KOV Battle 5: La Espada Vs. Ulysses

In this air of heat and poisonous gas, the scent of molten rock, of sulfur, hung with the prominence of a force of nature. And with the repugnance, the stench of rotting eggs and the stench of skunks. Gone was the sky's shade of azure. In its place was a haze of yellow, pale and the domain of clouds of black that climbed into the reach of clouds. And in this environment with its hostile air and toxic gases, rested a temple. 'Its architecture is archaic', Santiago thought, his footsteps of swaggering calm guiding him forward, inching him closer to the temple's opening.

Forged in gold and in stone, baptized in the fires and in the smoke of a volcano whose roar was still primal and commanding, the temple was a thing of isolation. Through the screen of poisonous gas and roiling soot, the Spaniard's eyes, gems of sapphire blue, gazed upon this place of ancient grandiloquence. These walls, fading in their color, were smeared with dried blood, and the metallic scent of leftover did well to meld its stench with that of the lingering sulfur. He saw no corpses. Only skeletons and broken bones marring these empty halls of a lost civilization. There was a silence, and time it seemed, froze, and the particles in the air? Suspended in anticipation.

The ground lurched, and this mountain of violence spat a rain of rock and flame skyward. "Torrents of poison fumes, unstable beds of rock, lungfuls of ash, and bubbling lava to leave us grimy with soot and slippery with sweat", the Black Viper finally spoke, his voice's timbre, cool and magnetic to the ear, echoing alongside the notes of an inflection beautified by Spanish romance. "A bit cruel for the first round but, interesting", he quipped, refined wit dripping from the corners of a smirk disarming in its European charm. His garments, onyx in color, sleek in style, and nameless in brand, adorned a frame sculpted to the proportions of Michelangelo's 'David'. He walked, and his features of exotic appeal held an expression that was wicked in its mystique, in its ability to, with no more than a smirk, weaken knees and cause hearts to soar.

And yet, in his minutest of mannerisms, in the air that oozed from his viper's gaze, was flair. Not a charmer's flair, but the gelid confidence of an apex predator in perpetual wait. He walked and explored this temple of a time forgotten, climbed its stairs and found his way to the top. There the air was thin, polluted with gases of poison, soot, and clouds of thick smoke. And the haze of yellow seemed not as pale there. At the corner of his eye, he caught sight of it. The volcano's mouth. Its pool of orange liquid bubbled and threatened to scorch and singe. He squinted his eyes of beautiful blue against the falling ash and soon his fingers coiled around the shaft of a weapon conjured from air, his weapon of choice; the spear. His spear; Venenoso (Spanish for 'Venomous' or 'Poisonous').

In a circular motion, smooth and with cool control, he twirled it to relieve his boredom. It was eight feet long and along the front end of its shaft and bottom of the spearhead, there coiled a snake, a black viper. And just below the spearhead, a tassel made from python skin. Forged from an alloy of steel and obsidian, and fortified by a quantum shield that locked its subatomic structure in place, the spearhead's thermal stability and strength/durability knew no equal. And with edges and tips of dispersed cubic-boron nitride, it was of great enough sharpness to cut and pierce through nearly anything. Yet its danger, its true power, lied within the spearhead, within the walls of micro-capsules that carry toxins and poisons too cruel for the faint of heart. And it was with this spear of cruelty and a smirk of wicked flair that he waited for his foe.

The Gecko Prince's green scaled hand pressed to the golden beams of ancient decor. They radiated with a heat rising from the mountain, a heat that could be used. A set of stairs lead to the top of the mound, an occasional bone left behind on every few golden steps. He looked to the base of the platform he stood on, old, barely solid. "Time to brew a storm."

The bricks below the Solar Scholar ate away at themselves, tunneling into the mountain. It was only a matter of time until several tunnels tore into the base of the mountain, vibrating their walls in an approach to the core. Dreadful quakes shot to the surface in rising shakes. To the point of the endless lush forests surrounding the sacrificial ruins crackled with falling trees. The moments after constituted the rupture of the sides and the crater held at the top. With sudden fury the magma spurted like the gross fiery vomit of the Earth.

An acidic smell of sulfur engulfed the air with a layer of ash exploding from the pores briefly before the fireshow. No longer could the green forests be seen from the peak of the sacrificial mountain. The stray boulders of magma from the booming center's waves lit trees aflame setting an orange dangerous glow in the fog of ash. The magma rolled down the steep slope of the side, when it wasn't blasting.

The sneer on Ulysses' face remained wide. Assuming who he was against wasn't connected to heat, an obstacle had been laid that would shake the odds. The Universal Undertaker rose from the base of the mountain in a low flight over the streams, soon reaching the peak with little hindrance from ash. Now at the peak the punchline of the strategy could be pulled. Partheris' hand stretched outwards, sending the bursts of molten rock stunned to the atmosphere. Clouds of ash adorned with the bubbles of magma in collection around the peak.

Banish's magma soon fell to the ground. Collapsing over the mountain in explosions of heat. Currently rising the temperature of the mountain to a critically high Fahrenheit. The act pulled was certainly useful, thought the downside was meager yet there. Even the Cosmic Prince's eyes could not see fully into the depth of ash. Staying in the air was the best protection against stealth. His dread blue cape glared orange at the light of the explosions. Each burst reflected light onto the look of doom on his green skin. His crimson eyes only furthering his intention for annihilation.

This was a domain of danger, where strength forsook the lungs, and skin tightened from the heat. And if not for a physiology extraordinary in its resilience, the Black Viper's fate would have been sealed. Yet even one with a willingness to survive as stubborn as his would find this mountain of poison fumes, clouds of ash, and burning liquid a test of endurance. The haze of yellow and smoke made for a screen his eyes of sapphire blue struggled to see past. Instead, he relied on the wits of his other senses. Then, then the ground lumbered, rocks were left broken, and the mountain's blood, bathed in fire, towered into the clouds and hurried down its slopes. He was fortunate then, the Spaniard, that on the temple's highest ground, he was beyond the reach of its molten fury.

It was then however, that Santiago caught sight of his foe. Like an eagle, his foe soared into this sky that was hot and toxic, his frame of emerald flesh and the proportions of a warrior-god, and his eyes of luminous ruby all the more ominous behind a haze that soon rendered him no more than a silhouette. A silhouette that inspired upon Santiago's highborn features, a smirk, his blood boiling for combat. Around the shaft of his spear, he felt his grip tighten and his resolve remain as it was, unsullied and unbroken. His adversary however, was quick, and remaining beyond the Black Viper's reach, he conjured an explosive rain of molten rock and superheated ash. Santiago waited not to have his flesh peeled from bone and bone burned to ash, instead, with superhuman might, the muscle fibers in his legs twitched, and he jumped.

His path? Towards this baron of brutality who sought to eradicate him. Even then, splashes of molten rock, a liquid that owing to its density, did not behave as one, singed the Black Viper's garments, and scorched his flesh. He winced, the agony wearing itself on his features of European appeal. Hair was burned, and as the lava bubbled, the moisture on his skin was turned to superheated steam. Steam that burned, snaked into his pores, and burned from within, burned so hot that it felt cold. The Spaniard however, was a warrior, and warriors, true warriors, do not relent. And like his foe, Santiago too sought to make use of their environment. How? By harnessing the versatility of his blood-bending to, with hydrokinetic authority, turn much of the water in his adversary's body into water vapor. Water vapor that would escape from the pores of his skin.

And if successful in his attempt, Santiago would wait for the photochemical action of the sun to act on the sulfur dioxide from the volcanic activity, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the water vapor to produce sulfuric acid on his foe's flesh. Sulfuric acid to corrode, turn muscle and fat to organic goo, decompose proteins and lipids, blind the eyes, and burn. And should the acid pour into his foe's pores, assault whichever internal organs he may possess. Success or failure, Santiago, airborne and bringing his foe into range with his one leap, attacked again. This time however, with his weapon of choice, the spear, balancing it with his front hand, and controlling and guiding it with his back hand in a thrust, beginning like a soaring eagle, then darting the spearhead towards the target like a viper, a Black Viper. And the target? An area not nearly spongy enough to absorb the force of the strike, the throat.

The thrust was straight, and the rotation of the spearhead as small as the circumference of an orange. It squeezed all the PSI of the attack, delivering the full force and weight of a blow into the tiniest of areas, force made possible by a superhuman's strength, and force that sought to drive the spearhead through the flesh of an emerald throat.