RE: Grand Battle (S?) (Round 1: Matmor Atoll)
06-15-2013, 10:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-15-2013, 11:36 PM by Brom.)
Volter missed.
He slammed into the pillar about thirty feet from its top.
The electric crack of pain coursed up his left arm and jolted his mind out of the lofty elation of flight. He missed. He never missed.
With a clumsy tumble he managed to absorb the blow against his armored rerebrace and ended up in an ungraceful, clattering slide down the span of the pillar.
It's the air, he thought, twisting and grinding against the coral to halt himself. It's this drenched, massy, thrice-damned air.
He finished his fall clinging to the pillar in a graceless, distended bearhug. It was just narrow enough to climb, and Volter wheezed the pain away until he found the strength to pull himself up.
The coral scraped and rent as he ascended. He hated the scabrous feel of it, the lepidote, pitiless length of it. He hated it.
This was all maddeningly unfair.
He was weeping, he realized. Like a child separated from his favorite toy.
He pulled himself to the apex of the coral and sat and forced the heaving, ropy sobs into the viscid pit of his stomach. He had to stand up. He had to be useful. Examine the damage.
One pauldron was caved in. His breastplate was covered with a thousand tiny abrasions from the coral's petrified villi. His left palm, to his chagrin, was slick with inky, purple blood. It dripped in thick rivulets down into the cracks of his perch.
What was he standing on? He stepped to the sloped edge and looked down.
It had seemed a spear, he realized, because it was. A great, coral partizan, clutched in the carved fist of a submerged, grim-featured statue of some stodgy, armored creature, whose waist swelled and curled into a swooping tail. The damn thing was nearly as large as the opulent towers of the Duke's keep.
His gaze followed the arciform colossus into the depths of the water, and further.
His teeth clenched.
It was a sunken palace, rolling out below his feet. A huge maze of ghost-pale framework and disconcertingly organic geometries. Perhaps if Volter had been in possession of his senses, he would have found it strangely beautiful, but upon the wind-blasted spear, a fathomless distance from home, he was repulsed. It was as if the ocean had sprouted a flowering growth of infected calcification.
That was when he heard the crash of the huge ball hit the surface, and the burbling wail of a thousand living things below the membrane of the ocean.
He slammed into the pillar about thirty feet from its top.
The electric crack of pain coursed up his left arm and jolted his mind out of the lofty elation of flight. He missed. He never missed.
With a clumsy tumble he managed to absorb the blow against his armored rerebrace and ended up in an ungraceful, clattering slide down the span of the pillar.
It's the air, he thought, twisting and grinding against the coral to halt himself. It's this drenched, massy, thrice-damned air.
He finished his fall clinging to the pillar in a graceless, distended bearhug. It was just narrow enough to climb, and Volter wheezed the pain away until he found the strength to pull himself up.
The coral scraped and rent as he ascended. He hated the scabrous feel of it, the lepidote, pitiless length of it. He hated it.
This was all maddeningly unfair.
He was weeping, he realized. Like a child separated from his favorite toy.
He pulled himself to the apex of the coral and sat and forced the heaving, ropy sobs into the viscid pit of his stomach. He had to stand up. He had to be useful. Examine the damage.
One pauldron was caved in. His breastplate was covered with a thousand tiny abrasions from the coral's petrified villi. His left palm, to his chagrin, was slick with inky, purple blood. It dripped in thick rivulets down into the cracks of his perch.
What was he standing on? He stepped to the sloped edge and looked down.
It had seemed a spear, he realized, because it was. A great, coral partizan, clutched in the carved fist of a submerged, grim-featured statue of some stodgy, armored creature, whose waist swelled and curled into a swooping tail. The damn thing was nearly as large as the opulent towers of the Duke's keep.
His gaze followed the arciform colossus into the depths of the water, and further.
His teeth clenched.
It was a sunken palace, rolling out below his feet. A huge maze of ghost-pale framework and disconcertingly organic geometries. Perhaps if Volter had been in possession of his senses, he would have found it strangely beautiful, but upon the wind-blasted spear, a fathomless distance from home, he was repulsed. It was as if the ocean had sprouted a flowering growth of infected calcification.
That was when he heard the crash of the huge ball hit the surface, and the burbling wail of a thousand living things below the membrane of the ocean.
let's post righteously & having good times /// check out The Book of the Courtier /// ensure proper vegetable consumption /// also check out The Blade and the Cycle /// post it up!!