Post by Wyntre Cold on Sept 11, 2015 7:35:01 GMT
Why have I transformed? What have I transformed into? How is my energy so stable, so frequent? How can I easily handle such power when, before, I had trouble controlling less? Is this power, this beautiful and constant power contained within the reaches of order? If I had lost myself, would I be able to regulate it? It seems much power can be had through self-control. If only some would listen to the proof. Power comes from regulation. Regulation comes from self-control. There are some that ruin the universe for the others, those without the ability to control themselves. How could Zucceta, for example, even hope to successfully control a single planet if she cannot control herself? Such a fact, among many others, explain her evident inability to actually rule.
The Empress put on her Scouter and looked over the hellish landscape in front of her to review what she'd need to do. One of the three tasks had been completed. Thus, another two remain...
The completed task was regaining a body, a task which Paimon foolishly had made easy. The two remaining tasks involved the purchase of a gi and the destruction of the Demon 'Froghead'. Wyntre hadn't the slightest of clues as to the location of the latter, but she had prior decided the former would be finished last. That only left her to defeat 'Froghead', a demon that she assumed had the 'head' of a 'frog', or perhaps he simply was a frog with demonic powers. Either way, it probably wasn't an ordinary frog, or Beelzebub wouldn't get her to defeat it, right?
She hadn't any idea where to look and there certainly weren't any giant flashing neon signs pointing at it. Although, at closer inspection, this sticky trail of green slime may as well spell out 'the Demon Froghead is in this direction' with bold, size 68 font size, comic sans MS font. Either that or it was the Demon Snailhead instead.
Retrieving an unexplained test tube from a pocket, a test tube that she seemingly had no reason to have, she scooped down and attained some semi-solid, green, putrid, jelly-like liquid as she began a full analysis with the scouter she almost forgot she had with her. It was strange to have a physical object like a scouter in a place like hell.
"Unidentified material. Comparing with material records. Beginning scan. 24%. 77%. 98%. Scan complete. Analysis complete. Molecular relations match. Matched with anuran active peptide skin secretions. 99.3% match."
Or, as it is more commonly known, that slimy goo sometimes found on frogs. Yes, this was a certain match. This was most definitely from the 'Demon Froghead' she was supposed to slay.
Looking around her to try to see a larger picture, she flew up and looked below to see something she had not expected to see. That goo? It formed a four-toed frog-like footprint fifty meters across, covered in a thin layer of green goo with a toilet-like scent. It was rancid, miasmatically fetid! But now, she had a giant demon frog to find and defeat. It shouldn't be too hard to find, considering a single non-webbed footprint was fifty meters wide. The total frog would have to be at least a hundred meters wide, and that is the smallest possible length that it could possibly be, unless there was some ridiculous limb to torso ratio. At that size, it would be very hard to miss, unless it had some large area to rest and hide. Defeating it would be harder, however. Given its size, Wyntre could only picture how strong it could be. Strong, perhaps, but also slow.
To try to find this great beast, she flew up even higher, up until a strange yellow group of clouds blocked the way, preventing her from moving up any higher. She recognized them from the Check-In Station, so she figured they divided the realms and prevented unauthorized beings from traveling in between them. With this in mind, she incorrectly came to the conclusion that above her was the Check-In Station, when rather it was complete nothingness.
Looking down again from this great height, only meters away from the yellow clouds, what she could was clear. Slimy, icky green slime blobs fifty meters wide covered the ground in a way you might expect from a lumbering quadrupedal. That was, until the trail simply stopped. It must have jumped.
"Background analysis complete. Print recognition invalid. Damage to ground insufficient to be caused by a jump. Modus Tollens. There was no jump."
Why, modern technology is quite useful. If there indeed was no jump, where could the Demon Froghead possibly have went? It could have teleported, sure, but how, through an evolutionary frame of mind, would a giant demon frog evolve teleportation? He could not have been taught such a thing, for that would require too much brain power, all of which it'd need not dying, making exact leg movements and, in general, avoiding the strain of the square cube law. There were possibilities left.
"Sonar and Thermal positioning systems are not aligning with Visual positioning systems. Identifying breach of misalignment... Identification Scan complete. Breach found. Formatting. Visualizing."
In front of Wyntre's face, the Scouter's realistic hologram covered the 'breach', making it look like it was actually in front of her... Or perhaps it might to someone without depth perception. There was, visualized, a large lump on the ground made through sonar data and thermal data. That large lump, however, had a recognizable frame. It had shape. In fact, it very closely resembled the frame of, wait for it, a sleeping frog.
She had an invisible demonic frog, hundreds of meters wide to deal with. You couldn't say this was going to be a simple procedure without lying. She thought it was interesting how the ground beneath it appeared normal, but surely was actually very gooey. How was she going to kill it, anyway? She didn't even know if it was sentient. This could be a ground-breaking discovery in biology for all she knew! She decided she'd gather samples from the corpse and have the iScouter collect molecular data. For now, however, that was a different matter. Collecting purple ki energy in both hands, she began to charge a simplistic version of her new signature technique. With a thrust of both hands, the balls of ki combined into a thick beam of purple heading towards where the scouter said the frog was.
It hit, but the effects weren't expected. All of the ki energy just dissipated in the thick shield layer of goo, temporarily making the sickening green jelly-like substance visible for naught but a few seconds. The creature, if you had not figured it out as of yet, had a defense against her attacks. Why, I think I'll give it a scientific name. 'Anura Corporosus' will do for now. That's a nice double entendre: 'corporosus' could mean 'large', but it could also mean 'gross'.
Wyntre thought it was strange, how Beelzebub told her to squash this thing. It was many times her size, many more times larger than her foot, and yet she was supposed to squash it underfoot? It must be for irony's sake.
She had an idea, even though it was a risky one. The risk wasn't what bothered her, though, oh no. It was the idea and what it meant. Her idea was such: go in through the creature's mouth, find a weak point in the stomach's structure and kill the creature from the inside. While, normally, she would mentally shoot down the idea immediately, something had recently come up, something of interest. A technique she had learnt, her three degrees of shielding. The weakest of these would probably do, sure, but Wyntre was, as you know, an Empress. The high standards she was used to made her mysophobic. Despite this, she was also the creator of posthumous good and was a great heroine of Arcose so she was not going to cower! And thus, she activated her most powerful shield, the Fimbulvetr. Just in case. A strong, solid mental purple shield encased her with safety.
Having a look through the scouter, she saw where the mouth was, or at least where it would be on most frogs. Hoping the creature's mouth wasn't located elsewhere, she descended to the head region and saw only multiple layers of sharp teeth taking up most of the space. There were so many teeth, in fact, that you could make a few hundred pianos by using the teeth as keys.
The iScouter's thermal visualization technique was beginning to annoy Wyntre. It painted the creature in color, dependent on the creature's temperature. This didn't help much, but it was made better by the sonar visualization technique, which added lines to create a third dimension. It was definitely worth the constant beeping it did. It would be very annoying if she had no access to her scouter, that would mean she'd be going inside a creature she wouldn't be able to see.
And so she began to fly in, avoiding the numerous sharp teeth the sonar visualizer picked up as she headed straight for where she hoped the oesophagus was located. With a little amount of scouter help, she got passed the teeth.
"Strange liquid preventing sound waves from moving back to scouter. Echolocation systems encountering difficulties."
Oh dear, that was one of the last things she wanted to hear. It seems the unique absorbent texture of the jelly-like substance did a very good job of trapping noise, very much like it did ki. Nutrients too, probably. Well, at least I'm safe in my shield. I just have to stay calm and orderly, for without self-control the Fimbulvetr will festinatingly dissipate. I must say, this creature has an internal organ structure unlike any frog's, or any known creature's for that matter. I wonder if this creature had even evolved at all, it may have been created by some summoning demon. However, alas, since this liquid is preventing the echolocational abilities of the scouter, I would have to do without.
It was a good thing she had her shield around her, defending her from the putrid, viscous, sickly, possibly corrosive substance. If she wasn't using the scouter's thermal abilities, there would be absolutely no clue as to where she was, plus her shield would be as clean as something very clean. With the thermal visualization overlapping with the light-based visualization, she saw splatches and splodges of thermal displacements across her translucent purple shield. However, if she were to disable light-based visuals, she would see the goop (a red, as that signifies heat), but not her own shield as that had no temperature as, technically, it did not exist physically in our sense of the word.
Wyntre eeked in revolted disgust as the 'pipe' she was going through, too dissimilar to any earthian organ to be named similarly, shook ferociously as a large amount of gas blew through, pushing against her shield unexpectedly. Exhalation. However, when one breaths out and when death is not an option, one must, too, breath back in.
And then it did. Hurricanes of oxygen came down the very same tube with a large amount of that goo, but Wyntre would not budge. Yes, the thermal visualization of the goo practically covered half of her shield, limiting her visibility in the process, but she decided not many minutes beforehand that she was going to be fine. And thus she was. Hurrying up, as to avoid another round of breathing, she thanked whatever gods that be (something she was very unsure of) for this creature's largely delayed breaths.
After gradually moving along the fleshy pipe and trying to ignore the scaly red flesh, beating in accordance with the heart with just the right tempo to maximize nauseation, she came across an organ that vaguely resembled every internal organ except the brain, the lungs and the heart. It resembled all of these, yes, but it also shared their functions. It was shaped like a large balloon made out of flesh with some sort of bubblingly-corrosive version of the goo we're used to, or at least that was what Wyntre could tell with her limited visuals. This would not do, she decided, for the walls were protected by the substance much hated.
Noticing how different parts of muscle moved and twitched at different speeds in relation with their distance to the heart, the Empress got a general idea as to where the heart was. The problem was getting there.
That was when she saw something in the corner of her eye and she got an idea immediately. It was a vein with only a small amount of flesh in between the blood inside and the stomach liquids. If having corrosive material being brought to the heart while damaging everything on the way doesn't kill the creature, I certainly will.
She grabbed for the Arcosia (her sword) from its hilt, somewhat surprised that she actually had it with her. She held it up and observed its welcome, flawless marble-white blade, so sharp that titanium is cut through like a hot katana through butter. Upon the hilt was positioned a translucent semi-reflective piece of amethyst. Holding up her thought-form-controlled weapon, she plunged it within and carved a circular shape large enough to fit the Fimbulvetr. Expectedly, a large gush of blood splashed across her shield and into the composite organ as the strange liquid got into the vein and was pushed through.
There was a scared squall. There was a ferocious croak. There was a terrific shake. The beast had been awakened. The first thing noticed by the Arcosian was how, with a flash, everything had become very visible as the thermal visuals shut off. With frightening ease, Wyntre could see the disgustingness of the composite organ. With frightening ease, she could see gushing blood covering her shield... And yet she pushed on. She flew into the bloodstream, making sure to not let any form of haemophobia make her lose her composure and therefore her shield. That would not be a mirthful day.
Another quake came, a rushed tremor. The demon was rising with tremendous girth and gargantuan strength: adrenaline rushed through the demon's mind, caused by internal bleeding and damage to vein walls. If it were a human, it would be screaming out in pain.
Wyntre could not see where she was- what she could see, however, was what seemed to be an ocean of flowing red blood with a few demonic tinged of other colors. This 'ocean of blood', the one that was fitting in this vein that seemed more like a small underground river mixed with one of those slide attractions at an amusement park, had a radius of two and a bit meters.
After a while, the Empress was getting were she needed to be as she noticed the blood was becoming noticeably more blue due to the oxygen in the haemoglobin being used on the surrounding body. The more blue it was, the more it was in need of 'refueling'. The more it was in need of 'refueling', the closer they have been from the heart. Considering the creature is using up a lot of adrenaline, that is speeding up the blood simply to deal with a supposed threat. Ahh, here we are.
It certainly was a strange heart, built in a unique way to suit the massive creature. It seemed to have two main chambers, separated with a strange net-like filter that appeared to be dirty. This filter was easy to spot, considering the rest of the heart was translucent. The Arcosian held her sword in her hands, focusing her thought-form, her tulpa, to make the blade sharper and longer. Along the way, her scouter had gathered multiple molecular samples, so there was no fear that the biological tissues would be lost to sentient life forever. 3... 2... 1...
With a channeling of ki, the primary artery, the one leading out of the heart, was no more. This was initiated with a flash, she couldn't even be seen moving. Wait for it. Almost as if on queue, blood came spurting out of the blood: enough of it to fill a river with enough speed to trump a firefighter's hose. You're feeling fine, there is no blood, everything is fine. Thereisnobloodthereisnobloodthereisnobloodthereisnoblood.
There was a quake. There was a roar. There was a cry. There was a crash, it seems, as the body began to go to desperate measures, none of which successful, to survive. With the size of the creature in mind, I'll give the creature an estimated maximum of a minute to live.
Now that the creature lay on the ground with no hope of survival, unforeseen consequences came to light. Namely, how was she going to get out of the heart of a demon frog? One idea came to mind.
Oh Universe, why do you hate me so?
The blood-drenched Empress cursed the blasted realm she was condemned to. She cursed the giant invisible demon frogs across it and she cursed how full of liquid they were. She cursed herself for not having enough self-control to not squeal out in reaction of the blood, guts and gore of being inside an exploding demon frog. Her mental shields were, after all, directly linked to her self-control: she must be calm if she wanted to use her shields.
Wyntre levitated, only meters over a large chunk of frog-flesh. She'd need ten thousand consecutive hot showers after this. With a powerful burst of ki, a purple aura formed around her in the form of a kiai, the sheer power blowing back the blood and generally removing it from the area, effectively cleaning her completely of any physical taint.
"I assume you think you've just killed Froghead."
Wyntre didn't turn. From where the voice sounded like it came from, it was assumed that the source of the speech was grounded. Who is this?
"Haven't I?"
"No. Rather, you had just killed the Demon Toadhead. I am Froghead, surely you are after me instead."
Turning to see the supposed 'real' Froghead, Wyntre was not too surprised to find a green humanoid with multiple frog-like qualities: the skin appeared moist, he had four large fingers and unusually large eyes. He wore some form of silver chainmail and a helmet you might expect from a knight who wasn't trying very hard. Oh, and he was only a meter tall.
"Why do you announce your identity when you know I am after you?"
"Because, I'll have you know, I appear only to those that ingest the blood of a demon toad. Like you."
I... ingested... blood? This is why I need a psychiatrist. Wyntre was half-tempted to pull out her tongue and destroy it. What she needed was to clear out the blood and a good wine. She didn't move, the only visible movement at all was the occasional nose twitch. She was screaming on the inside. A toad? A filthy hell toad? Its blood in my mouth, it's down my throat! Such a horrible creature with such sickly blood!
"You had two cups-worth of the stuff, says here."
It seems the nose twitch moved over to her right eyelid. Silence, maddening silence. And then was movement. Within mere moments, the Empress released a mighty kiai as a giant aura of red, purple and white surrounded her, the ground beneath quaking, collapsing and breaking up like shattered glass! The froghead fell in one such cracks, an abyss leading to fire, due to his ironic lack of frog-like jumping. Eventually, her disgusted rage subsided as the cracks mended themselves, sealing up the ground. Two tasks of three completed, therefore only one remained.
The Empress put on her Scouter and looked over the hellish landscape in front of her to review what she'd need to do. One of the three tasks had been completed. Thus, another two remain...
The completed task was regaining a body, a task which Paimon foolishly had made easy. The two remaining tasks involved the purchase of a gi and the destruction of the Demon 'Froghead'. Wyntre hadn't the slightest of clues as to the location of the latter, but she had prior decided the former would be finished last. That only left her to defeat 'Froghead', a demon that she assumed had the 'head' of a 'frog', or perhaps he simply was a frog with demonic powers. Either way, it probably wasn't an ordinary frog, or Beelzebub wouldn't get her to defeat it, right?
She hadn't any idea where to look and there certainly weren't any giant flashing neon signs pointing at it. Although, at closer inspection, this sticky trail of green slime may as well spell out 'the Demon Froghead is in this direction' with bold, size 68 font size, comic sans MS font. Either that or it was the Demon Snailhead instead.
Retrieving an unexplained test tube from a pocket, a test tube that she seemingly had no reason to have, she scooped down and attained some semi-solid, green, putrid, jelly-like liquid as she began a full analysis with the scouter she almost forgot she had with her. It was strange to have a physical object like a scouter in a place like hell.
"Unidentified material. Comparing with material records. Beginning scan. 24%. 77%. 98%. Scan complete. Analysis complete. Molecular relations match. Matched with anuran active peptide skin secretions. 99.3% match."
Or, as it is more commonly known, that slimy goo sometimes found on frogs. Yes, this was a certain match. This was most definitely from the 'Demon Froghead' she was supposed to slay.
Looking around her to try to see a larger picture, she flew up and looked below to see something she had not expected to see. That goo? It formed a four-toed frog-like footprint fifty meters across, covered in a thin layer of green goo with a toilet-like scent. It was rancid, miasmatically fetid! But now, she had a giant demon frog to find and defeat. It shouldn't be too hard to find, considering a single non-webbed footprint was fifty meters wide. The total frog would have to be at least a hundred meters wide, and that is the smallest possible length that it could possibly be, unless there was some ridiculous limb to torso ratio. At that size, it would be very hard to miss, unless it had some large area to rest and hide. Defeating it would be harder, however. Given its size, Wyntre could only picture how strong it could be. Strong, perhaps, but also slow.
To try to find this great beast, she flew up even higher, up until a strange yellow group of clouds blocked the way, preventing her from moving up any higher. She recognized them from the Check-In Station, so she figured they divided the realms and prevented unauthorized beings from traveling in between them. With this in mind, she incorrectly came to the conclusion that above her was the Check-In Station, when rather it was complete nothingness.
Looking down again from this great height, only meters away from the yellow clouds, what she could was clear. Slimy, icky green slime blobs fifty meters wide covered the ground in a way you might expect from a lumbering quadrupedal. That was, until the trail simply stopped. It must have jumped.
"Background analysis complete. Print recognition invalid. Damage to ground insufficient to be caused by a jump. Modus Tollens. There was no jump."
Why, modern technology is quite useful. If there indeed was no jump, where could the Demon Froghead possibly have went? It could have teleported, sure, but how, through an evolutionary frame of mind, would a giant demon frog evolve teleportation? He could not have been taught such a thing, for that would require too much brain power, all of which it'd need not dying, making exact leg movements and, in general, avoiding the strain of the square cube law. There were possibilities left.
"Sonar and Thermal positioning systems are not aligning with Visual positioning systems. Identifying breach of misalignment... Identification Scan complete. Breach found. Formatting. Visualizing."
In front of Wyntre's face, the Scouter's realistic hologram covered the 'breach', making it look like it was actually in front of her... Or perhaps it might to someone without depth perception. There was, visualized, a large lump on the ground made through sonar data and thermal data. That large lump, however, had a recognizable frame. It had shape. In fact, it very closely resembled the frame of, wait for it, a sleeping frog.
She had an invisible demonic frog, hundreds of meters wide to deal with. You couldn't say this was going to be a simple procedure without lying. She thought it was interesting how the ground beneath it appeared normal, but surely was actually very gooey. How was she going to kill it, anyway? She didn't even know if it was sentient. This could be a ground-breaking discovery in biology for all she knew! She decided she'd gather samples from the corpse and have the iScouter collect molecular data. For now, however, that was a different matter. Collecting purple ki energy in both hands, she began to charge a simplistic version of her new signature technique. With a thrust of both hands, the balls of ki combined into a thick beam of purple heading towards where the scouter said the frog was.
It hit, but the effects weren't expected. All of the ki energy just dissipated in the thick shield layer of goo, temporarily making the sickening green jelly-like substance visible for naught but a few seconds. The creature, if you had not figured it out as of yet, had a defense against her attacks. Why, I think I'll give it a scientific name. 'Anura Corporosus' will do for now. That's a nice double entendre: 'corporosus' could mean 'large', but it could also mean 'gross'.
Wyntre thought it was strange, how Beelzebub told her to squash this thing. It was many times her size, many more times larger than her foot, and yet she was supposed to squash it underfoot? It must be for irony's sake.
She had an idea, even though it was a risky one. The risk wasn't what bothered her, though, oh no. It was the idea and what it meant. Her idea was such: go in through the creature's mouth, find a weak point in the stomach's structure and kill the creature from the inside. While, normally, she would mentally shoot down the idea immediately, something had recently come up, something of interest. A technique she had learnt, her three degrees of shielding. The weakest of these would probably do, sure, but Wyntre was, as you know, an Empress. The high standards she was used to made her mysophobic. Despite this, she was also the creator of posthumous good and was a great heroine of Arcose so she was not going to cower! And thus, she activated her most powerful shield, the Fimbulvetr. Just in case. A strong, solid mental purple shield encased her with safety.
Having a look through the scouter, she saw where the mouth was, or at least where it would be on most frogs. Hoping the creature's mouth wasn't located elsewhere, she descended to the head region and saw only multiple layers of sharp teeth taking up most of the space. There were so many teeth, in fact, that you could make a few hundred pianos by using the teeth as keys.
The iScouter's thermal visualization technique was beginning to annoy Wyntre. It painted the creature in color, dependent on the creature's temperature. This didn't help much, but it was made better by the sonar visualization technique, which added lines to create a third dimension. It was definitely worth the constant beeping it did. It would be very annoying if she had no access to her scouter, that would mean she'd be going inside a creature she wouldn't be able to see.
And so she began to fly in, avoiding the numerous sharp teeth the sonar visualizer picked up as she headed straight for where she hoped the oesophagus was located. With a little amount of scouter help, she got passed the teeth.
"Strange liquid preventing sound waves from moving back to scouter. Echolocation systems encountering difficulties."
Oh dear, that was one of the last things she wanted to hear. It seems the unique absorbent texture of the jelly-like substance did a very good job of trapping noise, very much like it did ki. Nutrients too, probably. Well, at least I'm safe in my shield. I just have to stay calm and orderly, for without self-control the Fimbulvetr will festinatingly dissipate. I must say, this creature has an internal organ structure unlike any frog's, or any known creature's for that matter. I wonder if this creature had even evolved at all, it may have been created by some summoning demon. However, alas, since this liquid is preventing the echolocational abilities of the scouter, I would have to do without.
It was a good thing she had her shield around her, defending her from the putrid, viscous, sickly, possibly corrosive substance. If she wasn't using the scouter's thermal abilities, there would be absolutely no clue as to where she was, plus her shield would be as clean as something very clean. With the thermal visualization overlapping with the light-based visualization, she saw splatches and splodges of thermal displacements across her translucent purple shield. However, if she were to disable light-based visuals, she would see the goop (a red, as that signifies heat), but not her own shield as that had no temperature as, technically, it did not exist physically in our sense of the word.
Wyntre eeked in revolted disgust as the 'pipe' she was going through, too dissimilar to any earthian organ to be named similarly, shook ferociously as a large amount of gas blew through, pushing against her shield unexpectedly. Exhalation. However, when one breaths out and when death is not an option, one must, too, breath back in.
And then it did. Hurricanes of oxygen came down the very same tube with a large amount of that goo, but Wyntre would not budge. Yes, the thermal visualization of the goo practically covered half of her shield, limiting her visibility in the process, but she decided not many minutes beforehand that she was going to be fine. And thus she was. Hurrying up, as to avoid another round of breathing, she thanked whatever gods that be (something she was very unsure of) for this creature's largely delayed breaths.
After gradually moving along the fleshy pipe and trying to ignore the scaly red flesh, beating in accordance with the heart with just the right tempo to maximize nauseation, she came across an organ that vaguely resembled every internal organ except the brain, the lungs and the heart. It resembled all of these, yes, but it also shared their functions. It was shaped like a large balloon made out of flesh with some sort of bubblingly-corrosive version of the goo we're used to, or at least that was what Wyntre could tell with her limited visuals. This would not do, she decided, for the walls were protected by the substance much hated.
Noticing how different parts of muscle moved and twitched at different speeds in relation with their distance to the heart, the Empress got a general idea as to where the heart was. The problem was getting there.
That was when she saw something in the corner of her eye and she got an idea immediately. It was a vein with only a small amount of flesh in between the blood inside and the stomach liquids. If having corrosive material being brought to the heart while damaging everything on the way doesn't kill the creature, I certainly will.
She grabbed for the Arcosia (her sword) from its hilt, somewhat surprised that she actually had it with her. She held it up and observed its welcome, flawless marble-white blade, so sharp that titanium is cut through like a hot katana through butter. Upon the hilt was positioned a translucent semi-reflective piece of amethyst. Holding up her thought-form-controlled weapon, she plunged it within and carved a circular shape large enough to fit the Fimbulvetr. Expectedly, a large gush of blood splashed across her shield and into the composite organ as the strange liquid got into the vein and was pushed through.
There was a scared squall. There was a ferocious croak. There was a terrific shake. The beast had been awakened. The first thing noticed by the Arcosian was how, with a flash, everything had become very visible as the thermal visuals shut off. With frightening ease, Wyntre could see the disgustingness of the composite organ. With frightening ease, she could see gushing blood covering her shield... And yet she pushed on. She flew into the bloodstream, making sure to not let any form of haemophobia make her lose her composure and therefore her shield. That would not be a mirthful day.
Another quake came, a rushed tremor. The demon was rising with tremendous girth and gargantuan strength: adrenaline rushed through the demon's mind, caused by internal bleeding and damage to vein walls. If it were a human, it would be screaming out in pain.
Wyntre could not see where she was- what she could see, however, was what seemed to be an ocean of flowing red blood with a few demonic tinged of other colors. This 'ocean of blood', the one that was fitting in this vein that seemed more like a small underground river mixed with one of those slide attractions at an amusement park, had a radius of two and a bit meters.
After a while, the Empress was getting were she needed to be as she noticed the blood was becoming noticeably more blue due to the oxygen in the haemoglobin being used on the surrounding body. The more blue it was, the more it was in need of 'refueling'. The more it was in need of 'refueling', the closer they have been from the heart. Considering the creature is using up a lot of adrenaline, that is speeding up the blood simply to deal with a supposed threat. Ahh, here we are.
It certainly was a strange heart, built in a unique way to suit the massive creature. It seemed to have two main chambers, separated with a strange net-like filter that appeared to be dirty. This filter was easy to spot, considering the rest of the heart was translucent. The Arcosian held her sword in her hands, focusing her thought-form, her tulpa, to make the blade sharper and longer. Along the way, her scouter had gathered multiple molecular samples, so there was no fear that the biological tissues would be lost to sentient life forever. 3... 2... 1...
With a channeling of ki, the primary artery, the one leading out of the heart, was no more. This was initiated with a flash, she couldn't even be seen moving. Wait for it. Almost as if on queue, blood came spurting out of the blood: enough of it to fill a river with enough speed to trump a firefighter's hose. You're feeling fine, there is no blood, everything is fine. Thereisnobloodthereisnobloodthereisnobloodthereisnoblood.
There was a quake. There was a roar. There was a cry. There was a crash, it seems, as the body began to go to desperate measures, none of which successful, to survive. With the size of the creature in mind, I'll give the creature an estimated maximum of a minute to live.
Now that the creature lay on the ground with no hope of survival, unforeseen consequences came to light. Namely, how was she going to get out of the heart of a demon frog? One idea came to mind.
"Super Themis Wave!"
Oh Universe, why do you hate me so?
The blood-drenched Empress cursed the blasted realm she was condemned to. She cursed the giant invisible demon frogs across it and she cursed how full of liquid they were. She cursed herself for not having enough self-control to not squeal out in reaction of the blood, guts and gore of being inside an exploding demon frog. Her mental shields were, after all, directly linked to her self-control: she must be calm if she wanted to use her shields.
Wyntre levitated, only meters over a large chunk of frog-flesh. She'd need ten thousand consecutive hot showers after this. With a powerful burst of ki, a purple aura formed around her in the form of a kiai, the sheer power blowing back the blood and generally removing it from the area, effectively cleaning her completely of any physical taint.
"I assume you think you've just killed Froghead."
Wyntre didn't turn. From where the voice sounded like it came from, it was assumed that the source of the speech was grounded. Who is this?
"Haven't I?"
"No. Rather, you had just killed the Demon Toadhead. I am Froghead, surely you are after me instead."
Turning to see the supposed 'real' Froghead, Wyntre was not too surprised to find a green humanoid with multiple frog-like qualities: the skin appeared moist, he had four large fingers and unusually large eyes. He wore some form of silver chainmail and a helmet you might expect from a knight who wasn't trying very hard. Oh, and he was only a meter tall.
"Why do you announce your identity when you know I am after you?"
"Because, I'll have you know, I appear only to those that ingest the blood of a demon toad. Like you."
I... ingested... blood? This is why I need a psychiatrist. Wyntre was half-tempted to pull out her tongue and destroy it. What she needed was to clear out the blood and a good wine. She didn't move, the only visible movement at all was the occasional nose twitch. She was screaming on the inside. A toad? A filthy hell toad? Its blood in my mouth, it's down my throat! Such a horrible creature with such sickly blood!
"You had two cups-worth of the stuff, says here."
It seems the nose twitch moved over to her right eyelid. Silence, maddening silence. And then was movement. Within mere moments, the Empress released a mighty kiai as a giant aura of red, purple and white surrounded her, the ground beneath quaking, collapsing and breaking up like shattered glass! The froghead fell in one such cracks, an abyss leading to fire, due to his ironic lack of frog-like jumping. Eventually, her disgusted rage subsided as the cracks mended themselves, sealing up the ground. Two tasks of three completed, therefore only one remained.
[FIN]