ol was not a person easily given to sentiments of an imaginative nature, for his life had plenty of horrors to satisfy his needs without his imagination chiming in to help out. It is worth mentioning that, due to being brought up in a culture which considered the only high art to be that of war, the idea of using poetry to describe something of beauty was something that would never have occurred to him. Whenever he did manage it, the attempt was either clumsy or accidental, and being that clumsiness or accident were two qualities that Sol despised on principle, he often made efforts to avoid it entirely. This was interesting because of how well SOl managed to be a walking example of such well used poetic devices as irony, tragedy and symbolism. Of these three concepts, symbolism was that which Sol grasped the most firmly, being that training in the Moon martial style relied heavily on the idea of emulating a sword as much as possible.

According to the teachings of his father, and numerous tutors in the killing disciplines, one had to be hard but not rigid, flexible enough to not shatter under strain or resistance, but not to the degree that one lost their edge, just like a sword. Every part of oneself needed to be a self contained weapon in and of itself, a pommel and guard to bludgeon, a point to stab and thrust, and a blade to rip and tear. At the same time, every part of oneself needed to be an object of protection, a pommel to pin, a guard and spine to deflect, and a strong temper to turn aside. One could go on, listing such metaphors and anecdotes, but considering that it had taken Sol the entirety of his life to this point to receive instruction on this subject, it would hardly be prudent to make the attempt given constraints of the reader's time and patience. This would be better served to simply convey the central concept that united all the tenets of the Moon Style. Balance was the key, balance was the everything. Everything had an opposite. Everything existed in balance with the other, and everything came at an equivalent cost to the other. Every offense came at the expense of defense, every desire came at the expense of need, and so on. Just as the moon waxing meant it must eventually wane, everything in life had it's price.

It was in this way, while mostly ignorant of the subtleties of metaphor and symbolism, Sol, ironically, and even more so for being so, thought of himself as both a man and a sword. He was a blademaster, or had been, and thus he and his sword existed in a unity, and just as everything must have an apposing force, so did Sol have his sword. It was the cosmic irony of the art, that the sword came at the expense of the man who wielded it. The exploits of the man and that of the sword were not one and the same, in fact they apposed each other. A man who was defined by his sword was a vague thing, yet that was the price of strength.

Solomon and the weapon that experience had forge from him, lived two very different lives. One was a son who still grieved for a dead father and a mother he'd never known, a lord, a leader, and a work of subtlety and complexity which had once dreamed of being a hero. Meanwhile, the other was a bastard, an orphan creation without lineage, a simple direct thing of unfeeling metal, maiming edges, and killing points.

One might correctly think of all this and ask if the fact that Sol's flesh ended abruptly above where his right elbow might have been, and in the place of what was lost remained only a tool of death, had any significance towards this line of inquiry. One would be absolutely right to do so, but one must draw their own conclusions, for none shall be found here, save perhaps that of the ultimate persuasion.

As far as how this related the current circumstance, it must relate, because these concepts formed the basic foundation of the entity that some called the "One-Eyed Dragon".

Hopefully this interlude will prove useful at some point.

The previously discussed subject of this meta-narrative was sitting at his point in time and space, at the desk nearest the back wall of a classroom located in one of Vytal academies numerous lecture rooms. He had butted the right hand side of the desk up to the interior wall, and had the rest of the chair planted firmly against the adjacent structure that ran perpendicular to said wall. This was because doing so placed the entirety of the classroom within his narrow field of view, and forced any threat that might originate within a blind spot to first come through a fortified wall before it could reach him. What threat might be seeking to inflict harm upon Sol whilst he was within academy walls was up to the imagination, and this was one of the reasons that Sol often avoided being imaginative unless it helped him stay alive.

He was garbed in his usual school uniform, which was a grey-blue blazer that bore the emblem of the academy upon the right shoulder, a pair of matching dress pants that were tucked into his polished greaves which proudly displayed his family crest upon their reflective surface. Beneath the blazer his chest was encircled by a cuirass of banded steel, a deep blue with the exposed edges of his armor trimmed in lacquered gold. The straps of metal, and the flipped up collar of his blazer gave Sol the aspect of a hooded viper as he sat bolt upright in his seat. His brown-black hair was drawn into a tight tail behind his head to keep it from blocking his good eye, and an eye-patch of tan leather punctuated the right side of his face, concealing a puckered and empty socket which had once contained his right eye.

He nearly missed that Lily had entered the class. This was certainly not because any aspect of the girl's appearance was plain or unremarkable. Actually she looked breathtaking in her dress of ribbons and lace, with her bosom complimented by a snug tunic. She moved with a feline grace, only rendered slightly awkward by the addition of footwear. No, certainly the girl was everything that would have made Sol pay attention, had the setting been casual in nature as apposed to the objective oriented environment of a classroom. He'd only give her enough of a glance to know where she was, and then would have returned his full attention to the professor's lecture.

However, Lily offered a heartwarmingly bashful wave, and took a moment to straighten her hair, and Sol realized at once who she must be. He was nearly shocked into a stupor, and forced himself to look away immediately before it became obvious that he was staring. The addition of his gifted flower behind her ear triggered the return of that same overly buoyant head and curiously hollow thorax that he associated with their last encounter.

Throughout the lecture he continued to steal glances at that feline whenever he could. The transition between the grubby and barefooted girl he'd seen prior and this primly tailored model student, was so jarring that he simply could not help but wonder if the two were the same person. Even by the fifth time he found his eye crawling hungrily across the curve of her throat and through the hair just above the peak of her spine, he was still not convinced that the girl was who he thought she was, even in spite of the addition of the flower tucked into her locks behind an elegant ear.

This was about the time that Lily caught him staring, and he swallowed so hard as their gazes met that he made a mental not to later make sure that he still had all his teeth. He turned away as he tried to fill his empty chest with some air, and blinked like he had grit in his eye. This was also around the same time he realized that he had lost the topic of the class's discussion at some point, and was completely adrift upon the current topic.

His mouth went dry as he realized just how distracted he was, and he made a face as he tried to coax some moisture out of his tongue, which felt like swollen leather upon his pallet. He concentrated on breathing, and longed for one of his cigarillos to soothe his anxiety.

Next he knew, Lily was beside his desk, and the others were pairing up and beginning to file out. The girl's lips moved, but all Sol could hear was a distant and high pitched whine that sounded like what heat haze looked like. The classroom suddenly felt very small.

He looked at the girl, bewilderment making his eye look wet while the rest of his face conveyed as much as a blank brick of slate. He grunted something that might have been an affirmation beneath his breath, and snatched a bundle of fabric, about five feet long, and about as thick around as his forearm, held together with twine, from the floor beside his desk and lurched to his feet.

Somehow he managed to make his way outside. He stood next to the exit, trembling fingers endeavoring to raise a cigar to his pale lips as he held up a half wrapped red crystal to light the paper tube. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with the toxic concoction, and feeling immediately the illusion of relief. His classmates deliberately gave Sol a great deal of space, looking on wearily at the wild gleam in his golden eye.

tag(s): @someone ━ words: 000 ━ notes: please keep it short

moking was truly a filthy habit, not in the least due to the health risks of routinely inhaling burning tar and filtered ash. It was also peculiarly common to soldiers. This last might have had just as much to do with a certain nihilistic acceptance of risks as it did with the Legion military formerly providing rationed tobacco to it's forces. Weighed against a claw or bullet that might prove fatal in the next hour, a habit that might prove fatal in a decade or so seemed much less threatening, especially when it made the former feel a lot less stressful.

Sol's brand of cigarillo, chosen for the fineness of it's product, as well as the unique flavor provided by the cloves that laced the leaves, crackled and popped like a camp fire as it burned. The one eyed warrior considered this sound as soothing as the strong spice of the flavor, and it gave the smoke a faintly peppery scent around him.

It was a bittersweet relief to finally be free of the classroom. Sol distrusted open spaces, especially when there was such a lack of cover, but the illusion of security that the scent of his smoke gave him nearly made up for it. He smoked the same brand that his father had, and associated the smell with authority, guidance, and paternal affection. A good smoke was like being wrapped in a warm blanket that filled his lungs and veins, and was almost worth the foul taste and odor that clung around afterwards.

It was a guilty pleasure, being that he knew he smelled bad afterwards, but being addicted to both the chemical high of nicotine and the psychological dependence on nostalgia had a price, and he paid it.

This was why, when Lily joined him, Sol finished the last of his cigar in a single inhalation, causing the end to flare a bright white, and emit a series of pops that could have passed for distant automatic gunfire.

"You should probably get anything you need for the hunt. I'm ready to go whenever you are."

He nodded gravely as he discarded the butt of his smoke. His heart hammered in his chest, and his anxiety made the lingering flavor of his cigar taste like blood in his mouth. He tried to swallow the acrid bitterness, his adam's apple bobbing like a beetle on the broad trunk of his neck.

"I've got everything I need..." He replied as he collected the bundle that he'd brought from class and made his way to the Dirigible Class VTOL airship that had landed in the yard to accept the students for their "field trip".

Raised to resemble a gentleman under ideal circumstances, Sol allowed Lily to enter first, and then climbed into the open passenger compartment behind her. The pair of them, like each other team, had been granted their own airship, as well as their own island to hunt on, as a means of limiting the potential for friendly fire or complacency. This placed Sol on the left hand side of the compartment, and Lily on the right.

The flight was short, and took place in the kind of silence that can only be achieved by close proximity to a pair of Hermes Class dust turbines, and an ambient volume that renders any conversation impossible. Sol did not seem very talkative anyway, and would stare dead ahead, only occasionally glancing past the black leather of his eye patch to look at Lily. He seemed to be deep in an almost meditative thought.

The routine was familiar to him, and he had been conditioned to savor these moments of ear-splitting calm before the storm. He used the time in transit, as he always did when flying towards a combat zone, to think about all the things that young men think about before climbing out of a trench and sprinting through fire and shrapnel at a hostile force. For Sol this consisted mostly of taking account of his kit, and company, and little else.

First he produced the bundle he'd brought from class, and began unwrapping it upon his lap. Within was three items. The first and largest was a sheath sword, of the katana style used by the Legion faunus tribes. The shape had been determined as a matter of practicality, being that the impoverished tribes of the periphery had little access to the materials or facilities that would allow for the construction of elaborate weapons. Faunus katanas amounted to little more than a slightly curved metal bar that had been sharpened along one side, and the design had evolved with little variation over the years because the longbow and early firearms were always the preference for engagement, with a sword serving as a backup weapon. It was considered a tool of last resort among many faunus units. From all appearances, this sword, despite being crafted of the same expensive materials as the myomer fiber that Sol had introduced to Lily, and featuring strangle organic network of overlapping red chitin along the hilt, was not apparently any different than the crude faunus equivalent as far as shape went.

The sheath that housed the sword was a different story entirely. If the blade portion emulated the primal tribal influences of the Legion periphery, then the sheath that contained the blade served as an example of Legion's highest art of military grade ordinance. More than four and a half feet in length, and composed of red ballistic ceramic scales that overlapped an azure core of woven carbon fiber, the design featured a prominent ammunition feed and firing mechanism. A bulky block style trigger, the kind common to archaic arbalests, sprang forward from an assembly of gravity fed magazine that was eight inches long, implying that the cartridges within were at least as large as that of an anti-material rifle. Sol disengaged the clip, and proceeded to load ten 20mm 130gram blanks into the housing with methodical, almost meditative repose. The assemble gave a triumphant and grateful "clack" as he slid the magazine back into the feed.

Sol sighed visibly, though the sound was lost in the howl of wind and propulsion that filled the fuselage, and removed a second item from the bundle. Held in his right hand, the object first looked like a tiny but well made bandoleer, with objects wrapped in paper visible from a ring of twelve sleeves that ran along it's length. With a flourish that obscured the fastening method, he affixed the band to his left wrist, and snugged it tightly. He grimaced somewhat as a pair of pins rammed themselves into a set of brackets that were implanted into the bone of his ulna. He then tested the device by thrusting out his hand and causing it to eject a cigar from one of the sleeves into his palm. He placed the cigar beneath the strap that held his eye-patch to his head, and repeated the motion, causing a small ratchet tool to leap into his fingers.

He carefully affixed his sword's sheath to the bracer, using a mounting arm that flipped out of the scabbard's assembly, then he swallowed as he looked at the object cradled in his hand.

He furtively glanced at Lily over his right shoulder, making eye contact enough to know she was observing his ritual or preparation. He swallowed again, his face blank, but his eye pained, and then he looked back into his lap, hiding his expression behind his eye-patch. He d1111idn't want to see he watching him as he moved on to the final stage of his outfitting.

He shrugged his right arm out of his blazer, exposing the  entirety of his breastplate. Being that he wore no shirt beneath the jacket, and nothing to cover himself except the breastplate, one could clearly make out the true nature of his right arm.

Without the jacket's sleeve to hide it's exterior, what started at Sol's right shoulder and ended somewhere beneath the black glove that he'd draw up over the hand, barely resembled a living arm at all. Overlapping red scales of crimson ceramic surrounded a blue core of the same kind of myomer as the flower behind Lily's ear. It was clear that the prosthesis had been designed to resemble organic structure, but between the bolts, the occasional access panel, and a service number "1I" painted on the cap of the shoulder in military block capitals, it was clear that the limb was synthetic in nature. He flexed the "arm" tentatively, causing vents at the elbow, and shoulder blade to whir loudly as they expanded and contracted, like blind irises.

Sol quirked his mouth in a way that implied apologetic sheepishness as he jammed the ratchet tool into the arm just above the bicep and began extracting bolts. As the last bolt was liberated, the bicep peeled away obscenely, exposing a mechanical confusion of black bones and blue tubes and red wires. The "skin" sagged flaccidly like flayed flesh as he produced the final item from his bundle. The vial of orange dust, about half as long as the exposed humerus, resisted being forced into the cavity, with was large enough to just accommodate the vial and the fingers of Sol's left hand. He gave it a sharp twist, and this caused a very loud and distressingly organic sucking noise to briefly down out the whine of the VTOL's engines as the entire system pressurized itself. The limb's blue core began glowing slightly Sol pulled the separated muscle fibers and ceramic skin back up into place. This triggered another quieter, but still audible suction, and he began replacing the bolts.

He looked towards Lily again, though his eye kept a wide berth from her face, because he did not want to see the expression of concern or disgust that he was certain to find there. Instead he looked at her dress.

Something about it made him feel very self-conscious. She looked very pretty, all lace and silk and soft curves, while he imagined that he looked very unpleasant between the hatchwork of scars that covered his left arm and neck, the overlapping straps of his breastplate which seemed to radiate a sense of chill, a missing eye, and the gruesome abomination that was his right arm. His head bowed involuntarily, and he quickly covered himself with his blazer once more, though he felt as if an observant onlooker would now be able to see the harsh edges of his synthetic arm beneath the heavy fabric.

tag(s): @someone ━ words: 000 ━ notes: please keep it short

espite his best efforts to brace himself for the inevitable topic of his artificial arm, Lily's thoughtless words still made Sol wince visibly. Given his stoicism that could have taught a rock a thing or two about hardness, the fact that Sol reacted at all to the feline's banter was a definite sign of just how deeply the barbs had sunk. His shoulders rose defensively to guard either side of his broad neck, looking like a pair of cannon balls leaning against a mast. His lips drew apart in a savage snarl, and his eye was a tight and hateful slit. Finally his head jerked to one side, as if he'd just accepted a full armed slap, and the sound of his teeth creaking were the only audible reply he provided as he turned his back on the cat and stared at that sand.

"That arm... it's really amazing. Where I'm from, if you had lost an arm, if you were old, weak, or...sickly... You'd be left to the mercy of the grimm. For most it was a death sentence, for the rest, it was hell. It's amazing what technology is capable of."

He had to hide his face, because he could very well be relying upon the girl for his own survival. He had no illusions regarding what he must have looked like, with his teeth bared like a rabid dog, and it was hardly the kind of thing one showed an enemy, much less an ally. Furthermore, not only was he shamed by her words, to the degree that if she had been anyone else the pair of them would be trading blows that very instant, but he was ashamed of being so ashamed. It felt too much like a weakness to have her casual remark penetrate so deeply, and it hurt.

"Do you ever think before you open your mouth?" He snarled in a voice that could have shattered iron, as the muscles of his back bulged beneath his coat with barely contained fury and ruefulness, "Are you are very proud of being an inbred, uneducated savage?"

His words cut off, as if by a sword, and he exhaled what remained of the air in his lungs, allowing the worst of his anger to flow out with it. His shoulders fell, and his hands stopped shaking, and his head bowed as he concentrated entirely on keeping his breaths from stampeding away with his temper. The moment was brief, but the transformation was startling as from a raging bonfire to a placid lake, though it was clear that beneath the still waters lay a barely restrained storm.

He left Lily's further inquiries unanswered, and strode calmly towards the forest. As each step flowed into the next, it became apparent that whatever calm the stride had possessed was the same type of calm as a pitch black storm cloud, and just as the image became so complete that it seemed each footstep in the should be accompanied by a thunderclap, then the lightning began to strike.

Sol's hands, half curled into claws, no longer shook, but they did not seem to anymore be within his power as the rose to clasp either side of his head, weaving into his dense bed of shoulder length black hair that had become disheveled at some point. He grasped his skull tightly, as if possessed, exerting such strength that it surely must be causing him excruciating agony. Then he began to howl. Like a whipcrack that began but didn't seem to end, it was a sound that seemed abrupt and sudden no matter how long it lasted, a noise of tortured lungs that in a wholesome world would only have risen from the open gates of hell and nowhere else. The clamor thundered into the distance, frustration, pain, suffering, anger, and fear, smashed together beneath unimaginable pressure and given physical form and substance, and sounding very much as if they did not care for the arrangement.

Sol fell to his knees as the strain forced his body to choose between standing and continuing his roar of lamentation. There was no restraint, no reason, and nothing that suggested an end to the horrible cacophony. Every fiber, every muscle, every limb, and every ounce of his spirit seemed to be committed to the simple purpose of sustaining the blaring, uninterrupted melody of mortal malaise.  The sound continued long past the point when any average man would have been force to inhale or expire, but Sol just kept right on screaming, as hard and as loud as he could.

The trees lining the beach emptied themselves of birds, as gulls, petrals, puffins, parrots, cormorants, and the odd albatross, not to mention hundreds of other roosting seabirds, took flight in unison to escape the terrifying report of whatever creature was apparently dying a horrible death on the sands of the nearby beach. The rustling leaves and feathers of fright billowed down like falling ash. Deeper within the trees, small animals charged for cover, fleeing in mindless terror as surely some incredible and unnatural predator was laying waste to the shore. Voles scrambled for denser brush, rats had vivid flashbacks of almost forgotten shipwrecks as they swarmed across the rocks and fallen logs to escape, and wild boars shriek in surprise as the charge blindly through the bush in any direction as long as it was away.

Sol drew a single sharp breath, creating a gap in the wall of sound that seemed to impact like a meteor, filling his lungs in a single gasp that wracked his entire body. He seemed to have gone completely insane, as if whatever thinly defined flame that had perpetually flickered behind his single eye had finally escaped and was trying to burn it's way out.

When he began to wail once more, just as the distant peaks of extinct volcanoes were reflecting the echos of his first yell back like a chorus of the damned, it seemed somehow louder and more inhuman, as if something of his humanity had escaped, and now he was just a creature of sound and fury. The sand around his knees began to ripple and roll, as if it too intended to escape the onslaught of sound.

It starting slow at first, one grain of sand would skitter away, then another, and then another would steadily accelerate until it was moving so quickly that it was cast upwards into the air, lost on the currents of wind. At some point the slow march of individual grains became a tide, as a mass exodus of silicon surged away from Sol and upward into the air in an ever expanding ring. Soon the the howling youth was crouching in a depression nearly a full two feet deep, the sides of bowl flowing like water as a perpetual indelible force apply constant pressure upon the loose material. It gave Sol the illusion of having grown heavier, as if the earth itself was struggling beneath his mass, and he was slowly sinking towards the unseen bedrock below. A column of agitated dust suddenly burst upwards in a whirling vortext of grit and silicon that surrounded Sol densely enough to all but entirely obscure his shape.

Where she stood, Lily could suddenly feel this weight, as a front of oppression rolled away from the howling hunter, making their air feel greasy and unclean, as well as if ambient pressure had suddenly increased by a half dozen atmospheres. It was enough to lay the folds of her dress back against her body as if the fabric had suddenly been transformed into thin sheets of lead. This was about the same time that something new started to happen inside the vortex which had only recently surrounded Sol.

Pockets of dust began to randomly collapse upon themselves before bursting with dull thuds that could be heard over the endless howl of anguish, as well as felt deep in the chest. This caused occasional voids to appear in the swirling column of cyclonic sand, and every now and then they would align enough that Sol, still crouching and clawing at his skull, could be seen at the center of the maelstrom. The bursting bubbles of sand became more frequent, until their sound, was a constant booming that drowned out everything else, even Sol.

A living amorphous explosion surrounded Sol, driving him from his knees to all fours as he continued to scream silently amidst the blasts that lit up the air around him. Genuine pain entered his howl, physical suffering of having every inch of his flesh subject to the sensation of a hammer each second, and he could only stand to endure it for a fraction of a moment.

It was like someone struck a match and then carelessly threw it on a stack of red dust and fireworks, as the noise and sensations and the sight of whatever Sol was doing transfigured itself instantly into something new. The air itself seemed to bulge, as if something unnatural, something alien and unreal was trying to insinuate itself into reality, and then without any more warning, it came charging in it's entirety. One moment, Sol was on his hands and knees, surrounded by pressure waves, and in the next he was gone. In the hunters place was a tower of rampaging blue fire that was at least three paces across. The explosions, the sand tornado, and even Sol's scream, vanished. What remained was a thing of unreality, an object of not the physical world, but of the spiritual, the physical manifestation of a tormented soul.

It was not quiet, because while the thuds and screams and howling of winds and explosions and tormented youth were gone, what arrived in their place was a rushing, sucking, hissing, roaring thunder of endless expanses of flame. It was what a forest fire would have sounded like inside a churchbell, as it was a deafening mess of odd chaotic textures, destructive force, and weird resonance.

The light was blinding, ranging from the hue of open winter sky on the edges, to the heat bleached blue of an oxy-acetalyne torch at it's center, as if a comet had torched down right there on the beach and was trying to burn its way to the core of the planet. It did not generate any heat, nor did it any physical light, but looking at it directly left a shadow in the eye, and just being near enough to see it conjured up long forgotten memories of the monsters that lived in the unnamed shadows of the night. It was a dreadful sight, in that it filled the viewer with dread like a crushing pulverizing hammer upon the very morale itself. It stank like an open sulfurous pit, and lingered in the nose with a faintly sweet scent of sickly sweet spices.

Sol stood, his flesh prickling with the sensation of his own demons cannibalizing themselves to feed the blaze of azure that surrounded him. All his fear, all his anger, and all his grief and shame, focused and unleashed, and he looked around in the kind of calm only known to soldiers following the reaper's blow. He reached out, watching as shades of blue sprang from his arm and lashed wildly at the drifting motes of sand and feathers that filled the air. His aura, the true form of is spirit, a suit of armor crafted from fire and thorns that would maim anything that came too close, an ultimate sacrifice of the self and the other in the pursuit of power. He watched it wear the sand around his boots away to glass, and he tested the extra sensory awareness that filled his every nerve, as well as the sudden well of strength that seemed to make his veins pump with molten steel.

Then he saw the eyes. Bloody and red as the blood that was their only desire. A dozen sets of crimson eyes leered at him through the trees.

The barghests would have passed for slouching shadows in the lee of the beach's forest, were it not for the hellish sanguine slashes of their greedy eyes, and the glinting salivation of ther maws. The sound of suffering, the anger, the fury, the pure unfiltered well of negative emotion that was Sol's own blackened heart, they could smell it, they could feel it, and they could hear it. The knew in the unknowable way of beasts and monsters the same way a farmer knew when a crop was ripe for harvest. IT made their bellies ache and the mouths water, and every fiber of their beings yearned to lay tooth or claw on the source of such acrimony.

"COME AND GET ME YOU MANGY MOTHERFUCKERS! I'LL RIP OFF YOUR HEADS AND FUCK YOUR BLOODY STUMPS!" Sol's voice rose from his chest, and he realized that he was in a low sprint, headed right for the nearest barghest.

The grimm creatures could not resist the invitation, though neither they nor the speaker were actually in any frame of mind to grasp the content of what was said.

Sol wound up his right arm as he ran, several strides in anticipation of his target which was en-route to meet him right in there on the sands, halfway between Lily and the trees. The sleve of Sol's jacket, which was now revealed to have been composed of much cheaper materials than the rest, tore away in a single piece as Sol swung overhand with a crushing haymaker, despite the massive gap that was still between him and the grimm

"LEEEEEEEEGIOOON!" Sol's voice, as close to joy as it might ever be again, rose up, followed quickly by a high pitched shriek that sound just like a smaller version of the VTOL's Herme's turbines.

An inverted teardrop of white hot fire lanced a foot out from the arrangement of vents upon Sol's artificial shoulder-blade, The afterburner carried Sol bodily off his feet as legs like battering rams pumped like pistons beneath him. A streak of smoke that     was so hot it glowed red painted the trail of Sol's passage as he sped towards the unfortunate beast.

The beast, still on all fours, having not anticipated that it's prey would close the distance so quickly. The last thing that crossed the wolf's mind other than a brief sensation of surprise and curiosity, was Sol's fist. Black matter, white bone, and various tissues of various hues, including the pulped remains of the creature's red eye, sprayed n every direction away from the point of impact with a sickly crunching pop.

175/200
15 -Negative Energy Lure using Volatile Ignition
5   -Myomer Fiber

tag(s): lilywilde ━ words: 000 ━ notes: please keep it short

their credit, the abrupt demise of their comrade did nothing to stall the charge of the remaining barghests. Eight of the beasts, moving in what would have looked like a formation if one squinted hard enough and ignored the snapping whenever one drew too close to another, advanced on the one eyed swordsman's position.

As he skidded to a halt, trailing smoking black blood, Sol recognized the familiar pack tactics employed by this particular species of Grimm, and he was not surprised, far from. He'd been counting on their habits since the very start. Unlike Lily, Sol did not have the luxurious advantage of having hunting down to second nature. He specialized in a completely different prey, and his methods were as different from hers as night from day. This did not however make him a novice, despite Lily's beliefs.

The One-Eyed Dragon was a calculating creature, as one needed to be when one wielded enough power to eradicate oneself at the first misuse, and everything he'd done since stepping onto the beach had been as determined and explicitly intentional as a move in a game of stones.

Thinking that his display on the beach front had been anything less than deliberate by design,  was symptomatic of a fatal misconception of Sol's character. He was not simply a raw bundle of nerves awaiting a lucky strike to send it up in glorious conflagration, Sol was also a manufactured weapon of war, like a cannon or a sword, and he'd not lived as long as he had by making stupid mistakes.

The fact was that he'd unstopped the turmoil of his soul on purpose, because it served his objectives to do so. Sol may have been more at home facing bludgeons and blades than maws and claws, but he was still a straight A student in the academic areas, and far surpassing all of his peers in the physical department. He was no simpleton, and he was particularly gifted in strategy.

The battle did not begin when war horns howled, or when blades met. The battle began minutes, hours, or even weeks ahead of time, when first a force set foot in hostile territory.

"A victorious soldier wins his battle first, then proceeds to fight, while the defeated,  fight first and seek to win as they do so." Said the voice of an older man in his head, the memory as fresh as warm blood in Sol's mind, "A man who has chosen the land and hour of a battle, has also chosen the victor."

This beach provided Sol neither cover, nor escape, and it's soft sand made purchase for footing an uncertain prospect at best. It hampered mobility as the dunes slid beneath the boot, and the trees and sea created natural barriers that denied retreat. In a word, it was a perfect killing floor, and the grimm had showed up no sooner than Sol was ready for them.

"Know your enemy, and know yourself, and you will know the path to victory."

Barghests hunted in packs, and employed ambush and harass tactics. They surrounded foes, and probed the front and back while others struck at the flanks. It was an effective and sophisticated behavior that allowed the beasts to worry down even mighty prey, often without any loses of their own. It was the most solid argument for intelligence among the creatures of Grimm. It allowed even these, the least of their ranks to be a credible threat, and Sol was doing nothing as they slowly surrounded him

The young lord on the other hand was a one eyed cripple, with a personality of unleaded gasoline and a heart like an anvil. His favored style of combat was mid to close range, against multiple vulnerable targets. His method was to spot weakness and punish it, and all of his kit served an entirely linear progression towards that end.

"The expert makes his enemy move, while he stands his ground."

The urge to run, to flee, was strong. Only a madman would be without that instinct to turn and cower when faced by eight lupine demons as they closed in. Sol spat into the dirt, his saliva so thick with the remains of the corpse that was evaporating at his feet that it smoked as it hit the sand. He did not run, because there was nowhere to go, except into the surf, and at this time of year he would freeze in minutes. He did not attack either, because the formation of his enemies was sound. They stayed just far enough out of reach as they encircled him, that one or two could dart in and land a blow if he moved for any of the others. The only thing that was keeping them at bay was uncertainty, and the scent of fresh blood on Sol's fist, but that wouldn't last for long. Their bellies ached with the need to consume the wretched young man.

"You can smell it, can't you?" He whispered to his private audience, as he lifted his left hand, and then swept his hand out to the side. A ratcheting noise cut the air as the sheath that had been running parallel to Sol's forearm swung upon the mechanism that joined it to his wrist, causing the point of the scabbard to extend four feet ahead of his hand, the hilt of the housed blade pointing towards his elbow. "My rage? My Grief? You're just stupid beasts that can't resist a baited trap, aren't you?"

"The Art of War is that of deception.
-If he is secure, be prepared for him.
-If he is superior in force, evade him"

Two of the beasts surged towards the center of the ring. The first approached from the left and swung wildly at Sol's upper body, while the second came from behind and opened it's jaws to claim a pound or two of flesh. Sol fended the first away with a back handed crack of his scabbard turned tonfa, and thrust his right arm willingly into the second's jaws. Skull like brittle iron cracked as the ballistic ceramic of Whisper's sheath landed a glancing blow across the first beast's crown, and teeth like titanium crunched down upon the carbon fiber of Roar's forearm. Sol freed the arm by launching the steel of his right greave up into the beast's groin, just in time to avoid being hauled off his feet.  The barghest yelped and scrambled back into the fold of circling wolves.

Sol laughed as he shook the drool and shattered ceramic plates off.

"-If he is temperamental, irritate him."

"How do I taste? I've got seconds for you if you want it!" He declared, as he shook the length of his tonfa-scabbard in a manner that was more comical than it was threatening.

"-If you appear weak, his arrogance will make him careless."

The barghests had finally suffered their full of this lippy cyclops, and as a single being they fell upon him.

Black shapes surrounded Sol, darting in weird and strange directions, limbs and purpose lost in a confusion of black fur and dripping fangs. Sol was pummeled in the back by a massive paw that left deep gouges in the lacquer of his banded mail, and as he was thrown forward by the impact, another set of claws was there to slam him back once more. His game of taunts rapidly became a mission to simply remain standing as crushing blows fell all around him, and Sol reversed the position of Whisper`s scabbard to compensate for a lack of protection on his left side.  He avoided what he could, his feet unable to move easily through the uncertain footing, and he was forced to absorb the worst of the impacts with the length of his scabbard, the metal of his false arm, and in a few very unfortunate examples, the bands of his breastplate.

Within a few short moments, that felt like both a lifetime and an imminent demise, Sol was breathing heavily. Bruised ribs complained with each gasping breath, and his left arm was numb from the sustained abuse, while his legs seemed slow and unwilling to tread in the bed of loose sand. However, no matter how effort caused his face to contort, or his voice to leap forth in grunts and yells of exertion, his eye retained it`s glint of mad certainty. His aura, still a whirling abyss of blue that flashed red each time it met the soulless biology of the grimm, surrounded Sol in a corona of lashing blaze that lunged this way and that, driven towards the incoming assault as apposed to away.

"-In Chaos, opportunity lies."

He was not afraid. Fear had no place to claim in a mind that overflowed with information collected from Sol's aura as it was disrupted by the harrying forms. His eye was a treacherous organ, rendered useless by the absence of it's neighbor, and his ears could not make sense of the chaos that surrounded him, but his aura yearned to commit violence, and each time a grimm passed by, the beast's flesh was caressed by tongues of blue and red, that lacked the strength to actually provide a barrier, but allowed for a nearly complete three dimensional understanding of the immediate area. Wind currents of passing claws and furred bulk, tugged on his aura and though Sol could feel the tugs growing in strength and regularity as the perpetrators grew closer to landing a mortal blow, he still did not fear. For what does a dragon have to fear from a pack of mangy dogs?

"-Make your plans as obscure as a cloud, and your actions as sudden as lightning."

The moment came, as three shapes converged directly in front of him, just as two more snapped tightly from either side, and Sol roared, as only a dragon can. An earsplitting bellow caused all of the wolves to hesitate for an instant, and that instant marked the last time they would believe they could win this fight. The cloak of flames that surrounded Sol seemed to be drawn towards the sound, and like  smoke suddenly caught in a gale, the entirety of Sol's aura flowed towards his open mouth and filled his jaws with blinding luminescence. The air itself shook with a low rumble of thunder, and the transparent gas of the atmosphere immediately ahead of Sol's face began ripple visibly, shaking so hard that it's shape could be viewed clearly. A sudden whine that sang at a frequency far above the capacity of human ears, sounded for a single heartbeat and then it was as if a great hammer fell out of the heavens and smashed the three barghests that had collected in a general cone just in front of the one eyed huntsman. Sol's aura leaped from between his fangs, flaring out in a wide cone just as the air between the wings of flame exploded with the force of a hand grenade. A shock-wave that reached out ten feet in less time than it took for the light of it's appearance to be translated into visual information by the brains of any onlooker not capable of existing outside of conventional space time.

A wall of convex force traveling many times the speed of sound, erupted along the length of the cone of effect, slamming the closest of the beast so hard that the upper two thirds of it's thorax simply ceased to exist. The second barghest had been in a low stance as it loped towards Sol, and it`s back collapsed as the solid dome of ultra-dense air struck with equal force of fifteen pound weights being dropped from five feet up onto every individual square inch of it`s flesh. It`s internal organs were reduced to a fine slurry as ribs and spine snapped like dry tinder, a fine mist of pulverized tissues sprayed into the air from it's mouth, noise and ears. The third wolf was struck bodily by the uprooted remains of it`s comrades. At the velocity that the sundered carcasses were now traveling, they impacted like a pair of small vehicles traveling at highway speeds, and the third barghest went so abruptly from moving in one direction to rapidly accelerating in another that the g-forces upon it`s body caused several internal organs to completely separate from vital channels. The third barghest, while the most intact of the three, had it`s aorta, the primary blood vessel that supplied depleted blood to the lungs from the heart, torn from the chest wall and severed just above the first ventricle. Had the monster`s heart continued to beat, it would only have done so long enough to spill the entirety of it`s blood supply into it`s thoracic cavity.

Sol spared a single instant to appreciate the fact that his wrath was capable of willing obstacles out of existence, and then lunged ahead into the avenue that was opened by the recent expiration of it`s former occupants. As he moved he spun on his heels and aimed Roar, palm first at the pair of barghests that had previously been converging on his position.

"Can you smell it? That's what death smells like!" He declared as a column of fire, three feet wide at first and broadening to five at the conclusion of it's fifteen foot extent, erupted from his palm. Cupping his left hand over his right shoulder to provide support, he fell into a crouch and swept from right to left across the remaining four barghests with a brush made of burning jet fuel.

Two were taken in the face and upper body by the blast of ignited fire dust, and as they inhaled the burning compound, their throats were sealed and cauterized to the point that they could not even howl in agony as they died horrific and painful deaths. The other two, ducked away but still endured a burning shower that covered their fur in a layer of sticky semi-solid fuel. One rolled away, thrashing and wailing as it tried to smother the ignited fuel mixture but only succeeded in spreading it further, while the other made the wisest choice and bounded for the surf in hopes of extinguishing the hellish mantle of fire beneath the waves.

Sol lunged after the beast, and caught up just as it reach the waist high water. A fist of steel and claws of carbon fiber slammed into the scruff of the beast's neck, the force of the blow hammering the creature from it's feet and then submerging it's head beneath the foam. Sol collected his weight above the thrashing beast, enduring blows that were muted by the resistance of the water as it tried to struggle free. He emitted a vile laugh at the drowning beast as he held it under until the struggles began to abate. Then he would drag the monster's muzzle back out above the surf and unleash a skull shattering blow by chopping downwards with the pommel of his sword. The beast squawked in surprise and fear as was stunned into submission, only to be forced back beneath the waves once more.

Sol's laugh, a hideous sound of pure wrath and unfiltered glee, rebounded off the rolling surf amidst the splashing and howling of his victim. He drew the creature up again and again, prolonging it's suffering for no better reason that it was within his power to do so.

However, dutiful observers would note that only seven of the original eight grimm were accounted for by this point, a detail of which Sol was blissfully ignorant. The grimm in question had broken off from the attack early. Perhaps possessing a more suspicious nature than it's peers and knowing better than to trust the vulnerability of a man who had deliberately lured them to this place, or perhaps the barghest had wondered where three of their companions had wandered off to, and had started to worry. Whatever the case may be, this monstrous wolf had fallen back on another familiar tactic of it's kind, and was slowly stalking up behind it's victim as said victim toyed with his own prey. Why the grimm did not simply flee was a question that wiser men would struggle to answer, but it might have been a matter of rescuing it's captured fellow, or a simple matter of vengeance    . Though more likely than both was that the creature could not resist the rage and cruelty that Sol was currently radiating like an infernal beacon.

Of course, Sol suspected none of this. He was too busy amusing himself to wonder whether there were eight or seven grimm, or even wonder where Lily had got off to while he was busy baiting the trap.

145/200
15 - Volatile Ignition
10 - Defense and Offense augmentation from aura
5   - Myomer Fiber

tag(s): lilywilde ━ words: 000 ━ notes: please keep it short