Team Name: Stalin for Time
Team Members: Aleksy Rozhdestvensky and Brom
Links to characters: Aleksy,Brom
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(All Bunnying Approved)
Harsh and brutal was the blizzard that slammed into the tundra later that afternoon. A sea of clouds as black as a raven's wing quickly fell from view as the horizon began to pale, snow immediately beginning to fall from the sky in sheets. Carried upon howling winds, the snowstorm drifted to the farthest corners of the wasteland, soon covering the landscape in an ocean of white.
As mountains were hidden from view and entire forests were swept from sight by rolling dunes of white, the temperature plummeted to thirty below. While the storm continued to bay and howl, a powerfully built figure wrapped in a cloak of great, thick furs trudged knee-deep in snow as he moved towards what he last saw to be woodlands. His body mostly hidden from the deathly cold, not even Brom would risk his flesh to frostbite. Feeling the chill pass through his cloak and clothing and sink deep into his bones, the barbarian wondered how long before the dull ache beneath his flesh would begin to sap his colossal strength. It was the first time in years that the barbarian could remember being truly cold.
At thirty below, Brom guessed it'd only be a matter of hours before he would begin to succumb to the killing cold, more than triple the time it would take for it to infect an average man. In this kind of storm, even the toughest of mountain men could be cowed.
As he continued to weather the storm, Brom's frayed mind turned to the hard-earned lessons he had recieved while surviving in the wastes of Salvar. It was almost certain death to wander out into the open. The bitter gusts would score and weather faces until they grew numb and eventually frostbite would set in. But, the greatest danger of all was the one that couldn't be seen.
In a whiteout, when the land was entirely flushed with gray and one could barely see their hands in front of their face, it is easy to be led astray and eventually become lost. Unable to backtrack to shelter because their tracks would melt away in the storm, fools would continue to wander in circles until their bodies gave in to nature's wrath. Brom had even once heard of a tribesman who froze to death less than twenty paces from the clan's doorstep.
Interrupting his train of thought, Brom saw darker shades of gray begin to stand out in the snow-blind. Wandering forward until he reached a towering larch whose boughs were buried in snow, the barbarian leaned against the tree as he surveyed the area and found other trees springing up in the blizzard. As sure as he was that this was it, the Salvarian had every reason to reconsider his instincts with this place. It was not his homeland, but an alien wilderness far harsher than he could ever imagine.
"Siberia." Brom grunted as he wrenched himself from the larch and pressed on further into the forest, continuing on his hunt until even his towering sillhouette was soon lost in white.
Sight was useless, sound was worthless, and touch was left numb.
The forested, frosted wasteland howled like an injured beast, instinctively thrashing about. Every tree felt the wind's wrath, and the ground drew no safer lot as felled forests collapsed on top of it. Flakes of white swirled about; twirling lively and dancing in the air, blinding and selfish. It was a world without senses; a conscious dream where people fell deeper and deeper into a blanketed sleep.
However, one man knew the place well. He spent a boyhood of training in such conditions, learning how to survive based on the failure of others. And more important than surviving the weather; he knew how to kill in it. He sat atop a grayed and worn branch, a dying limb that was still thick enough to make a sturdy home. Though it creaked from time to time, the speeding gusts covered any sound from his enemy's ears. Dressed in forest green and looking rather chilled, he could already feel the loss of control to his hands, and the burning sting that nipped his face and ears.
Ten friends fought with him that day. They were great black birds whose sight and expertise in the hunt often proved invaluable. While their eyes were blinded, having ten of them spread out among the copse, pecking about, proved the deciding factor in cat and mouse.
Caw
It was short and sharp, and just below him; the calling card of his carrion comrades. No more than ten feet away, just close enough to hear but too far to see. His sniper was worthless here, so he kept it strapped to his back and drew his sidearm instead. There was nothing but a blank white everywhere, and all he count see beyond that were a few gnarled branches. On instinct alone and aimed at the signal, he pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession, moving the pistol just so slightly, hoping to hit something.
By the third shot, with frozen sweat sliding down his face, his perch began to snap a little more. It wouldn't last much longer, and neither would he. His limbs ached from the climb, his hands were frozen beneath his leather gloves, and every centimeter of exposed skin was thrashed by bitter cold.
The clap of thunder was all Brom managed to hear above the baying, frost-ridden winds before hot, hungry lead rained down from the boughs of a nearby larch. It was instinct that saved the savage from an ignoble death that fateful day. Lunging forward and leaving his addled brain behind to ponder the strange feeling of being bitten by pests in this hellish, desolate weather and startling pop that quickly followed, the barbarian disappeared behind the tree and into a cloud of white as he rolled against the impact of his fall with his shoulder and landed safely upon his feet.
"Hromag!" he snarled as he took short, shallow breaths instead of taking in great gulps of air which surely would have caused the membranes in his throat to burst from the sheer cold. The Salvarian was slow to recover from his brush with death, so slow in fact, that he knew something was amiss. His chest heaving and winter's grasp growing tighter upon him, no matter how hard he dared to breathe, the barbarian couldn't seem to fill his great lungs with bitter air.
As he tried to get up, Brom fell dizzily back to his knees as his head continued to swoon. It was then that he noticed the copious dripping that pattered the ground beneath him and the taste of copper that hung upon his bated breath. Only then did the barbarian learn the grim extent of his injuries. Checking his body for wounds, the barbarian quickly found one that sat towards the left of his chest and hissed with air. Feeling the odd sensation of sticky and wet as he touched the wound with numbed fingers, Brom held his hand that was smeared with crimson to his face and ground his teeth at the dire revelation.
"Hit. . .lung," He wheezed, curling back like a wounded animal under the relentless barrage of the blizzard overhead. On its own, the wound wasn't fatal, but combined with the cold and the whiteout, it was obvious to Brom that he wouldn't make it out of this savage land alive. Not with a wound like that. The Salvarian ground his teeth at the realization his comrade and his thundersticks were behind it all. The lithe figure had delivered him a coward's death, and for the barbarian that was unacceptable and filled him with cold, black rage.
Fixing his gaze upon what he was sure to be the larch that cradled his doom, Brom ignored the blood that dribbled down his chin and pattered the ground beneath him and the pain that was beginning to swell within him. The lust for vengeance had stricken the barbarian now, and even as he drew his steel and cupped his wound with his other hand, Brom felt a surge of strength rise within him. With the urge to fall into a deep sleep growing heavy within him, and the knowledge that his end was near Brom roared at the top of his lungs as he barreled towards the tree. Holding his arm out as he charged towards the thin larch he knew must have been brittle; the Salvarian took most of the shock with his shoulder.
The snap and groan of the larch and its roots beneath the permafrost was all the barbarian heard above the howling winds as he pushed onward with broadsword in hand. Sure enough, with a determination that could move mountains, Brom uprooted and bowled the tree holding his usurper over with one titanic push. As his stony face broke into a mirthless grin as he heard the crash, Brom didn't pause to survey the scene before stepping forward. In the harsh, savage blizzard in the middle of a strange land called Siberia, the Salvarian would make sure that he wouldn't be alone when he went to meet his maker.
Out of Character:
It was a hollow victory where any celebration seemed inappropriate. The Russian's entire body shook uncontrollably from the tundra. As his trigger finger grew numb, he could only take some small sliver of grim satisfaction, knowing his opponent would die first. He sighed heavily as his breathe condensed into a thick cloud of precious warmth, fogging his view even further. It was over. For now, all he could do was await his death. His eyes closed, his heart slowed; memories of his childhood flooded into his mind like warm broth, soothing his tensions. He was a boy again, being warned about the dangers of being alone in the cold. His mother, a lovingly frail woman, always told him it would be a sleep he'd never wake up from. It sounded pleasant; a relaxing end to a troubled time.
His dreams ended abruptly, however, when his mind and body screamed in unison. He almost lost his balance, but a soldier's instincts are hard to overcome. Even with frozen hands beneath stiff leather, he grabbed onto a stray and sturdy branch for dear life as his perch was uprooted and thrown to the earth in a thundering quake. His ears, burning red hot from the cold, now rang with a deafening cry. His lungs screamed for air, and his body roared with dull pain. The Russian, slowly, rose from the splintered mass that was his roost, only to be met by the clean glimmer of steel not three feet away.
A soldier's instincts are hard to overcome, but they can be. Despite his best efforts, he drew his pistol too slowly. The blade ripped through his chest, tearing through cloth and meat alike. His blood mixed into the snow, blending into a fine red slurry, and his cries were only met by another strike the the neck.
Death was less pleasant than his mother described. He went numb soon enough.
Trial Judgement
Stalin for Time
To start off with, by the end of the battle I was slightly confused. Aside from giving little context as to what they were doing in Siberia (as noted in Story), I was off-put by Saxon mentioning his "comrade." At first, I had taken it to be the tree that he was sitting under, and that he had, in his 'primitive' Althanian superstition, assumed that the tree itself had been the one to wound him. It was only after some reflection that it came together (probably in due part to some density on my end) that he had literally sat beneath the sniper's tree, and then after the fact, I realized it was actually a duel between the two, or so I understood. It was a decent thread, but the lack of reason is something I had to note, despite word and time constraints.
Story: 2.5 / 5
My first thoughts, by the end of Saxon's first post, were rather simple. Alright, so, there's a guy. And he's from Salvar. But he's in Siberia. Then, for Arséne, all I had to go on was that he was a hunter in the tree. I'm guessing they were opponents, and the context I've given it from my own inference places them in Siberia as a wasteland arena in what could be the Tournament of Champions, but there wasn't much to go by. Although it was a simple, quick battle, it was not much else, though I can surely understand the constraint to which you were put to by the world limit. The action was pretty good, as the battle played out pretty quickly and in a logical, realistic fashion. I like the idea of knocking out the tree to get to the sniper first-hand, too.
Character: 2.5 / 5
Between the action and exposition of it, there was not much room for characterization, which I can understand. I only received very brief glimpses of who they were, and even then, those were skewed by their concentration and silence, and by the emphasis on the action itself. In a way though, it reflects on your characters, and the clash of them from two different worlds and the way they do it.
Writing Style: 4 / 5
Saxon, I liked your description of a snow-filled wasteland, because for as bleak as it is, you brought it out and as vivid as it could be in my mind. Arséne, immediately my eye was caught with some of the word-play and alliteration present early on in your first post. Aside from some awkward phrasing at the end of your first post, particularly, "On instinct alone and aimed at the signal, he pulled the trigger." it was all very solid. The both of you had a few minor spelling mistakes and from what I could see, only one grammatical error that I could spot.
Total: 9 / 15