[Aurelian Belebast]

Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.

The river rolled and bubbled with melancholy bemusement, leaped and lavished at the side of wetted pebbles as moss grew in thick tiny blankets as if it was the lawn for some tiny pixies. Aurelian sat at the edge stone, piercing eyes harshly glared into the water, his clothing was nicked and ripped but a serene sense of calm overcame him. He had time, the sun still hang loosely in the sky, slowly limping down beneath the treeline as he sung a jovial tune, whistling along as he paced the length of the river, his boots slapping and splashing at the lackadaisical river with gleeful bursts of motion.

It was a few minutes from the landing site, at least his one before he found what he needed. It wasn't anything special, if anything it was the bare minimum to expect from the Haven Forest. Tree's. Great oaks, tiny sapling and every merry-colored rainbow in between. He slipped with a quick motion, fingers traced along branches with novice skill as he perched his backpack's straps against a thickened yet wining branch, unzipping the Pack to pull out two stretches of rope, and a large fat sheet. He twirled and connived with agile fingers, looping the material through the rope and making himself a makeshift hammock before wrapping it around his finger tips, feet trenched into the tiny cracks and crevices of the tree as he scaled, each step a bang and thud of motion as he climbed the long stretch of the tree as he watched the waning sun move a couple more inches through the sky.

As he reached the halfway point of the tree, he stepped along a fat branch, walking along it to start setting up his hammock, tying one end to one tree, before making a leap of faith. Again, a Parachute came into play. He made his running leap like some dog chasing after a ball off a cliff, the hammock catching the air below and bellowing out with gusto, Aurelian's descent slowed as he slid down, his free hand catching at another vein branch he moved with a shuffle, tying up his hammock to the other end, high above the floor ground and out from the prying of most Grimm.

[Solomon Moon]

Solomon

SHREEEE-KAAAAA-KOOOOMMM!

Sol rode the expanding wave of the explosion like a feather caught up in a gale. His ears rang, his skin tingled, his stomach felt like it was full of ice water, every inch of his body burned like the red hot edge of a tempered blade as it plunged into the quench. Air whipped wildly at the tightly bound fabric of his flak jacket and tactical pants, his hair flared out behind his head like the silky black wings of a crow, his solitary golden eye blazing like a chunk of super-heated space debris crashing through the upper atmosphere. Hands and arms, grabed in black leather gloves and the long sleeves of his army jacket, pin wheeled around in great circles as he fought to maintain his balance in the air, while powerful legs, and feet shod in heavy black combat boots swung back and forth in a vain attempt to match the pace of the ground as it streaked past several feet below their soles. His usually pale flesh drawn tight across stony features was red with the pressure of his hammering heart, while his usually sour expression was a wide eyed, jaw-clenched grimace of mingled furious concentration and wild, desperate effort.

The blooming cone of violence that leaped from the hand stretched out behind him swallowed a chunk of forest floor a dozen meters long in an inverted teardrop of force and fire as it hammered like a wedge into the formation of Grimm hot on his trail. A couple the slower beowolves were embraced by the blast and tossed thrashing off their feet to crash heavily into the brush and be left behind as the chase carried on without them. One of the unlucky victims, this being the second of such a blast it had endured, did not so much as stir, dissolving slowly in the battered foliage, as it's fellows thundered by.

Sol didn't even notice, he didn't have time, and even if he had, that would only have left a half dozen more of the pursuing monsters to worry about. He was far too involved in the task of trying to put some distance between himself and the phalanx of shaggy black fur and shining white fangs, to take stock of their numbers in any great detail, and this supposedly simple task was growing increasingly more complicated by way of the uneven terrain. The path before and behind him was choked with frequent obstructions perfect for slowing him down, low lying branches perfect for catching his head, the odd patch of mossy granite perfect for stealing his footing out from beneath him, and not to forget the occasional period of needing to take to the air as he leaned on his semblance to propel him through the infrequent clearings that would permit of such a tactic.

Speaking of which...

Sol tucked into a tight ball and came down on the point of his right shoulder, tumbling out of the bounding leap with a minimal loss towards his overall velocity. It felt like someone was hitting his entirely skeleton with a chisel, and he felt something creaking unpleasantly inside as he came back up running once more, but he could not afford the time to it would have taken to make sure nothing was broken. He was still moving, still able to maneuver as much as he expected to sprinting through the obstacle choked forest at the speed of a professional athlete on a perfectly level track, and for now that was all he needed to know. There would be plenty of time to find out all the new and interesting ways his body could ache later after he'd escaped his pursuers, assuming he made it that far.

It wouldn't be long now, either way.

At least he knew more or less what to expect this time. This exam had started almost identically to the last. Previously, Sol had been hounded, pun intended, by a small army of angry Grimm from nearly the very instant he'd touched down, owing primarily to the fact that the only method at his disposal to survive the fall from the launch pad was to improvise a breaking burn by rapidly projecting sustained burst of his explosive semblance towards the earth as he fell. While this made from one of the more spectacular methods of softening the impact, it took a great deal of energy to pull off, and it was hardly subtle. Every student in the forest would have heard the deafening thunder of his descent and many might have easily seen it as it streaked across the sky like an inverted comet with a tail made of explosive force nearly fifty meters long, every student, and everything else living in the forest, that is to say, the Grimm.

It seemed that the creatures of Grimm remembered his last visit, because they had fallen upon his landing site almost immediately upon touch down, and Sol had been running every since. In one on one combat he could fight beowolves all day if they came one at a time, but once the number got higher than three, any direct engagement was analogous to suicide, and while Sol had considered with a frequency that would have been alarming to a mental health professional, what it might be like to take the black pill and be free of his problems forever, he had methods that he would have preferred to being torn limb from limb and eaten alive by monsters. He'd tried being torn limb from limb once already and had firmly decided it wasn't something he cared for. When it came to living or dying, Sol was frankly ambivalent, but when it came to losing, he was firmly against it, and when the end came, he'd decided it would come on his terms, not on the terms of blood drunk monstrosities that haunted Remnant's wilderness.

It wasn't like he didn't have a plan. It just wasn't a very good one. As the case often was for Sol, it had been a choice between a bad plan and no plan at all, and that was hardly a choice by any description. Namely, his bad plan was to flee for as long as his stamina would hold out, which turned out to be an impressively long time as long as he conserved his aura and used his semblance sparingly, and to hope that he crossed the path of another student. He was just as easy to follow by other students as he was by the Grimm, as anything with ears could have tracked the explosive progress of his flight through the forest, and anyone with eyes could have seen the flocks of bird scared into the air above the trees as detonations shook them from their perches. In the ineffable arithmetic of warfare, as he'd seen in the last exam, just a single ally to coordinate with, to divide the attention of the host trailing him, would be enough to swing a no win situation into a fight he might win. He just had to hope that he'd get lucky and pick path that brought him into proximity of someone inclined to lend assistance to a stranger.

Of course, the weakest link in that chain was an obvious one. With a kind of mastery only capable of the extensively practiced, Sol hated most things with equal degrees of disdain, but if he had to pick a concept to hold above all others in his ire, he could have made a good argument for the concept of "Hope". Sol had often heard his father to say, "Hope in one hand, shit in the other, and see which fills up first.", and in recent years had found himself to agree with it more and more. Any strategy that hinged on hope was as likely to swing his way as it was the other, but as it often was, it was the best he could do on short notice, and perhaps even better than he deserved. The dead knew, he had no right to hope for anything better than the very worst.

@tag

1287 words

notes

Velvet of WW

[Aurelian Belebast]

He sauntered and swayed with melancholy motion, the flickering of light dancing between the thing mat of leaves that permeated every branch of the massive mounds of tree that left the ground awash in gloom. But Aurelian sat above it all, he swung his momentum with a heavier swing, his sharp eyes pierced at the branch and watched at the fabric that tied his hammock stayed strong, chocking and bending the bark in it's vice-like grip. The air swung and breezed with the call of calm, that same calm that came before the storm.

The clouds didn't grow mired with grayness, but his emotions gnawed dark, the sky did not erupt with bolts of thunder, but the earth quaked beneath thunderous paws and the air did not become pilfered with a thousand pikes of rain, but his skin grew damp and moist. His breath grew cold as he moved with a rapid motion, he couldn't see through the leaves, but even between the leaves he could feel that mass of dread form and coalesce with terrifying fervor. They were running in his direction and with every second they grew louder, a clump formed deeper and deeper in his throat before being exhaled in a miasma of fear.

His fingers gnawed beneath the rivers of cracks that formed between the bark, his form a motion of a Faunas, driven by desperation and skill as he lashed out with fiery passion, the bark peeling and cracking, landing in a slowly growing pile of bark in his hammock, first a pile, than a hill than a mountain. And the Thunder grew closer, and louder, the tree shook from the wind and his body from fear.

With a jump he landed into his Hammock, his Semblance snapped out, fingers and arms forming around him with crystalline white, they grabbed and pecked at the bark, fingers interlaced and connecting, one hand and it's almost glacial white fingertips careened and scraped, an ethereal motion unshaped by the passing of pain as the other set's of digits and arms careened and carved long and spindly thread, no larger than a half inch. Aurelian in the meantime, watched as his clones went to work making and forming, a simple yet laborious task to distract them as he grabbed his backpack his monkey-like fingers slipping between the bark as he dragged himself downwards, sweat and fear formed on his breath like an audible miasma with his very breath a shiver of motion.

He couldn't see it. But he could feel it.

He realized how short his time was becoming, the thunder and stamps seemed to make the ground quiver with envy, as if an Earthquake was learning a few tips from the bestial and unknown horde of black and white that slowly consumed the horizon of trunks. He knelt down, fingers strapped and laced with splinters and sweat as he pulled out a rather sizable nail. The sort of Nail that kept a railroad track in, and a Grimm down. He planted it right in-between his two tree's, drawing out his Duo-Quartet and scraping the length of it's blade along the Nail, fresh tiny splinters of metal flaked off and into Aurelian's hand as he watched the horde and tide form into a single massive form. For a moment, he looked into the abyss, and all he felt was it staring back.

He held his fingers tight on the flakes of steel, throwing them up and around him like a child flicking sand, the tiny steel dots being quickly consumed in the tide of verdant. He looked up, a sharp whistle pierced the encroaching mass of black, he stared back at the horde, some insignificant speck of color lead along as he looked with a long forlorn face.

Exhale. Inhale.

Exhale. Inhale.

Exhale. Inh... Is that a person?

He thought to himself as a massive length of thick vein rope slammed down, a harsh crack like a whip of a nine tail snapped a few feet above him. With the Railspike embedded deep into the ground and the backpack where it belonged, he moved with a snappy motion, climbing a few feet up the rope. His legs twisted and coiled around the impromptu rope like a snake constricting a rat, his body hung limp and upside down like some skulking bat, and at his fingertips hung his duo of guns. He made one last call, a shrill almost banshee like Cooee
of a call as he exhaled one last time, yellow light pricked and prided itself in his duo of gun's as his eyes focused on the single pinprick of metal that jutted just a few inches above the tracks of grass.

[Solomon Moon]

Solomon

Sol's solitary golden eye, wide as a saucer, flicked back and forth inside it's socket like a terrified budgey desperately searching for a way out of its cage. He tried vainly to take in every detail of the approaching terrain. A single low laying branch, a poorly laid root, or a concealed depression in the earth large enough to swallow his boot and snap his ankle, were all it would take to condemn him to a messy and painful death. Unfortunately at the speed he was currently travelling, it would have been a tall order for a warrior with two functional eyes, a department in which Solomon Moon was notably lacking. Plotting a straight line through the cluttered wilderness of Haven forest was less like navigating and more like playing an especially high stakes came of pachinko, and Sol had nearly given up on avoiding obstacles in favor of conserving his momentum and simply aiming for those few obstructions that he knew he could smash or batter out of his path.

His right arm cocked back with the rattle of ratcheting actuators, as he approached a particular tree, probably as old itself as he was. With about ten feet separating him from the bough of the unfortunate tree, Sol unloaded his wound up arm. What happened next would have looked peculiar to any bystander not acquainted with the one eyed lordling, as it began with the earth beneath Sol's trailing foot bulging like a massive bubble of soil and foliage, bursting with a deafening detonation, and then ended with Sol's mass, lead by his fist, passing clean through the trunk of the tree. The trunk was nearly a meter thick where Sol impacted, but he did not as much as slow as the wood shattered into a shower of splinters around his knuckles.

As he glanced back at the crater left behind by the explosion that had launched him through the tree, Sol reflected on how at this point he might have done more damage to the forest than any of his pursuers. Then the tree, suddenly without a lot of the structure it relied upon to stay upright, pitched down and flattened on of the galloping beowolves, and Sol decided that the share of abuse might actually be nearer to even than he'd thought.

The small and unexpected victory didn't last long, as the earth rose up and slapped him like a paddle made out of an entire continent, and Sol tumbled head over heels before he could come up running once more. He wasn't sure how many times he could do that, it was starting to hurt now, all the way from his right shoulder and into his ass. He could almost imagine his vertebrae slowly worming themselves into an uncomfortable zig-zag with each stunning impact. He scrambled back into an approximation of a sprint, bouncing back and forth between obstacles, skidding in the mud, and overall just having an awful time.

His sights fell back upon up ahead, again searching for any likely route he could exploit. He didn't see anything that could give him an advantage. The earth was uneven, and the staggered trees too robust and irregular to use his semblance to launch himself safely through the gaps between. Climbing into the boughs overhead was a possibility, but Sol had watched a bobcat get treed by wolves in the snowy wastes north of the Mistral/Atlas border, only to be torn to ribbons when it miss judged a jump and fell into the thick of the snarling pack, and he was not in a hurry to make a similar mistake. He'd never been much of a climber, and liked his chances much more on solid ground. The momentary consideration did bear some fruit however, and just the fruit Sol was most hungry for. A furtive glare played through the leaves, and Sol squinted as he charged towards it.

The twinkle was brief but distinctly unnatural in this setting, and alone would have been enough to pique his senses, but Sol had the added advantage of having spent enough time hunting insurgents in the swamps between Vacuo and Mistral to recognize the glint of gunmetal in the trees. He knew with the certainty of muscle memory what that glimmer meant, that there was someone sighted in on him, a lesson learned the hard way a hundred times before. In any other circumstance it would have had him diving to cover behind any available barrier that he could put between himself and that lethal spark. Even out here, leagues and leagues from the battlefields of the swamps and wastes, he could not be certain that the source of the glinting weapon would be an ally. However, given the choice between being eaten alive, and possibly shot in the back, it turned out to be no choice at all.

An instant after this shocking revelation he heard a sound rising from that direction, which like the twinkle of sunlight reflecting off the metal, was a similarly out of place in this setting. It was a shrill, drawn out, almost whistling noise, like the noise a five year old might imagine an exotic bird to make. To Sol it had it's own meaning. It was a signal. It was a signal that the time to flee had come to an end.

He smiled. It was a smile that stretched from ear to ear, less a display of happiness as it was a baring of teeth, the kind of smile one might make if he'd only ever read about them in books and never actually seen one, the kind of smile made by a man who only ever smiled when it came time to do violence. It was the kind of smile that held within it not as much as a suggestion of joy, the kind that did not come near to touching his single golden eye.

Sol slid into a crouch, the soles of his jackboots plowing furrows into the loose forest soil as he skidded to a stop, turning and dropping his left hand into the earth to stabilize himself as he spun around, whilst still sliding, to face his pursuers. His aura, like blue flame haloed in a corona of red smoke, spilled out from between his gritted teeth, flowing out to consume his entire body, untill he looked like a fantastic astrolite as it struck the forest floor. He threw his right hand, palm out towards the pack of Grimm, shaggy bodies glimpsed through the tangle of foliage and the clutter of tree trunks. A shrill sound, like the turbine of a VTOL preparing for take-off, split the air, as the cloth of his right sleeve rippled and thrashed, as if trying to contain the forces of a hurricane within it. A jet of ignited fire dust sprang through the jacket above his right shoulder blade, like a spear of fire lancing outwards nearly a foot long and glowing white hot.

"THWOMPH" "THWOMPH"

A pair of hollow sounds, like a gust of wind passing through a metal tube, reported from Sol's outstretched hand, as twin globes, a dozen centimeters in diameter of blinding red light sprang from his palm at the speed of bullets, and plunged towards the nearest of the approaching Grimm. Sol's arm compressed back into his shoulder like a piston with each lobbed projectile, the forces of the discharge throwing up a cloud of dried leaves and dirt around him, and only failing to knock him onto his back by virtue of the recoil being absorbed by the column of fire rising out of his back.

The first of the shining orbs struck the earth directly at the foot of the charging beowolf. A dull earthy thud accompanied a puff of dirt and wood as the Grimm was tossed tumbling into the air like a child's toy. The second projectile caught the shaggy black figure in the air, and slapped it back to the earth in a shower of sparks that tore the leaves off the trees and set the surrounding forest ablaze. The wolf emitted a shrill piping yowl as it scrambled on the floor in a shallow crater, legs kicking nervelessly as it tried to make sense of the last few seconds, all the while it's pitch black pelt smoldered and burned with a dozen bright orange flames, filling the air with a sickly oily stench of cooking meat.

Sol's rictus of a smile stretched ever wider as the odor reached him, and a cold sensation rose out of his belly and flowed into every inch of his body.

"BURN MOTHERFUCKER!" He bellowed, even his voice seeming to be a thing of distilled violence, like the roaring of a forest fire, like the fusillade of a cannonade, a rough unpleasant rumble that shook the world around him, each syllable drawn out to contain as much mindless fury as could be conveyed in words alone, "BUUUUUUUURRRN"

All the fury and frustration of the past hour of blind flight, of mortal terror, ignited inside him, burning so brightly that his mind was swallowed up within it. He was no longer Solomon Moon. He was that fire. He was the muzzle flare of the machinegun. He was the spark of clashing steels. He was the stench of men burning alive. He was their screams. He was the pitiless wrath of the artillery shell as it fell within the formation of the enemy. He was the One-Eyed Dragon, and he was done running.

@tag

1588/2875 words

notes

Velvet of WW

[Aurelian Belebast]

The air weaved and moaned, bedecked beneath the legendary call of fire and explosions, the mass of black that stared like two infernal beads in an oven of vaporous black was in and of itself meeting inside a new oven one created not by god's or craftsman, but by the cruel and crude machinations of man. His legs slowly unfurled and spiraled the snake losing interest in the blue-skinned mouse. The air seized and leafs fought with defiance to stay stuck and stranded on their branches, the weaker willed becoming dancers in the wind as Aurelian with the grace of a Pole-Dancer slipped and slid down with a caught step. He felt his semblance slipping between his fingertips, dissipating away and into the forceful gale that seemed to upturn beneath and through the treeline canopies.

Awe.

It was not fear. It was not jubilant. It was not exciting and it was not stoicism. His face was stripped, his lower lip quivered, parting into a tiny half O shape as awe consumed him like intensity would two lovers caught and intertwined in each other's embrace, consumed him like curiosity did a child who had met a pretty girl in a park or that infatuated giddiness that struck him like a teenager seeing the way the new girl in class hipped and swayed. It was love, a longing for power, a desire for more. His fingers slipped from the long tendril cord, a brilliant marble burst around his form, his eyes wide with tenacity as the sliver of fiber slung and whipped back and fourth at his aggressive motions before he unfurled his form, his fingers depressed the trigger back and fourth as he entered the fray, twelve shots fired into the misty haze of fire and abyss, seven screams upturned and lurched out with guttural annoyance from amidst the horrid and expanding black void.

He matched the ever expanding creature, as wave after wave of BeoWulf was consumed in eternal hellfire Aurelian braced himself, four figures of white rapidly flowered from him, like a series of slowed down silhouette's they raised their guns high, spreading far out as they made a lengthy line against the second tide of Grimm. Their arms drooped, eyes pierced into the darkness their shoulder's squared, the Grimm got closer and closer, the haze of grey emanating from the survivors mouth as chunks was left cindered and scarred into their vantablack hides. The triggers depressed in unison, Grimm were wasted beneath silvery shined shots.

It got hotter.

Aurelian and his clones sided a little across, feet dragging with it ground as the original looked, the heat was permeating, the cool forest breeze was now only cold by blood lust, the air was boiling around him, a wildfire of arson erupted through their ranks as the clones shattered and splintered, his focus grew lax and lazy as he tried to keep his focus, a Grimm was rushing him. It's massive tanned hide and red fanged maw was a horrific sight as he tried to saddle and dodge to the side, an off shot bullet pressed into its side as Aurelian was half knocked over, his Duo Quartet shifting as it's large maw unhinged, it's right arm raised high as his aura again flared fourth, his clones infused inside him, his Semblance broke through the haze of confusion as he became some incarnation of a thousand armed Grimm, Four arms shot fourth from him, their Duo Quartet's blades piercing it's ugly underside only for the beast to endure, it's left paw pressed further and deeper onto Aurelian's chest, he spit and spittle in response as it came down, it's hideous claws rending his arm open, slivers of blood pooled as he replied with a guttural cut of his own, his twin blades slicing at the throat of the beast as it gave a final desperate plea and call to war, it's bloodied body slumping onto Aurelian's own.

[Solomon Moon]

Solomon

Cold. He felt cold. Like the blood inside him was freezing over. Starting in the emptiness in his guts, the frigid grasp stretched out into every inch of his body, like a snowflake crystallizing, like an explosion blooming. As that cold grew, filling him from the inside out, growing to touch the tips of his nose, fingers and toes, the world seemed to shrink, a cataract constricting down to contain only what lay within the range of his senses. The entire world squeezed down to fit within what could be seen, heard and felt, and as it did, those parts of him that existed beyond the immediate range of his perceptions ceased to exist. The man that was Solomon Moon, shrank, shaved away layer by layer, made small and simple to fit within the new borders of this newly redefined reality, shedding the artifacts of his persona one at a time, shaking off the garments of civilization, bringing the monster inside closer and closer to the surface.

His mind regressed, drawn back, discarding all but the axioms, the imperatives. Hopes, dreams, loves, beliefs, mercy, compassion, like rags torn off and thrown aside. Those were things of the man, and only the serpent remained here in this place. The reptile ruled him now, that simple hindbrain function within which resided the foundations of all living beings. Eat, Fuck, Survive, axioms inscribed onto him at the genetic level. This was all that could fit within a world that only extended as far as could be seen or heard. Solomon Moon was far away, too large, to complex to exist in such a confined space. In here he was the One-Eyed Dragon, and the One-Eyed Dragon only knew one thing...

He was screaming. It had started as a word. But as the cold-blooded passenger inside had taken over, the sound had lost any meaning other than mindless fury. He bellowed with all the force of the muscles of his trunk, focusing the sound out through the flesh in his neck, rushing air like a cloud of razors slashing the inside of his throat and mouth, but he could not stop. A storm raged inside him now, and to try and contain its fury would be to try and contain a thunder-stroke or volcanic eruption. The fury was so great that it hurt, every nerve, every muscle, every cell shuddering with it, torn apart by a slumbering rage now coming awake. The match was struck, the blasting cap ignited, the fuse run down to nothing, and all that remained was the ultimate release of the ruinous energy. He could not control it, he could not stop it, to even try would tear him to ribbons at the seams, but he could direct it.

Fire flowed out of his mouth, lashing tongues of red and blue, crawling out of his gaping roaring maw and slithering over his face, down his neck, his back, his arms, and his legs. The aura, the spirit made manifest, the texture of the soul itself, and the aura of this thing which stood where once a man had stood, was a field of writhing hatred, an inferno of warring hues, a furious expression of violence that was not simply intent, but unavoidable reality. The one-eyed warrior was swallowed within the squirming flares of his own aura, only the detail of his blazing golden eye left to remain intact beneath a promise of destruction writ bold across his very flesh.

The One-Eyed Dragon poised himself, furious, hateful glare set upon the thrashing shape of the beowolf he'd shot a moment earlier. He collected his legs beneath himself, and sprang towards the beast it scrambled to it's feet. More than a dozen meters seperated them, but as he pushed off the earth with his jackboots, he projected a piece of his manifested aura into the soil where the soles of his boots pressed down. It was a minuscule fraction of the power contained within him, a splinter so small as to be negligible, but even still, as that fraction of his power infused the matter beneath his boots, a fraction of his rage followed. The earth beneath his boots bulged as the individual atoms of the molecules that made up the forest floor tore themselves apart in blind destruction, shedding their atomic bonds and unleashing a sudden and furious production of explosive force. An inattentive observer might had been fooled into believing that the one-eyed swordsman had angrily stomped on a stack of landmines, because one moment the earth he stood upon was an incoherent jumble of soil, leaves and composting organic matter, and the next it was a blossoming explosion six meters across. The forest shuddered, as if recoiling from the blow, as a deafening "KA-BOOM" tore all the remaining leaves off the nearby trees, and fully flattened some of the smaller saplings.

The blast launched the One-Eyed Dragon as he pushed off the growing burst of destruction with the ease of long practice, and rode the expanding blast wave high into the air like an artillery shell climbing through the barrel of a cannon on the force of ignited dust. With the familiarity of a lover, as if it were made for it, because it in fact was, his right hand found the hilt of the sword at his left hip, fingers cinching tightly around the shaped metal with machine strength. Climbing higher into an arch that would have seemed graceful were it not for the forces laying waste to the serenity of nature around him, forces of his own production, his left hand fell to grasp the mouth of the scabbard which cradled the sword he gripped in his other hand. His left forefinger tickled the trigger it found there, a trigger which would unleash a dust charge into the scabbard and eject the blade at a velocity to rival a hunter's rifle.

The Beowulf was on it's feet now. Pitch black ears pinned back, beady red eyes fixed on the blurred shape of the form climbing rapidly towards it. It roared, but the sound was swallowed like a single rain drop in the hurricane of sound that came from the screaming, exploding, burning huntsman. It's jaws unhinged, it's bulging tongue darting out, as drool sprayed from it's lips and the body beneath it tensed to meet the incoming hunter, claws winding up, paws splayed wide like fans of ivory daggers.

To it's right and slightly behind another monster was crawling over the mound of soil left churned up by the human's opening volley. This second beast was more cunning than to meet the threat head on like it's more battered comrade, and circled wide around the posturing wolf, ready to act based on the outcome of the imminent exchange between man and beast. Further back, a third Beowulf was crashing through the foliage to come and join the fray, not yet close enough to do much than bellow guttural encouragement to it's allies.

The One-Eyed Dragon reached the peak of his ballistic arch, and seemed to hang temporarily motionless in the air. His raging aura of blue and red fire gave him the impression of a meteor crashing through the upper atmosphere. With his legs thrust out in the direction of his launchpad, now little more than a smoking crater, his chin thrust towards the sky, the material of his combat fatigues flaring out behind him, he had an equal measure of some exotic phoenix rising out of a pyre, wings drawn in tight to his body to dart sparrow-like towards his goal.

His left hand squeezed the trigger on the scabbard of the elaborate sword he wore on his hip. A miniature explosive charge detonated within the scabbard and ejected the sword into the waiting grasp of his right hand. Four feet and change of glistening black steel sprang out of the sheath, at blinding speed, the force alone of the draw enough to fling the suspended swordsman down upon the battered beowolf below, but it was still not as fast as it might have been. That was until the artificial hand of the warrior's right arm, through a vent constructed into the palm, interfacing via a similar vent constructed into the hilt of the sword, poured a high pressure stream of accelerant into the sword. The volatile mixture of fire and air dust traveled through the black blade, funneled by nano-scopic channels along the spine of the sword and igniting as it struck the atmosphere. The spine of the sword blazed like a star, ejecting a hundred narrow jets of burning accelerant from tip to base, and turning the entire spine of the sword into an improvised rocket thruster.

The sudden addition of thrust carried the slash into a half dozen tight revolutions in the space between the peak of the warrior's leap and the touchdown just behind where the roaring wolf was standing. Blinded by the speed of his own strike, the One-Eyed Dragon could only hold on tight and trust to his own aim. He felt no resistance at all as he passed by the snarling wolf, who stood still snarling stupidly at a point in space were the swordsman had been an instant earlier. His boots punched into the earth like a pair of cruise missiles slamming into a bunker, and he cut off the flow of fuel to the sword, arresting his rotation by spreading out his feet and and arms, but still skidding around to be facing the drawn up figure of the beowolf he'd landed behind.

The wolf's beady read eyes twitched around inside it's skull, as it tried uselessly to make sense of what had just happened. It was hard to blame the unfortunate beast, because even an objective observer would only have seen the hunter suspended in the air, riding the last lift of an explosion, one instant, then a brief shriek of fire too fast to track with the naked eye, and then the same hunter standing behind the Grimm whilst holding a four foot length of sharpened steel which was smoking slightly. Compared to the explosion which had initiated the charge, the entire display was incredibly and confusingly subtle.

Still unaware that it's fate had already been sealed, the Grimm tried to turn to track the hunter who had unexpectedly re-materialized behind it. It first began to suspect something might be amiss when it's legs failed to obey the instruction to face the foe. This suspicion was confirmed when it's lower jaw began to peel away from the rest of its skull, divided cleanly along a line that stretched from the corner of it's gaping maw, and then down nearly the full length of its back. Black blood started to ooze out of the first the wolf's mouth and then down the length of it's body, before finally one half of it fell one way, and the second another, transected down the full length of it's body along the frontal plane.

The Dragon stared past the wreckage of the enemy already dissolving on the forest floor before him, instead gazing up into the trees where he remembered seeing the glint of gunmetal a few moments earlier. He didn't have to look hard to find what he expected to be there. A slumped shaggy shape was being propped up by a smaller figure on the ground. The wolf seemed to be sprouting spikes of searing white light randomly from point's across it's hide. It took a moment longer to make sense of the sight, but at a glimpse of a face screwed up in effort, pinned beneath the shape, the warrior understood that what he was seeing was the desperate attempts of a novice fighter to fend off the beast. The white spikes that the one-eyed soldier had taken for belong to the grimm were actually the latter few inches of the other hunter's weapons, which he was holding in multiple ethereal duplicate arms while his real arms battled to keep the grimm's jaws away from his throat.

A voice, something that came from a place far away and nearly forgotten, expressed horror, and concern for this companion in peril, but the One-Eyed Dragon was so far removed from the source of that horror that he could not even comprehend the meaning. If he felt anything it was relief that there was one less Grimm to worry about, at least for now.

Movement on his left. The Dragon spun, meeting the roaring visage of the cunning grimm who had laid back, now emboldened by the warrior's apparent distraction, as it thundered down the slope towards him. The One-Eyed Dragon spared the wolf barely a thought, and reacted in fact before it could be said that he'd thought at all. He leveled the mouth of his scabbard, still gripped in his left hand, vacant of the sword it usually contained. With a jerk of his wrist he racked the slide fitted into the underside of the scabbard, ejecting the previously spent casing from the magazine, and cocked a fresh charge. Then he squeezed the trigger again. Without the sword to block it, the full forced of the charge erupted unimpeded from the mouth of the scabbard, unleashing a close range concussive burst that took the beowolf right in its gaping jaws. As if it had taken an uppercut from a giant, the wolf stumbled to a stop as it stood up straight, head bent far back and smoke rising from the scorched interior of it's mouth.

The warrior darted forward and clotheslined the beast across the midsection with his sword arm, as he snaked his right leg in behind it's knee. The monster fell like a ton of bricks and flattened the third beowolf as it closed in to join the fray, both Grimm going down in a tangle of yelping flailing limbs.

@tag

1097 words

notes

Velvet of WW

[Jay]

XP Distribution:

Aurelian Belebast: 18 - 5% (no TWC) = 17
17 x 200% (event bonus) = 34
95 + 34 = 129

Solomon Moon: 40 - 5% (no TWC) = 38
38 x 200% (event bonus) = 76
326 + 76 = 402