[challenge] this is going to break me clean in two | chemdog

[Gale]

Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you PART 1 When he has eaten just enough grass to take the edge off his hunger, and kicked enough small stones into the water that he’s created a little island, the thing that is wearing Gale body grows tired of being patient. It whinnies, far louder this time than the last, a clear summons to anything within earshot. Perhaps this place is abandoned, it thinks, Mazikeen hadn’t been sure. The idea of taking the entity had been Gale’s, but the Curse has been the one to bring them here, and will be the one to take the magic when the time comes. It will let Mazikeen think it is a gift, the Curse thinks with a soft smile. Perhaps it will soften her to it.  The Curse intends to return to Hyaline with the magic of Craft and Anatomy, and it calls out a third time, a clear challenge, and adds a flap of its wide white wings for good measure. @[Chemdog]

Gale
16hh hybrid stallion
Traits: shapeshifting, self healing, vision manipulation, spinal mane, glowing
Defects: none
Build: Tall and well-muscled, looks like an oversize Welsh Cob

Challenging for the Entity, with Chemdog going first

[Chemdog]

-- accept challenge --

Chem had seen him earlier, rolling through, slithering by – infiltrating. Pretty rude. The Cove's new keeper did not honor him with an approach, instead, mocking him with silence. Petty, he knows, but he could smell something not right with the intruder. The owls didn’t call out much when the stallion broke through the border; suspicious. The land itself doesn’t seem to reject him, and it twists a sour, jealous taste in Chem’s mouth. He is an outsider, is he not? Perhaps this land ownership situation is not going to be as much fun as it used to be.

His teal eyes roll and he walks down the hillside, grimacing a bit – he’s so lazy, you see, this is just an annoyance. He’s never had an overstock of hubris when it comes to fighting, though he’s done very well in the past, he’s also familiar with losing. He has learned to always focus on the process, not the result. Don’t think about it too hard, he reminds himself. He smacks his lips, like a lion about to let out a loud yawn, “Fine.” He groans.

-- first attack --

The pair are squared off, and this stallion came here for this moment exactly. A challenge given, a challenge accepted, an attacked launched. It happens smoothly, no verbal communication necessary, these two have a primal call to answer. He leans back, the muscles in his hid bunching like coils and his front legs rising in a swift motion upward. It’s sudden, but it’s certainly no surprise attack. Chem's first try at a blow is very simple, he brings himself up in a powerful rear, front limbs reaching out with as careful dexterity as an equine may have, in attempts to latch onto or curl his legs (or a leg) around anything of Gale’s from the neck up. Aw, he’s giving a little hug. Adorable. It’s unclear in the moment of kicked up dust, bellows, and adrenaline to know just how accurate his aim is to drape himself over the front of his opponent, but whatever the case, he unleashes hard bites to any ears he can find (or if he fails to find ears, maybe just a clump of mane, or a pinch to the head). It’s intended to be some brutal chomping at Gale’s ears, but he’s been in enough tussles to know you cannot control what lands and what does not. Ears are sensitive, Chem’s learned that the hard way. Bigger means slower usually, and smaller means they're quick like hot oil much of the time. His only known advantage so far is his mass, he guesses, and then the thing all plain equines have – flat, clenching teeth. So he employs those things and hopes for the best.

(he doesn't use magic or anything, but i don't mind if magic is used <3 i'm a little rusty, i kept it brief and to the point)

Chemdog

18hh hybrid

soul summoning, immortality, glowing smoke

no defects

his build is sturdy baroque, i think of him as a beefier version friesian with PRE neck/head

[Gale]

Mazikeen had made the Curse promise to stay away during the daylight hours, but Mazikeen is not here in the Silver Cove. As soon as the piebald stallion answers the challenge, it shoves away what is left of Gale and prepares to fight.

Gale has too much honor for a good fight, the Curse thinks. He’s not reckless enough to really enjoy the thrill of it. But the Curse is, and it enjoys a good match.

The Curse yawns in the early morning light as Chemdog approaches, displaying long white teeth that have no place in a horse’s mouth. It has already shown off some of Gale’s shifting, but it benevolently gives its black and white opponent the courtesy of knowing that the brindle shape it wears is more than meets the eye.

Chemdog is quick to start the battle after his begrudging acceptance, and the Curse displays those sharp teeth a second time in an appreciative smile. The smile doesn’t fade; instead it becomes a feline snarl in an instant.

As Chemdog rears up, Gale’s equine body shifts into a white-maned brindle lion, and lunches - front claws out - toward the black horse’s exposed belly. Disembowling will end the fight quickly, and there are few ways for the Keeper of the Cove to avoid Gale’s sharp claws and teeth to his undersides.

Of course, there are few ways for Gale to avoid being beneath the flat stomping hooves of the horse either, so he scrambles away as quickly as he can on the stony beach. Chemdog’s biting teeth found nothing to grasp, but his front hooves strike Gale’s left leg just as the brindle lion ducks beneath the stallion’s right side.

The self healing means that by the time Gale comes up from Chemdog’s left side, any damage from the hoof strike is healed, and he can leap upward, and bite and claw at anything along the black horse’s left side.

@[Chemdog]

[Chemdog]

They’re locked in a waltz no longer than a half second before Chem feels the stallion’s form melt like molten silver, solid and yet moving like liquid somehow – and what do you know, a lion. Well, this day thoroughly sucks right already. Chem thought perhaps not employing his ghostly magics would be met with the same courtesy. No, no. Nay, nay. He groans again, fully inconvenienced, wrapped around a goddamn lion (which ends in the lion slipping out, and able to go at his belly, I think?). What’s more, when Chem bites, he finds nothing but mane hair. So, a total miss, pretty much, how fun. The smell of a lion triggers something a little deeper than a wrestling match, bringing with it a certain frenzied panic one only gets when it’s being…hunted, or, attacked to be eaten. What a party it is to be a prey animal – one who cannot shift into predator. Not going well so far.

Chemdog was mistaken when he thought this may just be a quaint scuffle for a prize. Annoying, but not deadly. He finds himself in very close proximity, doing very little damage, with tender skin and having mightily a soft belly.

While he’s upright still, so quick this cat is, he heads straight for the piebald’s underside. A natural reaction for any horse is to slash violently with his legs that already drawn up, he’s glad to feel the purchase of something, but it’s short lived. His opponent can heal himself. An ability Chem once had, morphed by the monsters into something different. Great. The lion’s claws first find his underbelly as intended, and leave long deep lacerations on each side. The cat flees from beneath Chem’s hooves before it can do much more to disembowel him, ducking away to his right and then circling back to attack his left side. Chem too, is quick, and makes sure to not let this cat maneuver to attack him broadside – never let a cat be able to pounce on your back, you’ll never dislodge it, and you’ll never survive what it can do from there. It’s something ingrained in his primal equine genetics. An instinct. He faces the threat, delivering strong, and sometimes double footed blows with his front end. No one wants their face caved in, even when they can heal it. If the cat comes in again, Chem tries his best to keep his hind away, and keep his front aligned so the lion can’t get him broadside either. In the chaotic scuffle, when the cat tries for his left side, he receives a few more gashes from those enormous kitty claws across his legs and chest. So far, his underbelly’s injuries are glistening pink from the open slashes, meat and fat exposed, starting to bleed down his black fur. The wounds across his front begin to bleed, some superficial and some with chunks of flesh dangling freely and his white patches veined with rivulets of bright red blood.

Not going well, but at least he’s not eviscerated or bleeding out just yet.

----------------

thank you for the extension sweets, and im sorry i made you wait! booo!

anyway here is something haha

@[Gale]

[Gale]

The black stallion keeps close, a tactic Gale that would applaud but the Curse grimaces at. While it’s only rational that the defender of the treasure would be a passable warrior, it is still frustrating to be held up - even by what it considers to be a quick scuffle.

If Chemdog wants to die in the defense of his entity, then the Curse will grant him that.

With no intention of hobbling itself for the sake of fairness, the Curse uses all of Gale’s abilities. The shifting and healing it has already revealed to its opponent, and the lion’s claws are dark with Chemdog’s blood. But there are other advantages to this host as well, such as the vision manipulation it wields now.

Illusions require finesse, so in the interest of speed, the Curse instead attempts to take Chemdog’s sight entirely. It will leave him in blackness even darker than the eclipse if it is effective, a rapidly progressive sort of blindness.

The concentration it takes to do this distracts the Curse for only a moment. Only a moment, but long enough that Chemdog’s quick front hooves are already battering down at it. A blow to its left shoulder, then one along the very edge of its jaw that shoves its head to the side. The injuries heal as soon as they are made, but the pain of them remains to aggravate the Curse, which lunges toward Chemdog a second time, this time with its front claws and sharp teeth reaching for his chest.

Not a wise choice, but Curse is more concerned with inflicting damage on its opponent than itself. Chemdog will likely be able to land a few more kicks, but this body will heal, and this move is really only intended to segway into another.

Whether or not it draws blood with its attack, the Curse shifts as soon as the momentum of its leap slows, and becomes a dragonfly.

Not an especially violent shape (at least not to something so large as a horse) but it is a quick shape, and a shape that it has practiced countless times along the lakeshore in Hyaline. Quick enough to give it distance, distance that it needs to take the next shape.

It almost hopes that Chemdog has managed to get at least a bit of his vision back. It would love to see the expression he wears at the sight of this shape.

A large bull elephant, its skin a deep and iridescent navy, its tusks snowy white and more than long enough to run a horse through, now stands beside the silver cove. It stomps one large foot on the stony ground of the beach and swings its head back and forth, beckoning @[Chemdog] closer.

[Chemdog]

It's a loss. Chem is beat, he yields, and leaves.

(default loss. i took too long.)

[Kyra]

Winner: Gale