from under her on a patch of moss she would have sworn was *not* there when she'd put that foot down.

Naturally, she twisted so that her feet were down, even as she fell through some unidentified portal. Understandably upset by this, Duska emerged from the other side with her ears flattened back, leveling a glare on the environment that should have been able to melt lead. Even as she landed, though, she realized it was somewhat wasted, as the thing that her gaze had locked onto could have withstood hundreds of such before even noticing.
The truly immense dragon, for its part, was gazing about rather passively. Eyes formed of pure, clear crystal, innumerably faceted, the size of VW Beetles, defied all scrutiny. A gargantuan tail, bladed at the tip, shifted only slightly, its owner well aware of the havoc that could be wreaked by such a limb left unchecked.

A long, serpentine neck shifted as the rock-brown creature brought its head about to peer at the little green marble floating in the air. Wings remaining folded along craggy, uneven skin, it blinked once, slowly, in recognition. The titanic craw opened, and spoke, the lack of teeth, beaked end, and thin serpent tongue doing nothing to prevent the use of clear, precise english, though in a register unreachable by nearly any other speaker, and almost at shouting volume.

"I see there is a gathering at hand."

At the sorceress' nod, the stone dragon shifted its huge forepaws, digging talons the size of steamshovel arms into the ground. Now and then, as it moved and breathed, a bit of its skin would crack off and fall to the ground, littering the area with small shards of stone.

It did not speak again- dragons hate having to whisper. But it did move one foot aside for a moment, replacing it and settling its weight, causing the ground to sink a bit more.

"A bit more of one than I ever wanted to see, I'll say that." Came the neutral statement from nearby.

The speaker was as unique as any of the others arriving, in, as with most of them, her own, unusual way. The armor pattern identified her race as easily as the appearance of the stone dragon did his- this one was a reploid.
Her armor rendered in emerald green, bodysuit a sky-blue, Janda was outfitted for combat. It was what she did. First as a Hunter, then a mercenary, then again a Hunter, and then as a traveling warrior- a ronin if you will, a wanderer if you won't. Crystal-blue eyes narrowed as she gazed across the array of portals waiting to be used, and her white-gloved right hand clasped a sort of staff nearly six feet long. Heavy, metallic boots shifted on the ground. "I had not expected to see any of the others so soon, or to meet in this manner...."

Janda frowned slightly, shifting, and hefted the staff slightly, before re-setting the butt of it into the soil as she heard another voice.

"It was not intentional." Spake Karna, stepping up beside her. The diminutive woman- more than half a foot shorter than the reploid she was speaking to- wore a slightly odd outfit for herself this time. Fingerless woolen gloves, a cargo vest over a puce-green tee-shirt, a pair of loose cargo pants, and a pair of high-ankle Wolverines were her garb, and her hazel gaze pierced the mist flowing from one or another nearby portal. Her naginata was slung lightly across her back at a diagonal, the blade end up over her right shoulder. "This is not because of the others, or of me. Someone Else has called, and, our nature being what it is, we have responded."

One hand came up, olive-tan fingers threading through purple hair cut in a chin-length bob. It looked slightly wrong, the way Karna's round, soft face was so serious, the mouth a thin line, bridge of a snub nose crinkled in effort as she squinted to see a little better. "We are, after all, no strangers to coincidence." She sounded a bit testy.

"Oooo, ominousness!" Exclaimed Mo, drifting by, a grotesquely-inflated frog being gripped in her right hand, holding her aloft. Karna winced as the ground beneath her feet suddenly turned lemon-yellow. "Mo, stay *back* from everyone! You can't expect me to believe you don't know your aura affects us all."

"Sorry!" The chaos demoness chimed, floating back away and up into the air. "I just needed to warn you about the olives!"

Janda blinked. "What oliv-" and was forced to cut off as a truckload of pimentos buried her.

******

Silence. Silence was her rule. That, and good, but that was another matter.
With skin blacker than tar, the eight-foot woman was an imposing sight, some trick of genetics giving her a pure-white skull pattern on her face. To match this, she wore a bodysuit of white straps, almost giving her the impression of being an immense walking skeleton. Clutched in her right hand was a tremendous broadsword, and a thin, black tail with a white arrow-spade trailed behind her as she moved out into the portal-ridden plains.
White hair cut almost brutally-short clung close about her head, barely shifting as she glanced about. A few moments later, she was joined by another, one even taller than herself.

Eight and a half feet tall this other stood, the air about her bearing the chill of deepest winter. Cobalt-blue skin, and hair the gold color of hay marked the woman as not human, and her nordic features only seemed to contribute, eyebrows angled up naturally, so that she seemed to bear an eternal frown. A solid-steel bustier was matched by tremendous steel shoulderguards that reached down to meet it near her underarms. A chainmail miniskirt draped over brown leather breeches, both held up by a simple leather belt. Bracers with a stormcloud pattern guarded the backs of her forearms, and brown combat boots her feet. Silver-gray eyes flashed as she looked to the one she had arrived by, and then she looked about herself. For a moment, the green stone in the front of her icy tiara glowed, and then her eyes matched it.

"Somebody went to a lot of trouble for all of this, didn't they, Nera?"

Her answer was silence, followed by the ebon-skinned woman tilting her head.

"No..." Uldi leant forwards a little, peering at the vast array of portals lying about the area. "It was with magic, mostly... but reaching this far, it was a major effort. It cost more energy than I can safely use, I'll say that."

More silence.

"True enough. Let us see who and what we can find, shall we?"

******
(Note: I hate post limits)

[The Willful Wanderer]

******

"'s like lookin' inna funhouse mirror."

"Yer tellin' me."

And indeed, it was. The two facing each other held more in common with one another than they did with most others who would be seen anywhere. Both stood roughly six feet tall, though one was a couple inches taller than her mirror. Both had scaled skin, though the taller one was golden, while the shorter was pure-orange. Both had long tails, though the taller one's was a mere six feet, while the shorter had seven feet of tail, and bifurcated halfway down, besides. Both wore vests, though one was green and midriff-baring, and the other was gray-blue and left only a thin strip of scales visible. Cargo shorts to cargo pants, loose to bell-bottom. Combat boots in red and gray-blue. Fingerless gloves, though one pair was red and metal, going back along the forearm, and the other reached only the wrist with padded backs in a pale purple color. And both had human faces and base forms, though one was thin and whiplash, and the other buxom and leaning into the chubby side.

Yume, sky-blue hair cut in dual shapes of chin-length bob and long, thick braid, folded her arms over her almost-complete-lack-of-chest, and regarded Terrafissa. Terra, for her part, rested her hands on her broad hips, and quirked up one pale-purple eyebrow.

Purple lips parted, and Terra spoke next. "Ya figger we were yanked here f'r a reason?"

"Gotta be." Yume answered, shaking her head and gazing off to the side. "That ain' my normal way o' travelin', anyhow."

"Hmm." Terra mumbled, folding orange arms across her chest, lightly gripping the bands of gray-blue cloth about her elbows. "I hope it don' take too long."

Yume snorted, and shook her head, noting the way Terra's twin-tipped tail sworled and lashed constantly behind the stouter woman. "These things take whatever time they take. Can't do nothin' about it. Ya learn t' live with it."

Shrugging, Terra kicked at the dirt with one blue-gray combat boot. "Not like it hurts t' hope, yeah?" She looked up, blinking brown eyes at Yume as the thin woman started walking across the area. "Where you goin'?"

Pausing, Yume turned, the diamond-shaped pad on the tip of her tail flicking. "I see someone I rec'gnize. Wanted t' go over 'n say 'hi'."

"Oh." For a beat there was silence, and then Terra started moving, walking after the other reptilian-looking woman. "Hell, may's well follow ya..." Purple tongue darted past sharklike teeth to lick her lips. This place felt... dangerous.

"Whatever." Yume non-answered, resuming her mosey.

******

"...."

Zail was, as one might put it, at a loss. The naga had never seen a place like this before. Then again, given she'd lived in a forest all her life, that wouldn't take much.

Still, she had expected to find some sort of life on the other side of the portal, not this... barren dirt. Frowning, she pulled her forty-five feet of green-and-gold tail up, coiling it about underneath herself. One hand almost went to the hilt of one of the two tulwar gracing her back- there was death on the air. A thin, forked tongue flicked out past her lips once, and then again. There were others here...

Now the brown-haired naga had to decide what she would do about it. She'd remembered her leather jerkin, so it was not likely that 'civilized' people would get on her case about nudity. But did she really want to find out who lived in a place like this?

She was almost inclined to try to head back through the portal. The only thing that had stopped her was that it had disappeared once she'd made it all the way through, and now she was rather stuck.

Uncertain of what to do, she defaulted to waiting, human part atop a massive coil of snake-tail, hands shifting uneasily, occasionally tugging at the edge of the jerkin, playing with shoulder-length brown hair, testing the tulwar to see if they would draw easily.

She did not like this place. It smelled unhealthy.

******

Unlike most of the others, Reiko was totally unfazed by having stepped through the portal and come out in a place full of them. Really, it was rather typical. It occurred to the half-dragoness to wonder if anyone would come up with an actually *inventive* way of bringing people to these places?

Heavy boots, mostly white with a few spots of red and yellow in odd places, scuffed through the soil as she walked, her incredible density causing her to leave footprints in the (relatively) soft soil of the area. Now and again, a step would cause her quills to rustle, but for the most part, the bulky woman trod on in silence. Her cloak was pulled back, rippling behind her as she moved, showing the personal ballista that hung within it, and the handle of her immense steel sledge protruded over her right shoulder.

"You would think," She commented to nobody, blue cheongsam skirt shifting with every soft stride, "That whoever did this would want people to think it somewhat unusual. This multitude-of-portals business is a bit overused...."

A stubby, four-spiked reptilian tail failed to trail behind Reiko, being much to thick for such an action. Occasionally, the spiked bracelets on her wrists, heavy black things, would brush against her skirt, and the heavy shoulderguards attached to her white-leather turtle-monogrammed breastplate swiveled with every motion. It almost seemed as though the decorative waves embroidered onto her sea-motif obi were shifting as she walked, to match the wave-like sound of her rattling head of quills. As usual, the main mass of the longer members of the forest of brown points were bound into a thick 'tail' by a broad white ribbon.
After several more minutes of walking, Reiko sighed a very put-upon sigh, and shouted out to nobody, crimson eyes glinting. "I'm stopping here! Whatever you have for me to do, can come here to me! I'm going to have a seat!"

And that she did, sitting cross-legged in the middle of nowhere, ignoring the other portals, and only paying peripheral attention to the other arrivals.

******

The first thing to fall through the portal was a heavy battle-axe. The blade sunk several inches into the dirt, and remained there, the handle extending into the portal, for several moments. When nothing disturbed the axe, a head poked out of the portal.

Islander-brown skin saw the light of this new place, and verdant-green eyes took it all in. Hair like a multitude of tiny vines hung loose from the young woman's head, and four fingers seemed to grip the edge of the portal, using that handhold as well as the axe wedged in the soil to pull the rest of her through. She stood four and a half feet tall, and looked to be maybe fifteen. Clothing that was a patchwork of tough leaves and sections of bark provided some modesty, but mostly protection. Her thin right hand clutched the axe handle, wrenching the blade free from the ground to hold the weapon up at the ready. The armor was very uneven, more and thicker bark on the left arm than protecting her body, and nothing on her right arm. Her 'hair' hung down to her knees, and bark 'bracers' covered her shins and calves.

Bare feet shifted in the dirt as she crept forwards, glancing here and there, wary and on the alert, the axe readied. It would be hard to say what she was thinking, but it was obvious she did not trust this strange place. Nor, apparently, did she trust to thin armor- the layer of bark about her body was solid, holes bridged by leaves and what looked like tied vines.

She had a slightly wild look to her eyes, one that might be borne out upon meeting her...

******

Elli awoke to a slight pain in her head, and a series of alarms from her 'mech.

"Crap... that's the last time I try camping out like this." The half-Russian woman commented, punching in the start-up sequence. Adjusting the metal headband running across her forehead, she pulled back black hair, and frowned at the visual that her Xerxes was displaying.

"What the hell...?"

Slowly, like someone arising from a deep sleep, the forty-foot-tall battlemech stood. Three-fingered hands flexed, the wrists restricted by the particle cannon aligned along the back of either forearm. Its head was sunk down into the middle of the torso, mounted where it would not make so easy a target, and the machine turned this way and that to allow the pilot to look about the area.

"Kuso." Elli emitted, inadvertently identifying her other half for anyone bothering to pay attention.
Strange place, no explanation...

She was going on red alert, dammit. If her baby, her modified Thug, her Xerxes could not get her out of it, then she had no business being in it in the first place, and that was final.

Four slabs of metal slid out of place on the front of the battlemech's torso, exposing two sets of six missile tubes, and two sets of ten. Several arrays of antennae slid up into place about the machine's shoulders.
A bit of scanning about, and Elli had decided which way to go. With the stomp and thunder of eighty tons of steel and death, Xerxes was moving, heading for the lower parts of the land near here- and away from the thicker clusters of unidentified energy signatures.

They looked like holes in reality, whatever they were.

Elli didn't trust them.

******

((So, on tally, that's: Akki, Duska, Stone Dragon, Janda, Karna and Kirala near each other, Uldi and Nera together, Terra and Yume together, and Mo, Elli, Reiko, Zail, and Unnamed Girl in individual separate spots. I count... 14 of me.
....this should be fun. Almost 1/3 of my genuine characters in one place. ^_^ ))

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: It's like an amazonian feminist sex orgy in here. Time to stir in some masculinity. -OoC

Six figures. Everyone simply noticed them because they were there, and it could be assumed they stepped through one of the portals (although they weren't particularily near any), but nothing was for sure. But it didn't matter - they were there, and that mattered. Individually, some were renown and others were complete strangers, combined, their presence made no sense, but they were all there.

Erdawn stood, his beard and hair still curled and trimmed and still an icy alice-blue, coroneted with a winking utility band, his muscular arms braceleted with steel bracers and bands splitting red tatoos from bicep to forearm, wearing his cuiras of boiled leather, sewn with paterns of metallic plates, sandaled and greaved to the knees, messianic and powerful, arsenaled with tomahawks, kunai, grenades plasmic and concussive, laspistols, warwheels, throwing knives, machetes, battlemaces and a compound bow, all warped and gleaming with alien metallurgy, utility belts criss-crossing his mid-section laden with complex gadgetry that the cimmeran longhunter's understood and handled with machine efficiency. He was as he ever was.

Beside him towered the massiveness of Yuri, drowned beneath a sea of tiger fur that bulged red orange black and white where various alien weaponry and artifacts honed and excavated from the fallen ruin of a star ship, his skin bronzed by sun and sweat, his hair maned with unruly bleched blonde, ancient eyes burning an ice blue profound like two frozen pools socketed into his skull, his jaw bristly and savage and prehistorically chiseled at the hands of some norwegian deity. His massive, knuckled hands fell upon the metal and stone of his war hammer, which was soundless and deafening as the fang of a dragon god.

And beside him... she was unnamed, but the World That Was called her Ra Son Ja, tall and powerfully beautiful, wearing a flow of white silk splashed crimson robing her figure slenderly at the waist and hips, her dark hair cascading from her brow in ringlets down past her shoulders, set above a hardened, china-white face. Her eyes were a soullessly immortal white, haemmorhaging with power and tattooed ever so slightly around the sockets with black ink. Armoured leather criss-crossed her thorax and sheathed three longkatanas, more suited to killing horses than men, but unlike her student and his she was devoid of technology save for a single gauntlet around her wrist, with flare with white-blue light. She wore the skin of an immense bear to big to be real, and its fur added bulk to her height. Ra Son Ja, because she walked the Way, the Way that Yuri had never walked and so he had built his own.

Standing taller than his son, Kaja-Rang the Red, Kaja-Rang the Cruel, Kaja-Rang. His shoulders broad, his body much more sizely than his son's, a savage beard the same colour as Erdawn's but whitening to snow spilled to his chest, his hair more trimmed, his presence spoke of royalty and cruelty and power. He was like an Egyptian pharoah, headressed with a half-helm of gold that sank to his jaw, armoured with linked plated that wrapped over his shoulders like kevlar and naked ottherwise, skirted with an armoured robe that fell past his belt-line, his body - tanned in the way of his ancestors, a dark, foreign bronze, and tatooed with slashes and sickles of red - scarred ritualistically as were all the kings of that atlantean, ancient race. He carried with him weaponry that was foreign and ruthlessly barbaric - a massive, long-pommeled blade that could be considered sword, and axe, and cleaver, heavily serrated, cruel and unorthodox - and a pair of curling, serrated war-sickles big enough around the tear a man in half, both made from the same brass-and-silver gleaming haephastean metals.

Naga Sull brooded ruthleslly beside Erdawn's father, this one reigning overload of the Sull, a humanoid leanly corded with muscle, but bearing a reptilian quality that seperated him from all else. A human face cruel and bony, with sharp red eyes and lips bulging with the overbite of rowed, tearing teeth, bone protrusion sliding from tendons like serrated spines, talons curving from his calves, and knuckled fingers ending in ruthless claws, he seemed evolved for the purpose of carnage. Crowned with bones knives grown back from his own skull, he wore the war-dress of the Sull, layers of boiled leather hugging his frame slenderly and spiked with iron and hot-forged steels from the war temples and the hands of the Iron Priests, which fell to his knees opened for his powerful legs, rapotlike-talons clicking against the grass. he held a single visible weapon - what seemed to be the combination of a cybernetic sceptre and the prehistoric brutality of a massive, axe-like, serrated pole-arm (which the Priests called a runeaxe), etched with symbols in the Sull and another language foreign even to the stars.

Finally, a Terror in his own right, the pharoah-high-priest of uncharted ancient religions, known once as Amari-Adom-Rah, called Sunday and Saturday for his striking appearance. A tall, sinously muscular black man, his face a hideous blending of coal flesh and skull death's head, hooded in thick black silk but plainly visible, his eyes like burning points of light from bleached sockets. He was largely naked, wearing only a scabrous cowl and skirt of boiled leather, greaved and gauntleted with hideously gothic meshes of leather and bone and iron, but the most horrific part about him was that he didn't seem to have any skin, only the heart red meat of muscle and ribs and tendons, but unaffected, as if his muscles had simply grown ridiculously powerful and protective as skin on their own, without any of the obvious side effects, whether result of phyisological mutation or black magick. He carried a single, gnarled, tall staff headed with an antlered elk-skull, and woven with snake-spines. It was hard to look at.

They stared at the heap of what was once Terror, not even a body, not even humanoid, only black fur and viscera spilled and cooked and dissected into a charred mass.

"This was the word of Wyborn and his companions," boomed Yuri. None of them moved.

"Did they succeed?" Erdawn asked.

"They did their part. We must now do ours."

"Longhunter," Naga growled, the serrated peaks of his fanged teeth working in his jaw. "After this is done, nothing is changed. You are still the hunter and enemy of the Sull."

"Nothing is changed now, Naga." He answered contemptuously, his eyes burning.

"You both speak as if we will certainly leave these grounds with our lives," spoke Ra Son Ja, her hands flicking to the hilts of her weapons. "You are being too confident, Yuri. You were always confident."

Yuri said nothing.

Kaja-Rang turned to his son. They stared at each other.

"Our first family outing - together, neh?" he smiled viciously, and Erdawn returned it, the same healthy madness.

"For this, yes."

Kaja chuckled, booming, but his grin was unpleasant."For this, and nothing else, my vagrant son."

So many ties made, so many enemies looked shoulder-to-shoulder against this.

Silent stood Sunday, his scarred, hideous body still as pond-water, boiled leather ruffling in the breeze. Burning eyes fell on the dessecated heap. His macabre scowl did not leave. He would end this, and secure his own place of power, through his own practiced ruthlessness... and he would do this with their help, and afterwards they would die. He wondered, how the carnage would ensue after the battle, how many would simply turn upon one another and end it - right there, already exhausted, and he chuckled, and it was throaty and unnerving.

He tapped his staff off the grass, and observed the rest of the warriors with disinterest and contempt, and his eyes fell upon Nera and he observed her face. She turned at him, and saw his face, and gave a visible start, and he simply threw his head back and laughed like a jackal. -This is not paint, girl.- He might have said.

The six stood before Terror and his unburied tomb, and they waited.

OoC: God, writing is terrible, but I don't care. This will be the Moby **** of all ass-kikcings Expect much less lenght in later posts.

[Acradius]

There was no army that appeared from the bright flash of white light. The figure that did appear was barely visible amid the green fields. By barely visible, I mean that you could see directly through him, and had you not attuned senses, or were not looking for him, you may have never known he was there. But for those who could see him, many would recognize the unmistakable visage of the Time Warrior, Acradius Journeyman. Even in death, he wore his shining silvery armor, and not even the powers beyond the knowlege of mortal ken could keep his wild blonde hair in order. He appeared the same as he always did, minus his corporeality. But that was something that was about to change.

The ghostly figure of Acradius looked left at many great warriors, and right at many more. But the most peculiar thing happened when he looked down. His boots were touching the ground. Come to think of it, the grass below them was a little more than flattened. It was a matter of seconds before he could no longer see through his feet. In fact, he could feel things he had not felt in many moons. Something was calling him back.

It took a full twenty seconds for the piercing blue eyes to open once more, for every masterfully-trained finger to remember its strength, for every brain cell in the powerully psionic mind that lurked behind those eyes to wake up and smell the bloodshed. He reached out, and reached through time and space, and gripped the most familar thing in his entire life. Pulling it slowly out through the fissure his hand had created, the weight more a part of him than his own flesh and blood, the Time Warrior held aloft his weapon once more. The wind stirred just enough that the blade whispered in it, and it said one thing. It is good to be back.

[Repster]

Ooc: Yeah, only one for me... the others need to be overhauled way to much to show they're faces.

His bare feet touched the soft grass below. His golden eye, the eye of a wolf, looked around. Warriors were gathering. Something was going to happen, and it was bound to be fun. The smile on his face allowed the tip of those elongated canines of his to be seen. The smile almost touched the scar. A long thing that began from far atop his left eye and went straight down underneath the eye patch cleaving him in half until it exited underneath his right ribs.

The blacksmith’s right arm bore the brand of a gold dragon spiralling around it and resting it’s head on the back of his hand. No clothing except a pair of simple fine silk trousers adorned the monk. He took a swig from the canister clipped to his belt, and replaced it next to the elaborate buckle shaped in the perfect likeness of a dragon. A pair of red gems served as eyes.

“Names Aidan Dreiks. Not that that’ll be important anytime soon, but best to introduce myself to those of you who don't know me while I can.” He chuckled with amusement. His voice carried a fiery undertone , as if his every word was being said behind a screen of fire.

[Legion]

"So, the gang's all back again."

Legion smiled as the portal snapped shut behind him. Spinning Apoc-akei above his head showily, he sheathed the blade as the dull glow from the runes faded completely. He may have been gifted with a free portal, but he preferred to make his own. The demon was short and stocky by human standards, though that was a misleading description. His form was that of a soid shadow, forever melting and reshaping, fluctuating. This was the position which gravity returned him to as normal; a vaguely conical mound of shdow. The gold lining of his crimson cloak shone in the sunlight from above and wind picked at loose stitches from the human eye pattern on his 'chest'.

He looked around and smiled. The Gunjin. Again, after all this time. The central point of the multiverse for all warriors at one point or another. He remembered fighting against some of these people many times. Erdawn he remembered especially. He wondered if that infuriating joker was with him as well.

He barely gave the shredded corpse at the centre of the field a second look. Back in the day he had commanded things which would make the beast's corpse look like a children's pet.

He had hated to leave Dirk and the rest so abruptly, but he would likely be back in Saria before anyone noticed. The Gunjin was strange that way. That wolf bothered him, but there was little he could do about it now.

There was no real need for words. No need for flowery prose. This may be the last time he came here. It was time to get down to business. There was a battle breing, but like most things on the Gunjin it was probably not serious. It was near impossible to die for good in the Gunjin; another of the weird properties it had. Fighting was more interesting than conversation here, where there were no consequences.

Legion laughed and drifted forwards. This would be fun.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Such confluences of power rarely go without attracting attention. From various places, at various speeds, in various realities, many were watching the maelstrom ready to begin in that grassy field.

That the field itself should have been impossible, bearing no plants besides grass, and all of that short and neat, was generally ignored. It was a minor detail. What was important was the fact that there were people gathering on it, people of various power and ability, but all strong in their own ways.
Yes, this battle in potentia drew much attention from the watchers of reality, and from those who would participate, but had not been.... 'invited'. Or who had not the inclination or time, so far as it mattered when crossing realities could mean moving into a different rate of flow, to come.

And on one edge of the region, far from the group gathered around the dragon, barely in sight for the longest-visioned of the group of primevals that included the Weekender, hundreds of yards from any of the other portals, a new one opened.

An immense chunk of black crystal plowed out of it, digging into the earth like a gigantic railroad spike with a spray of upturned dirt. The portal closed behind it, leaving the multifaceted shard of what looked like it might be onyx standing straight. A monolith to mark the coming battle. Or maybe, just maybe, something a little bit more than that.

With a dull sigh of shifting soil, the dark spike settled, tilting a little in one direction.

((Haha. That's right.... one more. Just... one... more....))

[Wyborn]

Terror's body still smoldered, tendrils of smoke rising up from it in irregular waves. Only six had really taken note of who it was and what it might mean about what they were going to face, but none of them really understood. Even Wyborn and his band had not understood. Not yet.

Thud-thud. The single pulse of a massive heart echoed across the battlefield, and something in the air shifted.

Ra Son Ja looked up and around, sensing something on a level basically different from everyone else there.

Something itched in the back of Mo's skull.

A chill ran up Aidan's spine.

No one else noticed.

Thud-thud.

Hundreds of yards away, a dark silhouette took shape. It was walking, and faded out of visibility after the end of the massive heartbeat. The air became noticeably cooler.

Sunday looked down at the corpse, which had suddenly stopped smoking. Taking a look around the battlefield, his expression changed to one of pensiveness as much as it conceivably could. "They killed him before he could really unleash all of his power."

"How do you know that?" Naga Sull's voice was guttural and monstrous, even compared to the Witch Man.

"Look around us. All of the damage to the landscape was caused by one attack, probably the one that finally killed him." He considered the body for a long time. "They had the element of surprise on their side, and killed him before he could really attack. There would be more bodies if it were otherwise."

Thud-thud. Now people began to hear it, but they dismissed it as the beating of their own hearts.

The silhouette appeared again, still walking. It was huge and black, nine feet tall, with a shape too indefinite to really describe any of its features save for two glowing indigo eyes. One could almost say that it was grinning, as it faded out of view again.

Legion's laughter was cut short as he felt something in the air.

Something in Acradius' mind began to scream at him, and his teeth chattered in his head with the effort of blocking it out.

Kaja-Rang and Erdawn and Yuri and Sunday all looked up at once, an unplaceable emotion covering their faces.

Thud-thud.

Light poured off of the edges of the silhouette this time, and it broke into a run. It was more clearly visible now, one could see the bushy tail waving behind it, and the hideous white grin that painted its features. Light poured off of its black form like it was tearing itself away from something, or down from something. This time it did not fade, and the Earth began to shudder under its footsteps.

Sunday was the only one who saw it before it was too late. "He...he descended. Why would...?"

The figure tore itself free from the glow, and Terror thundered across the ground again, his eyes glowing and his teeth shining and his fur once more glossy in its blackness. He was built like a massive parody of man, all sinew and muscle and bone denser than iron and infinitely harder. His head was shaped like a wolf or a wolverine or a bear or a weasel, but his expression was all too human as he ran. His clawed fingers clenched into fists and unclenched again, his fingers crooked and ready to tear flesh from whatever he touched first.

Oh, he was wonderfully alive, now.

Outside of Sunday, the irst one that knew he was really there was Uldi, though it was not by her own machinations: Terror's hand wrapped around the back of her head as he ran by her, and she was yanked off of her feet and found herself hoisted over the ground by this incredibly quick, still-running lunatic. For a second she was so surprised that she didn't act.

Yume saw it happening and took off after them, exceeding Terror's speed in the time it took to take a breath, passing him and ready to strike what was easy enough to recognize as a threat.

Terror's head whipped around to look at where she would be when she passed him, his eyes glowing a fiery indigo, and threw out his free arm in a backhand that would have bowled over a small tractor trailer. Yume's face collided with his forearm and her feet went out from under her as the back of her head slammed into the ground. It did little more than stun her, for now, but she wondered "How did he do that?"

Uldi's mass began to increase, and Terror knew it almost before she did, feeling the diameter of her head change just ever so slightly. His eyes flashed, and a huge, black, iron-hard fragment of Earth jutted up before him. Rearing back, he threw the hand holding Uldi's head forward, and plowed her unceremoniously through more than five solid feet of bedrock, which split and fell apart after the impact.

Erdawn and Yuri and Kaja Rang and Ra Son Ja moved, and even as they did Terror spun like something about to hurl a shot put before throwing Uldi like a human frisbee. Ra Son Ja was the only one to duck in time, rolling along the ground as the massive Nordic woman collided with her student and his student and his father, sending all of them flying backwards before rolling along the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Terror was coming right for her, and she drew one of her katanas, some vague recognition forming in the back of her mind. Something was wrong here.

The gap closed between them, his massive fist pulled back, and an indigo light poured from between his fingers. Ra Son Ja's eyes nearly bugged out of her head when she realized what was about to happen, and she fell flat upon her back, sliding along the ground under Terror as the punch that would have removed her head sailed harmlessly through the air. Terror thundered past, and she was left staring up at the sky, some mixture of shock and horror fermenting in her head.

Sunday and Naga Sull also had the good graces to get the unholy hell out of Terror's way, getting as far away from his body as they possibly could in that short amount of time. He didn't pay any notice to them.

Terror came to a thundering halt, looking down at his previous body. If anybody was moving to strike at him, he neither noticed nor cared. He just stared down at the charred, mangled remains of his previous form, his expression deadly serious. For a moment the entire field was silent.

Then he looked up, and it seemed that he really noticed the gathered warriors for the first time. His eyes lit up to a point of joviality and he grinned the simple grin of a little boy who enjoyed killing small animals.

"Well, at least you won't get the jump on me." His voice was smooth and deep, almost pleasant, but there were guttural reverberations jsut inside one's range of hearing that made him sound like the very voice of Hell.

He threw back his head and screamed laughter, a screeching, booming laughter that made the Earth shake. Those nearest him covered their ears for fear that they would be deafened. The ground began to split in microfissures beneath him. Some deep part of the souls of those around him were touched. In billions of worlds, sleeping children woke up, screaming. The very fabric of space and time shuddered, and when he finally stopped laughing it echoed for a long time.

He was still grinning as his eyes passed over them, and his look held a promise: I am going to kill you all.

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

OoC: All right then! Sorry if this disappoints you, but the situation amounts to this: Terror has torn himself back from the afterlife, descending to the physical plane, and he's looking to kill every single one of you in the most violent way possible. Lemme tell you a few basic things.

1. People can keep joining as the fight goes on. It doesn't matter how many. Hell, peopel who have already joined can keep bringing in characters if the ones they have now die.

2. As this is a 1 vs. Over Two Dozen fight, Terror can beat the hell out of any single person here like they're a rag doll. Even if it wouldn't be true normally, sheer virtue of numbers dictates that he be hideously powerful compared to everyone else. So you'll have to attack him en masse unless you're feeling suicidal.

3. This isn't going to stop until one side is dead. So either Terror dies or all of you do.

4. If you lag behind, I'm not going to wait for you. If you take more than a day or two to post I'm going to keep beating the unholy living Hell out of your characters, so be ready.

I want to thank everyone participating, and those who plan to join. Let's make this something to remember. -OoC

[Metal Man]

OOC: First crack at the big beast, eh? Sweet!

* Metal stared at the unholy creature and his immense power with respect; this would be around the seventh being with Godlike power he had fought. And, as usual, only a madman would attack them. But Metal was a madman. Looking to the small army of people who had appeared around, he decided that he could probably attack the beast without being killed instantly if they, also, attacked. Drawing within him the maximum power which he could, he hovered off of the ground three inches, his antigravity boots online. He held up his fists, brandishing them at the monster, as his pauldrons hummed on and his arms were wreathed in energy. Then, he pointed at it and spoke, his gravelly, annoying metallic voice echoing throughout the field. *

"You are a monster, a being made out of pure evil. You have defied reality in coming back. You cannot win against all of us, but I of all people will show you the power of law over darkness!"

* With that, he charged up his fists to maximum power, and then began air-skating around Terror, waiting for the precise best moment to attack. After a random interval, he lunged at the back of Terror's right leg with right fist-first blow, half-knowing he would probably be intercepted, but not caring. His armor was built for abuse, and how else could he use it besides being hit? Yet somewhere in his vast and insane mind... a plot was being cooked up. *

[Legion]

"Oh.... joy." Legion scowled at the beast which paced across the field now. Things had taken an unexpected turn. A more lthal turn. He doubted that this beast would obey the rules of the Gunjin. If he died here, he wouldn't come back.

"I guess it's up to me to help defeat this creature then," he sighed, unsheathing his sword in the same showy way he had sheathed it. Brandishing it before him at an angle, he drifted quickly towards the creature, keeping his form low to the ground. Coming up around 200 metres short of the creature on a small hillock he thrust the sword into the hilltop for easy access and flung his arms wide.

Dark flames began to wreath his arms as he muttered a chant under his breath. Bringing his head up to face Terror he span his arms in a wide arc to his sides. He watched Metal's imnitial attack closely, and as the warrior darted forwards Legion unleashed his attack. Torrents of impossible black flame curved from his arms and twisted towards the beast, aiming for the unguarded back of its left leg.

[Wyborn]

OoC: This is just to let you guys knowing I'm not joking around. C'mon! Let's go!-OoC

"You are a monster, a being made out of pure evil. You have defied reality in coming back. You cannot win against all of us, but I of all people will show you the power of law over darkness!"

Terror watched out of the corner of his eye as Metal skated around and then lunged, with all speed, at his right calf. Metal was going to punch him. In the calf.

Jumping and pulling up his feet, Terror grinned down at Metal as he passed under him...before bringing both of his feet down in an earth-shattering stomp that sent spider-web cracks along the surface of Metal's armor. He heard the man roar in pain, and his grin grew wider and wider.

Stepping off of Metal for a moment, he looked up just in time to see a torrent of black fire flowing his way - this guy had been aiming for his leg, too. His grin spread even wider as he reached down, wrapping his hands around Metal's ribs, and lifted him into the air like a human shield. Stunned as he was, Metal didn't realize what was happening until the torrent of black fire hit him in the chest and spread over him. Terror began laughing as he really started to yell, thrashing mightily, striking Terror's wrists and forearms with his elbows, to no avail.

After a moment Terror let go with one hand, pulling it back with palm flat, and a bright light shone between his fingers.

He dropped Metal to the ground at the same instant that he brought that fist forward, and Light exploded fom his hand as it made contact with that black fire. The result was...interesting.

Starting at the point where his hand touched it, the black fire turned indigo, so bright it bordered on being white, and that whiteness swept up the length of the flame so quickly tha Legion didn't even realize it was there until it had nealry collided with him, and by then it was too late. The light reached his hands, and all the fire was suddenly gone.

He staggered backwards, stunned, energy arcing between his teeth...and then he threw back his head and screamed as indigo fire burst from his mouth and nose and ears, dancing around the edges of his eyeballs, and it was a long moment before he fell backwards, smoking pouring from his head. He was far from dead, but it hurt enough to give him somehting to think about.

Terror absently punted Metal like a football, sending him careening over the ground and skipping when he hit the rock that Uldi's face had smashed, flipping through the air before crashing into the ground in a heap.

Terror stood there, apparently not interested enough to attack on his own yet, his grin growing wider with every passing second.

[Irkenwarrior12]

As the battle raged another portal appeared. Through it came a tall figure in a long black cloak that slowly fluttered in the wind. Nobody noticed as he quickly and quietly slipped into the crowd of warriors.

*moans* I suck at writing....

[Erdawn Il Deus]

"Heave - we need to mooooove--" In an effort practically cued, all three men heaved all of Uldi off them like so much coal-sack, dumping her unceremoniously to the ground and cutting into a run towards that big black bastard only slightly winded by the experience. Kaja-Rang clapped his hands, and that massive sword-axe collapsed into some kind of pocket space, and he whipped up his serrated war-sickles and they gleamed like fangs cut from slices of the moon. He face broke out into a mask of war rage, one half-tatooed red like an insectile death's-head, and he roared, and his eyes burned a blue so white with ancient power as he closed in, Yuri and Erdawn at his heels.

"Son - go for a hold!"

Yuri's legs jacknifed and he tore off leading a circle around the laughing madman, bulging arms dissapearing under tiger furs and whipping out a long and bulbous and gleaming rifle forged out of some kind of alien metallurgy, ringletted with bulky straps of ammunition.

"Kaja! Get in close and tear into him! Naga, assist! Amari, spell-fire!" Launching himself into a side-roll, the immense man hit the ground on his shoulder and the rifle whipped up, drew a bead, and he squeezed the trigger - Terror was already moving, fangs bared into a hideous crescent-moon of rage and laughter and madness but it wasn't too late, and those indigo eye dissapaeared under a targeted barrage of suppresive energy fire as line after line of plasma torpedo slammed from muzzle to enemy in a fireworks display of crackling air and blinding orange light. Ray-fire smoked off Terror's sizzling frame and he backpedalled heavily, laughing harder.

Erdawn's hands whipped downwards to multiple utility belts, slapping a curiously ironed tomahawk upwards and flicking a switch and turned on several small lights, whipping it forwards through the air like a cycling insect. There was a sharp, loud, and unnatractive cracking as the axe-weapon snapped into two symmteric halves in mid-flight, unleashing a yellow storm of electricity or energy between them that crackled heavily before both blades thunked into the stuff of each of Terror's respective knees. He had time to look down through the smoke of plasmafire before a sharp beep shot that lightning through his body like a poisoin, convulsing muscle and spreading downwards and hooking into the dirt like a thorned lightning-web, chaining him to the earth like a caged 1000-pound monster. Terror threw back and roared at this, Kaja-Rang hit him over the shoulde like a freight truck of tanned, coiled, scarred muscles, and the war-sickles twinkled before hacking into shoulder and flank like the talons of some hideous monsters, drawing gouts of blood and frayed flesh open into the air. Terror laughed, and his fist snapped up and snapped the warlord's skull back before grabbing his beard and pulling him headfirst over his shoulder, slamming him into the ground like an obscene hammer and reflexively trying to lift one of his legs for stompin, by God.

Naga Sull's legs were subject to reflection - they caused death and carnage on their own. If humans could look back and trace whatever he might have evolved from, it could possibly have been the velociraptor or deinonychus, and when he leapt and round-house kicked Terror below his jaw, all of that evolution shaped intself into a crude law - that of tooth and fang. The ball of his foot levered Terror's entire skull upwards and to the side, and that raptor-like talon sliced outwards on its tendon and practically bisected his chin from his jugular, sinking instead into the meat of his collar and ripping a wide slash through the fur that sprayed blood upwards in a mist. Restrained as he was, it was like hitting a tree-trunk, and throughout all the damage he did not fall back or keel over.

Kaja-Rang ripped free of the goliath's hand, and cycled his arms, and the war-sickled again hit flesh - punching through the meat of Terror's thighs (that was all Kaja could reach) with twin spatters of dark blood and hooking him like a fish. he braced his feet and pulled backwards with all the might of his leg-power, tearing at the muscles. Terror howled or laughed, lost in the boom of his voice. His arm wheeled backwards to crush Naga like a garbage compressor beneath his elbow, but the Sull overlord lifted one arm and caught the blow (bending like an accoredeon under the sheer intensity), and stabbed out with the runeaxe, scraping its serrated teeth against Terror's stomach wall in an effort to dissembowel him.

Sunday, tore the silk of his hoodcowl back from his hideous face. And began chanting through clenched teeth, boring holes at the enemy with his eyes.

Terror then bent backwards in a howl so loud it shook the very foundations of the battle.

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

He jumped. The longhunter's energy chain's exploded like glass, but not before Terror jumped and tore a mass of earth and bedrock up along with him roughly the size of a Swedish double-decker, roots and all, the very earth groaned in protest, the inky-black demon riding it like Chernabog. With a single kick he freed his thight from Kaja's meathooks and sent the kinglord hurling through air in a nose-dive, where he (boom) uprooted a trench in the ground and actually skipped a few times before rolling to a stop, brusied and battered, dented at the helm. The elbow came up and down like a hammer and bashed Naga in the skull (and it tore against his crown of bone-spines), hurling him back to earth as well, and he bounced.

Then, with all the grace of a ghost, he tore his toes into that earth mass, performed a kind of superhuman sommer-sault in mid air, bringing it to full bear in an earth-shattering circle, and hurled the thing at Yuri with his feet like a derailed freight-train.

The mass of earth bedrock practically moaned as it came, and Yuri, in a leap so immense it impressed even him, jumped it (he heard it crash and thunder behind him but he kept focus), drew back his arm and hurled his war-hammer. It glinted.

Terror was broken into full-grin, still upside-down, when it hit him (just below the sternum and where Naga had cleaved into him), bending him double-over and carrying the giant downwards like a black comet. Boom.

Sunday bellowed something, a kind of grunt, and his heavy, skeletal fingers slammed together and white heat poured from the point of impact like the extended body of a liquid-white sun, the air caught fire around it, bent around it, warped around it like something seen through hot glass, and it poured over Terror like an avalanche, burning and consumming but it was not fire, so precisely. There was explosion, not thunder, only the earth seemed to shrink and the sky seemed to shrink and everything seemed pulled into the density of that chaotic maelstrom, like the very power and density of the beam was drawing in all outside matter and shaping it. Then, with a clap, the brightness (which had darkened the field in contrast[/i]) subsided, the earth threw up clouds of soil and dust, and the shape of Terror convulsed.

Ra Son Ja met him. Indigo eyes the Immortal eyes burned together like liquid. No one saw what she did, only that all three of her swords were drawn (one was sticking up from the ground beside her), and that blood spilled backwards in lines from the shape of Terror's body and the titan stumbled forward, charred, and staggering (but his grin was still white as snow, as unwavering). Pockets of space zipped up behind the cuts. He was marvelously torn open. Ra Son turned around, and said nothing - she came from an older world. She didn't need to say anything. Terror might have understood.

Erdawn jogged to his companions, the tomahawk retrieved and slung from his belt. Kaja-Rang brushed him away, grunting, and grinning, lifting his sickles. Naga Sull shook his head and blood from his jaw and hefted his runeaxe upwards, sliding nailed fingers over the handle which could change the course of this disaster. Sunday stood where he stood, and Yuri landed like a cat. His hammer was back in his hand. no one asked why.

"This is where it really begins, children." The witch-man whispered, and he chuckled, but the fear could be tasted off his voice. They formed a kind of loose circle around him, not particularily packed together, Ra Son and Sunday and Yuri more individualised.

They barred their teeth. They weren't waiting any longer.

OoC: Typoed like crazy but it is gloooorious! XD

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Originally Posted by Irkenwarrior12

As the battle raged another portal appeared. Through it came a tall figure in a long black cloak that slowly fluttered in the wind. Nobody noticed as he quickly and quietly slipped into the crowd of warriors.

*moans* I suck at writing....

Not about writing, never was. Bout asskickings. Now get in there.

[The Willful Wanderer]

For an instant, the warriors stood arrayed in a circle about the ebon-furred Terror, and then things were... interrupted.

The ground beneath Terror's feet, torn already by talons, became infinitely more abused as something erupted from underneath it. How had they missed it? The way the dragon had disappeared...

It was back. In an instant, Terror had been propelled several stories up on the front facing of the stone beak of the titan-wyrm, the huge creature erupting from the ground and splitting it like an overripe fruit. Yuri scowled as he hopped back, and Sunday hissed his disapproval. It happened all the same.

Abruptly, the dragon came to a stop, emerged from the ground down to his foreshoulders, his neck snapping straight, and Terror kept going. An insane chortle of glee trailed after the un-man as he flew into the sky, attaining a height aspired to by challenge-bungee-jumpers. He turned in the air, rolling about his long axis, facing down. Arms drawing forwards, he readied them to protect his face, but the dragon seemed to have chosen not to belch forth its breath attack yet- instead, two sets of three claws, spiked back as they were curved down, dug into the sides of the eruption, and the ground exploded out from under Kaja-Rang, who threw himself to the side, cursing under his breath. Such interruptions...

Hauling back, the dragon spun around, tail whistling through the air like a thunderclap, the blades on the end whistling as they reached to meet the plummeting Terror- and a roar so very strong that it rent the *ground* before the dragon's head sounded, as several blades snapped cleanly off.

Gripping huge, jagged chunks of harder-than-stone, Terror outright cackled as he flew through the air again, and flung the spikes of dragon-bone at Erdawn.

Even later, nobody would be able to say for certain what had happened, what had been the exact combination that brought about the next few events. Several of those present had blacked them out for the safety of their own sanity. However, the cause was easily identifiable.

Terror's arc had taken him near Mo. Turning, she had grinned at him, and he had grinned back. And she had grinned wider, and he had grinned wider. And then she grinned, the split of her lips so broad that they tore slightly at the corners, blood trailing gently to give the impression of vampirism.

And freaky monkey cookie jargon spill, rewop vrrt klemhouse. Jeb gulth.

It hadn't been said, but it was there all the same, and nobody was quite sure how they'd sensed it. A piece of fire slammed into Terror's face, which accellerated while the rest of him slowed, straining his neck. Large patches of his fur went abruptly missing, and he had passed through three trees before the undying monkey king pronounced him thing and wife-thing. The broom missed the gride, causing all sorts of dust to gather on eternal shelves formed of a hideous screeching. It briefly rained thin mints, and Terror's left ear exploded with a lemming infestation. Two dozen trained monkeys got out typewriters and started banging out a communist manifesto in C minor, and Cthulhu lost a tentacle. This didn't matter too much, as it was still attached to the Great Old One, the Devourer had merely misplaced it. Okay, maybe it did matter, because it tore loose a chunk of Real, leaving a bit of a *not* in the middle of the battlefield. And there was much carousing and snake-flattening, and it was declared a holiday.

Terror's top eye inverted itself in a gorey spray, which was a bit odd, as he hadn't *had* an eye in the middle of his forehead before. Then again, a few moments ago, he hadn't also had a third arm sprouting from his spine with a three-toed foot on the end of it.

A section of ground beside Sunday shrank away to nothing, leaving an immeasurably-deep hole in the turf, perfectly hexagonal and lined with silver spoons. The monkey tree that suddenly had always been there lost all its fruit to an assault by gigantic kung-fu aphids, and then someone flushed.

An area of about seventy meters radius containing Mo and Terror spiraled out of existence, down the drain like the remnants of so many burritos. Slowly, from the bottom up, it filled back in, leaving Mo floating at the top of it in white tie and tails, singing 'How Much Is That Doggy In The Window' to the music of The Blue Danube, and Terror, extra limb, exploded ear still spouting lemmings, and bloody eye that hadn't been standing on the ground at the bottom of it with patchy fur and a dictionary of Esperanto in his hand.

Mo giggled, and drifted higher.

Had it been anyone else involved in the moment of sheer chaos that the demoness had instated in that region, they likely would have turned into an utter, babbling wreck.

Terror just grinned, baring teeth reddened by bleeding gums, attached to a split jaw. Crouching, he coiled his legs to leap for the floating bit of insanity- and then kicked behind him.

Struck in the gut, Yume was sent flying, the air momentarily knocked out of her, with quite the surprised expression on her face. She'd been going a lot faster that time, and still the damn wolverine-man had been able to predict her movements...

A series of fourteen shots rang out, and Terror flinched just a little.

Frowning, Terrafissa flung aside the two 1876 Trapper lever-actions that had previously been slung on her back, and drew her Desert Eagles as she charged at the patchy-black thing that felt so wrong- but she was much slower. She had barely moved seven steps when things suddenly got very, very hot.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Shrieking with rage in seven disparate-voices, the needletoothed Akki tore through the air, surrounded in a blip of total inferno, a trail of molten ground following her as she skimmed low towards Terror. Claws tougher than diamond flashed out in a series of swipes, and the dictionary was shredded, then the shreds shredded, and only then did they have the good sense to catch fire on account of the temperature.

Even Terror could not help but be affected a little bit by the sheer level of heat the scaled demoness was giving off, an intensity far greater than that of the rage in gleaming-blue eyes. One arm came up to catch a claw-swipe, and the claws dug, tore, caught on bone that managed to out-tough them. The other hand was already up, and slammed into Akki's arm.

It should have shattered. The demoness' biology, unusual as it was, should not have withstood the impact. The bone should have been outright powdered, the arm folded around the massive fist that impacted it.

There also should not have been a magical forceshield in the fist's way, but there was that too. The barrier gave with a dull snap, but it had delayed the strike- which was enough for Akki to take advantage of, sinking hundreds of needle-teeth into Terror's right forearm, not so much biting a chunk off as piercing it to the consistency of meringue and pulling on it. Pulling on it hard, as Terror's forehead met Akki's, and her third eye exploded in a burst of jelly, claws and teeth torn free.

With a shriek of rage (as if she could make any other utterance?), Akki seemed to completely ignore the pain that her destroyed eye and slightly indented forehead should have given her, and blasted back at Terror, at nearly Mach Two.

Given his prior anticipations, it was no large surprise that he kicked her like a football goalie, sending the razor-spiked ball of fury flying uncontrollably, momentarily knocked silly. Ignoring the row of perforations in his leg from Akki's spinal spikes, he slammed his elbow back-

-and there was an undeniable fraction of an instant of pause as the elbow shattered. Undeterred, he spun, and began a barrage of punches, to match the set of super-fast blows leveled at him by the blue-skinned norsewoman. Even with his right elbow rendered into a collection of bone fragments, he was able to put his fist in the way with more than a fair amount of power, and Uldi retreated as a sword sank into Terror's left bicep.

A reflexive kick netted no notable effect on the shadow-seeping shape behind him, white strapsuit still vaguely visible in the network of murky tendrils.

A right-armed punch met the same lack of response, as the sword was drawn back for another strike, and then the left came in, glowing with an inner light of pulsing indigo.

If Terror's elbow had been shattered, Nera's ribs were powdered outright- not that it mattered, with Terror's fist protruding from her back like that. Turning, the Wrong One flung his arm out, and the large woman's body collided with Terra at just the wrong moment, causing another set of flailing limbs, though this mess was much more bloody, one of the components dying almost before impact.

******

The black, monolithic crystal stood silently, stolidly, simply sitting at a slant. It would have taken looking away and looking back to realize that one of the many facets was now glowing with a faint, dim white light.

******

Reiko waited. Nothing seemed to be happening.

Opening her lips and blowing her breath out through her teeth, the air whistling slightly past elongated canines, she folded her arms across her chest as well.

She was patient.

She could wait it out.

******

Cautiously, slowly, the Xerxes began to approach the ongoing conflagration of battle. Elli thumbed some switches, examining the readouts. By this point, she was fairly sure she was just having a particularly lucid dream. Those readings didn't make any sense, there were all these holes she had to keep steering around, and she was sure she'd seen a naga back there.

She would definitely not be eating ham-and-pineapple pizza right before hitting the hay anymore.

Flicking a few more switches, she prepared Redline mode, just in case.

******

Zail simply sat and waited. Simply, nothing better had occurred to her to do.

******

Back at the farm, so to speak, things would only proceed to get worse as Janda entered the fray, opening up with a whirlwind of slashes- the staff she bore proved to be a beam halberd, projecting a foot of curved plasma blade beyond one end. She had her dash boots and her superhumanities, but she simply couldn't compare with most of those in the area at the moment.

Not that it would stop her from trying.

The miscellaneous appearances of multiple miniature forcefields didn't hurt, either.

******

High, high up above the battlefield, launching into a rendition of 'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz (though he'd definitely never considered incorporating furnace pipe and stuck pig noises into the musical score like that), Mo started building... something. Out of pipe cleaners and dental floss.

Chances were, it would be very interesting, whatever it was.