Kyng Uldred chuckled as Ford praised the event. He gestured Synnove out of her seat, taking residence beside the tall, blond-haired man and digging into his food: a large chicken drum, which he unceremoniously plowed through, toothy bite-by-bite.
"Whoever offered him to me, hm?" Uldred raised, grinning. "So, you mean to say you do not know who it was? Ah, you play your weak hand too easily. Now I will have to make that information cost something... hm..."
Synnove cleared her throat. "Fealty," she said. "That is what it will cost. Taelian will move onto one knee, and in exchange he will know. Isn't that correct, father?"
"You speak out of fucking turn, Synnove," he spat, not even bothering to glance to the woman beside him. The Kyng hummed. "Your husband will swear devotion to me in the form of a... Knightly sort of vow, and in exchange you will know who your rat is," he said with a nod. Uldred effectively repeated Synnove's idea word-for-word, though somehow in his mind the rewording was enough to make his idea distinct. "You'll be surprised who it was, I think. Or maybe you won't be. Sometimes you spend all of these hours worrying about the knife you can see -- the knife that's already tasted your blood -- when it's the knife you never imagined to color itself with your guts that gets you."
The creature did not emerge from the sand, but its tendril did. Like a coil, it extended almost infinitely, stretching until it was an elongated spike that bulleted through the air to Taelian in flight. The tendril ripped through his deltoid, forcing the man to scream out in agony as the high-velocity strike caught him by surprise. In a mere instant, it prepared its barbed tendril for a lateral slice, hoping to cleave the Draedan in half with a quick two-step maneuver.
The man struck first instead, flinging his sword towards the tendril as it swiped away; Ard Fuil began to spin, and quickly it dismembered the elongated tail as it flew outward towards the stands. Taelian grimaced, blinking towards his blade and capturing it, only to stop mid-air as red, ethereal cannons began to appear across the span of his shoulders. Six small cannons all appeared simultaneously, and with the rattling of his Divinity they began to devastate the ground of the Hippodrome with an echoing, explosive volley; each impact ripped through the ground, causing chittering screams to wail from below as the thousands of spectators rushed to cover their ears.
With the floor of the Hippodrome demolished, Taelian extended out his hand, a fiery plume forming from the center of his palm. He could see the damaged, broken, battered form of the regenerating creature from below, and decided that now was his moment to execute it. The flame spurred outward in a vast torrent of flame, the fire hitting the pit left behind by his cannon volley and blazing outward, all while the undead monstrosity screamed... and then leaped, gaining traction against the ground before flinging itself towards Taelian. The Knight slashed off the tendril that quickly came to impale him, only for a second to grip his arm and squeeze around it, wrapping around his forearm and twisting it in an attempt to crush his bones with its sheer weight and force.
He grit his teeth, kicking the creature as it converged upon him. His blade swiped off its right arm, only for its left to claw forward, the man catching the hand with his own and struggling with it. Through it all, he lost his flight, the two quickly barreling for the ground and crashing. Taelian kicked, wrestled and bit the creature, his shoulders suddenly erupting with an array of spine-like blades that cut the abomination's tendrils whenever they neared him; he was whittling at the creature, but it continuously and continuously regrew.
Somewhere in the flurry, he had dropped Ard Fuil, and Taelian's torso was covered in scratches and gashes from the creature's claws. Desperation took over--he had to kill the beast now.
The Mark of Vengeance appeared on the skull of the creature, seared into its flesh. Taelian's eyes lit a deep, piercing gold, and he roared as the creature wrestled him. The man gripped harder, adrenaline filling his veins as he slowly pushed the beast off of him, lifting it and tossing it onto the ground. Immediately, he appeared above it, plunging his boot into its abdomen with a brutal stomp that saw blood and guts fill the stage, as Taelian's own blood poured down his shoulder and his chest. The man's face, dirtied and covered with innards, glared down at the writhing creature; he forged a deep red fire from behind his maw, his cheeks lighting with a brimming orange-red as flame began to spew out from his lips, melting the creature below him. As it burned, Taelian kicked it again and again, before colliding onto it and beginning to pummel and rip away at its flesh, his hands utterly annihilating the creature piece-by-piece until finally he pulled its head clean off of its shoulders, clutching its mangled flesh within his closed fist and tossing it onto the sand.
It wasn't glamorous, but nothing about it was. Nothing about the Adac was glamorous, nothing about the Corrupted Ones, nothing about the arcane or the Divine. It was all sinew and metal and raw, entropic filth coming together to form a creature that could disintegrate other creatures made of sinew, metal and raw entropic filth.
By the time it was over, he was utterly soaked with blood; he was bathed in the beast's guts, covered head-to-toe with red splatter or the pink or pallored remnants of the dead creature.
Despite how filthy he was, and how utterly beaten and cut up he looked, Taelian felt fine. He could survive much more than that.
"Easy," he said, spitting out the creature's blood.
There was a pause, the Kyng lifting a brow and glancing towards his daughter beside him, only to clear his throat -- hesitantly -- allowing for his voice to echo. "Speak louder, Son of Venadr!" Kyng Uldred commanded.
"I said... EASY!" Taelian's voice boomed. "Surely there must be a second one? Was this the preliminary match?"
The crowd paused -- dead silent, at first -- before erupting into a bellowing cheer. Uldred seemed... either agitated, or transfixed; it was always impossible to tell.
"He teases!" the Kyng declared, laughing aloud. Uldred slowly made his way down the steps, the crowd duly observing him as he descended to the floor of the Hippodrome. At the end of it all, he extended Taelian a hand, though not quite to take. It was to kiss.
Taelian's chest rose and fell, and through it all he still felt himself in that bloody haze; the one that always consumed him in the face of a raw, gritty, violent battle. Some wild, irrational part of him wanted to lop Uldred's head from his shoulders, but he did not. He bent the knee, and he kissed the hand offered until it was smeared with putrid, undead blood.
"I heard you, on the balcony. Through Resonance," Taelian said, quietly, as he peered into Uldred's eyes. "You told my husband you would tell me who gave you my information if I swore fealty to you. So... tell me, and I will swear."
The Kyng narrowed his eyes. "Narin," he muttered. The name meant nothing to Taelian -- he could only look up at him and stare, one brow lifting and curling. "A Sil-Norai girl, younger than my daughter. Black clothes, crude. The name is lost on you, I see?"
Taelian bit his lower lip. He lowered his face, mumbling fake words to make it seem to the crowd like he was swearing some Knightly vow, only to clutch the Kyng's hand and stand. He presented himself to the crowd with a raise of his arms, laughing and grinning like a bloodied gladiator pleased with his kill. In truth, he did not care.
"I would have my husband celebrate this moment with me!" he exclaimed, beckoning Ford from the balcony. "I'm certain he does not wish to ruin his fine state of dress," Taelian let out with a chuckle, to the laughter of the audience. "He will have to make do, though. There is nothing a warrior wants more than his beloved when a battle is done."
Uldred was grimacing, now. Taelian had intercepted his strategy, intentionally or not: he intended to offer Synnove to him as the spoils of his victory, and now that was wholly quashed.
