Fight:Alastair v Vaidhe, Vaidhe Finds Some Graverobbing

Vailkrin

Alastair leaned his head back for a moment, almost neck deep in a hole, it was hard to make out the ever present Vailkrin moon. He found it beautiful though, his eyes trailed back down, to the lid just barely starting to show beneath his feet, that on the other hand, was tasteless. He scraped the dirt free, smashing a hand through the coffin, he knew the species buried here. It was an uncommon species to be present in Vailkrin, and that was exactly why he chose this grave. He hauled it up, and out, the Avain he chose smacked into the ground with a sickening wet thud. Sure the body had rotted greatly, but the wings, and a lot of the organs were still intact, thats what mattered. His feet soon made the same sound as he left the grave, despite all the dirt, and mud, his outfit stayed ever solid white. He looked down, piercing the shovel into the ground, and leaving it there. " Seems you had a decent funeral. A nice coffin. More then I can say for my own. I may enjoy this. " But he needed a rest, even being undead, that put a strain on him, digging that huge grave. He plopped down on the ground, staring at the face of the dead. Pondering what he had exactly planned, but he had an idea.

Vaidhe swoops in low over the graveyard, beating his wings only gently as he glides. This place of the dead, only slightly southwest of the area of Vaidhe's most dangerous confrontation to date, is of great interest to the golden dragon, most notably in the event that anyone should attempt to further desecrate the departed and once more visit hell upon the otherwise innocuous environs. He is just a split second too late to see Alastair neck-deep in a freshly-plundered grave, but he does note the figure itself, not to mention the exhumed corpse next to it. Vaidhe's cold, calculating regard falls upon this spectacle as he quickly adjusts his altitude, climbing higher so as to make a tight banking turn and fly back the way he had come, the better to catch the creature below in whatever action it might be wishing to perpetrate this evening. Vaidhe does not make his about-face in view of Alastair; nay, he climbs to a great height with increasing velocity, then makes his change of direction whilst under cover of a fog-bank a bit to the east before descending, still within its scope of protection, and flying out again. it is hoped that, having either ignored the passing dragon completely or having given him up as a passer-by, the grave-robber's conscience will be easy enough to let him do whatever it is he came here to do; Vaidhe is not convinced one way or another of the man's intentions, but has given him more than enough rope to fashion a noose.

Alastair let his eyes up, even though the noise of the dragon wasn't great, its movement caught his eyes as that moon drew his attention again. He followed it for a moment with his gaze, and without barely a thought, he grinned. Taking a stand, the grin wasn't exactly out of anything but for the fact tonight may prove interesting after all. He didn't expect the dragon was here for him, but he didn't know, and honestly as he thought more and more about it, he wondered why a dragon with such shiny scales would come here. He laced his fingers behind his head, letting free a shrill whistle, before it turned into a song, along with his attention turning to the corpse. His blade nicked the chest wide open, he had his own scalpel, not one he was particularly fond of, but he had found what he would do with this body. He might as well piss off a dragon with it, maybe get some spare parts, and some fun. He started to work on the body, keeping an eye on the sky, just in case that body came back. It was such a rare occasion to see a dragon up close for him, one that wasn't an earthy tone. He loved the shine of good dragons, and almost drooled at the prospect of including the parts in one of his creatures, or even attached to himself. Maybe he would be toasted dead trying, but this was becoming a more interesting night indeed.

                         The duel.

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Vaidhe is just in time to see the wink of steel in the moonlight, a blade senselessly biting dead flesh, on his return flight over the main graveyard area. The golden beast, rather predictably, is enraged by this act of wanton disrespect, but rather than allowing fury to cloud his judgment, Vaidhe acts in the same calculated fashion which has kept him alive for more centuries than one might expect. Instead of roaring and thus announcing his discontent to his foe, instead of simply bathing the area in a torrent of holy flames, Vaidhe takes in a great double lungful of cool night breeze, then lets it out as he allows his mind's formidable talents to visit themselves upon the various targets of his focus. Multitudinous gravestones, some lying flat upon the earth while others jut skyward, each begin to tremble and shudder, until all seem ready to shake themselves apart at the dragon's command. Little puffs of dust and the chattering of stone on stone from all sides are the only signals that something is amiss, unless one should be intently staring at one of the headstones in question of course. As the pent-up breath finishes its expulsion from his enormous lungs, Vaidhe imparts to each and every affected plinth and grave-marker a single, blind imperative. Thus loosed, these projectiles rip free of the cold soil as one, and hurtle toward the unfortunate Alastair where he crouches above the corpse he will now surely regret unearthing. This onslaught of etched stone will, if not somehow checked or dodged, visit terrible violence upon Alastair's person, burying him in an avalanche of pounding, crushing destruction, thereafter to form a jumbled cairn atop his remains.

Alastair shuddered deeply, magic lacing through the air was felt, but it didn't signal very well. He looked around for a moment, as he finished his work, another quick glance around. He let a bit of the string stitching his right wrist on to touch the gaping chest of the corpse, sewing it back together. Then came the rumble, and tombstones, he saw exactly what was about to happen, and much of his response wasn't to panic. He grabbed the corpse tightly, as it stood up, and started to beat its wings lifting it, and Alastair with it, into the air, the tombstones burying where he just stood, he let go when the magic stopped. The creature he created was made, for one certain purpose, and was too simple minded to let him down. He landed on the stone pile from a bit of a height, rolling down, and damaging himself a bit, some bruising, and maybe a bit of a limp. But he would live. He looked back up, to the quickly bloating Avain, seeking out its target, upon contact, it would explode in tons of bile, and plenty of splinters of bone, it would work to latch on first of course. He ran to a nearby mausoleum diving into it next, he wouldn't be able to reach the flying being, so instead, he would make some monstrosities to do it for him. Unless he could find a pair of wings for himself, sew them onto his back, though they wouldn't last long.

Vaidhe is somewhat surprised to see the alacrity displayed by his foe as he uses the risen avian to avoid the telekinetic attack; it occurs to the dragon's vast mind to wonder at the way this creature sensed the manipulation of stone particles without the natural magic which seems rife in this land, but ultimately these thoughts must wait. The incoming threat manages to latch itself to Vaidhe's foreleg before detonating, riddling that appendage with many splinters of jagged bone which wedge deep into the flesh between his scales; the bile is for the most part not noticed by the scaled saurian, present only as an olfactory offense as it patters to the ground. Vaidhe can no longer see his prey, and due to the thick stink of the destroyed avian clouding the air, has difficulty sniffing him out as well. Unhinging his maw and loosing a terrifying bellow of frustration, Vaidhe quickly sets about the grim task of forcing his quarry out of whatever bolt-hole it has managed to scurry to. The draconic shout itself is the first implement of attack, unconsciously magnified so as to be rather painful to mortal ears, Vaidhe's not least among them; this assault of sound causes the mausoleums in the graveyard to shiver, their stones to exude puffs of dust as they threaten to topple under the stress of excessive vibration. Atop this danger, Vaidhe spills another, a torrent of holy fire poured from his maw toward the ground in a freshet of infernal fury. Instead of simply burning what it strikes, though, this fire, which looks oily and slightly less bright than the dragon's normal flames, courses along the ground and fallen stones, seeking combustible material to burn. Should Alastair's bunker prove to be a match for Vaidhe's terrible trumpetting challenge, the fire itself may very well creep in and smother the creature as he hides; it is somewhat slow-moving, but its hunger is great and its intent is easily inferred...if not stopped, this blanket of fire will continue to spread, wreaking havoc upon the surrounding topography with no care as to who or what ends up in its ravening path.

Alastair the scream caused his ears to bleed, and didn't exactly do anything to help his thought process. But he started his dark work, even as the place started to come down slightly, he found what he was looking for. He chopped off the draconian's wings he found, he attached them to his back with a little more suturing, and soon launched free from the slowly becoming rubble laden place. The fire started to eat away at his pants legs when they touched, and it brought a curse to his lips, something relating to loss of eyes. But he started his own ascent into the air, after the dragon. He wasn't exactly used to wings yet, and his quickly becoming fleshless feet weren't helping at all. But he drew his blade, chopping off his own feet so it wouldn't spread further, he would find new ones to sew on properly later. For now, he was flying, he closed distance, having no ranged spells of his own, using the mist, and bile cloud as cover, his poison blade soon struck for a part the dragon probably wouldn't be looking towards. His tail.

Vaidhe reacts with the hideous speed of a threatened predator the instant he feels the blade bite into the underside of his tail. The attack, true to form, had caught the dragon slightly unawares, since he did not in fact see his enemy leave the shelter he had earlier taken. No matter the bale present upon that wicked blade, however, it will take a long time to do serious damage to the dragon, and so the great saurian's counterattack is unimpeded and horribly apt, under the circumstances. Vaidhe cannot fly backward in midair, but his tail is a long, well-balanced club, made of muscle and cartilage and spines. not being too far from the ground, Vaidhe uses the momentum from his casual descent, combined with a brutal downthrust of his tail, to hasten his meeting with the fiery ground. Less than a second after Vaidhe feels the blade pierce his flesh, in other words, first his tail and then the rest of him hammers the ground with a deafening boom, wounded front leg buckling beneath him and unintentionally adding to the horror of the impact. Vaidhe now simply hopes that, having struck the underside of his tail, his foe has been struck down by it and now lies broken and burning beneath its bulk. Avoiding the tail entirely is not likely at such close range, and even a glancing blow might prove a devastating strike against the airborne undead. Vaidhe feels the balm of his own fire licking over his toes and belly as he lies upon the ground, mustering his strength for more combat should it prove necessary, hoping that the healing quality of the fire upon his own flesh will somewhat counteract both the wounds imparted by the bone slivers and the poison delivered to him upon the edge of Alastair's sword, a toxon sensed without being fully understood.

Alastair was caught by the tail, but smiled, his poison never was meant to kill, he liked quick acting paralyzing toxins. But the tail started coming down, and the smile soon turned into a look of fear, he had barely any control of the wings as it was, it didn't crush him, but it smacked him hard, sending him spinning through the air, and breaking two or three ribs in the process. Tumbling through the air, he didn't have any clue how to right himself, and he hit hard. Smashing into the ground, knocking over almost three tombstones in his tumble, and ending all his momentum with another mausoleum. Lucky enough, the speed that he shot across the ground saved him from the fire for the most part. But losing all his speed, it started to burn him. He laid there for a moment, as the start of the burn touched on him. Besides a broken bone in his left forearm, and a bone sticking into the air of the night from his knee. He knew he would need to move quick, his wings were laying broken and battered behind him, so the stitches soon fell free, letting them to the ground. He rolled over, forcing the door open with his broken arm, and pulled himself in the building. He had precious seconds to work with, and using magic, he found so tasteless, he reanimated three basic ghouls, sending them rushing out of the tomb at the dragon. He couldn't even infuse them with any explosive magic. The fire ate away at their legs, but they would reach the dragon no less. At least he managed to invoke their magic, they wouldn't fight with fists, and being a collective grave, they all practiced the same. Soon, flesh decaying magic was launched in rapid succession from the ghouls, six orbs shooting through the air, no real aim, but they would strip flesh from the dragon, barely enough to even incapacitate him, just searing pain probably, especially with the healing fire counteracting. With that distraction, he worked on ridding the fire, and hopefully procuring some new legs, before he was found out.

Vaidhe quickly learns the type of poison to which he has fallen victim as he attempts to lever himself upright...his body has grown sluggish and heavy, a sensation starting with his tail and rear legs and slowly spreading forward. Before he can be thoroughly immobilized - an act which will likely take a fair amount of time regardless of the speed of Alastair's venom, owing to Vaidhe's massive size - the dragon throws his head back and looses a blurt of flame into the air. As the ghous erupt from cover, the fire falls about Vaidhe's form, shrouding him just as the orbs of magic strike low on his right side. Gold dragons, as is true of many other saurian species, are often somewhat healed by the results of their own breath; Vaidhe is no different, though the hurried creation of the flames renders them a poor cessation to his misery. Instead of eating the scales and flesh from his flank, the orbs of magic score little furrows in his hide, exuding thick rills of blood and little else. The pain, however, is intense, and it harries Vaidhe into an act that is part desperation and part raw anger. Beating his wings against the ground with a deafening tumult, sending the remnants of his oily flames up around him in an unspeakable veil, the dragon somehow finds the strength to lunge airborne, then begins flying away as fast as he can manage. He may be able to roost nearby, there to wait out the paralytic effects of his poison and remount the offensive, but otherwise, he feels that the lesson taught to this would-be grave-robber has to this point been painful enough.

Vaidhe alights upon the stone roof of the temple to the northwest, shivering with a mixture of rage and pain from the poison attempting to subdue him. The purging fire with which he surrounded himself previously has mostly nullified the effects of the poison, but his right foreleg still pains him and the wound in his tail still stings; atop that, the entirety of his musculature feels overworked and stressed, as if he has been flying for many a long, cold mile. He waits on the rooftop to muster what remains of his power, then lunges down into the graveyard again. It takes him almost no time at all to see the hunched shape of his foe, mangled and footless and altogether at the gold dragon's mercy. Vaidhe takes no time to ponder what he will do, knowing already that he wishes to leave his foe alive enough to fear the dragon who bested him this day. Swooping close to the ground and lowering his head, Vaidhe lifts the limp body up in his teeth, then viciously snaps his head up and expels the man in a high arc. He flies upward to meet it, ramming it with the horn on his head in passing, then buffeting it with his great wings as it tries to tumble back to earth again. Vaidhe does this for awhile, entertaining himself with the simple game of attempting to keep the man aloft for as long as he can, until at last he grows tired of the sport and allows Alastair to plummet into an opened grave. When he wakes, he will no doubt find himself quite the worse for wear, but there is no doubt that he will remain possessed of whatever wits he owns, in order that he shall never forget the humiliation of being so thoroughly pummelled. Satisfied that his message has been made clear without the need for words, Vaidhe once more climbs into the night sky and begins skimming eastward, toward the bulk of the dark forest and whatever tasty things might dwell there to satisfy his hunger. Healing, after all, is best not done on an empty belly.