92. Bloody Spar

“Now… I can strangle you with your guts in peace.”

There was a passing moment of silence, only periodically broken by the distant gasp of agony I forced down with a mental command. I could command my freed limb without much difficulty with magic.

Casting a spell through it was only a more refined version of that; now, going further was the same, if harder. It was no easy trick, all things considered, and pulling it off made it only more impractical.

Frankly, it was very new too, but my paw missile did a wonderful job on who could only be Vashj. How can she expect that? She can't, and so she loses. Nobody would have to be honest.

Typically, you don't sacrifice part of a limb as ammunition, certainly not like this, well, unless you could regrow it, which happened. I was among the best to have walked Azeroth. 

But it was a gimmick at this firepower, given the time needed to draw. Regardless, that was the best of a first shot I could have gotten.

“What…?” Vandel uttered, wholly caught off guard, but whether it was from my words or the brutal takedown of his ally was unknown.

He was back into focus right away, the faint trace of a smile, “Imaginative as always. And I will see you try, Ohto, I have grown since our last spar.”

Then he vanished into green smoke for a flaming dagger to flash over my right eye, cutting through it, blinding me through it. 

My left was quick to follow as his flurry of slashes went on, lacerating my armor, trying at times, succeeding in finding the weak spot. There was pain, as there always is when Fel was involved, even without nerves.

But it was an agony I was used to; I didn't react with animalistic rage, merely increasing my biological shell. Bones bloomed around my shredded eyes as they reformed, while thorny vines ensnared broken parts as they mended.

He was fast and anticipated my movement well. I failed to catch him; he slipped through my bite, paws, and vines with monstrous grace. 

His limbs and spine were as if liquid, flowing and shifting with chaotic methods, and, when he couldn't evade, he deflected using my momentum and placement to soften the blow. 

As much as one could when facing me, and it was impressively a lot for a man less than a tenth of my weight. I shattered the gilded enchanted ground with my missed slams.

If he couldn't escape still, then he became smoke and decayed leaves, or teleported if he calculated right. My mana-infused claws grazed and gouged flesh and skin, but made little more than flesh wounds healed by his draining of life.

It was… novel. He progressed far from the clumsy, suicidally reckless, below-average fighter. I didn't know if I should be proud or displeased.

“Exciting and entertaining as this is. A test of endurance with you, old friend, is one I cannot win.” He said close to my left ear, dodging yet again a vine that cracked the air like a deadly whip.

It was as if I were sparring with Chen, but here each attack was intended to, if not kill outright, bring us close to the gates of death. From both sides, even if I kept to the rudimentary. 

And Vandel wasn't as quick, not even close, but he could ignore hits far more easily.

He was right, though. You don't beat the Bear of Resilience in endurance.

“Indeed. Let's change the pace.” I answered gruffly, an exceptional thing given I never entertained any opponent with discourse. 

Vandel wasn't any foe.

And we had been testing each other; he couldn't bleed me to death as one would usually do. Yet as far as my tactic went, I would catch him only after exhaustion made him falter. Or he slipped.

Ultimately, that was a battle neither wished to continue, if I could even call it that. So things went up a notch, and the demon hunter was first to act.

He leaped away, spreading his wings and propelling himself away while his body morphed, becoming fully demonic. 

He grew larger, muscles bulging far beyond any semblance of attractiveness they ever had, with skin stretching to its tearing point. And it did with a sickening sound of leather and paper being shredded, followed by a roar.

Wet muscles, sinews, and tendons became exposed to the air with pulsating veins glowing in Fel lava weaved throughout. Jagged bones, scales, fur, teeth, and thorns pierced articulation, making claws, spines, and blades. 

His tail split in two down the middle, the same patterns of natural offensive defence coming too. Only the blades at the two tips formed corpse flowers with four fleshy petals armed with fangs.

His horn thinned and multiplied with his thorny and leafy hair forming a mane of sharp needles, and finally, his face turned into something monstrous. 

It elongated, skin hardening and jaws mutating in an almost beak-like muzzle shape, forcing his bandana to fall, revealing his empty eye sockets, burning with twin sickly green suns.

“A felhound?” I inquired, and there was no derogatory quality to my tone. These demons were one of, if not the most dangerous. 

It wasn't so much raw power or intelligence; they were clever beasts, but never past that. Though my vision was for me alone in combat, otherwise, they were the apex of the apex predator and then some.

Yet, contrary to the great majority of the Burning Legion, they could breed. And breed fast, consuming all manner of mana through their duo of tentacle tails to then enter what essentially was a full body mitosis after a certain threshold of energy was reached.

And the subsequent generation was more resilient to the absorbed mana of the parents.

It wasn't hard to grasp that those weren't likely original of the Twisting Nether, or well, full on. They were probably a corrupted life form of which the k

“Yes, the monsters who murdered my love and child while I stumbled in the forest, as the fool I was. Revenge came with devouring its beating heart, now it is part of me… they are part of me… I will never lose them. And you?” Vandel growled, voice warped in animalistic form to the point that words could barely be distinguished.

There were many emotions, too many to try and parse, but none were positive. Though his question made me muse internally as I shifted my body for what was to come, like him, I changed.

I had the feeling pure, unmovable defense wasn't going to cut it. 

My muzzle was divided down the middle, forming a maw composed of four independent mandibles with countless venom-slicked fangs. 

At the center, my throat grew three similar superposed jaws. My tongue changed as well, becoming many from everywhere, space was left, and thorny roots accompanied them. My face became a carnivorous plant of nightmare. 

My bark glowed with brilliant white Ursine runes and thickened. In tandem tendons, bones, leaves, and flowers crested my head in a dense slick helmet. My neck lengthened but only increased in strength, and my vines grew in size, number, and viciousness. 

A thousand pairs of wings buzzed from my bio armor. They swarmed into two clouds of scintillating chitin and crystalline flickers around my arms that became giant leathery wings in the same heartbeat.

A second pair of arms burgeoned from below the first, now wings, and the palms had teeth. At the same time, my digits were gone, replaced with an articulated exoskeleton that became longer, lighter, and sharper claws ever coated in the most aggressive form of Life mana.

One graze would forcefully transmute any cells into fragile bones that then repeat the cycle till I stop it or the curseds manage to. It was a sort of reverse Curse of Flesh in idea.

Those limbs could never be as strong, given how the mechanisms of morphology were, but pure raw might wasn't the end game. It was pointless if I couldn't land a solid hit anyway.

Inside them were inbuilt crossbows connected to a rich bank of ammunition. My back, upper shoulders, and legs had similar structures with their own pair of sensory organs, as did my tail. 

Only the last was simultaneously a ball of hooked bonny venomous thorns, not that my feet, or any of the above, were without weapons. And I took to the sky with grace, a body plan like this shouldn't give at first glance.

I learned a lot from dragons, more so of their anatomy.

“Fandral cost me Groot, even if you see him. His mind broke, and his body merged with mine, saving mine to two World Trees. Though enough talk.” I said, my voice only slightly distorted. I could speak through other voice boxes, and I did right here.

I wouldn't be able to talk otherwise. And this entire chain of events seemed to stun Vandel for a long second. I couldn't read his expression, given his face and the lack of eyes.

“I see, suffering hasn't spared you either. I'm deeply sorry, but yes, let us cease flapping our teeth and see who is truly prepared.” He growled from above, and his jaws unhinged before glowing and intensifying, sickly green.

His shoulder tensed, vein bulging even more, and then his teeth snapped shut, and from the opening between the front canine teeth a thin beam of pure concentrated Fel plasma shot out. 

I didn't stay still while he charged his attack, but the distance and the fact that he wasn't static made anything but dodging impractical. I rolled to the side and beat my wing with my full might, taking to the air.

But the beam of Fel didn't abate. Vandel was no complete idiot. Vandel shifted his aim not where I was but where I would be, and that cut off one of my feet despite the relative slowness. 

The ground and pillars behind fared far worse, exploding forth from the former as it was divided to the lake floor. The latter were destroyed, as was the wall behind showing the outside, and damaging the mountainside behind, yet the structure held.

For now. He was powerful, but I was no slouch.

I roared, a shrill sound of chittering, glass breaking, and groans of bark creaking, but that wasn't an injury of note. The curse afflicted was cut off right away, even if it was far from my main concern.

My loyal swarm attacked. At first, the demon hunter didn't relent, even if this distraction of stings and stabs allowed me to get closer. Enough to almost be in range, but he stopped–the damage minor but quickly magnifying–his Fel beam was cut off to create an infinitely lesser conflagration. That was plenty to do.

The swarm was gone, leaving him to glare at me without eyes yet seemingly victorious. Arrogant. More buzzing came from my back, and I dove with my bees, harpoons, arrows, and nets, pelting his general direction. 

I didn't go for precision because my aim was dubious, but I needn't to.

And so the battle truly began, me harassing, chasing, and dodging as he flew, cast spells, and repositioned continually. His first attacks were done again and again, at times nearly clipping my wings.

But such potent magic wasn't free, and mana capacity cannot be raised infinitely, even if a parasite of mine via Fel warlockery. It wasn't as vile a magic as Shadow, but the users often were, and it was enraging.

It pushed me to be more aggressive than I would have been. I tore out an arm, cleaved off a wing, ate a leg, made him a pincuchion, and shot a thorn fragmentation seed in his gut. 

To say more would be too long; he could regenerate as the demon he was and the battery I was to him. A detail I used when possible, Life wasn't only food, it could be everything I beckoned it to be.

But it needed to be timed well, and my foe could only be tricked so many times. I couldn't turn my life force off without consequences. It was delicate, and even a master can make mistakes.

But I was equally touched. 

He immolated me in the purest Fel barring Archimonde, violated my magic by draining my mana, gored half my hearts, nearly decapitated me, and so much more. I was not shy about taking risks; I took more than he did, by virtue of being what I was.

There was no fight from either of us. It couldn't be called such, for it was beyond that limited word. It was only raw emotions and wild aggression. 

It was therapy of rabid actions and insanity getting its closure. It was as beautiful as it was monstrous.

That this was personal merely poured petroleum into that inferno; it was the very heart of it.

Yet…

Yet, one of us couldn't take mortal wounds over and over and over again.

Yet, one of us was a man with nothing, nothing to fight but fading memories.

One of us couldn't listen to reason.

One of us couldn't learn restraint.

One of us couldn't be patient.

One of us abandoned everything for vengeance. 

Vengeance wasn't and never will be wrong, but too much of anything becomes poison. Measures were everything.

But Vandel knew nothing of measure. He was the greatest of fools. The moment reality slammed, he shattered and went to the extreme opposite. 

I was at fault in equal amounts. I could have done much, but I did barely anything worthwhile. I pushed him toward that fate. 

He was my greatest regret, more than not killing Fandral sooner. That led to a tragedy few could have foreseen. 

I grasped Vandel's personality–his naïvete–but I had been too weak, too afraid to sever the tie, to pay the price of saving him, his mate, and cub. 

I had been a coward.

Too distant when he needed me as well, and worst, an enabler with my experiments used on him. What kind of friend was I? 

And I still am. I suppose we were mirrors in many ways. 

I could have killed him with my first attack, but I didn't, and I could do the same now. He could have, too, or tried, but he hadn't. He showed restraint.

A fact proven by his dismembered body breathing raggedly below me, my body was back to its standard constitution and rapidly mending. My mana was down by a little less than half, but it had been a proper beatdown.

The Coilfang Reservoir was collapsing, and the consequences of our ‘spar’ were spreading. It was pandemonium. Vashj was alive–somehow–but not spared either, I would prefer her not a corpse. Not yet.

Regardless… I couldn't bring myself to continue. There was little else to do. I was exhausted, the kind that wasn't about physical effort.

“Things never change… never… I wasn't prepared enough… Illidan would be displeased…” Vandel said bitterly before coughing blood and flesh, a mix of his and mine. Then a pained grin formed over his split lips, and he taunted me, “Ohto, I await your strangulation.”

I growled softly, vines delicately picking him up, sealing wounds and binding him both magically and physically. Something I wouldn't have pulled off if he were in top form.

“Wish granted, I advise silence. You're prisoner of the Wild.” I rumbled as I did what he oh so wisely asked, a precise cut to the lower abdomen and surgical uses of roots later… His small intestine was part of his bandage.