Tournament of Red Lions: Championship

[Cosenticus]

We've come a long way....

Championship: Erdawn vs. Wyborn

And your judges are...

1. Shinigami (host)
2. Lycrios
3. Luigi007

Some general regulations for the participants:

1. Transformations are allowed. Should your character possess the skill to transform into a planet a la Unicron, or say you’re Satan and part of your act is to transform into the appearances of others, I have good news: you can. Want to be a werewolf? Change into one in the fight. The only rule and stipulation is that damage done to one form is carried over to the other. If you found yourself with a scar above your eye, that scar remains even if you become a werewolf.

2. No major healing. If someone slices open your throat and you seal it to stop bleeding, that’s legal. If you lose your arm and have the ability to reattach it (for instance, if George Bush lost his arm he’s screwed, sorry guys.) The only thing is that you can’t heal the damage done to your body. For instance, if you lose your arm and reattach it, you probably won’t have great mobility with that arm, and it will hurt like Hell. Be realistic and fair when healing above all else.

3. The first to post chooses the field on which their fight occurs. Again, obvious.

And, in case anyone has forgotten...

4. If you win, you will have the opportunity to finish off your enemy Mortal Kombat style. After the judges announce the winner, the host will say when the executions are executed. At that point, you can kill your opponent if you wish, though you aren’t bound to do it, it’s encouraged that you FINISH THEM Should your character die, fret not – they aren’t permanently deceased, for deaths here don’t seep into other topics unless you desire it.

The day this round ends is to be announced.

Have fun, Kids.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

...to where my travels have taken me, though I have not managed to alocate the trickster Harlequint, or Jeszebelle, and regardless of where my steps take me their deaths shall pull me through it all. But here, I find myself waiting... why? For what? My instincts thrum with vibrancy, calling me to stop, wait, despite my quest to catch and kill my enemies for the poisoning and murder of my liege, Surlord Juda Damodred of Iscariote, and leaving my homeland to burn and my soul blessed black and chimed of Death.

So why do I wait? Perhaps death has taken me here, written out my end, and my pursuits are in vain. Perhaps I am already dead, and this place of seeming elycium bleakness only a large tomb. I feel as if things are coming to a close... a climax. I think I am being pursued. Surely, it is a possibility.

...

There is nothing more I can write here. I can only wait. Will you, Reader, await my return? Or will your interest in my tale end with me? Time will tell. Then again, time is only another enemy.

~S. A. Navarre,
Third Centurion of the Iscariote Royalty,
Order of the Vandal Heart

SixY/Ti/Boar/18

p. 8062

The staccato scratching of his quill ended, and which a liquid movement of his hands he rolled the feathered pen and slid it back beneath the folds of his coat. He closed the ruffled, leather-bound book of old parchment, too small to contain the numbered ammount of pages, and stuffed it silently among the others in his breast pocket. He looked up with reverred silence and observed the realm in which he had thread.

It was the Hour of the Owl, sometimes known as Highmoon, and the silver disk hung fat and milky in the velvet softness of the night-sky, giving ethereal light to the late world. Stars dotted the creamy black of the sombre heaven, twinkling frostily like crystallized chips of candlefire. Grey, patterned clouds drifted lazily overhead, too far spaced to cover the colossal moon in its unearthly brilliance. He was standing in a cyclopean temple or city ruin which grew stark and stoically from the shimmering field of white grass like pronged fingers, crumbled towers and pillars of dark basalt teetering in stacked piles of mortarless architecture, cut bricks in the darkness making them look like silent and unmoving worms. Here and there, dark walls rose from the field, ending in smashed heaps of brick, well-tiled floors of grey marble overgrown with the curious, white grass standing out bleakly without their walls or roofs in broken squares and rectangles, broken pillars rising smooth and sheared off into brooding, stone stumps. The field in itself was an excuse for the infinite - reaching out in every direction like a snowy carpet, made up of high, swishing grass and weeds a brilliant wintery white, taking in the light of the moon and almost glowing in turn.

He stood tall and stared out across the contrasting emptiness, letting the cool breeze ruffle and batter his heavy curls of hair and wash off his skin. He fit well in this place - his hair was combed back and soft and snowy, falling in a curled mess down to his shoulders and exposing the sharpness of his face, which stood out milky white and narrowed, his cheekbones poking from the flesh of his face with sallow insistence and his eyes socketed deeply and gauntly into his skull, pinpricks of pale green like sea-ice. He wore a heavy coat of silvery-white fox-furs over his lithe, sleek body, which draped and billowed like spun silk from his waist and back. Sheated in a scabbard of wolf-skin and leather rested a massive long-sword, its metallic, charcoal hilt scratched and covered with so many runes and diagrames and sutras they overlapped into unreadable gibberish, the weapon strung off his hip with belts made of hide and leather.

He kneeled into the lush white grass and broken marble tiles, resting his weight on his knees, and waited, the wind buffeting him in caressing gusts, crisp and icily rich, his throat humming soft worldless songs into the night, his aura a perfect pearl of smooth and unmovable harmony.

OoC: Long and written in a tournament based on battling, but I really felt a vibe with this character. Since I sent that PM while you were gone and the tourney's already started, I just picked the white field. I think it will do this battle justice.

Now let's tear em up!

[ August 05, 2005, 03:15 PM: Message edited by: e-r-d-a-w-n ]

[Erdawn Il Deus]

*stab* [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Cosenticus]

August 17th this round ends.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

His eyes on the polyphemous tip of the white giant’s blade, Sebastian unclasp his belt and cloak, letting the silky robe of fleece fall lightly to the grass, revealing a narrow body of lithe and dense muscles roped up and down with athletic finesse and networked with the criss-crossing lines of scars – everywhere, scars, penned over veins and arteries, all save for the mortal line over his jugular and carotid – letting scars drawn into the flesh to let blood flow in ritualistic offerings, practiced by the iscarian centurions all their lives until the Last Cut, the mortal and honourable cut made to send the dying or old into peace.

The centurion rested his eyes on the white gigas – letting out a long breath through his milky nostrils – cold, sparkling fog gushed from his lungs, rising softly, coldly into the night, and for a brief minute Virtue swore he saw the green eyes go a coppery, metallic crimson.

“Hile, Virtue,” Sebastian said. “I am Sebastian, the Ghost Wolf of Iscariote, here to end you in turn.” With a serene scraping he drew his longsword, and Virute observed that the blade was black - a cold and milky black, the steel only reflecting light from the towers of glyphs etched up the groove. He discarded the leather scabbard, wearing only heavy leather belts that swung with gourds and packs.

Virtue said nothing, although he straightened, and Sebastian brought that wicked runeblade back off his body, the point behind him, his every muscle settling like fine oils. His knuckles tightened on the long, steel grip, and as it did the blade glimmered – rims of frost snaking up the edge and coldly tracing crystallized arches and branches in sheet-blues and whites, ethereal brush-strokes in eyes.

There was something odd about the man – his body was living but seemed to throw off a cast of death, of resignement, and Virtue felt the cold even through his fur. But he did not move, even as he felt his lungs tighten (ever so slightly, the air now frostily crisped and a fine bluish fog rising from the white field and coiling around the basalt structures).

Sebastian came forward on powerful legs and his blade whickered across whistling and cold to meet the edge of Virtue’s greatsword, and the giant’s instincts took over, gently lifting his sword upwards so that his adversary’s own cut only air beneath it and following up by heaving his arms upwards and downwards in a vicious chop that would have neatly splintered Sebastian’s body into a mess. The ghost-wolf twirled with dancing, unholy grace, his feet sliding and battening down grass with powerful speed, Virtue’s edge snapping to where his head had been in a great whoosh of air, and he again falling into that liquid, solemn grace, dipping his body lifting, arcing, twisting his blade over his shoulders in a downward thrust that neatly sliced into the flesh over Virtue’s right ribcage, finding no purchase and scraping off but drenching the transparent fleece with heavy crimson.

Virtue hissed, Sebastian melted, sliding his wretchedly black sword back to him and crossing his arms oddly so that his sword-arm’s elbow packed into his free-hand and stepping forward with striding might. His palm shot forwards, attacking three-steps in a mixture of adapted Tang-Soo Doo and Shaolin-Ken attack forms that complimented his weapon, bashing his hand into the massive Virtue’s chest three times in such a rapid succession that impacts almost overlapped each other, driving kinetic energy to batter his sternum-area and even thud against his beating heart. Ribs denser than iron crackled like uncalcified bone and suddenly his lungs compressed against his spine and he backpedaled, blood rushing into his throat and spurting between his lips down his chest.

Virtue retched and rested his weight – noting that his opponent had neatly complimented the goliath’s advantage in height by angling his attacks upwards and increasing the impact.

Sebastian did not move – only stared coldly, his body still with his palms out-stretched but missing no stance, trained to improvisation in Shaolin-Ken. Little else was said, and it had begun.

OoC: Christ I hate first attacks. Damn your eyes! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Around the fourth-or-so time Virtue lifted his leg and stomped downwards something entirely different happened than the crescendo of fracturing bones and squishing organic tissues – his foot stopped, and suddenly it was taking every ounce of capable strength in his lower body to keep his leg sinking down. The centurion’s arms were reaching upwards, bulling into the underside of Virtue’s white heel and forcing back so that muscle bulged and tendons stood out from the skin in cords woven so taut they might have been strips of tempered steel, veins ripping to the skin surface like fat earthworms. Copper and metal were heavy-sweet in Sebastian’s mouth, spilling from his lips in pattern lines of red, contrasting horrifically to his marble-ivory skin, but his face was perfectly, frighteningly tranquil, unrelentingly cold in face of the unholy strength and weight that bore down on him – let it be more properly illustrated. Virtue was pushing down with over 1000lbs of weight pressured by every woven fibre of his body-muscle, and Sebastian was holding it back without blinking, the working of his facial muscles only involuntary spasms caused by the righteous body-strain.

Suddenly, Sebastian’s lips broke open, and he exhaled, and again his breath iced upwards into silked fog of blinding mist like they were standing on the sunless shores of the Antarctic and not—

Virtue was cold. Something was happening, unregistered across either of the silent titans’ faces, something cold and hollow breaking loose, pushing through the pores in the grass, sweated through the fabric of the sky – like the universe was suddenly becoming frayed and there was only emptiness outside and it was breaking through – the feeling boiled, cold as milk and just as bleak, and out of the corner of his eyes Virtue was aware of small dark forms knifing from the grass, chirping sparrow-shrill and soft, the sighing of the breeze pushed away by the beating of inked feathers and puckered beaks. He pushed down harder, aware of the audible creak as Sebastian’s muscle teetered towards a cataclysmic brink, so much pressure heaped onto the cushion of fibre and bone that it would only take moments for the entire structure of his arms to explode in every direction and he would scream before Virtue’s heel collapsed his chest cavity and killed him, thrashing and solemn in death as he was in life.

Instead, Virtue’s leg burned. It burned so hard and so fast and so hot that the sting shrieked up into his belly and unwound like a bundle of wires, seizing up his muscles and blinding his train of thought – he howled, eyes widening – ice fog was smoking from Sebastian’s cold hands, billowing up like heat from a gas vent, and with a popping crackle Virtue’s fur took to ice – rimmed and glaciated so fast that his internal heat was sucked into the lines of crisp diamond, searing his muscle and flesh from the inside out. He growled and stepped back off Sebastian’s crossed hands but the warrior didn’t let him and pushed, shoving so forcefully even Virtue was driven staggering a whole pace backwards, and suddenly Sebastian was on his feet.

He oiled forward, a blizzard of bloodied white flesh, striking at his staggered adversary with all the deadliest forms in the killing martial arts – Steel Mountain Push, Pheonix-Eye Fist, Knife Dragon Hand, Iron Wall Strike, they slammed into Virtue like the throes of Fate, white and cold and merciless, dark obsession given form, taking the liquid, finishing blows to the jugular vein at the mercy of elbow calcium, energy from a wall of knuckle and heel targeting the spinal column, a rising curling fist that came up and down on the sternum and clavicle to shatter it inside and puncture the heart and lungs, a pronged spear-hand blow meant to break and open his rib-cage wide inside the cage of his chest. He was hit with what would have broken a man’s windpipe, splintered his spine out from under him, pierce his organs, torn open his ribs and stopped his heart dead, killing him so brutally and multiply it would have been legendary - carnage celebrated even in the corridors of Hell.

Only Virtue stood against it – blood bursting from his mouth and nose like overripened fruits, bruised so deep and black it couldn’t mean anything but internal haemorrhaging, and pain so visceral it wasn’t even pain, just a seizing numbness and the feeling that he had stepped into a titanic shadow.

His impossibly huge ivory body backpedalled, breaking in a hundred places, but he rooted his lupine legs, steadied himself, and bellowed, and blood sprayed from the recesses of his throat across the grass and stung Sebastian’s face.

The ghost wolf of Iscariote stood tall, sucking in air, and breathing outwards, flexing his entire upper-body. Ribs crackled and snapped like firecrackers in his chest – no wholly fractured but damaged – and lancing him with a hundred agonies, his arm burned where Virtue had gnashed it and that wasn’t even a spark to the throbbing aches of his ligaments after shifting so much weight, pounding like tambourines under his flesh.

Virtue’s blue eyes settled in his skull, not angered, not maddened, like ice cooling into a lake, his stare solemn and gigantic, Sebastian meeting him, his own sea-glass orbs haemorrhaging power and the tension between them something of colossal melancholies and colossal mirth.

The Khuutra giant charged forward, forsaking the theatrics of multiple steps for strides long and fast to cross earths with, his every footfall booming out across the field. Sebastian slid back, slightly, his muscles coiling, training himself for the moment.

In the martial art Aikido, it is called Zenpo Na-Ge. An attacker’s energy is met,…

Sebastian came forward into Virtue’s charge, meeting the freight-train power of his momentum with his arms, slapping one hand beneath the arm-pit of Virtue’s right and and cradling the under-side of his right ribcage with the other.

…re-directed,…

He pushed up and wheeled his entire body with Virtue, sliding on his hips and pivoting with his legs to swing the juggernaut up and over his head and direct him and every ounce of his energy past him and down to the field and stones, the giant’s body crashing into the ground mightily as to shake the foundations of the ruins and blast pebbles and dirt up from the splintered earth, plowing a trench eight-yards long and throwing up dust and soil in clouds.

...and ahnihilated.

Sebastian catapulted himself high into the air from a jog, his legs churning like pistons, bending his right knee to land and smash Virtue’s skull beneath his heel, his left lowered to meet obliterate his chest cavity - an ivory angel perched high and destructive and craned before the radiance of the moon, his face cold as snow, his passion cooled steel.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Virtue’s fist came down and bashed off Sebastian’s face and skull once more (the impacts shaking his head like the rumble of an earthquake) but as he drew back and punched again, the centurion pushed forward himself from the crater left behind his skull, twisting his abs and upper-body to the side, and the goliath’s fist only smashed the earth beneath him with a thundering boom. The Ghost Wolf gritted his teeth (his fine, china-white face broken like glass torn and twisted into an ugly bleeding mess) and sat himself up, bringing the elbow of his working arm down like the hammer of Thor above Virtue’s groin and knees. There was a split crack at the impact and the pain was like a spike of glass and Virtue felt as if his lower body has split wide in two, his jaws flagging open but making no sound. Sebastian struck again – his body an oiled machine, only knowing that he couldn’t breath and his spine was breaking and his head was packed with hard sand and numb and broken and his bunched fist slammed upwards below Virtue’s sternum, the impact targeted with surgical preciseness to rattle his entire ribcage, slamming the bones up against each and crushing the ligaments between them like a sturdy accordion in the Khuutra’s chest, who’s torso swung backwards, blood spewing from his dark lips in a hot stream, splashing onto his chest and Sebastian’s matted locks.

“JA-MÜT YOLERAH!” He swore, and Sebastian’s body swung down and bounced off the crushed white field like a beached shark, swinging upwards again the orbits of his eyes wide and cold and green in what might have been rage, so sunken into their sockets and so veined, his lips only a white line. His arm whipped back and forth again in a knife that disappeared somewhere between Virtue’s knees and thighs and hit like a freight engine of neige flesh. The feeling rushed into Virtue’s gut, stagnant water, a bundle of feverish wires sprung open, suffocating in its intensity and the massive white juggernaut gagged and suddenly he rolled himself off his enemy, his instincts only screaming at him to get away from the pain, dumbing and maddening. He thrashed, grabbing at places, beating at places, the pain nauseating and ineffable, like a disembodied itch.

Sebastian rolled himself over as well, his body seized and his chest burning, sucking air into his lungs with starved desperation, pounding at the ground, his body half-crushed, writhing and whipping his legs. With controlled agony, he pushed himself up on his one remaining arm, pushing a glob of sickening dark red (almost black) from his lips and blowing a cough to clear his throat, muscles throbbing and coiling underneath his achromatic flesh, burning, hissing like steam engines. With a snarl, he tightened everything, locking it down into submission in a bodily meditation, knowing only he would kill and kill and kill before dying himself (perhaps). His body straightened partially, still almost double over, his face so beaten and swollen and bruised and bloody that only one eye was visible and the orb glimmered like an icy nickel from its broken socket. Teeth, broken and bloody in part, pulled back in a controlled grimace, and finally he stood up.

He drew in rattling breaths, knowing his body was badly damaged, the extent only held back by his own force of will, rigorous training of his bones and aura. Blood streamed from his nostrils. They were equally met – in their own way. Virtue was mighty as a titan, he was fast, agile, and harboured knowledge of body cartography that bordered the surgical. He groped at the splintered mass of his right arm, pulling at the shoulder and wrenching the bone back in place, still useless but at least connected to his body. He had to find a way to tear him apart, break him down – fighting him was like sculpting, chipping away constantly, piece at a time, finally revealing something of worth, weakness. And when that was opened to the air, Sebastian would strike it dead.

”Yæ-sõ je, Ille-ήallum requiesta!” he yelled, cursing, wiping the hot sticky red from his broken face. ”Inch at a time, you will die.” His breath turned to ice in the air, blanched sparkling fog cold and unforgiving, casting a bluish hue, and slowly frost rimmed his face, blue almost lit from within with phosphorence, thin branches like diamond pencil-lead. He tore forward, achromic, his body smoked with brilliant white fog with every oiled lurch of his shoulders and legs, the alabaster grass actually crystallizing and shattering to dust in his wake, blasting the air with rains of glittering incandescent sands (and there was chiming and the shadows of sparrows out of the corner of his vision, sparrows or ravens, chirping and cawing, seeing and waiting and searching, but that slow, tinkling chime, that was forever and it was everywhere).

Virtue lurched, his legs still shuddering and wanting to give but his mind crushing its whim into submission, his face so taunt and pulled back with his pain it was human. The attack mapped out in Sebastian’s mind, flashing before his eyes like the afterimages of a photograph. Virtue swung his fist low and hooked, to slam into the centurion’s already wounded belly, and Sebastian leapt, touching down – actually stepping off Virtue’s swinging wrist and flipping his body with unholy grace, his fist striking out and thudding like a spear into the juggernaut’s neck, receding as the skull snapped backwards at the jaw, flickering downwards and crushing the wolverine-like nose into its face and blinding those deep, un-pigmented pink eyes with the sting of tears, landing like a feline at his back and turning around and bringing all hell to the Khuutra’s shoulder.

His hand knifed out, cracking against the socket and bone over-and-over but all across, surgical again in his fury, striking powerful and awful, the air actually thumping back into place where his arm moved, wheeling his upper body and cracking at it with his elbow, knuckles, the bone of his palm, all the while focusing his aural energies, sliding them into each other until they swarmed and liquefied into a whirpool around Virtue’s arm bones spun in webs and leylines of power. Fog billowing from Sebastian’s mouth and ice finding itself in the nooks and crannies of those calcium fortresses, sucking ligaments into shrunken, foetal pieces of dried meat.

Virtue swung that arm backwards, meaning to cleanly knock Sebastian’s head from his shoulders, and the centurion ducked into a squat, pistoning his arm, and as Virtue’s hyper-extended enough to practically meet his other shoulder, his hips rotating, and the Ghost Wolf struck.

When his fist met the place where Virtue’s shoulder ended and his arm began, at the socket, something unseen happened – the aura pumped into that nook sprung loose from itself like a wound bear-trap, an explosion of exothermic invisible might, and the ice in Virtue’s bones shattered, and in a single instant, a cyclone of Sebastian’s chi, the Khuutra’s arm simply tore off. Crash and splinter and pop, blood exploded from the rips and tears and the centrifugal energy of Sebastian’s aural vortex shimmered through the air like spun heat, buffeting against both warriors and the grass, the arm itself spinning ridiculously through the night air (whup-whup-whup) and landing heavily in the grass, twitching once, jumping, and lying still. Virtue roared, again, like a trumpet, the sound alone shaking Sebastian’s ears as the goliath’s other arm whipped the other way, guillotining the air clean and loudly. Sebastian ducked again, bringing his fist around and slamming Virtue’s left rib-cage, hearing a muffled crack as he did. Virtue brought the arm down like a dock crane, slamming into Sebastian’s shoulder and bringing him to his knees involuntarily, a massive, furred hand grabbing his skull and swinging upwards with Herculean strength, heaving Sebastian straight up into the air.

The wind roared in the centurion’s ears, and he howled, and flipped himself in the air and fell on Virtue with his legs, his eyes blazing cold emerald fire in his skull. His heels came down on the nerves of both Virtue’s shoulders and these seized up, coiling into receding carpets of muscle other the flesh and locking his arm in place, bones popping at the impact. As he knelt behind Virtue’s massive head, the centurion dashed aside his elbow, the point bulling into the joint of the Khuutra’s jaw, that nest of nerves, and with a splintering crunch that part unhinged into glass splinters, that nerves stretching and seizuring in his face and rattling his brain. Sebastian kicked off Virtue’s back (who stumbled forward and fell like a fallen white God into the infinite white field, trailed with blood and enamel and realising he might just be bleeding to death) in a backflip, crouching slowly into the field away from him.

His body screamed, itched, gnawed, but he pushed it down, still crouching, and waited.

OoC: http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console...bosv3final.mid
Tis here suits me. I think the post kinda pettered out near the end, but hey, I hope you enjoyed.

[ August 15, 2005, 02:41 AM: Message edited by: e-r-d-a-w-n ]

[Erdawn Il Deus]

The world swam back into focus, and Sebastian was aware that he was dying. -But we all die. We are all dying, a dying race, a dying world, a dying existence. So what then, makes my death meaningful? My life precious? My readers? The voice of my journal, my Epilogue? Harlequint? Jeszebelle? Erdawn? None of this… but I vowed long ago… to Jessica… that my death would not be meaningless - that I would live for her. Death is a part of life, life is the acceptance of death and making your life count, hoping your reward will be only the sweet rest at the breast of Our Father.

His vision was cloudy and clear all at once, swarmed by light that seemed to bright (hard, sharp light, like pinpricks) and colours that blurred together like streaked paints, forming nothing of coherence. He knew only that there was white around him and dark before (above) him. He took a breath, and the air was tight, weak and he knew that his lung had collapsed, punctured, and that brought to mind a slightly more immediate problem. -The sword…

It had been pushed so far through his body the hilt was now forever entangled in him, and removing it would be an exercise in suicide. The blade itself stuck from his back, hard against the earth (his body on its side in an almost foetal position). He was bleeding. Copiously. Crimson pooled and drenched around him, so much blood, stinging his eyes, hot and sticky, he felt lighter, numbed, and weighed down. -So this is death? Will I march proudly into that golden eternity?-

He smiled.

-No.-

An exhilaration ran through him like an electric current, a kind of buzzing, rising from his toes to his fingers in shuddering waves, excitement leapt into his heart. -So this is being so close to death, inches from the rift. Brought here by the hand of that solemn warrior. And so close to death… so close to it, am I not more powerful?- The answer was in the trembling of his body and the white fog gushing luminously from his nostrils and throat. Earthshattering. Glacial.

-Yes. Oh, yes.-

Virtue took a step back, breathing hard, long bloodied. Luminescent mist poured from what he’d hoped (unbelieving) was Sebastian’s grave, the light of the moon reflected and absorbed into every particle and recast white and pure and soft, like a blinding carpet of new snow. The air hissed, and Virtue shuddered – -God, it is getting colder. It is getting colder.- And it was. His fur stiffened, was brittle and sharpened naked to the crisped breeze, the flowing of his blood slowed and actually crystallised onto his body. The hairs in his nostrils felt all too present, his lungs sucked against his spine.

The mist sucked the latent chemical heat from everything, and moisture itself froze on the grass, the stone, the world itself, cooled like an exhumed beast. There was sudden rush, achromic steam geysering up and down, falling with almost liquid tongues, intensely billowing against the reeds and buffeting Virtue’s fur and arms, and he saw Sebastian stand up, so red with blood where his flesh was visible it stood out like naked china in the contrast. His eyes, once green like orbs of sea-glass, had flickered and were now beads of iridescent crimson, hot as brake-lights and alive with power.

But death was on him like a coat, in the blood that congealed into a cast around him, the rattling pierce of his breaths, the mad staring of his crimson eyes.

The ghost that had been Sebastian looked down, his body split open to his spine over the wall of his diaphragm, where blood spilled. His interest wavered, and he stared balefully (no, Vortue thought. soullessly, like an emptied diamond) at his opponent, and snowy mist poured from his nose and mouth and crystallised on his face into rims of frost.

-He draws power from it,- Virtue realised. -He is dying and it is making him stronger, like… like…- He bit his tongue, trying to think of anything he could use, as a point of refernce… anything he had seen before. But perhaps not him. He had heard something like this once, from his baby brother - a warrior carrying a wooden weapon had grown stronger as he moved closer to death, and every blow against him was like a thousand against his adversaries. -Maybe he isn’t like that, maybe not exactly, but my God I have to destroy him now now NOW-

Virtue flexed his good arm, closing his eyes, and with a grunt, he charged. His footfalls thundere across the field so loud as to echoe mutely, and the earth trembled at his coming but Sebastian only stared him down and the mist intensified, actually cold-burning Virtue as he approached, charring his skin, his body electric with stinging, burning pain. He roared, drew back his fist, the man was standing half-impaled on a bloody sword he would die now—

Navarre lifted his arm, and bent his body and brought it down, slapping the ground, and everything shook like the throat of God and force (invisible but so intense the air shimmered like bent glass) simply shook up against Virtue in mid-stride that he was lifted clean off his feet and hurled backwards like a lawn dart, his bones crunching, and from where Sebastian’s hand touched the grass blew backwards in ripples and was suddenly drowned in an inking carpet of red.

Fwoomp.

All the grass, from horizon to horizon, the crimson spreading like water clouds, boiling through the reeds with heart pigment, blasting petals and dirt into the air billowing in the rushing carpet of carmine, and suddenly the entire field was red and Sebastian was walking towards Virtue like a malign god, the reeds bending at his presence. Blood pattered into the crimson sea like raindrops from his body, and with one wave of his hand, the wound froze over – crystallizing shut and the ice was red. He kept striding, stoic, unstoppable, and he touched the blade that had impaled him – the cold suddenly wrenched into the very leylines of the steel and it shattered, the tip breaking off like a metal fang and resting heavy in Sebastian’s hand.

He kept walking.

Virtue pushed himself up, his head ringing and bleeding, warped and dizzy, but getting up because life seemed to be so important, something so worth fighting for, and mindless of the pain and dumbing numbess in his limps he charged, ignoring the sluggishness that stole over his muscles in the frigid temperature.

Sebastian reached down in mid-stride and picked up his blade, a runic slab of ebon steel, and it glaciated at the razor edges in crimson vine-works of frost. Suddenly he wasn’t walking anymore, he was sprinting, him and Virtue coming at each other together, and they met and the world trembled.

Grass burst into crimson fragments of dust around them, so cold, so cold, Virtue swinging his arm to collapse Sebastian’s chest and the ghost Wolf turning aside, both blades with him, cutting chunks from his adversary’s sides and letting blood to the grass, crystallizing where it dropped. Virtue howled and bulled forward, ramming the broad-side of his shoulder into Sebastian’s still-turning body, hitting him like a derailed train and staggering him clean off his feet, grabbing his right arm and twisting with his colossal hand and dropping the broken sword-point from Sebastian’s. He pulled backwards, planning to tear the arm off completely when the Gjost Wolf of Iscariote titlted his head to look at Virtue, and barred his teeth.

Suddenly, the goliath’s hand burned, seered away in a womb of alien red ice, steaming white, the fingers brittle and broken and splintered into uselessness and the flesh peeling dry from the palm. Sebastian whipped around as Virtue growled, and drove his runeblade to the hilt, nesting it through Virtue’s sternum, and twisting on thhe pommel, and smashing a lung to a pulp inside the cage of his thorax.

Blood burst from Virtue’s lips, and Sebastian let go of the blade and suddenly his hands wove and darted and cracked into the beast, over and over and over, each blow weaving those invisible lines of force, spreading red ice through Virtue’s body and skeleton, the Khuutra swatting Sebastian away as best he could but still taking on the rain of blows.

Suddenly, Sebastian slid backwards. They stared at each other, and Virtue felt the webs – woven into nests and bundles across his body in various positions, constrict.

Boom.

OoC: Bah, sorry, needed to go too fast for finishing this properly. Cheers all and see you in a week.

[Cosenticus]

TIME! This round has reached its end.

Judgings may now commence.

My verdicts will come late tonight or tomorrow. I have a lot of stuff to do.

[ August 17, 2005, 05:29 PM: Message edited by: Shukun Shinigami ]

[Cosenticus]

After much deliberation I hand my choice as champion to none other than Wyborn. This choice was made after reviewing the posts numerous times and deciding upon critical factors I found within the fight. I have an entire list to back up my opinion.

However, I can't give that now. I have to go to New York on account of a personal emergency. I will not be back for five days. When I return I will cast my opinions and name the winner of the tournament.

Edit:
OK, listen up both of you.

Erdawn:
I thought you did a good job at describing the way the battle went; however, you seemed to lack the brutality to suffice a win. That's what it boils down to being. You wrote well enough, but it was the lack of force that hurt you in this fight. I felt like you weren't nearly as aggressive as you could've been.

Wyborn:
I thought you did a good job at beating the pulp out of your opponent, but I didn't agree with the way you described some things. Granted, I liked the parts where you kicked some ass, and that's the reason why I give you what I do.

[ August 25, 2005, 05:38 PM: Message edited by: Shukun Shinigami ]

[Erdawn Il Deus]

((doo doo Andy's postin from his friend's house and is reminding us that there are two more judges doo doo))

[L007 is Undecided]

Ugh, forgot about this. Expect my judgement soon.

[Lycrios]

I'll be posting when I can. Last day of work today, so, possibly posting by tomorrow.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

>=P

[L007 is Undecided]

Time to get the show on the road.

Congratulations to the fighters, you two have shown some great talent as to be the greatest of brutal fighting.

Now, to the painful decision.

Edrawn, my main problem with you... Don't get me wrong, you were excellent, you had an awesome intro, and your posts were just full of detail, but that's not the main point of the Red Lions. You somehow dragged the start of your attack into about five paragraphs before unleashing about two paragraphs worth of attacking. Also, you seemed to spare Wyborn a bit. I mean, I bet Wy was killing himself more than you were. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Yes, yes, though, I loved your rich flow, though.

Wyborn, your problem... First, let me kill Scripture for making you threaten me. [img]tongue.gif[/img] The main problem is that your posts were rather... confusing at times. During one of your posts, you mentioned Virtue's father ripping his arm off. I couldn't tell if it was his father, or that he was just remembering it when Sabastian was ripping his arm off. Still, I loved your brutality.

The match of Freddy and Jason is over. Wyborn has my judgement.

[Cosenticus]

Since Lycrios is taking a bit and since we already have a majority vote, I am going to determine that this fight is over, though I must still request that Lycrios post his verdicts.

It would seem that out of the sixteen combatants, only one remains to take the title of champion. In a tournament where brutality conquers, it would seem that Wyborn is the most brutal.

Wyborn, in the immortal words first birthed from the eternal game known as Mortal Kombat, I bestow onto you this parting command:

"FINISH HIM!!!"