Relationship Status: It's Complicated
WEARING: This | WEAPONS: Ferrum Solus | Blodmåne | Howling Death
ALLIES::
Srina Talon
|
Madrona A’Mia
|
Mercy
|
Darth Caedes
|
Revna Marr
|
Taeli Raaf
|
Darth Prazutis
ENEMIES::
Taregh GaronTaregh twisted as the wolf came in, taking the impact across his chestplate instead of the exposed right side. The elbow came fast and brutal, slamming into the bridge of Gerwald’s muzzle with the kind of force meant to stun and disorient.
It connected.
Pain flared across Gerwald’s vision and his head snapped sideways as rain and steam blurred together. Blood filled his mouth, his own this time, and a low growl rolled from deep in his chest instead of retreat.
The hand came for his jaws.
One gauntleted palm clamped over his muzzle while the other drove up beneath it, fingers digging for leverage at the hinge. Taregh pulled to wrench his head sideways and force his body down into the mud, attempting to bury him beneath pooled rainwater and end it through sheer strength.
Gerwald felt the grip and the intent behind it.
He felt the drowning attempt before his nose touched water.
The primal surge released by the shattered altar had never left him. It had settled into his bones and thickened there. The wild Sith magick that had torn across Brosi now fed the wolf within him instead of overwhelming it. His spine bowed but did not yield. Muscle swelled along his shoulders and haunches, armor shifting seamlessly with the change as plates flexed to accommodate the increased mass rather than fighting it.
He bit.
He twisted just enough inside Taregh’s grip to bring his teeth down on the gauntlet itself. A Lupo’s bite was not the snap of a common wolf. It was a crushing force built to shear through bone and split plating if given purchase. His jaws closed over the fingers attempting to force them open. He did not thrash wildly.
He compressed.
If the plating held it would warp. If it failed, bone would follow.
Taregh drove down harder, trying to drown him anyway. Mud surged up around Gerwald’s muzzle and water splashed across his eyes. For a moment his vision filled with brown and red and rain. The Inquisitor’s strength was monstrous, stims pushing him beyond sane limits, but Gerwald did not feel smaller beneath it.
The ground shifted once more.
Brosi had begun to heal.
Where roots had moved before in defensive pulses, now they surged with renewed vitality. @Madron A’Mia’s will had sunk deep into the mycelial web with the aid of
Darth Caedes
, and the restorative force pouring through Psilofyr began answering in physical ways. Thick roots burst upward through poisoned soil near their struggle, not to bind Taregh completely but to disrupt his base. Saplings forced themselves through mud at impossible speed, soil swelling and cracking as new growth erupted beneath them.The drowning attempt lost clean leverage.
The water Taregh tried to bury him in began to drain and shift as rivulets carved new paths through reshaped ground. Above them, fire that had once consumed bark now recoiled in widening arcs. The oppressive heat that had hung over this section of the battlefield lessened as something vast stepped into the inferno. Flames withdrew rather than raged, bending away from the presence of Darth Caedes, whose will pressed like a void in which combustion failed to persist.
The air changed.
Radiation still clung low but began thinning in pockets as transmutation spread through root and fungus beneath the soil. The metallic sting remained, yet it no longer felt inevitable.
Gerwald used the shift.
He drove his forepaws deep and surged upward instead of down, spine uncoiling with violent intent. His jaws attempted to tighten further around Taregh’s hand as he pushed, hoping to force the Inquisitor’s arm into extension. His shoulders slammed forward into Taregh’s torso as he sought to break the angle of control rather than have to endure it.
Rain hammered down around them and mud exploded outward.
Gerwald wrenched his head sideways while maintaining the bite, using the torque of his entire body rather than just his neck. If the grip failed he would be free. If it held, Taregh’s fingers would pay for it.
He surged again, claws digging for traction along armor seams and mud-slick plating, forcing the fight back toward standing height instead of submission. The primal magick in him did not fade. It roared hotter, matching stim-driven strength with something older and more savage.
Roots thickened beneath them, and Gerwald did not pull away. He bore in closer, jaws crushing and body driving forward, forcing Taregh to answer a new problem in the middle of a battlefield that no longer behaved like stable ground.
Gerwald felt the moment.
He twisted violently, not backward but sideways, using the instability of the ground and the surge of new growth beneath them. Roots burst through mud at unnatural speed thick as wrists, then thicker still. Saplings split the earth between them. The drowning angle collapsed as the terrain rose and shifted.
Gerwald would only release his bite only when the leverage broke.
He tore free in the same motion, ripping himself out of Taregh’s grasp with a surge of muscle and primal force that sent mud and water spraying outward. He did not linger to measure the damage. He did not stay to contest strength against strength.
He moved.
The wolf vanished into the violent regrowth as it surged upward around them. Vines thickened in seconds. New trunks forced their way through scorched ground. Broad leaves unfurled where moments ago there had been ash and pooled radiation-laced water. The rainforest was not merely recovering. It was accelerating.
Gerwald dropped low and cut hard left, letting the explosive growth swallow his outline. Steam, rain, and fresh greenery blurred together into a living wall. Radiation haze thinned in pockets where fungus and root transmutation had begun their quiet work, but the air still tasted sharp and wrong.
The wolf did not flee.
He repositioned.
Muscles coiled beneath dark, rain-slick fur as he moved through the newborn undergrowth without sound. His breathing slowed. The feral surge within him did not fade, but it narrowed into something patient and deliberate.
Beyond the curtain of rapid growth, Taregh remained somewhere in the rain.
Gerwald did not howl or make any noise.
He disappeared.
