Colosseum - Semifinal - Magus vs the Bandit

[Storyteller]

The semifinals were upon the crowd following a brief lull in the violence to clean out the magically manufactured cityscape for the quarterfinals. As Victor von Magnus watched, they set up the arena for the next pair of matches.

At one end of the frozen wasteland, the bandit shivered at the magically manufactured cold. She glanced and saw that there were a lot of fun-looking guns lying on the shelves behind her, along with what seemed to be two piles of rocks with remotes rested atop them.

On the other side of the frozen field, Magus took a moment to reflect on the demon-themed weapons and gadgets. After giving them a final look, he turned his focus to the woman who stood on the other end of the gentle snowstorm.

Somewhere in the distance, the gong rang and the crowd started to cheer for blood. Just like the contestants, they knew that the end was drawing closer. Just three more had to fall before a Champion was crowned.

Judges – Edward/Minato and Gildarts/Caira

Magus posts first and may do so at any time after Tuesday, December 1st at 12 PM CST

Description of fight area and other information can be found here - <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://omniverse-rpg.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4506&start=20#p54446">viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4506&start=20#p54446</a><!-- l -->

Please refer any questions to that thread.

Word Limit: 750
Posts: 3
Time Limit: 48 hours
SP use is enabled. SP does not regenerate between rounds. Injuries may occur. Neither injuries nor SP use are factored into judgment, only the quality of writing

[Magus]

His eyes flitted over the frigid wasteland, deliberately ignoring both the cold and his opponent. His lips curled with the slightest hint of dissatisfaction. Again with the demon weapons. Ever branded the villain. It suited him fine; he’d embraced the darker parts of his nature long ago. Whether or not the people of Camelot could come to terms with it was a problem beneath him.

The elegant cape draped upon his bare shoulders did little to protect the rest of his body from the cold and his face stung, reminding him of the blinding pain he’d been subjected to just moments ago, forced to literally fight for his life as his demonic opponent nearly succeeded in literally punching his face off. A moment of fear had gripped him then, and now the howling of the Black Wind seemed… confusing.

Still, this place – manufactured though it may have been – felt like home. True, he’d rarely left the idyllic Kingdom of Zeal for the frigid wasteland of the Earthbound Ones, but he liked the bracing cold. It was refreshing. Invigorating. Maybe part of that was because he didn’t need to endure it every day of his life like the surface-dwelling peasants.

Magus looked up to the sky, admiring the fluffy falling flakes, and raised his arms out at his sides. A hiss of mauve smoke surrounded his hands, and simultaneously coalesced – a sphere of negative energy in his left hand, a massive, sinister scythe in his right. He lowered his arms, allowing his scythe to droop down, holding it horizontally behind him in a lazy grip.

“So,” he tilted his head and regarded his… unfortunate-looking adversary. His expression darkened. He exhaled. “I’ve grown… quite tired of this competition.”

It wasn’t the truth. Not exactly. The man in the red coat, he’d made Magus afraid, if but for a moment, and that, in turn, had made him angry. He’d sworn death for the devil hunter and had failed to deliver.

“I’d made the offer previously, and nobody had taken it. Instead, one of my opponents ended up with a hole through his skull, another without an arm and burned so badly his skin cracked and flaked from his flesh, and the most recent one impaled so many times there’s likely more blood on the floor beneath this arena’s illusions than inside his body.

Because I’m tired, my… grace… has worn thin. You have the next ten seconds to kneel in surrender. Otherwise, I will kill you, and I will make you endure the most exquisite suffering. All Camelot will bear witness to my… exhaustion.”

“That’s it?” came a feminine retort. Well, feminine-ish. “You’re tired, so I’m supposed to give up? Oh my gaaaawwwwwwd, I’m soooo scaaaaarrred! Bitch, I have a fuckin’ skull painted on my face! And what do I care if you kill me? Oh, holy shit, I’ll be… dust. Or whatever. For like three days. Like I’ve never been killed before. Look at me, you dumb fuck.”

Magus was floored. “Y-You’ve died before-?”

His eyes widened. It was true. All of it. That glowing white devil was telling the truth: Magus was immortal.

“Uh, yeah. Lemme guess: you’ve never been sent back to the Fountain, eh?” she hefted her laser rifle. “That’s cool. I can pop your cherry.”

Before Magus could respond, a red spear of laser-fire sizzled through the air beside his head. The woman adjusted her aim and fired again, but Magus leapt to the side and charged at her, hurling his Gloom bolt.

The Bandit ducked underneath the warbling sphere of profane energy, feeling its unwholesome chill on her neck as it sailed overhead. Ignoring the hairs pricking on her neck, she fired again, hitting home and searing the wizard’s shoulder, spinning the Fiendlord and dropping him in the snow.

He rolled to his feet and hurled another bolt of energy as he closed on his opponent. Again, she dodged, and he lunged at her as she evaded, catching her low across the legs with his scythe, upending her and, while she whirled in mid-air, blasted her in the chest with a point-blank burst of black magic, propelling her into the side of an icy hill. Thin cracks spider-webbed from the impact but she caught herself.

“You must be good to have made it this far. But this much has become obvious,” Magus hissed as thick tendrils of black and bluish-purple smoke coalesced all around the two competitors. “I’m better.”

748 words as per wordcounter.net

Bandit: Magus is somewhat reticent to use his Shadow Step. He'll still do it if he's pushed, but those weird shadow people are sketchin him out something fierce. Hope I did your character justice!

[Bandit With No Name]

Coughing gently, the steel-spiked warrior waved her hand, banishing the smoking miasma that still drifted from her chest. She pushed herself from the wide indentation she’s made in the hill, thick clumps of white tumbling from the harsh edges that protruded from every angle of her armor. She rolled her shoulders back and forth then dipped her head to the side, eliciting a series of loud cracks.

Her skull adornment grew teeth as she grinned, and her low voice confidently rumbled, “I made a life out of killin’ Primes that think they’re better than me.” She ejected the energy cell from her rifle, smoothly slapping another one in its place. “You’re just the next name on a long list, pal.”

The woman lifted her rifle, sighting down the third goddamn magic-guy she’d fought in the tournament. She took a step forward, the snow squeaking beneath her heavy boot as she-

The battle-hardened raider stopped dead in her tracks. Slowly, her attention dropped from her target to the ground below her, to the carpet of ivory that swept in every direction. Her eyes went wide and she tossed her weapon away, falling to her knees dramatically.

“I didn’t even notice,” she said in shock. She drove her fingers into the wet powder, wriggling them beneath the crust. “It’s…” she whispered to herself, “cold.”

What had once been a maniacal grin softened into what might have legitimately been called a smile. She rolled her armored hands through the drift, collecting it into a small pile just in front of her lap. “Oh man, is this snow?” she asked with as much innocence as her brutal life had left to offer her. Leaning in, she gingerly touched her nose to it, giving a genuine laugh when a tiny spot clung to her skin.

“This is totally snow!” she shouted, looking up to her ever-advancing opponent. “I’ve never seen snow before!” she exclaimed to the disinterested magi. “It never got cold – or wet – enough in the Dunes.”

She joyously collected the pile into a wad, crushing it down into a firmly-packed ball. She admired her creation, lumpy and flat, the indentation of her fingers giving it texture. Cautiously, she extended her tongue until it tapped the mound, instantly melting a patch. Her head jolted back as the sharp, almost tangy flavor flooded her mouth. “This is gonna be so much fun!” she yammered exuberantly.

She scrambled to stand, her feet sliding over the ice of the knoll. “The air sounds sounds different, too, right?” A childish look of glee washed over her when she faced Magus, now only a few meters away. She squared her shoulders, cocked her hand back, and playfully threw the snowball.

The skillful Fiendlord easily swayed out of the ball’s path. The woman bent at the hips and curled another into her hand, patting it down. “C’mon! Isn’t this some seriously awesome shit?”

Magus simply lifted his hand. “No,” he snarled, a blob of twisted magic writhing into existence in his palm.

“Fine,” she sighed, bounding away from the projectile, “you fuckin’ spoil sport.” Reeling back, she cupped the snowball with both hands then torqued her entire powerful frame into a pitcher’s throw. The powdery sphere struck the pale-skinned man with enough force to lift him into the air and onto his back, his shoes pointed towards the sky.

She shook her head gently, retrieving her rifle from the ground, “I guess we gotta be all serious.” She replaced the weapon on her shoulder and glared down the sight-posts once again. “What happened to your whimsy?” she scolded, popping off a few of the super-heated beams into the snow around him.

“Where did all you grumpy fucks come from?” she complained, clipping the AER9 into its sling and drawing the oversized mallet from the harness. “Every damn round I’ve been stuck with some uppity asshole.”

The engine roared, flames scorching through the snow-dusted air as she charged forward. Magus quickly rolled to from the churning hammer’s path and into a fighting stance. He sneered, his cloak flourishing dramatically as another sphere of dark energy was gathered between his fingers. She parried a sudden swing of the scythe, only to catch the dark sphere in the gut. This time her toes clung to the ground, leaving two trenches in the snow as she slid.

Her heels to hit the ground and she continued. “The funnest person I’ve met at this recreational event was some plague-pot. What the fuck, man?!”

750 words exactly, thanks to wordcounter.net
Hope I got your character too, dude! Fun fight so far.

[Magus]

Magus locked eyes with the crusty nomad, piercing into her and hoping to find some kind of twisted sense of humor. This delusional wench couldn’t have made it this far by acting like such a goddamned child.

But there was no humor. No sense of mirth, no coy twinkling indicative of her toying with him. This… person… was a bloody simpleton.

“…You’re an idiot,” the wizard finally breathed. His tone blunt and utterly matter-of-fact as he drew from his well of arcane energy. It flowed up from within and stretched to the surface of his flesh, swirling invisibly all around him. He buzzed with power as he stalked toward the woman with the ridiculous war hammer.

“Oh, I’m an idiot, huh?!” came her retort. Magus waited for her follow-up, but it didn’t come. He audibly sighed. What stimulating conversation.

When the wizard didn’t respond, the Bandit rushed at him, raising her gigantic mallet which suddenly vibrated with a snarling rumble. Magus watched as she charged at him, leaping into the air to deliver her killing blow.

“Yes,” he finally replied, just as the chilly air was suddenly invaded with a roiling hell-scape of blistering heat and searing flames. The woman was engulfed in the heart of the conflagration, but Magus had not calculated for her to block out the fire that hungrily gnawed upon her.

He took the brunt of the hammer’s strike to his head, and immediately the flames pulled back into him as he smashed into the ice and then skittered along its surface, bouncing again and again before crashing into a frozen hill halfway across the icebound lake.

Magus bit down on his hand to muffle his furious scream. Spears of agony clawed at his face, radiating from his eye. He pressed his palm against it and then pulled it away. Ice and blood marred his leather glove, and when he closed his good eye, he could see nothing.

The wizard stood, his cyclopean glare amplified by the hateful red glow that now emanated from his unnaturally colored iris. “You blinded me!!” he rumbled, the hiss of venom curling around his words.

“Oh, I did?? Well, golly-gee, I’m just a big, dumb idiot, y’know? Guess I just didn’t know my own strength,” the Bandit retorted, resting her gargantuan hammer over her shoulder.

“Yes,” Magus rasped, drawing out the word. Crimson oozed from his eye. It was discolored and swollen shut. Jagged shards of ice jutted from it, tainted by the blood of the Fiendlord. His expression, however, bore fury, not defeat. “Just a big, dumb, filthy, worthless nothing.”

He didn’t know why her constant stream of barbs was getting to him, but they were. And he intended to change that. She seemed ready with a quip, but then, suddenly, her eyes widened as she realized something had gone wrong.

Magus, on the other hand, flexed his fingers and, with a burst of fluttering purple motes, two quivering orbs of energy appeared in his hands. He channelled his anger and frustration into them even as the Bandit wasted away before him.

Her hair thinned and grayed as her skin lost its color and its strength. Deep canyons formed in the corners of her eyes and in her cheeks. Her forehead became a mess of wrinkles and discolored spots. Her strong limbs thinned and her back stooped, until the crushing weight of the hammer was too much for her and she was forced to let it fall at her side. It slammed into the ice with a heavy thud.

“What… what did you do to me?!” she wheezed, her voice as weak as her flesh.

“You took my eye,” the Demon King uttered, flashing a sinister smirk at the frail old woman who stood before him. “I took your youth.”

Before she could respond, he hurled his Gloom bolts at her. She couldn’t possibly get away in time, so she feebly shielded herself as the two burning blasts of energy erupted, tearing at her flesh. She smashed onto the ground as he had done, and in seconds he was upon her, sitting on her gut and hurling punch after punch into the defenseless woman’s face, just as the devil creature had done to him.

The Bandit’s lips split and her face almost immediately began to bruise all over, but her metallic arm, though rusted from age, jerkily rose up, steely fingers curled into a fist.

The colossal Crash Punch cracked across Magus’ jaw.

747 words on wordcounter.net

[Bandit With No Name]

A grid of blood opened up over the alabaster man’s jawline, his body spiraling away into the snowy battlefield. The once-mighty marauder couldn’t keep track of him, her eyes clouded by cataracts. Obscurity surrounded her, and what little she could see was blurred beyond any true recognition. The only thing she could identify with any surety was the delicate flakes of snow the fell onto her cheeks.

Her old bones crackled and creaked as she tipped herself onto her side, wrinkled fingers sinking into the frigid ground. She hissed through her teeth and pulled back, the cold now sharp. Her brow folded and wrinkled as she began to notice the ache in her joints, the wheeze in her breath. For the first time in her brief life, she felt frail.

“Do you feel it?” a voice snarled from somewhere beyond her sight. It was cruel voice, twisted by hatred.

“Yes,” she croned. Her wrist flinched back when the cold pierced her hand again, but she willed herself through it and pushed herself up. Her knees wobbled and cracked under her weight, but she stood firm.

She barely managed to hear the sound of his footfalls as he approached, and she was thankful for the snow’s crunch. The aches of a long, hard life throbbed from her shoulder when she lifted her bracer to defend herself. The wicked scythe bit through the ancient steel, sparks falling in equal measure to the flakes of rust. His cruel grin gleamed from the blur of white, sharp teeth carved from his bleached features into an image diabolical sadism.

“There is so much more I can take from you,” he whispered, allowing her mind to imagine which nightmares he would indulge her with.

“I can take your strength,” he snapped viscously and levered down on his scythe, forcing her to her knees.

“I can take your breath.” A knee sank into her unprotected gut, forcing the wind from her lungs.

Gloom materialized in his free hand, casting awful purple highlights over the checkered trenches in his face. His red eyes bore down into her, his nose turned high in superiority. The undulating magic grew larger as he poured his essence into it, his attack painting the snow with dancing darkness. He brought the ball of shadow back as it reached its maximum size and density, and smiled.

“I can take your life.”

Magus threw his palm forward and the blast engulfed the venerable old woman’s body, swallowing her in a sea of black magic. Swirling, inky, fumes filled the area, the sorcerer tainting the soil and sky with his foulness. He savored the silence that followed.

As the magician strode through the wafting miasma of shadow he had created, he glimpsed what must have been the tattered body of his opponent. The scythe still clung to her arm, the haft stabbing out into the air.

The man’s cruel, injury-distorted smirk retained its position. It soon vanished however, when the smoldering pile of flesh and steel fidgeted its miserably contorted body. “How-“ he stammered, before he was cut off.

“What I can’t take any more of,” the bandit barked, her voice clear and youthful as it had been before, “is any more of your bullshit.”

She was quickly to her feet, her entire body layered with grotesque injury from the blast. She reached up and grabbed the handle of his scythe, prying it free from her armor and slapping it onto the ice below. “I’ve already told you, you dense shit, I ain’t got anything you can steal from me.” Rotating her arm, she massaged one of the various tears in the muscle from her brief moment of geriatrics.

Magus was unwilling to listen to another of the woman’s lectures, and instead lobbed another volley of shadow at her and rushed forward. She leapt, tucking and rolling over her sledgehammer, retrieving it on the way up. A puff of dark summoned his blade back to him, and the thunderous clang of metal filled the arena when their weapons met.

The two wounded warriors glared, only inches apart. “I got nothing,” she growled.

Stepping to the side, Magus pulled his weapon back and skillfully spun on his heel, allowing the bandit’s strength to work against her. She staggered forward at the sudden lack of resistance, and he swooped in behind her by completing his turn. The butt of the haft pounded between her shoulder blades, and once again she was kneeling.

“So there’s nothing to take.”

750 words from word counter

[Magus]

Magus spun his scythe, haft dancing along his fingers, sending the huge weapon into a lazy twirl as he approached. The artificial storm had grown fierce, whipping snow up into his face, his blood red cape billowing out behind him. He grimaced as the harsh wind teased at the ragged edges of his wounded eye like a hundred needles gently scraping up and down.

The wizard raised his blade and swept in for the kill, and the Bandit whirled onto her front, ducking the swiping scythe and hurling a hard-packed snowball at Magus. It caught him right in his good eye, effectively blinding him.

The Demon King released a vicious growl as he wildly slashed through the air in front of him, simultaneously wiping the frozen debris from his eye, just in time to see the bright yellow ribbon wrap around his ankles and tug his feet out from beneath him.

He smacked onto the snow and immediately whipped a pair of Gloom bolts at the Bandit, who turned her body sideways and narrowly evaded the crackling magic as it grazed her back and chest before continuing on their destructive journeys.

Wisps of purple lazily swirled along the tundra as the Bandit leapt up through the air, humongous sledge revved up and careening down upon him. Magus evaded the hammer as it shattered the ice next to his head.

As Magus’ Miasma obfuscated the arena, both warriors fell through the frost layer and into the frigid waters below. His scythe fell away, but he was more concerned with the water in his lungs and the overwhelming cold that washed over him.

His one eye darted back and forth in the dim obscurity, desperately hunting out the exit lest he be laid to rest in a watery grave, but he spied the Bandit thrashing about in the water, darting about and unable to see as the thick of the Miasma blotted out the light that might have otherwise poked through the solid shelf that separated air and life from water and death.

Magus watched her struggle for a moment, relishing in the repulsive aura of fear that radiated from her like it did from all people when they realized they were going to die. It was… interesting. For all of her bluster, when put in the glow of Death’s headlights, all of her immortality meant nothing. Just like everyone else, she was suffused with the animalistic fear that everyone felt before they were unmade.

He’d vaporized a man’s wife once. His command of the language wasn’t strong, and the Fiendlord found himself touched by what he had said: accusingly, he shouted that Magus had made his wife ‘one with the air’. The phrase had a kind of beauty to it. So much so that Magus granted the man the same fate as his wife.

The Bandit, on the other hand, would not become one with the air, or even with the water. She was doomed to become a bloated, waterlogged corpse. There would be no beauty in her death, only ugliness, isolation, and fear. He swam toward the hole they had fallen through while the woman continued to thrash aimlessly, having lost her grasp on which way ‘up’ was.

Erupting through the surface of the harrowingly cold water, Magus dragged himself onto the surface, shivering in the awful wind swirling about him. He clenched his chattering teeth and clasped his arms around his knees. He just had to wait for a few minutes. He would be crowned the victor soon, and then only one adversary would be left before he was made champion.

He stood, his soaked and matted hair already beginning to freeze. He began the trek toward one of the small ice cliffs where he could take shelter from the cold, shivering and stumbling on his way there. Redness tinged his ears and face, his lips blued and frost clung to his eyebrows.

Laser fire caused him to whirl around and stagger back, collapsing into the snow even as blast after blast of red energy pulsed up through the ice again and again, before the Bandit smashed upward through the ice, landing on one knee on the right side of the ice, shivering and heaving for breath, her features discolored by the cold even worse than Magus’.

The thick, soupy blackness of Magus’ Miasma continued to permeate the battlefield, slowly sapping at the Bandit’s strength even as the cold did the same. He had to kill her. Now.

750 words on the nose as per wordcounter.net

[Bandit With No Name]

“I’ve had enough firsts,” the nameless warrior whined through clattering teeth. “I was ok at ‘first snow.’ I wasn’t really into my first ‘being old as fuck’ experience, and I had always hoped my first time swimming was going to be at a beach or something.” She managed to lurch out of the path of a few desperate shadow-bolts, and scowled in the direction they came from. “Too many shitty firsts.”

The cold wind now cut through the layers of her clothing and armor, her thick dreads already frozen into stiff, unyielding blocks. The failing command she held over her fingers urged them to hold onto the rifle, though she felt her trigger finger slowing its response. Also, whatever this freshest flavor of prestidigitation was, she felt it draining what little strength she had left. If she was going to win, it would have to be before he could make things any worse.

She had to kill him. Now.

Planting the end of Sledge’s Hammer into the snow, she angled the exhaust towards herself, grabbed the handle, and twisted. The engine’s waterlogged chambers sputtered for a moment before it choked to life. A thick cloud of steam billowed from the tubes before a torrent of flame coughed out, followed by its iconic V8 roar. Though the thick shadow-magic refused to be illuminated by the fire, it could do nothing to drown out the heat.

The bandit cared little as segments of her attire were set ablaze by the immense temperatures that perfused them, nor did she pay heed to the burns that rushed along her skin with the inferno. All that she wanted was warmth enough to move. Warmth enough to fight.

The silence was almost deafening when she finally relented on the throttle. She tore the oversized mace from the earth and spun it into her still-smoldering fingers, stepping into a batter’s stance. She peered into the void that surrounded her, the tips of her armor glowing as red-hot as her anger, smoke and steam billowing off of her shoulders.

“A’ight fucker,” she spat into the inky blackness, “let’s go.”

It didn’t take Magus long to accept her challenge, appearing from the fog in a burst of movement and malicious intention. She swung the hammer towards his smug face, but he dipped low and delivered a strike across her midsection, a few ribs now visible through her skin. Stepping past her as she bent over her wound, he turned and lifted his blade high overhead. Doom raked across her dense back plate, eliciting the caterwaul from the unyielding metal before it was cast aside. She abandoned her maul and twisted around, shooting her spiked pauldron into his waist.

The still-burning protrusions dug into his gut, his skin sizzling as she hefted him off the ground and through the air. Nearly helpless against her brute strength, Magus could only go along for the ride as she charged through the darkness. The outer wall of the Miasma blossomed when they burst through, grasping wisps reluctant to release them as they stumbled into the daylight.

The two crashed to the ground together, sliding gracelessly over the slickness of the frozen ground. His back on the ice, Magus managed to lift his knee up into her chest, then flipped her up over his head. She hit the ground harshly but allowed her momentum to continue and rolled forward onto her feet.

The adept wizard was, as if by magic, already standing when she spun to face him, and halfway through another diagonal cut. A splash of color appeared over the woman’s collarbone, and she couldn’t help but scream as the sorcerer reaped his harvest of flesh. He wheeled the scythe through with brutal elegance, sweeping it around for a downward slash.

Unwilling to take yet another hit, the bandit snarled and tossed herself into him, just inside the weapon’s range. When the blade soared past and sunk itself in the snow, she snatched his wrist and held it firm, preventing him from pulling it free. Using her prosthetic limb, she hammer-fisted it further down, wedging it in the crust.

“Enough of that shit,” she quipped, still holding his wrist, and then backhanded him. His near-frozen fingers released the handle and his head whipped to the side, frost-matted hair tumbling after it. He moved to retaliate, but she brutishly pushed her fingers into his mane and jerked his head upwards.

Grinning maniacally, she rhetorically asked, “Thirsty?” then slammed his face through the ice.

750
AMAZING FIGHT!

[Bandit With No Name]

Magus thrashed against the bandit’s strength, bubbles frothing along the surface along with the fragments of ice. The man’s hands found no purchase as the slipped and slid over the frozen surface of the lake, and neither could his shoes find any traction. His back helpless arched as the woman cackled and mashed his face downward, like a high school bully delivering a swirly to a drama student.

“Ya know,” she pondered, her arms jerking about as she restrained him, “despite my trying, I don’t think I’ve managed to kill any Primes since I switched teams.” She knotted her fingers into the man’s long, white hair, and pushed down with her entire body weight. “Don’t think I’ve ever drowned a man either.” She laughed to herself briefly and chuckled out, “First time for everything, right?”

As the bubbles slowly trickled to a stop and the magister’s limbs gradually ceased their flailing, she gave him one more solid jerk and released him.

It was then that everything went wrong.

The suddenness and the intensity of the heat was what threw her off, and she was cast to the ground as the huge wall of flames surged out in every direction. The thin layer of white was peeled off of the ice, and scorched the earth when it met the shoreline. The woman helplessly batted at her face, the spell having burnt away a good portion of her hair and nearly blinded her, patches of smoking skin instantly peeling back.

“Diablo’s fucking ass crack!” she shouted, rolling back and forth, her hands clasped over her face. “Why do none of you people just die?!”

The blinked away the remains of her eyelashes with just enough time to see another Gloom bolt whizzing towards her. She tucked herself to the side, and the shadow energy tore the earth away in a huge plume of frost-bitten dirt. Reversing her direction, she tumbled over the crater as another ball of shadow blasted a new one. Continuing her movement, she managed to make it back up, only for the waterlogged magician to slam headlong into her gut.

Snorting, she looped her thick arms under his chin and arched her back, pulling his head into a standing guillotine choke. His hands scrabbled over her backplate, but he was unable to pry himself free, once again trapped in the burly wrestler’s hold.

Without so much as a snippy comment, she unceremoniously ripped his body up into the air by his neck, his feet flying off the ground with whiplash-inducing speed. At the apex of the lift, she stepped forward into a one-legged kneel, and then slammed him back down into her knee. There was a series of loud cracks as several of his ribs found new and interesting ways to orient themselves. A lamentable and uncontrolled shriek echoed out as the air was forced from his lungs, though he sputtered when he attempted to inhale once again.

“Alright,” the gladiator gasped, taking several long, hard breaths between her words. “Let’s try that again.”

Though he was still conscious, Magus could do little in the way of retaliation when she took him by the hair and began to drag him back to the hole in the ice he had just escaped. Shallow, labored breaths was all that the conqueror could manage, even as she carelessly plopped him into the water. She planted her boot on his upper back and pressed down firmly, the grind of bone-on-bone crepitus crackling in time with the last vestiges of breath.

“And stay down this time,” she spat.

Finally convinced of the man’s death, she dredged him free of the drowning pool and rolled him over, giving his effects a once-over. Other than a leather-stitched codpiece and some decent boots, she didn’t see much that caught her eye. Sighing, she glared over at the man’s scythe and shrugged. “I guess it’ll have to do,” she whined, contemplating the idea of lugging around yet another big, heavy weapon.

Trudging across the snow, she stopped, huffed despondently, grasped the handle, and tore it free. She rolled the huge weapon over, hefting it up and down to get a feel for its weight and balance. Her brow furrowed when she recalled Magus’ ability to summon it to himself, and focused on doing it for herself. With a puff of obsidian mist, the entirety of the blade vanished. She grinned, and brought the thought of it returning into her mind. With the same wisp of dark clouds, it appeared once again.

“Heh, well that’s pretty sweet at least,” she admitted, then twirled it between her fingers.

A sudden chill washed over her, and she assumed it was just another breeze until she noticed the inky shadow that welled up around her feet. “That’s mine,” a voice croaked from behind. Spinning on her heel, the grave-robber caught a wad of magic to the gut, flinging her through the air like a ragdoll.

Tumbling wildly through the air, she lashed out with the blade, stabbing it into the snow. It dragged through the ground and eventually brought her to a stop mid-air, she then swung around the weapon and took a heavy landing on her feet. She squinted across the snowy wasteland, almost unable to believe the man was still capable of moving, let alone fighting. “What the actual fuck.”

The bitter combatant hadn’t managed to pull himself completely off the ground, but he sat half propped up, his hand extended. “Child,” he rasped, “I have survived far worse than you.”

Scoffing, the woman yanked the scythe up and snapped back, “Not for long you haven’t.”

She tucked down her shoulder and pushed her foot into the ground, building up speed like a train on the rails. Her footfalls began to splinter the ice with every impact, cracks forming in a trail of her rampage. Magus snarled and hurled yet another attack at her, but this time she made no attempt to avoid it. Instead, she ploughed through in a glorious blossom of metal, smoke and gloom, shrapnel flying in every direction. She did not relent in her determined, plodding charge, even as another blossom of shadow and agony bloomed on her hip and shoulder.

Screaming in primordial rage and pain, the dune-dweller filled Magus’ vision, and somewhere inside of him, he knew that it was over.

She swung the heavy blade, and with a SNIKT and a spray of blood, Magus’ head flew from his shoulders.

[Bandit With No Name]

With a wet thump, the head hit the ground.

Taking a long breath, the warrior fell to a knee, the scythe clattering to the side. For a moment, the woman enjoyed the blissful silence of the battlefield, and let the pain of her injuries overwhelm her senses.

In every round, her body had been devastated. In every battle, she had allowed herself to be torn to shreds more violently than she had ever believed possible. She was honestly rather shocked that she could stand up to such punishment and keep on chugging along. Without the fear of death, injuries seemed almost trivial. Then again, she didn’t really fear death before she was a prime, either.

Breaking her contemplative revere, she looked down at the heavy polearm and gently shook her head. “I already got too much pointy shit,” she muttered to herself, and dismissed the weapon as a trophy. Instead, her eyes locked upon the lulling head of the man she had just decapitated, the blood from his cranial cavity forming a sizable pool around her.

She snatched it up by the hair and dangled it in front of her, making note of his dull eyes that had rolled skyward and his tongue which gently sagged from his mouth. Leaning forward, she dunked the head into the water from the pit a few times, idly wiping away the small flecks of blood that remained. Something about the lifelessness of the head made something in her chest stir uncomfortably, something close enough to either disgust or guilt that she didn’t like it. Besides that, she knew that the head would soon dissipate with the body and the rest of his belongings, so something would need to be done to preserve it.

Squinting, she focused firmly, and a pearlescent flow of energy flowed from within her, infusing the macabre memento with omnilium. The eyes rolled back down and stared forward, though not particularly focused on any one thing. The tongue was slurped back inside, and a faint smile crossed his lips. She didn’t mind the faint trickle of blood that spat from the neck, and so she allowed it to remain, giving it an eternal “freshly decapitated” appearance.

She smiled to herself and admired her work, finding the severed head somehow less gruesome now that it looked more alive. “Now this is a trophy,” she said as congratulations to herself. “Now I wonder if the same trick works.”

Concentrating as she had with the polearm, she imagined the magister’s head vanishing with a poof of shadowy clouds. When it did, she was more surprised than not. “Well shit,” she gawked, “I wonder if I can do this with everything?”

Shrugging, she glanced around the arena, again waiting for the reluctant medical personnel to come to her aid. “Hey!” she shouted into the void, “This fucker isn’t gonna get anymore dead!” She waited a moment for a response, and sighed when none came.

She held out her hand and re-summoned the grizzly knick-knack, then turned it around to face her. “Well, I guess we’re waiting for the rest of your body to poof, buddy.” She turned Magus’ head around to face him, and slumped down a bit into a seated position, then buried her head into her knees. “Go on man, go. Don’t wait around for your head dude, it’s staying here with me.” She waved her hand in the limp form’s direction, shooing it away. “Go on! Get! Get out of here! I got hot dogs and beer to buy.”

Grumbling, she turned the head back around once again, “Hey man, the rest of you is being super inconsiderate. I got shit to do, and you, like, really fucked me up. Not like, cut my arm off fucked me up, but all these burns are considerably uncomfortable. Not like, ‘my body is rotting apart,’ uncomfortable, but I’m not real jacked about sitting in the cold for much longer.”

Finally, she noticed the magical barrier flicker, indicating that it had gone down, and the rushing feet of the medieval healers came almost instantly to her ears. “Ok,” she said to Magus, “here they come! Talk to you later, bro.” The dismissed the head, and it vanished in a wisp of purple and black.

She didn’t even move when the woman laid her hands upon her, the warm, glowing magic of the white mage filling her body and easing her pain. When the last of her wounds was sealed, she bounced to her feet and smiled, patting the healer on the back. “Nice work, killer,” she said warmly, ensuring to make eye contact with the secondary. She then stuffed her hands into her pockets and wandered off of the field.