Lichen wriggled and writhed, trying to snap at the kyte. It needed to be off now. She had no idea the extent of the damage caused; that bone had been broken, especially when the damned creature ignited. She couldn't see the flames, she only felt the flicker of heat lick at her face, and thank goodness she didn't have real eyes to lose.

Her teeth snapped uselessly in the air, once more, twice more. Then, finally, teeth connected with flesh, albeit flame-coated flesh. She heaves, the muscles in her neck working to try and wrench the kyte from her shoulder and toss it away, like trying to remove a tick.

88%

ATTEMPT: Pull that Kyte off!

INJURIES: Skinned (heh) shoulder, that's extra crispy

Dread recoiled, blinking, realizing that something was very wrong here. He hadn't been present for the initial insanity, and so he was wholly unaware that these lessers were... broken, somehow. The burning Kyte simply clinging to this other dragon-?

That isn't meant to happen.

He opened his jaws to call out, at full volume as always. "WHY ARE THEY NOT-" And then he winced, and roared, as the weird little bird latched onto his tail and bit. He thrashed for a moment in the air, unsteadied.

He flew back for the water, fully intending to dive and maybe drown the damn thing. There was no time to land and he didn't trust it not to explode into some kind of deadly magic, not with how these things were acting. In the meantime, magic flushed through his scales, hardening them, protecting him against some damage.

Aurelle had no idea what was happening-- and for once, she was uncertain if being able to see would even help in that department. Trying to tell what the creatures were feeling and doing had left her feeling empty, like she were existing in a space outside of her body. The elf only twitched back to life when she heard Lichen's jaws clicking beside her, and the smell of something burning hit her nostrils.

Is she on fire--? Came a sudden, startling thought.

Her hand whipped out over Lichen and a splatter of water came over the dragon, icy-cold against new, fresh burns. But at least they wouldn't get any worse.

There was a part of Aurelle that wanted to tell Lichen to turn and run, and to leave whatever was happening to everyone else. There was another that would feel guilt if anyone died because they weren't there. Aurelle spent more precious seconds frozen that could have been spent doing something helpful as result.

It's not like combat is a common occurence for her.

The basilisk did not bleed. Coilean did, and profusely, the second the fangs left the wound they'd gouged in his leg. Eeyikes!

Something was on fire, he thought. He couldn't put his full attention on his surroundings right now. Instead, he was aiming wild, panicked swings toward the basilisk as it sped toward him again, hoping to catch it in the air before its teeth found his flesh again.

Eulogy curled in tightly on themself, hindered slightly by the chunky blade of Diaspore sticking out of their tailtip. There wasn't much space to maneuver- Eulogy barely fit in the crevice- but they pressed themself as far away from the catsquirrel's grasping claw as they could manage. The air was filled with the stench of the catsquirrel's rotting flesh, and Eulogy nearly choked on it, already gasping and winded from their terrified sprint.

With nowhere left to run, they had no choice but to scare the lesser off- or else hope that it gave up and left on its own. Eulogy let out the loudest, most intimidating hiss they could muster- a little raspy given their aforementioned shortness of breath- and banged their gemstone tail-tip against the rocks, making a loud clanging noise. All of this might've at least caused a normal lesser gembound to hesitate- of course, this was far from a normal catsquirrel.

ROUND 3

ATTEMPT: Scare Catsquirrel
DEFENSE: hiding in some rocks
INJURIES: rattled and spooked

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see the light in the shade of the morning sun

With the rat obliterated, Callista turned to utter chaos on the beach. Fire, someone was on FIRE. But there were hands on it. The dog-thing was trying to deal with the snake. Okay okay, who were they missing...

...the SNAKE. Her ears flattened against her head as she whipped around, looking for where the tiny gembound had gone and laid her eyes on the catsquirrel scrabbling at a rock.

She didn't hestitate. Taking off at a sprint, Callista ran for the lesser, gathering energy in her foot and holding it until the last second. Like a soccer player making a goal, she slammed her foot into the sand and kicked out again, transferring the gathered energy into the catsquirrel.

That my life would depend on the evening moon
That the night would never comе

gore

Lichen's teeth indeed sunk into the half-decayed flesh of its neck, squelching horribly around her grip and as she ripped the Kyte off of her, she would do more then simply fling it off. So tightly was it grabbed onto her, that even in death it wouldn't let go. There was the awful snapping of bone and the shattering of crystal as the Kyte not only was wrenched from her, but broken apart, part of it still clinging to Lichen, but no longer actively tearing at her flesh. It simply hung there, a headless corpse devoid of skull and spine.

The basilisk, lunging for Coilean found itself speared by the knife-hand, this time the blade sinking into its body and catching on crystalline ribs. Unable to lunge any further, the basilisk instead tried to bite for the knife that had caught it, reaching for anything in its path to at least, at least, break off a piece within.

The Caroller didn't seem to mind all that much that the tail it bit upon was suddenly far harder to bit through. It didn't need to rip anything off. And the tougher scales where that much easier to break off a shard of the epidote. It continued to gnaw at him, awful crunching sounds as parts of its geode-mouth snapped as it tried to slip the shards into any soft parts it could.

As for the catsquirrel? It stood no chance. Undetterred by the snake's display, it reached for the thing making the noise against the wall, black and green claws reaching to scratch at it, grab it. But it didn't get the chance to do anything further as Callista's paw suddenly slammed into its side. Similar to the lava rat, it was rent apart, shattering like glass under the force of the energy. Its body was ripped apart and tossed away, falling down in chunks and shards on the beach not far away.

CAROLLER 15/15	CATSQUIRREL 0/15	KYTE 0/35
BASILISK 7/25	LAVA RAT 0/30

@Aurelle @Lichen @Coilean @Eulogy @Callista @Dread

The dragon was unaware of the remains, still clinging, still grasping her flesh. She felt it painfully tug when she moved, but the whole shoulder was painful; as far as she knew it was her own scraps of skin and flesh that flapped and moved against the breeze.

One gulp of air, then two, then she stopped. Trying to hold her breath through gritted teeth as it that somehow made the pain more bearable. And by all that was good; it hurt. Her right leg wobbled as it tried to support her weight on the ruined shoulder, blood trickling far enough down to slip into the creases and groves of her forefeet.

But there were still others, still danger. She could hear it, the sounds of water breaking, or being dove into, the sounds of hissing and slashing. She needed to know where they were; who was what and where. She was wet and she couldn't tell now much was blood or something else. It wasn't all sticky and copper smelling, perhaps water?

"Aurelle?!" Lichen swiveled, trying to touch, feel, hear, smell. Anything. Yet her senses were flooded with pain, the scent of blood and fire, the sounds of struggle. "Anyone?!" The pitch of her voice rises with the panic. "What is happening? Where are you? Is it dead?" Questions directed at no one particular.

Dread's roar was one of outrage. How DARE this little thing do... whatever it was doing!

He dove, wings folding, and splashed into the frothing sea without hesitation. It wasn't his domain, really; his children swam better than he, and when he came up it was with an awkward, floundering wing-sweeping doggy paddle that he obviously couldn't maintain for long. But he hadn't gone far out.

He shook himself and turned, serpentine, to aim for the Caroller--whether it'd followed him in (he'd gladly boil it like weird Leo soup) or if it were still in the air, in range. Or if it were still latched to his now-underwater tail, he'd hoist that up and aim at himself; he didn't care.

It was sputtering, the fire, not the inferno he'd intended--just a flicker and a short blast laden with half-formed embers. But hopefully it'd be enough to hit the damn thing.

He was, as yet, oblivious to the continued goings-on on shore.

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see the light in the shade of the morning sun

Everything was chaos. The dragon was roaring above them and there was the smell of singed flesh on the air. Callista glanced back and saw them dealing with the kyte (quite gruesomely, she quickly looked away from where its headless body flopped on the ground) and trying to deal with the snake. The dragon on the ground was panicking, blind eyes not landing on any of the other gembound near her. "It's okay!" Callista called to her. "The thing attacking you is dead! We're all okay!"

She turned back towards the crevice and leaned down, looking in towards where the baby had crawled in. "Hey, you in there...you alright? Did it hurt you at all?"

That my life would depend on the evening moon
That the night would never comе

@Eulogy @Lichen