The duo tear to pieces any grimm they find, Adam takes a second to catch his breath as Mizer scans the area for any potential threat, in the large open courtyard they are in. Several trees and plants populate the area, along with a fountain. The floor is made from soil and grass, there are pathways made from stone.
To the inner edge of the courtyard there are small buildings and after them they grow in size. To the outer edge there is a thick and tall wall made out of solid stone that acts as a barrier to the outside world.
The potential threat comes from the ground to their side, when a humongous grimm breaks to the surface, collapsing with its action a wall that leads outside.
The grimm it's nothing like he has ever encountered before, he has seen a picture in a book a very long time ago. But it doesn't compare to seeing it in real life, it's the size of a humpback whale.
It has a long body like a worm that it's covered in several bone white spots. A white skull with sharp points at the top, it ends in a beak, empty eye sockets, horns at each side of the beak and red veins that run all over the surface of the skull. The grimm's skull opens up in the middle and an almost invincible vertical line appears in the top of the skull and it goes down all the way to the throat, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth and two fleshy appendages with growths that resemble claws. The throat opens up like a voracious maw. The skull and the throat maw open 180 degrees. The tail of the grimm has two barbs at the end.
"Is that a…?", Adam doesn't even finish asking his question before Mizer answers.
"A gluttony grimm, probably not alone".
As if on cue from the hole it made beowolves begin pouring out and from the wall three goliaths much bigger than the average elephant bull enter.
Mizer smirks his upper fangs showing. "Time to party!", he exclaims excitedly, Adam could feel the bloodlust radiating from Mizer's aura.
The gluttony lets out a loud screech saliva flying from its mouth… mouths? And moves to attack them.
Mizer leaps forward to meet it, in the process Adam understands immediately why Mizer didn't bother with shoes today. His feet turn into razor-sharp talons covered in scales, fur and tough skin. One of those talons' feet leave deep grooves in the skull of a beowolf, using the collapsing body of it as leverage Mizer makes his way to the gluttony. The other grimm move to intercept him.
Adam adopts a stance, gripping the handle of Wilt firmly and Blush, he takes off in the blink of an eye sprinting at a great speed, leaving the imprint of the sole of his boots on the soil, raising dust and small stones off the ground. He infiltrates within the beowolves group inner circle and unsheathes his sword, decapitating six that were on his path. He sheats Wilt and spins changing direction unleashing lightning fast strikes, more beowolves fall down defeated.
A goliath swings it's tusk as him, Adam parries with Wilt slightly out of it's scabbard, the blade and his hair glowing red, as he slides back several feet. The other two goliath charge at him and join their companion. Swinging their trunks and tusks at Adam or trying to squash him with their massive feet. Adam has to resort to daring maneuvers diving and jumping, spinning and ducking at the last second to avoid a hit from ending him, also using the opportunities that arise where he can parry to charge his semblance.
Meanwhile Mizer is looking for an opening on his opponent's guard. While it's true that the grimm doesn't have plating covering all its body, the skin is very tough. Capable of stopping high caliber bullets and blades, even breaking them.
And it doesn't help that this grimm could be more destructive and grow bigger than the goliaths, he has to stop it from burrowing again to gain a deeper entrance within the castle. He thinks of ways that the damage can be kept at minimum.
The gluttony coils and then darts at him, using it's body like a spring, Mizer begins muttering low on his breath jump rolling away from it's path as it nears him, when the grimm lands it slides some meters away, instead of burrowing into the ground as it intended. Mizer had covered the area in thick ice, before he jumped.
Enraged the grimm turns to look at him and then rolls much like a crocodile does when twisting to take out a piece of flesh from its prey, with the intention of trampling him, taking down some of the plant life, leaving deep indentations on the ground whenever a part of him that had plates pass over. With its actions it takes down one of the buildings, it crumbles like it was made out of eggshells, offering no resistance.
As it rights itself it receives an intimate kiss right in the top of it's skull from one of Mizer's axes, small cracks forming where it gets hit, making it's head slam to the ground from the impact.
"You son of a bitch did you really have to take that down!? Wasn't the wall and the freaking hole in the ground good enough for you, you oversized slug!?" says an enraged Mizer, as he lands in front of him, baring his fangs at the grimm.
The grimm screeches again but instead of attacking with it's maws it whips it's barbed tail at Mizer. The battlemage uses his weapon to parry the attack, when he does the grimm rams at him several times with the sharp points of it's skull. Earning a pissed off shout from Mizer. He twists both ends of his staff and it separates in two parts, he holds a double edged bone ax on each hand in an x formation. And with that he meets gluttony's attacks, like if he is locking horns with the grimm. His talons burying on the ground to prevent getting pushed back.
The gluttony alternates between ramming Mizer and trying to bite him with his maws, especially with the throat one.
Adam is currently holding on for dear life with Wilt impaled atop one of the goliaths' back, said goliath is bucking around trying to dislodge him. So far his attempts to cause them to impale each other with their tusks have failed, and he is keeping the other two at bay using Blush to aim shots at their eyes, but he knows that will not hold them off forever. They are old and smart grimm.
The grimm he is hitching a ride in, knows that and adapts. It rears high enough to cause it to fall on it's own back, Adam has to high tail it to avoid getting crushed by tons of weight. The trunk of a goliath catches him on the stomach and he is sent flying, crashing against the hard ground. He is lucky to have had his aura active, just some bruises and definitely bruised ribs.
However he can't linger on the pain as they don't give him that luxury. Gathering his feet under him, he has to do several backflips to earn some distance between him and the grimm.
He winces when he sees that the gluttony has taken down a building and caused further damage to the courtyard. He has to hold back his laughter when Mizer is berating the grimm for causing more damage.
He cannot help but feel giddy and elated, it's been so long since he has participated in a real battle. There is no need for him to hold back, it's true that he is still far off from the body condition he had prior to his brush with death but he is working on it.
He takes another deep breath to ground himself and attacks. He extends his aura to his sword to make it stronger. As he nears the grimm he focuses his attacks on one of them, he will have to do this slowly, there is no way he can bring the three of them down at the same time. Once he is near his intended target Adam moves as fast as he can, two clones emerge from him, he delivers the first strike and they follow, targeting the same tusk, before they merge back to him.
A pity truly that he is not carrying the dust embedded bullets with him, just normal ones. "I just need to work harder", he thinks.
With the constant strikes to the same area the tusk begins to weaken. Knowing it's only a matter of time, Adam ignores the other attempts to defend their herdmate and dares to stay in place to unsheathe his sword, strike at the tusk, sheat it again and repeat five more times, until it's weak enough that he can break with a kick. He places his weapons on his hip and grabs his heavy prize, using it to parry another attack, despite not having his sword he absorbs the energy. Gladly he slides back several meters back.
The goliath make the mistake of thinking that they are the intended target for the tusk Adam has harvested. Instead he grabs the broken tusk and places it over his shoulder like he would with a pole used for jumping and runs to the gluttony. As he approaches he uses the melting ice left behind from Mizer's previous casting to increase his momentum.
Gluttony doesn't even see him approach, Adam is being realistic and hopes his idea might cripple it. He times it and when the gluttony rears back to slam down again against Mizer, his throat maw opens even more… are those it's damn ribs starting to show?, Adam doesn't want to even think about it, he gathers his aura and surrounds the huge tusk with it and throws it using his semblance. As expected the tusk pierces the throat maw by the side and lodges inside at an awkward angle successfully jamming the maw from opening and closing any further, since the tusk has a curvature at each end, Adam made sure to break it at an appropriate length. It looks like a badly made piercing.
Sadly it doesn't kill it, it lets out loud screeches of pain and it's body squirms, its intent of getting deeper into the castle forgotten as it tries to get the foreign body off it's maw.
"Really Adam? Did you even bother disinfecting it before making that piercing? We don't want the poor thing getting tetanus", says Mizer laughing.
"Ah what poor service I have provided, hopefully we won't get sued", says Adam with a smile.
"We? It's not me just who did it and without consent from the client, I expect that you will hear from it's lawyer soon", says Mizer as he evades a charging goliath. Using his talons he climbs to the one that attacked him face and uses their wicked tip to puncture it's eyes, the goliath makes a trumpet of pain and shakes its head trying to dislodge a laughing Mizer, who uses his axes to climb up further onto it's back. Hacking and lashing angering it more, he gives Adam a look.
Adam catches on with what Mizer is doing and engages the other two goliath keeping them busy. He takes the opportunity to recharge his semblance.
After a couple of long minutes Mizer jumps down and comes to stand beside Adam, he breathes a fireball to the blind and one tusked goliath's face. And it charges at them in its confusion not watching where it's going. Adam and Mizer dart back, but Adam lets one of his clones in his place for the goliath to follow, it's going to cost him aura, since he won't be reabsorbing it back. It impales one of the other goliaths on the side, making both of them go down trumpeting in pain, the impaled one dissolves in black smoke.
Not letting the opportunity go to waste, they work to deliver the killing blow to the other one, Mizer makes sure that the grimm cannot get up by cutting deeply into the back legs. Adam jumps to one of the remaining trees and into the air, letting himself fall down as fast as he can, one hand firmly grasping the hilt of Wilt and the other hand securing Blush in place.
His hair and horns glow bright red, the rest of him fades to black, the background turns red. In a heartbeat he unleashes his semblance, Wilt comes out smoothly from his sheath and releases a red arc of energy that collides with the back of the neck fallen grimm, at first it resists some but his semblance prevails in the end. The head of the grimm rolls away from its body, as the grimm remains dissolves in a whirlwind of wilting rose petals, their scent fills the air.
Adam lands staggering on his feet short of breath, it's been a long time since he had needed to use his semblance like this. Then there is a screech and he turns in time to see that the gluttony grimm has become free from the improvised piercing, probably when he killed the goliath and talking about goliaths he stares as he sees that more of them have entered through the wall, along with beowolves and another Gluttony is entering the castle using the same hole the previous one opened.
Adam fights to stand upright and continue the fight his legs tremble with the effort. A hand on his shoulder stops him from taking a step and he finds Mizer smiling widely at him. "Take a rest you did good Adam, I will take care of this… Xiang might not be happy about having to redecorate the place, in my defense I did try to keep damage at minimum".
Adam stares dumbfoundedly at Mizer, thinking that the other man is completely insane and then Mizer does something even crazier, he reabsorbs the bone weapon to his body, approaching the grimm completely weaponless. Cracking his knuckles, he smirks at the approaching grimm. "You assholes have been trying to take a piece of me the whole day, come and get it if you dare".
Without hesitation grimm pounce at the offer, several beowolves surround him but the smirk never leaves Mizer's face, instead it turns feral. A purple spark appears and it grows until it envelops Mizer and the grimm near him in a blazing inferno. Adam shields his face from the heat and makes his aura shield thicker.
When the flames die down none of the grimm remains. Just a very long body, serpentine like, no that's wrong, it's a long body, lizard like, but very long, the body is covered in pitch black scales and silky fur, a dragon but the head is nothing dragon like, it's the head of a wolf minus the ears, in their stead there are numerous horns crowing him and fringes in where the wolf eras would go from the top of his head to the back of the lower jaw.
Like a lung dragon this one also has two whiskers that almost brush the ground. The tail is long, it has the same length as the body. The dragon's size rivals that of the gluttony.
And then he turns and winks at him, Adam stares at Mizer's golden eyes with his mouth hanging open.
The creatures of grimm move to rid of this new threat, Mizer roars in challenge, making Adam feel his own bones resonate with the vibrations produced by the roar.
/
Author's notes:
. Gluttony looks like this ookamigirl00/art/Gluttony-Grimm-840566345 (part of the inspiration for this grimm came from the Gaping Dragon from Dark Souls wiki/Gaping_Dragon ), the artist that drew Gluttony commission makes grimm and character commissions, the link to the artist page is PantherCaboose.
. Mizer's body build is similar to Dark Eater Midir from dark souls, just that his torso is longer and he can have wings or not and of course he has a wolfish head. This is a link to the boss fight against Dark Eater Midir watch?v=X7YvyOJIzNQ