Re: The Savage Brawl [Round 3: Abandoned Park]
06-25-2010, 05:30 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Ekelhaft, burbling with a combination of anger and the thrill of hunting down a skilled opponent, had wasted only moments making its decision. Navigating a maze would be unacceptable; it would take far too much time and had no guarantee that any path actually lead to the slippery lich. For all anyone knew, Konka Rar was surrounded by a circle of earth with no way in. Climbing, too, promised little progress. Like any such being faced with such a Gordian knot, Ekelhaft drew its sword, launching itself teethfirst towards the hard-packed soil that made up the walls of the maze.
Digging short tunnels through porous limestone was one thing, but bursting in and out of magically-compacted ground was quite another. Sinewy roots and unexpected deposits of hard stone hampered the slime's spinning fangs, and the dense loam allowed next to no flow through it. Some three thicknesses of wall later, Ekelhaft felt little closer to its target; it was fairly certain it was headed straight towards the center, but infuriated that it had no way of knowing whether or not the lich had moved. Or set traps.
[background=silver:1l22y0tc]Magic or none, Hoss's senses were much more acute and wide-ranging than Ekelhaft's; hundreds of eyes afforded keen vision and an entire body that was a sort of sensory organ along the lines of tastetouchsmelltremor meant the slime was always well-aware of its immediate surroundings, but it couldn't compete with the array of enhanced organs and mechanical detectors the cyborg was in possession of. It was no surprise, therefore, that it was he who was aware of the ooze first, rather than the other way around.
Hoss had been navigating the maze by less forceful means than his quarry, forming a map in his mind of the twists and turns and dead-ends; this approach was effective both for finding his way through the maze, and finding his way to the old god. It was actually his more mundane detectors that alerted Hoss to Ekelhaft's presence before his attempts at divining the location of the madness aura; the cyborg could tell he was some thirty meters away from his target, and it was a fairly straight shot to approach.[/background:1l22y0tc]
Ekelhaft, burbling with a combination of anger and the thrill of hunting down a skilled opponent, had wasted only moments making its decision. Navigating a maze would be unacceptable; it would take far too much time and had no guarantee that any path actually lead to the slippery lich. For all anyone knew, Konka Rar was surrounded by a circle of earth with no way in. Climbing, too, promised little progress. Like any such being faced with such a Gordian knot, Ekelhaft drew its sword, launching itself teethfirst towards the hard-packed soil that made up the walls of the maze.
Digging short tunnels through porous limestone was one thing, but bursting in and out of magically-compacted ground was quite another. Sinewy roots and unexpected deposits of hard stone hampered the slime's spinning fangs, and the dense loam allowed next to no flow through it. Some three thicknesses of wall later, Ekelhaft felt little closer to its target; it was fairly certain it was headed straight towards the center, but infuriated that it had no way of knowing whether or not the lich had moved. Or set traps.
[background=silver:1l22y0tc]Magic or none, Hoss's senses were much more acute and wide-ranging than Ekelhaft's; hundreds of eyes afforded keen vision and an entire body that was a sort of sensory organ along the lines of tastetouchsmelltremor meant the slime was always well-aware of its immediate surroundings, but it couldn't compete with the array of enhanced organs and mechanical detectors the cyborg was in possession of. It was no surprise, therefore, that it was he who was aware of the ooze first, rather than the other way around.
Hoss had been navigating the maze by less forceful means than his quarry, forming a map in his mind of the twists and turns and dead-ends; this approach was effective both for finding his way through the maze, and finding his way to the old god. It was actually his more mundane detectors that alerted Hoss to Ekelhaft's presence before his attempts at divining the location of the madness aura; the cyborg could tell he was some thirty meters away from his target, and it was a fairly straight shot to approach.[/background:1l22y0tc]