Drifting Pollen

An Open Challenge

Tiamat flew away, fast and far, and fled the scene of battle.

An Open Challenge

"Ha!"

The dragon bared her fangs, her forked tongue taunting him through their deadly points. "The mightiest of the ants, challenging the heavens themselves! And he thinks himself eternal!" A fresh bout of laughter shivered through her, and she had to raise one set of claws to hide her vicious grin. "Oh dear, little one. I haven't heard such comedy in centuries..."

Her biting words slithered through a storm of oncoming blows, pricking at the griffin's fluffy ears. Archontikos had taken no significant damage from her claws, and other than a faint tingling sensation in his arm, there was little to stop him from launching his brutal retaliation. Those wings of his were veritable siege weapons, and their barrage would have pulverized even the thickest of castle walls—but Tiamat was a leaf on the wind, and against such a simple assault she was all but untouchable. Strike after strike ripped through the empty air beneath her, and her stinging claws snipped and sliced at the lashing wings, punishing every attempt to bring her down.

Once again, positioning was key. She'd launched her previous attack from above, and the impact had cost Archontikos just a few feet of altitude. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but here was the thing: every action produced an equal and opposite reaction, and the same impact that knocked the griffin down had pushed Tiamat upward, the recoil of her own blow giving her a burst of extra lift to gain distance. Her opponent had begun his counterattack without bothering to close the distance first, and though his sizeable wingspan gave him sizeable reach, Tiamat had only been gliding up to this point. As the beast unleashed his first mighty strike, her own wings beat down, and she darted up still higher, so that her body passed beyond the maximum range of his blow.

It was the flying equivalent of footwork, the kickboxer's agile backstep adapted for use in aerial combat. Any oversized bird could use its wings as weapons, but Tiamat had honed them into the primary tools of a full-blown airborne martial art, one that many a former foe had learned to fear and respect.

More quick wingbeats kept her clear of the initial follow-up strikes, but the dragon knew better than to wait for her enemy to change targets. The griffin's remaining four wings might have sufficed to keep him aloft, but in this moment his lift was nonetheless reduced, and it couldn't be easy to stay balanced in the air while constantly throwing out one's wings like that. Tiamat had used her wings as bludgeons many times in the past, and it only took her a couple of seconds to figure out the timing, and spot her opportunity. An upward strike, a missed blow... And before the next could arrive, her own wings snapped closed. Without any remaining lift, the dragon dropped like a stone.

And this, too, was a part of her art.

In the air, gravity became yet another weapon, another tool to use in outmaneuvering one's enemy. Archontikos had just thrown up a wing to try and strike at her, and that wing had yet to fully draw itself back into position after the blow. Before it could, Tiamat came down on it like a fucking guillotine, leading with a brutal axe kick powered by the full gravity-assisted weight of her falling body. The raw force of it absolutely dwarfed her skimming slash from before, and no amount of toughened hide was going to keep that from leaving a bruise.

...But that wasn't the point, or not entirely. The fact was, in using two of his wings to attack, Archontikos had sacrificed a degree of balance and stability. And while his physical toughness could reduce damage, it didn't prevent transfer of velocity, meaning it wouldn't keep him from being knocked out of the sky and sent hurtling towards the ground in an uncontrolled spin.

@Griffintaur

An Open Challenge

The scaled woman's horned head tilted just slightly on hearing his growled insults. "I am Tiamat, you little bug. Mother of life, and first goddess of the primordial sea. That you are graced with my gaze at all is far more than you deserve."

Her knees bent, and she spread her arms wide. Each of her fingertips bore a great curved talon, as long as a carving knife and wickedly sharp. A mere flick of her wrist would have sufficed to slice an ordinary man into a half-dozen pieces, but in this case that would evidently not be enough. She beckoned, instead, egging on the beast as he rose up and drew level with her. "Much better. You may be uncouth for a meal, but at the very least..."

A stream of fire erupted in her direction, and she sprang up off her perch. "...You have the good grace to come to me already well-cooked!"

The stone where she'd stood less than a second before was promptly blasted into molten slag, but the dragon was already beyond the reach of the flames. Her wings snapped open, and she threw her weight forwards, plunging headfirst towards her prey. The blazing river rose to follow her, but she bobbed up a little further with every inch it adjusted, always flying just barely out of its reach. She did not beat her wings, nor attempt to desperately maneuver, but merely glided along the full length of the attack with an almost effortless grace. The searing, vaporizing fire of the phoenix might as well have been a bright orange carpet laid out to welcome her arrival.

Was it magic? One of her six godly powers? Hardly! This was only the natural result of the attack itself, and Tiamat's own mastery of flight. Any mass of fire so formidably large and hot created waves of heated, expanding air around it, which naturally rose upward due to the resulting loss of density. It was this air that Tiamat was gliding on, catching the upward flow with her extended wings and letting it buoy her just above the raging inferno as it moved to follow her. In this way she rode the flames straight to Archontikos, their crackle and roar mingling with the sound of her mocking laughter.

Perhaps the lion would realize his mistake and stop the torrent, but by then it would already be too late. Tiamat had altitude, she had momentum, and her agility in the air was such that a mere tilt of her wings brought her swooping upward just a fraction of a second before collision. As she flashed past above her prey, her left leg whipped downwards, a full set of talons extended to rake across the back of his uppermost right wing.

@Griffintaur

An Open Challenge

It arrived in the form of a shadow, a winged silhouette passing in front of the sun so high up above that for a moment, the entire arena was cast into darkness.

A circling vulture, perhaps? No, there was no bird alive with wings like that. Bony, chiropteran, like great webbed hands extending to grasp the sky itself. Any denizen of any fantastical universe ought to recognize the wings of a dragon, and know enough to cower in fear at the sight of them. When their shadow fell upon you, chances were it was already too late.

The wings folded, and the distant shape dove downwards in a spiraling arc towards the half-buried Colosseum. Sunlight glinted off bright crimson scales, the red hunter swooping in to eye up its latest prey. After circling one final time, it slowed to a gentle glide and alighted delicately atop the highest point of the arena ruins, where it stood up straight and cocked its head at the tender morsel sat down below upon the sandy floor.

"Oh good, you're already kneeling. I do prefer mortals with some semblance of self-awareness."

Not quite a dragon, as it turned out. She certainly had the wings of one, and the nigh-impenetrable red scales, but up close her form was almost fully humanoid, a slender and feminine shape clad in nothing but her own reptilian hide. Her delicate features and soft black hair were more elven than draconic, and her voice brought to mind a beautiful siren luring sailors to their deaths in the open sea. Bright, inquisitive golden eyes fixed themselves upon the feline champion, and the hunter's lips curled into a gentle smile.

"I hunger, beast-man. You may be thankful that it is so. Slit open your throat, and I will do you the honor of taking your flesh as my sustenance."

@Griffintaur

Looking for a battle

I apologize for the absence. Doing this on mobile gives me no notifications. But here you go, one of my more physical characters

@GiovanniCarter

Alright! He seems pretty fun. How about this for an opponent?

Lyra Gwynn

Name: Lyra Gwynn
Age: Around 60 years
Height: 5'7''
Weight: 125 lbs
Race: Shroudwalker

Appearance:
Lyra looks much younger than she really is: she was twenty-two years old when she died, and her body has stayed that way ever since she returned to life. She has a slim and bony build, with jet-black hair that extends down to her shoulders and eerie yellow eyes. Her skin is a darkened gray that blends perfectly into shadows, making her almost invisible in low-light conditions.
For clothing, she favors a sharp black coat with long tails, and a pair of well-ironed formal trousers. She does not wear shoes.

Weapons and items:
- The Shroud: Lyra is bound to a floating mass of dark particles, a living cloud of unnatural smog that follows her wherever she goes. In more casual settings it will lie hidden in her shadow, compressed and passive, but in combat she deploys it in full force, and it can grow large enough to fill a small house. The Shroud has been intertwined with Lyra’s very soul since her first resurrection, and she can manipulate the size, shape, and position of the cloud as though it were part of her body, giving her excellent fine control over its form and density.
Other than being movable, the Shroud possesses three dangerous properties. The first is that it absorbs and stores light and sound waves, including frequencies such as ultrasound or X-rays that would normally be invisible to the human eye. This renders it perfectly black to outside observers, and masks any noise passing through it. Light and sound it absorbs can be gathered and later redeployed offensively, as wide bursts or tightly concentrated beams.
Secondly, it relays sensory information directly to Lyra’s neurons, beginning with the patterns of light and sound coming into contact with its outer edges. It also keeps her aware of its contours, allowing her to effectively 'feel' anything in contact with the cloud. The Shroud differentiates between her own thoughts and those born of other powers, obeying only those that are truly hers, and she can use it to detect foreign incursions into her mind.
Last but not least, the Shroud will resist any and all movement within itself not initiated by Lyra or her abilities. Its minuscule particles originate from a far-flung universe devoid of all life, and their presence in other planes of reality will bend physics around them slightly, slowing down other matter and energy passing through areas where the particles are gathered. This effect works more powerfully against faster movements: walking through the Shroud is merely uncomfortable, running through it is like pushing against a wall of molasses, and bullets or anything similarly fast will face resistance strong enough to slow them to a crawl. The more spread-out the Shroud is, however, the less powerful the slowing effect becomes, and tight concentrations are required to fully exploit this property.

Abilities:
- Physical parameters and training: Even before she died, Lyra was considered an exceptionally talented warrior. While her strength and endurance are better than one would expect from a person her size, it’s in speed and mobility that she truly excels. She can outrun the fastest of beasts, react quickly enough to avoid gunfire, and traverse even the most dangerous and chaotic terrain with impeccable balance and poise. Her skill with the spear is the stuff of legend, and she’s also known to wield daggers and shortswords in close combat, fighting with an inhuman precision that has only grown sharper since her resurrection.

- Shroudwalker physiology: The Shroud has infested her unliving body, changing her once-human form into something strange and unsettling. Though she still moves and talks and thinks the way a living person would, most of her biological functions have simply stopped: she no longer breathes, eats, or consumes any known form of chemical energy. Medical examination reveals that even her brain and nerves are electrically inert, though evidently some form of information transfer is still going on. Some otherworldly power seems to animate her now, preserving her from all forms of aging and decay while enabling thought and motion. It seems to be tied to the Shroud itself, which permeates her entire form and has infused itself within her lungs and bloodstream.
Notably, Lyra can synthesize Shroud particles within her body into a solid form, extruding them as pitch-black spines of varying thickness and length. While Lyra can wield these without issue, they don’t seem to be fully affected by external sources of kinetic energy, requiring exceptional amounts of force to damage or knock aside.

- Cryopsionics: Psionic abilities have long been known to manifest in various individuals across the many universes, and during her human life Lyra was one such person. While her powers did carry over after death, however, they were irrevocably altered by the manner of her resurrection: her mind is no longer the lively thing it once was, and only barely feels what could be described as human emotions. Due to her psychic nature, this emptiness manifests itself in the physical world as well, with her very presence dropping the surrounding temperature by several degrees. By exerting her will, Lyra can shape and focus this effect, bleeding thermal energy from select areas and sapping the drive and resolve of sentient beings. The closer she is to her target, and the more narrow her focus, the faster the resulting drain occurs. Lyra can channel these psychic attacks through her Shroud spines while wielding them, which sharply raises their potency.
Like many psychics, she possesses a form of telekinesis, which exclusively affects matter frozen in crystalline form (such as ice and snow). While this specialization restricts her in some ways, it also grants her firmer and more precise control, and allows her to spread her influence like a virus. Once she's seized control of a fragment of ice, Lyra can shatter it at will to flash-freeze an area up to four times its width in radius, and gains control over any new ice created. The larger the shattered ice fragment, the colder the resulting freeze.

Backstory

Lyra's earliest memories are of hard times, of dust and dirt and exile. Her people were forced out of their ancestral homelands several years before her birth, whole cities laid to waste when an ancient and powerful dragon decided to seize their mountainous nation as its territory. Faced with the wrath of a monster no mortal could challenge, the indigenous population was left with no choice but to flee. Even as they left their lands behind, however, they vowed to one day win them back.

From a young age, Lyra and her fellow children were trained in the arts of war and magic. Their elders told them stories of their homeland, instilling within them a burning will to defeat their common enemy and return to the life of old. Year by year, they trained relentlessly, eventually leaving their parents behind to travel the world and seek new skills and powers to help them succeed.

Lyra had never been particularly talented with conventional magic, so she sought out an order of psychics, and learned to channel her mental strength as a means of attack and defense. She wasn't satisfied with this, however, and ventured further still, seeking dangerous and forbidden secrets well beyond what others would dare. She traveled further than any before her, through burning deserts and dense jungles, across steep mountain ranges and into dark ravines teeming with hidden predators. She saw landscapes that dwarfed anything she'd ever dreamed of, and came to know of peoples and creatures whose vibrant diversity fascinated her, but still she wandered further, always fixed on her goal.

In the end she sought out a rumor, a ghost. Whispers of an abomination from another universe, a being that warped existence around it wherever it appeared. She walked out across a frozen sea, to the distant point where it was said this being sometimes passed through her world.

To this day, Lyra had never told anyone what she found there. What is known is that she came back with the Shroud.

There was no more need for training or exploration. She made her way back to her people’s homeland, and, rather than waiting for her old comrades to gather their forces, walked straight into the dragon's domain and challenged it alone. It was barely even a fight, for the beast soon tore through her defenses and snapped her up with its massive jaws, swallowing her in a single gulp.

It went exactly as she'd intended. Out there on the icy sea far away from all trace of civilization, Lyra had made a deal with the devil: she'd give up her mortal life, and receive in exchange a rebirth, a physical resurrection via a permanent joining with the Shroud. Thus, trapped within the corrosive, poisonous interior of the dragon's stomach, the fragile human quickly died—and then woke up, gathered her strength, and tore the beast apart from the inside, slaughtering it as one-sidedly as it had done to her.
As soon as the news reached her people, they rejoiced. Scattered families flooded back to reclaim their lost cities, and the many would-be dragonslayers arrived to find their life’s greatest battle already won. Lyra herself was honored and celebrated, showered in gifts and offered the title of High Queen.

For Lyra, however, something had irrevocably changed. She had returned from death with all her intelligence and skills intact, moving and speaking just like a living person… But she’d left something behind, as well. Her kindness. Her empathy. Her intensity of feeling. When she looked at her people now, she saw only scurrying creatures of flesh and bone, puppets to their own primitive instincts and desires. They might as well have been ants, for all that they mattered to her now.

So she spurned the glories offered to her, and left her homeland behind. The Shroud whispered to her of far-off worlds, entire different universes filled with people and creatures she could scarcely have imagined before. There was a great game afoot, with entire planes of existence hanging in the balance, and now that Lyra had achieved her personal goal, it was time for her to uphold her own end of the deal.

To serve as harbinger, and bring about the end of all things.

If you think she'll do, then feel free to pick a battleground for us and/or post up a fight thread. If not, then just let me know and I can check my roster for someone higher- or lower-powered.

Looking for a battle

Hello yes I enjoy the violence also

Much like yourself, I'm comfortable fighting with just about any level of powers, so pick one or slap down a character sheet and I'll see what I can offer.

Why We Fight - An Underground Fight Club RP

Hello yes can I sign up for the ass-kicking please

Legion of Heroes

I'm also interested! It seems like superhuman abilities are a focus here, but would a Batman-esque no-powers-but-many-skills archetype be workable as well?

Fight Knights [Pollen & Liotrent]

No worries. I did another reply myself, just to wrap things up on Favian's end. You can do a closing post for Aslain if you want or just leave things here, either way I think we've reached a good stopping point.

Thanks for the good fight! If you ever want to write stuff again together (arena or otherwise) then feel free to hit me up in PMs.

Fight Knights [Pollen & Liotrent]

Shadows loomed overhead. Hands grasped as his arms, pulling him away from Aslain and lifting him to his feet. Favian gasped for breath, the dagger falling from his loose hand while he blinked the sweat out of his eyes. It was over. He'd done it... To his own satisfaction, at least. Had it been a real battle, had he truly met his end, he would not have been ashamed of his performance.

His muscles were burning from exertion, bruised flesh beginning to throb beneath his armor, but he was quick to recover himself. Finding his balance, he shrugged off the attendants and waved them away, pulling up his visor and blinking in the fresh daylight. His heartbeat slowed, his breathing began to steady, and at last the calm returned to his mind, like a cold shock after being caught in a fire.

Well. This was more than I had bargained for. He'd presented himself for a duel on foot hoping for a challenge to keep his skills sharp, and had received one of the most difficult fights in his life. Not since his encounter with the stranger in the forest had someone pushed him to his limits like this, forcing him to leave calculated movement behind and rely on his instincts and raw ferocity. He would think over this battle many times, he knew, and perhaps learn something from it as he did.

Smiles did not come naturally to the cold Sir Favian Procell. But he made an effort, at least, as he reached out and shook Aslain's hand. "You are formidable, Sir Aslain, and there is not a man here who would doubt that now. The next time we meet, I will have to be sharper and quicker still—and that need will make of me a better knight. So I say to you: godspeed." He inclined his head, and his humility in the gesture was awkward yet sincere.

But the training and anticipation could come later. For now, he released the hand of his worthy foe and went to retrieve his sword, to rest and recover and sleep before embarking on the next steps of his journey. If today had shown him anything, it was that he still had a long way to go... And that there were still foes out there who made those violent, martial heights worth reaching for.