Oh, man, this was good. And was that one fucking crying? Hahahaha!
"KIIIILLLL 'EMMM DRACONUAAAAA!" Nemean screamed, an explosion of fireworks bursting out from behind her to cascade around the Arena in shimmering embers.
From the stands, the stiffly upright form of the Collector cupped hairy hands to his hood and called out: "PERHAPS A REQUEST, MY DEAR-? THE FIRE AGAIN? IT IS SUCH A LOVELY SHADE OF ARMAGEDDON," he called, and Nemean grinned wickedly.
"FUCK YEAH, DRACCY!! BURN 'EM UP!" Request put in; whether the Sleepless Chaos would follow it--and what it might do to the poor combatants--remained to be seen.
@Draconua
glhf
Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
honestly just assume those apply for the entire rest of this thread
The roars of the audience had long since faded into the background of eardrums ringing from void-thunder and blood loss. Nor did Aspen respond to the Selenite's weeping and pleading. He
couldn't have, even if he'd heard--its vice grip on his throat was only tightening, fishhook claws tearing into the leopard's soft throat, squeezing squeezing
squeezing even as bright arterial blood spurted around them.
Windpipe squeezed shut, all Aspen could do was eke out a reedy, high-pitched whine. His chest spasmed as he tried again and again to gasp for precious oxygen, only to be choked off by the Selenite's death grip. Where before his vision was colors and images blurred with neon and red, now it was going patchy and grainy, black eating away at every corner.
Then there was a pressure on his chest, vibrations shuddering through his ribs as the Selenite cried. Panicked, dying, and with nothing left but fear and adrenaline, all Aspen knew to do was
attack. He tried to crane his neck and bite for where those long, fragile ears should be, to lash out with claws at the Selenite's face, but the former did nothing but let the claws tear deeper into his throat. The latter became only weak flops of his paws, the muscles powerless with neither oxygen nor blood to fuel them.
ATTEMPT: let go let go let go
DEFENSE: aaaaaaa
INJURIES: strangulation, mauled throat, gouged eyes, blown eardrums
Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:
Draconua's flames came as not a singular straw but a metric truckful of haystacks, but the metaphorical camel's back was already broken. There was simply not enough air or blood reaching Aspen's brain in the end, and he flopped limp in Selenite's grip. Unconscious bodies don't escape fires. The amber on his forehead did not even have time to spread before the jet of void-black fire struck, filling the ring with the stench of scorched hair and burning flesh and leaving nothing but charred bones in its wake.
There were no screams from the snow leopard, not even a final gasp of pain. Only the quiet
thump of an amber teardrop as it fell onto the blood-soaked sand.
@V-Selenite-One :tada: congrats on baby's first murder! even if draconua did try to hog the glory in the end...
Selenite could not have possibly heard the feline's whine, both from the whipcrack of thunder and its own muffled static of a conscience. But, it could feel it. The rabbit-quick beat of a heart starved and desperate. The stuttering of a chest with nothing to fill its lungs. The gurgle of blood and saliva foaming at the corners of a gasping jaw. Its ear was pressed against Aspen's chest, and it felt it all.
It wept horribly for the feeling of its own claws continuing to hold fast.
ATTEMPT: Useless attempt to keep strangling for the sake of even rounds--
DEFENSE: Waa
INJURIES: Bitten on inner elbow, (basically) missing four fingers on upper right hand, blinded eye, scratched-up face, some quills dislodged from neck, clawmarks along entire body, The Works
It wept horribly, and it gagged on its own tears.
For what an unfamiliar feeling it was to cry. To cry over what it'd done time and again with lessers—a brief snap of the neck, a quick slit of the throat, a jab at the space between an arm and a chest. To cry over what it had witnessed over and over. Death. A murder. Now, it was its claws that blood slicked-over.
It gagged again, nostrils filling with the sizzling scent of meat cooking; and, briefly, it was taken to a flash of Leo, seated around a fire that Talys had conjured up for the two of them, eating fish grilled on the coals and making idle chatter. Yet the memory was plagued with the putrid odor of fur burning, organs uncleaned reducing to nothing but black ash.
Chaotic fire blitzed underneath the Selenite, and with wide, teary eyes, the kaijin jerked backward, nearly falling over its own two wobbly legs and tail in a mad grab to shove off.
Aspen was devoured just seconds after it broke away. Reduced to little but blackened bone in the same way She had willed Her horrible monsters to consume Scout, the same way that Aethril had inverted Kethri just weeks ago. Through Chaos and a Godawful power, and through Selenite's own hands.
It gagged for a third time as it collapsed onto its knees, and then its hands—even the one that'd been mangled and amputated. Blood streamed down its face, and it wavered even crouched there. Quills rattled not from anger, apprehension, but from the swirling nausea deep in its gut and that horrible, horrible, sickening feeling that grew stronger as it stared at the claws it'd used to kill and back at what remained of— of—
Selenite crawled those precious few inches to the skeleton, stumbling and wincing as sand coated the stumps of its fingers and a phantom sensation of their still being there lanced up that arm. It crawled, and it barely hauled itself back upright, sitting on its knees.
Shaking hands reached for the skull, and their fingers left bloody smears on its cheeks as it made contact. Already, the bone was ice-cold to the touch. Selenite sobbed. It sobbed, and it lifted the bone upward.
Its head tilted downward, and it pressed its forehead against the skull's. Eyes screwed shut, and tears began anew.
"I—I'm so, so, suh—s-sorry," it whimpered between gasping breaths intense enough to shake its entire form.