"Huh? Wait, I don't think-...!"
Listening to her words was one thing, watching her was another - the latter further trumping the former in a matter of bewilderment as the frothy-haired maiden quickly moved to obliterate the hoard around them, her movements refined and tested. In a short display of insecurity, his shoulders turn slack, as if his resilience was slightly dampened by the girl's confidence, something that he clearly lacked the capacity to mirror. For the swordsman, to consider him having left even the slightest significance on her life was the most pretentious thought among all the weird assumptions he's had all day, and with the origin spirit's existence among the gaps in his brain, that was already saying something.
However, a vital piece of information in the form of attacking as a priority was passed along as the young woman produces a golden key between her fingers, a short slew of enchantments calling to whatever magic it contains. The shine then dispersed into a maiden clothed in a pretty oriental costume with a matching sword at her aid, a sight that instinctively coaxed Torian to gently palm his etherblade in response, reveling in the rare instance involving a similar structured-sword being in the same space as he.
Not allowing a seconds-worth of pause, the young woman directs an arm to the heavens, the words to an enchantment readily slipping from her lips prior to the descent of what Torian could only define as angelic, where his vocabulary appeared to have dulled significantly under the influence of awe. The appearance of the winged maiden, along with the lady and her katana expelled certain auras that compelled him to believe that they were more than ready to deal a good number on whatever was unfortunate enough to be in opposition. More so when he'd regard their summoner as she was, which, although it managed to staple her power level, seemed to create a slightly wider rift between them - any semblance of their old relationship blurring into the backdrops as time quickly passed, and there was no helping the amount of guilt that steadily built up over it in his system.
Strangely enough, it was in these specific moments of weakness that triggered the old man in his head to crack an insult or two, but a solemnity unknown to him wafted through out the Chronicle, the stillness somehow haunting him, despite how frequently he requested for the spirit to shut up, and how often the old man would ignore the plead. Whatever attempt he had to call out to the silence was soon to be tossed elsewhere though, as a visible sense of awareness steadily began to wash over his person. With the subsequent attack of the girl's mechanical companion, and a remarkable one at that, most if not the entire mob of monsters closest to them was neatly eradicated. The swordsman would only furrow a brow at the horrific state of the creatures upon his own personal inspection, realizing that their bodies looked like nasty mixes of several other animals into one, piles of them writhing from the shots that the giant had seamlessly fired.
Good riddance, he thought.
Needless to say, Torian interpreted the next following seconds as a given opportunity for his own contribution to this fight. Better late than never, as he'd like to put it, carefully eyeing the mass amount of hissing abominations from beyond the chimera graveyard - a distance he could easily make do with from his current position. With a familiar ease to it, the swordsman splits his blade from its casing, peppering his form in a momentary surge of extra power from a small support spell before manifesting his desire for it to dissolve, promptly ensuing a chain reaction involving a blade-less sword in his grip and ten uchigatana replicas looming over the frontal portion of the serpent group. From afar, the replicas appeared hazy and blurred, perhaps as a result of being formed from the original's blade due to such a strange spell, the Mizu ni Nagasu (and as an honorable mention, the Jiguo Jitoku as well), as the origin spirit had once stated, in a language he was far from understanding.
But, nonetheless, the replicas would serve their purpose with necessary flair as his hand slashes at the space before him, mimicking his typical attack motions despite how the etherblade was reduced to nothing more than its hilt at this point, cutting furiously into an 'invisible' enemy. An unknowing eye would interpret the odd movements as dubious and insane, but looking closely at the snakes that appeared the closest, it seemed that their slippery bodies have fallen slack with open wounds, their hissing dying down into fruitless wails of pain before stilling altogether. The replicas dutifully followed the actions of its 'master', cutting through their soft serpentine underbellies that would have been previously hard to access in close combat. Later, the fuzzy blue blades all but faded suddenly, their dusts settling back into the etherblade's grip as quickly as it had left.
To him, the spell in itself was nothing to cause him surprise, but what did catch him slightly off guard was its potency against these lithe-bodied enemies - he humbly assumed that it was one of those extremely rare instances of his poor luck seemingly playing nice with him, and it was promptly left at that note. Furthermore, Torian's little stunt didn't go unnoticed to the rest of the snakes, and none of them appeared pleased, as implied by their furious slithering headed right into his line of sight.
'More incoming!' he thought, bracing himself for the next spell on firm legs.
A relentless mass of furious hissing immediately invaded the surrounding space, and while they reached a decent amount of noise as a product of their killing intent, the haunting squelches of the dead proved to be slightly louder. Beneath the secondary wave of serpents was a circle bursting in a dark, midnight pigment, pulsing with the energies of spirits that clung to his enemies' forms with a secure, taut grip, faces devoid of any human traces as their hollowed mouths stretched and contracted in low, guttural screams. Bound as they were, the swordsman moves to tackle the opportunity with as little time wasted as he could possibly manage, plunging his weapon into the soft earth at his feet. The action caused a small tremor to travel underneath, later tearing through the ghastly ghost circle in several blade-like spikes, shredding through the serpents' skin prior to completely impaling them from one end to the next. A sort of green bile trickled generously down the sharp structures, raining poison droplets unto the grass as the spikes burrowed back into the ground, following the motion of the etherblade as Torian retrieves it from the confines of the soil.
The swordsman takes one liberal gulp of air before he withdraws his sword, gliding the metal over the bump of his palm, perhaps to remove any dirt from tarnishing the shine, before settling it back into its sheathe, a satisfying click from the weapon significantly undoing the strain of releasing multiple spells in a short amount of time. Torian swiftly turns his attention to the remaining hoards, gathered in a protective ring around what appeared to be a fluttering bird with lion-like features.
Strangely enough, in all that frenzy, he would have expected at least one exclamation from the origin spirit, but he has yet to process any frustrating remarks heeding from a disembodied voice. Inspecting the stillness that still persisted, an in-depth gaze into the Chronicle would reveal the faintest hints of snoring, and a stretched out essence, so particularly thin that it was almost impossible to point out.
The old sap was napping, at a time like this. Not that he minded, sure, but the spirit's solemn display of rest seemed to do little in terms of his lack of sleep the night before, which was, to an extent, the origin's fault.
'This ancient bastard...' he mused, his mouth twitching in mild anger.
| out of character commentary | 1346 words |
2357/2000 words | 30/30 serpents | 4/4 Chimeras |