Pawn Goes into Negs

The inhuman scream presaged a fight. Morgan flipped his cape forward and the spikes bounced off harmlessly. Flipping his spectacles out, an ear-splitting screech rended his eardrum. He re-pocketed the glasses and simply followed the discernible malevolence. He tracked an arc partway towards the closest target then veered down and to the right. He weaved back toward and away as fire erupted around him. His skin started itching and he felt as if acid and bugs were eating away parts of his flesh. He conjured up a shield in front of him but it didn't stop the ground from shaking beneath him, or the previous injuries from festering further.

After ten minutes, the damage to Morgan's body was slowing him. He made no attempts to attack, just weaved forward and back. The presence of deities seared the edges of his soul and it took a firm hold on himself to keep from melting away. His mind kept on the business of staying a moving target and a delectable distraction. Whether Panic or Chaos or any of the deities he was 'serving' were winning or losing was not on his mind, only moving.

Something pummeled into him. It felt like a large beast. Flattened to the ground, out of breath and bleeding from several places, he spiked the ground around him. That wasn't going to do much against this level of nemesis, but it might buy him a few seconds to regroup his strength. No such luck, he felt the ground writhe like snakes. A warm wave washed over him, easing the pain of his injuries, possibly even knitting rent flesh. A literal wave hit him next driving his body over his own spikes. He quickly rescinded them.

He picked himself up and tried to mentally focus to regain his shield. A deluge came from above and his shield failed to materialize. The second attempt worked and the water sluiced around him. He wasn't sure how much longer he could defy the will of gods. However, he seemed less the actual focus of any deity's particular wrath and was more likely just caught in the crossfire. He turtled down close to the ground. He tried crawling in the muddy, sandy field away from any noticeable vibrations in the earth. The question of why he was even here and the insanity of actually agreeing to such a mission crossed his mind fleetingly. Death's temporary hold on him might not apply against actual divine beings... which was part of the reason he was here. He wasn't quite ready to call Panic's bluff, if it even was one.

The wet terrain was getting treacherous. He pulled himself into a crouch. It was still raining torrentially and the while the shield prevented him from directly getting smashed by water, the runoff was now a foot deep. The water stopped and Morgan slogged away in one direction, hopefully tangential to the main fracas. When he hit firmer ground, he assessed his injuries. Too drenched to determine where he was bleeding, he pressed on body parts and determined from the quality of the pain the nature of any damage. His mind hazed when he found a his face half gone.

'This is not war,' he thought. 'War is what mortals wage and they eventually tire at the end of the day.' Even Morgan himself, the least on the battlefield, had a limited immortality. He never died permanently, but death itself was painful in ways mortals wouldn't understand. He contemplated two weeks of his face burning. Two weeks where there would be no sense of time, just an endless clawing, burning, shredding pain in his face and eye, not to mention the cracked ribs, various lacerations, several torn ligaments and muscles, ruptured eardrum, and some deep punctures. It wouldn't, he decided, be the worst death he'd suffered. It's a difficult thing to judge in the moment. Away from the deluge, he could feel liquid seeping from his face. Either through blood loss or shock, the pain had dulled around the edges. He murmured a short prayer for death to be quick.

When he awoke, the undulating nature of the pain in various areas of his body told him he was still alive, but the relative silence also told him the skirmish was over. He slowly attempted to rise. The searing pain in his chest discouraged the activity. He sensed a presence next to him. His shallow, gasping breaths kept him from saying or asking anything.

“Beautiously done, well.” Chaos's voice grated into his burst eardrum. “Reward, yes? Be right? Be bad?”

Morgan merely held up his left hand, slashed and burnt, in a symbol for freedom. It dropped like a stone afterwards. The sand and mud irritated the ripped, festering wounds.

“Shoo. Away from my minion. I'd like him in working condition a little longer, eh? He's sooooo useful.” Panic kicked Morgan in the ribs playfully. Morgan's pain crossed his threshold and he mercifully slipped into unconsciosness again.