(Hope you don't mind how much I took over your character, Garud.)

Another chunk of ice hit the dryad in the side, throwing her off balance ever-so-slightly and distracting her from another leap at the demon slayer.

"Don't be silly, Garud," Mauve said curtly. "It was no big deal. The whole point of the arena match was to try and beat the living daylights out of each other, and neither of us really even managed that." She turned her attention back to the dryad.

"Now, here's what we do..."


By now the dryad was more than a little annoyed at the constant interruptions. She had been enjoying herself up until the point where her prey had taken on this annoying sidekick. It wasn't like the little mage could actually harm her, but the dryad preferred to have her prey alone and defenseless. It was far more amusing that way.

Of course, there was a very simple way to fix this problem. The dryad bent her hand into a rake-like claw and leaped at the problem in question. The mage stumbled backwards in surprise and extended a hand, but the dryad wasn't worried about any spells she could cast.

The dryad was actually airborne and just feet away from the mage when she felt something wrap around her ankle. With a shriek, the dryad stopped mid-flight and jerked backwards before impacting heavily with the ground. She looked back-- Garud was tugging on one end of his sword-chucks with all his might while the other was wrapped around her foot. A series of cracks ran up the dryad's front and across her arms as a result of the impact.

"Watera!" commanded the mage, and the dryad was instantly drenched. Water seeped into the cracks. "Now!!"

Garud's magic swirled around the dryad, and her face instantly contorted in shock as the water expanded with the cold, breaking the cracks open even further. Something that could be likened to horror spread over the dryad's features as the lower half of her right arm split with a sickening crack.

The creature tried to stand, but the ice slowed her movements. Some of the water even acted as an adhesive, freezing the dryad to the porous ground like cement. She was trapped, and was slowy falling apart. A bone-chilling scream left her mouth and was slowly stifled as ice formed all the way down her throat. Then, there was silence.


"Dunno if she's dead," panted the mage, leaning heavily against a tree trunk. "But that'll at least... hold her for a while..."

Her eyes went from the dryadcicle to Garud, who was slowly becoming a living statue.

"Dammit," she cursed. "Still gotta find... a way to stop this. Ideas?"

The tree proved harder to burn/melt than thought, but there was some screaming from the Dryad, who suddenly found it a bit harder to get out. Pyros kept up the heat, and concentrated it to a smaller, hotter flame that was still large enough to cover the entire tree. This did entail getting closer, which Pyros found just as perilous if he had attempted to wrestle the thing to death like certain other people.

The Dryad could still lash out a free arm, and hack away at PYros, who did his best to remain in his position without letting go of the stream of heat. Pyros had to duck and swerve, and when none of that could aid him, he pulled out his sword with his free hand and parried. However, the flame weakened and Pyros had to get closer to keep up the heat neccesary.

The problem was is it was similar to performing open heart surgery while using one's other free hand to shoot six bullets in a bullseye 30 yards off.

"I am not fully free with my hands, but-dodge- may I ask, do any of you know Earth Magic? I'm fairly -CLANG- sure there's a magic spell that gives animation to lifeless rock..."

Tarrin curled up into a ball on the ground, The preasure of his stone affliction becoming too much to bear.
Pain was shooting through Tarrins body, The stone was squeesing around his heart now, Making it hard to pump blood around his body, It wouldn't be long before either his heart was itself was stone or crushed by his other organs as they turned to stone as well.

Darth skidded back into the room.

"Sorry. I left the water running. At my house. Where I live. Had to go turn it off, cause I don't want to run up the bill...'cuz I'm not...rich...oh bother."

When his voice dropped off, he'd taken stock of the situation. Well, the tattered remains of it. Basically, as farm as he could see, they were screwed. His mind was actively searching for a way to unscrew the situation when it was, unfortunately, interuppted by one of the beasties that had screwed up the situation first. Damn dryads, couldn't they see he was busy?

Rapidly, he returned to reality as a stone claw arced towards his face. His arm snapped up, intercepted it, then he jumped and booted the dryad away. Unfortunately, his arm...felt funny. He looked. Stone. With a wince, he grabbed his knife and flayed the stony part off before it could spread.

Fucking ow.

After a bit, the skin regrew. After a bit, the dryad was coming back. She threw another claw at Darth, who was at an impasse on how to stop her. He blocked the strike again and prepared himself to hurt himself again. His arm wasn't turning to stone. Why would it? It wasn't actually there. It was his ghost arm that had taken the strike. Darth moved her hand aside and punched the dryad right in the nose. Since his arm was a product of his mind, he could make it as hard as he had to. Verilly he did just that. However, since he now had a way to defend against the dryad, he had to think of a way to kill it.

After another quick sock to the enemy nose, he set about doing just that.

Syttulg felt his knees soften, and then his hands as well. The statue head slid off of his claws, and he dashed forwards. Slicing at the frozen Dryad, he slashed off half of its head.

"It helps if the culprit is dead." He panted, before collapsing to the ground.

"I need..." gasp "... a recharge." Gasp "Lightning, anybody?"

And with that, he fell unconscious.

"The arena... that's it! This gives me an idea. Remember when you burnt that tree, and the light created both light and darker shadows. Well, if you have a fire or light spell, you can create more shadow, enough for me to make more potions."


Garud looked down at his legs. They were completely made of stone. So was one of his arms. He still had one arm free, but it didn't really help much. His neck was starting to grey.

"Umm... I don't mind a bit of chatter here or there, but would it be too much to ask for a little spell to generate some shadow? I don't really want to put you out or anything. No hurry though."

Garud always made sure to be polite when asking for things. Even for a cure for petrification.

"You got it," Mauve said. She took off her cape and threw it up into the branches of a tree, then extended a hand and engulfed it in flames with a single word. The fabric caught fire and burned, casting long, flickering shadows dancing around the room.

"All yours."

Garud raised his one good arm, and the darkness swirled around him, culminating in one point. A vial appeared followed by it filling with a putrid smelling pitch black liquid. Success. The cape continued to burn, despite having no shadow now.

"We make a pretty good team, don't we?"

Garud prepared to douse himself with the acid, but it seems his arm would not respond. It seemed during his shadow creation, his arm had turned to stone. He felt really bad about it.

"Eh, I never thought I would be this dependant on someone until I got into a nursing home. Would you mind tipping the bottle. Pretty please?"

IC had taken on a dryad of his own. Every time it came at him, a block happened to stop the attack, but then when IC counterattacked, the damn thing always got away.

Then IC had a crazy idea. When the dryad went to hit him, IC reached out with his left hand. The claws sank into his palm, and IC squeezed his hand around the claws. The dryad ran away, but was suddenly jerked back. IC still had ahold of the claws, but not his hand was stone, so the dryad wasn't getting away. IC yanked the dryad in, and with his free hand swung the Wind Edge, smashing off the head of the dryad.

He would have to give his hand a minute to unstone itself, so he went off to help someone else.

Arhra watched as Inbred leapt into the fray and pursued the dryad that had been attacking her. "Uh, little help?" she called at his retreating back. Sunk up to her waist in the mouth the rubble beast had opened on it's back was not a good place to be. She secretly suspected the dryad had deliberately run off to distract Inbred.

As the stony jaws closed on her, Arhra discovered there was one advantage to being half petrified at least. It had numbed and hardened her flesh. What would have been very painful was merely painful as she felt rock shards press into her flesh. One arm flailed and grabbed at the vine-like cords of magic threading the thing together.

Tugging at it experimentally and feeling the energy being to flow out of it, Arhra's expression turned devillish, "Well Mr Rock, it seems I have found your weakness!" Grabbing at a conduit that seemed to be articulating the jaw, Arhra pulled energy through it into herself and forced the mouth back open. Merrily tearing the magical vines animating the thing out by the roots and withering them as she balanced precariously on its back, Arhra quickly had the upper hand. When too damaged to sustain itself, the remainder of the spell disispated and Arhra fell in an undignified fashion as the monster collapsed back into a pile of rubble.

Arhra dusted herself off and took the moment to triumphantly pose on top of the heap. She kicked a rock and watched it tumble down the pile, "Not so tough now you can't move, are you Mr Rock?"

Arhra then found herself stabbed from behind. She gasped and arched back, losing her balance and tumbling down the mound, sprawling in an ungianly heap at the bottom. With the alarming sensation of blood in her throat and numbness where she'd been stabbed, Arhra coughed and looked at her attacker.

It was the same dryad as before. Walking daintly down the pile of rubble towards Arhra, the dryad smiled. It was almost flesh now, a picture of long legged grace as it stepped lightly from rock to rock, the sun shining on its lovely form. Bark garments snugly hugged its green skin, still paler and greyer in areas not quite flesh. It combed back it's deep green, leafy hair with its flinty, blood stained claws, one of the few parts of it that were still completely stone, and traced along one of the branches woven into its hair like ornaments. Deep green eyes were lit with evil joy.

Arhra felt quite certain this should be going the other way. She was also of the opinion that she didn't get enough long eloquent descriptions of how kickass and beautiful she looked.

"I am beginning to not like you!" Arhra decided to inform the dryad. She had briefly considered seduction, but seeing how she had used it before in a remarkably similiar situation, she doubted lightning would strike twice. Instead she ran through a mental inventory of her abilities and considered her options. Her best bet was probably a Cunning Plan. She inhaled.

When the dryad reached Arhra's supine form, it found its intended prey more than it had bargained for. Arhra sprang into action, breathing a gout of fire at its face, and lunging, stabbing one hardened hand through it's torso. Arhra was mentally congratulating herself on how smart she'd been to hunt down a dragon and steal its fiery breath when she felt unexpected pain. The dryad's two claws stabbed into her chest, burying right up to the digits.

In emergency panic mode, Arhra did not stop to consider why the dryad was still alive after having a hole punched through it. Instead she focused on making it more dead, free hand lunging for it's throat. She slumped as she felt the leaden weight of stone flow into her, along with the life force of the dryad. Almost completely stone, she felt the dryad collapse, Arhra's drain being just enough to kill it along with the injuries inflicted upon it. With the dryad dead, Arhra tried to move and found she couldn't. Her thoughts moved sluggishly as she realised just how close she'd come.

A mental inventory revealed that she had accquired some new abilities from the dryad, including the ability to transfer petrification. How typical of Blue Magic-esque abilities to be learned the moment after they become useful.

Feeling the petrification slowly beginning to abate, Arhra wished it would hurry up. It was embarassing being frozen in this tableau with the dead dryad.

OOC: Well, let's finish the mopping up and then we can continue.

Syttulg looked around for anybody still in need of help, dashing forwards to slice at the Dryad's head once he found somebody.

Fenris lay on the battlefield, cradling his stump. He was practically in tears. Through blurry eyes, he saw what was left of his arm starting to turn to flesh. Fenris's eyes went wide. He knew by looking at the other half of the stony arm that his arm would start bleeding out the hole once it healed. Grabbing the stray arm, and locking it into place with the jagged fracture, he realized that his only hope was to find somebody, anybody, who could mend it.

"If anybody is not too busy, and would like to partake in saving my life, I need somebody to reattatch my arm over here!"

----
Elsewhere, the rubble monster that attacked Fenris had finished melting in its charge against Phoenix, and dissolved at the base of Rhiya,

Phoenix cackled as the angered rubble-monster that had attacked Fenris was slowly eaten apart by the cobalt-blue plasma flames cutting through his softer vines and harder rocks. It collapsed with what rock might call a pained moan. Phoenix called it poetic justice.

She was just about to raise her weapon, when her weapon was suddenly grabbed from behind. One of the Dryads must have been a professional Dragon-Climber also. Phoenix was mildly unpreturbed, but disliked being stoned regardless if it were the Dryad's doing, or the result of illegal drugs.

Yes. It was her Dryad from the very beginning, behind her now, and looking much more fleshy and angry than her origional opponent.

"Um. Hello." Phoenix said, fighting the fae as her hand was wrenched skyward, gun shaking toward the glass ceiling as the two fought to control the only weapon within several feet.

*Krack!* *Vssrrrsh!* Phoenix's revolver discharged, firing another plasma bolt high into the air overhead, augering into the glass ceiling before detonating and spraying tiny bits of it's payload all over the field.

"Grzzr'argh!" Phoenix yelled, swinging her right, and stoned arm in a less-than-graceful punch at the Dryad's face. Ironically, it connected. The Dryad staggered backwards and released Phoenix's gun.

"Not so tough now that you're not stone, eh?" Phoenix taunts, raising her pistol, and hoping the thing would run away. Honestly, firing at this range would be suicide. The Dryad stared at her.

Phoenix sighed, "This is what we in the business refer to as a "Mexican Standoff." Theoretically, the only way a Mexican Standoff can end is if we both agree to stop fighting and go home, or... *click* We blow each other's brains out. The in-"

The Dryad wasn't interested. She lunged at Phoenix's chest, whom awkwardly attempted to pistol-whip the fae in return. Both succeeded, though the Dryad had claws. It was something like a bad episode of "The Shores of Hell" on "Nightmare Mode". The claws dug deeply into Phoenix's abdomen, while her pistol clanked against the Dryad's head, snapping it sideways.

"Ugh, this is awkward..." Phoenix groaned. The Dryad grinned. "If only I had..."

*Kzzzrrrrrrzzzrrr*

The Dryad drew Phoenix's PC-5 Vibrokatana from behind her back.

"My sword..." she said meekly.

The vibrokatana rose up as the dryad prepared to finish off Pheonix. A whistling sound suddenly filled both Pheonix's and the Dryad's ears. When they turned to look, they saw the Wind Edge hurtling towards the Dryad. The Dryad took off, doing its best to avoid the attack. Unfortunatly, the Wind Edge still struck, though this time in the rear, sending the dryad spinning, and causing the blade to go wild.

The dryad got up and moved it, because now it saw IC charging it. Off it went into a nearby tree, but instead of IC following, he went and retrieved Pheonix's blade.

IC tossed the blade, letting it stick into the ground near Pheonix, and turned for his Wind Edge. Just as IC turned for the Wind Edge, the dryad was back for more. This time, the dryad slammed into IC, and sunk both claws into IC, one in the back and one in the chest. IC set both feet on the ground and shoved back, trying to get the dryad off of him.

The dryad accepted the deal to get off of him, and backed off. Just as it turned around to get away, it felt its back leg catch on something. IC then yanked back and spun around. He spun around three or four times, then had the dryad go overhead and slammed it into the ground. IC backed off then, taking a breather over his wounds and to retrieve his weapon.

Darth was engaged in a high speed fight with his own dryad. Thankfully, his ghost arm was warding off petrification, but he found himself at a bit of an impasse. He couldn't hurt the dryad, and it couldn't hurt him. Nevertheless, Darth found himself running backwards along the wall, with the dryad chasing him across it, swinging furiously at it.

Rock was a solid. Solids were hard to break. When did rock break? When a fissure was in it. As long as Darth could crack the bitch, he could kill her. But how? Rock. Hard. His weapons would break, his bombs did nothing, and shooting could create difficult ricochets. What could he hit the dryad with? Rock.

Darth snagged her hand at the next swing, then stopped running. The two of them began to fall back to the ground. Darth bent her arm so her own claw was at her neck, then flipped around behind her. When they landed on the ground, Darth was standing on the Dryad's back, and the Dryad had cracked her own throat. Badly.

When the two flipped up into fighting positions, the Dryad was shifting to a softer form to heal. Darth's katana whirled out of its sheath, and into a bitching backhand. It was a perfect imitation of Mace Windu in Episode II when he killed Jango Fett. It also had the same effect, popping the dryad's head off.

"My thanks to the man who taught me that. Samuel L. Jackson. The L stands for 'bad motherfucker.'"

Meanwhile, someplace else....

"WALT!"

It was raining. Sayid ran full speed through the sheets of rain spilling down in the jungle, chasing after Shannon who herself was chasing and calling after the young boy who, by all accounts, should be miles away at sea.

"WALT!!"

Sayid could hear the girl screaming in the distance, but the downpour obscured her from his vision. He could only see her shadow through the sheets of falling water before the gunshot rang out. As she turned around, he could see the blood streaming from the wound in her stomach, and he could only cry out her name as she slumped dead into his arms. Cradling her in the jungle, Sayid looked up weakly to see Ana-Lucía standing before him, the gun used to slay his lover still trained on them, a look of shock and confusion--

"Pe-chan?"

Pedro O'Sullivan swiveled his chair away from the flat-screen television mounted on his wall as the credits began to roll and responded to the digitized female voice that came from seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once. "Yes, Rei, what is it?"

"Sorry, Pe-chan. I hope I wasn't interrupting," the Relatively Empathic Interface program continued in its usual sweet tone, "but we've taken some interesting readings from the comet. I thought that, seeing as your show should be over, you might like to take a look at them."

"Of course, of course," nodded POS, "I'll be right down. I needed to stretch my legs, anyway."

The AI was pleased. "Great! We'll see you in the astrometrics lab shortly. Also, I thought you might like to be updated on the status of our friends."

"Friends?" Pedro asked confusedly as he rose from his chair and stretched a bit, "I don't seem to recall having any--oh, right, those guys! How are they holding up? Dead yet?"

"No, they're still alive. They've run into a bit of trouble at the moment, but they seem to be handling it just fine. Well, overall anyway..."

"Ah," POS sighed blandly as he swiftly exited his office, "I guess that's okay. Maybe later, then..."

(Sorry if this post sounds messed-up; I am so very very tired right now it isn't even funny.)

"Since you said please..." Mauve pried the bottle out of his hand and dumped its contents on his petrified arm. She had originally planned on saying no, and then threatening to put him and the other petrified folks in the NPF Arts and Crafts museum as statues. She wouldn't really: It was just a joke, for kicks. But seeing as how fate loved to watch her suffer, she figured that even joking about it would probably cause her nothing but problems in the next battle. Karma and all that.

"There. Now with any luck, neither of us will need any more mobility assistance until we enter nursing homes." She stopped, thinking. Then she shuddered. "Because honestly, the thought of me as any kind of nurse or caretaker frightens even me."

Irony was obviously alive and well in this cave, because at that moment Fenris called out frantically for-- you guessed it-- medical assistance. Mauve looked over towards the sound, and her eyes went wide.

"Uh oh," she said. "Don't mean to abandon you, Garud, but we've got a hobo in distress." Thus saying, she approached the freaked-out Fenris, first making sure that Garud was indeed recovering.

"Fenris!" Mauve said, kneeling down to look at his arm. "Holy cow, man, what happened to you?!" Not waiting for reply, Mauve dug into her pockets and pulled out whatever she could. Among the items removed was a blue scrunchie. Mauve used her knife to cut the fabric and removed the thick band of elastic inside. This she tied very tightly around Fenris' upper arm. It was meant to slow the flow of blood, but with a wound this size, she wasn't certain how well it would work.

Both halves of his arm were recovering from the curse, although one half was decidedly faster than the other. Fenris was frantically trying to keep both halves pressed together. If he kept them there, Mauve could heal the wound as soon as both halves were mostly flesh on their contact surfaces. Unfortunately, that meant that most of the nerves would be back online before she could start. He probably wasn't going to like that.

"Don't move," Mauve warned him.

White magic swirled around the wound a moment later, joining the fully-unpetrified part of Fenris with the lost part. The lower half of his arm was still in the process of converting stone to flesh, but at least he had one whole arm again.

Fenris swore he could have kissed the mage right then and there. He didn't. He just stammered out a "Th-thank you," and looked at his arm. It was whole. Whole.

'You handled that well,' the voice in his head said sarcastically.

'Why are you such an ass?' the other voice asked the first voice.

Fenris stood up and waited for the rest of the curse to flow away from him. He felt ashamed, really. He knew the first voice was right. Fenris had panicked. This was just the first trial in the first temple. If he couldn't survive this, how was he going to be any use later on?

"Really, I couldn't thank you enough, Mauve."

He stared at the ground and waited for what little was left of the battle around him to end.

Garud had regained movement, but his feet and arms were still stone. He stumbled over to his savior (what?) and Fenris.

"Mauve, you are an angel. An angel of pain maybe, but still an angel! I would hug you, but I fear that my stomach would get dirty if it ended up on the floor."

The demon slayer turned to Fenris and said,

"How's the arm buddy?"

((Mop-up Slice and Dice))

Phoenix slipped her gun back into her coat, and calmly gripped the hilt of her vibroblade with her still-functioning left arm. A smile broke across her face as the weapon hummed to life.

"Thanks IC." She said, and lept off of Rhiya's stoned form and headed toward the tree the Dryad had fled into. It would not escape so easily this time.

*Vwrrrrr...* "Come out, come out, little one." Phoenix cackled.

For seconds, nothing happened. Then the creature lunged. It was faster than it had been before, but far less stony. Phoenix's vibrokatana bit deeply into the creature's torso as it attempted to claw at her. Green flesh and "blood" sprayed everywhere as the vibrokatana whined like a stressed chainsaw.

*ScresccheeeVwrrBzzzrrr!*

Soon, the dryad was two smaller dryads, and Phoenix continued to dice the creature up into smaller pieces with her weapon while accusing with sundry obscenities it of cutting off her fingers and ruining her right arm. By the time she finished, she was covered in dryad-guts, but felt much better.

"That took a little more effort, but *I* feel it was worth it." she said while whistle-walking back toward the group.

I sighed, and got up. "Mes, you had better come back, cause I'm not carrying your ass all over." I said, picking up her body.

"Better, now. Thanks to Mauve. I dunno what we'd do without her," Fenris replied. "How about yourself?"

Darth came over and was chuckling. Not pridefully though. More in that "Oooh a butterfly" way. Nevertheless he chuckled, and even said "Dur." The source of Darth's amusement?

"You could've died, Fenris. Fenrissss...sssss....like a ssssnake...heh I'm so funny."

What Darth hadn't counted on was that his ghost arm was part of his mind. His mind was slowing down. Darth was going to be a bit stupid for a while.

"Thanks for that marvelous insight. I never could have figured it out myself," Fenris said curtly. He was already embarrassed enough at his lack of usefulness, he didn't need to be reminded.

Just then, a chunk of rock hit Darth on the back of his head, and if one looked at the direction it came from, one would see me, looking a little ticked at the remark. "Darth, just remember, I am a lamia. That means part snake, so watch the snake cracks, ok?" I said as I walked by them.

Stuck in battle with the Dryad, Premo had never been happier. He dodged, he slid, he parried, he fought like a madman convinced he was Samurai Jack. The two had barely landed a blow when he saw it. The dryad swung a clawed hand around to catch his face, a broadly telegraphed move, Premo twitched and brought his glowing sword around, barely having time to notice the claw coming up from below. The warrior howled... and all was silent.. They stood there, frozen, Premonitions with his sword at the dryads head.The dryad with her claw poised to strike his exposed belly. The leafy creature snarled "so.. what's it gonna be?" Prem spoke through strained teeth as his mind raced.. "I don't know, but it ain't gonna be me."

His breaths came ragged now, The stone was pressing against his lungs.

Tarrin gulped in air trying to keep his calm, Trying to figure how to get out of his predicament, Unfortunatly he failed at both of these areas, Panic set in and with that his already compressed heart tried to beat faster.

This ofcourse was a bad bad thing, Pressure built up more and more untill Tarrin sank into the darkness without sleep, His grip on reality fading like the last rays of sunlight giving way to the darkness of the night.

Moments later Tarrin awoke, the pressure lifting from his chest, His breath coming easer and more controlled, Looking down at his chest it started to take on more of its normal flesh like appearance, "Thank the spirits" He whispered it's fading.

Pyros wiped his brow. With a close proximity and a constant stream of concentrated flame, he'd torched the Petrified tree and the Dryad who had the base of her body inside it, until both were somewhat melted.

When it was visible that some of the more vulnerable parts were starting to liquefy on the outer shell, Pyros took that opportunity to let the flame down and hack at the warped creature's neck with precise fury, and within 5 vertical slashes, with the creature screeching with every blow, it's vile head was seperated from it's equally vile body.

The thing still lived however, due to it's own healing processes. The head's face contorted and began to grow a neck, and the remaining body spasmed as violently as it could as it was stuck in the slightly gelatinous premagma'd tree.

With a heavy left arm, he gave one more violent stab and plunged the sword down the base of the neck at an angle, and then gave his sword a quick fling to send the head off to the ground. With his light left hand, he wiped off the blade as well as he could, and then groped in his clothing for his softs.

There was a reason why he his hand was so heavy, for the dryad had managed to strike the midsection of his arm plus the base of his shoulder and they had begun to harden into stone. The spot on the base had grown as well, and now was starting to spread to his neck. Pyros knew that if the process were to completely transform his neck, he would die from lack of oxygen and blood to the head in a very short amount of time. It was the price one had to pay for a few blows to the arm instead of a safe, nigh instantaneous petrification.

Despite his mortal Peril, Pyros calmly rummaged past some antidotes and spare change in gold coins within his person, and drew out the two softs.

Pyros was fond of the more old fashioned ways of doing things, and didn't trust the sprays and lotions. What if he had been petrified in a strong gale, or in the rain? Instead, his softs were from the olden days, a liquified acid that was in a sharp, but thick needle that was stuck into the hardened flesh with precision, lest the affected body shatter.

With one hand, Pyros removed the wrapping and pinched the tip, squeezing out a small amount to allow for a safer penetration. Then, he stabbed it into his shoulder, near the neck. He aimed for saving his life first, then he'd deal with the arm. He could only hope he'd aimed the soft well, or else he'd soon be on the floor unconcious and dying.

(OOC: Fenris-- "Lack of usefulness?" You killed a dryad! There are those of us who couldn't even accomplish that!)

(Also-- I feel loved!)


"Oh, you'd probably live longer, fuller lives," Mauve answered cheerfully.

Now that the coast was relatively clear, Mauve took a look at the gashes in her arm left over from her fight with the dryad. They weren't incredibly deep, but they did hurt now that the stone curse had been completely removed. Mauve used a bit of white magic and they were gone without a trace. Well, aside from her left sleeve being somewhat shredded, that is.

"So is everyone okay?"

Syttulg managed to rise to consciousness just long enough to groan and then slipped back into sleep.

"So, is everyone okay?"

"More or less." Phoenix said, examining her right arm with much interest. It hadn't been horribly stoned, and the effect already appeared to be wearing off shortly after the dryad's chainsaw-massacre demise. Several of the severed fingers had begun to reconstruct themselves, and the other damage she had suffered was already healed.

"Sure could go for something to eat, though." she coughed, while cradling her revolver in her right arm and reloading it with her left. "Damn stone monsters."

(OOC: Mauve, once Fenris starts emo-ing, there is nothing anybody can do to stop it. XD)

Fenris let out a laugh. "Yeah, I'm fine now. Thanks to you. I don't know where this whole goddess of pain and death and whatever started, but they're all wrong. 'Cause you're awesome. With awesome." Fenris said with a grin.

He turned to PhoenixFlame, "And thank you too. I'd have been a goner if it wasn't for that weapon you took out Rocky with."

Darth was standing there. People could watch his brain begin to accelerate.

"An apple can be called one apple...one, two, three, four, five...One plus one is two...one times one is one...two squared is four...root two is an unreal number...one plus one is three for extremely large values of one. What is one? It is a means to quantify matter. To say you have exactly one apple would mean that you have exact perfect parameters for one apple. Parameters do not always apply because they beg the question is reality and matter always the same, or is it a constant state of flux that our senses find the average to report?"

Darth stopped and looked around.

"Yah. I'm good."