The Sketch Rift: The Seal of Demons

From the Jaws of Death

No terrier could be as agile torturing prey as Sulukrita. Here, Soal served as a lowly rodent, clasped between the Bane's jaws (defended only by the Fractals' veil) and excruciatingly thrashed back and forth beneath the considerably thicker veil of earth separating the two combatants from the Waise Temple's surface. Not for much longer would this remain so.

The titan in turn released his teeth from Soal's shield, seeing that it would do little harm as long as it lay in check by his unrealistic reflexes, tumbling him into the avalanche that awaited.

Sulukrita rose from his burrow, heaving to unleash his many limbs from the dirt where they were entrenched, lifting his comparatively minuscule head until all that came between Soal and the sun's bloodred beams was Moth's preciously lightweight gift to him. Particles swarmed his debilitated lungs and the pressure of thousands of tons of land bore down on his hands through his shield like Scright Glacier and the detritus of Fort Whal never did. However, even this would not last further than those few, grave moments.

Due time let pass the shrill resonance of gravity impressing Soal's barrier until it was practically molded into the shape of a dome, snapping back once aerial circumstances were kinder to it. When this ceased, his wrists and heels were grabbed by an unwelcome presence with which he was all too familiar. Each finger of the Ammeroap strained against impulse to contort the semi-Master Bringer's digits to their breaking point, to little avail; as those on his hands stopped their assault, their victim reached for his back, as effectively as he could, for the Hand he needed attached to him instead. It was, and its attachment was judged by some (one in particular) as necessitating further challenges. More specifically, these were challenges involving the abrupt dragging of Soal by his boots' reluctant soles upward and upside down through such distances of soil like it was thinner than air, all the way to his feet at the foot of the Great Waise Temple, pockmarked with challengers' tunnels.

Six days ago, when he trekked to this sacred Fviron ground, nothing was gained but blood, betrayal and property damage. Now, there could be no betrayal: Sulukrita's motives were clearer than most, and he licked his chops at the sight of the Reacsoa Hand's escort within a minute's walking distance, which would only have been a few seconds' galloping distance at his own pace.

A selection of his mottled emissaries arrived first to forcibly compromise Soal's possession from his sheath, a prospect he rejected long before. As he swung the sheath's original inhabitant at the aggressors, however, one managed to knock the hilt from his glove across the entire length of the structure's unfeasibly wide and interminable stairway, barely designed for a human's stride, onto the tip of its brick-built plateau. Sans his weapon of choice, Soal snatched the Reacsoa Hand with the right arm left unoccupied, slinging his left over his back to deflect the foreign arm seeking it to begin with. The inky tip again shone an alien blue, calescent in the manner by which no piece of the Ammeroap could safely touch – tested when one tackled it, unable to be handled by someone with so many urgent tasks, ending up scorched fully by the blaze, its ash rushing away with the fateful 24-hour era's winds. If only two new hands had not sprouted from the wound, each another two elbows' lengths apart; almost no outcome in the original Halmaven would push Soal back into pushing the Hand into an evil hand, should it multiply like a hydra rearing its ugly heads.

"Watch yourself, as debtors must."

Soal knew well not to wallow in futility returning the Bane's gaze with eyes or words. All he replicated from the figure behind him was his individual stampede up the steps of the Temple, avoiding its newfound craters, whose origin he was all too aware of, and the more than conspicuous Sulukrita bolting fiendishly in his wake, puzzlingly not outmatching his speed until mere seconds from where his sword lay, when fate sent Soal to his knees in a prank of extraordinarily inconvenient ungainliness. This time, poorly coordinated mental signals drew Soal to wield the Reacsoa Hand instead of the Fractals' Shield, ripe for the smiting by its most despised hunter – until those same signals recognized their ineptitude and undid their mistake, jerking Soal's right hand back to its resting state. A collection of the Hand's searing tip's embers escaped in the process, landing on a hungry creature's oversized, Sketch-glue-slimy tongue.