thearena | Moth Delivers a Message [Closed]

Gary can hide, but not nearly as well as Tom. Even quick excursions between buildings in the village during the early-week heat have left him burned and peeling, moreso than he already was from his nasty shock at the Cornucopia, and any attempts at rest leave him prey to the persistent vampire bats that pick and bite at him like mosquitoes, forcing him to keep moving. The adrenaline, even in its reduced levels, helps sustain him there. Pain drifts into numbness, his dogged heartbeat keeps his legs moving in spite of how little sleep he's had. Hunger drives him more than it exhausts.

The adrenaline does nothing for the voices. Logically Gary can figure out that his brother isn't really here, urging him into the forest (at least not after the first couple of times he went looking), but eventually he got curious enough to follow. Deeper and deeper in he went, until he came upon the sword. There wasn't any harm in seeing if he could pull it out, he thought.

He nearly snapped at Kurt when they first ran into each other on the way back after their respective unsuccessful trips; thankfully, the promise of having a partner to help him search for food overwhelmed his general irritability. Together they wandered through the forest, until eventually--

The supplies catch Gary's attention first. He motions for Kurt to stop with a sharp raise of his hand, and he's happy that he does, as it seems that the trees themselves start moving to tend to them. They're a decent distance away, far enough for Gary to feel safe in standing back and watching in silent wonder. The spell lasts for a tense half-minute.

Then he turns to Kurt. "We have to get our hands on that," he whispers.

Kurt had pretty much always worked in a team when it came to dire situations. It's not that he was afraid of striking on his own - he's spent most of the Arena alone and done... well he's still alive, at least - but it's easier with even one other person to watch your back. If they'll watch your back. Kurt has his doubts concerning Gary since the sword. They'll just find food, split it, and then Kurt decides he'll be in the wind. There's no reason to hang around when it means less of a share for him and more noise coming out of his companion's big mouth. He's like the Thing that Wouldn't Shut Up and Kurt has to wonder if Gary's a mutant and continuous speaking without apparently drawing breath is his ability. Moreover, he's not a fan of Gary giving orders and makin pronouncements.

Like this one.

It only takes Kurt half a moment to note the trees turning almost imperceptibly towards them, the supplies posed as if on display though in such a way that one's eyes fall on them seemingly by accident even if something in Kurt's gut tells him its by design.

"It's obviously a trap," he mutters, but his stomach growling almost drowns him out with the force of its protest. Trap or not, he's not entirely certain they can ignore it.

The knot in the tree is a panoply of goodies, clearly several week of a popular Tribute's stash or the collections of several allies: a boiling pot, a desalination kit, weapons, food, a tent and a sleeping bag all rolled up. Tom's left it for the moment, having pulled himself away and out of the tree and stretching his legs, which he's finally ripped and cracked out of the mound of boughs and leaves and mulch that has been making up his lower half for the last few weeks. Unlike his usual flesh, his current form's dark and covered in strange ripples and knots, rings and lines of discoloration as if he were carved from the inside of a trunk itself. He breathes heavily, each pant causing sap and saliva to drip in sticky, heavy globs from his chin.

Outside of the tree, he cannot, at the moment, sense that Kurt and Gary are approaching his and Arya's cache of supplies. Instead, he finds a deer that died earlier in the Arena, one which he strangled with thick chokeweed and brambles, and starts to rip into it with his clawed fingers, tearing away bloody hunks of flesh with his hands and shoving them through his mossy beard into his crag of a mouth. The blood, semi-coagulated by now, dribbles down between ravines of bark down his chest and between his fingers. With a crack, he pulls off an entire flank from the deer and starts to shove it into his gullet like a snake devouring something larger than he is. He makes little hacking sounds and the bones inside his throat splinter and are swallowed down.

He pauses when he thinks he hears something over by his cache, and so still dripping blood he rises and starts to stagger back towards the knot.

Edited 2015-06-24 02:59 (UTC)

Such are Gary's thoughts. "So?" he mutters back with an emphatic shrug, watching from the corner of his eye as Tom works himself out in the clearing. Gary's never seen anything quite like him before. He's obviously a Tribute, based on the beacon, but he's obviously not someone Gary's met before. Can't be. He's sure he would have noticed horrifying tree monster Tribute sooner.

But this is beside the point. "Look at how slow he is," Gary notes with a wave of his hand. "He's up against me, with my super speed, and you, with your teleporty bullshit powers. If he even manages to get close to laying a tentacle on one of us, we can get out of there, no sweat."

From the clearing, he hears the horrible sound of rending flesh. Gary's face, already gaunt from hunger and suppressed illness, drains of color as he whips around to view the carnage, and jesus christ is it a lot of carnage. Wow. That's...that's just a whole deer, right in his face, isn't it? Holy fucking shit that's terrifying. Morbid fascination holds Gary's attention for much longer than it really should; then he swallows hard and turns back to Kurt with a faint grin.

"...Knows how to put on one helluva show, eh?" He chuckles, perhaps a little too loud from his nerves, and suddenly the noises of Tom's feast stop. Gary does a double-take for the clearing. "--Shit. Uh--I'll distract him, you get the goods. Okay?"

"I don't want to use my abilities." Because of the beacon, because then it won't matter how slow this tree guy monster thing is, he'll be able to find Kurt just like anyone else in the Arena. Of course, for survival he would use it, but they don't have to engage this thing. Besides, if Gary is so eager to show off, then he can use his dam powers for something useful.

"You run for the stuff, I'll distract him." Kurt pronounces, rising from the poor cover they were getting from the bushes and striding right out in plain sight in order to avoid further argument, entirely ignoring just how terrible of an idea this entire endeavor is.

Perhaps it's an idea that would have worked if Tom were merely that one form, instead of wended to the entire forest itself. He walks his way slowly towards them, face turned towards them, but he takes in their presence through more than his dark-socketed eyes and the ear-like knots at the side of his head. He feels them in the grass below their feet, senses their vibrations in every fluttering leaf on the wind.

He leaves this body to collapse, and so it does, stopping dead and then dropping with a clatter and wet thud into a bundle of boughs and half-rotted leaves. He travels through the roots under the earth, appearing again as another doppelganger wrenches itself free from the tree trunk nearest Kurt and Gary. The beacon travels to his new body.

"My my, what do I have here?" A vine whips out to try and catch Gary's ankles. "An X-Man and his friend? What a treat."

Gary responds with a pointed, mature retort of mimicking Kurt talking with his hand and rolling his eyes. Stick in the mud. Sure, he doesn't really want to push himself either, not after that disaster at the Cornucopia, and there is perhaps an argument to be had (or shouted as Kurt walks into the clearing) about situational conveniences and spontaneity, but there's no way they're going to have that talk now. Not because of sticking to the job or anything, no--because suddenly Tom is gone, then back again, right between them.

If Gary had the foresight to consider his own constant beacon showing him off like Tom's is, maybe he would have planned a little better. But Gary has never been too strong of a planner. Instead he works with instinct and his naturally heightened reflexes, both of which cooperate nicely in these sorts of situations. The moment Tom reappears, Gary is springing away in the opposite direction, rolling further into the woods. Just going to have to take the scenic route, then.

Suddenly their foe is behind them with the sickening sound of a hollow body hitting the ground and then the cracking sound of splintering wood. Kurt whirls as the tree-man begins speaking and Gary tries to dodge the vine, falling into a crouch of his own that will allow him to easily jump from any attack aimed at him. Or at least any he sees.

'An X-Man.' he says, so this man knows of him and his team. Perhaps he's even a mutant himself. It might be worth trying to talk. He's terrifying to look at, it's true, but some of his classmates can be as well and they all are good people. He has to find out, before this escalates.

"Yes. Please, we're just hungry. We didn't intend to steal... well we did, but not- I mean-" Kurt makes an impatiently frustrated noise, angry at himself that he can't say what he needs to, angry at the damn sword for not coming out of the rock, angry at Gary for this stupid idea in the first place, angry at the Arena for existing. He's just angry.

"Let us go and I won't have to hurt you."

"You could have asked politely, couldn't you have, lads?" Tom's new face crumples with crinkles like the corner of a bough as he lashes out with roots to try and grab Gary as he runs. The ivy and roots attack Gary from each tree, making getting away from the trees, at least, a better option. "Leaving so soon?"

He catches how young Kurt is, younger even than his version of Nightcrawler and he were the first time they met. He grins and those strangely human teeth seem to glitter even as sap drips down from them.

"What are you going to do, Wagner? Teleport at me? Am I supposed to be allergic to purple smoke?" He flings a root up like a trap toward Kurt's feet, trying to bring him to the ground. "You don't know me, 'tis a shame. You ought to be well aware of Black Tom Cassidy."

It's times like these where even an ounce of common sense would do Gary wonders--enough to recognize that trying to run away from the trees by hiding into a forest is just about the silliest thing he could have done--but alas, instinct leads him the wrong way. It's mere seconds before the vegetation rears up and snags his bloodied foot, instantly tripping him. He gasps, thinks to yell some kind of warning, but the breath comes only after he faceplants in the dirt.

Tom's victory speech goes unheard over the blood pounding in his ears, unfortunately. Not that Gary would be listening anyways; he's far too busy trying to struggle away from the encroaching roots, tugging and tearing with significantly more strength than someone his size should have. The delicate edge of his abilities that enticed him at the Cornucopia is starting too look more tantalizing. If he can't get out of this trap, he might be forced to take it.

He can't teleport, he's trained himself out of it by now in the Arena, and so his reaction to the root is a dive sideways instead of a bamf behind their barky foe. The name doesn't ring a bell but the sapient tree knows his name and that is enough to give him pause, to keep talking.

"If you know me, you know I have more tricks than just teleportation." Like trying to pull whoever this Black Tom is' attention on him entirely instead of terrorizing Gary yards away. He's starting already to understand that the supplies are forfeit. The only goal now is escape.

Scrabbling on the ground for a moment, Kurt finds a solid branch and wrenches it up from the forest floor, brandishing it like a saber at Tom with his stance mimicking those late-night swashbuckling movies he loves so much. "If it's a fight you want, then fight!"

It's clear that Tom isn't immune to pain, as he flinches and thrashes when Gary starts ripping at the roots with surprising force. He redoubles his efforts to tie Gary down, this time swinging an entire bough at Gary's head.

"What are you going to do, hit me with a branch? Night vision and sticking to walls won't do you well here." There's an angry tone his voice now, not the sugary taunt from earlier but something furious and sadistic, and he lunges for Kurt with his humanoid body, foot long claws on each hand extended and strange knot of a mouth filled with spittle and mulch.

As we've already seen, Gary is far from immune to distraction even with his improved reflexes. His focus is on those roots; he finds some satisfaction in feeling them rip under his hands and watching them flinch away like a bunch of frightened animals, not necessarily in their pain, but in that he feels he's making some progress, some kind of impression. It's a powerful compulsion.

It is not nearly as powerful as the bough that hits him upside the head.

The branch connects with a dull whump, hard enough to throw Gary several inches off the ground before he comes rolling to a stop a few feet down the path. Stars dance in his vision and the headache he's been ignoring since the Cornucopia claws with renewed vigor at the back of his eyes. He is thoroughly dazed and will need a minute of recovery. Hopefully Kurt can hold is own until then.

Kurt barely has time to acknowledge Gary being hit before he's trying to avoid similar, the chilling wooden form of Black Tom calling his bluff and springing with surprising speed. Surprising enough to catch Kurt cleanly, piercing his shoulder and sending blood spraying. He gives a strangled cry and awkwardly tries to bludgeon his assailant with the branch in his arms, but strength seeps out of him with every drop of blood.

But he'll use every last bit of strength to struggle, at least, trying to keep Tom's attention on him.

Three-fingered hands scrabble at Tom's back, the young mutant staying near instead of bolting like he wants. He won't leave Gary, even if any fear of teleportation is long gone. It's the Danger Room training - the X-Men training - that kicks in instead. Protect the team. Protect each other.

It works; Tom's attention is thoroughly on Kurt, and while he tries to wallop on Gary's stunned body with the branch, he's really just thrashing it against the ground, unable to aim while he's got his focus on the more interesting, more satisfying, and more nimble target.

"The longer you make this, the more it'll hurt, boyo," Tom says, trying to slash at Kurt as Kurt scrambles over him. Tom's nowhere near as quick as Kurt, but when Kurt snaps a branch off red, blood-streaked sap spills down Tom's back, sticky as glue, and Tom hopes it'll slow Kurt down some.

The distraction is plenty of time for Gary to recover. He comes to his senses slowly, but reacts much faster, rolling sluggishly away from the thrashing branch and staggering to his feet. One hand makes a blind grab for the awful pain in his head and finds his hair matted with blood. He isn't sure how to react to this. Fear? Remorse? Neither of those seem like options that will end well, given the situation.

Oh, right--the situation. Gary blinks away his blurred vision and focuses in on the scuffle in the clearing. He has no real plan of attack, here, but he knows that he doesn't want Kurt to get hurt more than he already is. He'll figure out how to get to that end when he gets there. Meanwhile, he gets there--at a sprint, with a yell and a flying tackle at Tom's side, aiming to wrap his arms around his neck.

Kurt gets stuck in the sap and if it weren't for the clear and immediate danger, he might have contemplated the ridiculousness of being stuck via sticky sap to the back of a super villain. Blood leaks down his arm, staining his dark fur even darker as he struggles to gain a better purchase on Tom, to at least do some damage before--

Before Gary does something monumentally stupid like throw himself at Black Tom instead of running the other direction as fast as he can.

"You idiot!" Kurt's so angry at Gary's move that he barely feels his wound for a moment, clenching his teeth in frustrated irritation before trying to adapt to the situation, trying to see any way out of this now.

The only thing he can think to do is grab Gray and teleport away. He doesn't want to, doesn't care for the idea of a beacon over his head for the next several hours, but if it's that or die...

Tom hisses and tries to knock Gary away with a backhand that is too slow and too late - but he's literally got his roots down in the ground, and so he leans from the impact but doesn't topple. For a moment he, Gary and Kurt, piled atop each other, stand at an insane angle before Tom straightens up, from nearly parallel to the ground. And then there's a bamfing sound and the stink of sulfur and they're gone.

"Run away, little X-Man..." Tom taunts, looking around for the beacon - but his eyesight in this form is pretty poor, full of more shadows than colors, and so he can't seem to find where they went. He starts to spread his senses out, instead, feeling his way through every leaf and blade of grass.

The forest might bother some of the other Tributes, but the darkness and the general creep factor of the place is old hat for Zed. Likewise, seeing a...tree-monster-thing might be a cause for alarm for other Tributes, but Zed is the Emperor of Darkness, head of the Shadow Line. Weird monsters are, in a way, more normal for Zed than ordinary humans. He's lurking in the forest when he hears that splintering noise, and curiosity draws him to that location. "...so what are you supposed to be?"

"A mutant. And what are you? A lost traveler looking to be added to my graveyard?"

With his new form, Tom's taken on his old flair for the melodramatic and ridiculous. He tucks the note back next to the knot of the tree and moves towards Zed's voice, not walking so much as slithering like an upright snake not with legs but with a mound of boughs and mulch and leaves that moves with him with a distinct damp rustling sound.

"Come out where I can see you. I've been longing for a challenge."

Zed just laughs at this. "Hardly." Lost traveler? Him? "I'm the darkness itself." Which isn't anything he'd be proud of under normal circumstances, but here? His pride won't let him admit to otherwise. He's got power in this place, and he strides forward towards that slithering snake-monster like it's the most boring, unimpressive thing he's seen all day.

"Then I might finally have an enemy worth his spit, don't you think? I've been so bored out here with nothing but magicians and mutants shambling around."

And with that, the beacon above Tom's head blazes as he whips vines out to try and bind Zed. The branches and ivy come from all directions, trying to restrict Zed's arms; roots surge upwards from the earth to try and trap his feet.

"I'd say you've bitten off more than you can chew." Zed's response is automatic, and his own marker lights up. He tries to jump out of the way, and there's a pulse of darkness around him, swallowing him up. When it clears, two things happen. The first is that Zed's form has changed. He's humanoid, but not human, and he is now holding a sword.

The second, more pressing one, is that the punishments for using powers are still in effect, and that there's now suddenly fire raining down on him from above. It's meant for him, and it slams into him as he tries to parry those branches with his sword, for there's no way he could have managed to dodge both.

Maybe he got lucky and some of it hit those vines, but maybe he didn't. He's just going to try to ignore that pain and try to keep hacking at those vines. He has also failed to realize that the tail of the long coat that comes with this monster form is still on fire.

"I'd say we'll see the answer to that soon en- what the devil?" Tom is more startled by the fire than he is by Zed's transformation (he's seen some shit from the X-Men), and the branches and vines surrounding Zed - the ones that haven't been sliced off - recoil. Tom yells. A cry emerges seemingly from a hundred voices, as if each tree around them is howling in pain. Fire races up some of the drier parts of his body, making snapping, crackling, popping noises and giving off a scent that's less like woodsmoke than it is like burning hair.

"Did you do that?" Tom retreats a bit, moving less like a person than like a wave, pulling up the grass around him in a sort of serpentine roll.

Well, at least Zed's got the satisfaction of making this jerk yell, even as he's trying to put his own fire out. He's smoking, though if there's any odor to burning darkness, it's masked by the strange smell Tom's giving off. He most certainly did not do that, but he doesn't want to let Tom know that. It triggered when he changed, just as rats had attacked and ceilings had collapsed when he'd used his powers earlier..."Do I look stupid enough to set myself on fire?"

And really, he'd love to follow that up with a pulse of darkness, but he's not willing to set himself on fire again after saying that. He's regained a little of his own footing, and he's charging at Tom with his sword.

"Do you really want the answer to that question?"

Tom doesn't meet Zed with vines, this time, but instead with those foot-long claws that ornament each of his fingers. The sword slices through two of Tom's fingers, and he shrieks again, slashing at Zed's stomach in an attempt to disembowel darkness itself.

Around them, the dried grass and forest burns, filling the air with choking smoke.

Zed starts to laugh in satisfaction once he's successfully removed two of those fingers, but it's cut short when Tom slashes at his stomach. It's not successful enough for a disemboweling, but it does connect, and those claws raking across his midsection make Zed stumble back as darkness oozes from the wounds.

"So. You bleed after all." He's emboldened by the hit, although he still has to overcome the intense pain the fire's wreaking across his extended and decentralized nervous system. Another vine shoots forward, although this one less like a whip and instead pointed, looking to puncture deep into Zed's chest.

"Not like you." Zed sidesteps that vine. It's not enough to escape having it make an angry gash on his arm, but he was bracing for that. After all, if he escaped it completely, he wouldn't be in range to try to lop it off with his sword. He'll be feeling these wounds later, but for now? He's angry enough to try to push through the pain.

"Ah, but yours must have limits." Tom hisses when the vine comes off, but as soon as it does he has another whipping for Zed's wrist to try and disarm him. "You could continue cutting daisies all day on me and I wouldn't tire. Maybe you should run."

It's all talk, all boasting and puffery, because this isn't a fight Tom knows he can win. "If I let you."

Zed knows he shouldn't be hanging around for too much longer, either. He's already weakened from the fire, and though this is a dark forest, it's still daytime. He's weaker during the day--it's a bad time to fight. But he's not about to stop his boasting, either. He swings the sword to block that vine, too, though it's not as fast as he'd like. "What, and miss out on this exercise? It was getting kind of boring around here before this."

"A true lament," Tom grunts, trying to lift up the grass beneath Zed's feet to trip him. "Perhaps we should call this a tie, so we can continue to entertain each other in the coming weeks."

Zed laughs. It's a good cover for the way the grass has made him stumble. Not enough to knock him over, but enough to throw him off balance. "Alright. We'll meet again for a real fight once some more of the less-entertaining people are out of the way."

"Consider it a promise, then, lad." Tom backs away, pulling with him the grass and tendrils of plant matter. "Until we meet again."

Spoilers: Tom has no intention of meeting him again.

All things considered, things had seemingly quieted down inside the arena. The bats had stopped their nightly attacks, though it had cost them Lilah. The fish and frogs had kept them fed, without having to risk traveling and hunting. The cries of the ghostly voices had even begun to lose their sway.

It was a respite, badly needed. ...For their bodies at least.

It was doing nothing to ease the awkwardness between Maxwell and Dorian. Maxwell tried to keep his distance, but it hadn't actually gotten any easier. Especially when the man insisted on accompanying him when he might have otherwise gone alone to check the traps he'd set. Especially when Bayard, their small, distracting chaperone, broke away to collect some water and left them alone together.

"...Not much further," Maxwell murmured after a pregnant beat.

"Considering how many times I've heard the words 'not much further' only to find out that there happens to be a cliff in the way, you'll forgive me for taking that with a grain of salt," Dorian quipped, apparently completely himself.

He wasn't, of course, but he needed to be.

Not only for Maxwell's sake, but for his own.

"If it wasn't for the whispering promise of food on the end, you'd find me a much more vocal complainant, but as it is, my stomach has the best of me."

There was a small twitch around Maxwell's mouth, pulling at his lips, but it was delayed. The act of a smile, rather than one entirely honest.

Playing the part as best as he could, as tired as he was.

"No cliffs, I promise. Unless the Gamemakers have done some significant redecorating in the last day." He led them further into the forest, the trees growing closer together, the path darkening. "No guarantees about the wolves, however."

He was used to the strained, delayed smile by now. He felt guilty for it, but he was used to it.

"Ah, well, I haven't had an excuse to have myself struck by lightning in the last three days, so I could use a new one." He resisted the urge to summon a magical light - joking or no, he didn't want to risk the consequences unless he had to.

"Let's try to avoid both, if we can," Maxwell replied with an airy snort. "My eyebrows still haven't fully come back from the last time."

And as tempting as it was, imagining a chance to finally rest, the absolute last thing he wanted was to bring Dorian and Bayard along with him.

Not again.

He'd caused enough grief.

"Maker knows I'd never forgive myself for tarnishing that handsome visage of yours," Dorian quipped with a smile, though it faltered slightly as he wondered if he'd overstepped. He cleared his throat, turning his head only to spot something odd off between the trees.

"Well, that looks peculiar," he murmured as he carefully stepped toward it. There was something in that tree. He could just barely see it, the corner of something--

It still stung a bit, like an old wound on a rainy day, but he was getting used to it. He was used to carrying burdens, what was one more?

"Neither would my escort," he murmured back, as if the conversation was nothing was casual. Friends, on a stroll. "She's sold it to some leather-makers--"

Frowning at the tree ahead of them, Maxwell glanced back, checking his path. Yes, they were going in the right direction-- turning back, he caught at Dorian's elbow quickly as he started to move closer to the tree.

"It didn't look like before."

And that immediately made him uncomfortable.

"Be careful."

Tom's been watching for a while, idle and patient not out of strategy but because he sees no need to rush the situation. In the woods, he may as well be a god, fueled by power as ancient as the earth itself and as unique as the very DNA which grants him him abilities. The trees seem to pause for a moment, as if suddenly every leaf in the trees has ceased rustling in the wind, like the entirety of the forest is one great muscle tensing in wait-

-and then a root rips out of the dirt, wrapping itself around Dorian's knee, yanking at him and dragging him into the dark of the forest. A second one quickly follows, shooting for Maxwell's wrists, and a strand of ivy drops for each of them like a sort of noose seeking their necks. Tom emerges like some sort of tidal wave made of wood and mulch in a nook between two trunks, semi-human, dark-socketed eyes glowing and a beacon appearing above him to mark him as a powered Tribute.

"Well, well, well. Top of the morning, is it? Or is it afternoon?" Tom's mouth has very human teeth in it, but his voice seems like the slithering noise of feet running through wet mulch and mud.

He'd been walking carefully, but the root was impossible to see before it was on him - before his back hit the ground with a smack and he was being pulled into the woods.

Without even waiting for Tom to finish his sentence, the second he saw the beacon appear his own flared suddenly above his head, and his hands shot out in the tree's direction with a massive whirlwind of flame.

He tried to remember if he'd ever fought a tree before. Probably? Probably. The teeth upped the creepy factor by around a thousand, though.

There was barely time for Maxwell to grab for Dorian as he was ripped away. None at all to go for the knife in his boot. He wasn't even entirely certain was going on until the root had already twisted about his wrists and wrenching forward.

He hit the soft earth with one knee, the other heel digging in, fighting back against the dragging force. Knowing instantly, instinctively, that going down into that dark, damp earth would not end well for him.

He heard the rush of air, felt the burst of heat, and he twisted away from it. Pulling hard at the root as he did, trying to snap it.

Edited 2015-06-29 02:12 (UTC)

The flames surprise Tom, and the strange eyes of his doppelganger are burned out right there. There's a cry that seems to come from the very forest itself, as if from a hundred voices, but the roots and vines tighten and another body seems to appear, massive and muddy and arboreal and with the same awful teeth and mossy hair and claws like rakes. Tom throws that body upon Dorian, scoring at Dorian's chest with those claws while the vines and ivy try to bind Maxwell tighter and choke him.

Dorian's fire isn't the only conflagration here, as lightning strikes in the field not far from there, setting the grass ablaze. That awful many-voiced shriek sounds again, and Tom pauses as if in pain before driving his stakelike fingers back at Dorian.

He tries to throw up a barrier, but they've never been good for close-quarters combat, and the claws are ripping into his chest, bright pain exploding through him. He swears, viciously, loudly, and yells before his palm thrusts out. Lightning leaps from his flesh, chaining from one tree to the next, no apparent focus save to hit absolutely everything that he can reach.

The ground rumbles beneath him and the sky opens up - the gamemaker's answer to his lightning is to give him one of their own. He barely has any warning before he is struck. It doesn't kill him, though his heart does stop for three or four beats, and he passes out. His sweat from the fire is what saved him, the lightning arcing down his skin rather than through his heart, following the trail of least resistance.

Maxwell wrestled with the roots, twisting and pulling, until he could at least reach his boot and fumble the knife free. He cut himself, along with the writhing white whip tangled around his wrists, but he felt the pain of the wound only distantly.

If anything, it only spurred him to fight harder.

He swung the blade blindly above his head until it caught and then sawed, hacking his way through the root trying to strangle him. It gave with a wet sounding snap and he gasped hoarsely, dragging a desperate breath into his starved lungs.

And promptly began to choke again on the hot, thickening smoke and the bitter, biting ozone.

Still he found his feet somehow, and lunged for strange, twisted body looming above Dorian, putting all of his considerable weight and size into a vicious tackle.

The lightning, both Dorian's and the Gamemakers', hits Tom too, and the resultant shriek seems to lurch out of the earth like a belch, sudden and gusting. Tom's thrown from atop Dorian, and moments later Maxwell is atop him, slashing with his knife. Tom claws at him, but he's disoriented, his pain spread out not just over his body but throughout all the plants around them, across the miles of timberland.

"I'll kill you!" he howls, no longer snide and taunting but purely furious, vicious, aiming his clawed fingers like stakes for Maxwell's gut while roots and vines try to pull Maxwell's head back so Tom can get a clear shot at his throat. On the ground, creepers and roots start to wrap around Dorian's throat.

Moth Delivers a Message [Closed]

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[cw: gore]

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thanks, rng, for suddenly fire

i went to the store to get more FIRE

FIRE BAD

FIRE BURNING ON THE DANCEFLOOR

ALL FIRE ALL THE TIME

This Thread is on FIIIIIIRE

just a hunka hunka burnin' thread

great threads of fire

burninating the countryside

you're gonna hear me burn

disco inferno

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Week 4: Bayard, Dorian, Maxwell, Tom - Death

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