Swirly ROund 2: vs Blake

”Ciblet.”
The Kiperlander jumped as a wash of warm breath rolled down the back of her neck.  She whirled around, pulling her hood up, and stared at the bizarre creature.  She smiled brightly, then, and raised a hand in greeting.  “Oh, hello!  Who are you?”
The Medium cocked its head, characteristic sharky smile tugging at its lips.  “Cleops,” it answered drily.  “But I’m here to talk about you.”
“Are you a demon?” Ciblet asked, fingers straying to the edge of her hoodie, where she hid Jericho.
Cleops snickered.  “Kid.  You don’t even know what a demon is.”  It rose and walked around her, dog-like body brushing her like a cat.  “That’s where I come in.  Do you remember an opponent named ‘Blake’?”
Ciblet concentrated, her cracked eyes narrowed.  She smiled brightly.  “Oh, yeah!  I liked his poncho.”
“It was a very nice poncho,” Cleops agreed.  “See anything of interest up there?”
Ciblet craned her neck to look up the sheer canyon walls.  Silhouetted against the light there was a short, hooded figure with enormous ears and stubby scythe, a dot hovering in the air behind it.  “Oh- is that him?  Yeah, no one else on the island has ears that massive.”
“Looks like she’s your next opponent.”
“Oh… right, I g-  Wait, Blake’s a chick?!”
“You’re funny, Ciblet.”
Ciblet cocked her head, squinting.  “And she’s like… a zebra, right?”
“I believe she is supposed to be.  Anyway.  I have to leave before this gets rocky.  Violence isn’t my thing, you know?  But I have a little gift for you.  From Hiplute with love.”
“Who-”
The Medium squelched a paw into a slick of especially gooey mud and planted a perfect six-toed print on the middle of Ciblet’s face.  She squeaked in surprise and stumbled back, gingerly poking at the wet stamp with her fingers.
“Craaazy things are going down.  Make Kashi proud, my little princess.  We’re all watching, down in Hell.  We’re all rooting for you.”  She slunk off, down the canyon out of sight.
Ciblet continued to prod at her face when a peculiar, creeping sensation spread out under her eyes.  She blinked and pulled back, confused, and then the sand granules pivoted in place and dug into her pores.  She squealed like the pussy little gradeschooler she was and fell over backwards, scrabbling at her skin.

The zebra picked her way down the trail towards the bottom of the canyon.  A fanged, fat fly glared at her as she moved forward, chattering stupidly.  “Oh, Losca, this has been the best day!  I got that coupon and I made friends with all these crabs and stole clothes from that mean person and now I’m in a canyon.  I sure love canyons!  They’re the greatest ever.”
Losca scowled.  “Yes but focus.  I see someone down there.”
Blake glanced.  “Yeah, it’s Ciblet.  Little Kiperlander shade.  Nothing big.  We’ve met her before, remember?” She grinned to herself, remembering the inner tube.  The Mist was such a potent defense.
“Hey, keep it together,” Losca said, fanning his wings nervously.  “Never know who’s listening.”
Blake snorted, smiling brightly.  “You worry too much, silly boy.  I’m sure the massages are in this canyon!  It makes so much sense, you know?”

Ciblet was staring at the stripes on her fingers through pupils that had expanded to drive out the white of her eye, only the jagged cracks remaining, and what was more, through the six other eyeballs that had emerged around them.  Her ears flickered feverishy under her hood, listening to the breathy, slithering voices that seemed to crawl across the ground around her.
”You are dead.  You are a shade.  Sent to Hell.  Hell for so long.  So long.  So sad to be a shade.  Poor little Ciblet.  The Marlx and the Hellmother; they’re the ones behind it.  They’re malignant.  They have a greater plan.  All of Hell isn’t safe.  And this Island.  There is so much beneath the surface.  You know this.”</b> She made fists, head bursting from the new knowledge.  She knew it was all true, and it hurt, but somehow it was just facts to her.  She felt desensitized and numb, a vessel for information to pass through unjudged.  ”The Corrupter is drawing close.”</b>
She looked up sharply, and there, smiling stupidly, was the little zebra, her fly hovering beside her, and a gentle mist rolling around her, making the canyon walls wobble like heat waves.  The fly said, “She’s here to take your massage.  And she’s a dead soul.  You should totally actually reap this one.”  And the zebra smiled and said, “Oh, okay!”
Ciblet shivered.  She blinked, and the images were shifting- the zebra’s round face jutted out, her teeth large and horsey, her hood falling over eyes so that predatorily grin dominated her expression.  Her ears were cocked open and twitching, registering information.  The simple, stubby scythe had elongated into a cruel, ornate weapon.  
Ciblet listened to the voices in her head, listened to their Truth, and felt the blood drain from her face.
“That’s no mist….”
The walls where the vapors wrapped around them had taken on a crappy, tardy quality, inky and rudimentary, as if designed by an 8 year old.  They clashed with the smooth-as-graphite stone on either side, but the effect was creeping, filling the canyon.  Its artistic natural beauty was becoming corrupted.
”Roiling waves of lethal Retardation,”</b> Warned the Truth.  ”You have suffered them before.  If she wins, she shall move forth and claim more of the Islanders; she will leave her mark on the entire plane until there is not a drop of intelligence to be found.  She moves slowly, working towards the Masters.  She will use the island as her medium.  She will drain the world of all soberness, and make it like her: simple, basic, and utterly retarded.”</b>
Ciblet’s mouth was dry.  “Yes,” she whispered, her hands shaking as she continued to stare at the advancing demon.  ”You must stop her.”</b>  “How?”  ”You know the way.”</b>
And she did.  She was a displaced denizen of Hell.  She had the means to defend herself.  Ciblet held out a palm to the zebra, and shouted, her voice suddenly much deeper thans he remembered, “Corrupter, I defy you!”
Blake stopped.  A malicious smile curled up her face.  “Why, look, Losca.  I do believe that little one sees us as we are.”
The fly snorted.  “It makes no difference.  The Mist is irresistible.  Elbony shall overwhelm her soon enough.”
“All hail the rising world,” Blake said wryly.  She ran a cleft hoof over the tip of her scythe.  “Ebony Dragon is unsupressable.  We have nothing to fear.”  To those who watched without extra eyes, the stupid-looking poncho-wearer smiled stupidly and said, “Omigosh!  What happened to your face?”  She tried an approach appealing to the other girl’s child nature.  “Want to tell me about it over tea?”
”The tea will make you pregnant.</b>”
“Blake- Blake, stop!  Don’t come any closer!”  Ciblet backed up, synthetic heart thudding; the mist was lapping at her toes.
“You know my name?”  Blake gasped.  “You… Did the CRABS send you!?”
Losca facepalmed.
“I know what you are, you sin against art,” Ciblet growled, more courage in her voice than she felt.  She could feel a tingling her toes, and the edges were looking inky.  Her lowest eyes took in this development as she focused on Blake’s face, at her gleaming, grinning teeth.
“Oh really now!” Blake said cheerfully.  “Well.  What are you going to do about it?”
Ciblet pressed away from the mist, fighting off the irrational urge to make a stupid expression.  What was she going to do about it?  Her fingers touched the cool metal of Jericho under her hoodie.  No, this creature was too powerful; she’d probably just make Ciblet do some horrible retarded attempt at throwing it.  The voices, though…  
“You cannot be allowed to pervert this world,” Ciblet said, and again, she could feel her voice was different, as if something was speaking through her.  “I am of no consequence, Blake, but I know what you are, I know what you shall do.  And by the power of Life…” she could feel something, something powerful, growing on her heart, some authority she had never realized she possessed- “By the power of the Overlife,” she drew Jericho, but instead of growing into the spiked meteor it twisted out of hammerspace into a curling, curving scythe- “And by all the spoils of Hell,”   Her hands closed on the weapon’s shaft, and as she oushed herself off the wall she felt a final burst of power and blackness flooded each eye; she raised her weapon high: “I SHALL CAST YOU FROM THIS PLANE, AND PURGE THE WORLD OF YOUR ABOMINATION AGAINST INTEGRITY!”
Ciblet roared in an ancient, guttural language, and slammed the blade into the ground.  It split, a yawning chasm opening, and sharp, twisted, tapering spires thrust up from the ground, the sky darkening to a rusty hue over the canyon.  
On the topmost spiral of the Tower, two humanoids and a yellowish dog mummy sat on a precariously balanced sofa.  Master Fip pulled the binoculars from his eyes, his face awash with crazed glee.  “What did she just do?” He bawled at the dog.  
Cleops answered him with a silent, sharky grin, and lapped happily at its soup bowl.

Blake’s face was elongated, somewhere between crocodile and horse, her tail bushy under her tattered cloak.  She gripped her iron scythe and met the first strike of the possessed Kiperlander- Ciblet’s eyes were gaping wide and wrathful and her headhornphones had fallen out as real, tapering prongs grew in their place.  Scythe met scythe as All Hell Ciblet and True Essence Blake exchanged blows that sent shockwaves crumbling the canyon walls.  Blake laughed at the grim task, defending herself with powerful strikes and cleaving chunks out of the Island’s surface with ease.  Her mist whirled around them, trying to overpower Ciblet, who fought like a demon herself, hellbent, in multiple ways, on casting out this blemish against the integrity of the plane.  As if in tongues, from her mouth there poured a stream of prayers in Portuguese, which seemed to discontent the Corrupter, though she never weakened her attack.
With a colossal effort, Ciblet at last hooked her scythe into Blake’s poncho and swung her off her feet; she dangled off the blade and slashed over Ciblet’s head.  “KEEP SWEARING, LITTLE LOST SOUL!” she cackled.  “YOU THINK YOU CAN DEFEAT ME?  PATHETIC!  YOUR WEAPON AND YOUR WILL ARE NOT WORTHY OF MY ATTENTION!  LIE DOWN AND DIE FROM RETARDATION LIKE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO!”
Ciblet stared at her, pulse racing in fear at the truth behind her words, but her brows knit in fury and hatred, and she lifted her scythe high to scream to the heaves.
“LEADERS OF THE AFTERLIVES!  MARLX AND LAURENT AND THE CREATURES THAT SPIN THEMSELVES ALONG THE EDGES OF OUT PLANE, HEAR MY PLEA!”
Blake stilled, suddenly worried.  “What are you doing?”
“HEAR THE WORDS OF THIS DISCARDED SHADE!  I PRAY THEE, FOR THE LOVE AND SURVIVAL OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, ALL THAT IS EVIL, AND ALL THAT IS SIMPLY NOT FATALLY STUPID, HEED MY CALL AND SEND FORTH A CREATURE AS VILE AS THIS ONE, COME TO THE SURFACE AND END THIS SIN!”
“SHUT UP!” Blake screamed, flailing on the blade.  “SILENCE!  I WILL NOT END THIS WAY!  ELBONY SHALL RISE!”
The ground was beginning to shake under their feet, and an overwhelming feeling that something colossal was rushing towards them from below filled their minds.
”Now, Ciblet, now!</b>”
Ciblet pivoted on the spot and hurled Blake into the air, off her scythe, as the ground beneath her fell away and from it there exploded out the face of an enormous Bunchie, larger than a blue whale, propelled forward on a mighty, phallic neck.  The Bunchie threw wide its maw, round teeth the size of cattle glistening in the apocalyptic light, and bellowed to the heavens, uvula flopping in the gust of fowl breath that issued from deep within its gullet.  In the air above it Blake writhed and screamed, but for all her evil she could not fly, and her mist was cancelled out by the hideous apparition’s own perversions.  She fell, and as her body passed the lips it slammed its jaws shut with a mighty crack that still did not drown the wet squelch of meat and bones pulped between its molars.  A crimson wave of gore, disproportional and thick as sauce, fanned out from the mouth, spraying with a purpose, and the sticky, incarnadine blood rained over the length of the island.  With a final, primal cry, the Master Bunchie descended back into the Abyss that Lies Beneath the Lowest Reaches of Hell, and the glorious purpose that had empowered Ciblet ebbed away.
”Don’t seize now but the Masters are here.”
Ciblet turned slowly, and beheld the three figures, staring at her or at the scar where the earth had closed moments ago.
“It is done,” she said, her voice still powerful.  Fip and Kashi continued to stare at her, gore dripping off their hair.  And then Cleops cuffed her upside the head so hard her extra eyes fell out and she keeled over.




Ciblet woke up to someone prodding her in the forehead.  
She sat up, feeling stiff and bruised for some reason.  Jericho was lying on the ground.  There was a thin film of congealing brownish red over everything.
“What happened?” She asked vaguely.  Her head cleared a bit.  “Blake!  I-  did I lose the round?”
“I don’t know!” The stupid zebra exclaimed, sitting across from her, handing her her headhornphones.  “What did you call me?”
Ciblet blinked.  She got the impression something important had just gone right over her head.  “Blake,” she said again, installing the headphones.
“Blake?” Piped a fly lying on the top of her hood.  “But… that’s a horrible name!”
“I know.”  Ciblet wiped her gory face on her gory sleeve.  “Are you suuuure you’re a girl?”
Blake looked disturbed.  Hmm.   Maybe it was best not to get too technical with this one.
“I just woke up,” Blake said.  “There was this… rumbling of the earth and I felt aaaaaall empty inside, like a gutted fishy.  Or a crab after you eat it.”
“I see.”  Ciblet tried to think.   “But who won this round?  And why is there red stuff all over the island?”
“I don’t know.  You just woke up from a seizure or something,” Blake said brightly.  “I guess you did, because I don’t know why I’m on an Island.  Who are you?  Why do I have an extra pair of clothes?”
The fly glared at her.
“Well I guess you two can come with me,” Ciblet said.  “As long as none of us know what’s going on.”
They smiled like stupid little girls , pulled themselves up, and began to walk down the canyon.