Blood & Gore
Just as the snake had knocked the third griffon from the sky, gravely injuring it, Corven and Cimon had descended, weapons in hand and at the ready.
The great snake was not entirely sure who these creatures were, nor where they came from. It just knew it was just going in for a meal when these two humans strange on strange mounts descending from the skies.
It was tired from its earlier fight with the three griffons, so it only hissed a threatening warning at Corven and Cimon, intending to get its message across.
To which the stubborn brats kept charging anyway in the face of.
Corven used Eclipse to fly to eye level to the snake, using Darkstar to slash at its eyes. Now the snake might have been a Tier A beast, equivalent to that of a demigod-ranked cultivator, who also took on a whole flock of adult griffons just moments ago, but Corven's sword was 2.8 tiers of power more powerful than its scales. The eyelid of the snake was instantly cut through, as if it were made of paper, and with it, so was the eye, blinging the enraged serpent on its right side. It hissed angrily, thrashing wildly in pain and anger, as Cimon slashed the eyelid to the other eye using Dreamspire, barely leaving a surface wound.
Cimon then flew into its mouth, slashing Dreamspire into the roof of the serpent's mouth, swiftly, before flying out just as quick to avoid being swallowed whole.
Corven cut at its other eye, effectively and completely blinding it. These actions only served to enrage the serpent further, as it hissed and thrashed wildly, both in pain and in rage. 'These mortals dare to attack me! The Great Horned Viper King of the Dark Forests!' it thought, enraged and admiring at the concept of the audacity such foolish mortals possessed. 'I'll swallow them whole!'
The snake, completely enraged and blinded, bleeding from both eyes and its mouth, tried spitting corrosive acid from its mouth, shooting said corrosive acid wildly around itself quite blindly. It couldn't accept defeat — It wouldn't! Sadly, both Corven and Cimon avoided the serpent's loose sprays.
"Cimon, have you ever had grilled snake meat before? I bet it's delicious," said Corven, drool sliding down from his mouth at the thought, causing the great snake to feel a unsettling shiver down its spine as Corven licked his lips in, already imaging the tender meat fixed over an open fire — 'Oh, I'm gonna be having such a nice dinner tonight!' Corven thought, the drool waterfalling down his chin just at the thought.
"Corven, please focus!" Cimon shook his head at Corven's antics. When it came to food, something Cimon noticed long ago was that Corven could eat anything! The guy once went on a hunting trip with Cimon and Achlys and they hunted a deer in Washington state — Corven ate most of it and then tried to eat their portions, as well! He had a basically insatiable appetite. It was a wonder he stayed so skinny for so long…
The serpent began realizing that Corven wasn't his prey — He was the predator and the snake itself was the prey! It turned frantically around, blind but eager to flee. It was in danger, it realized, as it choose a direction to flee in, but Corven wasn't planning to let go of his meal so easily. The snake was his meal and soon to be shadow soldier, armor and maybe even a dagger or two. Corven now had the serpent in his most unholy sight — There was no way he was going to let it go now.
Corven cicleed overhead the fleeing serpent, formulating a plan. He knew he couldn't let the snake escape. If he did, then his mission wouldn't a be a success and he'd be hungry for the night. Just thinking about eating this snake was making his stomach rumble. 'Fuck! I need to eat already!'
Then, to Cimon's horror, Corven jumped into the closing mouth of the fleeing great snake. "Corven!' he screamed in horror as he saw the great snake gulp his friend whole.
Cimon was horrified, but the snake, thinking it not only survived predation, but swallowed his would be predator due to being stupid enough to go near its mouth,gleefully turned to the sound of Cimon's voice, a cold, unsettling sneer spreading across its face, threateningly. It was pissed. And it wanted to eat Cimon for dessert before finishing its earlier prey.
But Cimon was not happy, either, nor was he going to let Corven's sacrifice be invane, and he sure as hells wasn't going to let himself to be eaten. He'd just lost his best friend – the last son of House Umbrovante and it happened right in front of him. Oh, he was pissed.
And Cimon knew his family would not be too happy to hear that their only hope of returning to the Shadow Realm has just died with him on watch, but he not care about that at the movement. At that moment, stricken with grief and burning with rage, Corven unleashed both his Demigod rank power and it let it's aura merge with his spear, Dreamspire, boosting its already incredible power to the peak of Demigod rank, as he prepared to charge at the approaching serpent, his own eyes glowing silver at the irises in response his grief and rage. The air between them began to permeate with grayish silvery fog, within which silver luminescent light like miasma began spreading within from. This fog covered a 3 mile radius, and within this three mile radius, Cimon would become significantly stronger, while his opponent — the great serpent — would become significantly more slower and drowsy, making them much more weaker than normal. This skill was known as Dreamscape, an area of effect skill that Cimon inherited from his father, Hypnos, the god of slumber.
Upon stepping into this AOE skill, and inhaling the the fog and miasma, the serpent began feeling heavy and his eyes became filled with lead, becoming much harder to keep them open. The serpent could not help but feel groggy and sluggish. And not just that — He felt as though something else was wrong, that his stomach was hurting, becoming more more painful as its movements slowed. The pain became greater and greater, as it completely stopped only a few feet before reach Cimon. Eventually the great snake began to start wailing, as it began hitting its skull onto the ground, hard, as if losing its mind.
This left Cimon puzzled. He knew it wasn't his Dreamscape skill that is doing this. Dreamscape doesn't cause pain; just drowsiness and weakness. This had to be something else.
Cimon, watching the snake's behavior, was perplexed. It was obviously in extreme pain, but he wasn certain his Dream Pollen — the silver miasma floating in the fog of the Dreamscape skill — was not the root cause of it. Dream Pollen causes sleep, not physical pain. It induces sleep, sometimes madness, but never physical pain, not like this.
Wielding his Dreamspire defensively, Cimon kept his distance, observing the scene before him. He was not sure what was happening to this serpent, and he did not want it to happen to him, so, until he figured out what was really going on, he sought for his distance. He was sure the great snake was in pain, though he wanted to be safe, in case it was really a trap to lure him in.
He had just watched as the Great Snake's slamming into the forest floor got more and more intense and desperate — It even began slamming into trees and nearby boulders, thrashing wildly, as if its insides were on fire. Its outbursts was causing the local wildlife to flee in panic.
A flock of crows took from the branches of the trees nearby into the midnight skies of the night. Some pixies who were investigating nearby, Cimon sensed, had fled deeper into the dark forests, as if frightened. Cimon even saw some elvin scouts retreat further into the forest, obviously distressed by what they were witnessing. All of these creatures were right outside the range of his Dreamscape ability, so Cimon couldn't compel them to slumber, but it seemed like it did not need to.
'Good,' Cimon thought he would have had to deal with the tree elves of this forest after he dealt with this serpent. Thankfully, it looked like they were dissuaded from engaging. 'At least something good is coming from this farce.'
Suddenly, the Great Snake collapsed with a huge BOOM!, no sign of movement coming from it, not even the drawing of breath. Cimon did not even need to check to know that it was downed. It was dead.
Cimon began stepping forward, Dreamspire in hand, as the sounding of grunting sounded from within the colossal serpent. "Goddamn it!"
Taken aback, Cimon gripped Dreamspire, already ready, in battle stance, as something sharp cut an arch-door shaped hole in the scales of the now dead great snake from the inside of its stomach. As it fell, Cimon released a heavy sigh of relief.
Covered in blood and guts and intestines and blood and gore, in all his glory, Corven Umbrovante marched triumphantly, out of the carcass of the giant serpent, a greenish-yellowish monster core in hand, as he grinned mischievously, like a kid in a candy shop. "Honey! I'm home! Ya miss me!"
Cimon just rolled his eyes. He could not believe how relieved he felt. If Corven had died, the shadow families would really never let him live it down. They would probably banish him, if not outright have him killed. Plus, he would be down a friend.
"Glad you're alive,: Cimon said, reigning in his emotions and his skill, Dreamscape from his surroundings. "It would have sucked if you had died."
"Please, I'm perfect. I don't know what you're talking about. I wouldn't have died like that anyway," Corven said with a raised chin, as he lifted the greenish-yellow monster core to his face, eyeing it curiously. "Anyway, what is this? I found it in the monster's heart, thought it looked kinda cool."
"That's a monster core," Cimon answered, curiously eyeing Corven. "For cultivators, we have our cultivating cores; for monsters, they have monster cores. Not all monsters are powerful enough to drop them, though, and the ones that are tend to evaporate them whenever they die, so they're really rare to acquire. They can be used to help forge weapons, power runes and magic and even help with cultivation, though not its full essence due to the purity of it might kill you if you tried to absorb all of it. It seems to a Tier A Monster Core."
Cimon watched Corven eye this core, before, to his horror, Corven gulped it down. "Corven!"