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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ciaran" data-source="post: 703149" data-attributes="member: 756">A vibrant mist, all green and violet and bronze, trickles from the shark’s ruined maw and swirls across the water, dancing along the fallen stones to a massive rocky crag, an islet new-formed by the collapsing bluff.  There, the mists congeal into the form of the masked wizard Shou Ren, looking little the worse for wear.  A metallic chuckle echoes across the plashing waves.“Silly child,” mocks Shou Ren as he waits for Nekokaburi to pick his way towards him across the water, stepping among the bluff’s fallen stones.  “Water and teeth against bronze metal’s strength?  So foolish.”  He chuckles again.  “Steel is better.”As the young swordsman approaches, the wizard draws from his robes a withered scarlet blossom, all crusted with shriveled leaves.  With a cryptic word and a single convulsive gesture, he crushes the bloom in one gauntleted fist, then casts the resulting dust at his opponent in a suffocating cloud of cloying red sweetness.“The red lotus,” observes the sorcerer, “grows only in the Garden of Lost Hope.  It has a numbing effect upon mind and body.  You will feel no pain, and little else besides.  And thankfully,” he adds with an icy chuckle, “you will find it difficult to speak.”Stepping forward, Shou Ren traces strange signs in the air as he continues to speak.  “As to your steel,” he murmurs, “you may find trouble there.  By channeling your power through it to strike at me, you formed a bond.  And I am skilled in the use of bonds.”  Tracing a final sign in the air, he claps his hands together, his gauntlets ringing like cracked and broken bells.  As he does so, Nekokaburi’s sword slips silently from its master’s hands to hover in the air between them, caught betwixt water and island, between swordsman and sorcerer.“Of course, an heirloom blade such as this is also bound to its master,” the wizard observes.  “It wishes to be close to you…  very close.”  He snaps his fingers, and the blade begins to spin, its edge whirring faster and faster as it cuts the still sea air. With a gesture, Shou Ren sends the blade spinning towards Nekokaburi.  “Shall we see how close it comes to your heart?” The sword spins next to the island; silences the pain of the garden! *yen*</blockquote>

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