Re: The Grand Battle S2G1! [Round Three: Water...place!]
01-20-2011, 09:05 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Schazer.
The blue head lifted labouriously, red-rimmed eyes glaring hangdog baleful at the tiny Xadrez as he rose past the huge, collapsing bubble round Hydresther. The way it stared, it seemed to imply the ceaseless torrent of sludge spewing from its mouth was the tactician’s fault. Xadrez noted with a glance that the head, distended even more hideously by the curvature of air and water, had spotted him, and scribbled the data on his chessboard. Beneath him, his bubble-lift threatened to break apart as a grey head snaked about and roared with a noise like machine prematurely meeting concrete. The spirit wavered, his still-rising pocket of air threatening to spill out from underneath him and cast him into the slums of Hydresther.
Fingers wrapped their way round the knife, and slammed it tip-first into the front of the chessboard. The whole assemblage tilted, the pocket of air suspending it glubbing sluggishly out from underneath, tipping the disc on a crash-course on a hopefully-smooth path into the main dome, and with a less-smooth touchdown on Cyk’nl. The surface tension of the giant bubble almost bounced Xadrez right off, before the dagger demanded a way in.
Everything ever promptly inverted, to the peal of wingbeats. It was like trying to steer loose change to some mythical Atlantean haven in the corner of a washing machine reserved for the Pocketly Forsaken. Xadrez snarled, flipping head over chessboard too wildly to sheath his knife, a neck big enough to march a funeral procession down hurtling ponderously closer-
Xadrez would’ve smirked in satisfaction if he had the features, as the obsidian disc axed neatly into the bloated, drowned-corpse sponge the blue head seemed to be made of. It arched its neck and uttered a secondary noise of choked pain as liquid filth poured its burning way down its windpipe. He scratched a few more notes, and then sheathed his dagger.
This was obviously going to be the easiest of the heads to defeat, assuming Cyk’nl’s monster could even be killed this way, but hell, Xadrez had to start somewhere. He levered his disc out; the creature’s blood-substitute evaporated off the glowing notations with an eye-watering sizzle. The dagger unsurprisingly struggled to near the creature’s overripe-fruit flesh, which burst brackish blood at the slightest touch or scrape. A bit of dragging and prodding finally freed the chessboard, which righted itself atop the hydra’s broad back. The spirit drifted Cyk’nlward, further from the languorous sway of the septic serpent’s neck; the better to study the bioarchitectural bulk of the city above him. Spongy, cerulean flesh curved upward until the point where it emerged from Cyk’nl’s underbelly, too steep for Xadrez to ascend. He coasted to the point his board started to protest the feasibility of the slope, then prodded the waterlogged wall in front of him with his dagger. Again, its tip seemed to shy from the tender flesh, knowing that even without a sharpened edge it could easily spill the creature’s toxic blood.
The dragon-hangar head swung up and around, organelles peering over the socket-rims of its cavernous eyes to stare down at the intruder. Its coppery jaws opened with a clang, a poisonously sunny gecko-like creature crawling all over the hydra’s teeth before it dropped like a stone toward Hydresther. Xadrez sheathed his dagger, hoping this sewerage-hydra head was tender enough to yield to his spectral fist. The tactician tapped his knuckle to it, feeling for the borderline constituent parts of it he could fool himself into considering as non-living, then took his best swing and ended up up past his elbow in corrosive sludge. It prickled, while the hiss of sewage on chessboard masked the snap far below of the gold dragon’s membranous fin-wings arresting its fall.
Xadrez lifted his chessboard with obvious effort, before letting its edge bite into the hydra. He pulled out his arm, shook off the sludge with a look of disgust, then raised his fist to do it again. The head swung dolefully round at this affront, but couldn’t actually lift lest it inhale more of its own miasmic mire. Then the gold dragon swooped up and latched onto its face, claws digging into its droopy features for purchase, ignoring its protesting gurgles. Xadrez’ response was to punch another hole in the monster. Wound it, make it retreat inward, dragging the tactician with it up to the inorganic, the hull, something to carve and shuck and expose with all the elegant simplicity of a dagger’s twist-
The grotesque little lizard had clambered onto the sludge hydra’s back, its cruel, hooked claws tearing up the waterlogged tissue, leaking ichor. The hydra shuddered, and Cyk’nl seemed a sudden metre closer.
The slinking, snarling dragon, however, had crossed twenty in that same time, and showed no signs of stopping as it tore a putrid path across the hydra’s neck. With a sigh, the warlord jammed his tether into the monster, and spun fluidly to brandish his dagger at the arch-backed salamandrake. Its spine rippled like a cat’s, pre-hairball; and it spat something equally foul-smelling but significantly more corrosive at Xadrez. He sidestepped (drifted?) it, and was rather pleased with the foot-wide cigarette burn it left on the hydra’s neck behind him. The duo’s living platform shuddered pleasingly, and retreated further, this time dragging the chessboard impaled in its bulk with it. The gold dragon spat another globule, before realising it didn’t do much to the obsidian disc, and opted to scramble its claw-bloodying way up the hydra’s back instead. Xadrez jabbed it at strategic points with his dagger to keep it at bay without crippling it – those gouging claws scrambling all over the hydra were doing the tactician’s job for him. Seeing as his weapon acted more like a truncheon than a knife, though, crippling it wasn’t that much of an issue. Xadrez’ own maneuverability was, on the other hand - lodged in place while the skulking, honey-coloured beast scrambled around him in its rather uninspired but persistent attempts to remove him.
Another mouthful of bile missed Xadrez’ head; another weeping burn to the hydra. The turbine was a mere two arm’s reaches away, but then gold slithered between the spirit and the city and spat acid derision all over Xadrez.
Raising an arm proved useless; it just meant he was now missing a forearm in addition to a left shoulder and side of his face. The dragon snarled with satisfaction, then unhooked its carving-knife claws and fell at the tactician.
being dislodged is highly suboptimal
To otherwise distract
Xadrez raised his knife as if to ineffectually parry, then stabbed it into the festering blast burn on the hydra’s back. He stabbed it. He struck true, the motion free of tilt or angle to let the dagger glance to the side.
And the blade, drowning in hydra blood, screeched. It was even setting Xadrez’ recently ventilated outline ashimmer, and the gold dragon didn’t stand a hope. It landed in a tangled heap on the chessboard, failing to escape while also covering its ears from the noise. It eventually writhed its way off the septic head’s back, this time without the sound of its wings catching it. The other heads of the hydra could hear the cacophony too, and didn’t sound particularly pacified by it either. The grey one with several rows of glowing eyes unhinged both its jaws and wreaked stream-crossed havoc across what was left of Hydresther as it roared.
Xadrez, meanwhile, had realised; as the turbine’s mouth approached in time with the head’s retreat; that in its present hysterical state, the knife was buzzing to the point it couldn’t cut anything. Stabbing himself with it didn’t shut it up, or clean the blood off. All it did was lend the spirit the sensation of a jackhammer striking his chessboard. Which was still wedged a decent way into the blue neck.
Cyk’nl’s underbelly, which less than a minute ago looked like access - the forced mate in six - was now looking far less helpful. And a lot more impassably solid. The knife was screaming; Cyk'nl's monster thrashed and howled, Copper clamping its jaws round Blue as though the noise what that poor stupid creature's fault. What Xadrez would've given to be able to observe all this from anywhere but here.
Spoiler
The blue head lifted labouriously, red-rimmed eyes glaring hangdog baleful at the tiny Xadrez as he rose past the huge, collapsing bubble round Hydresther. The way it stared, it seemed to imply the ceaseless torrent of sludge spewing from its mouth was the tactician’s fault. Xadrez noted with a glance that the head, distended even more hideously by the curvature of air and water, had spotted him, and scribbled the data on his chessboard. Beneath him, his bubble-lift threatened to break apart as a grey head snaked about and roared with a noise like machine prematurely meeting concrete. The spirit wavered, his still-rising pocket of air threatening to spill out from underneath him and cast him into the slums of Hydresther.
Fingers wrapped their way round the knife, and slammed it tip-first into the front of the chessboard. The whole assemblage tilted, the pocket of air suspending it glubbing sluggishly out from underneath, tipping the disc on a crash-course on a hopefully-smooth path into the main dome, and with a less-smooth touchdown on Cyk’nl. The surface tension of the giant bubble almost bounced Xadrez right off, before the dagger demanded a way in.
Everything ever promptly inverted, to the peal of wingbeats. It was like trying to steer loose change to some mythical Atlantean haven in the corner of a washing machine reserved for the Pocketly Forsaken. Xadrez snarled, flipping head over chessboard too wildly to sheath his knife, a neck big enough to march a funeral procession down hurtling ponderously closer-
Xadrez would’ve smirked in satisfaction if he had the features, as the obsidian disc axed neatly into the bloated, drowned-corpse sponge the blue head seemed to be made of. It arched its neck and uttered a secondary noise of choked pain as liquid filth poured its burning way down its windpipe. He scratched a few more notes, and then sheathed his dagger.
This was obviously going to be the easiest of the heads to defeat, assuming Cyk’nl’s monster could even be killed this way, but hell, Xadrez had to start somewhere. He levered his disc out; the creature’s blood-substitute evaporated off the glowing notations with an eye-watering sizzle. The dagger unsurprisingly struggled to near the creature’s overripe-fruit flesh, which burst brackish blood at the slightest touch or scrape. A bit of dragging and prodding finally freed the chessboard, which righted itself atop the hydra’s broad back. The spirit drifted Cyk’nlward, further from the languorous sway of the septic serpent’s neck; the better to study the bioarchitectural bulk of the city above him. Spongy, cerulean flesh curved upward until the point where it emerged from Cyk’nl’s underbelly, too steep for Xadrez to ascend. He coasted to the point his board started to protest the feasibility of the slope, then prodded the waterlogged wall in front of him with his dagger. Again, its tip seemed to shy from the tender flesh, knowing that even without a sharpened edge it could easily spill the creature’s toxic blood.
The dragon-hangar head swung up and around, organelles peering over the socket-rims of its cavernous eyes to stare down at the intruder. Its coppery jaws opened with a clang, a poisonously sunny gecko-like creature crawling all over the hydra’s teeth before it dropped like a stone toward Hydresther. Xadrez sheathed his dagger, hoping this sewerage-hydra head was tender enough to yield to his spectral fist. The tactician tapped his knuckle to it, feeling for the borderline constituent parts of it he could fool himself into considering as non-living, then took his best swing and ended up up past his elbow in corrosive sludge. It prickled, while the hiss of sewage on chessboard masked the snap far below of the gold dragon’s membranous fin-wings arresting its fall.
Xadrez lifted his chessboard with obvious effort, before letting its edge bite into the hydra. He pulled out his arm, shook off the sludge with a look of disgust, then raised his fist to do it again. The head swung dolefully round at this affront, but couldn’t actually lift lest it inhale more of its own miasmic mire. Then the gold dragon swooped up and latched onto its face, claws digging into its droopy features for purchase, ignoring its protesting gurgles. Xadrez’ response was to punch another hole in the monster. Wound it, make it retreat inward, dragging the tactician with it up to the inorganic, the hull, something to carve and shuck and expose with all the elegant simplicity of a dagger’s twist-
The grotesque little lizard had clambered onto the sludge hydra’s back, its cruel, hooked claws tearing up the waterlogged tissue, leaking ichor. The hydra shuddered, and Cyk’nl seemed a sudden metre closer.
The slinking, snarling dragon, however, had crossed twenty in that same time, and showed no signs of stopping as it tore a putrid path across the hydra’s neck. With a sigh, the warlord jammed his tether into the monster, and spun fluidly to brandish his dagger at the arch-backed salamandrake. Its spine rippled like a cat’s, pre-hairball; and it spat something equally foul-smelling but significantly more corrosive at Xadrez. He sidestepped (drifted?) it, and was rather pleased with the foot-wide cigarette burn it left on the hydra’s neck behind him. The duo’s living platform shuddered pleasingly, and retreated further, this time dragging the chessboard impaled in its bulk with it. The gold dragon spat another globule, before realising it didn’t do much to the obsidian disc, and opted to scramble its claw-bloodying way up the hydra’s back instead. Xadrez jabbed it at strategic points with his dagger to keep it at bay without crippling it – those gouging claws scrambling all over the hydra were doing the tactician’s job for him. Seeing as his weapon acted more like a truncheon than a knife, though, crippling it wasn’t that much of an issue. Xadrez’ own maneuverability was, on the other hand - lodged in place while the skulking, honey-coloured beast scrambled around him in its rather uninspired but persistent attempts to remove him.
Another mouthful of bile missed Xadrez’ head; another weeping burn to the hydra. The turbine was a mere two arm’s reaches away, but then gold slithered between the spirit and the city and spat acid derision all over Xadrez.
Raising an arm proved useless; it just meant he was now missing a forearm in addition to a left shoulder and side of his face. The dragon snarled with satisfaction, then unhooked its carving-knife claws and fell at the tactician.
being dislodged is highly suboptimal
To otherwise distract
Xadrez raised his knife as if to ineffectually parry, then stabbed it into the festering blast burn on the hydra’s back. He stabbed it. He struck true, the motion free of tilt or angle to let the dagger glance to the side.
And the blade, drowning in hydra blood, screeched. It was even setting Xadrez’ recently ventilated outline ashimmer, and the gold dragon didn’t stand a hope. It landed in a tangled heap on the chessboard, failing to escape while also covering its ears from the noise. It eventually writhed its way off the septic head’s back, this time without the sound of its wings catching it. The other heads of the hydra could hear the cacophony too, and didn’t sound particularly pacified by it either. The grey one with several rows of glowing eyes unhinged both its jaws and wreaked stream-crossed havoc across what was left of Hydresther as it roared.
Xadrez, meanwhile, had realised; as the turbine’s mouth approached in time with the head’s retreat; that in its present hysterical state, the knife was buzzing to the point it couldn’t cut anything. Stabbing himself with it didn’t shut it up, or clean the blood off. All it did was lend the spirit the sensation of a jackhammer striking his chessboard. Which was still wedged a decent way into the blue neck.
Cyk’nl’s underbelly, which less than a minute ago looked like access - the forced mate in six - was now looking far less helpful. And a lot more impassably solid. The knife was screaming; Cyk'nl's monster thrashed and howled, Copper clamping its jaws round Blue as though the noise what that poor stupid creature's fault. What Xadrez would've given to be able to observe all this from anywhere but here.
peace to the unsung peace to the martyrs | i'm johnny rotten appleseed
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow
clouds is shaky love | broke as hell but i got a bunch of ringtones
eyes blood red bruise aubergine | Sue took something now Sue doesn't sleep | saint average, day in the life of
woke up in the noon smelling doom and death | out the house, great outdoors
staying warm in arctic blizzard | that's my battle 'til I get inanimate | still up in the same clothes living like a gameshow