Fetzen
FernStone
Alby47
Shienvien
The Grey Dust
Punished GN
&
Ahtziri's journey had taken her to the north-east, and she had made no small amount of progress during her time spent travelling. She had given birth to uncountable packs of the Abiktu along the way, populating the areas that seemed to be most devoid of the presence of monsters--and she had slaughtered no small amount of mortals that had attempted to attack her newborn children. Her experience with the transient mortals of this place had, thus far, been largely the same--they would see something that was not like them, judge it a threat to their existence, and attempt to wipe it out without concern for the fact that they were mere children. Ahtziri's mind still swirled and swam with the rage of it, her blood quickened and burning hot beneath her skin, and her normally yellowed eyes had been almost entirely overtaken by the crimson hue of wrath. She flew through the sky at almost incomprehensible speeds, honing her senses to pick out any enclaves of surviving mortals, and blissfully had not come across any in a while since her initial spate of killings. Before she knew it the landscape had given way to sandy hillocks and sparse brush. Some amount of her rage was forgotten at the sight of it, the clearly unnatural terraforming that had taken place having dizzying implications in her mind.
She pressed a hand onto her distended, pregnant belly almost by instinct, as her mind considered the possibilities that such a place offered her. There were others of her ilk, then, if such feats of creation were possible--she had only encountered the land in its barren, apocalyptic state thus far. She knew then the gravity of the situation that was about to unfold before her: with others possessed of her power but differing motivations and proclivities there would be constant conflict and constant change. But how many others could there possibly be? She'd seen no signs of any intervention in her travels that she could recognise, but perhaps she did not know what to look for. Distracted by the thoughts as she was, she did not recognise the sounds of combat until she was already close enough that they could spot her if they simply looked upwards. She looked down, focusing her sight on the details of the engagement, and found an all-too-familiar sight: a skirmish between mortals girded with naught but crude weaponry and ambition, and a couple of creatures she was unfamiliar with. The creatures looked like panthers, except instead of fur they were covered in quills, and three of them were squaring off against five humans, one of which was a child huddled in the back and surrounded by the adults.
No thoughts entered the Mother of Monsters' mind, and the red mist descended upon her in an instant. Before she knew it she had landed on the earth with an almighty crash, claws bared, and she let out a screech of rage that caused the ground to vibrate beneath her. The humans and the panthers each turned to her, surprised by the intervention of another party, and a stillness descended over the situation as they each prepared to make a stand.
Lonn had been watching with some interest at the petty skirmish for a while by then, not yet quite willing to step in. More and more as of late he had found himself coming face to face with monstrosities and had seen their handiwork more than a few times. From what he had noticed, they were very much unlike the assorted creatures he had seen at the very onset of his birth. They were stranger, more specific to mortals, as if they had been made by hand to be a foil to men. So he had watched with great curiosity, following in the wake of destruction many made, occasionally saving the humans that were in danger or simply watching to see what occurred. After all, that struggle was part of what made humanity just so damn alluring. What arrived was far from what he expected.
When the monstrous divine arrived Lonn was stunned; he had met with a number of deities and even a demi-god and so far they had proven mostly palatable. Though he was no pretty face himself, Lonn could honestly say he’d never seen anything quite like that in his admittedly brief life. From his eyes the Mother of Monsters was every part a perversion, looking more broken than anything else. Though he couldn’t quite feel disgust, he certainly couldn’t feel attraction; as such, any allure that the creature’s odd body might have was lost on him. In an instant, however, he knew her to be entirely divine.
That meant trouble.
Lonn ground his perfect teeth as the three sides now presented for a fight, cogs biting at each other in his head as he attempted to decipher the best path. Up until now he had taken an openly friendly stance towards other gods, to ingratiate and befriend as many as possible, but this certainly was an example of something far worse. It was clear whatever it was had no love lost for mortals and that in of itself presented a number of problems to his goals. With his characteristic smile completely shed from his face and replaced with a scowl and a grimace, Lonn shouted out down the hill where he was posted to interrupt the monster’s plans.
”What in half-a-dozen hells do you think you’re doing?”
Ahtziri turned her head to meet the gaze of whatever had called out to her, eyes seething with rage, before softening slightly at the sight of something she instinctively knew to be her kin. Another divinity, in the flesh, standing before her for the first time. She steeled her gaze and focused her mind, willing her chest to stop heaving with the barely-restrained fury currently dominating her body--but it proved a more troublesome foe to vanquish than she had anticipated, and she could not keep the edge of hostility from her voice.
"They are about to slaughter my children! Since I awakened, that is all these misbegotten creatures have done--slaughter anything that looks dangerous, anything that looks different!" she snarled in response, her breaths shallow and heavy. Her claws flexed, casting a wicked glint as motes of light reflected from them, and the serpentine head of her tail snapped its teeth in the direction of the humans before also turning itself towards the new deity.
In an instant, the mortals were forgotten. Ahtziri knew that she could kill each and every one of them before they could so much as think about harming the monsters before them, but this new divinity posed a threat that she could not ignore. If she could kill them before they could so much as think, it stood to reason that another being possessed of her power could do quite the same to her own children. If she struck preemptively, what was to stop this new figure from doing the same? Could she stop him before he did? If she could, could he stop her before she did? The thoughts slipped atop one another in her mind, failing to make any purchase on the landscape of her consciousness, and she stepped forwards again towards Lonn. The humans made a sudden gesture to brace themselves, but Ahtziri did not even notice that they had moved in the slightest: all of her rage, in that moment, was focused upon whatever would step in the way of her protecting her children.
"How can I remain passive? How can I wait for them to strike first as they have done so before, every single time, without fail?!"
With each exhortation her voice grew in volume, each syllable stoking a coal of embers within her chest that was very close to becoming a fire that would consume her entirely if she let it. Each step forward she took towards the interloper shook the unstable earth below them, each footfall a bellows to that smouldering rage. Her resolve not to simply strike them down wore ever-thinner with each second, but concern for the consequences of her brashness stayed the worst of her impulses--but the growing heat was, she could tell, getting the best of her. It was only a matter of time.
Lonn was absolutely taken aback by the almost immediate, intensifying response given by his adversary. In an instant she had turned all that rage and fury directly onto him, heedless of what consequences such a destructive meeting might have. His eyes flashed briefly to the mob of creatures, the humans themselves desperately looking for any chance to escape. Though he didn’t necessarily care for their individual suffering, a certain level of pride had entered the situation; who was this creature to decide men should die when her spawn should live? Even more galling was her absolute refusal to consider Lonn’s needs! Where would Lonn be if she went and killed all of mankind? Not to mention, her reasoning was absolutely insane; he had seen, personally, that her so-called “children” were not in any way blameless.
”Now I’m not one for calling someone a liar, but that one is just blatant,” sneered the glowing-red god, ”Not only are your ‘children’ the ones hunting men, but did you ever stop to think why a starving, weakened mortal ever seek to start a fight with one? They are dying in their droves and you castigate them for protecting their own children! Look! There’s one, right there!” Lonn thrust an outstretched hand towards the family, directly pointing at the child cowering in terror.
Ahtziri's gaze turned from furious to bewildered in an instant, and then offended, and then back to furious.
"How dare you?! Children are innocent, yet to consume the poisonous lessons of mortality--I would never harm a child!" the intensity of the response was staggering, her enunciation and vigor such that her mouth began to foam with the seething rage boiling within her. Her claws clenched into fists, her jaw clenched as her teeth ground against one another, and a rising growl forced its way out of her throat with such ferocity that her body vibrated from the exertion. She turned away from the mouthy god across from her towards the humans and their child. She stepped towards them and then abruptly turned towards the monsters that had been threatening them--beneath her gaze they immediately retreated, their postures suddenly bereft of any hint of aggression and their attention raptly focused on her. She knelt down towards them, gesturing for them to come in close, and she placed a single kiss upon each of their heads. Immediately afterwards they turned and fled into the distant night, running as quickly as their too-many limbs would take them, and Ahtziri turned back to the god of, apparently, mouthiness.
"They act according to their instincts. They do not have the capacity for reason--but these mortals do, and they have chosen to use it to attack my children. I admit, not every instance was instigated by these humans--but most of the ones that I have seen were, and my vengeance was appropriate. With what authority on this matter do you speak?!" and then all of the fire and fury was back, her attention solely directed on the crimson god and his oddly perfect teeth.
”So do men! They have just as much choice in what they do as your beloved children! And what do you mean, vengeance!? Have you been cavorting about, killing folk who had not even a hare’s chance in hell to fight back!?” It was obvious Lonn was starting to match the Mother of Monsters’ in his intensity, eyes flaring. In an instant, however, he seemed to cool; red, hot coals for eyes still burned bright but his posture took on an entirely different shade. Though he held a clearly bellicose stance, a shift in positioning lowered the clear aggression as his gaze dodged about Ahtziri, desperately clawing for more mortal-esque behaviors he could more easily manipulate. Though he had very little to work with, Lonn was cunning first and foremost.
”My authority is as their parent. I am in each and every one of their hearts and I know them inside out, from head to toe. You have been butchering defenseless children since the day you first opened your eyes on this earth; you are man’s worst impulses made manifest. You are worse than them.”
And then the rage was gone from her face again, her corded muscles untensed and her eyes relaxed. Suddenly her voice was very small, barely a reverent whisper, and she looked upon the misshapen husks of flesh known as mortals before her with a spark of pity in her eyes.
"I could not stand for my children to die here…” she began, waving a hand at the nearby mortals in dismissal. "Yours should see this encounter through, too. Go.”
She spared no further thought towards the beneficiaries of her clemency, instead choosing to focus on the more apropos target of her rage. The fire did not return quite so quickly as before, but the more her eyes bored into his the more it rose up within her until she could contain it no longer and a heavy snarl forced its way through her clenched, imperfect teeth.
"I endowed one of my children with intellect, you know? I made him capable of thought, and of speech. He did not use that gift to seek out the mortals who’d hunted him down in the first place, he was simply so grateful and so filled with adoration that he took me to his brethren so they, too, might know a mother’s love. Your children are born into this world knowing that love, and still they choose the darkest paths available to them--ignorance and fear are their kingdom, and you their king! You dare chastise our nature and excuse theirs? Yours?!”
Ahtziri’s claws grew wickedly long as she spoke, her wings spread ever-wider, the machine of her body rippling and huffing with the wrath soaking into every part of her being. She did not strike, but nor did she back down--and her patience for Lonn slipped like so many grains of sand through an hourglass.
Lonn’s sneer returned in full swing, only the slightest hint of his perfect teeth visible behind a clear and very apparent grimace. Despite his attempts otherwise, whatever was seated in reality in the creature that just barely counted as his peer fled before the onrush of hypocrisy. He would almost felt pity for her if it weren’t for the rampant levels of disdain. Before her he had never once even thought of hating the monsters that prowled the world, only seeing them as another challenge for men to overcome or fail to; now, having met their mother, he was beginning to feel a bit different. While still maintaining his somewhat defensive posture, Lonn stretched and outward and caught the lance of red lightning that burst into a line from the point of his hand. It crackled viciously as the red glow of that God of Mortals hummed and thrummed with life all its own, scorching a black scar into the ground below as the energy jumped from lance tip to earth. One last attempt, he promised himself, to try and handle this in a more subtle way. Only one, though.
”Love? Men don’t know love; they seek it, crave it even, but it is stolen from them at birth. Do you know how many suffer that loss? How many children lose their parents, or vice versa? You should, as I wager you’ve taken your fair share of them. They are gifted with the will to act on opportunity, not the freedom to make any and all choices. They choose the paths they choose because that is the world that was made for them; mortals are no different from your precious spawn but for how they look. Their bellies ache when they’re hungry, their skin bites at them when they’re cold, and their hearts tear at them when they feel loss.” By then Lonn had dropped any pretense, clearly at the limits of his prodigious ability to hide his true feelings. His eyes pierced Ahtziri like the sharpest of blades, her monstrous hypocrisy impossible to ignore and wounded him so that it colored every word of his retort, “You just can’t stop lying to yourself, can you? If you weren’t such a damned hypocrite you’d see right through yourself and your high tower of lies. Fact is, men and monsters are exactly the same; I know, I’ve seen both their hearts.”
"Then are we not fated, as their stewards, to play out our roles? To inhabit this world that our actions have built and act on the opportunity we have been given...?"
Ahtziri's tone lost its fiery edge, tempered in a deluge of icy conviction. No longer was she furious beyond reason, the world seething red like a sanguinary pallour. A calm had overtaken her, her ire sharpened and cooled into a steely edge of determination--red gave way to the baleful light of purple, her form sheathed in forebodingly gleaming purpose. The air around her seemed to darken, her silhouette drawing more and more of the light from her surroundings until she was a byzantine streak against a void of black. She stood in opposition against Lonn, though calmly--she acted in that moment as though the heaving, snarling fury that had dominated her not moments ago was irrelevant to the point of forgetfulness. There was an unspoken challenge; no longer defiant, no longer beyond reason. All of that was gone, replaced with this resolve to act. To demonstrate, to bring into being and manifest through action and not word--a seizing of a moment that had been offered, but in her own way.
"Then must I not see the heart of man for myself, to know?"
Lonn’s eyes locked on Ahtziri and closed to smoldering red slits, all sense of humanity usually presented by him dashed. There was no question that any attempt at turning things to peaceful ends had failed. The body language of the goddess was unmistakable. The tip of his crackling lance lowered to point generally towards Ahtziri’s heart though Lonn had no intention of making the first blow. When he spoke of Ahtziri’s death, he would do so honestly; the beast hadn’t seen reason, despite every attempt on his end. Most of all, Ahtziri’s poorly veiled words did not fall on deaf ears; to Lonn her meaning was clear as day.
”Yours first.” came the laconic threat, spat from Lonn with not a drop of insincerity.
Ahtziri's very being was calm. Still. In that moment her focus was serene, utterly consumed by the purpose she had given herself. Whatever came before and whatever was to come after no longer mattered, falling away like a caul dissolving over the eyes--there was only this moment in time. Her movement was lightning-swift, propelled dually by the inhuman might of her physical form and the additional force of her wings. Teeth bared, claws honed to steely points; she was the weapon in that moment, her focus aided by a primal insight into the shape of her flesh that mortals often forsook in the name of civilisation. She came at him head-on, with no particular direction or points of attack in mind; she would react to his movements to determine where her attacks would target and how she would move. Her monstrous, serpentine tail also moved independently of its own accord, holding slightly back and to her right as she moved towards him. The sheath of energy began to bristle and intensify as she got closer in proximity to Lonn, equally ready to crackle and lash out against him. A ferocious snarl coiled within the lower reaches of her throat, building in intensity and making itself known with a low, thrumming hiss.
In a flash Ahtziri had closed the distance on her rival, truly godly speeds making her rush all the more impressive. It was obvious how easily the Mother of Monsters must have dispatched all the mortals she had found, made readily apparent by the might presented in the moment. Against any mortal or some creature ken to a god, Ahtziri would’ve been a whirlwind. Alas, she had not yet known other gods and she clearly underestimated her opponent; the God of Mortals did not have that failing.
With speeds belied by his mortal-appearing frame, Lonn did not only react but moved to secure the initiative. A bare foot, caked with soot and muck to the point of being nearly unrecognizable, slammed heel-first into the rock before him. The kinetic energy produced shattered Lonn’s fleshy leg, meat and bone exploding into nothing but red mist and white powder in a fraction of a second. Where the heel struck stone the world erupted, a massive cloud of dense fragmentation and shrapnel vomiting from the contact point. With balance set and perfect posture taken, Lonn’s cocked arm launched forward to hurl the electrified carmine lance of violence made manifest. In the instant where the projectile left his fingers, the stored energy drawn with it destroyed Lonn’s throwing arm in a similarly brutal fashion to his leg. Moments later and Lonn detonated with a spiteful roar, a bolt of red hurtling into the sky like lightning, coursing through the sky over the lance at similarly breakneck speeds. The lance itself scorched through the air with such speed and ferocity that it would’ve been barely visible to men, no different to the eyes of mortals than that of the sky opening up with all its fury. It burst out from the cloud with only Ahtziri able to track its path, baleful red glow a promise of the pain to come.
Were she a flurry of animalistic fury intent only upon loosing her savagery upon a target, the lance would've hit its target sure and true--but Ahtziri had left all of the fury behind her, and what her focus became was something eerily similar to the true essence of Lonn that had been revealed with the barest fragments of his fury. Mortalkind's worst feature was, without a shadow of a doubt, the cool edge of reason that honed animal instincts to fine points, sharp enough to pierce the natural law of the world. The best in them was a force truly to be reckoned with; just, benevolent, brighter than even the gods shone in the sky. A fragment of what had made the paradise their home used to be the wonder beyond wonders that it was lived on at mortalkind's highest peaks. Just as things could arc highly, so too must they have equal capacity to fall--and in that descent the keen edge of mortal spirit lit the darkest paths one could take with a compelling refulgence, and man was wont to follow its glow until they lost themselves and became what she was. Monstrous. She, too, had arced towards a parabola in that moment--her entire being soared so closely to that turning point that in a darker sort of light she could almost press against the glass and look mortality in the eye. A scarlet flash seared that gleam of ruinous nostalgia into her mind as her body twisted and wrenched itself in the air, becoming airborne and twisting herself underneath the lance as she rotated 180 degrees.
The force of the movement from her wings kicked up against the storm of shrapnel and halted most of it midair, the rest becoming too slow to impact her form with enough force to matter. Then, from above, a strike she had not seen coming; the bolt of crimson lightning from above directly struck her underside, cleaving into the sheath of purple flame that cooly danced on her bare flesh and setting it alight with the sheer force of it. Though the initial impact she had compensated for with her buffer, the rest of the attack soon followed through with horrendous force, slamming her directly down into the ground with a sickening crunch and a tremendous screech of pain.
The bolt of light that was Lonn ossified into flesh and bone once more, sans the organic matter sheathing his right arm and left leg. In their place were semi-metallic facsimiles of human bones, black and red in hue and indescribable in their make. The tattered remains of flesh hung at where they jutted from annihilated stumps, freed from the trappings of mortality. For only the briefest moment Lonn crouched with both feet firmly planted on Ahtziri’s back, crushing her into the earth and rendering the stone beneath them to rubble. Though the explosion was deafening, even before the moment had the briefest second to settle Lonn was struck in the gut, turning his insides to pulp. The man-god was hurled from her back with contemptuous ease and despite the wounds dealt, the Mother of Monsters rapidly twisted and leapt after him.
Lonn glared at her in the brief flash before contact was made again, his form hurtling through the air as she rapidly closed the distance. The moment of separation passed and she was upon him, lunging at his face with monstrous claws bared. Just as Lonn’s back slammed into the boulder behind him, shattering an entire side of the thing with the force of his impact, Ahtziri struck. Talons raked across his face, making short work of the skin and muscle and fat that clung there. Even eyes were torn free, ripped from their sockets and sent flying in the opposite direction as a spray of viscera. Beneath that lie, the mask of mortality Lonn wore, the metallic-skulled features grinned back with deathly intent. Perfect teeth, unmarred in their entirety by the violence, gleamed within the confines of a pitted black, metal skull. The deep holes that once held eyes seared Ahtziri’s vision as they returned to life, surging with the deepest red light imaginable.
Powerful hands, one of flesh and one of metal, dug fingers painfully into Ahtziri’s sides before her talons could return to their brutal work. Lonn rotated in an oddly inhuman motion underneath the bestial woman before kicking off and tossing Ahtziri from his previously prone position. Moving with monstrous reaction times, Ahtziri immediately pounced right back for him before noticing a carmine glow just outside her view. In an instant Lonn’s arms raised above his head crashed down with the force of an asteroid, carrying with them a burning red maul of ferociously crackling energy. The gada struck Ahtziri on the pate of her skull, sending her face first into the shattered ground beneath while violently evaporating in a cascade of red light. Another explosion erupted from the surface as a cloud of obliterated stone showered the world around them, Ahtziri striking the ground only to bounce back up from the force. In came Lonn’s kick with his still fleshed right leg, shattering blood and bone in an instant as he launched Ahtziri away from him. Before she could react, Lonn plucked the goddess’ tail in two hands, rotated on his heels, and swung her above him in an arc right back into the hole she had previously put him in. An entire portion of her back erupted into gore, obliterated in the world-shattering impact. The crash was deafening, leaving a crater of serious dimensions as the fight only increased in intensity.
As the shredded meat, sinew, and bone that had once composed most of her back erupted from her body, it sizzled with the sheer heat and fizzled into nothingness before Ahtziri's monstrous regeneration could knit it together. Ahtziri released a shriek of pain as the pain receptors in her body finally caught up with what had happened to her, and instead of blood spraying itself across what remained of the ground beneath her an amaranthine ichor seeped out in sinewy strands and filled out the empty space where her organs and her meat had once been, crackling all the while. As her lungs were repaired and her vital organs set back into their proper place and function she inhaled a colossal lungful of air and let out a screech of agony that thrummed along the physical axes of the world and threatened to crumble them from within--even a hundred miles away, it would cause any humans that heard it immense pain. The force of it blasted Ahtziri back out of the hole she was in, and pushed Lonn back enough that his footing slipped on the unstable ground just beneath him and his momentum began to carry him back. Ahtziri's serpentine tail clamped its rows of teeth into the metallic skeleton that was his more honest form, hissing and crunching as they slightly crumpled the metal inwards to gain purchase, and Ahtziri used his momentum along with a powerful thrust of her newly regenerated wings, slamming him into the ground and sending a volley of amethyst arcs of arcing and crackling energy through his facsimile of flesh and into the splintered and heaving rock.
With another blast of her wings the Mother of Monsters was upon Lonn, chasing those arcs of energy into the ground, and as she barreled into Lonn the ground beneath them suddenly gave way, hollow and riddled with still-fizzing pockmarks, and the two were falling down into the earth below beneath an avalanche of dust and rubble collapsing in atop them. Ahtziri's talons found their marks once more, clanging and scraping against the metallic core of the God of Mortals, as his errant flesh began to swell and bloat and writhe of its own command, molting away from him, and Ahtziri plunged her monstrous jaws forward, opened impossibly wide, and swallowed the lot whole as she clamped down upon Lonn's truer self and wrenched her jaws closed as the ground grew ever-closer beneath them.
Lonn was a mess of silvery pockmarks and deep gouges, the flesh that made up his false identity now utterly and entirely gone. What remained was a more honest representation of men, as they sought to replace themselves with artificiality. Regardless of the metaphorical implications of his form, Lonn and Ahtziri plummeted towards the ground at breakneck speeds while the Mother of Monsters devoured what was left of his flesh, leaving the machine-like skeleton to glower back at her during their rapid descent. Despite the not inconsiderable damage dealt to his hide, the God of Mortals was not even close to surrender. In the fraction of time between the blink of an eye Lonn’s hands launched at Ahtziri, right hand plunging a thumb deep into her left eye while fingers from the other dug into the flesh of her neck. With meteoric speed the skeletal deity thrust his metallic skull into Ahtziri’s face, crushing meat and bone with disgusting ease. In her moment of discombobulation Lonn struck with his feet, thrusting her from him as her claws dragged out hunks of metal from his form.
As both divines hurtled to opposite sides of the crater, Lonn rotated on himself to crash into the ground below, falling near-instantly into a squat. A lightning flash later and he exploded from the earthen wall of his own making, shattering it as he threw himself as the projectile. He reached Ahtziri just as she reached her own stretch of crater, crashing into her and slamming her deep into the earth. The goddess’ stomach erupted into gore and viscera while Lonn roared his fury, metal fingers ripping two slabs of bedrock from their crust to smash Ahtziri’s face to splinters. The clamour of his furious shout broke the sound barrier just as the ruined goddess pushed him free of her, only for Lonn to grind to a halt on the descending wall of the crater. Even as Ahtziri leapt from her repose, body reknitting with disgusting rapidity, the Red God pressed his advantage. A sonorous, machine-like warcry escaped from his maw, a massive boulder torn from the earth held above his head, only to be brought down on top of the Mother of Monsters moments later. Blood, thick and dark, splattered in a sickly spray out from beneath the improvised weapon following a cloud of splintered rock and powdered stone.
At first there was nothing but silence, the dust finally having a chance to settle to the ground like flakes of decayed snow, but after a brief second and then another, the surface of the boulder seemed to buckle and cave in on itself, melting to magma as a sticky tendril of ichor launched itself from an imperceptible crevice within its rapidly decomposing surface. Then there was another, and it launched itself directly onto Lonn's face, sticking to him, and then before he could so much as brace himself for the impact the threads rapidly contracted and he was lurched forward directly into the burning mass of partially liquefied stone. The strands whipped themselves back as he came into contact with it, a thunderous clarion of hammered and battered metal ringing into the air, and the stone cooled around his frame to partially fuse him with it. He brought his hands up to wrench the boulder free from himself, a murderous crackle of scarlet fury surging into the boulder, before suddenly its far side crashed through it and directly into his face, shattering what remained of the boulder into pebbles that rained down like purple and red bullets, Ahtziri's still-reforming eyes boring into his as feathered wings bore her forwards and her claws lanced towards him so quickly the rush of air blasted some of the oxidised coating away in great whorls. With a surge of speed beyond speed Lonn responded, manoeuvring his chest to the side and his head slightly back and to the left, both of his heels slamming into the ground as he did so.
Ahtziri's momentum pushed her forwards still while Lonn completely arrested his, and as if following the trajectory of her movement his steely, outstretched hand caught her by the throat and crushed down with enough force to completely obliterate the flesh there. The force of it knocked Ahtziri's head clean off, flying back, but whiplike threads of ichor caught it and ripped it back towards her slumping body. In an instant they were reunited, and as she fell down towards the ground Ahtziri whipped her tail up through his legs and towards his chin, teeth glinting from the otherworldly effulgence emitted by the two and just barely reflecting the sheen of Lonn's metallic frame as it snaked its way towards an impact.
Lonn’s hand held flat slashed through the air, cutting the very wind in half before making contact with the speeding barb. With razor sharp precision the tail was severed and smashed impotently against his form, splattering from the speed of its thrust and exploding into gore. Halfway to imperceptibly, Lonn’s hand arced from its cutting swing to spear into Ahtziri’s chest, plunging into flesh to crush through bone and reach her heart. The goddess’s mouth erupted in blood and ichor that splattered across her enemy’s face as the Red God’s hand wrapped tightly around her heart, squeezing just enough to cause incapacitating pain but not destroy her. Ahtziri screeched with the use of only one lung while Lonn tightened his grip, perfect teeth belching smoke and lightning as he glared daggers into her eyes. The hand on her throat wrenched downward once more, asserting his victory. His baleful gaze was the only tell needed to tell Ahtziri she was at her end, despite the horrendous wounds she had unleashed upon her hated foe. Despite that, Lonn was far too ready to revel in her defeat to simply kill her then and there.
”I’ll remember you, cunt.” he growled, toned to match the sound of tearing steel, made all the more believable with one look at his marred body, ”But no one else will.”
Ahtziri's body still writhed and fought, her flesh rippling and shifting even then, as her eyes locked with Lonn's and that baleful purple simmered within them. She made a motion to wrench herself free, but his grip was too tight and her body too tired--for the first time in the fight she simply could not will her body to obey her, and she relaxed long enough to speak:
"If I am the worst of mankind, you are a worthy reflection indeed..." she spat out, a little globule of divine ichor spilling from the side of her mouth and dripping towards the floor, only to be snatched up by a web of thin violet strands and absorbed back within her body. She did not try to rail against her fate any further, knowing that even were she to try that she could not escape her summary judgement--her last thoughts turned to Pazuzu, and the rest of her children, and before she could stop herself hot, acrid tears streamed from her eyes in great rivulets.
"If they truly are naught but man in another shape to you, please, look after them..."
The pleading was unbecoming of the savagery and ferocity displayed only seconds ago, but now it appeared that they were both shorn of all their trappings and falsehoods--free to act in accordance with what they were beneath it all, beneath the pomp and circumstance.
"Mother! I heard you yelling!"
Suddenly, from above, a great swooping whoosh displaced the air and then the wolf-thing Pazuzu was bounding towards his Mother, whimpering distorted by the speed at which he was travelling, until he came to a stop some ten feet away from the pair of them. Two of his eyes turned to the battered body of his mother and two towards Lonn, and his twin muzzles simultaneously spoke:
"Leave Mother alone!"
"Mother! You're hurt, let me--"
But he did not move further, Ahtziri's right hand limply gesticulating a motion of dismissal.
"Pazuzu, run! Take care of the others!" she panted out, every breath in a scorching carpet of rime within her lungs and every breath out a churning column of fire spewing forth from her mouth and nose. She could barely muster the effort to remain conscious and aware, never mind speak again, but her claws still limply found their way to Lonn's hand on her throat, scrabbling desperately and furiously to free herself.
Through it all, on had been incredulous. The tears had been a magnificent display, one that practically fueled him, and he had savored the moment the very instant her first tears splashed against his limb. What came next, however, hit Lonn quite different. The defeated Goddess’ mewling had turned from petty insults almost instantly and in the depths of her despair, it wasn’t her own life that Ahtziri begged for but those of her children. And then that damned whelp appeared.
Lonn hadn’t even spared Pazuzu a passing glance, tasting nothing of divinity on the air from him. It was a creature, no different than the other beasts that had scattered earlier, and the Red God had nothing to fear from him. Even its call of of “Mother”, though mournful, meant nothing to Lonn; a pup whining for its bitch-mother, nothing special. Its threat in particular was notably laughable, like the poorly built thing was somehow going to tear Lonn from his victory. But even as it snarled at him, it whined. Again, that hit differently. A sidelong glance was all the attention he provided, however, while the creature’s mother clawed at his iron-clad grip on her life.
By the Old World, the fucking pup was crying alongside its mother. When Lonn looked at Pazuzu he didn’t just see a filthy aberration, but a mortal child. Deep within its eyes he saw the intelligence of a boy watching its mother die in front of him. An involuntary twitch rattled Lonn’s body from previous damage, turning his gaze towards that of Ahtziri’s. In there was legitimate mourning, true sadness and despair when forced to consider the empty and doomed fate of her children. Beasts and men alike would often eat their young rather than perish, but here in his supposed “opposite” was the capacity for mortal caring beyond even his own grasp. Part of Lonn was infuriated, but a greater portion still felt shamed. His mind danced back to images of the terrified little girl, watching as monstrosities closed in on her family. In the depths of Lonn’s psyche, he couldn’t help but see himself in the place of those heartless vermin.
A sigh belched smoke from between his teeth as his red eyes flashed back towards Pazuzu. Without any sense of gentleness Lonn shook Ahtziri vigorously, as if still warring with himself over his next moves. The vice grip of the God of Mortals loosened on Ahtziri’s heart, not enough to yet let her free but to make clear what was happening. Ruined metal twisted on itself as he returned to looking her in the eyes, his hand on her throat slowly lowering her to the floor.
”Listen and listen well, sow,” came Lonn’s first words, screeching metallically but with a far more human voice behind them than before, ”I am not doing this for you. Your life is spared entirely by my mercy because of the honest love your child shows you. I want you to know that if it weren’t for the child’s mind you gifted this cub, I’d snuff out your wanton excuse for a life without shedding a single tear. And I remind you, this is a mercy you denied countless children. I swear, I will take count of each and every innocent life lost to your petty murders and if ever that number rises, I will return to end your life, a moment in agony passing for every single one.
With not even a hint of kindness, Lonn tore his hand from her chest with an eruption of arterial blood following suit. The grip on her neck gave ample control for a push, though it held surprisingly little strength in it. Instead, Ahtziri simply stumbled back as her flesh reformed and she coughed to regain full breath. Lonn, for his part, stood absolutely still as he stared at her, the threat of continued violence clear as day. Though he did his best to hide it, one leg was bent and his chest had been caved in at points. He looked all the part a battle worn figure, despite his victorious position and the threat he still promised.
”Now, leave.”
