Duel:Jerralith v Merrien

Duel Info

• Judges: Kuzial, Thea, Tiphareth
• Stakes: OOCFC Round 2 Advancement
• Assigned Duel Details: Pixie Druid, possessed with intelligent weapon, 1 magical misc item
• Rd/time: 3rds / 15 min
• Date: 07/26/2012
• Venue: The Giant's Hand
• Decision: Jerralith

Venue

The Giant's Hand
Several moments of intense and panic-ridden ascent have brought you here, atop the butte at whose foot you so recently stood. From here, the view is nearly endless, but monotonous and uninteresting. The surrounding topography is of far more exciting than anything else, and quite possibly worth the speedy climb just to see it. From your newly-acquired point of view, it seems as if you are standing on top of a giant hand carved from stone. A quick glance in all directions shows you that no other signs of statuary grace the area, and the existence of this single massive hand is, while intriguing to say the least, quite unnerving as well. As if to add to the unease of this discovery, the wind seems to whirl and howl more at this altitude than it did below, exuding a malicious presence which is all but palpable. No sign of treasure or further travel is evident from this place, so it seems that the only point of exit is the very face up which you ascended, back down to the horrors which await in the false calm below. Those with wings of a pixie might, however, be able to gain a footholdon a ledge to the east.

Jerralith vs Merrien

Jerralith flaps his tiny wings rapidly, pursuing his foe up onto this giant stone hand. Alighting on the nearest fingertip with all the grace of a dove on a branch, the pixie sets his eyes - which seem strangely glazed over, no doubt possessed - upon Merrien and stalks toward her, moving quite quickly even with those horrendous howling winds that zip through the makeshift arena, making flying a definite chore. Even so, those luminous wings spread once more, fighting furiously against the currents of air all while encroaching on his similarly bewitched foe. The very weapon which has him under such a spell is clearly visible, a seemingly normal branch of wood with a thorned vine wrapped tightly about it, though to those with the ability to perceive, it throbs with a sentient power. The nefarious staff is brought into play just as he dives for Merrien, that vicious vine unfurling from the branch and snapping toward his fellow pixie like a cobra, seeking to snake about her like an insidious python. The staff is pulled back at that very moment, seeking to grind those wicked spines all about the fellow druid's body and wings, leaving her nothing more than a lifeless heap to be swept up into these harrowing gusts...

Merrien has been followed by her pursuer to this Gods-abandoned place that was to be their arena. Her clouded eyes sweep across the battlefield swiftly, the entity taking possession of her body humming in approval as the pixie flutters around the stone hand, batting her wings against the harsh winds and using them to carry herself ever higher. The barrows down below call to her to send her opponent posthaste to join them in their eternal slumber. Her weapon was poised at the ready, seeming almost an extension of the woman's arm with how she clutched it ever-so-lightly, but with strength and purpose. The six foot long, shimmering green scepter in her right hand pulses and appears to lead the druid to the right place for her to begin her assault. Her target has taken it upon himself to aim for the first strike. A wise move, but he'd best pray to his Gods that it incapacitates this druid, elsewise the vengeance would be swift and relentless. The two weapons throb with a malevolent power as they clash and the other druid's vines shoot out with attempts to constrict. One weaves itself around Merrien's left arm before she is able to summon a counter strike and she feels the sentient vine close and constrict with expert calculation. She smirks through the pain as she looks to the sky and her eyes turn a pure white. A storm is brewing…Jerralith would feel the wind whipping up even more than its previous harrowing speed. Merrien's staff whips about her, clashing with the other druid's staff with a desperate shriek as the thorns close in deadly close to Merrin's body, but scratching only her clothing thoroughtly. The light scratch to her body did not phase the pixie as she jumps back, dragging the constricting vines with her as much as she can. A manipulation of the natural air currents is afoot, creating a tempest around the Giant's Hand with Merrien as the eye of the storm. Where she would move, so would the fifteen foot diameter of the storm. Loose debris is picked up from the ground below and huge rocks are tossed about like they were pebbles, all aimed at Jerralith's head, chest, and legs.

Jerralith looses an uncharacteristic growl as his fellow druid avoids significant damage, no doubt the sentient frustration of the weapon voiced through their current vessel. The staff is pulled back like a fishing pole and the constricting vines harmlessly remove themselves from Merrien, coming to curl around the finely carved wood of the staff once more. Jerralith's ears twitch now, as if taking notice of the manipulation of the winds in the area, and he turns with ample time to face the incoming hail of rocks, clutching the sentient staff close to his body. Again those wings buzz into play, narrowly carrying the nimble pixie above one perilious stone while he zips this way and that, the winds assisting his frenzied evasions at times and hindering them others, but he thankfully finds a safe haven near the edge of the stone palm, leaving those rocks crashing upon the hand and reducing them to innumerous shards. A malicious little smile forms on Jerralith's lips as the remnants of stone are seen, no doubt a hazardous plot being hatched in his mind. That fiercly intelligent weapon is pointed straight toward the pile of rubble and they respond in an instant, gathering and melding together into something resembling a very crumbly golem, held together by minute fragments of rock and the natural magic the staff and the druid both possess. The creature storms for Merrien and tosses both of his limbs out, which surprisingly snap right off! A virtual hail of stone particles are swept up into these winds and forced right for the pixie, aiming to carve through her wings and rob her of flight. What's left of this mangled golem dives for her now, with all the cruel intention to leave her splattered like a bug against a window.

Merrien is taken aback as her own flotsam is being used against her in this storm. The golem is an impressive feat to be certain, but the entity possessing Merrien does not begin to worry until the creature's arms crumble to pieces and form deadly shrapnel. The pixie also takes to the air in order to try and dodge as best she can, but there is no avoiding every piece of this grapeshot. Her wings suffer a rather devastating blow as a sharpened boulder rips right through her upper left wing, leaving her flying crooked and ragged, screaming in pain as a few more pieces of shattered rock embed themselves in her skin at the legs as she falls. She alights with a bit of a crash back onto the Hand, momentarily distracted by her beautiful wing's casualty. The golem had not been dissuaded from its course, so Merrien must take drastic action to avoid being made into nothing but blood splatter upon these ruins. The druid has yet to unveil her secret weapon though…The squall rages ever-onward, hopefully disrupting the other pixie's flight and vision as much as possible. The girl begins to chant under hear breath and something in her hair begins to glow ruby-red. If one were close enough to see, they might perceive several runes on the Merrien's hair ribbon, innocently keeping the girl's hair from obstructing her vision alone, until now…As the runes glow brighter, Jerralith would note that the tumultuous air seems to grow more obscure with each passing moment until the area surrounding the other druid on their stone-topped battleground is entirely filled up with a noxious, magical smog. This would not kill Jerralith, oh no. That honor belonged to Merrien alone…but it would make his lungs…feel as though they were sizzling as it were. Fighting to breathe was certainly a detriment to one hoping to retain concentration in combat, should he breathe in too much of it...This was certain to give the druid time, and that is what she desperately needed at this juncture. Her staff raised high in her right hand--appearing to melt into her skin as the scepter's blighted entity digs its power more firmly into Merrien--the druid slams the scepter down onto the palm of the Giant's Hand with all of her strength as the golem makes his final steps towards her. The effect of her spell is not felt for moments until a rumbling is felt and Jerralith would be forced to take flight or move swiftly in order to avoid the plethora poisoned, toxic hemlocks, monkshoods, and bladderworts that rush towards him in the smog. From this same chasm simultaneously erupts vines that twist, snare, and grab at the golem to halt its assault with a desperation felt by Merrien at this moment while she nurses her pain and observes the chaos swirl about her.

Jerralith gags as this hideous smog is introduced, covering his mouth with his own forearm to fight the stifling nature of it. The myraid of toxic plants are heeded even through this gaseous storm, coughing and hacking as his wings spread and he's allowed flight, forced and flung this way and that quite comically. Unfortunately for him, one of those leaves on the hemlocks are torn in the winds gathering and smack right into his form, gifting a portion of its poison right into his skin. The leaf has obviously swatted him right out of the sky, sending him skittering across the stone hand here in a gasping, very nearly beaten heap. Thinking fast, a strange cluster of herbs is pulled from a pouch at his belt and tossed into his mouth, chewing furiously, no doubt an antitoxin of sorts designed just for this very sort of purpose. Even so, whether through that nasty smog of early effects of the poison, his coughing into more severe fits, and he summons the vast majority of what's left of his power in a druidic chant, forced on these howling winds. Through some miracle - possibly aided by his staff- they force that smog back down the chasm and tear apart the vast majority of the toxic plants on their way, sending them scattering down off the cliff. His suffering somewhat lessened now, Jerralith weakly makes his way to Merrien, the staff thrust forth once more; again that vine snakes out and aims to grasp at her leg, pulling her battered body closer. At the same instant, the druid reaches into a pouch of pixie dust and flings it right at Merrien's face, no doubt seeking to blind her, as even she is not immune to the effects of dust in the eye. With the vine closing around her ankle, Jerralith pulls back harshly and seeks to fling her right off the stone hand, as they are already quite close to the slender fingers that terminate it. With torn wings and a battered body, if she is cast off of the cliff, there may be nothing to save her from a perilious fall to a certain death... .

Merrien is thankful for the time to pull herself together as her enemy struggles with her smog and assault, but it is borrowed time alone, she learns as he quickly is upon her once more with his staff. Rather than going through a big show of avoiding most of his onslaught, she embraces it. The dust in the eyes hits her first and it stings like fire ants digging into her corneas, but the druid cackles amidst her screams of pain. The vines wrap about her leg as she is crouched upon the stone and drag her towards Jerralith…just as she desired. As he moves his staff to try and throw her, Merrien thrusts her scepter out as far as her arms can reach, hoping to bring it around the other's back and pull him closer to her so that he might dare not fling them both to their deaths. Merrien's final assault is to be the culmination of all of her possessor's desires for this battle. The death of her enemy is not optional. Victory must be obtained no matter what the cost…The girl wields her scepter with sightless vision behind her opponent's back as she attempts to makes intricate knots in the air with it, drawing out something behind the other pixie to which she adds a thrust of her own pixie dust from her pouch with her left hand once the air around the two of them begins to glow. This dust was not your average blend. It was cut with potency enhancements of her own herbal experimentation. The dust reacts with the spell and a flare-like burst of like emits from the area, blinding all who were not prepared for such. It pulses with the malevolence of the one who had cast it--the possessor. Merrien becomes a dead weight, plastered to the stone, her energy drained as the ground quakes and the entire Giant's Hand cracks. Every ounce of power, cruelty, and malice was poured into this onslaught in which the rising currents of the wind fill the air with the sharpened, deadly shrapnel lying about and whip it towards Jerralith in a cyclone. Water joins the wind in a syncopated effort as the moisture in the air is condensed by pressure and chilled into a ravenous hail storm that would assault Jerralith with huge chunks of ice with no reprieve. All of this raging storm is taking strength from the possessing entity, the staff itself, Merrien's very life energy, and the potent dust infused with it. Whether Merrien herself survives this attack is irrelevant. Only victory is important to the possessor and victory it shall have.

Jerralith would normally have no issue allowing himself to be flung off the cliff along with Merrien, as he has working wings and she has none at current. Nevertheless, the scepter does pull him closer and the hold of that vine is broken, sending him tumbling along with his foe and ever closer to that cliff's edge. It's only when the furious power of his opponent's spell is realized that his eyes widen in positive shock, in awe of the might unleashed. The hailstones pelt his face and body, eyes closing shut as he cries in pain, barely able to even see the the incoming cyclone of shrapnel. Weakly he thrusts his arm out and that vine upon his staff wraps around Merrien's scepter, seizing it from her grasp, as she is merely dead weight upon this stony cliff . Just as the grip of the scepter is transferred to his hand from the vine, he is smashed by a large piece of sharpnel, lacerating a single fragile wing and sending him skittering to the very tip of one of the 'fingers' on this cliff, surely only seconds away from this cyclone enveloping him completely and claiming his life. With a scream of frustration the vine again whips to life, coiling around the scepter and squeezing with a might previously unseen, as the possessor is fighting for his life. The scepter gains hairline cracks here and there and Jerralith thrusts his knee right into it with strength he does not normally have, brusing and possibly even breaking the bone, but succeeding in his primary interest - destroying the weapon. The pain overwhelms his body and he collapses now, but the weapon is broken, and so is its command over this spell. As such the cyclone is significantly weakened, large pieces of stone dropping carelessly to the earth, but the rest of the implements keep the winds themselves in place, however lessened. Jerralith is swept up into their cruel grasp, staff and all and tossed about this way and that before it rejects him, forcing him off of the cliff. It's by nothing short of a miracle that the vine upon his staff snaps out and catches the very edge of it, his single unharmed wing fluttering madly as he seeks to keep holding, closing his eyes and praying to whichever god may give him grace that he is able to survive...