TWC Round 1: Terrence Le'Blanc Vs Faustus Clemens

From behind a curtain of fog, and a veil of shadows, pale, pallid hands emerged. Following them, were softly rolling shoulders, and then the shine of his black polished shoes against the twilight of the sun, until, eventually, the full silhouette of a man was standing erect afront a colossus of ancient society. He was wreathed in black. Not the black you see when you flicker out a candle and are left in the dark. Not the black of the night. This was something different. Something darker than black. This was the color of a man's soul. A soul so deprived and unhinged that not the most skilled spiritist could reassemble the jigsaw of its constitution. It was the color of the soul of a man who had long since traded his humanity and sanity for the power of a beast.


He was still not satisfied. Faustus Clemens did not want to be a beast, but a God.


It was that desire for power that brought him to a place that seemed suspended in time. It was power that brought him to the ancient temples delapidated gates. The great walls that once separated it from the outside world were now reclaimed by nature, and defortified to not but rubble. Faustus made a snow white fist the likes of which was so tight the sound of his knuckles cracking from the tension could be heard reverberating and rippling through the mountain range that surrounded the temple for miles.


It was that scent of power that let him know where his next victim lie. He could see it, the vane semblance of magic trying to claim ownership over the temple. The walls cried out in detest, and creaked and moaned under its pressure. To the average man, they'd never hear the slight creeking, or see the subtle warping of the wind. But Faustus knew it all well. The face on Faustus' watch gleamed a sunwashed light, and he placed a defiant foot down into the great courtyard of the manner; the center of which serving as the grounds for his enemy. His whole body came to be inside it, well within the man's loosely thrown together abjurative barrier. The watch gleamed and shined, and the mans barrier waned and wavered, until bursting into shards of invisible obsolescence.


Faustus' spellwatch sent out an anti magic wave. Singular, and simple. A benign, invisible force of energy resonating on the opposite frequency of the man's abjurative spell-circles. While the purpose lay in metaphysicality, the effects crossed over into the very physical world, in the form of a very short lived, localized shockwave. One that would mar concrete, and unsettle dirt. The goal was not to cause pain to the man, but instead to interrupt and destroy his spellcircles.


The area around Faustus' body began to darken significantly, only his silhouette, and his glowing, golden eyes visible from behind his smokescreen.

Note: Terrence's TK barrier is shattered and no longer active as of this post.


The darkness around Faustus grew richer and darker still, becoming near impenatrable to quotidian sight, but not to such a bolstered degree to preturnatural senses. It seemed to convulse and hiccup around him, swirling and howling audibly, kicking up the wind around it so that the trees waned and waxed with its ebb and flow.


"So you admit you think me a God, then?"


Faustus' hand moved with unnatural speed to the hilt of his blade that rested comfortably at his side. He did not draw, not yet, merely let his hand rest there, coiled at the fingers, like a viper ready to strike. And like a viper, Faustus bore venomous fangs of steel and magic, and he would bare them soon, but not quite yet.


"What do you know of me? Nothing. You know my shadow. My legend. You can't understand the gravity of the danger you are in just by showing up here. I can't blame you. Children don't know fear until they have felt it."


As he spoke, his other hand slipped swiftly into his suit-jackets innards, and with a silver flash, flicked out a slip of white paper, crimson etched into its canvas in odd shapes and angles. The crimson was one of a particular shade. A shade that brought blood to mind, and for good reason. ABout him, spanning six feet in any direction, a field, invisible aside from the faint rippling of the air, was erected. Petals of supernatural activity bloomed forth from the spell-circle. Th field prevented any supernatural activity from entering its space, but through means of blood bolstering, would bypass that effect for the caster, and amplify magical effects from within the barrier. It was in essence, and function a two way mirror.


Faustus aimed and pulled the trigger of Fiktun, all while his eyes were closed. Physical sight would not be the means by which he would hunt his target, but spiritual. If he had learned anything from that damnable man, Arthur Tristem, was that those who truly wished to see closed their eyes. Even with eyes closed, Faustus could see the mans spiritual residue, his signature. Like a fingerprint, there was only one of its kind. This way even if he decided he'd try to cloak by means of magical interference, or hide, it wouldn't matter.


Thre pulls of the trigger. Three bangs. And three bullets. He shot them off into random directions, and on the surface one would think Faustus was missing his target, but that was surely not the case. Faustus fired the first bullet, engraved with an ice rune directly where the man was currently standing. When the capsule holding the manacrystal and rune met any physical or magical resistance, would release the crystals bounty, in this case a swath of cold. Cold to such a degree that it would flash freeze everything within a three foot radius.


The second was fired off to the left. This one was a bit different. It was engraved with a "seed" rune. It, like all the other bullets were set to go off when they were within a single foot of of their target, or when met with sufficient opposition. When the seed rune would be released, hundreds of earthy vines would sprout in an instant, sprawling and ensnaring everything within their reach. Once they latched on, the roots would take hold within the earth, and a full grown tree, thirty feet high would be standing where there was once a man.


The third and final bullet trailed off to the right, and could, via mental link, change direction in a final fit of desperation to catch the enemy right in the dome.

Terrence's meneuver was clever, but horridly misplaced. From within his Double Mirrored Barrier, all supernatural effects were left useless upon Faustus, and it only grew in its bounty. Even if Faustus made eye contact with all of the pretty shows of psychic energy, Terrence's trees would bear no fruit, so to speak. In fact...


Faustus holstered Fiktun, and in its place, two silver scalpals found themselves fitted into his hands. The Man in Black flung the first one with a force powerful enough to puncture steel directly into the psychic igloo structure. What happened next was quite a show. The scalpal was laced with the same antimagic force of his barrier, and those energies built within the scalpals cored, burning it red hot, and then spread throughout the blade melting his psychic "igloo" with the flame of his repurposed DMB.


This may sound relatively complicated, but it happened fast. That being an understatement. The scalpal seared white hot, and then in a bright flash exploded. While the blast didn't cover quite enough surface area to destroy his igloo completely, it still managed to punch a nice two foot hole in it, while the rapid expansion of the Double Mirrored Barrier consumed him and his light show.


The result would be violent to say the least. First, the expansion of the DMB from the scalpal would destroy his barrier completely, leaving him open to what came next. Superheated, preturnaturally sharpened shrapnel created from the combustion of Faustus' scalpal. At such a close range, dodging was unlikely, though the same went for the possibility of causing death. The blade shards would find themselves embedded in bits of his shoulder and upper thigh, just missing any vital organs, though slowing movement and reaction speed. The flash of light emitted by the explosion would also serve as a wonderful makeshift decoy, to make the ability to successfully dodge even less likely.


When the light faded from Terrence's eyes, he would find his vision still obscured. Faustus' orb of shadow continued to expand, threatening encompassing the entirety of the courtyard.

"Men are vile, weak creatures. I am more than a man."


The black orb grew darker still, now making Faustus completely invisible from behind its swirling mass to both mundane, and preternatural sight, expanding a total of fifteen feet in any direction, placing the foolhardy man on the business end of it all neatly within its sphere of influence. From within, he could see nothing in the most literal sense. Not even his hand if it were directly in front of his face. But Faustus could, he could see it all as though it were clear as day.


The man had forfeited any chance of escape via his meneuvering. Momentum and inertia had damned him to hell. In the air, and coming down with the momentum of a full, supernaturally bolstered burst of speed. Slowing down was not an option, and at this range, changing direction was even less likely, not to mention he wouldn't even be able to see which direction he was moving in. This all created the perfect concoction for Faustus.


In a brilliant flash of light, the orb cracked, and reconfigured itself. A single bioelectric burst escaped Faustus, entangled with the magical light that was so carefully caressed, and even further enhanced through the DMB for an assured victory. The result would be a bolt, mighty and great, and crackling with rage and power, aimed directly for the mans heart, going speeds that could cause even a superhuman to come down with a horrible case of whiplash trying to follow it. Charged to 900 volts, it was more than enough to fry the shouting flesh bag.


Faustus was sure the man was dead, but oft was the downfall of the man who is not careful. At the same time that the lightning bolt fired off, Faustus, Galvanized with power  allowed his pressure to force the ground to buckle beneath his feet, and he fell into the depths of the temple. An underground web of tunnels and archways awaited him. 


Faustus moved down the hall opposite the direction of the man who was standing above ground. From within its cover, he began to to work on his next scheme. His psicrystal necklace humming with power.