Breaker vs Behemoth: Davy Jones' Locker

[Breaker]

From a distance, my island looked serene, almost heavenly. A golden halo of sparkling sand ringed the dense jungle, distance reducing those clawed branches and strangulating vines to a green and brown blur. A few gulls circled and swooped above the beach where so much blood had been spilled, hoping for a free meal. They had learned to anticipate the carnage, and I didn't like that. I didn't like anyone predicting my actions, not even a flock of harmless scavenging birds.

I treaded water in the open ocean, half way between my island and the much larger land mass called Scara Brae. I knew the route the enchanted rowboat that delivered my opponents followed, had watched countless times as it cut the wavy waters to bring me my next victim. Nowhere in the Pagoda rules did it say I could not ambush the enemy before they arrived. That was one of the few good things about the Dajas Pagoda; there were no rules.

Invisible currents tugged at my bare limbs and the heavy swim trunks I wore, trying to lead me every which way. I refused to budge, floating as best I could with only my eyes and soaked hair above the waterline, tilting my head back whenever I needed to breathe.

It was not only a desire to break routine that guided me to pitch this challenger a curveball. I had heard from a number of sources that this man was a mountain, the largest fighter to ever enter the Pagoda. While that may or may not have been true, he had defeated a Warrior with alarming alacrity. Beyond his physical size and prowess, I knew nothing about the giant, save for a name I needed a calculator to pronounce.

So I took the safe route, became a sea monster for the day, and waited amidst the water that shone like a thousand shattered mirrors in the day's bright sunlight.

Today, I realized, tasting the salt water as my lips spread into a small smile, I'll feed the fish instead of the birds.

[Behemoth]

Bhakti’mat Zu’ura sat as close to the center of the enchanted rowboat as he was able. After defeating Jobe in his very first Pagoda battle, the hulking Fallienite had challenged up to the next rank. Matched with a Hierarch almost immediately, the dark-skinned behemoth had set out the very same day. Though he might have taken his time had he known water was involved. Exiled from the land of the gigases in Fallien for killing an important dignitary, Bhakti’mat had wandered Althanas for a time; always searching for his place. Leaving Fallien had meant crossing the sea as well; a trip he’d loathed immensely.

The towering titan of a man had a phobia of water and felt he was justified for it. It was simply something that he had never had much dealing with in his life’s experience. As a border guard to Dosidica deep in the Fallien desert, Bhakti’mat had lived a life of unfailing loyalty to a militant race. He had been a machine of death, a harbinger of destruction. Every breath he breathed spelled doom for his enemies. He was a terror to behold when in his element.

The ever-flowing tides of the wild sea were certainly not his element.

The nervous brute was unable to focus himself like he normally would have. Typically he centered himself with lethal determination; his entire being intent on the hunt until the glory of victory washed over him like a warm rain. He had been born to fight; indeed it had been his only purpose as a border guard in Fallien.

The rolling waves around him nearly sent him into a panic.

Since leaving his homeland, the half-gigas had yearned for a place to fit in. When he had stumbled across first the Citadel and later the Dajas Pagoda, the desert warrior had been pleased. Here, in the corner of the Althanians’ society, was a niche worthy of his devotion. With the same steadfast determination he had given to his job as Zalkhein, Bhakti’mat began training to conquer those he would challenge. His first fight had gone well; he could only hope the remaining few were as easy.

Knowing nothing of the Master he faced and still surrounded by the dancing waves, the fugitive from Fallien closed his eyes and let the rocking boat lull him into the meditation that he so eagerly desired. When he arrived at the forsaken island, he would take his fears out on the Master whose domain it was. The wretched man would pay dearly for making the dark-skinned warrior cross the sea. With a renewed sense of calm, Bhakti’mat Zu’ura readied himself for the battle ahead.

[Breaker]

The boat appeared, a speck in the distance that grew rapidly as it advanced. Every so often the choppy water blocked it from my view, and then seconds later it reappeared. Like a cheap neon sign, it flickered in and out of existence. I waited until my enhanced eyes could almost make out the lines on my opponent's face, then took a deep breath and allowed myself to sink.

Beneath the surface, silence pressed in. Before, I had been bombarded by sounds, from the cry of the gulls to the water constantly lapping at my ears like an overly friendly dog. In the surreal aquamarine light, I waited, suspended as if in purgatory. Some might have found the weightlesness and ominous silence intimidating, but I found it meditative. It gave me time to think, and mostly I thought about the Pagoda.

When I first signed on as a warrior, it seemed every battle brought something new to the table. The vampire Lorenor, the assassin Madison Freebird, the ferocious tribal Jada. Each of them had tested me, and I rose to the challenge. These days, the battles were nothing but a recurring gimmick. I no longer lived for the thrill of combat; instead I craved only the kill.

Looking down, I stared through the levels of descending darkness. The limelight I was suspended in quickly became a deep royal blue, which ended abruptly in crushing black oblivion. Like a strange puppet on an underwater stage I pulled my arms across my body one at a time, stretching my shoulders. Look on the bright side, the optimistic portion of my brain said in a thin, dying voice, maybe long-name up there will give you the fight of your life.

Thinking of the challenger, I glanced up and saw the boat passing overhead, gliding soundlessly like a ghost ship in the clouds. Hoping to leave my self pity behind, I dolphin kicked with both legs, powering my body after the fleeing craft. My eyes had grown used to the sting of saltwater, but it increased tenfold as I streaked through the rowboat's wake, catching it quickly. Then with a final flurry of energy, I rose from the water like a polaris missile.

My hands left the water first, shedding droplets of water as they clamped twin vicegrips on the stern edge. I heaved and kicked upwards, escaped into the air and landed in the boat. I sucked in merciful lungfulls of air and blinked in the unfiltered sunlight as the breeze whipped through my ears. The salt water had scrubbed my senses shining, and I smelled the big man's blood, racing through his thick arteries it begged to taste the air. The boat rocked precariously as I leapt without hesitation, aiming to wrap my body around the enemy's frame like a long, lethal coil of chain. My long legs sought hooks to control his hips while my forearm snaked out to secure his neck in a rear naked choke. Despite the sudden movement that threatened to capsize it, the enchanted rowboat continue smoothly along its designated path. I didn't care if we overbalanced and ended up in the drink; I just wanted to feel the dying ebb tide as my bicep compressed the behemoth's carotid.

[Behemoth]

Water erupted behind him like a geyser and the hulking man whirled about to face the threat as fast as he was able. His blue eyes narrowed as he took in the stranger’s features and realization quickly dawned. The man was pure muscle; reflecting the barbarian’s own features and magnifying them tenfold. Bhakti’mat felt as though he were looking at a shorter, paler version of himself at the pinnacle of physical fitness. This had to be Joshua Cronen, the famed Hierarch he had elected to challenge.

For a moment his enemy just stood there, as if preparing himself now that he was out of the water. But it passed quickly and then his lethal form was hurtling through the air toward the brute. The dark-skinned warrior was caught in a desperate instant of indecision; his instinct told him to drop back to avoid being attacked so easily, but the water was at his back. Could he ignore his fears to rely fully on his instinct?

Indecision stalled his actions and the towering behemoth had only taken a single step toward the prow of the rowboat before Joshua was upon him. Nimble limbs snaked across the Fallienite’s dark skin, securing their holds on his own corded muscles. The titan thrashed instinctively, trying in vain to shake the Master’s grips. However, both combatants’ prodigious weight combined with their position in the boat soon made his efforts moot. The stern of the enchanted boat thrust toward the clouded sky while the bow began to sink beneath the waves. And all the while the determined little boat plugged away at its pre-set course toward the isle.

As Joshua’s thick forearm began crushing his enemies’ windpipe and throat, Bhakti’mat Zu’ura found salvation in the last place he’d ever expected it; the sea. Finally capsizing, the rowboat tipped its occupants into the briny waves and fought the water rushing over its gunwales. Both the desert warrior and his adversary found themselves tumbled by the rolling waves as they fought against one another. Luckily, as they had fallen, Joshua’s grip had been loosened slightly and Bhakti’mat gasped for breath each time his mouth broke the surface. Fighting against the water closing in all around him while trying to extricate himself from the Master was proving difficult and the Fallien fugitive feared that the battle would be over before it had begun.

Flailing against anything and everything around him, the fearsome and calculated killer regressed to a panicked child; scared as the waves tumbled him and desperately searching for any sign of salvation from their salty depths.

[Breaker]

I clung to my opponent like a magnet to an anvil as he thrashed about, fighting to keep his head up while simultaneously defending the choke. He gasped for air as if he had forgotten how to breathe. I held my breath as comfortably as an amphibian in midwinter. We bobbed like an oddly shaped buoy as the rowboat pulled sluggishly away, half filled with water after dumping us into the ocean.

The desert dweller showed good instincts. He did all the right things despite his total loss of composure, working to keep my unyielding arms from crushing his windpipe. I must have looked like a child hitching a ride on his father's back, but contrary to appearances my strength far outshone the behemoth's considerable power. He bucked like a wild stallion but failed to throw me away. My legs hooked together and squeezed like a pair of duelling pythons, capable of crushing the air from his lungs on their own.

I could have kept it up, working a slow choke for hours if necessary until the enemy's endurance waned. But I was impatient, craving the satisfaction that would only come when I stopped the circulation of his blood.

We submerged momentarily, my open eyes now immune to the sting of sea salt, and as the giant reached to pull his head back into the world of air, I struck.

With locomotive precision I transitioned to a head-and-arm triangle choke, attempting to trap the gigas' own beefy arm against his head and use it to compress his carotid. In the shining sea this technique was a double edged knife; it would halt the blood flow to my opponent's brain while also impairing his ability to swim.

Anticipating another dunk in the briny, I inhaled, smelled the larger man's fear. It foreshadowed his fate, my victory, and a free meal for the carrion creatures of the sea.

[Behemoth]

As his massive arms beat against his attacker, the desert warrior felt an impending sense of dread closing in on him. The fearsome Joshua Cronen had the upper hand before Bhakti’mat had even entered the arena. Knowing that going into the match, still the dark-skinned titan hadn’t backed down. His resolve to prove himself to the rest of the Hierarchs had overcome any fear throbbing through his veins. Now, however, the behemoth had let that anxiety crash in on him, literally drowning him in its waves.

But we fight in the ocean, he complained to himself. His natural fear of the water had only been heightened by the ambush; putting him at an even more severe disadvantage. Joshua Cronen was not only a master combatant, but a brilliant tactician as well. No doubt he had studied his opponent before the battle. What can I do to compare to a man such as this? the brute wondered.

With animal-like ferocity, Joshua tossed the towering titan around in the waves as if he weighed nothing. Unnerved by this feeling, for the hulking Fallienite was accustomed to his prodigious weight and frequently used it to his advantage; Bhakti’mat lost his tenuous grip on his nerves and began flailing once again. However, this time it would prove even more ineffectual.

Gasping one strangled breath heavily mixed with salt water, the dark-skinned fugitive sank below the waves with his adversary clinging to him tenaciously. He felt every beat of his fluttering heart pounding in his head and instantly knew what his opponent had in mind. Rendering him unconscious in the sea would be a death sentence, one that would be difficult to avoid. He needed to act… and act quickly.

He pushed his frayed nerves to the far corners of his mind, trying his best to overcome a nearly crippling phobia of the water. With his free arm, the hulking behemoth drove an elbow back into Joshua’s stomach; with any luck the impact of the blow would loosen his hold somewhat. All Bhakti’mat needed was a second’s opening and he could slip out… at least he hoped so. His massive legs churned the sea beneath him, but as the pair of battlers tumbled through the sea, the Fallienite couldn’t be sure which direction was up any more.

He only hoped that his attack would open the window of opportunity that he so desperately needed.

[Breaker]

Sorry for the wait; that's my warning.

My incessant, crushing grip tightened ever more as we sank into the deep. The water darkened around us and became cool. Both dense-bodied men, we plummeted almost like two stones lashed together, the enemy's feeble attempts at swimming less and less effective. I felt a new level of desperation overcome his movements, sensed the mistake coming even before he made it. Like a ratchet, my legs constricted further, urging the desert dweller down a path of destruction.

Finally the giant could take it no more; he gave up on fighting the choke and drove an elbow backwards into my ribs. Coming from a brute like him, the blow might have killed an ordinary man, but I barely felt it over the cold water massage that streaked around my body. My abdominals handled the strike like a brick wall, unyielding. Before the gigas could realize the futility of hitting me, I retaliated. One large hand, pruned by the salt water bath, reached to clamp around his jaw while the other aimed to grip the top of that boulder-sized head. With an explosive jerk I attempted to snap my opponent's neck, then released him and swam towards the surface.

The constant effort of squeezing that tree trunk of a body had burned my oxygen faster than usual, and the lack of air stabbed at my lungs like a hot knife. I reached up and pulled with both hands, legs resuming the pneumatic dolphin kick. The aquatic blue light that pressed in all around grew brighter, lighter, until finally I broke the surface and sucked a breath of delicious sea air. I treaded for a moment, almost hyperventilating to harry the oxygen into my bloodstream and brain, then thrust my face back into the briny. In a dead man's float I stared downwards, wondering if I would see a tumbling corpse or a petrified nonswimmer.

[Behemoth]

Silent bubbles drifted their way through the tumultuous sea, tiny beacons to the behemoth’s final resting place. Joshua’s aggressive assault hadn’t killed him; no, far worse. As the half-gigas’ body ceased obeying the commands issued by his brain, Bhalti’mat’s eyes went wide with fear. He screamed: from the pain, from the paralysis, from the millions of gallons of water crushing him on all sides. The Fallienite wanted nothing more than to be able to struggle his way back to the surface and battle Josh Cronen to the death; but fate had other plans for him.

Watching with bloodshot eyes as the Master broke through the surface; the dark-skinned warrior knew his time at the Pagoda had ended. He could imagine no crueler way to die; forced to watch and wait as he slowly drowned before sinking to the bottom of the heartless sea.

However, as the black depths forced the last vestiges of air from the titan’s lungs, the thought on the forefront of his mind was, I wonder if the rowboat ever made it to the island? Then, only silence as even his mind ceased to function.

[Breaker]

Corpse.

Without granting Bhakti'mat Zu'ura's body a second glance, I struck out after the semi-sunken rowboat. I cut the surf like an arrow through linen, quickly closing the distance, for it wallowed in the water like a lame duck. Disapointment sloshed inside me more violently than the waves all around. The sickly crackling that came when I severred the behemoth's spinal cord should have brought me some satisfaction, but I felt as bored as before.

The Dajas Pagoda was no longer able to supply me with worthy challengers, it seemed. Few hopefuls made it past the warrior tier, and even those that did were just... fish food.

I stood on the first sand bar surrounding my island just as the boat beached itself. I walked through the shoulder-deep water as if unninhibited, quickly reaching the craft. Grabbed the gunwale and flipped it, allowed a few seconds for the water to drain, then hefted it high above my head. For a moment I pondered the strange shadow I cast, then spun a half turn and heaved. The rowboat skipped like a smooth stone ten times before skidding to a halt. Like a stubborn lamb it straightened itself and slid through the waves back towards me, riding much higher without the weight of a giant, or water, within.

Damp shoulders shining in the sunlight, I took a deep breath of salty air. The cry of the gulls was curiously absent.

Nothing curious about it, I realized, When there's nothing here for them, they move on.

And with the simplicity of that epiphany, I knew how to challenge myself, how to shake down the monotonous blur my life had become.

"Teric Bloodrose." I breathed the name of the Pagoda Grandmaster. "I challenge you."

As the words left my lips, the wind accelerated and whipped them away, tossing a shower of grainy dry sand in my face. I laughed as I swept the grit from my eyes with calloused fingers.

Scara Brae was about to get the show of a lifetime.

Requesting the Master's EXP bonus with a winning streak of 1, please. To save you a trip, that means +8% of whatever EXP I'm already getting. Thank you!

[Behemoth]

A large callused hand batted at the fingers probing his face. "Is he awake?" a soft voice asked. With a low grumble, the dark-skinned giant opened his eyes to see the cold stone around him.

"Where?" he asked in Common, his eyes roving the room's features as he struggled to make sense of it all.

"Warrior Zu'ura," a tall man in a long, sweeping robe stepped forward with a roll of parchment in his hand. "You have been bested by Master Cronen and as such we have stripped you of your honorary position here in the Pagoda. Please challenge a Warrior if you wish to try and re-enter the ranks here." And with those words, he spun on his heel and marched away. At the door he paused, a look of sorrow in his eyes before adding, "Better start training." With a thin finger he beckoned the rest of the monks and soon the stone chamber was silent.

Indeed I must, the Fallienite thought as he rose to his feet. Standing his full height, the half-gigas was a sight to behold; salt water still dripped from his massive frame and a large bruise welled under the skin of his neck. Joshua Cronen may have beaten him once, but the near-immortal would not do so again.

"I promise you," he whispered to Breaker, although he knew the man could've hear him. "I will be the one to kill you..."

Thanks.