Moth Delivers a Message [Closed]

[pimpcanes]

WHO| Black Tom and Lord Zed; Black Tom, Gary and Kurt; Black Tom, Dorian, Maxwell and a cameo from Bayard
WHAT| Superpowers showdown, then Gary and Kurt die!
WHEN| Week 3
WHERE| The forest
WARNINGS| Death! And gore!

For a while, Tom lies dormant, like a volcano awaiting the proper tessellation of tectonic plates to erupt. He coils into himself in the trees, inward-focused, self-absorbed on his own grief for Molotov, even as he suspects he'll see her again. With the exception of Arya, he interacts with no one, waiting out the weaklings of the Arena and preparing to assault the survivors of the final week. He outlasts the voices calling people into the woods. He's immune to the bats, which have no interest in his bloodless form.

But he becomes bored, and eventually he pulls himself out of one of the trees he's occupying. It cracks as if all the sap inside has frozen, and he emerges from it neither man nor plant, but some foul combination of the two: barky skin, black sockets for eyes, moss and algae and leaves forming a ruff of hair that extends from his crown down his back. And he tends to his cache of supplies, folded into the knot of another tree, looking over the note that Molotov sent him and wondering when the next time Arya will retrieve the goods will be.

The air is warm again, and he cricks his neck back to look at the sky, appearing more mutt than Tribute. His nostrils flare, pulling oxygen into lungs that have all but collapsed from disuse. With a splintering sound, he opens his mouth and frees his teeth.

Comments

[dreadinquisitor]

"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.

[tevintage]

"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--

[dreadinquisitor]

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."

[pimpcanes]

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.

[tevintage]

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.

[dreadinquisitor]

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.

[pimpcanes]

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.

[tevintage]

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.

[dreadinquisitor]

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.

[pimpcanes]

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.