[center]Under Your Skin[/center]

Tablurath simply watched as Khold touched earth once more, before he turned and started walking with purpose toward him. The volley of missiles came striking down from the sky as he approached. The ice man quickly avoided the worst of the barrage, destroying another with a blast of ice. All the while Khazna seemed unconcerned, even going so far as to start juggling right in front of the angry Khold! Three then four, then five blades, dark mist forming into each, all rising then falling again as Tablurath watched Khold approached with a smile behind his eyes, and mostly hidden under his skull mask. Though his expression easily matched the dark skeletal smile it held. Even as winds started whipping behind the approaching man, Tablurath was still juggling. However, it seemed a poor idea to juggle in weak gravity when one possessed his strength and speed, and before he knew it he had lost two of his for swords! 

Both flung far into the sky as if to follow the ascending drop ship directly above. Which no doubt had created the large shadow over Tablurath's head. If one paid close attention to his feet however, they would find the black swarm at his feet even more perplexing. As it seemed to be pouring into the ground at his feet through small holes within the dirt, rock, and, soil. He stood perpendicular toward Zima, his right side facing him. 

"You ran from me!" Khold shouted.

To which Tablurath only cocked his head ever so. "Odd." He responded. "I seem to rememebr you jumping away- twice, though I suppose one of those times someone did throw you..." Though Tablurath was indeed amused by his targets present state, often it seemed he was more fashioned after the trickster god then the son of war, unreasonably obnoxious as he was. His juggling had already ended by the time Khold was within 10 feet, deciding he did not want to lose any more of them. He could hardly believe how straight forward this one was, not that he had soon any degree of creativity thus far, but really he could not have made himself more obvious in intent. It would have been almost insulting if it was not so amusing. 

Then Khold stepped within 6 feet of him, well within range of Tablurath's swords mind you. It would have been childishly easy to cut his arm off before he even realized it but he simply decided not to. Where would the fun in that be after all? Then Tablurath saw what he had been waiting for. Just a mere second before his cannon unleashed its payload the spark of energy that was the subtle command to do so flashing down Khold's arm. Invisible to all others including Khold himself, it was so invisible to Tablurath's inhuman senses. Even as Khold stepped within range Tablurath was already moving. However he didn't react in any manner one might have predicted. He didn't move within Khold's guard, he didn't move left, right, up, or back. In fact he did none of these things. He simply spun in place like a child's top, and even as he made the first rotation an opaque wall of dark mist swirled around him. 

The very next moment Kholodny's barrage of ice and wind was unleashed, blasting away the wall of black even as it swept up swaths of dirt and loose rocks into the air to send them flying away. However, there was no sign of Tablurath as the winds blasted debris in every direction. Indeed Tablurath had not gone in any of the aforementioned directions; it seemed he had completely vanished into thin air. 

-----

But the wily Cardinal had not in fact truly vanished. The moment Khazna had started standing in that very spot the black swarm around his feet had not been one of spiders, but made up of countless nano machines. His mib army had been eating away at the very ground beneath his feet, and the moment Tablurath had spun in place, he had effectively turned himself into a living drill, his weighted body and speed cutting through the foot and a half of earth now left beneath him in the blink of an eye. His first observations of this planet had been that it possessed a remarkable amount of pits, not surprising given the realms name. He had made an assumption however and it seemed to have paid off. Even as he fell he felt the bone cold air above him, the wash of cold sending a shiver down his spin. He landed on his feet soon enough however, finding himself in a kind of tunnel, one filled with spiders crawling along the walls. With the small tunnel he had forged above him covered almost instantly, partly from his own mibs and the debris of ice caused by Khold's cannon, the place was pitch black. 

Of course the infrared spectrum provided by his mask would have made the dark less intrusive, but there were so many spiders along the tunnel walls that the light of their living bodies provided as oblivious a barrier as cement walls. While he hated spiders with a passion, his vanishing act had offered him a window of opportunity he would not waste. Springing up he stabbed a copy blade straight through the tunnels roof just 6 feet forward from where he had been standing before. A physical barrier was no obstacle for Tablurath's god like sight; his blade piercing through the foot and a half of rock like it was so much wet paper to stab directly into Khold's right foot. 

Something he would notice immediately as the nature of Starhilm would wreak havoc with Khold's ability to manipulate Seidhr, and while Tablurath was not immediately aware of it, it would also very well paralyze Khold for the time being, puppeteered as he was by the powers of another being. With that done he simply let go of the blade and fell back down to the tunnel floor beneath him, sprinting off down the tunnel before turning left as dictated by the many spider bodies. All this from the moment he seemingly vanished to Khold's foot behind impaled occurring roughly in a second and a half's time.