Geddesmck
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He collapsed into the snow, his body dying despite his victory. His mangled form fell atop that of the bear’s and Kovvi felt the blood leaked from him. He would die soon, but the spirits had blessed him with one final taste of triumph. For that, if nothing else, he was grateful.
His mind began to slip away and everything became dark. Inside him, the heat he had stolen from the bear still burned. He wished he could somehow use it to save himself. To live another day.
Again, almost as if to respond to his wishes, the heat leached from his body. The air around him became beyond freezing. A moment of shock was all Kovvi had before the air turned to ice around him.
They found him in the red ice, with a slain bear beneath him. Their shamans had told them the Iceblessed would be there, but none had believe that anything could still live beneath a mountain of snow. Still, none believed he lived now. But the shamans had heard the spirits. The Iceblessed was needed.
All four of them were needed to lift the frozen man and his kill onto the sled.
He had known rage before. He had thrived on it. He had let it swim beneath his skin and cloud his mind. Let it guide his actions and sooth his hurts.
Kovvi did not feel rage now. Now he felt something that transcended the concept of rage. He felt something that made hatred a petty thing. Made fury but a breath of air before a hurricane. There was not a word for what he felt, for nothing short of a god had ever felt its like before.
His mind was torn away by the primal emotions. Instinct and instinct alone guided him. The wall of ice before him exploded into countless shards of ice as his giant sword Freya smashed through it in her search for the woman’s blood. Some of those shards cut into him, tearing long gashes into his already scar-webbed form. Other buried themselves deep in his flesh like arrowhead. Not a single one registered with his mind.
Kovvi Iceblessed was gone, instead the wrath of some unknown god wore his form as his mighty weapon swung towards the woman with the beautiful sword and the deadly eyes.
The two opponents before her appeared to be locked in combat, and Phoebe reasoned with herself that it would not be entirely wise to join them just yet. She decided to wait for an opportune moment to intervene, when one or the other would gain the upper hand and she could-
-a ball of searing sped past her face, narrowly missing the tip of her nose. She recoiled instantly, but it was not quite quick enough, for she hadn’t seen it coming towards her. She felt her forehead gingerly - her brows were gone, singed away by the ball of fire.
Ah well, she mused, she’d survived without eyebrows for most of her life. The curse of the Witch had given her more than she had initially realised, though it had taken away much. Eyebrows, hair, fingernails - odd little human quirks that hadn’t meant much to her, but she had come to realise that humans prized and revered the oddest things.
Phoebe broke off her reverie, reminding herself where she was. “This is the Elemental Championship,” she muttered to herself, reprimanding.
She swung round to see where the fireball had come from, only to find more heading towards her, as well as the two adversaries that were now to her left. She rapidly conjured up handfuls of gel, hurling them to the balls of fire that were nearing her, effectively diffusing them. For the ones slightly further away from her, she flung tentacles instead, wrapping them around the fireballs, extinguishing their flame.
A sharp sting on her left arm almost distracted her, but she ignored it, waiting until the volley of fire ended. Phoebe glanced down, lifting her arm to see that a shard of ice had lodged itself into it. She deftly plucked it out, wincing slightly at the pain. A drop of blood fell onto her arm, and she quickly wiped a hand across her cheek, finding blood on her fingers. That too stung, now that she’d noticed the cut.
She looked across to the Ice-man, crushing the ice in her palm, and placing it atop her wounded arm. It stung again, and she sucked in a sharp breath, resisting the urge to lick it, her tongue flicking, agitated, between her lips. The ice melted away, and now that her wound was clean, she covered it with a thick layer of gel to help it to heal.
The Ice-man attacked the pale woman in seemingly blind rage ahead of her. Enough, she mused. For a man of Ice, has too much anger. Let’s see if I can calm him before he kills all of us in his rage. I don’t particularly want to die just yet.
However, she needed to grab his attention first. He had not looked at her once, save from the dark scowl he had sent her when she had flung his sword towards the woman.
“So, it’s his sword that’s important to him.” Her almost-amber eyes focused on the large weapon in his hand, the corners of her mouth lifting up in a smirk.
Teasing out a thicker, longer length of gel, she flicked her wrist towards him, capturing his sword easily. With barely contained effort, she yanked it towards her, having to use both hands. His grip on the weapon had been strong, but he had not been expecting it. The sword flew towards her, arcing in the air. She caught it, thrusting it into the earth, leaning on its hilt.
When the Ice-man inevitably turned to her, she grinned at him amicably, waving the fingers of her free hand at him.
Freya was torn from his grasp mid swing. With a bellow of wordless rage he turned.
In his enraged state, Kovvi did not register that he had turned away from the battle-scarred woman. He did not remember having seen his new aggressor before. His fury was so all consuming he didn’t even think to retrieve Freya or Ingrid. All he wanted to do was tear apart the green-hued woman. With his fingers and teeth, he would rip her apart and glory in her demise.
His anger robbed him of awareness. All he saw was his target, all else was noise. It was no surprise that the fireballs struck him. A stumble, a scream of half agony and half fury, and he continued. His bear pelt burned against his skin, and his beard became one of flame. His skin reddened and then blackened beneath the heat. Yet beside the fury, the pain was nothing.
Wreathed in flame and mist, the Rathyd chieftain descended inevitably upon the spear wielding woman. His grey eyes sparkled with madness and pain as he locked gazes with her briefly. That momentary gaze held a faint hopeless pleading. Stop me, it might have said, if one was looking for such a message.
Their eyes broke contact when he formed spiked ice around his hands and struck. Precision and accuracy were in short supply, but strength and intent were abundant. If he hit, he would pulverise his foe.
He came towards her, all Ice, and now Fire, and rage. Rage that was directed to her. Her grin vanished, replaced with a look of determination. She would use his anger against him, that was the only way.
She evaded his first attack with ease, noticing the spikes that appeared on his fists, jagged and deadly, meant for her. She was quick and light, keeping just out of his reach, sending handfuls of adhesive in the direction of his feet in an attempt to make him lose his balance.
At this range, she could tell that he would soon tire, or at least, she hoped he would. Rage was another strange human oddity - she had learnt that lesson too soon for her liking.
She was quick. He rained blows down upon her, or at least he tried. She slipped away from each strike and ducked beneath his blows. Circling him slowly, she sent globs of some unidentified, adhesive gel at his feet. It got harder and harder for Kovvi to keep up with her turning.
Somewhere, far in the back of his mind where the anger didn’t reach, he knew what she was doing. She was like a hunter bringing down large prey by snaring and tiring it. Kovvi himself had done the like many times. But though a part of him had such clarity, the anger that drove his actions cared not.
The fires burned still, his once fine beard now nothing more than scorched hair and tender skin. He would be nought but a mess of burns once the flames and the fury died down.
Frustrated at his inability to hit the slippery foe, he tried to grab Katherine from her place on his back. The green-hued girl took the opportunity to make her move.
Again and again, she eluded him, the huge man of Ice who tried so hard to land his blows upon her. Even now, the flames ate at him, and she almost felt a pang of sympathy for him. To be filled with such rage that you neglected your own body, intent only on attacking and attacking.
He raised a hand, but rather than continuing his attack, she saw that he was aiming for the axe that lay against his spine. Phoebe took this chance to fling a thick patch of her most adhesive gel onto his arm, rendering it useless, for now.
He glared at her as she walked towards him, having casually flicked more of the same gel towards his feet. Now her glands secreted a different kind of gel - this was a mild sedative, and aimed it towards the open wounds criss-crossing his torso. She waited for it to take effect, locking his gaze with her own.
The same gel that stuck his feet to the floor now caught his hand, even as it grasped Katherine’s haft. The great giant of a warrior found his arm immobile and as more of the gel struck him, soon his whole body suffered the same fate.
With a roar of anger he strained against his unnatural bonds, lashing out wildly with his free arm. The woman stayed out of reach, and flung more of her secretions at him, most of it sticking and seeping into the open wounds on his chest, most notably the one scored against his ribs by the battle-scarred woman.
He roared and raged, froth and blood spraying from his mouth as much as sound. Yet, as he did, he felt something pushing down the rage.
His screams got quieter, his straining weaker. His left arm no longer lashed out, instead it hung limp by his side. His eyes flickered. Sleep stole into his mind like a raider and plundered all thought of fighting. Even his rage could not hold against the thief.
The edges of his vision dimmed and he knew that soon he would be unconscious and vulnerable. Yet, for one brief instant, his mind was clear again. The anger and the soporific poison, for that was surely what was causing his unnatural drowsiness, neutralised one another and allowed Kovvi’s thoughts to come to the fore of his mind.
With clarity came pain. Pain enough to make sleep, even toxin-induced, an impossibility. The fire’s still burned his skin away. With all the urgency he could muster, Kovvi drew the heat into himself, replenishing the heat he had squandered so fruitlessly in his wrath.
The flames died, but the pain persisted. The injuries were too severe. He would not survive for long now. He shuddered to think how he must look; at least some of his flesh had burnt away, whereas in other places it had almost melted. He would be a gruesome sight.
But he was not dead yet.
The gel that bound him froze and shattered. The giant Ice competitor got unsteadily to his feet and stared hatefully at the green woman who had so embarrassed him. This hate was not the burning fury that had possessed him before. It was cold, and focussed and all the more terrifying for it. But it was nothing compared to how he felt towards the woman with the sword he so coveted. She had stolen Kovvi’s mind from him. He would repay her with steel and blood.
He sculpted a large block of ice before him and threw it towards the sword-wielding woman. He wondered if she’d pay enough attention the incoming projectile to realise the ice had been sculpted into the image of her very own head; a grim prophecy of her impending fate.
Kovvi returned his attention to the green woman. He would repay them all for the pain he felt, the pain that foretold his demise.
Kovvi was dying. But they would all die with him,
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