Okay. Now he had to act pretty quickly, before the bubbles drifted towards the ground and popped.
He reached for the spell that WOULD'VE sent the bubbles careening over the crowd, but nothing happened. Shoot. He couldn't just stand there, doing nothing. He should at least say something.
He could PROBABLY still salvage this, if he acted quickly.
A few of the bubbles had popped by now, but the ones that remained turned into ice and shattered onto the ground with a satisfying crystalline crunch. It wasn't QUITE the finish he'd planned- if he'd gotten the earlier spell right, he would've flown the bubbles high up into the air, to make the whole display of shattering ice that much more dramatic. This just felt.. anti-climatic. Almost accidental. But his time was nearly up, so he should stop dwelling on that and start making room for the next contestant.
He'd end with the octopus equilevent of jazz hands. Jazz tentacles?
Oh gosh, okay it was her turn, she could do this.
With a deep breath, she walked out, a large smile on her face. Hello there, my name is Daphne and my abilities are lightning based.
She was very proud of that fact, but now wasn't the time for talking, now was the time for showing.
And so, with a deep breath, trying to create a field around her... but nothing seemed to happen. She was too nervous and for a moment, she giggled a bit nervously. Crap this wasn't going well so far.
That's okay! She could just continue on and act like nothing happened. It takes a moment to warm up.
It was a blatant lie and she hoped they wouldn't be mad at her, but now wasn't the time to think about it. No, she was on the spot! She had to focus!
This time she tried something a little bit different, and though at first it didn't seem to work, finally a ball of lightning began to form around her body before she shot it upwards, letting out a soft sigh of relief. It was something at least, flashy and beautiful in its colors, though dangerous if it got too close.
That was okay, she just had to make it look like things were happening cooler than they actually were. And so, she shot the ball into the air, letting it spin and zap out at the air around it, watching it closely as it began to fall back down towards her.
As the ball fell, she would jump up at just the right time, where her body would have crashed into the ball of lightning. However, instead of getting shocked by it, she let it vanish at the exact time that she activated her personal static, small lightning bolts that zipped across her body.
The lightning bolts pulsed from her head, where the 'impact' was, down her body and to her tail, leaving her fur a bit poofed but making it look like she had absorbed the ball of lightning. That was cool... right?
Landing easily on the ground, she shook out her for, the last remnants of the static flicking out of her fur onto the ground beside her before vanishing completely.
She panted softly, a large smile on her lips, though she was still very nervous, knowing she had messed up a bit. Tada!....?
She hesitated for a moment before bowing her head and turning to quickly leave, her heart pounding and wanting nothing more than to hide in the corner right now.
Archon had watched with growing interest and trepidation. He'd watched far too many Gembounds harm themselves, some severely, one impaling herself straight into a chrysalis--prompting a rare and wide-eyed
Still, he drew himself up and strode out before the judges, a sickle in each hand, wings spread. He looked confident--though he was not--and looked arrogant, on top of it. Sure, snobbish, his jaw tight and chin raised, as though he were far too good to be here.
His plan was to use battle magic. Archon was a fighter, but he utilized magic alongside his scythes. While no warmonger, he considered himself capable enough: so he'd set up one of the dummies to (hopefully) destroy. First, though, he bowed toward Overseer Tectus, and then to the crowd, with far too much flourish.
Archon then sheathed a sickle--he hadn't thought that through--and retrieved his simple dummy. It was just straw and stick, mainly. But he carried it over toward Tectus, offering a respectful nod before setting it up near her. Then he took up position again, sickles out--and dropped into a combat stance.
Archon had planned on plunging himself into darkness to begin with. That... did not happen; in fact, the light around him seemed to brighten, putting him in a very awkward spotlight.
Sweat beaded up on his face, his eyes widening slightly in dawning horror as his gut absolutely churned. Yeah. He'd failed this one, before he'd even started.
Well, he'd planned to plunge himself into darkness, from which two copies of him would've stepped forth. And given the initial shadows, it'd have hidden which of him was the real thing. Unfortunately, it was clear as day as a fake Archon stepped from the real one. Cool, maybe impressive, but it'd be hard to fool someone he was standing ten feet away from.
The two Archons spread out, sickles flashing. He'd do what he could to save this.
His last step was to surround Tectus in images of herself--and the dummy--before the two Archons stepped in with dramatic flourishes of their weapons.
As he stepped forward, sweating and focusing, his nervousness betrayed him. The images appeared, but flickered, completely false. Some of the Tectuses were Vargas. Some of them were the wrong color; one was more of a weird brown-yellow, unfortunately fecal in coloration. (He hadn't meant insult.) The dummies were all the wrong shape, and--all of it lasted only seconds before falling apart.
That's what they got for hosting in Polaris, full of spiking energy. Archon sighed softly and stood straight, abandoning all pretense at theatricality, shame rising sick in his throat.
Which he'd just failed catastrophically.
He turned, pulling his head up to hide his face, and made his way off.
There was scarcely a "good" reason for her to be here: Slavering amid the spectators, waiting impatiently for her name to at last be called and champing at an invisible bit at each successive failure, each simpering Gembound slinking away to wallow in their embarrassment and storytelling.
Only at the cat—
It's a miracle that she merely laughs at the very idea of it. An idea for a routine (ill thought-out before that exact moment) finally emerges from the black morass of her beautifully Chaos-rotted brain: An insult for an insult. An eye for an eye. His gifts, imposed more beautifully than those of that owl. It is merely a matter of reining in her attention span for long enough to retain that idea.
Crooked, jagged teeth bare themselves as she trudges forth, shuddering with anticipation as she sweeps the gathered crowd with her gaze. Though she would have already been introduced, the Valkhound bellows her own name for them to all hear again— in more syllables than just the three:
And as she bellows this, she continues to look. She looks— black lightning and sparks jolt along her pelt with the excitement of searching again— she looks, and her gaze snaps onto—
And back toward the crowd, the Sleepless Chaos gazes.
Draconua throws her head back, shrieking with a short peal of laughter that breaks into the thrum of blackened thunder and void-lightning, arcs of the latter spilling onto the floor to a less than dramatic effect.
The thunder is merely a dramatic courtesy, leaving the already darkened ground beneath her scorched and corrupted. Draconua heaves her shuddering self upright as it breaks, fingers coiling into hooks with which to rend the earth apart as she returns to it.