His limbs ached. His breath came short, spittle and a lick of blood down his lip.
He didn't bother drawing Sincerity from its sheathe. It hung heavy at his side, weighing him off-center as if its weight was greater than his own, but his arms cast in front of him. The beasts that crowded drew forward then back, whining with unseen blows that coated their thoughts like tar while stuttering claws scratched unimpeded. Waves had stained red in his eyes and a single black tomoe struggled within the pool of crimson. He couldn't explain nor control it, really, but he could direct the feeling of his tightened chest. That burdened heat in his arms, through his veins, and he breathed sparks like circuitry. They fought with his illusions - this idea he had heroically dove into their writhing masses with blade drawn high - but he had long given up the point of his exercise in taking this mission. The scratches and bruising down the marred sight of his exposed skin more than told their story.
Monsters, it appeared, were not as easily subdued as men. The cognition of his sword had been the turning play when other tricks failed. As he spoke, "be felled," the concept of steel met the wary of his attack. He panted with the same exertion of actively fending the fray with the tool, but the stress on his chakra was far more palatable than the wince he got from his slight legs on every shift back. A fair number lay dead around the edges of the clearing, already, but still more advanced; and the force the monstrosities saw him as while he weaved his spell only counted for so much with their sheer numbers. He twined a sign to bend the shape of another, but a growl made him adjust back-- and his foot caught, sending him stumbling onto his back with a yelp and a pained twist of his face. The Heroics of Kiseki Akane wavered just in that moment as phantasms before every beast, and that was their call to descend.
He grimaced, widened eyes dripped with hazing violet until startled blue won from the hubris of their bloodied waters. "No!" He had moved to react in time to fang and claw, this sea of teeth, but the rush of ice & crackle of lightning that burned through the flicker of his soul was going to be just that beat too late --
He didn't bother drawing Sincerity from its sheathe. It hung heavy at his side, weighing him off-center as if its weight was greater than his own, but his arms cast in front of him. The beasts that crowded drew forward then back, whining with unseen blows that coated their thoughts like tar while stuttering claws scratched unimpeded. Waves had stained red in his eyes and a single black tomoe struggled within the pool of crimson. He couldn't explain nor control it, really, but he could direct the feeling of his tightened chest. That burdened heat in his arms, through his veins, and he breathed sparks like circuitry. They fought with his illusions - this idea he had heroically dove into their writhing masses with blade drawn high - but he had long given up the point of his exercise in taking this mission. The scratches and bruising down the marred sight of his exposed skin more than told their story.
Monsters, it appeared, were not as easily subdued as men. The cognition of his sword had been the turning play when other tricks failed. As he spoke, "be felled," the concept of steel met the wary of his attack. He panted with the same exertion of actively fending the fray with the tool, but the stress on his chakra was far more palatable than the wince he got from his slight legs on every shift back. A fair number lay dead around the edges of the clearing, already, but still more advanced; and the force the monstrosities saw him as while he weaved his spell only counted for so much with their sheer numbers. He twined a sign to bend the shape of another, but a growl made him adjust back-- and his foot caught, sending him stumbling onto his back with a yelp and a pained twist of his face. The Heroics of Kiseki Akane wavered just in that moment as phantasms before every beast, and that was their call to descend.
He grimaced, widened eyes dripped with hazing violet until startled blue won from the hubris of their bloodied waters. "No!" He had moved to react in time to fang and claw, this sea of teeth, but the rush of ice & crackle of lightning that burned through the flicker of his soul was going to be just that beat too late --