super late post lets go

death

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go.

She had the advantage. Her opponent was bleeding and blinded, and at the crucial moment where he was about to strangle her, she slipped out of his grasp instead. Tumble, tumble, tumble. Like all cats do, she landed on her feet, and within moments she was circling the naga with triumph in her eyes. "Give up yet, snake kid?" she snarled.

And then she heard a shrill voice.

And then something wet splashed across her fur.

She froze in place, slowly turning to look behind her shoulder as the wet stuff-- alcohol-- suddenly caught on fire. A horrid, ear-piercing scream tore itself through her throat. Dear Astraea, her fur was burning. Her skin was burning. Enemy forgotten, she slammed herself in the ground, desperately trying to stamp out the flames. But it was too much. It was too searing. It was too, too, too, too--

'Madhukar,' Twisted thought wildly.

She began to laugh.

Within a minute, all that was left was a flame-scorched corpse and a perfectly untouched, emerald gemstone.

Twisted is ded lol

MADHUKAR.

Like a shot through the cosmos, that rang through a space few could reach, few could access. It pierced something within the ghastly presence floating about the stadium seats. She, herself, could not have heard it, but for a split second, gripped wholly by the claws of irony, she could wonder: 'does it hurt like lightning?' In the next split second, she could summon the rain. Friend of lightning, enemy of fire. The fire that burned down this particle of the past.

It is strange to say what Madhukar was thinking or feeling in that moment. She hadn't come to the Deathmatch for death, as most had. Mostly, she had only wanted to evade that chance. Knowing that half, more than half perhaps, of those who entered, who she saw in one rambunctious crowd, would not return to that same unknowable shape... it made her feel so out of...

But for a few, she had come. Against her better judgement. Do ghosts have the ability to judge anymore? She wished, most of all, that she could still her beating heart as swiftly as she could still those beating flames. Even if her magic did not work this time, it inevitably would. Even if it backfired completely — which it did! — it would never bring her down. Her heart, however, would never work like it was supposed to; she was painfully aware. It wasn't the only pain, in this moment.

Without a word, masked behind a rudimentary wooden plate and bundled in mosses, muds, the blades of leaves, she drifted down to the arena floor and attempted to take what was left of the feral kitten who had beaten her when both of them were small. The flames would gnash like phantom teeth, the absence of rain an evident downfall. Yet Madhukar would not feel angry, only lost.

If that worm creature — Erebos — had any sense of self-preservation, it would not attempt to intervene. Nobody had to be blamed. Nobody else had to...

Madhukar would shamble away then, unless she should be stopped by anyone?

- attempted exit; can be interrupted -