Shard event: Ark vs Mithril

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

 

"Hahahaha! Excellent! COULDN'T ASK FOR A BETTER BACKDROP!" Ark roared through the fire and brimstone, "FOR YOUR INEVITABLE END!"

 

The magma around him began to turn the same green as his flames as his mere presence corrupted it, and yet still Mithril hammered away at him. He slammed his fists into her midsection, each strike accompanied by a burst of green flame, and yet she kept going.

 

"Give! Up!" Mithril roared back, thrusting a wall of nuclear drills at him. Ark punched straight through it easily, the energy he'd poured into her making her metal brittle and weak.

 

"I'll beat you, beat people stronger than you!" she shrieked, turning the shattered metal into sharp flakes that cut into his flesh, and yet he pushed through it, raking fingers full of green flame across her torso, leaving blackened furrows.

 

"And then, I'll kill that shitty evil god of yours!" Mithril kept going, slamming her fists into Ark's face, the fatigued metal crunching into metallic spikes, gouging open his cheeks to reveal a rictus grin.

 

"And once he's dead, I'll toss his carcass down into hell right alongside you!"

 

"That's right, elemental! NEVER SAY DIE!" Ark replied, ramming a fist straight through her torso, more black and green cracks spreading out around it. Mithril took the chance to grab hold of him.

 

"**TITANIUM!**"

 

Ark beat his left hand into her face, and she bit his hand.

 

"**TRAIN!**"

 

Ark pushed forward, reaching his right arm up behind her to grab the back of her head and spray more green flames into it.

 

"**THRASHERRRRRRRRRRRR!**"

 

A huge train loaded with thrusters blasted out from her body, shoving Ark along as it burst forward at hypersonic speed, straight down, into the gravity and heat of the planet's core. Both were shortly lost to sight.

 

"Eat..... shit....." Mithril growled, all but spent.

 

Mithril dragged herself out of the green magma and remained still for a moment, no energy left to celebrate. Slowly, laboriously, she made herself return to the surface. Eranikus - and the shard - were still up there.

 

It took an hour to get back to the surface, dragging herself out of the hole in the ground she'd driven the death knight into in the first place, leaving molten drippings in her wake.

 

"Alright, one down... one to- oh," she interrupted herself as she caught sight of Eranikus.

 

He was... well, *partially* alive. Specifically around his front. The back half was still quite undead. He was panting, eyes rolling about at random, until they landed on Mithril.

 

"What is... who... where am I?" the green dragon murmured. Mithril forced herself to walk toward him, quietly ignoring the verdigrised flakes chipping off of her with each step.

 

"The middle of... just about nowhere," Mithril informed him. "That bastard... killed you and... raised you into undeath. And on top of... on top of that, I think... the shard's rewinding you... back to life a little," she ground out, each word accompanied by a painful metallic grinding noise.

 

"Shard...?" Eranikus responded, just managing to lift his head to look at himself.

 

"Too much to... explain right now... time bullshit. Ugh... probably pieces of Chi," she said by way of explanation, willing herself not to fall over.

 

"The time warden? That is... quite dire," the dragon muttered, seeming nearly as out of energy as Mithril did. "This state that I am in... this is not living. Please, small one... a measure of mercy."

 

Mithril approached him, morphing her hand into a blade and lining it up with the center of the living portion of the undead dragon. Certainly that's where the shard was.

 

"Sorry about this," she offered.

 

"The one that... slew me... what of him?" Eranikus asked.

 

"Dead and... buried, in the center... of the earth."

 

"Hah... a fate richly deserved. Go on then... return me, to the dream..." the dragon murmured. Mithril stabbed into him with one quick motion and withdrew her arm with the shard in hand.

 

"Thank... yoooooouuuu," Eranikus muttered with his final breath, as undeath washed over him once more. Mithril eyeballed the shard.

 

"You better... fix me up between... now and the next one," she said as cracks spiderwebbed out from it.

 

Before the world could shatter around her, though, the ground shuddered violently.

 

"No," she grunted between clenched teeth, before the ground exploded in front of her, a black figure erupting from the hole and slamming down in front of her before rising to his full height, eyes blazing green. As the cracks spread toward him, he *grabbed them* and *shoved*, pushing the cracks back to Mithril's hand, which he clasped in both of his.

 

Well and truly lost for words now, Mithril had no clever quip as Ark's burning gaze came back up to meet hers. A sinister grin spread across his face, and she noticed, through blurry eyes, that all his injuries had vanished. Like he'd not been in a fight at all.

 

"Heh. Heheh. Hahahaha, hahahahahahaha!" Ark threw his head back and laughed. When his eyes alighted upon her again, he leaned forward and said, in a conspiratorial whisper...

 

"Mithril. **Reach heaven by violence.**"

 

And then he let go, and the world shattered around her.