Spirit, Soul, and Steel [Private, Dmitry/Niyol]

Job Description:

Somewhere between Mount Hargeon and the city of Rose Garden lies a mysterious canyon.

Within this place was one of the greatest threats the nation of Fiore had ever seen, a mechanical behemoth of unbridled power and destructive potential. The inevitable result of human greed and lust for power, the terror known as 'weapon of mass destruction' was currently shrouded by the high walls of this canyon. Unbeknownst to this abomination of science, though perhaps not surprising, a certain gray haired mage was riding hard for its current domain on the back of a spiritual steed.

For once, Dmitry Kazakov was entirely focused on the mission at hand. There were no illusions of napping under trees after a quick and easy job this time, the wind blowing through his hair as  the horse spirit Alsvinder conveyed him to his target. When he was first made aware of this mission and that he had been recommended for it, his initial thought was that it was the Council's problem or perhaps the problem of the company that manufactured it. Dmitry had been made aware of Isayev heavy industries while working with the Banfield trade company so many years ago and even then, he could tell they were dangerous. It seemed his hunch was right, as this weapon he was faced with now was spawned by what he could only concede was hubris. As he arrived at the canyon the machine was reportedly seen in, Dmitry stopped near the edge and peered into the depths.

Just as he thought he could see a figure, a strange bolt of some substance unknown to the medium blasted through the stone cliff beneath him, causing Alsvinder to fall into the canyon. While the horse was able to react quickly enough to leap across several of the boulders as they fell, ultimately it couldn't maintain enough balance to keep from landing face first into the ground, it's form dissipating completely from the force.

Of course, that meant that Dmitry would hit the ground shortly after and despite the fact the horse spirit's destruction dampened the fall a bit, he still ended up tumbling about ten feet before slowing to a stop and landing face up on his back...again.

"Damnit, I'm gettin' real sick of this fallin' shit..." He grumbled as he pushed himself to his feet. "Well, nobody said it was gonna be easy...what with the doomsday device and all."

A silver, smoke-like aura began to swirl around Dmitry as he saw the figure begin to move, unmistakably mechanical in it's motion.

"Well...might as well get started."

---

WC: 430

Code:

<div align="center"><div style="width:400px;"><table><tbody><tr><td><div style="width:400px;float:left;"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/4LzQ758.jpg?1"style="max-width:100%;"></div></td></tr><tr><td><div style="background-color:#ffffff;padding:10px;font:11px georgia;color:#000000;text-align:justify;"><div style="height:20px;width:20px;background-color:#cc0000;padding:10px 5px 0px 5px;margin:0px 6px 3px 0px;float:left;color:#f8f8f8;text-align:center;">?</div>[size=13]

[/size]<div style="padding:15px;"><div style="width:80px;background-color:#cc0000;padding:5px;font:8px georgia;color:#f8f8f8;text-align:center;text-transform:uppercase;margin-right:5px;margin-bottom:5px;margin-left:30px;float:left;">WORDS</div><div style="width:180px;background-color:#cc0000;padding:5px;font:8px georgia;color:#f8f8f8;text-align:center;text-transform:uppercase;margin-right:5px;margin-bottom:5px;float:left;">TAG</div>
</div></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="width:400px;text-align:center;font:10px georgia;">credit to <a href="http://adoxographyv2.boards.net/user/15">nat</a> of adoxography and <a href="http://gangnam-style.proboards.com/user/4292">gangnam style</a>.</div></div></div>

Oddly enough, the machine looked up towards the sky and fired a barrage of attacks at...something. It was then that Dmitry noticed an abnormal, yet unmistakable presence in the direction this WMD happened to be firing in, causing the spirit mage's scowl to deepen.

"Oh, that's fantastic," he said in a manner that was practically oozing with sarcasm. "Admiral Angst is here to save the day." Sure enough, after the figure being shot at absorbed the attacks and launched them back at the walking weapon in an obscene display of middle-finger diplomacy, it flew down to the ground where Dmitry was standing and began spouting something about distracting the giant instrument of death. "Piss off Mopey, I don't need you comin' in here and orderin' me around!" He shouted rather angrily at the death mage.

It wasn't because his pride was hurt. In the first place, the medium didn't care for pride in the slightest. But despite the part of him that regarded Niyol as a friend and a trusted ally, there was also something about him that Dmitry simply couldn't reconcile. He had only noticed recently, when the two of them, along with several others came to the aid of their mutually dear friend Mao Nakiri. At the time, the young man didn't have time to ponder on that feeling, time not quite being on the side of those helping the girl with the strange ears. However, ever since that battle, it had been relentlessly nagging at him, all the more irritating because he couldn't figure out why it was that he felt this way. It certainly wasn't that he hated Niyol, that much was plainly certain as Dmitry didn't have a cause to do so. But for whatever reason, there was an urge in his gut that made him want to reject something in particular about the morbid creature, something he simply couldn't pinpoint.

Deciding to shake off such useless and counterproductive thoughts, Dmitry held his hand out to his left as a silver magic circle formed a few inches from his palm. "I invoke the Swift Hawk: Vedfolnir!" At the call of it's name, the smoke like aura emanating from caster converged on the circle and formed the spirit born from the bird of prey, flying forth and into the sky above. As when Niyol arrived, the machine let loose another barrage directed at the hawk, showing a distinct fixation on aerial targets, likely seeing them as more of a threat. However, Vedfolnir was even smaller and more nimble than the tower of death's previous target, allowing it to dodge the attacks with ease as its flight path took it far up into the air before curving back downward towards the robot. Taking advantage of its prey's clunky, unwieldy nature, the hawk spirit flew at the speed of a bullet and grazed the weapons knee, causing it to kneel a bit on one side. Testing it's luck further, Vedfolnir flew upwards into the air again and came down for another pass, not quite as fast this time. As before, the machine failed to move out of the way in time as the Swift Hawk grazed the top of its head with a sharp pair of talons, leading it lean forward momentarily.

Once more, the nature spirit flew up and looped back downward for one more attack, attempting to further exploit the enemy's slow movement speed. However, this time the machine compensated for its lack of speed with timing, drawing a strange sword that seemed to be made of the same substance it had been firing this whole time and slicing clean through Vedfolnir. Of course, the information Dmitry was given for this mission included the plasma weapons the device possessed, leaving no reasonable room for ignorance. However, the word 'plasma', along with much of the machine's other details fell into the domain of things this mage had failed to ever learn about, leaving him to wonder if this was the substance they referred to. "Not gonna make this easy, huh?" He mumbled, preparing to invoke another spirit.

Well, he was warned.

---

WC: 683

"Shit, shit, shit!"

Thus the elegant chorus of the delicate young Kazakov could be heard throughout the canyon as he ran for cover behind a boulder, narrowly avoiding a freshly made rectum in the side of his gut. "Hey, I realize you can take a hole to the chest and walk it off, but that kinda shit tends to kill us mere mortals!" He shouted at the man who seemed to be suggesting that the gray-hair could handle such a task while keeping most of his blood on the inside, a theory he personally didn't have much confidence in.

All of a sudden, before he could get in any more complaints, a third person appeared next to the dark one in a ball of fire, causing Dmitry to put the palm of his hand to his face. Who was going to show up next? Just as Dmitry pondered such a disturbing thought, he heard Niyol say something that took him back...


Do you think any of the predators in this world would spare you for such a foolish reason?



At the time, he was just a child learning to hunt, forced to kill his quarry for the first time so that he may eat. Still he knew the lesson well and had thus far lived by it, killing that which posed a great enough threat or simply that which could only afford him survival through their own death. True, since he had joined Lamia Scale, he had found that he was killing very few of those he fought, rarely finding cause for the extra effort along with the extra scrutiny from the Council. Nevertheless, if someone he cared about was about to die, Dmitry would likely do kill anyone who threatened them, as well as anyone who got in his way.

Indeed, he was becoming more and more aware of a deep, powerful rage tucked away inside him. No doubt this was a result of his childhood and the animalistic nature it sowed within him, something he would likely carry with him for the rest of his days. But then, he heard the girl say something that both shocked him and opened his eyes at the same time.

"I'm sworn to your service, but not to your values!"

Of course, that was the reason for this strange feeling. While the principles were different, Dmitry and this little girl shared the same paradox towards Niyol. While he accepted the death mage's character, personality, and even his beliefs in this case, there was a part of him that the guild wizard simply couldn't absolve.

No, that wasn't quite it. It wasn't something that was apart of Niyol, but rather a future that loomed around the corner, an abyss that he could fall into and never return from. But the irritation Dmitry felt didn't even come from this; it was the simple and indifferent fact that he could have easily been set on the same path. After all, he and Niyol suffered the same fate so many years ago, though this similarity was known only to the spirit walker. The two of them both had a tribe, a home, a family, a childhood waiting for them; all gone in an instant. They were the same. And yet Dmitry felt a grave danger in his counterpart, one that threatened everyone around him and most of all, himself. It was the very sense of brotherhood he felt towards Niyol that made the medium reject him, because he couldn't abide what lurked inside him, threatening to consume him.

The young woodsman found himself chuckling to himself, slowly but surely breaking out into all out laughter. How could he not laugh? The entire situation was ridiculous as far as he was concerned. And yet, there it was.

"Must be gettin' soft..." Dmitry mumbled as his laughter finally died down. It was around this that two massive clouds of...something spewed forth from the machine, baring down towards the girl from above. "Allow me, miss." Dmitry said with mock sophistication as he got up from his spot and walked up next to Niyol's young companion. He then held his hand up towards the clouds and made a motion as if he were gripping a ball, shortly before the smoke like aura that surrounded him began to converge on his palm. His grip widened until eventually this aura formed into something the size of a soccer ball, exploding forth into two smaller cannonball like objects. The projectiles each shot straight through the middle of one of the clouds, causing them to disperse from their original pattern and form what was left into a single cloud. However, Dmitry's hand did not move. Instead, it formed another ball of smoky aura the size of the previous two and fired it through the remaining cloud, causing this one to disperse and all of the tiny machines that made it up to fall to the ground, perhaps having lost the signal that drove them due to the destruction of their brothers.

After the cloud had been dealt with, Dmitry turned towards the tool of destruction itself, the Tesseract unit as the job request had called it. With a smirk that just looked odd on his face, he began to walk towards the behemoth, not too fast, not too slow. Even as the wolfish grin stretching across his face, the Lamian was baffled by his own actions. Was he enjoying this?

As he practically strolled across the canyon bed, the machine finally noticed him and took aim with four barrels at once, locking on and charging up more of the plasma it had fired earlier. But when the barrels fired in unison, creating a massive bolt of the substance that had up until now been Dmitry's bane, he was no longer there. In fact, he was about ten feet ahead and to the left of his original path, still grinning like a devil. Before the machine could make another attack, he held his hand out in front of him.

"I invoke the World Serpent: Jormangand!" From a silver magic circle about twenty feet from the hulking, forty five foot robot, a one hundred foot long silver serpent spewed forth and immediately began wrapping itself around it's new foe's legs, coming around from it's left side to it's front so that it could sink it's fangs into the Tesseract's right arm before it could draw that sword again. It's back had not been covered by Jormangand and the serpent may have even made a good point from which to climb on the machines back. "I'm not done yet, you bucket-o-shit!" With the first hand still held out, Dmitry put his left hand over his right shoulder, forming another magic circle in his palm.

"I invoke the Twin Ravens: Huginn! Muninn!" From the circle spawned two spirit birds, each a bit smaller than Vedfolnir. They flew up into the air between Dmitry and the machine, transforming into a pair of twelve-inch bladed knives. The medium's left hand shot forward like the right, followed by the two smoke-like weapons shooting forth like bullets and piercing the 'eyes' of the Tesseract, eliciting some sparks from the optics before they faded away. With it's optical sensors gone, the device was left to rely on audio sensors and motion trackers, limiting it's ability to fight by quite a bit.

"Between me and the girl, I'd say you got your distraction." Dmitry said as he crossed his arms and waited to see what happened next.

"Now show me what you can do, Chief of Souls!"

---

Split one of the normals into two weaks. Left the other normal for later.

WC: 1263 this post.  

Total WC: 2376/8000

Dmitry's grinned simply widened at Niyol's request, knowing full well what the train sized snake spirit could do. "Oh, I'll keep it held..." He said, having more fun than he had ever had in a fight as Jormangand tightened it's hold on the machine, putting even more pressure on it's legs and waist. Sparks began to emit from the knee joint of the left leg as well as from the arm that the World Serpent's fangs had pierced through, a sign that it was not holding up very well under the strain of the spirit's grasp. Of course, the machine struggled to break free of it's captor, even as it's sword arm was being restrained. But that only caused the coiled snake to wrap further around the mechanical lower half as Jormangand drew on Dmitry's silver aura for added strength and fortitude, making escape quite improbable for the Tesseract.

Up until this point, Dmitry had been able to easily track Niyol's movement through the incredibly unique spiritual presence he held, a trait the spirit walker had come to know the death mage by ever since their battle at Quanny village. However, around the time that the joints of the foe standing before him began to moan in protest to the enormous force being applied to them, the presence he had come to know had all but vanished, moving so quickly that he was almost unable to register it's sensation. Eventually, the alien speed of the presence ceased and seemed to begin falling onto the machine giving this group so much trouble, causing Dmitry to look up at the sky only to have part of the sun blotted out by his comrade. As he dropped, he seemed to pick up quite a bit of speed, most likely as a result of his magic. However, despite the impressive velocity he gained from whatever spell he was casting on his way down, it was the same, almost instantaneous speed that he had before, allowing Dmitry to track him with his spirit sense as he had done thus far.

Still, it seemed there was something else at play as well, if the feedback the gray-hair was getting was to believed. This something was making it a great deal easier to track Niyol during his speedy descent towards the Iron Giant, a fact that was not necessarily a good thing as far as Dmitry's personal experience went. Looking a bit closer, the Lamian was fairly certain he knew now what the cause was, spotting a strange claw that seemed to form around the chief's hand, not to mention the incredibly ominous and flame like glow that was coming from it. Something about all of this made Dmitry fairly certain that he wasn't going to like what would happen next, hunch that usually proved correct in his past experiences, especially when dealing with Niyol.

Sure enough, when the reclusive one's claw hit the metal exterior of the Tesseract, a massive explosion of blue fire occurred, producing a light that threatened to blind the guild mage. Of course, considering this was the Cthulhuish magic of the chief of the Tribe of Souls, it was only to be rationally expected that it would produce far and away more than simple visual or auditory stimuli. Indeed, this blast erupted with an incredible and truly absurd amount of spiritual influence, nearly causing Dmitry to shudder as he shielded his eyes form the light. Not only was the spirit walker affected by this force of death and despair, but he could feel the spirits shying away from it's powerful essence, a statement of the extent of this audacious spell.

Truly it was a marvelous and terrible feat as even Dmitry's spirits echoed their displeasure at what to their eyes was a wave of horror, forcing the medium to 'reel them in' as it were. To any on lookers ignorant of the true nature of this attack, it would seem as though the machine should have crumbled to the ground in pieces after such an attack. However, they would be proven frightfully incorrect as the death mage came flying out of the dust cloud his attack had created before slamming into the canyon wall behind Dmitry and Hana, creating yet another dust cloud. Niyol's next statement made the former tribal sigh and shake his head, wishing that the previous attack had delivered a bit more oomph in the tangible sense.

"You really gotta start thinkin' this kinda shit through, Mopey." Dmitry said with a weary voice, having seen where Niyol's recklessness could get him. It seemed the strange euphoria that had possessed him had now passed, possibly a result of the ridiculous amount of spiritual stimuli he just received. The spirit user wondered what had caused it in the first place, the experience being quite new to him. Unfortunately, he wouldn't have time to ponder that thought as the dust cloud from the attack faded, revealing a very much intact Tesseract.

Dmitry cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders as the second act of this battle began...

---

Word Count: 844

Total: 3220/8000