Fight:Tooth and Claw.. and a Couple of Sharks
Spider's Nest, Dark Forest, Vailkrin
As you stumble into the area, the webs here are thick beneath you. You can see cocoons hanging from tree branches, shaped like human figures, some of them with blood stains. Before you is a large nest which has various treasure within it. At first you desire to reach in and take what you can see, but you get a feeling that it's not a wise idea, and that it's most likely bait for travelers. Desiring not to end up like the hanging bodies, you decide it's best to leave this nest alone.
Kuzial is a creature of darkness and death, as much as any who stalk this abysmal world. He was forged within the twisted city of Trist'Oth; his malice and hatred hammered against the wickedness of his kin, his evil nature tempered against the horrifyingly torturous caves where only the strong survive... and even then, only if they can make all those dance around them, much like a puppet master. It is a place where scheming comes naturally to those who survive, for all whom it doesn't die quick, painful deaths. This is where the Patron of House Stavret was born and raised... and so he has no qualms at all about this current plan of his. It took many meals and many spells to recover from the last battle with Tenebrae, and despite the fact he doesn't actively want her to die, he will not let such wounds go unpunished. So he came to this place, finding it oddly fitting his nature, before he lets out through the bonds which bind himself to the lady of darkness a summoning cry. 'Treachery!' it screams. 'Betrayal and death!' The unspoken words hammer along those ties like the panicked cries of a woman being chased by drunken nobles through town. 'Come! Aid me against...' a brief pause. Kuzial doesn't know who Tenebrae hates the most in this world, so he simply chooses who he does, 'Aid me against the elves...' With the cries sent, then abruptly stopped, Kuzial climbs a tree, ignoring the many tiny spiders which seek to find who intrudes upon them. And only when crouched in darkness, a dagger in one hand, the other clasped to the tree, only then does he allow a small smile to come to his face. He'd see how she likes it when he has some preparation! Though, he isn't entirely a cheat, for he summoned her with a warning of danger... that should make the playing field even enough.
Tenebrae is not all that far away, relaxing in a deep, red tub of bubbles on the upper floor of her manse. Her armour drapes, listless, across a high-backed chair while its mistress hums, her swathes of dark hair coiled damply atop her head, one pale foot resting on the tub’s brass edge. She’s just finished wedging swabs of cotton between all her toes and given the nail varnish bottle a good shake, when she feels that unmistakable tightening of her senses, like a great invisible fist has forced its way into her bathroom and seeks to drag her out by the soul. Kuzial. Of course, he’s caught her vulnerable. The necromancer rolls her eyes a bit and smiles faintly. Of course. But the smile vanishes when the tone of the call becomes more plain. More.. panicked. Treachery? She frowns. And clambers out of her bath, not bothering to dry the suds off herself before summoning her armour. Because it likes the taste. Nothing under it – there would be no removal of her carapace –this- day! Because – treachery! Really, in House Stavret, was there ever anything else going on? Betrayal, ditto.. death, yup. She is guessing an uprising or perhaps an invasion by a rival House, and really, until the moment Kuzial took it just that –teensy- bit too far, Tenebrae was quite prepared to come and view the carnage. Maybe join in, if her nails were dry. But then there’s Stavret, begging, pleading with her for help. Against – the elves. Riiiight. She now takes the call to be a joke. Or a truly revenge-worthy insult. She shakes her head at you, Kuzial! And runs about arming herself with the usual plethora of nasty pins and poisons, sharp things, more sharp things, oh yes, and a boomerang. In her armour and best steel-heeled boots, she tromps down the stairs and out onto the porch, from where she intends to.. Oh. Wait a minute! Tene’s got a parcel. She loves parcels, and is not going to wait until (until! not if!) she gets home again to open it. A moment later, she’s jiggling on those high, high heels, hands pressed to her mouth to cover a peal of laughter. She even has to cross her legs a little bit, she is laughing so hard. The contents of that parcel are –definitely- coming with her on this ‘rescue’ mission. Because Kuzial is like, so needy, especially when cornered by those nasty elves.
Kuzial waits for a while in his improvised tree-house, surrounded by spiders, webbing and the stench of (relatively) fresh air, all the while growing more and more angry. The smile that started so evil - one rather similar to what Tenebrae wears when cutting off one person's head to stick it to some twisted creation, before sending said creation off to torture the loved ones of the first someone... it was that kind of smile... - and it lasted for a long while, before it fades to a look of irritation. She bloody well knew! He punches the tree, dislodging hundreds of tiny spiders which crawl all over his own armour, which has retracted from his face and arms, leaving them bare. He ignores them, though, even as his armour shares with him a strange lamentation of days spent in spider webs. But he ignores that too. It's not a bloody spider anymore, it's his – bound to him with bonds stronger than mithril – and like any of his tools he doesn't care to hear it whine. The E' et-Nilah Blade is the same... it's why he's taken to leaving it in his Throne Room. Nevertheless, he's about to go huntin' Tenebrae, before he spies the woman running oh-so-seriously into the place he well-prepared. He was right, he's sure. She bloody well knew! Ah well, perhaps he should speak to her in his typical lascivious fashion, lull her that way... no, she'd see right through that too. He punches the tree again, dislodging more spiders and perhaps giving away his location, before, with a shrug to no one, he decides if he can't surprise her with is own tricks, he'd use another's. He flips the dagger in his hand, before tossing it through a small gap in the branches. It flies across the nested area, before slamming into a tree with a dull 'thud'. But not just wood was impaled, oh no. It sliced cleanly as it flew through two of the thick silken strands which hold up one of the bigger webs. He watches as it falls almost languidly down, before he reaches out and grasps one of the few remaining supporting webs, and jumps himself, pulling the last part of his 'net' down with him, hoping it'll cover Tenebrae and, worse comes to worst, he'll leave her tangled enough for him to mock her for her mockery, before stabbing her a few times for good measure... it was not a great plan, but at least it'll save him some face.
Really, Tenebrae was thinking, as she came jogging up that gloomy path to his lurking-place. If he’d just left it at ‘treachery’... She feels a little disappointed in him. Not in the drow-born himself, of course, he was satisfying in oh, so many ways. More just a bit let down that he’d think she would –actually- believe such a pitiful call of help came from –Stavret- in the first place. Oh, he was going to be punished for that! And not in –any- of his favourite ways! Tenebrae was expecting something or other to happen as she entered the webby glade, and the little rain of baby spiders –awh- that come pattering down wasn’t it. Eyes sharp, ears sharper, one hand gripping a nastily-barbed pike that hadn’t seen a good killing spree in several years, the other clasping the handles of some sort of bag. She hears a THUD. Her green eyes glitter in the scant reflected light of luminous tree-fungi and a sliver of moon hanging overhead, as she steps toward the location of that sound. And too late, thinks to glance up -- for here, like the gown of an opulently wealthy and overly romantic bride falling off a cliff, comes that web. It’s almost pretty, she thinks, as it wafts its slow way downward. Tene actually wonders whether it’s nothing to do with the trap, because Kuzial tends to move very .. “OOOF!” Yes, a bit more like that, she manages to think as web, maybe drow, persistent baby spiders and all land upon her, more swiftly for Kuzial’s knifework. Effectively tarped to the dank earth, Tene hasn’t much chance of manouvering that spear. While her armour sprouts its usual retinue of spikes, the death-mage forges her own shorter weapon by biting into the handle of the spear like a pit bull, managing to crack it enough that broke when she leaned her fast-becoming-stuck elbow on it, hard. Perhaps Kuzial whatever he was doing to her by now, would hear the ‘crack’ before the spear-tip pokes up out of that web, every upward and hopeful little stab only serving to make the woman stickier, and thus more stuck.
Kuzial wasn't following in with his other daggers, or leaping upon the woman and thus making himself sticker than she was, even though she now seems to wield a stabbing stick, having bitten through the spear's shaft... that caused an unconscious wince in the drow, you can be sure! Instead of following in with vicious attacks, he lets out a not-very-convincing sigh, before speaking in tones which echo the irritation he has at himself. “It was the addition of the elves, wasn't it? You knew neither myself nor my blades would ever share the blood of elves, unless you were giving me something very valuable in return.” He looks her over salaciously at those words, even though she's half trapped beneath the web. “I forgot that you are more drow than anything else; despite you being more steeped in death in decay than almost anything else – the decay not your own, of course - you think like all great drow do. Like myself, like Tiphareth... though, the mighty Patron of Trist'Oth, he often...” Kuzial is rambling, apparently pointlessly so. Usually his words are always to the point, because he usually doesn't care too much what others think. Perhaps that would be the only thing to betray the truth of what he is doing. For while he rambles about Tiphareth and his ties to the surface, the rather large, very hairy, and unbelievably angry spider whose web Kuzial so casually tore down has begun to lower itself from the trees above. It's body is blacker than the night sky, helping to disguise it, though it does have thin tendrils of colour which mark its sides, betraying the deadly poison it gleefully uses to kill many creatures... and seeing as there is so much death in this area, one would assume it's strong enough to test the constitution of even a vampire.. maybe even an Empusai vampire. So while Kuzial rambles away, his eyes never once flicker to the silently descending creature as it lowers itself, fangs almost dripping venom. He keeps his eyes hopefully upon Tenebrae's own, if she's free enough to be looking anywhere. And it isn't until the great spider is very close that it releases itself from the strand of thick web that held it to the tree tops, and falls, aiming for Tenebrae who may still be trapped in the webbing, seeking to impale her sweet flesh with its fangs and imbue her with a poison that will quickly begin to devour the necromancer's flesh from the inside, making the spider's meal that much easier to digest. Perhaps Kuzial's obvious deceptions were not entirely in vain, perhaps this was his plan all along... or perhaps, it was simply the instincts of a hunter layering his trap, despite his mistake in seeking to trick the very clever necromancer into his trap.
Tenebrae had begun to think Kuzial had drawn her here for an altogether different – and possibly, only slightly less disturbing – reason, once he starts talking of valuable debts (and we all know where those exchanges always end up..). So at the point where he’s raking her over with his eye and looking like a vulture about to feast on a carcass, she’s grinning, slowing the stabs down.. His comparison of her to a drow makes her shiver with pride, for well she knows what a compliment it is. She’s expecting some very dark stabbery indeed, gazing up at the cruel thing whose flesh has been changed by the addition of some of her own. And then – Kuzial keeps talking. And it’s only because the original subject of the diatribe was Tenebrae that she wasn’t already wondering what awful ruse he was up to now. Her vanity, her terrible lust – oh clever Kuzial, to use a sinner’s sins against her! So, while she’s waiting for him to get the point, which she fully expects to be about further virtues (or vices, as it were) of herself, Tenebrae is not in any way preparing for that massive, fat-bodied, gluttonous creature to descend and turn her into little more than soup-in-a-sack for arachnids. In fact, Tenebrae is cooing out a few salacious words designed to provoke and aggravate the drow’s lowest nature, when the first drop of venom falls on her cheek. Was he drooling? She barely finished the thought and then the monstrous mother-of-spiderlings was stabbing her fangs through the web, at bits which looked lumpy enough to be prey. And Tene, well.. has several tasty lumps. Except, the ones the beast was biting into were not soft to the fang, like sweet blood apples. These were hard, and hard enough to chip off the end of the monster’s fang-tips as it struck in rage, over and over. For of course, Tenebrae’s armour, that once-man that is now a plated, sentient carapace, had thrust itself to fore of danger, as was its job, detaching itself from her at the front, standing itself upright on several spindly limbs – and thereby creating for its Mistress a little wiggle-room underneath. The spider attacks the armour over and over again, and even manages to breech the plating a few times, piercing its spongy under-flesh. Meanwhile, hopefully obscured from Kuzial’s vision – and that of the big frakking spider he just fed her to!- by the web, Tene wiggles her way under the armour and out of the trap, miraculously somehow still gripping the handles of that bag she was carrying earlier. Now, she only has the spider itself and Kuzial to deal with. Scrambling free, she delves both hands into that mysterious carry-bag, looking for a moment as though she is –pushing- very hard on something within it. And then she raises the bag which, bloody and sodden falls away, to reveal… the two shark pups she’d ordered for a special vat-experiment, jammed onto her arms like gauntlets. They’re not doing much as she gives the dark and the drow in it, and the spider an evil sort of grin, because the fish are quite clearly dead. But moments later – and we can just see it coming, can’t we, kids? – the razor jaws of the baby sharks start snapping mechanically, while dead gills gasp for the brine they will never breathe again. Tene marches on the spider, which is still attacking her amour, and though the creature feels her vibration coming it simply isn’t that quick on the ground - especially in the middle of an existing attack. Tene is swift, though, and leaps for the thing’s hideous, bulbous back end – and with a two-fisted PUSH! shoves the shark-mouths where the sun don’t shine, never has shone and is unlikely now to ever begin shining – what, with these amusing new gauntlets ripping the creature many new and fatal rectums. She wonders if Kuzial is watching, as surely he knows he is always foremost in her mind…. And gaining a sense of him, his putrid glee, the necromancer comes after him next, wherever he is. Possibly soon to meet his doom via a naked dead chick with red toenails and two necromantic sharks for hands. Snap-snap, Stavret. Your time’s coming!
Kuzial watches with a detached sort of glee as the spider begins to attack what he assumes is Tenebrae. He knew her armour was thick and strong, but it'd not take too much venom for his plan to succeed, and he would kill the spider before it killed her... this was vengeance of a... playful? kind. Deadly, undoubtedly, vicious and mean, twisted and cruel... in their own way, it is how they play together. But he wouldn't let it destroy her, if even it could. Here with the eldritch trees standing silent sentinel; thin shafts of light from Hollow's moons marking the dank ground with dancing shadows as the ghastly trees and willowy webs move in the slight breeze. Even here they played like children without morals, with a cruelty society usually drives from the minds of the young, unless they are of a race as dark and twisted as drow, orc or troll. And here, standing tall in his armour, watching callously the struggle between... wait... did the spider's eight eyes just grow wider? Is that blood or venom now marking its face, pouring from within, coloured most foul in the dampered light of the dark forest. Kuzial takes half a step forward, unconsciously dodging the sticky web on the ground with an assurance of one who grew up around the eight legged creatures and their hideous traps. But he stops, and only just... barely... refrains himself from lifting his hands to his cheeks and letting out a rather fitting scream. This wasn't how it worked! The beautiful, naked woman was supposed to be fleeing from the monster in the night, tripping over a twisted root before being killed... that was how ten thousand dark stories are told, yet this one perhaps is the exception which proves the story-telling rule. For the beautiful and unclothed woman, her vanity on show with toenails painted, looking so hideously normal, is walking now towards him with two undead sharks attached to her arms... two hungry undead sharks, their teeth and faces stained with the blood of the fastly-curling-up spider beside them. This was something entirely new, and Kuzial, for a long moment, merely stands there, truly too shocked to react with his usual languid and deadly grace. What the hell was this woman?! Only then does a smile form on his lips. He knew the answer to that. She was as messed up, twisted, deranged and undoubtedly psychotic as himself, and for some reason this thought drives some of the eternal anger from the dark elf. Well, briefly drives it away. He laughs, even as he takes a backward step further into the gloom of the forest. “You, lady darkness, have lost what few strands of sanity you once had.” He pulls out a dagger, and waves it menacingly, “And there's no way I am ever letting you in bed with those, get that thought from your mind!” He flashes a psychotic grin at her, clearly enjoying the insanity of the moment, before flipping his dagger around so he holds it by the blade for just a moment, then hurling into the trunk of a tree. He uses this impromptu step as a springboard as he leaps forward, twisting himself through the air over the woman, so he lands behind her. He takes another step back as he extends his hand, wraps it around a hairy spider leg, before twisting and pulling with a sickening squish. It rips the leg off, and he holds it before him, dangling it like a bone for a dog. “Here, sharky, sharky, sharky...” Did he really just say that? He prods it towards the undead sharks on her hands. “Dinner!” He has, in truth, no idea how this is any sort of attack on the woman. But considering she's strutting through the deadly forest in such a fashion, perhaps he cannot be blamed for merely wanting to feed her hungry pets before they decide drow is a fitting substitute for fishies. Vengeance, it seems, can wait.
If she didn’t reek of death before (and she did not!) by all the nine hells Tenebrae surely does now. But even the stench of perished sea-life (which may have been in the post a few days longer than actually recommended..) rising up to her delicate nostrils cannot turn the woman’s glare from Kuzial. “You.” she says, “Kuzial Stavret, dropped a spider on me!” Which is –how- much less insane? Then he’s behind her – sometimes, just sometimes, she really hates that – goading her razor-toothed gloves, so that they twist and turn and nearly take a bite or three out the necromancer herself before she finally, with eyes that are two green pits of promised punishment, glares at him “This is what you drive me to!” She adds, without a smirk, “And yes. It was the elves.” The sharks are in a feeding-frenzy, and if Kuzial wished to feed them so badly? So be it! Both arms once more thrust forward, with a vicious PUSH, but this time she –lets go- of the things, and they slip off her hands with a nasty sort of ‘slurrrp’, before sailing through the mildewed air toward the drow. Tenebrae’s nose is wrinkled. And if even one of those undead fish hit anywhere near the drow, no-one could blame him for thinking it was the malodorous reek at the cause of it. But the expression isn’t dropped, it just gets more pronounced. The woman’s jaw lengthens, her spine cracks and ridges sharply, bowing her over so that her hands – which are not hands anymore, press upon the wormy soil in aid of keeping at least half-upright during this shedding of her humanoid mask. “No more games, Stavret,” she hissed, her bifurcated tongue lashing, ears like two elongated conch shells protruding upright from the sides of her head. “If I go naked, then so must you.” Meanwhile, back at the spider, Tene’s armour is doing very poorly indeed, having enough venom in it to melt the flesh of a mammoth. She isn’t thinking about now, but about Kuzial’s armour, which she gestures to with a taloned paw which smells like Cenril market on a hot day. It’s getting harder to speak through the fangs that riddle her mouth. “Strip for me Stavret. Let us finish this in nothing but the truth of what we are.”
Kuzial reacts like the children of Larket who live in such wealth they can afford to spend their youth playing games... so unlike the dark streets where the drow and necromancer grew up. He shifts his grip on the spider's leg, before slashing it through the air. It hits one of the undead sharks, sending it hurling into the trees, where fate alone seems to decide it would land in a nest of spiders. The noise coming from it is disgusting as the creature feeds upon the eight legged arachnids which have no real chance against one of the ocean's greatest killers... even though it's on land and rather undead. The second shark sneaks through, and latches onto Kuzial's armour, but he simply ignores it. Instead he commands the second-skin he wears to change itself – opening to allow Kuzial to step out, before spider-shaped armour and shark-shaped glove meander off, perhaps to look for food of their own, perhaps to go harass Tenebrae's own armour. Or to comfort it. Either way, Kuzial doesn't care. His eyes and concentration are for Tenebrae alone, glowing scarlet eye locked upon her gaze. “Must I? Command me not, woman.” He snarls, then. The game they were playing quickly shifting to a dark menacing situation. She wanted to play properly. He would adhere. Like a grotesque mirror, Kuzial's own face reacts like Tenebrae's. The change is rare for Kuzial, shedding his drow looks come harder to him, despite the fact he's every bit the monster the necromancer is. But the challenge was offered and he would not refuse. Like her, dagger-like claws replace fingers, muscles already thicker than most dark elves seem to grow larger, stronger, until at last he stands before Tenebrae, not quite as changed as she was, but looking no less demonic as the lady of darkness. When he speaks his voice is sibilant and cruel, no longer euphonious and lyrical, coming as it is from a mouth split entirely too large. “Ready yourself for death, then!” That said, he leaps forward, quicker than many an eye could follow. With strength born of undeath, vampirism and the vats, he closes the distance to the woman who gave him such gifts, but no gratitude is given for them. As he does, he gracefully drops low, picks up some dank dirt, before thrusting his right hand at her face. Claws are extended, seeking her flesh, while his left hand snaps upward, hurling the dirt at her eyes to distract long enough for her to learn the harsh, harsh lesson he wants to teach... don't piss off a psychotic Empusai drow.
A mission statement which perhaps ought to be amended to ‘don't piss off a psychotic Empusai whose forebears borrowed heavily from the traits of bats’ – while the dirt indeed clods into her head, smirching eyes with granules of foul humus, in her current state Tenebrae has little need for vision. Those elongated, convoluted ears flick and swivel, so that even the shifting weight of a drow’s soft footfalls echo back to her perception. Not even sound is necessary, however, for at present the Patron is attempting to manhandle his maker, claws slashing out to catch on armourless skin and what passes for muscle for below. Blind, but not deaf or unfeeling, the woman-thing allows those claws to sink into her, but before they can grope toward real and lasting damage, or be joined by their mates which adorn his opposite hand, Tene’s left hind leg – bestially rearticulated now – bends high, its knee pressing hard into her chest, its taloned foot smashing into the drow while mimicking his own clawed attack. Flesh is grasped – and then comes a powerful thrust of thigh, shoving Kuzial with all the strength she can muster. He might take a little piece of her with him, but unless he’s somehow anchored to that rotting earth, she’ll return the flesh-taking favour and put some healthy distance between them while she’s at it.
Kuzial snarls as he reacts with speed forged in a thousand battles. As Tenebrae's leg comes up in a most disgusting fashion, he tears his hand down in an attempt to cause maximum damage to the woman's face, at the same time as he gropes out towards her ankle with his free limb. His intention was to hold on, and shift his weight so her force can be used against her. But he has underestimated his Sire, the giver of his dark and twisted gifts. The strength of her attack is enough to send him flying backwards in a haphazard fashion, until his back strikes a tree with a sickening 'thud' that echoes throughout the forest, dislodging many tiny spiders in a horrifying parody of rain, though one which is ignored entirely by the psychotic patron. He snarls again; were he mortal, his spine would have shattered, his life would have been taken. But he has gone beyond the pathetic shackles of life, and enraged and changed as he is, it does little more than send a tidal wave of agony throughout his body. But it'd take more than pain to put out his burning anger. He steps forward again, preparing to attack, and only then notices his chest... and the lack of flesh there. Ribs can be seen as starkly white bone against sanguine vitae and ebon skin, and to these Kuzial goes – entirely uncaring of the damage he does, as long as it's repaid twice against his now-grotesque maker. So he lifts a hand, grasps one of his ribs, and with a sickening twist tears it from his body, giving him an improvised dagger of Empusai bone. He grins; an ugly look on a face no longer beautiful, before leaping towards Tenebrae again. No matter what she is doing, he simply doesn't care – he'd leap and twist through the webs, not bothering to be stealthy, until he reaches the necromancer. Near enough to attack, he noisily feints high, then low, before spinning himself in a tight circle as he shifts his grip on his newest dagger, holding it underhanded to drive with all his strength and momentum the white bone at Tenebrae's chest... if she had a heart, he was intent on finding it... let's see her live with it beating on the end of his weapon.
Tenebrae hasn’t bothered at all to indulge his love of the chase.. She just wanted him to get a long, hard look, from wherever he landed, at the awful, triple-row of fangs she used to grin at him while her chin tilted high and she looked (through a remaining film of dirt) down her nose at the creature she’d re-made in the image of her own monstrous nature. The ribbons in which her mauled cheek hangs reveals not red below, but dark stuff that leaks darker ichor. Baby spiders rain – she snatches one from the air and eats it even while he tears from his own body a makeshift weapon. The grin grows wider, until it seems it might split her head in two hemispheres. How slowly the new-born are to forget what it is to be a lesser thing. It’s wonder it does not occur to Kuzial to ask himself why she isn’t running from that stabby bone, why she isn’t dodging and weaving to match his faux attacks. When the thrust to her chest comes, it is powerful enough to drive half his hand through her, too, leaving the erstwhile dagger protruding from her back. Nice and close, boiling with rage, just the way she likes him best.. Heartless, some call her - and they are, at least these days, perfectly correct. For no longer has she a heart to offer him, nor lungs, nor any of the organs left that belonged to her former existence. Now, she has proto-flesh, the meat of which writhes into separate strands which close about Kuzial’s arm like druid’s vines, suckers and hooked extrusions lampreying him to his maker. Her arms clamp around him, her maw drops open like that of some hellish, hungry dragon – a forward thrust of her neck brings the mouth of hell snapping down in the direction of his beautiful – never more beautiful to her than it is now – snarling face.
Kuzial feels the satisfying sensation of driving a weapon through someone's chest; like a fine wine it is to the Empusai drow, though it seems this wine has turned to vinegar before his very eyes. There is no cry of pain, there is no bones breaking or organs rupturing. Just the feel of flesh against a weapon, followed immediately by a tightening which has his arm trapped in her chest, locking him in place. For just a moment there is time for thought, and instead of the normal ideas for attacks and battle which flow through his psychotic battle-rage, it instead whispers of a truth in the middle of this fight... a lesson learned here amidst the devastation. Kuzial rarely shifts his form from that of a drow, and rare it is for him to truly embrace the darker side of his gifted heritage. He would die before he admits it, but he fears what he is... he fears he will become nothing more than an animal; a fate he has seen many times when errant drow are morphed into driders. He clings to that thought even as Tenebrae's mouth snaps down into a perverted lovers' kiss; one more deadly than the wrath of any other woman. Acting quickly, Kuzial drives his free arm up into her mouth, using it as a makeshift trap between knuckles and elbow to stop the viciously sharp teeth from tasting his face, though they do tear into the flesh of his arm rather viciously. It's an awkward position he is in, but one he has immediate answer to. He draws upon the darkness within, allowing it to more completely take over. Like the driders he has seen, mad animals lost in a world of darkness and pain, he falls backwards into the abyss, letting it shift and warp his flesh much like it does Tenebrae's own. All this happens in the time it'd take a living heart to beat once, before Kuzial jumps up, using his trapped arm as a lever, and wraps his legs around Tenebrae's body. Locking himself in place, with one arm hopefully still in her mouth, the other still in her body, he screams a cry which would give nightmares to any mortal which heard it, and he allows his body to shift more completely; feeling the thick ridges of bones form on his arm, before they protrude from his flesh, tearing it with vicious ease... It's only then that the drow begins to wildly thrash, hoping to cause horrifying damage to Tenebrae's head and body where his arms are trapped, his legs locked around her ensuring, he hopes, she cannot simply push him off before some damage is done.
Tenebrae knows all too well that fear, of losing oneself to the symbiotic thing which transformed her into what she is.. For not only has she fought that war herself – and won! – but first-hand has witnessed the horrors of what happens when an Empusai’s mind is too weak to curb his flesh. It is a fear she no longer possesses, but the stink of it rises from the ichor Kuzial is oozing into her mouth, even as he warps into the true beast lurking within. She has this small moment of triumph before he surprises her – and again, pride is her fall, or at least a mouthful of barbed havoc. Oh, this is pain.. this is agony.. and her fight to draw away from him is savage, claws on all four limbs snapping and tearing and raking whatever of him they can reach and grasp, the dark tendrils binding them together recoiling like burned snakes back into her wounded body. The ground below them grows slick by the time she does fend him off, and already her features, the ruin of her lower face, are rippling with the Empusai version of healing.. Not quickly, but enough to prevent her losing her jaw entirely. Her voice is a gurgle, all at once thick with pride and choking in defeat – in all her posturing she has forgotten until this moment, that her armour lies sick with venom, and may not offer her the chance to repair it normally would. She has called it, and it has not answered… She would rather Kuzial grind the rest of her into food for the trees, than request his mercy. Survival means flight, and flee she does, loping like a wolf on all fours, skidding off the trunks of trees and rocks. Here’s the chase he wanted, but there’s no arrogance in it for Tenebrae now. Only the slim hope of losing him, and finding a deep, dark place to burrow down in, go to earth and let her hammered face and body mend.
Kuzial has his face and body further mauled by Tenebrae as she thrashes her deadly limbs at him, driving him from her with the fevered strength of survival mixed with monstrous...monster-esque-ness (that's a word!). He staggers back, bones sticking out of his flesh, a rib missing like a twisted version of a religion not quite of this world, yet still strangely fitting; they are the first of their kind here, after all. Though it was he who was made from her, not the other way around. Nevertheless, he pants as she flees, feeling the rage building inside him, threatening to take over his entire body, his soul... to drive it all into the mindlessness of a beast, a killer without true thought and purpose, other than to feed. But he will not. He is Kuzial Stavret, Patron of House Stavret, Lord of one of the strongest houses in Trist'Oth, and wicked dance partner to Tenebrae herself. He would not fail in this; his arrogance and anger will not let him. So he stands there for a long time, not able to chase her as part of him wishes, forcing his body to return to how it should be... and slowly, so slowly, it does... until he drops to his knees, blood mingling with Tenebrae's own, forming a pool as dark and evil as anything this twisted forest has ever seen. Long, long moments pass, before at last he turns to regard his own armour; it crawls beside Tenebrae's own, the shark still munching away ineffectively at it. Kuzial doesn't bother to ponder why his armour seems to be using one of its spidery legs to pet Tenebrae's in an almost loving gesture, that thought is too disgusting for him to process, so instead he commands it with a force not often used, and it has no alternative other than to obey. Using two of its front legs, it picks up Tenebrae's armour, before lifting it awkwardly to rest in the place between its bulbous back and over-sized head. With a gesture that spreads more blood onto the ground, Kuzial commands it to find Tenebrae and return her armour... it may be wounded, yes, but he knows she will need it to speed the healing process. He damaged her face, something which, despite it all, he will not tolerate being permanent. Yes, he just tried to kill her, and she near succeeded in killing him. But that was all part of their monstrous games, was it not? They play, they destroy, then next time it will be as if it were all as it was supposed to be... as it is, as it will be. With his armour gone, Kuzial shifts himself so he's resting against a tree, before closing his eyes and allowing his body to begin the process of healing itself. It would be painful, but he fears nothing in this forest will come and try to harm him... he's coated in his own blood, and Tenebrae's too... what creature would be mad enough to hunt something which smelled as he does? None, he's sure... only these two are mad enough for that kind of hunt.
Tene would never in a million years admit it, but she was grateful that Kuzial hung back – which, of course he has, by choice, or he’d still be hunting her now. Once it’s apparent to her that he does not run behind, she wastes no time in finding a good, soft bit of earth to dig into – it’ll be her salvation, or her grave, but in any case she has the satisfaction of being pretty sure Kuzial has conquered his last necessary milestone.. that of letting the monster out, yet keeping it firmly in chains. Really, she expected no less. She also had not expected him to ruin her armour and leave her this wounded.. Gods, her face! Without the armour to cocoon her, to give its life for hers, she would wear that damage forever – if she survived it. Thus do Empusai come by names like Pietr Bonebrow and Havtha Hagbreast… And, with an eternity before her – of true death, or ugliness (she can’t decide which is worse), she is almost at the bottom of her grave and ready to start pulling dirt on top of her, when something heavy and limp plops into the hole. For a stark moment, she thinks it’s Kuzial come to finish her off, as would be his right. Long moments after, the ‘cockroach’ Krice teases her about has made itself her coffin, snug and chitinous, its envenomed fluids not ideal, but also not as deadly as they are useful to its mistress, for within its confines she will, in time, drain the armour dry and then split from it like a dark moth, reborn to the moons above and the forest of her homeland.