[center][h3][color=C0392B]Rudolf Shilage[/color][/h3][/center]

His teeth grit, as hot metal rods of pain jammed their way through his body and he tumbled, end over end, through the frost. He had felt the now-defiled steel groan within the mighty beast's grip, as it had ripped him free of its back before he could wrench his body around for another desperate cleave to the vertebrae— but if it was proof of concept he wanted for the pursuit of proper armoring, he now had it in spades.

For all the uncomfortable noise, the plating held up, without warping out of shape or crumpling in on him.[sup]1[/sup] With a Behemoth's claws and crushing grip conducting the test, there were far too few guarantees in the world of that much. It was ample testament to the quality he'd ended up sourcing. However...

Wrenching himself to his feet, Rudolf felt his left arm spasm, the joint of his elbow all liquid flame even as a few fingers stubbornly clung to his dagger, coated a bright, angry red that had painted streaks across the rime. He'd ripped a part of the Behemoth free with him, evidently, when it had ripped the intrepid warrior off its back in turn— but the titanic force that it had mustered to protect itself was, as you would expect, a horrid idea to contest.[sup]2[/sup]

He drew a breath. Not the worst he'd fought through— ribs were certainly sore, and the interstitial muscles unhappy with their attempted pulverizing, to put it mildly—

A sabaton broke the ground, as he suppressed a pained scream and launched himself forward, as the shower of meteors descended from parts unknown. Weaving between those that came close and letting the smaller ones bounce off the bulk of his greatsword, he clicked his tongue— had only he not burned down Shield to dust, he could have cast it over the militia, sparing them, Miina, Elly, and Esben all the onslaught. Nor could he muster Svalinn— so failing all that...

A scattering of purple sparks, notably weaker than those that had piled up the blighted dead on the eastern front, danced around the bulk of the meteor storm's mass, causing them to slow in midair, almost hanging as if suspended in honey for a brief moment before the world resumed itself. Were the puprle orb at its full capacity, he surely could have caught the whole thing and pelted the Behemoth with it in reprisal, but this was as much aether as the stone had left to give for the day[sup]3[/sup]. A hurried stopgap by any measure, but one that would hopefully make a crucial difference—

—And buy him time to [i]properly[/i] interpose himself.

He skidded to a halt in front of the Skaeller's lines, took a rickety breath, and charged, throwing a globule of black flame ahead of him towards the maw of the beast as it roared to herald the rising moon. 

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[*][sub]1. Editor's Note: Don't make a habit of this. I really don't care for feeling my vacation house do that.[/sub]
[*][sub]2. You're not gonna be happy when the adrenaline wears off. Best you don't completely take stock of how that arm is doing while you're still willing to put power through that busted tendon. Oops. And the broken fingers. Oops.[/sub]
[*][sub]3. So, because my essence is so spread out like this and I've so greedily intertwined myself with my vessel's will, corpus, and equipment, I actually can nudge that battery's switch from off to on if he asks me nicely enough. I can't break the thing down the way we tore all the potential energy out of Shield without him to give it direction and focus on maintaining the activation while I go in and deconstruct, so that's why you see a tiny stream where a river used to run— to put it in idiot terms, I can't cheat unless he offers to cover for me. If I'm doing remote work, I work with what I'm given only.[/sub]
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