12-22-2015, 08:33 PM
Dying was a surprisingly painful ordeal.
The Bandit had made the cleanest of cuts and had decapitated him instantly, but for what felt like ages he could still feel the aches in his bones, the cuts and scrapes on his flesh, the water in his lungs. He watched her desecrate his remains as the light faded from his eyes, and then all he felt was cold.
The lonely, unyielding cold of the void. People murmured about it but Magus could attest to it. And then, after he began to lose hope that he would be reconstituted, he was suddenly and violently thrust into a flash of light, blinding in the unending sea of infinite darkness, dazzled and overwhelmed by light and heat and sound.
Magus fell to his knees, clasping his hands over his ears and clenching his eyes shut to block out the sudden, riotous return of his senses. It took some time to adjust to having a body again, but eventually, his hands fell away and he carefully opened his eyes, to see that damned tunnel to the Colosseum that he had walked through so many times already.
He had been killed, and still, they would not let him rest. He sighed. He’d come far enough that even losing a match didn’t merit being cast out of the tournament. He would fight for the dubious honor of third place. There would be the ridiculous pretense of triumph for whoever was victorious, but the truth of the matter was, he had already lost. So had his opponent. In a sense, theirs was the most fitting battle for those trapped in the Omniverse: an arduous exercise in futility.
Only one thing raced through his mind as he stormed out onto the arena, his face already twisted into an angry grimace. He’d been handily defeated by his most unremarkable opponent yet.
Killed by a filthy, non-magical commoner.
Killed by a commoner.
Killed by a commoner!
Magus’ scarlet eyes fell upon the pathetic form of his newest opponent; some pallid simpleton in a hood and glasses. A scholar at best. It was as though Omni himself saw fit to add insult to injury by pitting him against this pitiful, scrawny nothing.
A sudden, fleshy rumbling to his right distracted him but for a moment, and the earth swelled as if diseased, before erupting with a blobbing burst of bloody fluid. The liquid dribbled from the burst pustule, soaking back into the earth from whence it came.
Weird, bleedy sores in the earth. Lovely.
Fuck it. He needed to end this, right here, right now. He’d suffered the indignity of defeat already; he would not go back to his army completely humiliated. Magus lunged forward, disappearing from Adam’s view.
Charging toward the altar that loomed between them in the hellish, monochrome world between worlds that he’d fallen into, racing up the gleaming, black stone steps. As he reached the top, a twinge of terror rose up in his throat. The shadow people who had surrounded the arena had swarmed the battlefield. Only the mighty Black Gate itself seemed free of their touch.
They remained faceless and unmoving, twitching in and out of existence as though possessed of an ethereal origin. Not from the material plane, but neither from this plane immaterial either. Magus felt compelled to call out to them, to find out once and for all why these creatures were stalking him, but the words would not come. He swept his eyes back and forth among the jittery, glitching silhouettes as beads of frigid sweat dampened his brow.
He felt himself growing weaker the longer he stood between planes, and this broke his indecision. The shadow people would be there the next time he stepped across existences – for now, he had a whelp to disembowel.
The Demon King loped down the stairs toward the young boy they had pitted him against, standing there with his mouth agape like any other plebeian hungry for subjugation. The boy would make a good servant, Magus thought as he closed what little gap remained, his fists glowing with the putrid magics of Gloom, but his anger had simply become too terrible for such niceties.
The boy would die.
Magus thrust his hands forth, smashing the searing Gloom bolts into the child’s bespectacled eyes before loosing the bolts into his face. He leapt back into the material plane with the boom of explosive magics and the high-pitched caterwauling of a blinded urchin.
The Bandit had made the cleanest of cuts and had decapitated him instantly, but for what felt like ages he could still feel the aches in his bones, the cuts and scrapes on his flesh, the water in his lungs. He watched her desecrate his remains as the light faded from his eyes, and then all he felt was cold.
The lonely, unyielding cold of the void. People murmured about it but Magus could attest to it. And then, after he began to lose hope that he would be reconstituted, he was suddenly and violently thrust into a flash of light, blinding in the unending sea of infinite darkness, dazzled and overwhelmed by light and heat and sound.
Magus fell to his knees, clasping his hands over his ears and clenching his eyes shut to block out the sudden, riotous return of his senses. It took some time to adjust to having a body again, but eventually, his hands fell away and he carefully opened his eyes, to see that damned tunnel to the Colosseum that he had walked through so many times already.
He had been killed, and still, they would not let him rest. He sighed. He’d come far enough that even losing a match didn’t merit being cast out of the tournament. He would fight for the dubious honor of third place. There would be the ridiculous pretense of triumph for whoever was victorious, but the truth of the matter was, he had already lost. So had his opponent. In a sense, theirs was the most fitting battle for those trapped in the Omniverse: an arduous exercise in futility.
Only one thing raced through his mind as he stormed out onto the arena, his face already twisted into an angry grimace. He’d been handily defeated by his most unremarkable opponent yet.
Killed by a filthy, non-magical commoner.
Killed by a commoner.
Killed by a commoner!
Magus’ scarlet eyes fell upon the pathetic form of his newest opponent; some pallid simpleton in a hood and glasses. A scholar at best. It was as though Omni himself saw fit to add insult to injury by pitting him against this pitiful, scrawny nothing.
A sudden, fleshy rumbling to his right distracted him but for a moment, and the earth swelled as if diseased, before erupting with a blobbing burst of bloody fluid. The liquid dribbled from the burst pustule, soaking back into the earth from whence it came.
Weird, bleedy sores in the earth. Lovely.
Fuck it. He needed to end this, right here, right now. He’d suffered the indignity of defeat already; he would not go back to his army completely humiliated. Magus lunged forward, disappearing from Adam’s view.
Charging toward the altar that loomed between them in the hellish, monochrome world between worlds that he’d fallen into, racing up the gleaming, black stone steps. As he reached the top, a twinge of terror rose up in his throat. The shadow people who had surrounded the arena had swarmed the battlefield. Only the mighty Black Gate itself seemed free of their touch.
They remained faceless and unmoving, twitching in and out of existence as though possessed of an ethereal origin. Not from the material plane, but neither from this plane immaterial either. Magus felt compelled to call out to them, to find out once and for all why these creatures were stalking him, but the words would not come. He swept his eyes back and forth among the jittery, glitching silhouettes as beads of frigid sweat dampened his brow.
He felt himself growing weaker the longer he stood between planes, and this broke his indecision. The shadow people would be there the next time he stepped across existences – for now, he had a whelp to disembowel.
The Demon King loped down the stairs toward the young boy they had pitted him against, standing there with his mouth agape like any other plebeian hungry for subjugation. The boy would make a good servant, Magus thought as he closed what little gap remained, his fists glowing with the putrid magics of Gloom, but his anger had simply become too terrible for such niceties.
The boy would die.
Magus thrust his hands forth, smashing the searing Gloom bolts into the child’s bespectacled eyes before loosing the bolts into his face. He leapt back into the material plane with the boom of explosive magics and the high-pitched caterwauling of a blinded urchin.
Quote:747 words.
![[Image: Magus.jpg]](http://rpnexus.com/sig/miscsig/Magus.jpg)