07.11f: Follow the Soulsteel Road

[Joshua]

When you activate your claw-charm*, the roaches will respond with "kkkKSSSrrEee cChhhHiIEkKlLl rRRrhHhoOUukK!**" His body shimmers and he takes a defensive stance, bursts of fire singing your hands and threatening to do worse. Thankfully your regeneration can keep up, but it's draining your endurance a bit faster than you had hoped.
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*: Or shapeshifting effect...
**: Capital letters are dashes, lower-case are dots. Each change in letter is a separate letter. In this case: "Void Avatar Prana***".
***: This makes him toxic to touch and causes him to block attacks with necrotic fire as his body seems to dissolve on contact. Potential flaws for this are 'real power', attacking him in sight of something he cares about or that cares about him, or forcing him into a situation where he's defending someone (violating his motivation). Oh, or running him out of essence. I assume a long-lived Lunar knows this.
****: He's cheating and using the non-eratta'd version of the charm. The big jerk!

[Chtalo]

Ch'talo has faced this sort of thing before, though never in quite so... tight quarters. He continues to slash and claw, using careful, pinpoint strikes with the tips of his claws to avoid damaging himself, but each time his claws dash forward is another attack to defend*. As he moves he flows effortlessly, smoke in the wind, silt in the water. He finds himself hearkening back to another dance, once, back when he first exalted, patterns in sand...

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* Every perfect defense has an expenditure associated with it - Essence, Willpower, etc. And that is a finite resource. Since he didn't bring an army of expendable Dragon Bloods with him, he has to do all the work himself. (so consider him flurrying to maximum effect at the price of minimal damage on each)

[Joshua]

To clarify... Every time you touch him with an attack, his aura strikes you with necrotic fire for the equivalent of a moderate knife wound. If you hit him five times, you take the same damage. If you hit him twenty times, that's twenty knife wounds burned into you that need to be regenerated. You are inflicting damage on yourself at a much higher rate than you are injuring him. (Cause this technique also blocks the attack.) If you do as you say, there is no way your regeneration can keep up with the amount of necro-fire damage you will be taking.

The damage he inflicts on you is not dependent on the level of strike you do. It also apparently costs you more to regenerate the damage then it costs him to inflict it. And the range on the counterstrike is in yards... so... using the spear doesn't help.

Oh yeah, he still occasionally manages a fine cut with his own sword. But that's relatively minimal at this point. He's focused on his damage-shield.

[Chtalo]

It only takes a moment for Ch'talo to realize his mistake. A quick examination of his environment shows just how much of a corner he's backed himself into, what with choosing an oversized closet for his choice of encounter space. He looks around to examine his options, then after dodging a horizontal sword sling he drops to a crouch, thick moonsilver claws digging into the masonry, taking swipes and trying to weaken the floor enough to drop through. If nothing else, getting ahold of something he can throw to exhaust his opponent's essence will be critical. And there is nothing like collapsed masonry to provide things to throw.

[Joshua]

Even better when the flooring isn't directly supported and gives out. And with lots of bad stuff, that just guarantees it's over something fun. Like the jail / dungeons.

Crashing into the iron-grates from above hurts. At least they have that horizontal cross-bar instead of impaling you. Right into a cell with a strange skeleton with glowing green eyes.

Said skeleton cackles and proclaims, "See! I told you my castle would not hold me! Now I will kill you all and-" He is cut short as he is decapitated by the roach-monster's blade.

Nearby cells contain lizard-folk in various stages of malnourishment/death/decay.

[Chtalo]

Cursing, Ch'talo lashes about with his claws, trying to clear a little space. Claws rake through iron, and he grabs pieces to use as bludgeons until the void-fire eats through them, then will move to the next. A ball of fur and fury, like a cat dunked in ammonia, he lays about him almost heedlessly, grabbing makeshift weapons where he can and using them until he needs another. He lets his regeneration catch the few times when he overshoots a weapon's durability.

[Joshua]

The battle is intense. Most of the black energy only strikes at living flesh, so it strikes at you instead of metal, although it does like to rot wood. He seems to be running low on energy, but as the battle continues, the prisoners are starting to be injured by the fray, from the broken shards of weapons and masonry and the general life-drinking aura this monster is giving off. Also, some don't need a lot to teeter over the edge of life.

[Chtalo]

Once Ch'talo realizes that it goes after current and once-living things, he changes his tactics slightly. Moving his projectiles to not be stone but wood instead, grabbing and throwing what he can. If he can't do that, he'll go for cloth when he can. Just a small piece that he can affix roughly to whatever object he throws*. Sensing growing exhaustion, he will advance, not particularly caring for the other prisoners at the moment, though should he happen upon a corpse, he may make a couple more gruesome projectiles from easily detatched* parts.

As he fights, he has slowly begun to glow a pale silver, and if anyone were really paying attention with a critical eye they would see he is slowly growing, his claws lengthening, fur growing slightly shaggier.

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* He has... adequate Amber-level strength. This makes opens up a broad range of things that are "throwable" or "easily detached", such as half-ton hunks of masonry or an entire leg. He doesn't pull many punches in this process - he wants whichever attack that gets through first to be a good strong blow regardless.

[Joshua]

By life-drinking, I mean, each time a prisoner gasps his last, the roach thing seems to inhale the final breath. The longer you fight and the more casualties that are occurring, the stronger and more rested he appears. He is literally drinking in the deaths around him. His technique still offers a perfect parry, with a flawless counter-attack... If it wasn't for him relying on the local magic so much, you'd be able to beat him. Cutting that off would be difficult, although you have a few options. (Not the least of which is, he's being very defensive. Picking a different objective would be rather effective against him.)

A few more minutes into the fight, there's a brief flash as one of the shadows in the room darkens, with a brief canine presence. This rapidly vanishes though.

[Chtalo]

Ch'talo snarls as he realizes the depth of the situation. Of course this can't be easy, or straightforward. Nothing with this particular prey ever was. Realizing that standing here tearing the castle down with his bare claws wasn't getting him anywhere, he takes quick stock of the room. There are doubtless exits of various kinds, though the most interesting to him is the way he came in. The fall down left him a good opening. and he grabs a large hunk of masonry, unloading it at his opponent, then leaps up with a sudden bound, claws scrabbling at the opening as he aims for purchase, then he bolts. Out the door and down the hall, towards where the festivities were being arranged. That, at least was likely where his prey was. And it might confuse his old opponent enough to give him time to get in for the kill without interference.