Before Morgan knew what was happening, the whole world around him had transformed. What had once been an inn of usual standing (minus its two demonspawn inhabitants), had become nothing short of a war zone. The vampire hardly knew how to react to how poorly his attempt to verbally batter the blue haired sister, let alone the pillar that might have very well been the end of his existence. However, the aftermath of the pillar’s appearance, the vampire reacted surprisingly well, given the circumstances.
Upon the creation of the twisted sister, the pillar’s force knocked the sniffer cleanly off his feet. The brute force that pummeled the inn’s floorboards pushed him back an entire body’s length backwards, punching splinters that had punctured Morgan’s back firmly into his clothing - luckily, his layers, due to his cloak and thick robes, prevented the offending pieces of wood from penetrating his skin. The impact, however, was not as lucky, as his body heavily hit the floorboards, the back of his head bashing into the floorboards, his arms partially bent. If one were to look at an angle above the fallen vampire, his upper torso would resemble a letter “w,” due to the position of his arms.
The sniffer wouldn’t feel as much pain as he should have as his head smashed into the floorboards. For all of his previous and supposedly current frustration, he would feel any of it - the anger towards the sisters, the frantic caged feeling, even the the pent up beast that was so close to emerging once more within the hour. It was as if someone had purged his mind for a brief moment, a blank canvas. Hooded eyes would gaze up at the ceiling that had been torn by the twisted sister’s pillar, an expression of relaxation forming under his mask. “What are you doing?” The vampire would murmur as Ixion suddenly appeared above and behind him, the red hood turned upside down. It was odd, seeing the assassin in the midst of this chaos and watching him step over Morgan’s fallen body and…
The canvas would not stay empty for long.
Ixion’s aggressive move snapped Morgan from his dream like state when the assassin’s heel fell downward onto the vampire’s right wrist, pinning it efficiently. At this moment, Morgan’s eyes snapped wide open, completely focused. Even in his magic induced calm, the survival instinct that had been developed from living on the road since his last moments of his previous life had sprang to life and pushed back the haze. For a normal human, the reaction time would have been impossible. However, for a vampire, the world had to move slower than he. Red eyes snapped onto the dropping blade, time seemingly slowing as Morgan’s free left, gloved hand mirroring Ixion’s blade holding hand. The idea was to catch the arm at the armored elbow. With both stiff arms locked due to the vampire’s viselike grip, Morgan would half rise at the waist, using momentum of Ixion’s action and Morgan’s own unnatural strength to smoothly and instantly throw Ixion head over heels with a grunt. With any luck, Ixion would be caught off guard and off balance, tumbling away from the vampire and allowing Morgan to most ungracefully to rise to a kneeling position.
However, with the magic brushed aside for the moment, all of his previous pain would hit Morgan like a freight train. A wave of dizziness would hit the sniffer, causing his vision to sway violently to the left. Even for a vampire, his reaction time would be poor at this sudden shift, causing him to fall on his left hand in a staggered fashion. If Ixion had not recovered quickly enough, Morgan would recover unsteadily, rising upward only to pounce on Ixion’s fallen form, the sniffer’s right hand producing his dagger from his right sleeve with a practiced twisting motion. If Ixion did not or could not retaliate, the red hood would find the tables turned, the vampire’s own blade under Ixion’s throat, just above the Adam’s apple.
Morgan’s voice wouldn’t be snarling anymore as his blade’s steel none-too-gently pressed up against Ixion’s covered flesh. The words that came from behind the sniffer’s mask would cold, calculated, the only two emotions a sniffer could share with the world. However, while his voice would start strong, it would fade into a confused tone, the fog of I'on's spell swiftly returning.
“Don’t ever... do that again...”Then, the most astonishing thing: Morgan pushed himself off Ixion’s fallen form and quickly retracting the blade to its hidden place in his right sleeve. Walking over to his staff, he would retrieve his weapon, run the wooden pole through a cupped, empty hand and then plant its butt onto the shattered inn floor, masked eyes slowing rotating to those on this side of the wall. I’on’s magic, while its initial affects shaken off, had managed to push the beast within back into its cage and allowed the sniffer to take its place. Morgan's masked gaze stopped on I'on, in which he said the (possibly) most baffling thing:
"Well? You wanted to talk - so let's talk."I'on had managed to put a collar on the beast - for now.
