Immortal (PvP)

[Magus]

His armor hissed and sizzled where the child soldier struck him; the leather melting and warping around the area where her electrified fist had been. The wizard glanced down at the damage before flicking his eyes up at the girl and splitting his sneer into a small, wicked grin.

He laughed.

It wasn’t a quiet chuckle, but rather a hearty, bellowing, horrible laugh.

“Is that really all you have?” his grin curled back into a hateful sneer as he gazed upon the Toybox Girl. “Your mimicry was quite impressive, though, really. I’m genuinely quite shocked; I’ve only ever met one other person who could enter an immaterial plane without being torn apart,” he paused, glancing up at Caira on the rooftop before returning his gaze to the girl before him. “I do hope you found your time there… comforting.”

He threw up his cape to deflect an incoming knife at the last second, failing to notice the woman on the rooftop throw it at him – the second time he’d been caught by surprise by the same attack. The blade pierced his cape but could not punch all the way through.

Not being stabbed by a flying dagger didn’t much help the arch mage when the dagger exploded, though.

A bright flash and a loud ringing sensation accompanied spears of pain as he scraped face-down across cobblestone. The side of his face and shoulder stung from the head of burns inflicted by the explosion. Rivulets of blood cautiously trickled from his nose and from the various cuts and scrapes he’d received.

Magus rose to his feet and glared up at his attacker. His hair, disheveled by the explosion, draped over his visage in angry violet streaks. He clenched a fist, channeling energy into it before hastily flinging it at the robotic fighter while at the same time, he stepped into the plane immaterial.

He gazed at his Duskstrike, seemingly frozen in mid-air, aimed right at the girl. The rocket-launching psychopath wouldn’t be able to predict his movements while focusing on a flying energy ball. Even if she could, she couldn’t possibly move fast enough to deal with both.

The Fiendlord couldn’t rest, though, not now. He had to get up to where the other attacker was. He had to remove her high-ground advantage. Magus raced up the street, into an alley, fighting the shrill shriek of the Black Wind that now seemed to rattle around between his ears. Time was short. Very short.

Not only the edges of his vision swam with strange and upsetting distortions, and the outlines of objects and shadows all seemed to shudder, stretch, and distort themselves. Knowing those… things might lurch at him at any moment, the wizard hastily scoured the alley and found an area with enough debris piled up that he could climb.

The pile of garbage and old furniture nearly toppled under his weight and he fell forward, catching the edge of the roof with his arms and chin. With a mighty groan of exertion, the mage barely made it onto Caira’s rooftop and wasted no time in charging at her. He would finish this, here and now.

With a roar halfway between determination and rage, Magus broke into a full sprint, aiming to hit his assailant right between the shoulders. He leapt out of the Shadow Step and drove his shoulder into her spine, sending Caira careening over the edge of the rooftop.

The Toybox girl propelled herself up and over Magus’ Duskstrike, but couldn’t make up the time needed to prevent her friend from crashing into the cobbles. Instead, she aimed her beam gun up at Magus and send a thunderous blast of electric blue energy up at him, before rushing to tend to Caira.

Magus took the beam head-on, and was propelled through the air. He slammed onto the far side of the rooftop and nearly slid right over the edge that he had first climbed up. The wizard scrambled at the clay tiles as he slid off the side before finding purchase with one of the tiles and preventing himself from falling right off.

He tried to swing himself onto the debris pile as he let go, crashing down into the wood and garbage, obliterating anything of value that might have been left as it all shattered and splintered under his weight. He rolled up, wincing at the sprained ankle he suffered from his fall, and made haste down the alley, breaking left and away from the two women who sought to bring him to ‘justice.’

He wondered how the girl with the purple eyes had managed her fall. It was quite the sucker punch; she might have broken a leg – or her neck. It would have been enormously convenient, but part of him hoped she’d survived. She was clever; almost clever enough to see past the bullshit – almost able to perceive this place as the false construct that it was. Almost.

If not for that damned, half-robot lunatic.

It didn’t matter now. He pounded down the alley and onto another road, sprinting toward the poorer districts in spite of the throbbing ache in his ankle.

- - - - -

It had been a few minutes and Magus had made exceptionally good time. He’d been equally lucky in that he hadn’t come across a single guard in the time he’d been running, which was good, as he’d expect one of those authority types to have a few questions for a sweaty, bloody, out-of-breath man who looked like a vampire who’d just been burned by the cross.

It was convenient, then, that he found himself in a busy flea market. It was obviously a town square, but it had been overrun by shop stands, carts, and people of all kinds. Shiny trinkets glittered on tabletops, smoke wafted from food carts, and fresh-caught fish glistened on canvas sheets on the ground, sheltered from the sun by hide stretched out over wooden poles overhead.

Everything a person could want and more was for sale at this bustling bazaar, and the crowd could swallow a man into obscurity. The tall mage allowed himself a small smirk as he weaved his way into the throng, slowly making his way toward the center of the living mass.

Scarlet eyes spied the various hawkers and shop-keeps, the couriers, the mothers looking for their evening’s meal. It was all so… so utterly mundane. Magus didn’t understand this Omni. No, he didn’t understand the supposed deity of this Omniverse in the slightest.

Why create such a world of boredom, only to fill it with unique and volatile people, and then become upset when they didn’t conform to the dull world he’d dropped them in?

Dull couldn’t describe the two pursuing him. Magus growled as he spotted a silhouetted duo atop a nearby building, looking down into the crowd. No, they were not dull.

Just tedious.

He growled; the little one would catch him out soon. If she could see him as he stepped in between planes of existence, she would be able to see him in a crowd. With that being the case, he reasoned, why not add the random element of fear to the mix.

He looked up at the silhouettes, stared hard at them for a long while, before clamping a hand down on the shoulder of the nearest person.

It was a woman. She was young. She was, Magus found himself realizing, also absolutely beautiful.

“S-Sir, please-” she twisted, fearfully trying to break his grip but seemingly just as fearful of making a scene. “You’re hurting me, please let me go.”

He sighed as he withdrew his karambit in his free hand. What a waste. He slashed her throat and looked up at the silhouettes, before his Miasma descended on the people in the bazaar. Gasps and shrieks rang out. Some had seen the murder; some had only been plunged into darkness. Their combined fear created a cacophony of screams and crashed as the mass of people began to panic.

Magus heard the dull thump of the woman fall at his feet amidst the panic. He looked down at her through the haze and frowned. He knelt down and withdrew a small coin purse. He placed it on her palm and clasped her other hand over it, hoping it would find its way to her family or lover. Or children.

The silhouettes weren’t on the roof anymore. Magus could see clearly through the inky blackness as people panicked. Some ran, crashing into and over one another, some wailed on the ground, curled up into balls, some looted whatever they could. The place was bloody anarchy, and he gambled that the two girls didn’t have the stomach for it.

He hadn’t gambled for the cyborg abomination to leap out from between planes to his right and lash out with a kick to his head. He narrowly avoided it and drove a punch into her cheek, pushing her back just long enough to reach for the nearest weapon and lash out at his assailant.

What a sight it must have been for the Toybox Girl to see the Demon King strike at her with a massive halibut, slamming the huge fish into her face like a hammer. Both she and the fish crashed onto the ground.

“Your friend lost in the crowd?” Magus taunted, leveling his palm at the girl’s face. “I’m going to end you,” he said over the sizzle of profane energy that grew in his open hand. “I offered you the opportunity to look the other way and you refused. I tried to give you the chance to let me go and you chased after me. So this is where your story ends, here and now.”