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 Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 7:57 pm
"Gah! Stupid snake! Don't you get that you're dead!?"
Scarker shouted at the snake as he was thrown around like a rag-doll, bouncing around on it's nose with his blades held into the creature's eyes. All he could do was stay where he was, trying to find purchase for his boots along the scorched flesh of its face. Eventually he gave up trying to steady himself and curled his legs under him. This would be about the time that Damion would catch a glimpse of him - as yet unharmed - through the smoke that is drifting slowly from the burns.
"Die, damn it, you worthless pile of slithering flesh!"
The cleats on his boots came out, the sharp points digging into flesh and scraping against bone as he makes purchase for himself to shove his blades further into the serpent's eyes, trying to pierce its brain.
His original plan had been stopped. He hadn't thought this far ahead when he improvised, and he wasn't being given the time he needed to come up with a better idea. His concentration was on the tip of his swords and how close they were to gray matter, he couldn't divide that focus with his target thrashing so violently. Just another foot of steel through the eye and it would-
"Just die already!"
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Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 8:07 pm
Scarker's words were lost on the giant reptile, before it drove it's head down towards the sand. The tips of the swords were well through the brain, but snakes are funny. Even when dead, they are dangerous, thrashing about and biting and such. Just cause it was bigger than average, doesn't mean it didn't react similarly.
The mage on its' nose though, was in some bit of danger, trapped between the snakes nose and the hard packed sand.
Or he would be, if Damion wasn't ready. He could see Scarker on the things burning head, flailing about until his feet spikes got into the snakes jaws. " Damn glad I've got a teammate for this..." The earth user muttered, sweeping both hands up dramatically as the giant head drove down. A geyser of sand rose, catching the mage in a cushion, to keep him from getting crushed and to maybe put the flames on the snakes head out. He did need the blood after all.
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Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 11:42 am
As Scarker slowly realized that the creature was dead, and just refused to stop moving, he decided that now was a perfect time to shift his focus to leaving. He threw his weight back, digging his cleats in the opposite direction to pull out his swords and jump off so that he could be caught by the convenient spray of sand.
Even better, with his swords getting beaten through the sand - even though the tinting woulds wear off a little - the blades suddenly became exceptionally clean.
Unfortunately, it put Scarker's fate out of his own hands. This isn't a problem if he knew who's hands his fate was in, but at the moment he had a snake thrashing around near his random savior of a sand geyser controlled by someone whose morals he didn't know. Let's just say he was a little uncomfortable with the situation at the moment.
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Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 12:15 pm
Scarker had good reason to be uncomfortable, given his position and the person in control of said geyser. He didn't have the greatest control over his power, and all that he'd done so far was straining the limits, and he couldn't maintain the geyser anymore. The sandy cushion that had been so far keeping Scarker safe from the giant snake would collapse in on itself, burying him in about a foot of sand.
Damion himself, however, was quite pleased with himself, even if it did feel like he had strained something. " Oi, Scarker! You alright?!" He called down to the blind mage, sitting down atop the rock with a smile.
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Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 6:15 pm
It took a little bit of struggle for the mage to exhume his head from the sand that landed on top of him, but once he had, he did something that proved without shadow of a doubt that he was alive. Unfortunately, that was preceded with a very painful sneeze. It's not pleasant to sneeze sand, after all.
"#@&%!!! Gyegh... I'm alright... Not dead yet, so I must be alright..."
He pulled his arms out, swords still in hand, and shook the sand off of them, revealing how battered the black tint covering most of the sword had become...
"Aw man... Scratched the paint job..."
More wriggling ensued until Scarker was finally free, laying on the sand to relax until sudden realization struck him like a wet noodle. His magesight re-expanded around himself as he took in the surroundings, his feet finding their way under him as his mouth started spreading the thought to his 'partner.'
"What happened to long, dumb, and zombied? We still need the blood!"
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Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2008 6:34 pm
Damion chuckled softly, watching as the other man worked his way out of the sand. " Heh....zombie..." He mumbled under his breath, before letting his chuckle evolve into laughter. The snake was out of his mind for the time being, despite the fact that it was his top priority.
" Your gonna have sand in your a** for a week mate." He said, dropping from the top of the rock to the sand. Upon Scarkers question though, he took a quick look around, eyes following a rather beaten trail up and over the top of the dune, where half the snakes body hung on either side. blood lay in little splotched spots, crusted in the sand.
" Geesus...those things really move when they're dead." He offered, trotting around to the other side of the Mage's Rock to retreive his own, much smaller, stone.
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Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:09 pm
"Bah! My a** is covered, that's not what I'm worried about."
Scarker shakes his head, releasing a fine spray of orange, yellow, and white particles from his hair. Next he goes to work prying off his boots. His efforts are rewarded double as a steams of sand leave his pant-legs and are poured solemnly out of the foot-wear. Once the mage has finished de-sanding himself as much as possible in a desert, he leaps to his feet and starts making his way over to the nearest coil of the snake. His swords hover over the scales, looking for the best angle to get blood from.
"So what'll it be, light meat or dark?"
The mage slashes, making a deeply cut 'V' with his swords. With any luck, the bottom of that V would be the perfect place to place the stone to drench it with blood.
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Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 4:49 pm
" I'm quite partial to dark meat." Damion said as he trotted up, feet thumping on the sand as he came up behind the mage. " Careful with the skin though, I wanna make a suit out of this thing." He said excitedly, dropping to his knees with the stone in his hands.
Blood splashed out from the new hole in the snakes body, kind of like when you turn on the faucet in a bath. It splashed over the rock, Damions hands, and the sand beneath them, staining all a dark crimson in the murky twilight, the sun barely over the horizon anymore. Only the twinkling stars were there to witness the two.
" Big snake like this is going to make an awesome snake skin suit....thanks for your help mate." He said, looking up at Scarker, the flow of blood starting to dwindle.
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Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:35 pm
"Not a problem at all. I do have a favor to ask in return, though. If you can take me to the edge of this sand pit, I'd be quite grateful. I'll even throw in my services skinning enough of the snake for your suit and share what's left of my water for the trip as a bonus."
Scarker looks over the snake. He already knew there was no way they could take it with them, so he instead was working over which parts of the hide would tan and hold up to tailoring best. He also looked over which bits of meat would taste the best if he could get them to a smoke-house fast enough.
"So, what d'ya say? Care to have a traveling companion?"
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Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 9:49 pm
Damion nodded alittle, " No problem mate, Be glad too. You expectin' trouble though, cause if you don't mind me sayin' you seem quite capable of defending yourself. A hell of a sight better than I can anyways." He offered, standing up and shaking the excess blood off the rock, holding it in his right hand.
He had skinned and tanned things before, but this was entirely different matter entirely. " This blood smells rank though...like...worse than it really should." He thought aloud, kicking the side of the corpse.
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Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:18 pm
"Not expecting any. Maybe looking for trouble, but how interesting is life without a little of that? And what good would looking for trouble do me if I couldn't handle it?"
Scarker's sword start looking for a good angle again as he passes up and down the coil. Eventually he stops, finds the angle that he wants and cuts into the skin quickly, using the flat of his other blade to press down on the skin and give himself a straight cut. He even runs with his blades like this, right down a good piece of to-be-leather. He finally sheers it off, a 4 yard sheet of premium snake-skin, about a yard across. He does that another 4 times, each time getting only the skin that will make the best leather, until he has about 20 yards.
"That'll make a good suit, now what about the rankness? Oh, the blood! Well, I wouldn't worry too much about that, such a large amount of blood never smells good. At least, I hope that's all it is. If all of this snake-meat is bad, that'll be quite the waste..."
His sword detaches the rest of the triangle that he had cut earlier for Damion, displaying the meat below the skin to get a better look at it. The flashlight from the rock flies to his hand and shines on the meat to give Damion a better view.
"Can you tell what color it is? I'm a little color-blind, but I'm told that it should be pink."
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 9:13 am
The earth user nodded alittle, smiling. Trouble did make life more interesting. He set the rock aside for amoment and collected the peices of skin as Scarker's blade cut them free. Alittle sand on each and he was moving again, grabbing up his little moonstone and moving towards the head. " I don't think it's bad....but something this big isn't natural right? It's too big to be a normal snake." Damion said from the Snakes head, prising it open with his hands.
At the mention of being color blind, Damion looked up again, one hand wrapped around the base of the giant vipers needle like fangs, muscles straining to yank it out.
" Been meaning to ask that mate, how do you see? And it's kinda red, not pink but not dark red either."
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:14 pm
Scarker nodded at hearing the color, then went on to finding the better cuts of meat and getting them off of the snake's body.
"Probably just bloody... Well, I see through magic. It's a type of radar, or sonar, if that makes any sense to you what-so-ever. Like how a bat sees, only with magic instead of that high, annoying screech."
He wraps up about ten pounds of meat in a specially-cut section of the snake's skin, then goes on to Damion's first question.
"If I had to take a wager, this is a strain of basilisk. They've never been any danger to me, but I don't know if you looked it in the eyes... Either way, it's certainly not a pure strain, or at least not old enough to be lethal like that. This thing's 28, maybe 30 feet long. Full grown basilisks can break 60. My only other guess is that it's been magically altered, someone's pet or experiment... Can't see the spell that did it, but that could've faded."
He walks back to the rock, dropping his swords and the meat-package inside. He shakes out his harness a little and looks disapprovingly at the now flattened top before turning his attention back to the man.
"Now what do you want the fang for? Buttons?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:11 am
" Naw, I do bone work sometimes, and a friend who's all about fashion, so I'm gonna make them pretty and give them to her." He said, grunting alittle as one finally gave way and he fell on his a**, clutching the needle like fang in his hand. It was just long enough to make a knife infact, though it's only purpose would be to stab. Damion would have to look in to that.
" But I didn't get to look at the eyes, I'm suprised the damn thing didn't break my ribs....hey, do their eye things still work after death? Ah ******** it, I'm taking' them anyways. If I dry them out I bet I can make a charm out of them." The earth user said, thinking ahead as always. He was a 'hunter' of sorts, but he also had a collector quality in him.
" I've never seen a full grown basilisk though....luckily enough."
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Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:04 am
"The eyes should be safe by now. They don't do anything once they're damaged. I hope the cuts don't make 'em useless, though. Anyway, I'm gonna get this hunk moving. It'll be a while before I get any speed, so catch up once you're done."
The harness that Scarker puts on crosses over his chest, as well has having a belt strap - a total of six ends connecting the mage to his 'mobile' home." He starts dragging the rock - with a surprisingly small amount of effort - and then realizes the reason why Damion gets to tag along with him.
"The town is this way, right?"
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