ORIGIN

The arena smells like blood, and death.

It can tell its match is not the first today. Nor will it be the last. So much blood spilt here—more than Terror has seen in a single lifetime, even with the City and the Kraken. It was only a single opponent, there, and the green shade blood took on deep beneath the waves blended with the darkness of the depths.

The water is its home, its element, where it lives and will die, but it can admit... there's a certain beauty to the hue gore takes against sand.

A voice shrieks from up above. "AND UP NEXT! THE TERROR OF THE DEPTHS!"

Its ears twitch to lay flat against its skull, Terror sneering. Oh, but it would take that damn fairy in its mouth and crush her if it could. Too loud. Too raucous. Too annoying.

Luckily there's another opponent to take its anger out on. It flicks its ears forward and pads leisurely out of the gate, head held high and tentacles writhing to stand upright to frame its face. Jellyfish tendrils sprout from its lower back and trail behind it like a bustle; cyan light ripples in stripes across its dark form. It holds itself for all the world like royalty. Poised and perfect, like all the world is beneath it. An eldritch empress.

It tilts its head and shoots a grin across the arena, its many maws baring teeth in a calculating smile. Who has come here to be mauled?

It takes a moment to size its opponent up. The titles the fairy bestows upon the competitors mean nothing to it; it's been watching a few of the fights, lingering in the back of the stands. Creatures both mighty and pathetic have been painted with the same grandiose brush—her words are no measure of the competition.

Instead it takes in its opponent's size, his shape, his strength. The catlike beast that stands before it is smaller in height, but about the same length; built lithely in contrast to its own brutal strength. Faster, most likely. He bears bioluminescence upon his skin just like it does, eliciting within Terror a feeling of pleasant surprise. It had expected to be paired with common prey, upon volunteering for this bloodbath, but many of the competitors here are far from such, including its own opponent. Smaller as he may be, he is still of monstrous shape. He is still kin to it, if not by gem.

And he stands with stoic courage; not wavering nor backing down, and as he begins to advance with arched back and bared teeth, a laugh peels from between his teeth.

Terror's grins stretch ever farther.

This will be a good match.

Without warning, it throws itself forward; head bowed to meet his advance, all its weight used as an impromptu battering ram.

Impact.

Fleshy body slams against its opponent—knocking the cat-creature to the ground. A raucous voice cries out over the battlefield—a thrill of excitement spikes down Terror's spine as it recognizes the voice as one of its' siblings, another set of grins splitting its maws. Karambit!

Anything for it. Anything for its siblings—especially if it's something it already enjoys doing.

For its family, it would tear apart a thousand cats. Would drown the world in blood and gore for it.

The cat flails and strikes blindly, but the actions are futile; a mess of flailing limbs, all striking for air. It would laugh if it wasn't well aware that any moment the cat could right itself and strike true—it holds the low chuckle that threatens to ring through its body in and pounces for its opponent's prone form.

It aims low, jaws snapping and twisting, trying to catch at what little of Ultraviolet's back was exposed, away from four sets of swiping claws and directly at exposed flesh. One after the other—a flurry of snarling teeth, all desperate for blood.

He flails and snaps and shivers; for all the world the perfect picture of poisoned prey, and yet with the flashing lights and the flailing tendrils it all works in his favor, as he rolls away and twists and strikes at air and its own snapping jaws find a meal of empty atmosphere.

A snarl rips from slavering jaws as it takes a couple steps back, watching the not-cat roll to his feet in the sand, trembling like a leaf in the wind. But is it all an act…? Or is there simply a strange power to his madness; to the constant strikes at seemingly nothing.

It cannot tell. It, frankly, does not care. There is only one thing in front of it, and that is prey, and it will rip its guts out into the sand if it has to bleed out with it.

There is one thing they have in common, besides their monstrous bodies. Fury. A kind of familiar rage that Terror can see written all through its expression, in the lift of the lips and the baring of teeth, and with its opponent's apparent weakness the lunge is still so startlingly quick that it doesn't even think to dodge before fishhooks are being sunk into its skin.

First blood, but it isn't his—claws rent its flesh and Terror howls, a thing of equal parts rage, pain, and pure thrill, thrill of the hunt, thrill of the fight, thrill of clashing snarling snapping with someone that is not prey but beast—

—and it is all too happy to meet him with its own vicious offense. Its wounds open from a trickle to a waterfall, but Terror doesn't care about the pain; doesn't care about anything but blood, blood, blood. As claws sink into its chest and flesh parts and tears and burns like flame with hurt, Terror twists its body sideways to swing new tendrils into its opponent, aiming stinging cnidocytes nestled within white tentacles for those rending paws—aiming to fill limbs with toxin.

Little kitty serves himself right on a dinner plate into Terror's jaws.

It can see what he was trying to do with the maneuver, how if it were better-aimed the cat would have been in perfect range for its throat, but—it is not, and his eyes are dilated into little pinpricks, twitching and staring at points that are not quite in Terror's range, and it actually looks down at him in shock for half a second, startled by the sudden vulnerability.

Only for a moment, however, before it snarls something euphoric with bloodlust and lunges for his own throat, ignoring the burning in its chest as the movement stretches torn muscles.

It was a good maneuver, a good attempt, but it fucked up—and now it's Terror's turn to try the same.

It will not fail.