Return to Earth (Open)

Shadow had been about to speak again, at least until Jack spoke before her. Almost immediately, she felt the temperature in the area drop. As she gasped, her breath turned to mist in the air. The demoness wrapped her cloak around her body, trying to keep in the heat so as not to weaken. She instinctively cast a shield of dark magic around herself as Jack started to attack the weaver. She felt a little more than slightly afraid, given that she had absolutely no idea what was going on.

The Weaver shook its head as it looked up, or at least turned the mask away from the hard ground which it had impacted. It was turning to observe its opponent, which it wouldn't have been able to see anyway, due to the fact that the cart was in the way. Instead, it caught sight of the shivering form of a fire demon. "Don't die, Shad," its voice twisted horribly on the note of her voice, contorting into the little girl's plaintive tones once more. It whisked it's own patchwork cloak from over its shoulders and forced it into the arms of the animate corpse, who had remained where she had fallen. With those same fluid motions, the aberration of a girl began to move towards Shadow, with the apparent intent of wrapping it around her chilled frame.

Meanwhile, the Weaver, exposed by lack of covering was revealed in its own hideous glory. Four human legs and four human arms were sutured together at different point to create limbs of varying size and length, all would be emaciated except for the wiry muscles which empowered them, the legs were the same. They were all connected, at proper points to an oddly shaped body. It was like that of a human, be twisted and malformed into sort of a hunched figure, so that although it should have been taller than Shadow, it was actually quite short. Strangeness surrounded the trunk of the body due to the fact that it looked rather like the body had been separated and slapped haphazardly upon the ends of a massive spool with thread wound all the way around it. Long greasy dreadlocks of hair hung down from behind that gruesome visage of the mask. The burning eyes were turned upon Shadow for but a moment, before the slapdash creature turned, almost folding out of itself. In two hands were clasped a giant pair of rusted scissors, and on of the hands held yet the great needle, threaded from about the things torso, the thread being fed out as necessary by on of the feet. It lept upon the top of the cart and vaulted forward, towards Jack.

In the same moment, the cart froze and the force of the leap shattered it into broken shards, like glass. But instead of falling, the shards hovered where they had broken and slowly turned to begin whipping through the air at the Weaver's unguarded rear. In the same icy breath, pointed lances of ice formed on Jack's palms which he directed towards his quarry from the fore, pressing him on both sides. The gangly creature was quick, however, launching the needle towards the houses on the roadside and pulling himself in as though it were a grappling hook. With inches to spare, it had evaded the assault, only to find the circles and Jack converging and then redirecting themselves all towards its form at the same time. The Weaver was left with the options of up or down or impalement. Then again... Those massive scissors made a a closing snap, and sheared straight through the bricks of the house. One, two more cuts and it blasted through. Jack's form, quickly turning into a blur of ice and light once again shot through after the beast.

Shadow who's gaze had been locked on the ground as she stood hunched over on herself in an attempt to keep warm amid the ice battle looked up as she felt something draping over her shoulders, warming her further against the chill. Glancing up to see the Weaver, she murmured her thanks, seemingly unfazed by his appearance. She had seen too many battle casualties and pieced together demons to show or feel such things. Her violet gaze swept over the ice-strewn battlefield.
"Jack! What are you doing?" She yelled out, her shield of black magic fading. The demoness shivered violently as she felt herself buffeted by a gust of ice cold wind, but steeled herself against it, her glare directed at the ice manipulator.

Perhaps he did not hear her, or he ignored her. Jack's attention was thoroughly driven at the target of his mad rage. The Weaver didn't really fight back. Jack's attacks forced the creature to dodge and dance about with their sweeping waves of destruction. Yet, somehow it always remained a step ahead of him, as they crashed through the walls separating two houses that stood together. Someone connected with a hit and a moment later, the Weaver was propelled out of the window, glass blasting out around him as it careened madly across the street, flailing through the air. It hit the sill of a window on the house opposite the one from which it had been ejected, catching itself with two legs and spinning so that the mask faced where Jack would undoubtedly be attacking from next.

But Jack didn't come flying out of the window. Instead, moments later, he very calmly walked out the front door. "Because I've got questions, Princess, questions that you won't answer, so I'll have to get my information from elsewhere, won't I?" The temperature of the air warmed surprisingly fast, a chill wind sucking down all the cold air into a space held within the palm of Jack's right hand. A swirling mass hung there, almost like a snow globe that has been shaken up into a fervor by a small child. "So, Weaver, what will it be? The name, or the girl's life?" he held out the chilled hand in Shadow's direction, the mass of frozen air roiling upon itself.
The Weaver seemed interested. "Why threaten the plaything?" its voice carried down from where it hung, supported by the majority of its limbs with the scissors and needle hanging from tangles of thread.
"The way you play with your food is disgusting," Jack sneered with disdain, "Tell me, how tasteful will she be if even her soul is frozen into a dead lump?" Once again the air began to grow chill, although the little mass in his hand had not expanded or released any of its pressure.
"What would you trade?" the Weaver glanced nonchalantly from Shadow to the overgrown icepop.
"Her life for a name." Jack's voice was hard, cold and brutal.
"What name?" the creature shifted like a giant cockroach where it sat. An odd note of interest had entered its voice.
"The one hovering above, hanging over the girl. I want to know his name," the grimace which pulled back Jack's features into a snarl was almost animalistic.
"Obviously," once more the head rotated so that the greasy locks fell earthward, the mask's freakish glare pasted upon Shadow, "Well, Shad? Your life worth a name?"

"You don't need to know his name, he has nothing to do with this!" Shadow spat. In the blink of an eye, the demoness had morphed into a black wolf, leaping towards Jack with her teeth bared in a fierce snarl. Both her hearts were pounding with adrenaline and the beginnings of rage. Her mind was fixed on attacking Jack until he begged for mercy. She felt that she had to protect Diaes, not to let these seemingly insane people know who he was in case anything that could harm him be let loose from this world. Diaes was willing to save her, and the fact that he had remained there, watching over the waters, proved that he was a friend.

"B****!" Jack's face sharpened down into a grimace as the force bound in his hand sprung forward, burning like a star with its glaring white light. As though it were a living thing, the blast coiled upon itself once, then twice, and then lunged at Shadow. The light became almost too brilliant to look at as it exploded against an opposing wall of energy that stopped it before it could hit the demoness. Dispersing across the field, it formed massive sheets of ice which froze the air itself solid before quickly melting and shattering to pieces in kind. The power thus circumvented the great burning wolf without ever touching her. "B******!" Jack spun to face the Weaver's permanently mocking smile. The creature cackled in response. With a growl, the sorcerer leaped into the air, hurtling himself towards the wolf which would attack him, careening until he was inverted, facing her. Infernal words passed his lips in a language that caused his skin to darken about his mouth, to the point where it no longer appeared simply frozen but dead. With the words came a hailstorm of needle-thin icicles. Swirling all about him, they flayed the molecules of the air into an icy still. His final words were the end of his dark spell, which held him there, waiting for Shadow in the midst of his icy torrent.

Shadow calmly morphed back into her humanoid self. She held her hands out to either side of her body, eyes closed as if she were beseeching a god. An unfelt wind seemed to play with her hair and lifted her a few feet from the ground. Black energy twined around her body, like vines up a tree. She spoke words in demonic, words that brought fire to her mind and soul. Heat began to radiate from her, melting the ice and warming the air. The black magic sparked in the air. Her eyes opened. Four glowing crimson eyes stared Jack. A sneer twisted the corners of her mouth.
“Ready to dance, Ice Sorcerer?”

The fierce wind ripping at his clothes, his hair, his very skin, peeling back with sulfurous blasts at the decayed skin, Jack squinted down his eyes against it, where he was suspended yet upside down in the air. His hard face cracked ever so slightly, revealing a bestial smile, ever so small as it may have been. Even as he was almost blown away, the demonic being of the frozen wastes wore an expression of exhilaration and power. "Let's," the word slipped through his teeth as a hiss. At the same moment, a gale of wind born as if from the deepest corners of the void, swept over Jack, blowing his already frosted hair so that it rattled as do icicles against the blizzard. The cinders flickering off of Shadow's magic were swept past him, burning and dying in the frightful cold which Jack's mystic power created.

The wind grew stronger and stronger, Jack squinted down his eyes against the blaze of the wind until they were almost closed. The wind now carried in it a myriad of frozen particles, and as Jack's eyes began to close, he began to vanish in the cloud, but just when he would have faded from view altogether a light like that of the morning star burned out from behind the obscuring flurry of snow and ice. The eyes, still nearly shut, burned with that white ferocity, so cold that it burned. The light flashed to an incredible intensity for but a moment, but in the next second, Jack was on the ground, his voice thrown into a deep and guttural undertone formed around ancient and god forsaken words. He swung his arms in the same way that a warrior swings a sword, and as he did so, the earth was rent, the cobbles of the street sent flying hither and thither. The displacement heralded massive thorns forged of the frozen ground shooting up beneath Shadow and all about.

Shadow lifted her chin, looking up to the sky. Her lips moved in demonic words, a ring of fire around where her feet would be had they been touching the ground keeping the ice at bay, turning it to steam. The demoness brought her hands together. As her palms touched, a thick column of magic erupting from her hands and heading towards Jack. A cruel grin twisted her face.