Initiation Battle - Argus Leandros v Heisty Beardo
Before the two combatants left, Cecilia was forced to make a decision. As much as she wanted to trust and have fun with people she wasn't totally familiar with as a way to open up, accepting the Crimson Demon's wager presented her with a no-win solution. She didn't want to go on a date with this guy; she barely knew him and had no clue of his nature, aside from a sudden and unexpected spurt of generosity. It also didn't pique her interest on the off-chance that he might lose the bet. She wouldn't know what to do with power over someone, and didn't think she deserved it.
"Um...sorry. I'm a bit busy and, I don't really know you."In the open area, Heisty Beardo stolidly awaited his challenger. Though his facade was totally impassive, his mind surged with ideas, tricks, traps, and strategies. First things first. Judging by Argus's taunt, it would be up to the Smith to initiate combat. Like a dozen streams converging into a delta and then flowing out to sea, the various strains of thought in Beardo's noggin melded into a single gameplan. He held out his hands, projecting a silver arclight that moulded itself into the shape of a crossbow in each. Without hesitation, he fired both. While the weapons themselves glinted with metal, the bolts were dark, small, and swift--not easy to see. Only an observant combatant with good eyes, with some experience in following small but speedy projectiles, would be able to make out that Beardo shot not at Argus, but
to either side of him. If the demon dodged to either side, he'd be punished. Beardo was not done, however. His crossbows evaporated as he slung a silver-wreathed throwing knife at Argus, this one direct and made to hit. It flew in an arc from Beardo's outstretched hand, slow enough to be effectively blocked.
While Argus would've been able to notice the oncoming projectiles, it didn't matter since he didn't go left or right, but up. He launched himself a decent distance into the air, his blade abandoned on the ground at the moment as he summoned a brace of throwing knives to launch at his foe. They would move decently fast, but were blockable, one of which would clash with the dagger that Heisty had tossed his way. That, however, was merely a distraction for Argus' next move.
Though Argus had taken a direction that Beardo hadn't expected, the result was ultimately the same. A thrown dagger clattered midflight against Beardo's own, blocked easily--just as he had intended. The fur-clothed foreigner spread his fingers and activated latent Smith magic tempered into the metal of the knife. It dissolved instantly and five new blades materialized in its place, all shooting directly upward in a spread pattern much faster than their predecessor. It would be difficult for Argus to either dodge or block.
As the daggers flew towards Argus, he couldn't help but grin slightly at the man's clever trick. Quite the tricky magic he's got there. He thought as he quickly requipped a pair of clawed gauntlets and bladed greaves, drawing his body in tight to make for a smaller target while the defended portions of his body took the attack. Of the five daggers, one missed, two were deflected, one merely grazed him, and one bit deeply into his arm, causing Argus to hiss in pain, but it wasn't enough to keep him from executing the rest of his plan.
The remaining knives of Argus converged on Beardo's position. Even if he'd had it within him to dodge, he couldn't have now that he'd spent a precious moment pulling off his trick with the knives. Instead, he whipped up his cloak, and allowed the daggers to zip into its soft folds, where they lost momentum and killing power to become useless.
As Argus began to descend, he requipped 3 of those smoke lacrimas, tossing them to the ground around Heisty to from a large dense cloud of smoke around the man, completely blocking his vision as long as he remained in the cloud. Argus would land inside of the smoke, requipping a large staff this time, which he'd quickly swing around him, hoping to hit the opposing mage as the staff's range was large. whether he hit him or not, Argus would exit the cloud a short amount of time later, but he wouldn't be leaving the smoke cloud undisturbed. With a snap of his fingers, he'd requip into his hand a small but powerful flash lacrima, tossing it into the cloud and prepping to see what his opponent would try next.
When the light died and the smoke cleared, the demon could see among the few lingering wisps of vapor not a man but a literal wall of metal weaponry. Evidently, when the smokescreen had first arisen, his opponent had erected a barrier of blades to defend himself. Around the metal and on the ground lay the splintered remains of Argus's staff, having broken on contact with the razor barricade. The imperfect construction of said shield had allowed the photon lacrima's glare to momentarily bedazzle Heisty, but the Crimson Demon's retreat meant that the situation could not be capitalized on.
Beardo grunted and delivered a powerful kick to the back of the weapon wall. Suddenly the air was filled with armaments, tumbling end over end in a chaotic and none-too-deadly tumult but definitely in the direction of Argus. This, too, was a distraction. Without skipping a beat, Beardo summoned several handfuls of heavy-bladed swords without proper handles, practically useless for combat, and hurled them into the air. The weight in their tips meant that the blades would return to earth point-first, landing randomly around the fighting area. It was a steely and lethal downpour, with Argus caught in a precarious position in the middle.
"Crimson God's Raging Bellow!"
The attack would tear it's way across the field, slamming into the weapons hurtling towards Argus. Due to the focused nature of this attack, the weapon would be blasted away from Argus and sent haphazardly across the field, the corrosive qualities of the energy either making them useless or dispersing them as it ate away at the magic holding that created it. As for Heisty, he'd either have to move out of the way quickly, because the attack was headed straight for him and unless he could raise an very durable wall within seconds, he'd be in for a world of pain as the attack hit, causing a small explosion as it did so from the impact.
A wave of riotous chaos, exhumed from the Crimson Demon's mouth in the form of a raging yell, bore down on him. The large man bunched himself up and clumsily leaped to the side, diving head-first into the grass. It knocked the wind out of him, but that was by all accounts a far kinder fate than he would have met had the Bellow hit him. He watched, eyes wide, as the blast of malevolent sound sailed away into the sky, shaking the windows of all the buildings it passed, before he rose to his feet.
While that occured, Argus suddenly was forced to keep his eye in the sky as the heavy blades began to rain down on him, nearly skewering him before he requipped one of his specialty weapons, Mehrune's Chain. He spun the weapon over his head, willing the energy inside to flow out to form a rapidly rotating disc around it. Any blade that hit it would be deflected away with blunted or broken tips. After the rain of weapons had stopped,Argus would relax a bit, placing the staff down while he muttered to himself.
"Property Change . . ."
After that, he pulled the dagger out of his arm and it would sokn be enveloped by black and crimson flames, destroying it before the smithing mage could pull off a similar trick as before. However, his arm began to bleed profusely as soon as the weapon was removed, but Argus quickly tore strips of his clothes to make a makeshift bandage befire turning towards his foe. Picking up the staff, he'd simply point it at the man.
"Well then, Beardo, you want to go another round with the Crimson Demon, or have I proven myself capable enough to join the guild?" While Argus seemed like he was veimg arrogant, this was more to do with his magic than his ego, bringing out the reckless smartass in him in the worst way possible.
Unknown to Argus, however, the magic he had just used would give off an intense feeling of darkness and evil, and while to most it be hard to identify why they suddenly felt shivers down their spines, those of either great power or baring a sense of sensitivity for magic would be able to identify and track the aura to it's source.
Beardo took a step back then, recoiling instinctively from the powerful and ominous omen surrounding Argus. A dire uneasiness settled over him and, indeed, anyone nearby, but neither it nor the demon's words were enough to cause Beardo to back down. Though a quaint and quirky soul, Heisty Beardo wasn't one to let an adversary come out on top if he could help it. Merely putting on a good show wouldn't convince him; the challenge laid before Argus was to defeat him, not to impress him.
Plus, looking around at the fighting area, now littered with blades sunk into the ground, Beardo now had every advantage. Had Argus truly thought that clumsy rain of blades to be an attack? Such a notion was wrong--dead wrong. Instead of paving the way for his victory, Argus had merely set himself up for his defeat, for all was going according to Beardo's plan. He raised his hands, palms upward, and spoke in a guff and unknown tongue,
"Эквивалентный обмен: ножи на подрезку!" Equivalent exchange: blades to flails!Immediately a visible shockwave of chromatic energy radiated outward from where the large smith stood. Every sword sunk into the ground that it touched was altered, growing a chain in place of its lower half, tipped with a large metal sphere furnished with spikes. Beardo offered Argus a look of defiant smugness before lurching forward and kicking the flail closest to him. With a
clang it began to spin, and on its way it hit the head of another flail. Weapon slammed into weapon while spinning, like billiard balls ricocheting off one another, until the grassy clearing had become a whirling deathtrap of steel.
As Heisty cast his spell, Argus smiled, rolling his shoulders a bitmas he jabbed his staff deep into the earth. When the whirlung field of death came his way he merely jumped into the air. The top part of the staff separated from the rest to form z horizontal pole for him to deftly land on, connected to the rest by a black and crimson chain made completely of flames. The flails swung into and around the lower half of the staff, and while it wobbled a bit here and thete, it stayed firm and the flails weren't able to land a scratch on it.
"I thought not, but I had to try. Now then, let's get rid of these annoying flails. Crimson God's Divine Blessing."
As he spoke the name of the spell, a dark flame would erupt from his body, flowing down to the ground to wash over everything on the field. Everytime they touched one of the flails, it would begin to glow with an eery red light, the coloration shifting from silver to black as it became imbued with his magic power. Once every flail was imbued, Argus ceased the flow, and for a moment, Heisty would probably wonder why he had done such a thing, as the flails were now covered with a flaming cornoa of magic, enhancing the power by a decent amount. To nost, it would seem like he'd worsened his situation . . . at furst. However, since these constructs were made completely from magic, they wouldn't be able to handle the magic and would soon deteriorate as a result. Some would simply disperse into blackened mist, but most would begin to crack and crackle for a bit before they all exploding into a raging flame across the field.
Argus lept off the pole into the flames, the weapon dispersing behind himmas he stared at his fie through the fire. A low chuckle could be heard through the flames as his eyes began to take on an intense red glow. Mixed with the black and crimson flames raging around him, it gave new weight to his title as the chuckle suddenly became slightly off-kilter, as if some of his sanity had been burned away by the flame.
"Come now," He said, his voice coming off with a slight dissonance that further added to the intimidation factor of the scene, "Surely you can do better than that."
He made a mocking 'come at me' gesture, the grin never leaving his face.
While Beardo had expected Argus to jump, it hadn't seemed possible that he'd be able to summon his staff, which had been broken against his bladed barrier earlier, and reside upon it until he'd worked up a countermeasure. The fur-wearing man gawked in disbelief as his flail-heads simply
bounced off the staff, the metal failing to even mar the wood. It didn't make sense; this wasn't fair. He recoiled as the playing field blossomed into a maelstrom of nasty flames, and watched as a twin pair of glowing red orbs closed the distance to his location, a voice undulating with malfestation taunting him all the while. For the first time, it seemed, Beardo had no trick up his sleeve, or else he was too scared to put a plan into action. He continued to retreat, one step at a time, as Argus grew closer. Sweat glistened on Beardo's forehead and eyebrows as the tense seconds passed. By the time Argus was a dozen feet away, Beardo's will to fight appeared all but gone.
It would take keen ears indeed to detect Beardo's whisper, however, and to realize that the words, though unfamiliar, came in a completely tranquil tone.
"эквивалентного обмена информацией: ножи, мечи!" (Equivalent exchange: knives to swords!)
Without a moment's delay, the blades of longswords sprang up from the ground beneath Argus's feet. To anyone unfamiliar with Beardo's language it would seem as if he conjured a geyser of swords from nowhere, but in truth he had planted knives in the earth where he'd been standing earlier when Argus's focus was elsewhere. By pretending to be more frightened than he actually was, Beardo had lured Argus into the trap. These blades were long enough to still bring the hurt if Argus attempted to jump straight up, though there was no way he'd know where the spell was coming from. Some of them were angled outward away from he center of the geyser, so that an attempt to dodge along the ground wouldn't totally spare him either.
By now, Beardo was well aware of his own problems. Despite his cunning and tricky gambits, he simply didn't have the stopping power of other mages. It was why he remained a C-rank, coupled alongside his distaste for fighting multiple enemies simultaneously. While this surprise conversion would almost certainly hit, he doubted it would do enough to prevent the crimson demon from steamrolling him immediately afterward. With that in mind, Beardo ignored whatever effect his blade geyser had on Argus and instead began creating an intricate armor for himself that lay invisible beneath his robes and furs. It was made of interlocking pieces of steel, and had blades and spikes facing outward. All Argus might see if he charged at Beardo was a soft, silvery aura, but any melee attack to a covered part of Beardo's body would result in a lot of pain. It didn't occur to Beardo exactly why he was willing to use lethal force against Argus just yet, but deep down he knew the reason: this man was truly a demon, and humans could afford demons no mercy even as comrades. Only another second undisturbed, and the Secret Defense would be ready.
As Argus approached, his opponent's apparent fear only served to heighten the urge to fight that his magic was invoking in him, causing him to speed up hs pace. A bit, it wasn't until the trap was sprung that he remebered how tricky his opponent had a tendancy to be. The only think that saved him from being hit directly by the blades were his reflexes and agility, for as soon as he realized what was happening, he was already jumping backwards to try and avoid the attack. He did suffer some minor cuts and bruises from it though, and they would've been more dangerous except for the fact that the daggers it had come from had been corroded by the Crimson flames, weakening the attack by a decent margin as the blades summoned looked rather decripit and unrefined. In fact, shortly after coming into being, the blades would disperse, consumed by the flames that surrounded them.
Argus' grinned like mad as he realized that he could've died from that attack, that this game just got turned up a notch.
So that's how he wants to play it now, huh . . . well then, two can play it that way.As Argus landed a short ways away, he brought a hand up, palm facing the ground as he begun pumping out a large amount of magical energy into the ground. Soon, a magic circle formed around him as he turned his palm skyward, a smaller magic circle forming above it.
"Crimson Godslayer's Wrathful Upheaval!"
Argus voice would ring out across the clearing as he waved his hand upward, causing the blackened flames to explode slyward, concealing him within a pillar of flame. The action would also cause a shockwave to blast out, knocking Heisty back and also causing a few embers to strike against his clothes, causing smallfires to appear. The same happened aroundmthe field as well, causing a small amount of brushfires near the outer edges. Before they could begin to rage out of control, however, all of the flames were suddenly drawn back to the source as the pillar imploded on itself, forming a sphere of black and crimson flame about aa tall as Argus to be formec.Unknown to Heisty, Argus had cast another spell, converge, to draw all his magic back to him. Next, he would use his Change Property spell(which Heisty couldn't hear as Argus was covered in roaring flames) to shift his magic. The roar of fire was replaced with the crackling thrum of lightning as the sphere turned into a giant ball of crimson electricity, with shades of black mixed through out.
As his foe looked upon this maelstrom of power, teo blazing eyes would statre back at him, the dark aura rising to a greater intensity as the name if the next attack was called out with a dissonant bellow that seemed to vibrate through the core of everyone in range.
"CRIMSON GOD'S BLITZKRIEG!!!!"
As the spell was intiated, a multitude of lightning bolts would blast their way into the sky, seeming to make an arc towards Heisty, tearing across the sky in jagged wounds in the bright blue sky. However, they'd stop about 2/3's of the way to him and begin circling above like some dastardly halo. This waa a distraction meant to turn t
his eye's upwards, for the true threat came in the form of Argus bursting across the field with a sparking fury, his launch speed boosted tremendously by a burst if ligntning so that he'd arrived in front of the target about the same time the halo started to form, cloaked in an intense aura of magical lightening that acted as both an offense and a defense, as anything coming towards him would be blasted off to the side and defenses Heisty could make would likely be ineffective at stopping him for long. In it's lightening state, the magic has more power and is able to cause more destruction on impact than the other two by a large margin, at the cost of being able to imbue objects as easily asthe other two, oft requiring more time and magic to infect something than the default form or the flame form.
Upon reaching Beardo, Argus would split the cloak down the middle, focusing the energy into both of his arms as he attemptec to strike at the man with a viscious uppercut to the man's gut, the armor defending him cutting into through the lightning and into his fist deep enough to be painful before it would be overcome by the destructive power.If he was succesful in his hit, the lightning imbued in the fist would pulse upwards violently, sending the smith mage flying upwards into,the center of the halo. Upon reaching that height, he'd be set upon by a rapid fire barrage of lightning bolts, sending them hurtling back towards Argus. As his foe approached, Arguswoukd draw his fists back before unleashing another barrage of blows against him. These blast were weaker than the upper cut separately, but grouped together it'd make for quite a bit of damage. On the final hit, Beardo woukd be sent rolling to the side, and Argus would leap into the air, all the remaining electricity, both that in the air and covering his body, would gather around his fist, forming a mass of crimson lightning around the limb.
With a roar, he'd come hurtling down, and what followed next would be a loud boom to sound out as he struck. A cloud of dust and debris would linger around the field before the damages could be assessed. Any grass that had been on the field had long since been destroyed, and their was a large streak of burned earth from where Argus had charged. Where the two fight we'd lay, a moderately deep trench of burned earth could be seen heading away from Argus' hand, whiched he'd brought down at an angle away from his opponent. The man would feel disorientation from the attack, and maybe singed a few hairs, but the last attack of the Blizkrieg had done very little damage to him.
"Still want more, or do I pass yet?" Argus asked as he rose from his position taking a couple steps away from the man and taking a fighting stance in case he wished to continue. If the man was not conscious or gave an indication that he was done fighting, Argus would approach slowly. This was due to both caution and fatigue, as the last spell had taken a but out of him. It was one of the advanced moves, and it took a lot of magical energy to run smoothly and keep up it's power, which can be lessened or increased by using more or less of it. He could keep fighting if need be, but his left hand was cut-up by the secret armor and he was loosing blood from both the cuts in his body and the stab wound to his arm. Add that to his current fatigued state and you'd find him a bit weakened from his endeavors.
The assault of Argus left Beardo a thoroughly defeated wreck on the ground. While he was not unconscious, any movement on his part caused him a significant ache, and he endeavored to lie still to deaden the pain.
"Я еще не овладел интеллектуальные игры," he grumbled,
I have not yet mastered the mind games, smoke rising from his clothes. Working together what strength he had left, Beardo raised his voice and told the demon in heavily accented English,
"Give, give!" as a way of saying he was giving up. As he returned to his dedicated attempt to repudiate movement, Beardo considered just how powerful Argus was. During the duel, Beardo had managed to outwit his opponent several times if not every time, but each instance his gambit had proven unsuccessful as Argus had simply dodged or found another solution to the problem. That meant that the soldier's stratagems could use some work. He'd even bashed through the Secret Defense with a single attack. Oh, well--he hadn't expected that he'd be able to beat Argus anyway.
"Huh, so you do know some words I can understand." Argus said with a chuckle, the light in his eyes fading out as he reached down to help the hairy man up. "I'd offer to help you learn more, but I'm pretty sure I'd make for a crappy teacher. Oh, and sorry fir going a little overboard near the end, I tend to go a little crazy when I fight for real. You'll be feeling sore for a bit, but you should be back on your feet soon."
Argus flashed the man a smile before lookingnaround for the nearwst medic tent, finally deciding to ask Beardo himself. Once the furred mage pointed out the directions, Argus would assist him in getting there, even going so far as to prop the man up on his shoulder if he had to. As this went on, Heisty woukd get a cha ce to notice how Argus focused entirely kn helping him, completely ignoring his own wounds. While not overly serious, the man was losing blood at a somewhat worrying rate from them, mostly from the stab to his arm and his injured hand.
"Okay then, once we get you all patched up, should I go tell that Zander guy who won or just wait for him to come to us. Nod once for me to go or twice if I you think I should stay."
