03-28-2018, 11:19 PM
As the sandstone obelisk shattered, the Shadow gathered his incorporeal fragments back to center and returned to a solidified existence. Sweaty, panting, Tearen looked up at the towering fury of Strazio Rockwell with a wistful smile. The black, crystalline exoskeleton receded back from his face, revealing his human skin to be pocked and lacerated quite thoroughly. Was that a pang of remorse he felt flicker across the berserker's conscience? The perception seemed misguided as Rockwell sent a knee into Tearen's gut with a vicious snarl. The overpowered blow sent the ex-enigma flying out of the courtyard, across the shoreline thoroughfare, and into a small grove of apricot trees that was blooming along Alexandria's shoreline. Despite the immense crash and physical pain, Tearen did manage an adroit scan of the surrounding area. It appeared the two interlopers were content to occupy one-another for the time being. Good. That was good.
The distance gave the Shadow enough time to react to Strazio's relentless assault this time. For all the Rage Mage's brute force, he completely lacked tactical sense or subtlety when the cards were down. A clumsy haymaker came down at Tearen, and the Shadow simply smacked the fist away with a telekinetic wave of the palm. A hail of uncoordinated hammer-blows crashed into the Shadow's casual deflections, and with each warded blow, the ex-enigma could feel Strazio's rage deepen. Rockwell truly was a remarkable creature; a self-sustaining flame, with all the vigor and hunger thereto. The apricot grove was blasted to smithereens, with heavy foliage and splintered lumber rattling off in all directions as a blast of strobing magic bounced off of a hastily conjured spacial distortion. In the aftermath, there stood Tearen, no worse for wear.
"How?" Rockwell breathed, haggard and panting just a few feet away. The air around the Shadow wavered and relaxed as his mental grasp on the fabric of reality waned.
"How am I not exhausted? I am exhausted Strazio. I can barely budge my muscles, in my current state...but it is not my muscles that are moving my limbs." Tearen said softly, tapping the center of his forehead with a noticeable amount of effort.
"You still think of the world in terms of cause and effect. Force against resistance. I gave you everything you need to defeat me, and you're still fighting me like any other pedestrian brute..." the Elder Prime smirked, trying to steady his breathing.
"Oh, here we go." Straz barked, throwing his hands up in the air. "You know what? No! You taught us that we defined our own rules and aspirations. I didn't fucking come here to impress you, I came here to prove my strength–"
"I don't think that was ever in question. I wonder, who's the one who doubts it?" Tearen said cutting the enraged man off. The rhetoric seemed to genuinely catch Strazio off-guard, and in the four milliseconds it took for him to blink, the Shadow immediately had his face inches from the other enigma.
"Is it you?" the eldritch human murmured. He managed to a bloodstained grin before Rockwell smashed him into the sky with a savage uppercut. At the crest of his flight, the Shadow came to a halt, and leered down at his disciple with a curious melange of malevolence and whimsy. The rising smoke of the Library had stained the sky an incarnadine shade, and Tearen's rent garments whipped around him like strands of ghostly sargassum. Even in his frantic mental state, the berserker had enough focus to tell that Tearen was gathering his remaining strength into a final gambit.
"You wish to pit your strength directly against mine? You wish to see the full extent of my directly applied power?" the ex-enigma bellowed, folding his hands together in an intricate lattice. Strazio had seen this before; the aerial grandstanding and the gleaming, white eyes. It had happened directly before his erstwhile teacher had sucked him and his classmates into the Singularity.
"No you fucking don't!" Strazio roared as he ran up the length of a fallen tree trunk and blasted himself airborne with a flash of arcane fire. As he closed the distance to the deeply focusing Elder Prime, however, his forward progress seemed to come to a halt. He hung there, frozen in space and time, feeling as if he could neither breathe nor blink. This wasn't the pulsating vortex that the incensed sorcerer had been anticipating. This was entirely something else.
Try to remember this, my disciple.
The distance gave the Shadow enough time to react to Strazio's relentless assault this time. For all the Rage Mage's brute force, he completely lacked tactical sense or subtlety when the cards were down. A clumsy haymaker came down at Tearen, and the Shadow simply smacked the fist away with a telekinetic wave of the palm. A hail of uncoordinated hammer-blows crashed into the Shadow's casual deflections, and with each warded blow, the ex-enigma could feel Strazio's rage deepen. Rockwell truly was a remarkable creature; a self-sustaining flame, with all the vigor and hunger thereto. The apricot grove was blasted to smithereens, with heavy foliage and splintered lumber rattling off in all directions as a blast of strobing magic bounced off of a hastily conjured spacial distortion. In the aftermath, there stood Tearen, no worse for wear.
"How?" Rockwell breathed, haggard and panting just a few feet away. The air around the Shadow wavered and relaxed as his mental grasp on the fabric of reality waned.
"How am I not exhausted? I am exhausted Strazio. I can barely budge my muscles, in my current state...but it is not my muscles that are moving my limbs." Tearen said softly, tapping the center of his forehead with a noticeable amount of effort.
"You still think of the world in terms of cause and effect. Force against resistance. I gave you everything you need to defeat me, and you're still fighting me like any other pedestrian brute..." the Elder Prime smirked, trying to steady his breathing.
"Oh, here we go." Straz barked, throwing his hands up in the air. "You know what? No! You taught us that we defined our own rules and aspirations. I didn't fucking come here to impress you, I came here to prove my strength–"
"I don't think that was ever in question. I wonder, who's the one who doubts it?" Tearen said cutting the enraged man off. The rhetoric seemed to genuinely catch Strazio off-guard, and in the four milliseconds it took for him to blink, the Shadow immediately had his face inches from the other enigma.
"Is it you?" the eldritch human murmured. He managed to a bloodstained grin before Rockwell smashed him into the sky with a savage uppercut. At the crest of his flight, the Shadow came to a halt, and leered down at his disciple with a curious melange of malevolence and whimsy. The rising smoke of the Library had stained the sky an incarnadine shade, and Tearen's rent garments whipped around him like strands of ghostly sargassum. Even in his frantic mental state, the berserker had enough focus to tell that Tearen was gathering his remaining strength into a final gambit.
"You wish to pit your strength directly against mine? You wish to see the full extent of my directly applied power?" the ex-enigma bellowed, folding his hands together in an intricate lattice. Strazio had seen this before; the aerial grandstanding and the gleaming, white eyes. It had happened directly before his erstwhile teacher had sucked him and his classmates into the Singularity.
"No you fucking don't!" Strazio roared as he ran up the length of a fallen tree trunk and blasted himself airborne with a flash of arcane fire. As he closed the distance to the deeply focusing Elder Prime, however, his forward progress seemed to come to a halt. He hung there, frozen in space and time, feeling as if he could neither breathe nor blink. This wasn't the pulsating vortex that the incensed sorcerer had been anticipating. This was entirely something else.
Try to remember this, my disciple.
Quote:747 words, Wordcounter.net
3 SP Used
Relativity Shift - 1
A Barbaric Crescendo - 2 on Strazio Rockwell
0/9 SP Remaining
Tearen shifted into his Harmony Form. With Relativity Shift enabled, his stats were thus:
ATK: 5
DEF: 3
SPD: 5
TEC: 4
And, we dream of home I dream of life out of here Their dreams are small My dreams don't know fear I got my heart full of hope I will change everything No matter what I'm told How impossible it seems We did it before And we'll do it again We're indestructible Even when we're tired And we've been here before Just you and I
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued
Don't try to rescue me I don't need to be rescued