Welcome to Gaia! ::

The entrance is simple in its elegance, a single man stepping out from the northern gates. A flurry of orange feathers surround his form, dancing about him in an endless dance of grace. A tall man with the face of a bird strolled out leisurely into the arena, orange and green feathers accenting the large wings that extended from his back. He wore robes of orange, long and baggy to cover all but his wings, for doing so was too uncomfortable to him. Underneath the robes he wore a golden breastplate, a shimmer of green light passing down his right side while orange passed down his left. With wings unfurled to their full extent he held each hand out to his sides, palms facing up with clawed fingers extending towards the sky. His right leg pulled up to hold position with the foot against his knee, his beaked face falling to only show the feathers atop his head. His stance was odd as he waited, for it looked like he should surely fall, hardly a combat stance at all.

The Herald did not even look up, so the description was largely a wate of everyone's time. The avian creature simply raised a hand when the nin came to a halt at around 112ft from his entrance, roughly 187ft from the avian man. The world would seem to freeze to the nin as time stopped around him, a ten foot radius sphere centered on his Temporal Signature. Light would quickly dim as the sun was mostly blocked, but not entirely. A shaft began to open below the man as the shell extended downward, the sand and rock eroding away under the test of time.

A ring-out was intended before The Herald even looked to see who he was fighting.

Kold's attepmt to chip away at the energies around him and add them to his own would be rather futile. Despite it being a manipulation, there simply was no energy worth taking around him. Everything had just stopped, energy included, leaving Kold in a bubble with a hole at the bottom. The ground underfoot would be rushing out from under him faster at his manipulations and movement, eroding that much faster. Even if somehow Kold's attempts could alter a point in space where time simply stopped, the speed at which he would be affecting the sphere would be so slow that it would be imperceptible. Matter, anti-matter, energy, anti-energy, all of it had found its place in stopped time, sitting on its hands doing absolutely nothing. This is not to say that the bubble was unbreakable, simply that trying to destroy a non-existant field of energy is quite the wrong approach. Oh, and that whole thing about Kold being able to manipulate time, no, he wouldn't. Even if he somehow gained enough energy all it would do is fizzle out without any direction by divine will, as the effect is part of a cleric ability set that passes beyond energy and spells.

Now, while it was obvious that time was stopped around Kold, he himself was not stopped. Breathing was somehow still possible in this bubble, as was limited movement. This alone should give some indication of the best way to escape the bubble. Meanwhile, The Herald had not yet looked up, gently caressing the field under the guidance of divine will. He seemed to not be exerting any focus on keeping the field in place, chuckling to himself as he almost literally felt Kold try a rather incorrect way of altering his field.

((And even if The Herald didn't know his gender, man is just easier, plus, its not like I'm cleoing anything because its just a friggin pronoun. If you really care I could explain how he'd know.))

Wherever the idea that the arena was covered in shadows came from was rather incredible and quite false, as it looks like day, and if not there would be floodlights, and oh, look, there was light. This meant that the two shadows could simply not connect. However, if a small detail had been missed then the nin would find a secondary barrier, the fact that the bubble around him seemed to stop his influence from passing out of it. The same effect, stopped time, that caused him to be unable to alter the bubble around him was the one that was blocking all energy manipulation from passing through the bubble. And if somehow the nin got around that fact, the last one would become aparent still. The Herald had no energy of his own. The vampirism would be stealing nothing from nowhere, at best gaining the ability to call upon a specific deity for divine will, a deity that would definately not listen. Though if Kold did persist in trying to demand energy from a god with his vampiric influence, that was his problem.

That having been said, even if Kold could atach himself to The Herald's shadow, he would find his ability to move the avian creature severaly hampered. The effect would be similar to trying to lift a one hundred pound object with the same force one would apply to lift a one pound object. The nin would slow The Herald down at best, nothing more. Assuming the nin could somehow create his hentai tentacles The Herald would be reacting to them even before they sprouted from the ground, his reaction time actually negative by divine will and a mastery of the flows of time. The being would be up in the air at the speed limit set for the tournament, his own incredible speed limited by a bar placed by himself after further knowledge of the workings of the tournament and the actual presense of a speed limit. Suffice it to say, he was faster than the spears. However, even if the spears did somehow make contact, a bright light would flare around the points of contact, something akin to an energy shield blocking them.

Now that hypothesizing had been completed the actual actions of the post can be considered. The Herald was dissappointed that the man could float, for that made everything so much more difficult. He had hoped to simply win without expending any effort for once. Now, finally, the avian's eyes seemed to cast their gaze towards the nin, seeing not the visible spectrum but that what lay beyond time and space, sealing an individual to their location in the fabric of spacetime. His hand began to twirl and from the reaches of another world a single staff was produced, slowing to a lazy spin before his body as the field around Kold was released. The return from a stopped time field in such an abrupt manner would leave the body temporarily numb and then would induce incredible pain as the stresses of time eased away. This mechanic was exclusive to stopped time, however, and differential fields were quite unique in their own right. The figure of the avian would then dart towards Kold, the staff launched before him in a whirling throw that made it spin at such an incredible speed that even the blunt edges would seem sharp. The flightpath was aimed to take it directly through Kold's abdomen and then arc back to the quickly advancing Herald.

Regardless of just what energy was being stolen the transfer rate would make the effect quite useless, gainging next to nothing compared to the effort required. The staff was back in The Herald's hands in a mere moment, and in the split second after that The Herald was upon his opponent, the staff swinging for the nin's midsection once more with all the force the avian man could muster. Furthermore, an odd thing happened in the wake of the robed being, great orange feathers of light began dancing in the air, centers of temporal instability left by his advance. Though not only did they spring up in his wake, but began to surround his opponent, giving so little room to do anything but stand and take a hit powerful enough to split a man in half with a large chunk simply missing.

((Heh, a free energy drain using no effort whatsoever. Riiiiiiight. Still don't get anything. XP))

Simply so the opposing author stops bringing it up, the staff was not illegally summoned, the restrictions on summoning applying only to creatures and other related summons. Summoning a nonsentient weapon or piece of equipment is perfectly fine. As the lightning streaked in to make contact with the staff there were two possibilities. If it was guided by conductivity and normal physics it would simply miss, seeking out the ground first. If it was truly aimed it would strike the staff and stop dead, the staff obviously not conductive of electricity. The material was indeed metallic in nature, but for some reason did not follow any of the laws for a metal substance as if it were stopped in time.

Having not provided a worthy defense to the staff attack Kold would be left in a very bad position. Even his reaction times at this point would be unable to stop the staff only a mere inch from his gut. Furthermore, it would be noted that the eddies of temporal instability surrounding JKold were not stopped time, just points at which the flow of time was so chaotic that an organic object put into it not attuned to temporal flows would be ripped to shreds.

The first half of Kold's post is irrelevant, as yes, the staff is made of metal, but no, it does not conduct electricity. We call this a fantasy substance because this is called a fantasy roleplay where, hold onto your hats, there is magic present. Even if all that fun lightning continued buolding up it'd just sit around and do nothing or ground itself by arcing to the ground. This effect was already covered and will not be addressed again.

With no reason given why the divine gifts were apparently fading, the avian's author would just have to put his word against the other and say 'no they're not.' Why should he give an explaination on why if Kold's author wouldn't give an explaination as to why they were being interupted? For all The Herald's author knew Kold was making use of a purple eyes bunny shotgun. Furthermore, without explaination of why the eddies were fading they would simply remain and grow in number.

Even if somehow the illogical process of trying to remove The Ageless Sentinel's power base succeeded the current speed of the avian would remain. The birdman's motions blurred to even advanced vision as light simply slid along his form in an irregular way. The staff spun away from its point of initial contact to swing back around and slam in hard on Kold's left side before spinning around behind the avian's back to strike from the right. Even if Kold dodged in any direction save for upwards the strikes would follow through, the fluidity of his motions with the staff displaying that his accellerated time flow was giving him much more time to perfect his actions.