"Tick tock, tick tock... Tsk." Ares kissed his teeth and poked his head out of the ruins to check and see if the rain had disappeared yet and, though it was clearing up, there was still enough left over to make hm hesitate and not go outside again just yet. He was mostly bothered by this because the swamp outside on the ground floor had nearly doubled in height while he was idling around and, while that wasn't necessarily much, if it kept increasing at this rate he would be in a rough spot before long. He was seriously wishing he could just kill this obnoxious noxious brood mother already but that jeopardised his future plans nd so he held back. If it didn't result in him losing a valuable food source he could just charge up an Armillary and make the monster go booma thousand times over. Unfortunately this was shaping up to be a situation similar to the one he'd been dreading a while ago in that one war aura flag wasn't enough to win quickly but three was overkill... If he wound up having to use the full extent of his war aura just to subjugate this damn brood mother he was gong to be pretty indignant about the whole thing! Thankfully the rain cleared up, and Sandy re-emerged from the sand, so it was go time once more. The poison rain couldn't be used again for a while so Ares was free to take to the skies with Voidwalk without being pestered too much at least. No doubt the brood mother still had more poisonous spray attacks in its arsenal to deter Ares and waste his time but there was no way they'd be as time wasting as the rain... Hopefully...
Ares loosened up his shoulder and prepared to try for another Big Game Hunter with a random spear from his Blade but, regrettably, the brood mother was aware of this art now and showed signs of wariness. Ares figured the attack would just be avoided if he tried and so opted not to waste mana pointlessly, instead simply tossing the flag up and letting it do its thing while he put away the spear and pulled out his scythe. It had been a while now since he held this thing in his grip and he was a little rusty but it did feel good wielding it again nonetheless. It wasn't his most powerful weapon by any stretch of the imagination but it was the one he was most talented with so that could make up for it in spades under the right circumstances. "Teleopsia." Ares threw out a patch of nothingness that connected with the brood mother's bony neck and a decently large spectral scythe spirit appeared in the air behind it. Ares readied and steadied his swing and the copy hanging like a reaper of death above the brood mother followed suit but it was all for naught as the stepper eye rotated on the spot and turned a dark purple. Ares figured it was going to stop his art in its tracks but he kept going anyway because the scythe up in the sky wasn't attached to him or related to him in any way so whatever happened to it would not cause him any kind of backlash. There was no reason not to follow through as he already used mana on this and it might still see some results if he was lucky. Plus this way he could wrangle out another one of the brood mother's means and see what kind of tricks it had up its sleeve for future reference.
CRACKLE
Purple streaks of lightning dashed around the eye as a large clump of mana trickled through an air funnel towards the brood mother. Whatever it was unleashing was not a small attack by any stretch. The lightning converged at a single point, thinning the welling mana until it became a purple beam that blasted through the night and obliterated the summoned scythe in the blink of an eye. The purple beam became a long and dangerous extension of the brood mother's eye that was at least a few miles long and followed along wherever it gazed upon. With a swing of the neck, the beam came slicing through the ruins and headed straight towards Ares but he was already on the move and escaping before hand. The attack was devastating but not unexpected thanks to its long wind up. The brood mother tried to trail the beam after Ares, and it wrought havoc across the rooftops as the poison beam left a burning trail of rubble in its wake, but he was too slippery to hit. Ares threw himself at and clung to a clothing line that snapped under his weight and became a vine for him to swing around on. He leapt of the clothes line and barreled through a broken window, leapt out another one on the opposite side of the room, grabbed and spun around a pole and threw himself into another building.
Taking in the path before him for a brief moment gave Ares the needed information to keep pushing forward so he dipped and ducked under several hands that sprung forth to act as obstacles, slashed two more with his scythe that burst out from within a sink and bread basket, and carved a new path though the wall in front of him using disintegration. Finally he bust out into the open air once more and used a Double Jump to climb up to a safe rooftop as the poison trail ran out of steam behind him and fizzled out of existence. You'd think ruins couldn't be made to look much messier but the buildings were melting and bright orange cut marks became traces of the brood mother's devastating attack; all of which served to further dilapidate this run down playground. Meanwhile, as the ruins crumbled and crushed stepper hands along the path he'd just sped through, Ares used his nail to cut open the back of his neck and let out some purple blood. When ducking under the hands earlier one nicked him in that rough area and, though it was mostly fine, he wanted the poison gone as soon as possible. Ares losing here wouldn't be a result of blood loss, it would be due to poison building up to a dangerous level that couldn't be ignored any longer and overcoming his regeneration. Some self-inflicted blood loss for less poison squirming around inside his system was an acceptable trade that he happily made the second he was in the clear. Even though his regeneration and Converter would remove the poison eventually he was better of playing it safe than sorry!
Eughhh
Ares felt his stomach churn as his head and vision became woozy. He felt sick and dizzy as it seemed like the fuchsia coloured poison from earlier was finally settling in somewhat. Though it didn't inflict any kind of damage it was an extremely unpleasant sensation that washed over Ares and nearly made him stumble over himself. Coming to terms with having to fight like this was a hair pulling-worthy task but he took deep breaths and gulped down fresh air to try and combat the sick taste in his throat. Ares shook his head and readied himself to go do battle with the brood mother for real this time but it roared and the rain returned again, forcing him to throw up another Not Even Light and retreat indoors once more. "Again? So soon?! Tsk..." The downtime between the rain was surprisingly minimal. Sandy mentioned it was longer last time she did battle with it but that was probably just the brood mother being a smart ass and not laying all its aces out on the table. It must have understood that Sandy was on the backfoot during their last encounter and so withheld some of its power in case she came back...
Ares had gone down two floors inside the building now and could watch the swamp in the courtyard filling up bit by bit. The pitter patter of the purple rain above was insidious as it was slowly destroying the roof on the floor above Ares and the next time he climbed the nearby stairs he would be on the 'new rooftop'. The floors above him were being destroyed at a rapid rate via the brood mother's attacks and the swamp below was still rising uncompromisingly, pushing the aromatic poison further and further up too which made its effect all the more potent. Though the brood mother was utilising stall tactics the rate and rapidity at which things escalated was severe. Ares guessed he could maybe live through one or two more purple rain casts before there was nowhere left to stand and the contained swamp was unleashed on the surroundings, drowning out everything and everyone. By the time it subsided Ares would be nothing more than a skeleton picked clean of flesh and blood with purple droplets dripping off his bony corpse. He'd been reluctant to use harder hitting attacks in fear of accidentally going too far but it was now starting to look like that he didn't have a choice anymore because time was running out fast...
Ares looked out the window at the swamp again and wondered if he could maybe disintegrate the poison... There was so much of it though... If he used a Not Even Light he would waste a large amount of mana to maybe remove no more than one thirtieth of the massive lake brewing and it would fight back too. If he'd preempted this, and disintegrated the poison before it clumped up together like this, he might have been able to keep it at bay for longer but now it was like trying to clear out the ocean with a bucket. It was in Ares' best interest to just defeat the brood mother ASAP and not worry about the poison swamp at all. Ares spun his war aura flag atop his pointer finger, flicked it up, and caught it in the palm of his hand as he stepped up and out of the building again. His elevation as now drastically lower than it had been at the start of the fight but the tip of the ruins had been cleaved straight off thanks to the poisonous onslaught. The space Ares had to play around in was now less than half of what it was to begin with as the rooftop height was declining and the swamp height was now enough to drown out a thirty metre tall Garmr even if he stood on his tip toes... Though Garmr wouldn't care about poison in the slightest, probably. He might even take a dandy little swim through it and wet his fur a bit just to feel alive...
Canis Stimulant...
It was an option, and Ares was considering it, but he was reluctant to waste it when there were other options available that could do the job so Ares simply chucked the flag straight at the brood mother and took off after it. Six limbs moved to block the flag, forming a pentagon by bending and crisscrossing around and past one another, and glowed an eery purple while leaking some kind of miasma. Ares seriously wished he knew what arts this brood mother was using but the disadvantage of fighting monsters was that it was almost always hard to tell unless the art was easily recognisable. These weren't unique arts, so Ares would probably come across them one day in the future and learn of their names properly, but for now he was on the back foot and guessing blindly. In this case, he had no idea what to expect so he took a gamble and activated the Not Even Light he stored inside the flag earlier in the fight. Whatever came out of the bony pentagram could hopefully not beat out this defensive art and that would give Ares space to close in on the brood mother and do some meaningful damage for once.
The flag shot straight and true as the purplish poison mist formed the shape of a snake with devil horns that hissed and lashed out towards the incoming weapon. Ares released the Not Even Light and both it and the snake clashed but the snake was surprisingly powerful. Although neither art really 'won' in the end, the snake did technically live whereas the black hole faded away due to time constraints. The snake had half its head missing, and definitely took more damage overall, but it could sacrifice itself and throw its remaining life force at the flag to impede it in death. If Ares allowed this to happen his approach to the brood mother would get complicated but, thankfully, he wasn't the only person fighting this fight. Sandy had bust out from below the sand after locating a safe exit and was raring to go. Most of the sand above her head had been drenched in poison, and she was being chased around by hands constantly underground, so it took her a little while to safely reappear and join the fight but she was here now. She'd come back at the perfect time to lend a hand and so she cast an art to help deal with the stubborn snake.
"Trampling Oryx!" Rather than summon hands, an Oryx, about half as big as a cruise ship, shot through the sand and ran towards the snake. It hopped a few times during its stride before eventually taking one massive leap into the air and goring the confused snake, impaling it and dragging it out of Ares' path. Upon landing, the Oryx flung the half dead snake into a dune and then stepped on its coiling body over and over again, tap dancing and kicking up a small sandstorm in the background as Ares continued following his flag. He didn't have time to spare to enjoy the show so he activated Black Blossom and sent the flag spiralling towards the giant eye. Even if the brood mother could do something about the flag the owner following along after it would cause trouble. It seemingly understood the predicament so took the only option available to it and shook its entire body to summon a large poisonous smog and disincentivise Ares from remaining close for too long. His eyes blurred and his tongue felt like it had been lit aflame but he pressed on and grinded his scythe through the brood mother torso as he advanced towards his real target higher up.
Yet more chunks of brood mother were severed by the hard work of Ares and his flag and it wasn't long before they had climbed up around the neck of the brood mother and were ready to start laying the hurt down. The flag pinpointed a structural weak spot in the neck and dug in while Ares firmly gripped his scythe, held it past his waist, and threw his whole body into a powerful slash. Though the brood mother attempted to lean away Ares still caught his weapon on stepper flesh and tore through the multiple bony appendages that linked together to form this thing's neck. The brood mother's eye drooped and almost fell over as this was where its extendable neck, that was long enough to resemble a giraffe's, started to become a negative for it and did it no favours. In fact, the eye did fall eventually as the flag's efforts were rewarded. It pierced a clean hole through the part of the neck it was drilling up against with a Black Blossom blast. It shot through the black-burning neck and left a small wind tunnel in its wake as the pent up force with which it had been grinding away with gave it a massive burst of speed once it was in the clear and no longer being blocked. The stepper eye, and the small chunk of severed neck still attached to it, fell through the sky and was crashing straight towards the arrogant Oryx. If the brood mother had no solution to this predicament it would get gored straight through he eye and become completely incapacitated, winding up a trophy for this sandy magical animal. It had sufficient toughness to survive such a fate, and sufficient regeneration to reconnect its neck afterwards and be healed, so Ares had no problem with letting this happen as it would conclude this fight nicely. Having to put together his victim afterwards was a minor bother if it meant getting away from these toxic ruins. The sooner the better, even.
Unfortunately nothing was ever that simple as the brood mother's eye split open once more and the matter was instantly complicated. Ares didn't know what he expected to happen here... But wings flapping out from within the unzipped eye and enabling it to fly like a crystal white ball-shaped bat, with bony black wings, was definitely not on his bingo list... He was too stunned to even react as the eye quickly darted back upwards and reattached itself to the rest of its body before Ares' very eyes. Ares had dealt a great deal of damage and yet, in the span of the blink of an eye, literally... It had all been undone! As it turned out, attacking the neck was not a wise idea or a valid strategy as it wasn't the weak spot Ares assumed it to be... The brood mother's torso was convenient but not really is true body, the eye was seemingly extremely important and what the entire rest of the monster revolved around. Ares' options going forward were either the limbs, to immobilise the brood mother, or the eye itself to put it out of commission. The eye was risky business as it looked quite fragile so maybe the limbs was his best bet?... Ares was lost in thought but not so much so he didn't' notice the brood mother roar at the sky and summon that pesky rain again... He chanted Not Even Light for the umpteenth time this fight and retreated with a small grimace. Things had goteen so bad during the rain intermissions that Sandy had to come along with him and hide in the buildings beside him now; the floor was almost entirely submerged and there was nowhere for Sandy to enter the sands below without getting at least a little poisoned so it was no longer worth it for her to hide out there.
Ares had been on the eighth floor previously, and it was safe enough there that he didn't have to worry about any poison creeping through the ceiling, but now he was forced to relocate to the seventh floor of this ruined building mishmash as the eighth was uninhabitable during this rainstorm. Holes cropped up in the roof at an incalculable rate and it was turned into Swiss cheese in short form. It almost seemed like the rain was getting heavier each and every time the brood mother cast it but there was no point worrying about that as Ares didn't have much time left. Even if ignoring the sickness the aromatic poison was inflicting on him and Sandy, the fifth floor was already seeing signs of the poison swamp starting to seep in from under the carpet when Ares peeked his head down there to have a gander. The next time Ares came into these buildings for refuge from the rain it would be his last as the swamp would have definitely reached the sixth floor by then. He would need to flee from the seventh floor to avoid the rain above so he would quite literally be clinging to the walls and hugging them for dear life as the swamp corroded half the room below his feet. He had two more go arounds at the brood mother, one more poison rainstorm in-between them, before all hope was lost and all options other than just killing it had been thoroughly exhausted. He would rather not take drastic measures but this monster was insufferable down to its core! Ares was tempted to check on the limbs near the edge of the ruins and see how they were in comparison to his current ordeal. It was his best option and if escaping became necessary he would rather know what they could do in advance so as not to be taken by surprise by them later.
Once the rain let up again, Sandy took to the skies to go do battle with the brood mother's torso and head region again but Ares slunk off to the side to go check on the limbs holding up the monster. As he Voidwalked over he could see some strange purple runic, see-through looking veil forming a wall between each limb. This veil was keeping the poison sloshing around on the ground in, turning this cage into something more akin to a jar slowly being filed up with poisonous excretion from the brood mother clamping down on it from above. The swamp out here near the edges of the ruins wasn't quite as bad compared to the ruins, as there was more space out here than inside the courtyard, but it was filling up regardless and walking along the floor was no longer a possibility. Ares had left his war aura flag with Sandy so he readied his scythe instead, used Black Blossom to inflict additional damage with every strike once more, and put his back into another mighty swing. His power output was reduced slightly thanks to the poison making him sleepy, hanging around near the miasma the brood mother let out earlier in self-defence was taking its toll, but he bulldozed through his exhaustion and scraped the scythe against the surprisingly resilient limb.
The same purple veil, acting as a wall between the spread out limbs, appeared briefly in front of the limb protecting it and, while it definitely took a noticeable hit that reduced its vibrancy considerably, it lived to tell the tale. Ares reckoned he could probably get through this blockade eventually if he kept working at it for long enough with his disintegration so perhaps this was the best option available to him after all? Once he broke through he could maybe even damage this limb, cut it off, and open up an escape route to the rest of the desert. Doing so would unleash the poison tide it contained but it also offered Ares a lot more space to move around in freely and reduce the level of nuisance the hands brought forth. No wonder the brood mother hid in ruins all the time; this place was like a perfectly tailored battlefield for it. Anyone who stumbled into the ruins would become trapped and the fight would shift in its favour quite drastically. If Ares had just blown it up from the outside he wouldn't have had to deal with even half the issues he was currently facing and even just not being trapped like a rat would have made hits fight a lot more even. Rather than simply having to spray poison directly down underneath it, the brood mother would have had to fire off poison in a 360 degree radius and clogging up the desert with a poison swamp, the way it had done with the ruins, would require a ton of effort and time. This was all basically one big trap and Ares had walked into it confidently only to slightly regret that decision. The shadow stepper possessed pretty significant technique, speed, and strength but the brood mother traded all of that for two things: its ability to ambush people and the potency of its poison. Two very different skill sets and approaches but, despite the psychopath being stronger overall, this brood mother was giving Ares a run for his money and a tougher time. Still, he wasn't in a dire spot and things weren't going too terribly... Yet.
Ares shook his head and put such thoughts to the back of his mind. Right now his job was simple, destroy this poison defensive veil and clear a path to safety. Though the aromatic poison was doing a number on him it wouldn't matter much once he was out of this cage as the advantage freedom would provide outweighed his current sluggishness. Ares was about to start hacking away but his gut was warning him something was amiss. Not with his own situation, he'd activated Omniscience and everything seemed to be all clear near him, but back over by Sandy there was an uncomfortable amount of mana swirling around for seemingly no reason... Ares' war aura flag no longer had a defensive art stored in it so if something went wrong...
Before Ares could even make the decision to go and make sure everything was fine the brood mother eye opened up once more and all the mana was sucked directly into it. A strange and unnerving calmness pervaded the entire area trapped underneath the brood mother as it began violently trembling. Ares was able to understand what came next in advance thanks to his Omniscience but his mind couldn't really come up with any way to stop it. He was relatively fine but Sandy... She was directly underneath the brood mother right now and was about to be hit square on by this next 'attack'... The attack itself wasn't lethal but it was problematic enough to lead to a lethal situation. Put simply, the brood mother was about to roar again... That was it... But it was also more complicated than that. Mana could be imbued into a person's voice, or an animal or monster's roar, to make it echo throughout the surroundings. Mana essentially acted as a megaphone if utilised correctly and the more mana the louder and more impactful the voice travelling through it would become. In this case, the brood mother had just inhaled how much mana, exactly? Too much to even feasibly try and calculate, that was how much! If it yelled and screeched now... Ares was at an angle to the main body, so he would just get blasted harmlessly into the purple veil behind him... Sandy, however, was positioned straight underneath the brood mother so she was about to get shoved and pushed directly down... Into the poison swamp courtyard below... The impact of the shrieking yell would do basically nothing to her, maybe destroy some of her clothing at best, but the poison was the real issue and the force the shriek was packing would be more than enough to beat her all the way down there and push her under. Sandy attempting to use her newfound physical strength, from the fine grind, against the brood mother had put her in a dangerous spot. If Ares were in her position he would be pushed into the swamp and die a dog's death the second he collided with it... Sandy might last a few seconds at most but it's not like her fate would be any better once those seconds were up. This was going to end poorly.