[KhalidtheGrey]

I was felt like writing a page or two about a random encounter I had in a dungeon with one of my characters and am posting it here so it can get [strike]bashed mercilessly[/strike] criticized or enjoyed. Or ignored. Most likely ignored. Don't care, felt like posting it instead of just deleting the note I wrote this on.

[KhalidtheGrey]

Beset by demon plants and earthkin creatures. Two shambling mounds of vines. Seven goblinoids, six with spears, armor, and shields, one with a staff and appearing as a shaman. A man, more a monster, was half surrounded by the creatures. He was clad in a black, heavy helmet and a dark green canvas cloak and robe. Upon his body were black plates, an aberrant mutation of his form, covering everything not covered by helmet or clothing.

As the creatures advanced, their shaman began to chant, invoking a foul spell from the safety of the back of the war party. The chitin-clad man huffed a quiet "Feh.." in irritation as his gray-brown eyes surveyed the enemy.

The man's feet dug into the ground, though they were not mere feet. They were like seven-fingered, plated, insectoid claws. The twin, opposing thumbs supported his heel while the five claws gouged into the soil and stone and the man tensed, leaning down slightly and preparing.

A moment later and he had jumped from the ground and flew forward, catching a goblin's face on his knee as he vaulted into the midst of the group. The goblin yowled in pain and surprise, falling backward and moving to nurse the partially crushed face while the others, though they hesitated, soon moved in with their spears, though the shaitan was already in motion, having never stopped.

The shaitan swept wide left to right, turning as he did so, with his left hand, structure the same as the feet. A shimmer followed the wake of the claws and a split second after the motion was done, the spear-wielders and the legumes were draw inward, tumbling forward to the motion of his hand. A rush with the right hand, glowing with inner golden light, followed, the shaitan all but flying passed one of the hardy legumes as the claws tore through the mass of vines and roots.

Now with a clear path to the shaman casting his spell, the shaitan raised his left hand and slammed it down to the ground, another shimmer following its path and exploding out and forward. The shockwave blasted into the shaman, knocking them backward several feet end over end. Concentration broken and the spell interrupted, the goblin was left reeling for a precious moment.

The rest were getting their act together again, trying to approach the shaitan and lunge at him with spears and teeth and vines. The attacks were batted away or avoided with bending and sidestepping by the shaitan, at most glancing blows that harmlessly bounced off of his chitin plates under the canvas which held together well enough.

The shaitan returned his focus to the group, knocking them about and steadily crushing one after the other under claws like magicked iron. A goblin was felled by the time the shaman had regained enough sense to try casting another spell, beginning the invocation. This caught the attention and ire of the shaitan whom repeated the blast wave technique whenever the opportunity presented itself, scattering any in the way to send the shaman tumbling and break the shaman's focus.

This process of knocking the shaman flying and fighting the others continued for four cycles, at which point the shaman didn't get up again. This left the shaitan to go to work in earnest. Having cut down the two legumes and two of the goblins, the four remaining creatures were left to give the shaitan a stab, if they could. They all happened to lunge almost simultaneously, which allowed the shaitan an opportunity to jump straight up above their strikes.

At the peak of the high jump, five feet in the air, the shaitan almost instantly gathered a mass of focus into both legs and both arms. He crashed back to the ground between the spear-wielders, blasting the ground and knocking them up and off their feet with a shock-wave. The shaitan reared up sharply, another mass of focus in his maw, throat, and chest as he came up. He loosed a powerful roar before the goblins had even hit the ground, maw opened wide and split down the middle as two independent halves of the jaw. Six shark-like teeth were at the front of the upper jaw while four each were at the front corners of either jaw. The bellow seemed to dim the air and cause a large ripple at the forefront of the wave. The force picked up and carried the yet-airborne spearmen away, tossing them like ragdolls. As goblins were so near to the epicenter, the pressure wave tore wounds open on all of them.

Two of them didn't rise in the wake of the explosion of force. The shaitan seemed to know which were still alive, zeroing in his attention on one of the remaining goblins. He jumped, clearing the four yard gap in an instant, and descended upon one of the knocked down goblins, killing it instantly. The other was rising to its feet when the shaitan pounced on it as well, killing it similarly as the last.

The mob dealt with, the shaitan took a breather among the dead, green blood painted about on the ground and his arms and legs. Given a couple minutes, he began to stride off, moving deeper into the tunnel complex. A soft, white glow crept across the bulk of his body as he went, the green stains fading in the dim light. He muttered to himself, "...Hate the smell of earthkin dead..."