The graceful, sophisticated and measured Rhaum was gone. As blow after rapid, debilitating blow swept over and over faster than his Eyes of the Discerning could reasonably follow, nor his enhanced body react in time to, he came to accept that he was, against all reasonable odds, losing - and not due to being outsmarted, but simply out-skilled, outnumbered, and thrown out of his element. The culmination of an entire arc, no, a lifetime, resolved and condensed into a single battle where they beat each-other senseless with pointed sticks. It stoked the true rage, the mouth-frothing fury that had long since been steeled under an icy surface of indifference. It brought forwards every shred of passion he'd bottled up for so very, very long.
Win or lose, there would be nothing dignified about this. The ugly, detestable things that lurked within his stomach seethed, roused by the emotions. No. No, no no no.
Vega's strikes sliced over his lips and cut them, forcing Rhaum to stumble over his lines. Every strike was undermined, every frantic combination blow disrupted and taken apart under the rhythm of deflections, counter-strikes, and debilitating blows that he had to constantly exert all his speed and endurance to merely reduce to shallow cuts. Each one festered and seethed under the punishment of his own Embrace and her Spiritborn Weapon, wearing away even further at his mobility and reaction times, allowing the next blow to come quicker, heavier. Varlum doubled down on the strategy, biting and clawing away, but his technique of fighting lacked the same precision and trained malice of Rhaum's, making it significantly easier to evade and deflect - only made a hindrance through its perfect coordination with Vega, as an added distraction, another thing to constantly split his focus between. Vivian, awash in Brightgleam Oasis water, was perhaps what finally tipped the scales completely. Brightgleam Oasis water seared his shoulder, reducing mobility in his left arm when Vivian's secondary slash impacted it even after he'd slid sideways to escape; Vega's cut across his brow poured water and blood down the sides of his face, narrowly avoiding his eyes. The eyes she struck out at with every ounce of skill, strength and precision she had at her disposal.
It sank straight through. The blade jammed deep into his eye, then his skull, and Brightgleam Water poured straight through the blade, boiling the blood and flesh that it touched until it peeled back to expose blackening viscera wilting away from the touch of spiritsteel. She was close enough that she could even hear the death rattle as the huge swathe of flame that had surrounded his body faded to embers and dissipated.
In that moment of clarity and peace, the corpse's arms both rose to wrap around her throat, as a sickly black glow erupted from Rhaum's stomach. Some horrid, unknown noise like the shearing of cartilage echoed in the arena, as though Rhaum's body was being torn in two from the inside - except Vega, thanks to her necklace, could understand it. Two words. Two, giddy words, coming from something, somewhere, inside Rhaum. Exhilarated to be freed.
FRESH MEAT!
Rhaum's head, split almost clean in two by Vega's sword, flopped almost comically on its shoulders with one blank, bloodshot eye as the rest of the body surged into motion somehow just as fast as a moment ago, even without the previous enhancements of its magic and prowess. The tail, lashing about behind it as a counterbalance, suddenly grew longer, more muscular, and its tip surged for Vivian with a giant bone-like club manifesting on the tip that smashed straight into one of the water-shields, triggering Vespa jaws that clamped around the limb and tore it clean off. The severed piece dropped to the floor, lifeless. The ragged stump left behind, seared by the water of the Brightgleam Oasis, waggled for just a moment - then grew three more club-like heads immediately afterwards, sprouting like the branches of a tree from its length that lashed at her next.
Below the first pair of arms suddenly grew a second, ending in claws much like Varlum's, crossed protectively over the stomach. From the elbow joint of each arm grew a second forearm, ending in a second hand. Each new addition growing and stitching itself together from raw bone and sinew, its origins entirely unknown.
It was a shame Balthazar, Praetorum and Woe had their hands full dealing with flaming crows, though they seemed to have a good handle on things. The birds swept out and dispersed as quickly as possible, but their chaos so soon post-transformation was something easily seized upon by Praetorum, using wind to upend them in mid-air and hurl them against one-another in a huddle. Of course, these also weren't mundane birds. Furious winds snagged their wings, yet as they caught on to the trick Praetorum was employing to hold them together, their wing-beats soon began to unify, adding the heat and flames of their fire-forms to create hot updrafts that fanned the flames of their bodies. Let them seize control, and it was clear what they intended - to turn Praetorum's trap into a weapon, a fire cyclone. Woe's frantic strikes, utilising their clumped-together forms to feed them with pain and distract their focus, and Gennadiya's distractions picking out the birds one by one with focused blows to the head, was the only thing that held them at bay from completing it in time.
Lightning struck, and arced from the birds, seizing each one and racing to the next in sharp, condensed blows that stunned, then paralysed, and finally burned the flaming creatures from the inside. When they each dropped to the floor afterwards, lifeless, the flames faded from their bodies and left only a cluster of black-feathered ravens. Quite fitting, that they would end a murder.
