<strong>Name:</strong>Adam Smith<br/><br/><strong>Location:</strong>Gehenna<br/><br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Necromancer, Ariel, Marchosias<br/><br/>The Necromancer, having escaped death at the hands of a murderous man in a mask and a wild, uncontrolled demon, was naturally exhilarated. He was still deep within enemy territory, cut off from allies, and with no hope of rescue, but it was almost enough for him to want to go back on the various pacts, contracts, and oaths he had entered into for power over the undead and go over to the side of a Higher Power.<em>Almost</em>.<br/><br/>He used that magic now on his mangled legs. The dead flesh was still warm and fresh, but it was dead and as such responded to his particular brand of eldritch manipulations. It was not especially easy, and he desperately wished he has some zombie powder, percocets, or even some fucking Motrin. But he was walking towards the exit while everyone was gawking over defeating the Highborn - whose wrath the Necromancer knew he would eventually face for his role in this boondoggle - and the appearance of a dragon. Each step was agonizing, and his vision was blurry, and the effects of shock and blood loss were curtailed only by expenditure of magical energies he could neither afford to spend so deeply nor afford not to. It was his ticket out of this place.<br/><br/>There came a deep, long breath behind the Necromancer. He stopped. He considered, very briefly, uttering a prayer, but he did not have the currency to pay anything that might answer such a thing. Once again, he found himself lifted up bodily. Thankfully, this time it was not by some fleshy appendage around his neck. It was a very large hand gripping his shirt and jacket, holding him several feet off the ground. The Necromancer was not entirely shocked when he saw that it was the masked assailant who held him now - the thing had returned from being shot once already, and the Necromancer was too far gone to feel much in the way of bladder-draining fear. Nor, really, much in the bladder to drain at this point.<br/><br/>Adam had his weapon cocked back and ready to strike. The Necromancer raised both of his guns and discharged them. He held down the triggers until the magazines were empty and the hammers clicked. The bullets had discharged into Adam's right arm and shoulder, mauling the tissue there. There was a clanging as Adam's weapon fell, his arm too damaged to hold it aloft anymore. There was blood spatter on both of them, but the Necromancer was too busy murmuring and cursing and wishing he had invested in some magical bullets or magical magazines that never emptied because they had portals to some sort of magical bullet hell that was full of bullets so that he would never ever run out of bullets even in times like this. He also imagined his mother chiding him that he should have become a dentist, and wished that she had doen and that he had listened but noooo his mother had always been supportive of his interest in the dark arts and his thoughts were only: 'thank you mother.'<br/><br/>For Adam, being covered in blood was just the state in which he existed more often than not. His blood. Someone else's. It did not matter. He looked over at his bullet mutilated arm and shoulder, hanging bloodily and uselessly at his side. There was no sound. No utterance of pain. Nothing to indicate that this was more than an annoyance that by no means would forestall or truncate the violence that he was soon to visit upon the Necromancer. Adam turned and swung his left arm, smashing the Necromancer's body into the wall. He repeated this twice, and each time he did so he was rewarded with the cracking of bone, the sound of brutalized meat, and the Necromancer trying to breathe and scream in pain at the same time with two punctured lungs. The grotesque moved forward and slammed the Necromancer into a still-standing table. The table, magically reinforced to the point that it could provide cover against small arms fire and potentially more, did not shatter. This was not good for the Necromancer, because physics. And physics had a special grudge against magic, and the people who used it to give its laws a great big 'fuck you' with both birds. So all the force Adam exerted had only once place to go: the Necromancer's body. Which was just a brutalized sack of bone and flesh at this point. But Adam did not stop. He dropped the Necromancer, and grabbed a chair by its leg and raised it. And lowered it. Again, and again. Beyond all reason. Beyond when the Necromancer was well and truly dead. Beyond when there might have been a possibility that a magic spell, cast beforehand as a contingency, would reanimate the flesh and keep the spirit bound upon this plane of existence.<br/><br/>The chair was not a blade. It had no sharp edges. But it was not going to break easily. Adam changed his heft of the thing, and arranged the back upon the Necromancer's neck. The tall masked man lifted the chair, and then brought it down one last time, severing the Necromancer's head from his shoulders. The head was mostly intact; his close friends and acquaintances could likely identify him, albeit with some difficulty. Dental records would still stand up. Adam bent over and gripped the Necromancer's hair in his left hand, and claimed the prize. He carried it, dripping blood with every step, down to the main area where everyone congregated.<br/><br/>He paused as he saw Ariel's light. The hulking masked thing approached the periphery, the very edge where her shining aura mingled with the darkness. He toed the line between her holy light and the magical darkness, craving it with all the insensibility of a moth to a flame, and equally unconcerned that he could be burned up.<br/><br/>"Ungh . . ." Adam made a small noise in his throat. It was a pathetic noise, like a tormented dog that deserved to be denied. Not a whimper, but something in that range. Something deeper and uglier, a pitiable sound from a thing that gave and deserved no pity. She seemed so perfectly at ease. Everything perfectly in place, from her hair to how her suit fell upon her body to the way she crossed her legs. Through will alone, Adam's flesh responded, and his right hand rose from where it dangled at his side. It entered into the light, trembling and reddened. Drops of his blood fell, staining the ground underneath, hidden by the shadow he cast. The trembling stopped, sharply, as Adam forced himself to accept that that was all he could do: cast shadows. His choices were made: like so many others, he had killed the light inside himself because it was the easy thing to do. His hand lowered, drawing out of Ariel's holy aura. In that light, all of flaws and failings and every wretched thing he ever done or denied would stand revealed. His mask would mean nothing. The darkness would hide his imperfections, and he could be what he was.<br/><br/>Adam trundled off to Marchosias. The way he stood made it easy to discern that he was The Boss. He raised the Necromancer's head, holding it up for all to see, and then his arm dipped enough to toss it at Marchosias's feet. The head bounced a few times on its way there, and unlike the movies with their perfect cinematography and choreographing, the head came to rest facing to the left and away from the half-breed. Thankfully, Adam was not a creature that minded so much.