Because there's always the possibility that its central characters will die, everyone likes to see that.


*Chapter 27: One on one*

War strode forward, brandishing her sword with unstoppable force. She met Lori halfway, who kicked her legs from underneath her and aimed a volley of blaster fire at her head. War dodged, rolled and got up smiling. "At last! Someone to play with!" A second later her sword split the ground where Lori had stood leaving a deep gouge in the earth. Lori spun around and whacked the demon in the face with her ponytail; always a favorite move of hers.

Spaz charged wildly at the flickering demon in front of him, who immediately focused into the form of Devan Shell, complete with raygun. The two beings ducked and dodged wildly, with Kira flapping and screeching at the edge of the fray. But no matter how fast Spaz shot, or dodged or kicked, the demon stayed two steps ahead of him. He'd tire eventually, something the demon didn't have to worry about.

Schrock grabbed Trixi's arm and tried to drag her behind a rock, he may as well have tried to drag the rock in front of her, she shook him off and dashed towards the cowed figure. Wit blocked her path before she was even halfway there, about the same time she realized she had absolutely nothing to fight with. Wit sneered, an action that split his face from ear to ear, coughed, and spat. A thin stream of sticky brown sludge hissed toward Trixi.

Trixi dodged to the left but some of the stream of liquid still managed to hit her, splattering against her chest, just under her arm. She screamed, hit the ground and rolled to a halt. For a second she lay still before making a sudden attempt to get up. She staggered a few steps as if her leg was numb then went down on both knees. Still she struggled forward in jerky, hesitant steps as the toxin took hold. It worked surprisingly fast and in mere seconds half her body was seemingly paralyzed.

Schrock ran over to where Trixi lay, still jerkily dragging herself forward on her stomach. She stared briefly up at him before shuddering to a standstill. "Ig foom to ubuggin." she said slurring her words, already one of her legs was beginning to twitch. Schrock tried to pull her upright, and almost succeeded; the rabbit was surprisingly light, little more than skin and bone under the fur. Her head lolled listlessly on her shoulders as she struggled to focus. "I knew this would happen, you stupid, stupid lop-eared twatt!" Trixi giggled quietly in reply and was still. Schrock could feel her body still moving, but they were the sharp, uncontrolled spasms that were the only real sign that a living being has crossed the mysterious threshold that turned them into just so much lukewarm worm food.

Schrock's mind did a quick calculation about odds of survival, ways to die and the sum of the situation then sprang into action. Schrock hurled himself toward Sheldon with surprising speed for a turtle, screaming as loud as possible out of sheer terror and rage and the knowledge that when you're going to die, you should at least go out impressively. Sheldon, while a demon, and a powerful one at that, was not a good fighter and was taken utterly off guard, He went down flailing beneath a hail of blows. The advantage didn't last long however, and Schrock was rapidly picked up and tossed against Spaz like a rag doll, stunning them both. Then Sheldon simply picked Spaz up, and smacked him against a rock. He shuddered and was still.

Schrock grabbed Spaz's now useless blaster and flung himself down the slope as a piercing cry was let out by Kira. The wowhawk pounced on Sheldon and carried him, still flailing, high into the air, where eventually he stunned the bird and broke free. And fell, down, down, down; he'd been very high up, and made quite a mess upon impact, like a rather more colorful broken egg. Oblivious to this Schrock had turned to face Wit, holding the blaster the wrong way around and upside down, while his mind screamed at him to flee. But there wasn't anywhere to flee to.

It soared over the scene, watching it unfold perfectly, watching Its champion advance, sword raised to defend against the demons below. The thread had reached its peak and events flowed with it like water through a millrace. All it would take would be a few more minutes and everything would unfold, like a flower going from bud to bloom.

Then Erst stared at his opponent, lowered his sword and asked "Why?"