Osiris Open 2017 Round 1: FennWenn vs Warpath

"The river is a slice of mellow harmony amid the deadly hemlock that grows here. It flows like time, always onward, always toward its destiny. One day these placid waters will enter that great ocean, each drop a vital part of what becomes the mighty aquatic world. In the shade of the boughs we wade in, feeling the welcome kiss of coolness, watching the eddies that swirl and disappear. The water surface is livened by brief crescents of white that are fish arcing as they swim. Our eyes travels down stream, caressing the dapples that bring the shine of the water to a hue so homely. This forest is so far from the home we left, but right now it doesn't matter a bit. This moment is my own and right now, in this flash of the time continuum, I am at home. No matter the chatter of the trees, the grove ahead is welcoming, refreshing. On quiet days it can be heard to whisper its wisdom, on stormy days it is lost to all but those who listen closely. The grove, adorned with those bright hemlock plants and marble ruins of a civilization long passed, always talks, always speaks the wisdom of the ancients to anyone who treasures its words. Even on the rainiest of days it can heard beneath the splashes of the river, a sacred melody, always moving, always present."

Brotherhood report #012

Hemlock leaves were not tasty.

The big man went on chewing them anyway as he waded effortlessly through the river shallows. The stalks, roots, and flowers would get him the same as the leaves without giving him rank breath and a bitter taste, but they were all even more miserable to masticate. Suicide was never sweet, he decided not for the first time, and that seemed unfair.

Of course, he wasn’t attempting suicide today. The philosopher’s bane was deadly to human beings, and despite appearances he was not human anymore. When he bent down to scoop a massive handful of water into his mouth, he swayed just a bit. Perhaps he was a bit drunk, but the mild vertigo and muscle numbness would pass in small time. A few more hours and his body would know hemlock, and ever after the effects would be a memory only.

He told himself that’s why he was chewing on deadly poison: future resistance to an inevitable assassination attempt. The truth is, he was probably just curious if it would kill him. Or just sweaty and bored.

He was almost to the halfway point between six and seven feet, and weighed as much as three solid men. He was prodigiously muscled in a bestial way, human in crude likeness only, and moving such bulk against the water’s current was a considerable act of labor. It was late spring, newly green and humid, and the man was naked from the waist up and from the knees down. His trousers had been savaged into ragged-edged shorts, and the riverbed mushed between his bare toes.

The other exception to his general nudity was the textured black-and-red mask he wore. He had it folded up in the front above his nose, leaving his bearded lower jaw exposed, but otherwise left it in place. It wasn’t pleasant in this mugginess - despite the fine mesh at the top, which let his naked scalp breathe beneath the material - but it was a necessary discomfort. As long as he wore the mask he was Atlas Redpath, and not Flint Skovik.

That is why he wandered now, in search of places to make his new name mean something. Flint Skovik was known, and had history. Flint’s past was a weight he needed to shed, but Atlas’s future necessitated a reputation beyond Ettermire. He was hunting heroes.

The river curved broad and went shallow beside a white marble ruin. Had it been a temple? A small but prosperous village? Flint - Atlas - didn’t know. He couldn’t even place the architecture. It didn’t matter, ultimately. A seer had told him he would find a worthy hero here, a name to match against his new one. He spat hemlock taste out of his mouth and emerged dripping from the river, flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulders.

There were shafts of sunlight everywhere, pregnant with motes of pollen, but thunder rumbled somewhere to the east.

Fenn wandered through the wispy sunlit groves of white and green, fallen leaves and uneven dirt flattened underfoot. The boy was but a gaunt sprite moving through a field of fey blooms. The pale gleaming flowers, he knew their hue. Closing his eyes a moment, the boy took a deep whiff of the air. Its bitter earthen scent spoke nothing of the leafy poison dripping from the branches. A faint memory came to the boy of a time he eked out a living all alone in the shaded forests of Concordia. A deer had eaten the hemlock, and as he had become wont to do, Fenn had trailed it for a day. It was better to let others try first what might be poison. Surely enough, the stag fell to its knees and heaved its last. That such a hefty animal could fall to such a thing had amazed the little Fae then.

Small wonders felled impressive beasts.

Today, Fenn was alone in his wanderings. His dark direwolf companion was nearby, but only in the roughest sense of the word; she wandered when she was hunting, and he wandered when he was bored. The green-cloaked boy knew better than to stray far from the motherly beast, but give her a day and she would find him again after she had stalked to success and eaten her fill. Keen was her nose. Not so keen as her bite, but keen enough.

Little stirred except the bluejays, dancing through streams of sunlight. Despite the grove's peace the hair on the back of Fenn’s neck prickled gently. He had the unearthly feeling that he wasn’t as alone here as he thought. The little Fae shrugged off the feeling and continued tromping through the undergrowth. Her could hear a river calling through the viney undergrowth, gurgling with delight, drawing him with its song.

Past a hill and through a few blackberry brambles he found it. Fenn crouched over the edge to peer at his distorted reflection. His blonde hair was twisted with leaves and twigs, thorns had loosened a few threads on his verdant cloak, and his frostbitten cheeks were dirty. Still, his eyes were sharp as ever under their light lashes. Even he himself felt a little uncertainty at pupiless, pooling emerald, so he turned his gaze to a shoal of minnows. Tiny, bright! Fishes danced away from the giggling reach of his childlike hands, the tips of his fingers stopping just above the lap of the current. He knew better than to get his frosty fingers frozen fast to the water. It was a mistake he had made plenty of times before.

Sighing at the thought, Fenn stretched and leaned down to take an awkward feline lap of the water, wondering if he should bother to take his waterskin from his satchel and refill it. Since it was already half full, he wasn’t sure if he could be assed to make the effort. Eh.

Fenn stood up and turned away from the river, yawning. There. Not ten feet away from the edge of the current he stopped, mid-step, ears swiveling towards the undergrowth downstream. His hair prickled again. He had heard something, he was sure. A deer, a bird, a person? Monster, maybe?

He raised a hand a moment, gaze cold as frost laticed over his hand, magic concentrating at the tips of his fingers. But before he summoned any force of northern nature, Fenn blinked and hesitated. It was silly to react to a noise in a forest. Wasn't it? Even one so quiet as this. It felt as if his recent string of blunders -- and the almost-deaths he could have died -- had imbued him with a trigger-happy impulse he wasn’t quite sure he liked.

The boy grimaced and flicked his hand, dispelling the frost and the unseen brightness of magic. His cheeks were tinged grey with an unspoken embarrassment none were around to see.

The masked brute stood among the reeds on the river bank for a long moment, peering into the ruins and straining his ears for hints of his quarry. He didn’t know what to expect, only that his skein would cross with another’s here. This would be the battleground, but all else was in question. It could be now, or tomorrow, or ten years from now. Seers rely on magic, and magic is notoriously, maliciously blind to mortal hopes and expectations.

Still, Flint-now-Atlas felt the pressure of immediacy, a sense of fated moments that he never ignored. His heart fluttered and anxiety (or the hemlock) closed its claws around the meat in his center chest, making his breath shallower. It was immensely important that he did not fail here, and he did not know the rules or challenge the contest would demand of him.

He crept across the border of those marble ruins, hulking but low, more a lion than a bear now. Sweat trickled down his back in rivulets, and droplets of river water still clung glimmering in his beard like dewy stars in an oily night sky. Such was the humidity that they had not yet evaporated. He pressed his back into the shadow of a toppled marble pillar, relished the chill, and lissomely skulked on. The thunder preceded him, a warning in the distance. It was his harbinger - aiding his stealth, giving something ominous to the air.

There.

He spotted a diminutive figure beside the river, upstream from where the post-human monster had stood moments before, tawny head turned in that direction. The reeds and the natural curve of the river had concealed them from one another until now. Now, one had a clear view of the other’s back. Cold certainty turned Redpath’s face into a mask beneath the actual mask. Atlas needed to be brutal, not honorable. Here was an opportunity to begin and end this in one move.

A quick scan of the immediate environment offered a solution.

As the little fae considered the surrounding forest, apparently shaking off the feeling of being watched, a statuesque figure loomed silently in the middle distance behind him. Atlas stepped slowly up onto the pillar that had hidden him, and, like his namesake, he was carrying a tremendous chunk of marble on his shoulders.

He twisted at the hips, set one leg forward, and let the marble roll portentously across the arm he stretched back to accept it. His torso stretched long, and then he threw himself forward with a savage grunt. He fired off his back leg, quadriceps rippling, and he heaved the chunk of marble overhead and through the air at the elfen figure’s back.

Shaking off his shivers, Fenn wrapped his arms around himself and forced himself to walk away from the river. See? Nothing was off in this forest. It didn’t matter how he rationalized to himself, how silly it was to feel hunted here, his unsettled feeling didn’t go away.

There was the scuffing of gravel and soil. Something heavy was dislodged from the earth with a booming grunt. The sounds registered to his twitchy ear as distinctly not-animal. He glanced back. Seeing the enormous hunk of marble arching towards him, Fenn came to the wide-eyed snap realization that his instincts had been right after all. MOTHER OF FUCK- The boy immediately threw himself to the ground, narrowly avoiding the nasty fate that befell the tree it crashed into instead. Its weighty truck splintered under the blow.

Still, he didn’t entirely escape its path of destruction.

The pillar clipped him as it passed. Badly. The mangled squeak of pain that escaped Fenn as it smashed his left shoulder on its way out could almost be registered as a proper sound. There went his good arm. Fallen face-first on the ground, the Fae rolled onto his back -- ow, ow, fucking ow -- and spat out leaves and dirt. He shook quite a bit. Note to self; pay attention to instincts next time.

His backwards glimpse of the behemoth that had assaulted him was brief, but good enough to give his spine a rattling shiver. At least six feet tall, expression mostly concealed behind a mask of red and black, and completely shirtless. The last detail gave Fenn a deep impression of his developed musculature, indicating the man’s immense strength. Not that he needed to be told that when his shoulder was dislocated thanks to that fucking stone pillar he threw. Nice arm, very strong. Much stronger than Fenn would’ve liked. His attacker was winded by the effort, but only so much.

DAMNITDAMNITDAMNITDAMNIT-

The muggy air cycloned around Fenn as he panicked, whipping his hair, tugging his cloak. What dew still lingered on the leaves frozen solid as the winds turned ice. Fat snowflakes burst into existence all around him and the assassin-man, shrouding the poisoned paradise in a veil of white. The dappled sunlight faltered. Cover. He had to find cover. What if the assassin-guy started chucking more pillars? He scrambled backwards through the howling winds only to bump into a tree a few paces away, wincing as it jarred his shoulder. Sure, that’d do. Fenn ducked behind it, a thin sheet of ice accidentally creeping up the trunk wherever he touch it.

Why was this man attacking him? Fenn shuddered and clapped a hand to his screaming shoulder, not sure it mattered in the heat of the moment. All he did know was that this man did not mean well, and he had to defend himself at all costs. His arsenal of attack was limited, to say the least. He could tick the spells he had figured out off on one hand. And only one of them actually did any damage; that was, unless he got very creative. Daugi was usually enough to bring any opponent at bay. But she wasn’t around to haul him out of this mess.

Yet, that could be remedied…

Fenn dug into the front pocket of his satchel and grabbed the only item his fingers found -- a slender brass whistle. When he brought it to his lips, an ear-piercing note shrilled through the forest. What birds hadn’t already fled the shocking winter gales screeched and scattered from the canopy. It was entirely possible that his cry for help had given his position away, but on the off chance that Daugi was near enough to catch wind of it, it was worth the risk. The whistle was shoved back in its pocket.

Frost crept up Fenn’s arms again as he reached for his magic, pulling a fist-sized pair of solid ice chunks out of the air. They shivered and hovered at the ready. He wasn’t sure how well he could aim with his right arm, but fuck it, he was going to take out this dick’s nuts if that was what he had to do.

Atlas ran the back of his hand across his bearded mouth in one quick, rough movement. His attack had been a partial success. He was preparing to jump off the pillar and charge the distance between himself and his prey, but something made him hesitate. The little figure still had some fight left. He felt a mixture of satisfaction and dismay when the elfen sprite scrambled away behind a tree, easily twice as quick as any human.

And then a localized snowstorm kicked up in a flurry of chill wind and oversized snowflakes, and the brute’s mouth formed a grim line even as the water stiffened his beard around it. Magic.

Atlas stepped backward instead of forward, and turned as he fell the short hop down from the pillar to the ground. He crouched behind his cover, put his back to the cool marble, and assessed the situation. The man could change his name and his legend, but he would never shake specific attitudes. One such attitude was his relationship with magic: he didn’t fear it, but he had a certain healthy mistrust of it.

Better to be safe, as they say.

So Atlas braced his back against the pillar and closed his eyes, and took a deep breath of the suddenly-frigid air. His unshod heels pressed deep into the sun-baked earth in front of him amidst patches of crabgrass. He pressed the undersides of his naked arms to the marble pillar, and curled his fingers into the cracked, grooved ridges of its stone. He heaved upward, pulling from his triceps and pushing with his thighs, and with herculean effort he shifted the pillar’s considerable weight.

Doubtless it had been many decades since the thing had fallen; probably centuries. Its weight had impressed it down into the earth, but Atlas forced it out of the indentation and rolled it toward his foe. Where it had laid was now a stretch of black earth, alive with panicked centipedes and spiders that scattered away from the sudden flood of light and magically winterized air.

Redpath paid the insects no heed: other things needed crushing. Once the pillar was in motion, he turned himself around, put both hands against the stone, and continued to push like an oversized sisyphus. It rolled forward slowly, at first, and then faster, and faster still. Soon it was tumbling, flattening the underbrush and the reeds, a steamroller without the steam, aimed at the sprite’s hiding place.

The brute continued to push on it from behind, periodically peeking over the edge of his makeshift weapon to make sure its intended target didn’t dart away. If the green-clad magician tried to run, he’d abandon his cover and chase the little runt down before any more magic got worked. If no escape attempt was made, well, the pillar would have an ugly collision with a tree trunk, and Atlas would be well within grabbing-range - exactly where he preferred to be.

He heard the whistle, but paid it no mind. What good could a whistle do?

Behind his thinning shroud of snow, around the cover of his tree, Fenn could hear his heavy opponent moving. He really needed a name for this guy. Mask-man? Mask-man. Something was heaving, something was giving, something was being pried from the earth again. Another pillar? Really, didn’t this oaf had more tricks up his sleeve than rock chucking? Then again, the boy thought as he winced and stood up, it didn’t take anything more creative than that to damage his twiggy frame.

A very distant baying could be heard as well. It was a deep, welcome sound that faintly shook the hemlock’s delicate blooms, one that brightened Fenn’s eyes with a spark of hope as he strained his ears towards it.

Daugi!

As far as Fenn could tell, she wasn’t anywhere near the fighting yet, probably still tracking her way towards him. It might take her some time to follow his trail. He just needed to wait out the time between now and when she’d be at his side.

Alright, new plan. Fenn wasn’t eager to duck around the side of the tree to see if he his piddly chunks of ice could do anything to that ogre -- not yet anyway. Not when there was probably another rock heading his way. He sighed and let them fall to the snowy-soft grass, pondering his possible escape routes. The rumblings of whatever-his-attacker-was-doing were approaching. If he stayed where he was, he’d surely be crushed. If he fled… he wasn’t certain what’d happen. It was doubtful that mask-man was going to just ignore him streaking away through the forest though. Fenn shivered, breathing shallowly, and the snowstorm around him went sparse from his frustration. He gripped one of the lower branches of his cover-tree, his mind racing...

Ah-ha. When in doubt, go up.

Fenn grinned, took hold of a thicker branch in his uninjured hand, and hoisted himself up. His toes dug easily into the rugged grooves of the bark. Climbing was fairly instinctual for him; the beamish boy had been skittering his way up the boughs of pine and deciduous’ since he was… chronologically at his youngest, he supposed (“littler” wasn’t the right term for someone who had never sprouted an inch in his life). This was something he could do, quite literally, with one hand tied behind his back. Or in this case, with one shoulder severely damaged and starting to turn a worrying shade of purple. Before Fenn knew it, he had shimmied his way up into the canopy. Shafts of grey sky greeted him.

Finding secure perch in one of the heftier branches, Fenn leaned out to see just what mask-man was up to. He paled. By the time he was able to get a glimpse of it, a craggy grey boulder was barreling its way towards the base of his tree like an Alerarian steam train off its rails, being shoved along by mask-man. Fuck!

His hands tightening against the frost-cold trunk of his tree, Fenn grimaced and braced himself for immediate impact.

Much like the first tree to be hit with the pillar, this poor yew did not fare well against the earth-shattering force of the boulder. It crunched, tipping inward towards the source of impact. Fenn gasped and clung on for dear life as the tree careened forward. Leaves and slender grey twigs shook loose from the boughs, and the rattling branches scratched at his clothes and skin, leaving grey marks and beads of black blood. The fae child’s general attitude towards death had always been fuck this, I’ve got better things to do. This time, swinging closer to the behemoth below glaring up at him with a hardened gaze, was no exception.

The wide-eyed boy squeaked and made a lunging grab for the next oak over as the yew fell. His falling hand snapped a few thinner boughs before making contact with one thick enough to hold his weight. Frightened ice shot up the bark as he struggled to pull himself up. There was a sudden tightness around his neck, a weight that was dragging him down, fighting against his grip on the tree. He could hear the loose button fastening his cloak strain before fly off into the forest with a great pop! Wheezing, Fenn scampered up the oak’s winding branches, glancing back only after reaching the safety of its crown. Below, a mask-man framed by debris was holding the boy’s torn green cloak, his hands tight with cold anger.

Too bad. That had been a very nice cloak, even if it was old as balls.

Irked that he had lost his favorite piece of clothing, Fenn reached instinctively for his magic. Another sharp chunk of ice shimmered into existence from thin air. He didn’t know if a hurled bit of ordinary ice would affect such a beefy opponent, but the boy had to try, didn’t he? With a flick of his aching right wrist and a feral scowl, he hurtled it down at mask-man.

Daugi had better come soon. Really soon.

As Atlas-once-Flint stood wringing the empty green cloak between his hands, he cursed himself for a fool. Apparently he’d been spending too much time in Ettermire, and had become a two-dimensional strategist. He hadn’t considered up as an option.

He was thankful for the confines of his mask. The air near the ground was yellowed-brown with a thin cloud of disturbed dust and pollen from the fallen trees. The scent mingled queerly with the unnatural chill the little magician had produced. His teeth felt gritty, but the mask filtered the worst of it if he breathed through his nose. He could only imagine how it would annoy his eyes.

Thunder sounded again, closer than before, though sunlight still filtered through the leaves. The bedlam he was wreaking on the forest had removed the chatter of the birds, and once the rumble in the sky died down he thought he heard some larger, terrestrial beast bellowing somewhere in the forest. It was a secondary concern, but some sub-process of his mind filed the fact away as relevant.

The primary concern had been strategy until the sprite summoned up a shard of ice. Now it was evasion. The brute grunted in alarm, twisted away, and ran as the ice pelted him in the rear deltoid. It had been sharp, and traveled with enough velocity to puncture his leathery skin. He felt blood well in the wound. He imagined that if the elfen wizard could see the blood from all the way up there, it might have been heartening. After all, his attacker was running away.

Until he threw one foot forward, sideways, and skidded to a stop, sending up a fresh plume of dust and pebbly grit. He twisted back, bent low, and let out a single huff of steam that clouded around his head. With a savage roar, he shoved off from the ground and charged directly at the oak’s trunk, momentum building around him like a physical thing - an almost-visible tension in the air like a half-bubble in front of him. He crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, and then tossed himself bodily at the tree. His left shoulder collided with it with an incredible cacophony of shattering wood. A colossal rend appeared in the side of the trunk as Atlas’s shoulder passed through it: an explosion of bright wood splinters and unbelievable noise. It echoed through the forest, an earthy challenge to the heavenly thunder.

The tree shuddered and lurched as Redpath stumbled away from it, his momentum spent. He gathered himself before he fell, and rushed back to the tree as it swayed. This time he pushed his right shoulder to the trunk above the gaping gash he’d blown out of it and pushed, encouraging it to fall away from him - and toward the river. When gravity took over and it began to topple, he stepped back and watched the culmination of his labor, searching for the diminutive figure among the branches as they bent chaotically between the wind and force of the fall.

Atlas wrapped the cloak slowly around his right hand, and then used it to absent-mindedly mop the blood from his puncture wound. Nothing satisfied him like destroying magnificent things.

The boy raised a fist and cheered internally as the mask-man turned tail from his puny piddle of magic, even as the victory gesture strained his shoulder. Yeah! Take that, you ogre! That’s right, you’d better flee Fenn’s wrath! But why was his attacker running so readily? Was he frightened of magic or something? It seemed easy, almost too easy…

With a roar that could challenge Daugi’s, mask-man skidded to a stop, swung around, and began barreling right back towards Fenn’s tree. It momentarily scared the wits out of the little Fae, startling his hair into standing on end.

Yep. Too easy.

The tree swayed, shifted, and toppled just as surely as the previous ones had. Fenn felt a twinge of apologeticness for being the reason these majestic woods were being felled one by one. Still, if it was between him getting snapped like a twig or the trees, he’d rather it be them. All the boy could do was cling to his branch and pray he could find another tree to-

SNAP.

His branch broke.

Fenn found himself falling through the air with no more branches to grab to matter which way he flailed. For a brief moment, the trees, sky, and plants became a green-grey-white cloud spinning about him. It was as if someone had dolloped paint on the edge of a canvas and smeared it all the way to the other side. Darkening clouds above rumbled with another blast of thunder, mocking him as he plummeted.

He expected to hit the ground, maybe smash open his skull, probably split a few bones. Instead, he found himself suddenly immersed in a shock of dirty water, having only smacked the back of his head to bruising on the rocky riverbed. The fallen tree had stirred up silt and decay, turning the once-clear water filthy and opaque. The boy halfheartedly coughed it out when he surfaced. Fish darted away from the point of his abrupt impact before swimming curiously closer to the dazed Fae.

Several minnow and a small pike found out the hard way that Fenn and water did not mix well. Ice crept out from his prone form, his body still in defense mode even as he couldn’t quite find the energy to lift himself up. Spindly chunks were floating everywhere.

Something grabbed ahold of Fenn’s oversized shirt and began dragging him out of the shallows, a tight grip at the collar that he didn’t have much strength to resist. Still, resist he did. Fenn’s greatest strength laid not in his physical power, but his shocking tenacity. An annoyed growl sounded as his weakly flailing hands bumped against a fuzzy snout. Wait, snout? He blinked and focused weakly up on the dark shadow that had hauled his sorry ass back onto the grass. Red eyes blinked down at him, bright and worried. Relief lit Fenn’s face as he reached up to give his direwolf an enthusiastic half-hug with his good arm. He didn’t even mind her terrible breath huffing in his face.

“Ouf!” Daugi barked, nudging her boy-pup onto his feet urgently. For a “dumb dog”, she was actually pretty perceptive at times. She knew that the whistle meant danger was afoot.

His mind was fuzzy and his head was pounding. Fenn fumbled to wring the water from his shirt and pants, not wanting to turn into a complete block of ice. As he did so, he was startled by the sight of mask-man emerging from behind the fallen tree, staring angrily across the stream. He had located his prey.The boy’s green cloak was clutched inhand, stained dark with blood.

Fuck it, that was his cloak!

Very little dug into Fenn like someone claiming his shit for their own. He gritted his teeth venomously, irritation biting into his veins like icewater. Lessons needed to be taught! Enemy, Fenn signed with great effort to his wolf, fumbling to point in the direction of mask-man. Hurt me. Took green. We fite him. Instantly, she lowered herself into a defensive stance. Her yellowed teeth were bared for all to see; any who approached would see just how they compared to her bark.

Fenn shuddered and hoisted himself onto his wolf buddy. With his injured hand, he struggled to pull another chunk of ice out of the air. They were ready to charge.

Round 1 is over! This thread is now closed for judging.