Erdawn Il Deus

[Joker]

OOC: I thought I might as well start the topic off since I didn't do much in the other thread. Also
I’m still in a first person mode, so please forgive the style.
====================================================================

I squeezed my hands as the gauntlets were placed on my forearms by my faithful servant Thole. I could see the concern written across his face. He, had been with me in meditation when I found the energy of the warrior I searched the endless galaxies for. The massive sense of power that this warrior gave off nearly disrupted our astral projections. Thole had never before felt such a enormous aura from one of my enemies. And I can see now as he places the final parts of my battle armaments on to my undead frame, that for first time ever his faith in me is shaken.

“Thole”

“Yes, Master?”

“Your master is an immortal, this you know. And though my body can be broken or destroyed, my spirit will survive. I am the Spirit of Vengeance! I will always return to satiate the need for revenge... ”

“Yes Master”

I am ready. I close my eyes and let the ebon flow of magic escape my body. Extending my mind across universes of time I concentrate on the destination. The words slip from my tongue almost instinctually as I feel the molecules in my body separate and move at incredible speeds through time and space. I materialize almost instantly in the center of some gothic arena, steam evaporating from my body. Opening my eyes I begin to drink in my surroundings. I feed into my vast memory every detail of my environment with a preternatural speed.

Then I call to him, my energy invisibly exploding around me like a flaring star. To those with eyes of great perception I will be a bright beacon guiding their way to the battlefield.

Erdawn Il Deus

Chosen one of the Spirit of Vengeance. Wrath awaits you.....

[Erdawn Il Deus]

OoC: And it seems you have >.> Aha, will post

[Erdawn Il Deus]

From Joker's perspective, what he saw made little sense – or wouldn't have were this any other encounter, even between warriors. A line, like a thread spun of purest white, rose perpenticular to the ground to six feet above the ground, cut parallel in a horizontal arc, then descended again in path. The rectangle – which was to say, angled with a kind of mathematical precision, as if any form of laziness or disregard for geometry would have disastrous consequence – held space for only a few seconds. Then, its brightness filled until it made its purpose clear, and from that shape of light stepped the Westendrean longhunter as summoned, a piece of chalk – too bright to have been shaped from anything but ensorcelled components – between his thumb and forefinger.

“Sorry for the delay, prince – you lazy bastard – but I hate teleportation on seventy different levels and I wasn't about to conjure it out my ass just because you couldn't visit me directly.” Erdawn's face cracked into a grin that showed teeth more than it showed humour, and he tossed the chalk away. He was in decidedly dark garb, turbaned in a silk scarf that hung down his shoulder-blades, robed and sashed lightly in the same materials, visibly wearing his boiled cuirass of leather and sewn, glimmering mail. Joker raised an eyebrow.

“You don't seem at all the picture of health that I expected, battousai.”

Erdawn's grin widened. The hideous cartographical mutilation about his eye-sockets sunk into his face like a spider-web, deep fissures into his flesh which implied a kind of creative barbarism appreciative of his opponent's tastes. Where his eyes should have been were only two orbs of light, which threw off neither flame nor brightness, merely hung solid as coal in his skull.

“My light burns brighter than most,” His implication made its mark as he shifted arm to the intonation from beneath the robe. “Brighter, by suns, than his.” The decapitated head swung like a withering pendulum, eyes sunken and white in a rictus of frozen agony, mouth gaping open. His fingers were entwined in the dark locks of hair. The flesh had been pallid in life, but now the carrion whiteness of death had milked the skin until a road-map of veins blued to the surface. Blood had crusted to film about the nostrils.

Joker hissed. “My apprentice.”

“Johnathan?”

“You offend me.”

Erdawn's smile narrowed, until his lips passed over his teeth drawn like the lip of a razor. “You sent him to die, oh liege. He gave almost as good as he got,” with a violent jerk and a snap of his muscled forearm the morbid bauble shot forward, rolling over the piled stones of the arena, leaving prints of blood and nimbuses of dust. He swept the robe from his shoulders and it fell away, floating and rolling over the ground, and wrapped the scarf over his mouth and neck. His arms were bare, burly, tatooed in an absurdly fantastical fashion in sweeping slashes of red. He was arsenaled – and I say arsenaled, and not armed, because he was armed to the point of ridiculousness. Networks of leathering held collections of various killing implements over his hips, calves, shoulders and back; from knives, to a mace, dirks and a short sword, a rifle made from some foreign metallurgy that was bulbous and bizarre, and various other artefacts of warfare. His arms were bracered in steel and these were spiked and toothed above the elbow in a way that would rend flesh at close-quarters.

The longhunter was little in terms of overconfident – despite the traits that might be misconstrued as albinism (and lethally misconstrued as frailty) in his opponent, he knew that Joker was one of the most dangerous immortals alive. But he would test the name either way.

When he moved forward it was like a great... inhalation, everything rushed by him, his thighs pounded and his gloved hands whipped down to his belts and back upwards even as he closed the distance between both of them and the air filled with throwing knives sharp enough to split grass. The Spirit of Vengeance's brow was divided by lines deep like trenches – concentration or physical wrath (there was thunder, without any sound, an impact) – and these stopped and were thrown back and lapped the meat of the longhunter's forearms in bloody strings even as he kept coming. He clapped and compressed the vampire liege-lord's cheeks into his gums. This one spat blood, fast enough to burn it off the longhunter's right eye, as Erdawn's forehead collided just above the bridge of his nose, smashing cartilage into landscapes of busted blood vessels. Joker fell backwards into a roll, rising in a readied stance that spoke of coming violence.

Erdawn, however, had not followed-through. He breathed in – and as he did the tint of his skin lightened, as if lit from within, and... light blazed from the contours of his body like spume off of high seas and his eyes – which were nothing but solid fire on their own – seemed to wink with greater incandescence. When his arms moved they left after-images of their movement – and from his finger-tips whickered an assortment of deadly throwing weaponry, each burning as brightly as he.

And they landed on Joker like a locust.

“Now we wil test your title, spirit.”

OoC: Sorry about the delay, this had been written before I left but didnt get a chance to post it. I also think that my post against Dhampir has been lost. Bollocks.

[Dhampir]

Your post against me was lost? God damn it

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Yeah, OpenOffice only recovered the Joker post I sped wrote both before we rucked out. Bunch o crap but I'll write up another. Also kudos on that battle with Wyborn, that got my juices flowing. Bitch better reply or I'll take it myself =P

[Dhampir]

I got your juices flowing? Gross.

I actually rewrote that post, removed the dragon and such.

[Joker]

Your post is next....I'll edit this in to my post laster

[Joker]

OOC: Still working in first person mode for this one...I might change it up later....also forgive the short post. I'll pick up the pace next attack.

======================================
************ Attack 1 *******************
======================================

I could feel the blood trickle out my nose and curve its way along the contour of my chin before dripping to the floor. My head is not yet raised to eye level, and I can already see the cloud of weapons shooting towards me with great speed.

My eyes widen and then narrow as they take notice of each projectile making its way towards me. I note each weapon, its trajectory and current location with in the space between me and my opponent. Instinctively the magic from my arms releases as I touch the tattoos on the inside of my wrists and begin firing off kunai knifes and shurikens at the oncoming weapons. With preternatural speed my arms blur as they motion back and forth sending each knife and star that materializes in the palms of my hands rushing to intercept his attacks. I watch as both of our weapons collide together nailing each other dead center. Our aims are comparable, which for me is a rarity considering I have had centuries of battle and training to sharpen my eyesight. As the last few weapons fall to the ground, I spring into action darting my way towards the longhunter.

We meet immediately and the two of us engage in hand to hand combat. My forearms connect with his as I start to unleash the deadly style of my technique. Sliding my punches through small holes in his defense I begin changing the rhythm and position of each one of my strikes. With every successful hit, I rotate my fist into an open palm and push against the body at the precise moment of impact. This technique utilizes my energy in such a way as to infuse intense surges of pain into specific points on the body. Every kick and punch feels like I am sending mountains of corrosive power into what ever body part I strike.

The successful blows that I land are accented by quick flashes of neon green. Making the deadly dance of kicks and punches we display almost pretty. Two figures silhouetted only by the blur of movement and bright green flashes that range all over the battlefield. Winds rush and sounds echo from the cobblestone walls of the arena as our battle moves quickly from ground to air to wall. Normal eyes can not see us, even devices of great advancement would have trouble tracking our movements. Pushing each other to higher speeds, we each try to gain some small advantage over the other. Finally, after what seems like an hour long high impact race, I manage to catch my moment of opportunity.

My stance changes from long to short as I slip and jump over him as he counters my attacks with some of his own. I find the opening I need and catch his fist with my palm as it flies towards me. My left hand holding his fist, I use my right to swing around and chop into the joint that connects the radius and ulna to the humerus. His arm bends in reaction to the blow and I slide my hand up along the length of his arm. My fist in a karate chop passes over the many weapons leathered to his frame up and over the shoulder and right into the side of his neck. The blow hits him with tremendous force and quickly jars his head to the left. In anticipation I catch the left side of his cranium just as it bobbles in the direction of my right foot. The one two punch is enough to send him spinning to the ground. Drilled into the floor I press the attack by conjuring a surge of energy into my hands then firing the dense ball of power at him. It hits with the expected devastation of a small bomb, blowing bits of earth and rock into the air.

Raising my hand behind my back I grab hold of the handle to my sword and unsheathe its gleaming blade.

I stand at the ready, blood still flowing from my nose, eagerly awaiting my enemy’s next attack.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Kksh!

Light flared, shrunk, and spun off as another of the longhunter’s long, thin throwing knives deflected off the flat of Joker’s blade. In the time it had taken the vampire lord to draw his weapon Erdawn had pulled himself back from the brink of senselessness. His head swam and throbbed from repeated concussions against his skull and ribs (that last bomb had been a doozy), but he rode momentum to keep from falling over knowing recovery was inevitable. He was aware of his opponent as a peripheral blur, he was moreso aware of the sunlight which had brightened to its own universe around them, but shape and direction was enough – more than enough.

The upper-most left corner of Joker’s lip curled, ever so slightly. “Good shot.”

Erdawn frowned. “Could’ve been better. Could’ve taken your eye.”

“You could try again.”

“I could try again.”

He tried again. Erdawn’s deftness with this was an unforgotten legend in this conglomerate of independent realms. Adversaries like Fury, the Khuutra champion, and the gun-fighter Jaeger (amongst others) had both been victims enough to warrant a kind of… speciality to its practice. Fury had once reflected that no man should have been enable to hold – no to mention properly utilise – the amount of throwing weapons the longhunter so often exploited without twice the amount of fingers and thrice the amount of hands. Joker understood this now. When Erdawn’s hands moved, they did so without any external indication they had done so that was trackeable by the limitations of the human eye in a kind of accelerated sleight of hand. By the time they had resettled to their original position the amount of thin knives bristling from the nooks and crannies of his hands and fingers glinted like cactus pins in the noon glare.

These lit up like match-heads, flickering with tongues of flame that little resembled the contemporary ideas of fire as an element (coloured with a kind of boreal phosphorescence). The muscles in Joker’s face sucked to his skull and jaw in grimacing concentration instantly – he reached out with psionic talent in reflex – and all of these again fell on him like rain. Instantly steel and energy warped, burst, were plucked from the air like clay birds, cinders of the longhunter’s light blasted upwards into the sky. Joker’s counter-attack spread out like an invisible net to encompass the mass of projectiles – and he followed through with this, sprinting forward, the tip of his serrated sword lifted almost daintily over the lip of his knuckles like a pool cue to drive in through his enemy before all the strength in his upper body and its murderous velocity.

Erdawn slid his right out and his left forward and hunkered down defensively. The Gatotsu-form sword strike would kill him – Joker was not ****ing around, and his intent was neither to wound nor lame – he was sure of that. He brought his palms forward in a triangle at the tips of his fingers and met the attack with a patient state of severity.

He was counting on what happened – his hands worked inevitably as an aiming point for his adversary, lifted at centre-mass – and as the point thrust into them he whipped them down clapping them onto the weapon – hard. In the martial art Aikido the technique is called Zenpo Na-Ge: an opponent’s energy is met, and re-directed. The longhunter did not move despite his adversary’s intent and power, which fell on him like a freight train. His own force swept this aside, putting up no wall but rather digging a channel to divert it, and the vampire lord was lifted by his sword and sword-arm (both displaying the physical prowess and balance of gymnasts) up above the longhunter’s head, and while the momentum of his charge kept gravity at bay for that crucial second – only then, did Erdawn attack.

His hands fell and rose, and more knives were drawn, but his eyes flared and his muscles seemed to seizure and wiggled from the shoulders to the forearms (bursting veins to the flesh surface) and his hands flared like suns in that second and when they came up the light that traversed the blades had turned them into splinters of light and they cast through Joker’s body like fletchettes from a grenade. Each splinter was something like a foot in length and ran him through from navel to throat, the liege’s own aura concentrated far too densely around his most vital organs to severely damage any of them but his flesh opened and burst ripe with blood and smoked openly to the air and when he fell, he fell hard, like an electric pincushion. Blood fumed from his flooded mouth and hazed in the breeze.

Erdawn leapt. He rose like a phantom, lifted higher than his limited muscle capacity could have lifted him on its own, and as he rose above Joker his intent was neither to wound, nor to lame. His fist became solid light, and fell with the single-minded purpose of striking above the heart at the ribs to dislodge the aortal cluster from the heart organ. Kill.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

“The primary thing when you take a sword in your hands is your intention to cut the enemy, whatever the means. Whenever you parry, hit, spring, strike or touch the enemy's cutting sword, you must cut the enemy in the same movement. It is essential to attain this. If you think only of hitting, springing, striking or touching the enemy, you will not be able actually to cut him. More than anything, you must be thinking of carrying your movement through to cutting him.”
- Miyamoto Musashi

OoC: Actually, Zach, I gotta say I liked the dragon and the first draft of that post. Something struck me as interesting from it. I dunno.
OoC: And don't worry about post brevity, Jo, mine are only this lenght because they end up that way. Not intentional.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Bumping this up.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Bump!