World of Warcraft - Interbellum (IC Thread)

[MrAbdiel]

Long troll legs carry Jakk'ari in big, loping strides up to the palisades, and with a desperately outstretched hand. Sympathetically, the elemental spirits produce a reaching hand of the same shape and arrangement as Jakk'ari's; but an effigy rendered from mud and loose stones, lurching from the soil to intervene between Felix and his towering, flaming adversary. When that infernal spins, it brings a wild, devastating backhand of stone to bear that could smash a mortal body with a direct it. It carves through the muddy apparition; but in the blur of the movement, it may have lost just enough momentum from its strike to save the cadet's life. He raises his sword to parry the strike, and his blade is pushed against his chainmail, his body knocked skidding onto the mud and then, incredibly, the momentum carries him with a weird, accidental elegance tumbling back to his feet again. He pounces forward and slashes at the infernal's legs, with another pitiably brave ring of steel on stone that yields no effect on the monstrosity.

Marion's roiling blast of shadow roars over the palisade, but the angle to avoid a wasteful impact against the wood means the missiles sing overhead of her marauding target, curling back around as they instinctively calibrate their destructive focus on the target of her searing hate. Isaera's casting is more formalized and precise; a spinning spear of ice coalescing in the air above her shoulder at the delicate sculpting of her scintillating fingertips, rattling in its unseen arcane binding as it builds power. The third member of the ranged assault team, Zachary, brings his rifle to his shoulder and squeezes off a shot so swiftly that it should by no rights hit the target; but luck is with the ranger in that moment, and as his shaking hands are moving to reload the musket, keen eyes can see a neat bullet hole in the stony skull of the infernal bearing down on Felix. The injury jets sputtering green flame, which one must hope is a kind of analogy to a bleeding wound. Headshot doesn't seem to notice - it lets out an unearthly roar and redoubles its murderous efforts upon Felix.

The infernal that had flung its ogre prey into a nearby hut stalks purposefully into the building, its bulk smashing the burning, crude structure apart, and delivers a stomp that reverberates through the ground and fills the air with a grisly cracking noise that hearers do well not to imagine mapping to the specific interaction of stone foot and ogre head. Curbstomp, its foe extinguished, cranes its burning, rage-crazed eyes over to the palisades, and the attacks flying over the wall at its companion. From there, its attention wanders slowly, almost thoughtfully, to Zachary, Isaera and Marion.

The ogre facing off against the other infernal is an older male, a cyclops by injury not birth, with the horn in the middle of his forehead broken sideways and healed oddly. He is possessed of a grunting, inarticulate stubbornness that might be considered admirable. Further in the interior of the town, the battle is raging and it seems likely that in due time the ogres will win; but they will win from the inside out, and if this warrior is to survive - and preserve the lives of the cluster of six ogre children pressed back in paralyzed fear into the muddle base of the inside of the palisade - he will have to punch above his weight for some time. He has hoisted the heavy feast table in both hands and deflected one blow; and manages to deflect another. But the second blow catches the improvised shield on green flame, and its usefulness quickly threatens to turn to liability. His one good eye catches the storming approach of Mor and Lag, however; and with an unspoken interaction between the ogres, Brokenhorn roars and makes several feigned assaults on the demon-engine that instinctively shifts its bulk to deflect, before darting out a hand and snatching the table away, smashing it on the ground in a display of mindless, furious dominance. Tablesmasher does, in that way, keep focusing on the older ogre, exposing its back to Mor'Lag's coming blow.