~!@#$%^&*()_+ -- Territory South

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Date Posted: 23:38:02 03/20/04 Sat
Author: Deyt
Subject: ~!@#$%^&*()_+
In reply to: Ayrist 's message, "Help Arriving..." on 22:28:01 03/20/04 Sat

Time slows, stops. There's a windy rush, the sigh of air currents.. many intricate patterns fluting amidst the boughs. War drums thunder in the south, and a nearby river roars and crashes. Breath. Heart. Blood.

Time slows, stops. There's the pattering of rain over this very jungle, and the metallic clash of some far-distant battle. Paws falling over trunk and ground, the Korats engaging in this timeless combat.

Deyt snaps into reality. Her mind lays bare of unneccesary thought; only strategy and perception make their nest there for now. Emotion is lost to the winds, even the thin threads of anger and her usual sadness are gone. There is only a killer, one of Change and of Justice, one of Vengeance and Mortality.

There is only the Mournbringer.

Deyt's limbs bend and swiftly snap straight, sending the mammoth Korat a few feet to her left. She had not heard nor smelled nor seen the red, for those senses were shut down for the moment. No, the great striped had /felt/ him. She had /tasted/ him. Those two senses were more effective than one would think, and seldom one thinks to suspect them. The red crashes by, lost in his momentum, and tosses his head back in a low growl as claws meet earth and whirls to face the one he has challenged. Said Korat turns, as well; but her own spin is surprisingly fluent and controlled. Then her eye meets his - honeyed brown met compassionless, cycloptic steel. She waits for the.. 'official' words from this large, heavy - yet blindingly fast - beast of almost-purpled burgundy.

'I am Newirle.'

Long, slow, flowing.. dangerous tones, undisguised and pure, loyal. Deyt felt a twinge in her mind - her forgotten heart was murmuring sadness. She did not want to kill.

But it was her duty.

'I-am-Deyt.'

Lustrous paws with talons of bronze sweep the fallen leaves and dance with the earth. Newirle seems to move in slow motion, as Deyt warps her personal time to follow him. Taste. Touch. It was easy. He smelled like old magic and faintly of cinnamon, of power and long-lost blood, that was refreshed. His weight shoved aside hundreds of trillions of molecules that ripple like a stone thrown into a pond. Deyt can feel it in her own paws, both natural and unnatural. Blackness avails as the almighty Mournbringer leaps forward to meet and make battle. Newirle can't tell this haughty lunge is a trick, and darts to his right and shoots forward, hoping to stab deeply into the gargantuan striped's stomach. But she twists in midair, before losing ground contact and dodges, her own tail rushing in and plaiting with the red's, in the split-second he was off balance. A low-hanging bough smacks at her muzzle and Newirle leaps to take advantage, forehands slashing violently for her shoulder and tearing away hunks of ragged, death-coloured fur, before Deyt rises onto her back paws and fends him off with her own limbs. Newirle backs away, his tailblade slashing at Deyt's tail as much as it can in its trapped position. He doesn't want to fight this horrible cyborg, this lonesome beast of macabre despair! But yet.. he must. So he will use all his skills to bring her down and end his Pack Leader's rage.. with honour and dignity. Another lunge brings him close to Deyt, but he lands heavily on the branch that had smacked her and his longclaws slash down at her back, digging and hoping to pierce down into her heart. What he doesn't expect is that she had tasted his change and felt the aircurrents sweeping over her, felt the molecules raining over her gaunt frame. He doesn't expect the wings, massively proportioned and as tattered as the big hybrid's body, erupting from her back and crashing into his branch and himself, once again unbalancing him.

Their arboreal battle had become aerial.

Deyt's wings retract, but both of them know that is how it will go down. A wordless mental tract goes down and the pair of large Korats make for the skies, talons catching the bark and propelling them ever-higher. The hybrid is taller but the red is much, much heavier, and Deyt is used to winding through tight spaces. She is the first to erupt in a spray of crowning viridian feathers, the death-dark pinions melting from both shoulders and beating heavily, further tossing her into the sky. Newirle's own form emits in a similar fashion, and the sky is filled with membraneous wingbeats.

It has begun..

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