INCLUDES VIOLENCE AND DEATH

They had never come.

The leaders. The others, who ought to have aided. Dragon had sunk back into his swamp, silently contemplating. He had wished to put so many things into motion--and yet, the others had merely drifted away.

Over time the goings of the brighter, furrier, more active beings in the swamp became a blur, to him. Perhaps this was how Father felt: lying in the murky black, silent, nearing a state of sleep eternal, while the world around him whirled in noise and colors he would never understand.

He felt, in a distant, vague sort of way, that the time would yet come. That the Children would grow, and thrive, and rise, and the others would fall from their onslaught, or stand beside them. But first, perhaps, the Children had to fall--to fall, to fail. To die, rot, and decay. They were, after all, the children of Rot.

The alligator bobbed slightly to the surface, long, broad water-slicked back glistening black in the very dim light. Mist curled and coiled overhead, and as Dragon lay in his dreamless state of non-reality, he could almost hear it whispering.

The words came soft, at first, a scratching; and then clearer, and then he recognized their language.

The rifling of leaves by clawed paws. A light creature, nimble. It approaches. Prey.

Dragon lay silent and massive, a fallen log and nothing more, if one was not aware and alert. His broad, boatlike snout nearly butted up against the shore, his eyes staring unblinking into the mists.

{ art by dark } ~ { table by aura . edited by banshee and dark }

She wasn't quite sure how she'd gotten to where she was. The place was darker than Eridanus, and the entire place was filled with shallow black water. Fog hung thickly in the air, and the distant trees were dark and looming. All in all she felt unnerved; that there might be things creeping here which simply did not occur elsewhere. Eridanus was safe. It was green and vibrant, its brooks cool and shallow and bubbling, the incessant chatter of the songbirds a reassuring chorus. Here the insects chittered eerily, and she could hear a haunting call echo, muffled, through the darkness every now and again.

Still, a fire burned within the dingo's heart, as bright as her orange-tawny goat, her gem, her vibrant amber eyes. She wanted to explore, to push on, to stubbornly shove her way into any place that tried to hold her back with something so mundane as darkness and fear. She thrilled with excitement, instead, beneath the unease--not quite fear, not yet. And she pressed onward.

Ahead the water got deeper, but she could see a reedy section of shore. She trotted down to it, moving along its edges, picking her way through clumps of black and rotten leaves and nimbly over a dead branch, not stepping on it. Not cracking it.

There was a large, black log lying in the water ahead, and the dingo hesitated for a brief moment. Something about it sent the faintest thrill of alarm down her nerves, twitching and tugging at her primeval instincts.

She paused, there, then slowly stepped back. No; something wasn't right. She wasn't sure quite what; her experience had not yet caught up with her instincts on the matter of alligators and crocodiles.

Nonetheless she was left standing motionless, triangular ears pricked up, one forepaw dangling midair--dripping--as she eyed the 'log' in the water.

She was waiting. Would the log move?

She was too far.

The alligator waited, for a time, his thick body motionless, hanging in the black water. Clawed feet barely touched the ground. Should he speak? Perhaps she was not mindless--but she did not seem it. She was sniffing, nose quivering, paw raised. She was staring right at him alertly, yet she did not speak.

Prey.

The alligator considered.

If he lunged now, she would be off like a shot before he could get close. She was just out of reach. But if he waited, she might not approach at all. He was forever patient, calculating, but he already knew that inaction, or brash action, would gain him nothing.

He could, however, attempt to injure her at a distance. At range.

Slowly, the alligator lifted his head from the muck. The dingo blinked and scurried a quick few steps backward, but so long as he did not move quickly...

Within him the banked fire stirred, whirling into a rush of heat as he coiled his magic through the forge of his body. Melting it, compressing it, until a searing ball of plasma roiled agonizingly painful within him.

His jaws parted. Teeth jutted out in rows, the pink maw widening, the bright fire within abruptly visible--and then he took careful aim, and fired.

The flare of heat blasted forth, hurtling toward the tawny creature, who was suddenly and starkly silhouetted by its blinding light.

{ art by dark } ~ { table by aura . edited by banshee and dark }

Round: 1/?
Attempt: Strike the dingo with superheated plasma flame.
Defense: --
Injuries: --

The log rose in the water, and the dingo stepped quickly back, to what she thought was surely a safe range. It began to split apart, unlike anything she had ever seen, and she stared, transfixed.

Is this magic?

The interior of the log seemed to be filled with pointed ivory bits--teeth? But surely this was not a living creature? And inside, there was a rapidly-increasing glow, a beckoning fire that had the dingo nearly stepping forward again. What was that?

She had never seen fire, before; it was beautiful, like the light-orbs shining through amber, attracting and enthralling. And like a moth to a very real flame, she leaned forward to look more closely.

A searing heat engulfed the air before her, and she was flinching, wheeling away with squeezed-shut eyes, as the blistering air washed over her. The briefest of instants later she felt absolute agony searing over her left flank and haunch, and she stumbled in the black water.

A piercing series of screaming yelps echoed through Cetus' mist like gunfire, sharp and deafening. She barely registered that they were even hers; only that her pain was ripping out from her gut, through her throat, out her frantic maw. Amber eyes filled with terror, a snarl creasing her furred muzzle.

And then the stench of burning flesh and fur hit her nose. She was struggling, scrambling to turn, to shove herself through the slippering wet black and slosh away over rot and slime, to safety.

Round: 1/?
Attempt: Gain some distance!
Defense: --
Injuries: --

The creature did not move--she was not familiar with what he was, then, nor with his magics. The alligator loosed his blast of hot plasma, filling with grim, bloodthirsty satisfaction when it hit its mark. Light and fire flared over the dingo's haunch, blackening flesh and fur, and she turned with a series of screams to scramble away. But she was slow, and he lunged forth.

Now is the time.

He barreled forward, water erupting around him in a black spray, heavy body surging like a breaker over the shallows of the shore and toward the dog. He moved with startling speed for something so large, a burst of power and swiftness that made it seem like the lake itself was hurtling for the fleeing dog.

Dragon did not make a sound as he came--didn't hiss, didn't bellow. He just rushed forward, the thrill of the hunt pounding through him, the desire to crush his jaws around the thing and drag it back--to sink away into the black depths as if they had never been there--driving all thought from his mind.

It is mine.

{ art by dark } ~ { table by aura . edited by banshee and dark }

Round: 2/?
Attempt: Charge
Defense: --
Injuries: --

The dingo scrambled away, but she realized at once that the massive fire-log was bursting out of the water after her. She bolted to one side, throwing herself into the water chest-deep, and the thing fell beside her with an enormous spray of cold, black water.

She could flee; she could try to escape, to get clear, but with her wounds, and with this thing--... She wasn't thinking clearly, anyway. When did she ever? She was a creature of instinct, and she was damn near cornered, this unknown object of sudden pain and terror slamming down beside her.

Right where it's vulnerable.

Without thinking, without reasoning--as she always was--the dingo launched herself at the alligator in a flurry of lunging, snarling bites, savage without holding back. She was a blur of tawny color, her sound now a deep and throaty roaring of her own, fangs bared past their pink gumlines. She tried to sink the teeth into the strange log, to tear into it, to bite, to shake, to rip, to shred. To kill.

Before it killed her.

Before it was too late.

Round: 2/?
Attempt: Attack!
Defense: --
Injuries: Badly-burnt haunch/flank

The creature dodged his lunge, and he fell with a mighty splash back into the black--not submerged, but blinking as spray washed over him nonetheless.

Then there was a faint, but sharp series of pains on his left side--along his head, his skull, his jaw. The creature was--attacking him?

Dragon felt faint amusement, even fainter alarm, and the vaguest sense of appreciation for the dingo's fire. It was going to lose--it was going to die; yet it was fighting back nonetheless.

Good. This would have been boring, otherwise. Just another ambush--quick and silent, perhaps kinder for the prey, but where was the fun in that?

Dragon wheeled, jaw springing open, attempting to whirl with that same startling agility and seize the dingo in his jaws as she bit at his armored flesh.

Seize. Crush. Drag. Drown. Kill.

He felt his jaws close around something--something small, something bony--not her torso, as he'd wished, but it would do. He began to push himself hurriedly backwards, trying to sink back into the water with her clamped securely in his jaws.

{ art by dark } ~ { table by aura . edited by banshee and dark }

Round: 3/?
Attempt: Seize the dingo in his jaws
Defense: --
Injuries: --

A fierce, bloodthirsty thrill began to course through her. She would fight, she would kill, she would survive. This angry, hot log wouldn't change that.

Her fangs tore at the armored skin, sinking against plating and then ripping, again and again. Then the log had twisted, slammed into her, and she was down with her left hind leg seized by something vicelike. Something powerful, the pressure pressing down and threatening to snap her bones, the sharp points of it driving through skin and deep into muscle and flesh.

Sparks of white-hot sick-yellow pain flashed through her mind and she released her bite, letting out another strangled yelp.

The dingo turned, lunging for the log again--and its eye, was that an eye, glaring at her, so baleful and coppery, glittering in the dim light... She had only an instant to feel terror, and then the adrenaline pushed her on, her violent ferocity swelling in her. Kill! KILL! Survive! KILL!

She aimed her next attack at the alligator's eye, driving fangs toward it in an attempt to sink them in around its stupid froglike socket. TEAR ITS EYE FROM ITS FACE! KILL THE LOG!

____________

The Hallowed Callers stopped their haunting songs to listen to the distant sounds of battle: the quiet spray of water, the screaming calls, the growling.

Someone was hunting.

Someone was feeding.

One by one they lifted quietly off, soaring toward the sound and the temptation of a scavenged meal at its source.

Round: 3/?
Attempt: Attack the log's eye
Defense: --
Injuries: Badly burnt flank/side

One instant, he had the creature's leg seized firmly in his jaws. The next, in a flash of fangs and hatred, she had curled over herself and the darkness of her maw engulfed his vision. He squeezed the eye shut, but he felt the sudden pain nonetheless, the sharp spike as fangs drove into the one sensitive spot on his entire body. He let out a choked bellow, muffled by her fur, and he felt her react: redoubling her efforts, perhaps heartened by his pain, shaking her grip all the way out.

Something wet and hot leaked down his face, and he could not see.

Enraged, Dragon threw himself over--and over, and over--flipping himself around and around with the propulsion of his tail. The deafening sound of his body thumping against the water filled the air, and the Hallowed Callers circled closer.

He could feel the creature--feel its agility, its fire, its determination--keep it from wholly having its limb torn off. Instead it flipped as he did, rolling with him with a ferocious growl of its own, one which choked as water poured into its jaws. Jaws whose ends were locked back firmly around his ruined left eye.

But it is too late, now. You won't escape me, and you certainly cannot kill me.

{ art by dark } ~ { table by aura . edited by banshee and dark }

Round: 4/?
Attempt: Death roll
Defense: --
Injuries: Bite wounds along head and neck, left eye now damaged

She felt the metallic wet of the alligator's eye bleeding into her jaws, and then her world was swallowed by spinning, dizzying, chaotic darkness. She heard a loud, deep crack, felt the log-monster flipping her around and around in the water, felt that water filling her nostrils and her throat. With a growl she turned, muzzle still wrinkled up, body now matted and soaked with blood and swamp water, and aimed to pin her teeth entirely around the side of the monster's upper jaw.

Perhaps sinking fangs into the jaw of an alligator wasn't the world's best idea, but the dingo had very few options left open to her. She felt her senses catch up--felt her mind realizing that her left hind leg was ruined, twisted, broken apart--the bone, shattered completely.

She was only vaguely aware that the world had stopped spinning, that everything was tilting back upright--that all was dark, and filled with the circling crows.

Round: 4/?
Attempt: Attack the log-monster's upper jaw.
Defense: --
Injuries: Badly burnt flank/side, left hind leg broken