SPECIAL!: Ziren Vs Faustus; Blood On The Gallery Floor

OOC Note: Sorry for the longer-than-usual length of this one, Annie. I am setting the stage for some character progression and story elements. Had a lot to set up, lol.


Every moment was titillating. Every second lasted an eternity. Something as brief as a half an instance became a crucible that tested his very fiber, and the very limits of his ability. Focused, sanguine eyes stared, unblinking and unmoving for minutes, and then hours in a fixed position. He wanted to blink. He wanted to shift into a more comfortable position, flex his fingers, and habitually touch his nose as people walked by. Those things you take for granted every day, things like scratching an itch, the freedom to twitch or move a limb, or something so inborn as blinking became something the thing could not afford. He had a purpose, one in the devising for months, and he'd see it through.


Splotches of deep yellows and sad blues were estrewn upon a porcelain skin canvas. He was awed at and admired by unaware patrons by the masterfully recreated artwork. The painting seemed so visceral. So real they almost felt the need to touch it to reassure themselves that it was not. There was no doubt that DaVancia was a masterful bard, and Faustus, a master of the mind.


Finally, after hours, the one whom he awaited so long at his own expense had arrived. He felt that fire burst up and alive within his chest, but he poured the waters of discipline over them to quell its ire. He felt the person before he could see him, but when he did, it took the innumerable years of collective experiece he'd gained in his long life to keep his disguise full-proof. He eyed a ghost. Just that; a ghost. He recalled the very day he killed Ziren, four years ago, but there she was. Confusion was followed by anger. He spent years maticulating over her ruination, and it was all for naught!

Now she stood just before him, captivated like all the others by this beautiful piece of art. This Masterful, almost magical painting. In it's center, a deep black, scaly eye met Ziren's, and seemed to look not at her, but within, and through as though she were transparent. The other forms of the picture switched her focus. The abstract figures, in a sprawling chaos of despairing colors, and hollow yellow orbs gleamed like miniature suns.


It depicted a woman, fair in skin and nature, sitting disbarringly beneath the ever watchful Eye, as the shadows or waters swallowed her in her own black past. But something saved the picture, spared it of its hauntingly sad static story. A hand, pure and scaled with its own shadow, reaching into the blackness. To most, it seemed the hand was reaching out to grab her and bring her back.


Ziren's hand began to outstretch, and even made contact with the Mans clever visage, and the fact she remained never the wiser bolstered his resolve even more. Just as she had made up her mind that the painting would be hers, without a sound, and without a warning, it vanished!


A jewel of Syirith had been stolen! How could this be!? It was just there! The tour guide thought to herself.

That wasn't exactly the whole truth. Let's rewind a few hours back.


The artwork had been removed hours ago, in the wee hours of the night. One man, dressed in all black, with eyes that bore a color liken to bright lions fur, was the only man with the skill, and patience to enter undetected. Manipulation of light and a suit that contained his metaphysical presence made him all but impervious to the various forms of divination and scrying(regardless of how ludicrously numbered they were).

The painting was stored away then, and he had taken its place ever since. His suit expanded out to replicate detail for detail by memory alone the picture in which he had studied, all of this whom he had his own genius and Edzren's master artificers hand at clothes making to thank. He could bend and refract colors, and assume the shape of that with which he committed to a photographic memory.


Back to the here and now.


"Keep searching, the thief couldn't have gotten far!"


Faustus' steps echoed off of the white marble floor, each paced steadily and confidently. Museum security charged past him in droves, never taking stock of his decorative choice of wear, which oddly reflected the same material and color of the painting they were desperately searching for. Perhaps it was that the stretched out painting had been applied across a whole suit, thus changing dimensions. A lot how a map looked much different when you compare a flat one to a globe. His simple, yet efficient tactic seemed to be working wonders. He smiled wholly to himself.


He stopped his gait when Ziren came wafting into sight. Faustus stopped dead in his tracks fifteen feet from her. Beautiful as ever. He frowned slightly, remembering explicitly that he had killed her ages ago.


"Looking for this?" he spread his arms so that she could see the suit wholly. The colors began to drip and ooze off of his suit like water thrown onto a fresh painting(get it?), creating a puddle at and around his feet of rainbow colors of blues, blacks, and yellows. He outstretched his palm, and the liquid began to dance and take shape again, this time outside of him, until it came together like a puzzle into its original shape; the missing painting. "I've been meaning to add this to my collection. You can have it if you want. Course, I ain't just handin' it over. Come get it."


He wasted no more words. This was a long time coming.


In a time-frame that would seem instantaneous to mundane eyes, Faustus reached into his pocket and flicked something long, and black out. It was just a blur to the untrained eye, but one with focused senses, perhaps not even preturnatural, could catch a glimpse of the tiny black thistles on the object. it was a paint brush, though not just any paint brush, it was another nice little trinket he lifted from the gallery. It was owned by none other than Miss DeVoncia, famous bard of ages since past. With it, any bard magic was bolstered and reinforced with a vengeance.


With not paricularly mind bending, but definitely not negligible speed he drew elaborate shapes in the air, these in particular; 'バインド ストリップ'. As he drew, a black, inky substance followed the brush like a tail, marking the very space around him as though it were a canvas. No one from this planet or plane would recognize them, but to someone who has skipped planes like buses, would know they were the written language of the orientals on Gaia Prime. The words translated to Bind, and Strip respectively[1].


They uncoiled and launched from their static stasis like vipers unfurling to strike, speeding in from the left and right in an arcing vector(coming out from Faustus, then inward the closer they get to Zieren.)and aimed to do just as the words they formed from described; Bind her body to paralyze[1a], and then strip her progressively of a decent portion of energy[1b].


As Faustus left Ziren to deal with his maneuver, blossoming petals of supernatural force swelled up from within his chest, and down, pooling and boiling in his stomach[2]. In his left hand, he gripped the butt of Fiktun religiously. When he drew it? No one could say, other than obviously sometime between the launching of his attack and now. But there he waited, poised to strike, waiting to pick off her decaying flesh like the Raven he was so named years before. A moniker she'd surely recognize.


You've been busy. To what deity of the undead do I have to thank for this reunion? His lips didn't move, but his words would be like whispers in her mind.

Faustus' lips elicited, for a fraction of a second, a disgruntled grimace. He was hoping Ziren would defend with some flechet of might and magic, or her magically tempered arm or body, so his attack could eat straight through and write her -second- demise like a story. However, she did not choose that method of defense, and probably by no coincidence. The issue with fighting an opponent who has faced you before, regardless of how brief the altercation, was their ability to draw from previous knowledge one offered them. She was using that knowledge. Faustus would need to respond by using his.


Though clever enough to shy away from using any part of herself, be it her body or metaphysical machination, her choice of assault must have been done without thought. When the guard unleashed his torrent of silvery vectors, two things came to Faustus' mind. First, how the hell was that guy firing a gun underwater!? Secondly, Ziren must not have realized that while silver was a weak metal, it was still a metal.


Just as soon as the bang rung out from the barrel, Faustus needed not to move. Not to flex a single muscle. The bullets sparked in visible detest, the light orange low of their friction arcing about his frame, and careening off into the walls and pillar behind him, leaving sizeable holes in the foundation. The smell of metal, and that ambient flow of eclectricity that followed it was almost habit-forming.


Faustus, in the blink of an eye, drew forth the blade of Edge(the brush is still in hand, just gripped against Edge's hilt) with the refined temperment of a master swordsman, a finesse and praticed skill you'd expect of someone donned in a Kimono and mugiwara, not a fair skinned man in a suit. It was no less masterful, if not more so due to sheer dent of his lifespan alone. In the same motion he raised Fiktuns barrel just a few degrees, and pressed taut against the trigger.


BANG!


A bullet, or rather what appeared to be rang out and was released from its chamber. It was not deterred by water, as Fiktun was magical in essense, and required not on trivial things like the limited gunpoweder to ignite, but was rather shunted off magnetically, and aimed for what, exactly? Not Ziren. That would be all too predictable, but the floor itself just a few feet afront him. As the bullet struck ivory stone, the run that was drawn within the magic crystal inside of the metal capsule released a raging, orange pillar of preternatural Tyrant flame. The water did nothing to stop the flames advance, but was rather fueled by the energy all across the land of Osceux. It used various arcane feats and spells to make the environment liveable, and would help to keep the flame lit, even if only for a second.


The blade of Edge's luminal construction passed through, the flame latching around, and encasing the sword in a red hot crimson shell. But the attack did not stop there. The brush was held tightly against Edge's hilt, and the black ink that turned the world into its canvas bled from the fine onyx hairs, and onto the flat side of Edge's blade, marking it with intricate runic words, that would offer a boon against unnaturally tempered flesh, something Ziren prided herself on. What he had made was an attack that was a simple, but effective trifecta; it would sear flesh, destroy physical and magical barriers, and had a specific enchantment garnered to bypass Zirens natural preternatural defense toward magically enhanced items. The blade slashed through the guard like a knife would through butter, cleaving him betwixt horizontally at the waistline, and Ziren would follow him to hell -again-.


He knew it wouldn't be enough to make Ziren forfeit her life, but that was not the plan. The idea was to make her throw out her cards. The quick, powerful strike could cut her bonds to power she was siphoning, and force her to change tactics and, hopefully, her position.


"If you could take my life, it would have been done years ago. Forego any thoughts of besting me, Desolator." The title Ziren coined through years of hardened combat, and proving herself time and time again was spoken with a vane sense of purposeful derision, and flicked from Faustus' toungle like venom from a snake.


The power in his stomach continued to pool.

Ziren's head narrowly dipped beneath the blade of light and crimson, and it would seem, that Faustus had missed. Now let's be honest, it was unlikely that Faustus had ever intended for the blade to strike in such a fashion. He knew better against someone with the skills of Ziren Rhizae. What had happened, however, was as the blade passed, the luminal energies that held Edge's form together crumbled in the form of visible golden cracks in its blade. It exploded just as it would strike the top of the pillar behind her, sending a hail of marble shrapnel into her immediate field, and causing a large portion of the ceiling to come crushing down; thousands of pounds of ceiling, as well as all of the shit that happened to be sitting neatly on the floor above her, something like, let's say a piano.


There was more. The tyrant flame latched onto the sword had to expand too, right? This added a vitriolic effect to the dangerous concoction.


Faustus remained keen, and from the shroud of mist created by his attack, the woman whom Ziren had turned into nothing but a play thing emerged with torrential speeds, an orb of crackling silvery strands of energy glowing from her mouth.


Faustus flicked the wrist of his blade arm, and from the useless hilt of Edge, a beam of light emerged, stretching out six feet, and held in place via what Faustus fancied, a containment field; an abjurative field conjured from his spellwatch that prevented the 'lightsaber' from going haywire, and kept it localized in the space that is was held.


With a synergetic flexation of sinew and muscle, he lopped the girls head off cleanly. The lopping off of her head would not do well to completely stop the blast. Faustus had encountered necromancy in all its ugly faces, and this was puppateering; controlling a host body via some third party source. For a split moment Faustus wondered how she could maintain the magical or supernatural link when Edge would have severed the puppeteers 'strings'? No use complaining about it now. Evade now, think later.


As her head became separated from her shoulders, the blast was released within a few inches of Faustus' location, singing the left side of his suit, and blasting a sizeable hole through the lot of the museum, looking out into the greater city of Osceux.  Although the saber was haphazardly made, and this was reflected by visible convulsions and the flickering of the saber on and off, unprotected, much less undead flesh would be sundered wholly by its bright blue glow.


By the time Ziren would have regained her senses, if she was still alive, Faustus would be nowhere to be seen, unless.... He was there, but a speck off in the distance. He escaped through the hole in the wall created by her undead puppet, and out into the destruction of the city she had caused. Amphibious vehicles were piled atop one another that got caught in the blast, and others were lodged wholly into buildings, thrown cleanly off the road by a glancing blow. Made one wonder how Faustus stood firm when the blast that could throw cars went off literally inches from him.


Because he was a giant among giants, that's why.


His own metaphysical force latched him in place just as it went off, enough to prevent his bones from breaking, but used that very same force to give him an expediant backwards push outside of the building. 


The Awol Raven stood atop the great fountain of Osceux, never looking more hungry for souls than he did in that very moment. The half moon sent down silvery light against his back, and his shadow had been casted along the whole of everything before him, and if you looked closely, you'd swear the shadow casted great, feathery wings from him. The area around Faustus in a three foot radius began to darken significantly. All that could be clearly made out was his haunting silhouette, and his golden, gleaming eyes.

If he would have been anyone else, Ziren's tactic would have saved her. If she had come across another man, one who did not make a habit of thinking twenty steps ahead at all times. If her enemy was not as keen, and his foresight unbolstered, she may have been able to get away unscathed.


But this was Faustus.


As the ceiling and shrapnel came raining down on her, her telekinesis would have saved her from the harm they would have caused, but it was just a smokescreen. She completely overlooked the Tyrant flame, and while Telekinesis was perhaps not the most magical implimentation of free energy, it was surely supernatural, and would suffice as fuel for Tyrant Flames gluttaneous appetite. It fed on her psychic energy, and thus brought an end to any hope of altering the direction of the shrapnel, or the piano. She'd be pumpmed full of more holes than cork, and then smashed by the weight of Grand Piano to boot.


The Tyrant Flame did not stop at her telekinetic flexation, either. The energy she used left a gasoline trail, and the flame was on a hot trail to burn her alive in the black pedals of onyx-licked fire. Of course fire was only a byproduct of Tyrant Flame, the real killer was the entity itself. It fed on magical energy, so her body, which was held together by magical means(being undead) would in fact, not only strip her of power, but end her life as well.


What Ziren had done, was light a match in a room full of gasoline.

---

This section of my post is a safety measure just in Case Ziren somehow survived my previous description of events, and the method of attack in her previous post still follows through. I'll go further and say this isn't cheating, because the entire first half of my posts is in relation to earlier events, and does not apply to the current events. I am not changing the events of the present to fit the one most convenient for me is what I'm saying.


As the explosion plumed up and out of a portion of the meuseums ceiling, Ziren's golden eyes scanned them for signs of life. And then, from the shadows they came. Dozens of bodies, touched no doubt by Ziren. She was a clever rat. His eyes squinted. From atop his perch, he had the advantage. He could see all of the incoming attackers, but he had the high ground, so their moves would be telegraphed.


A hazy, electric blue crackling mist seeped out from every one of Faustus' pores, covering the battle torn city of Osceux. The effects of the Xhycht taint were immediately made apparent. All of the 'organic bombs' were now tainted by Faustus' presence. That was a bit of a lie. Not Faustus' presence, but Terrata Legends. Although Faustus claimed the Taint for himself after killing Terrata in his own realm, it was still his overbearing, will crushing metaphysical presence that turned the zombies-made-bombs.


Now Faustus stood upon his make-shift alter, like a priest before his congregation, and before him stood a small army of followers of unquestionable loyalty. The rushed from all directions towards Ziren just ash she showed herself through the great hole, eager to blow her all across the land like confetti. The Area around Faustus deepened to a darker black. His sillhouette was no longer visible from behind the orb of blackness. His golden eyes could still be made out from behind it, however.


The face of his spell-watch thrummed with power.