New Blood Bracket: oblueknighto vs. Falling With Style

[Tainted Bushido]

The match begins at Midnight 7/31/2009 and ends at Midnight 8/15/2009.

Best wishes to both participants!

[Falling With Style]

Place: Southern Salvian Highlands - Forest Clearing
- Atop the Ruined Watchtower
Time: Midnight

The night breeze kicked up to surprise the late summer air with a chill. Caught unsuspecting, cicadas and crickets briefly halted their song, leaving only the rustling of pine needles and poplars to fill the night. The breeze carried a few leaves and fireflies out of the Salvian forest, placing them against the slope of a hill which rose out of the forest to create a clearing perhaps as large as a town square.

Atop the hill, rising out of the low grass, squatted an old tower, constructed of thick local stone. A relic of some forgotten war - Salvar's witnessed far too many to keep track - the tower rose perhaps thirty or forty feet when new. Now, the enclosed turret had fallen in to create an open roof, perhaps fifteen feet across. The remains of the enclosed roof resembled battlements. Inside was a simple stone staircase, built solidly into the inside circumference of the wall, leading up to the top. It was in an odd place for a watch tower, being in the middle of a pine forest. Nobody really knew, or cared, why it was built in the first place, all valuables long since gone to looters. It was exactly the sort of place to go to get away from civilization, as nobody took any interest in the place any more. It held neither strategic nor historical value.

Tonight, however, was different. A small fire, besieged by night breezes, burned in the old fireplace, casting a dot of orange out of the ruined turret. A brass telescope and astrolabe glowed with reflected firelight. A small and thin female figure stalked around, weighing down sheets of paper and parchment with rocks from the rubble. Occasionally, she paused to look through the telescope and adjust a knob or setting, or adjust the astrolabe.

Another breeze kicked up and the fire wavered. The astronomer's shoulders went up reflexively, a shiver passing with the wind. She drew the cloak of her brown robe tighter and added another stick to the fire. Her studies tonight chiefly concerned an incoming comet she had been cataloging for the past week. It wouldn't be close enough to project its ley energy into her magics for at least another week, or, perhaps a month. It was hard to gauge its approach velocity when it couldn't be seen by the naked eye; it had taken more than a few magical lenses out before the eye of her telescope to even glimpse it.

Regardless, she knew it was there by the faint electric buzzing of magic. It flickered deep inside her, like a firefly caged by her ribs, distinct yet maddeningly elusive. She had felt the tingle of magic like this once before in Salvar, when she chased a meteor shower from the heavens, drunk on the power of a lunar eclipse. There was no such magical boost tonight, but she didn't mind - the wizard Alcyone was a wiser creature than the brash sky-witch she tried to be those months ago above Salvar.

Tonight, all she needed was a fresh stack of papers, a hot mug of peppered vegetable broth, and the solitude of study.

[oblueknighto]

Sitting down at the camp having formerly relayed his message to his higher ups Blue was hoping that they would allow him to participate in the events that were to come. He was expecting a messenger to come and go on this day and waited for whatever the message said as he prepared to leave. Checking his bow-string, his quiver for his arrows and shoving his boot-knife into where it belongs. He was ready for travel and was going to set off even if his request was declined. As the time passes he leans back on his chair and waits intently for the door to open.

As the messenger walks in Blue quickly interrupts him, "Blah blah blah, I know the procedure so you can just skip to the message already. There is no need for any formality and I don't need to see the seal."

The messenger then sighs at Blue and begins to speak, "Cadet Knight, your proposal has been accepted and now you may go to battle as part of the 103rd Legion of the Corone Armed Forces. Next time you wish to leave for battles there is no need of approval as you are currently just a Cadet in the Legion. We thank you for your support of the empire and appreciate all the participation you have in the quelling of the Corone Civil War."

He was quite happy at the way his higher ups barely noticed his message, he had not even stated where he was going on his request and it seems that he didn't need to. He was setting off to go to a fight yes but not as a Cadet but as a participant of a tournament for fame, battling experienced foes learning of their techniques and using them against them. Blue then set off to meet his informant, thinking of all his allies he had made during his life and all the enemies he had known. Then he made a grin under his mask as he easily knew that all his enemies were long gone and many of the allies he had made were still out there with favours to pay back.

***

Deep in the night Blue spied on his target, a lone female. The informant had stated the target to be able to use some magic of some kind, something to do with the stars the informant had said. The target was looking through some kind of long spyglass affixed towards the twinkling stars of the night sky. Looking at the target as if he felt pity over her as he nocked his arrow aimed right at her chest as the shadow cast over by the dim fire.

Blue was nested on a branch of one of the trees in the upper story of the forest where the moonlight is slotted through the gaps between the leaves. He had waited for his target to peer through her spyglass so he could get a clean shot on her, hoping that the first shot his indeed hit its target. He had three arrows in the gaps between his fingers and he was going to fire them consecutively. He was about 100 metres away from the target and he was sure that he could at least graze the one of fragile body but he his gut feeling was acting up for some reason, as if there was something he didn't know.

As soon as the target turned back to look into her spyglass he let loose the first arrow and in the next three seconds his hand was free of his arrows. He didn't even watch his arrows as he was so confident that they would strike true and win the fight he drew another arrow with his right hand and put his bow down to look for another beast to hunt but this time not for hunger but for food.

If anything needs to be changed or corrected I will do so.

[Falling With Style]

A longbow shot from a hundred and ten yards away, at night, slightly uphill, is a chancy proposition. Minute discrepancies in fletching and wood grain grant each arrow a unique character and potential trajectory; factor in cross-calculations for wind and adjustments for trajectory and you'll have a shot that an inexperienced marksman stands little to no chance of making.

Blue, however, was not an inexperienced marksman.

The arrow, now unleashed, flew at a rate of hundreds of meters per second, faster than any bird, faster even than some Alerian flintlock bullets, and threaded itself expertly between a gap in the masonry little bigger than a breadbox. Its wicked iron tip sliced apart the air approaching the wizard's chest.

However.

Perhaps the wizard Alcyone had a residual field of warped gravity around her, a gift unseen and unnoticed from the approaching comet. Perhaps the wind shifted minutely at the last second, altering the arrow's flight. Perhaps the fletchings of that particular, handcrafted arrow simply made it pull in a particular direction, or the character of its shaft made its flight frequency a bit too unique.

Perhaps it was blind and idiotic luck, and by all accounts this was the most likely explanation, but Blue's arrow missed Alcyone's thin frame by six inches and instead struck her mug of vegetable broth.

POW.

"Gah!"

The hot broth exploded everywhere, its pepper stinging the wizard's sallow face and shooting up her nose. Caught in the midst of hyperconcentration, the wizard stumbled and tripped over her robes, sneezing repeatedly, pulling the telescope, astrolabe, and fifteen pages of broth-soaked and thoroughly useless astronomical sigils down upon her in an ungraceful heap.

A heavy CLACK followed her fall and a few rock chips -along with a shower of gray dust- tossed an inglorious shock of old age into her rust-colored mop of hair. Alcyone blinked, entirely confused, and then realized she was bleeding from her right wrist. Something else had grazed the skin along her ulna bone, neatly carrying away a bit of skin and flesh. Had it been one inch higher, it would have pierced straight through the veins of her wrist.

It didn't take a genius to figure this out: someone was shooting at her.

Sure enough, three arrows littered the stone around her. One bore a few droplets of blood on its iron tip. Alcyone gauged their incoming vector from the fresh bite taken from the stone, following its direction and trajectory. Numbers and physics whirred in her brain, jockeying for position with adrenalin, pain, and panic. The sobering realization that there was someone out there, right now, firing arrows at her sent waves of fresh shock into her system. Even worse, Alcyone knew she couldn't use her standard retreat of flight; if her assailant were good enough to make those shots, they'd easily peg her while exposed and floating. No, she was pinned down. She crawled and jittered over the cold stone, looking for all the world like a bird with a broken wing, resting herself in the safest place she could think of - against the stone directly next to the arrows' entry point. Trajectory would protect her there.

After her wrist had a token bandage around it - enough to staunch the small dribble of blood it produced - the wizard Alcyone set to work looking for any sign of her assailant. She didn't wonder why just yet; there was only how. She cobbled together a few magical lenses from the broth-soaked sigils she had used to focus her telescope on the comet, and soon enough, she had a periscope-like spell in place that allowed her to look up, back, and around the tower wall. She searched back and forth, hoping to get a glimpse of the owner of those iron-tipped arrows.

Chillingly, though, there was only the moon-dappled forest.

[oblueknighto]

Jumping from tree to tree having kept the thick layer of tree between him and the rest of the world Blue was still looking for fresh meat. His stealth had hidden him away in the night as any spying eye would see. He knew that animals sometimes gather around the stone building to eat so he circled the structure looking for any animal feeding in the vicinity but when he realised that birds would fight over the meat of his target he looked across at the stone building. Finding that the woman was still standing and was barely hurt Blue made a sigh as his confidence beat him up on the inside.

If she had seen him then he would probably already have been attacked or at least taken cover from but his target was still searching for him. Blue then backed away onto a thick branch making sure that he could only just see his target from his position. His entire body was totally covered with a thick coat of leaves as he sat on a branch just enough to hold his weight.

Blue lifted his bow and used his right hand to nock the arrow onto the grove. Then aiming not at his target but the spyglass the target is using to locate him, even though it isn't directly aimed at him he knows that sooner or later the target will locate him and initiate an offensive plan of some kind.

Releasing the arrow now Blue watched closely and inspects how the target will react when her spyglass has been disabled and is unable to locate her attacker.

[Falling With Style]

If Blue's waiting for carrion birds, I reason that gives us a few minutes' break between my last post and yours.

Huddled and shivering more of fright than any night breeze, the wizard Alcyone spent five long minutes hunched against the masonry atop her tower, peering above and behind her through an intangible pipeline of bent light. Her hastily-assembled sigils afforded her a less than perfect resolution compared to a telescope, but she dared not move from her place lest the archer spot movement and send the next arrow through her spine. More than a few times she jumped at shadows in the firelight, seeing robbers and assassins crawling from the stairwell.

What could her attacker possibly be after - her paltry possessions? A load of astronomy equipment, some writing supplies and a bit of food were all she had to her name at the moment. The question - why? - had finally bubbled to the surface, joining how, ignoring her instinctive attempts to push it out of her head. It was unavoidable - she was a scholar of the laws of the physical world, and how to pluck them like the strings of a lute. Why and how were important words to her, and perhaps, even, the most important of words. The senselessness of this attack violated why.

Alcyone disliked this. How would thus avenge why, and how was good friends with the scientific method.

Step one, then, was to define the question. Easy enough: why is there someone trying to kill me? It had supporting queries, of course; who were they, for example? What sort of person and what sort of capabilities? What personality would snipe an unarmed, defenseless young lady as she looked at the stars?

The next step was considerably more interesting. "Gather data," she muttered, and before long, she had a better light-bending spell in place, working like an intangible telescope. She scanned the pine forest, watching the breezes ruffle the dark needles against the moonlit sky.

That's when she'd seen it - not a figure, but the movement of the springy pines, out of sync with the gentle swaying of the others. A treetop bent and then sprang back, clearly indicating where someone was jumping from tree to tree. The wizard noted this, following the movement of the trees and their regular rhythm; stretch, bounce back, swaying of the next. Clearly, he's more agile than I am. And a very good shot with a bow.

Then - zzzff - an arrow went through her eye. Alcyone gasped, falling over backwards and scrabbling at her face...where, of course, there wasn't an arrow, else she'd be dead. The archer had somehow seen the faint disturbance of light her spell produced, and shot an arrow through the eddy-like distortion. Likely her assailant figured that it was tangible and could be destroyed, despite being made of nothing more than a bit of light. The effect of watching the arrow approach head-on, even if the arrow sailed over her head, was visceral enough.

Alcyone's heart took a little while to settle. "Hypothesis," she told the night breeze, "trained killer. Likely paid. Cannot understand why I'm the target du jour."

If they're a hired assassin, they'll know to either stay hidden and keep sniping to pin me down, or close in for a knife between her ribs.

I'm not liking either of these. I might be able to flush them out if I can expose them.

Alcyone crawled, below the lip of the broken masonry, to retrieve her writing equipment. Soon enough, she had a few spells ready to go. She ticked the last few numbers and angles off, ready to test her hypothesis.

The spells were kin to her faux-telescope spells and the ones she used to augment her viewing equipment. They were simply large, intangible lenses collecting ambient light and focusing it to create low-powered searchlights slowly roving the forest. They weren't bright - no more so than a pool of moonlight cast into a cave - but they should be able to illuminate or expose any odd shapes in the trees.

Alcyone sat leaning against the wall between herself and her attacker, peering backwards over the wall through her magical periscope.

Testing.

[oblueknighto]

Watching his arrow pierce something Blue then confirmed the destruction of the magical locating device but his target had probably located him now. Blue was then jumping again as he watched his target and wondered what his target was doing as he kept jumping from branch to branch trying to find any better location that his current. He needed a location where his target couldn't see, notice or even see a arrow flying from. He would need to calculate exactly at what angle he would use to make sure that the angle was not noticed until it struck. Using his stealth to shadow himself from his enemy he continued to hop from foot to foot.

Blue was now only 80 metres away from his target and was about a quarter around the tower from his previous location, he spotted a tree almost completely cutting off sight to and from the tower giving him a good chance to slowly rain down arrows over the area that his target was at, taking a last peek at his target before entering the blocking.

He took his quiver belt and put it to his side, inspected the arrows for all fault and stabbed an arrow into the trunk behind him. Drawing another three arrows from his quiver he aimed his bow it about a 60 degrees into the air and estimated the speed and drag, the drift and the wind. He aimed for his target as a whole now knowing that taking her down wasn't going to be so easy, she had some tricks of her own but Blue was going to take her down with a few of his own.

He kind of felt sorry for his target, somebody becoming a target for absolutely no reasoning other than the order to do it, Blue had to use his time as best that he could. Once he was with the 103rd Legion full time he wouldn't be able to fight like the old times.

He looked straight into the air and watched the night sky and stared right into the stars that shone. He fired two of his arrows consecutively right all into the same direction, he then aimed through the opening of the leaves and peered through the gap right at his target and fired his arrow directly at her, he estimated that his descending arrows would land right after his third arrow either found it's target or not. He nocked another arrow and concentrated on his following attack, after his three pronged attack he would follow through with a clean hit at his unsuspecting enemy.

I was actually meaning that he looked over to see if any birds had started to eat Alcyone's body yet but he saw your character still standing so he engaged his target once again, it doesn't matter. It wouldn't make a difference and I was slow on posting anyway. I'm sorry I couldn't get on any sooner, we only have 5 days left.

[Falling With Style]

Hypothesis confirmed.

Once her searchlights went up, the attacker had taken off again. The springy pine trees once more danced to the beat of his leaps, and here and there her keen astronomer's eyes caught flashes of motion, arms and legs as silhouettes in the trees. Her pen and ink flew over the pages, furiously jotting down masses and velocities. Now she was caught in the madness of investigation, now she would test her opponent again and again.

By the time the arrows came, Alcyone had seen where the trees had stopped and positioned herself behind the fortification of the wall.

CLACK. CLACKCLACK.

One arrow skimmed a crack in the masonry, shot expertly through a hole where her voluminous robe had been exposed. Two more landed directly behind her - had she been standing a yard to her rear, they'd have hit. As it were, the angle of the wall did more to protect her than any number of cantrips or spells could have.

They can't get a clean shot -

-zzzzzGhnk-

As it were, Alcyone hadn't perfectly taken cover.

She cried out as the fourth arrow tore a bloody furrow along the outside of her hip, lodging itself deep within the muscle of her outer thigh. The wizard threw herself out of sight instantly, tears running down her face past clenched teeth and a neck positively Gothic with strained buttresses. Her heart was aflame with energy and adrenalin, burning away like an Alerian boiler about to explode. Unable to think of anything but the pain of her new wound, she pressed her torn robe to the wound, its dark red staining the earth tones of brown and green with the unmistakable savage red of human blood.

The wizard Alcyone had to scream. There was nothing for it. It built in her like a nova, gathering energy and scattering tiny bits of gravel as gravity pulsed in intensity around her frail body. A small cavity of space warped itself before her face, a bubble filling up with her words. Finally, it burst and threw her high, sobbing voice to the night sky.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?!"

The battle had truly been joined when the full reality of her attacker's intent sunk into her with the arrow. She wanted answers, all right, but if she couldn't get them, she'd settle for self defense.

Alcyone lay on her right side, the wound on her left welling blood, and huddled herself below the lip of the wall where the arrows couldn't get her. She snatched her paper, snatched her pen, and started completing sigils with ticks and digits and arrows. She managed more than a dozen before the pain of the wicked arrow sent her into a sobbing convulsion again, clutching her thigh, trying to dam up the blood welling out of her. Each press of the linen robes dug the arrow through more of her flesh and started the terrible pain anew.

Her efforts with the diagrams hadn't been a loss, though, and while she clutched her wound and sobbed to herself, the cosmic energy began to flow through the glowing numbers and lines.

A dozen or so small rocks, ranging in size from large gravel to softball-sized chunks of masonry rattled upon the weatherbeaten stone, gathering energy, slowly levitating in the air, before launching themselves, as if from dozens of tiny catapults, in an arc. The rain of stone and chips of rock cascaded down upon her attacker's position like so many angry, misshapen birds, the retribution of an angry mage.

[oblueknighto]

Blue finally got a clean hit in, his sight giving him a plain sight of the blood all over the robes of his target. Even though his shot had been clean his position had been compromised and needed to move quickly when his target screamed for him. Pounding her voice into his head, the birds flew away and he almost tripped when he was going to jump. With all the animals moving as far from his target as they could he was intrigued at how his target was stupid enough not to know, his informant had told him that the woman was highly intelligent and had a mind for technology and science.

He sat there stumped at how she had yet to figure out the situation she was in, she was in the middle of a battle of not just strength but of wits, losing her cool like that was the mistake of her life. Anybody assaulted who can think calmly was to be commended and congratulated but his target had just stepped down from the position so Blue aimed his bow at her head. Blue had almost let loose his arrows when some rocks started floating and flew right at him, they were flying at him in a speed too high for him to simply jump away.

Watching the rocks flying towards him he training with Lorenor, he had threw them one at a time and at a lot closer range but it was the same concept, Blue estimated their courses and flight patterns taking into account most of the other factors. He made all the basic movements to avoid the rocks by sliding back with his leg now outstretched but restricted in movement. One of the rocks was now flying towards his face so he made a quick movement to the right just avoiding a direct hit, the rock had just scraped the left of his face cutting through the material of his mask. Then again, it wasn't all that simple.

He took off his bag and put it right below the stuck arrow then also let his bow down and set it as an image of himself drawing a bow. His quiver was now on the ground below, his arrows scattered and Blue didn't even have an arrow with him so he decided to take a risk and he jumped down from his vantage point onto the ground below. Collecting his quiver and his arrows then strapped them onto his back.

Blue needed to engage his target in melee combat, her only attack was to toss rocks and what was the easiest way to do that, to strike them in close combat so they couldn't strike easily. He ran for the first level of the ruins and just made it so he slowly started to climb up the tower with his quiver now tightly strapped onto his back. He lifted his right foot up onto three steps above and drew his boot-knife from it's position.

He was pretty sure that his target was still trying to figure out where he was but if she knew of his presence as he used his stealth to run up the stairs in silence his target could easily assault him with another barrel of rocks and stones. All Blue hoped for was that his target was still angry at the notion of somebody assaulting them. He had finally used the power of his enemy against them. If he had placed his belongings right his target would be seeing a shadow on the ground that looked just like him drawing his bow. Almost at the roof of the ruined tower he just wished.... that he still had his bow.

I'm not sure if this is acceptable and I'll fix it up if there is anything that isn't acceptable, I was just trying to be creative and it turned out kind of weird.

[Falling With Style]

Vista thought it would be hilarious to reboot itself and eat my post, so I've had to redo it in its entirety, infinitely crappier due to fatigue. Good times.... *preps rifle*

Magic is always treated with respect; it needs no passport. This is because no matter where the traveler goes on Althanas, magic is always expressed as analogous to fire or steam, perhaps a wild beast. If it's not properly harnessed and contained, Bad Things happen. Wizards, sorcerers, witches, mages - all names for the vessels of this power. They are the fire pits, the steam boilers, the cages for the tigers and jaguars of magic. They are, often times, the sole entity capable of containing the awesome forces within. A severe injury, then, can breach this containment, making an angry, wounded mage a dangerous thing to deal with.

The only way to make one more dangerous, though, is to corner her.

The archer would soon discover this. The witch Alcyone seethed in her agony, her sheer, inhuman willpower being the only thing keeping her conscious. Her blood had turned her left hand slick, but it held the wound tightly, trying both to stop further blood with her torn robes and steady the arrow in place. Dozens of bloodied diagrams, traps and sigils littered the stonework before her, ready to be unleashed with a stroke of her pen. She'd had a rare stroke of luck - her pale searchlight had briefly lit up both the crude decoy and its maker, granting her a brief minute or two to draw up these sigils. Her attacker had ran for the tower, likely seeking to get away from future missile barrages, and doubtlessly attempt to finish her with a blade or club.

This had not been a pleasant thought. Alcyone had poured more coals onto her mental flames, clutching her wound with one hand while the pen had flown over the spare papers. Her mind burned with numbers and vectors as she tried to blot out the fire in her thigh with that of her brain. A stack of papers now in hand, Alcyone adjusted her position on the rock she used as a chair. Her willpower wouldn't hold out forever, not with the archer bearing down -or rather, up- on her this second.

She pulled the first trick out of her sleeve, looking expectantly at the fireplace while her good hand clutched a glowing parchment. The coals and logs of the fire collapsed in a bloom of sparks, shifting their weight as if on the deck of a listing ship. A few burning coals clattered out of the fireplace before the whole fire shambled out in a shapeless mass, a giant amoeba of coals and logs. Alcyone was no pyrokinetic - she'd simply changed the direction gravity pulled on the components of her fire.

Amorphously, the fire lumbered across the stonework, buoyed along by sliding coals and logs still close enough to form a cohesive fire. The fresh oxygen fanned out a tail of orange flame, giving it the look of a crude comet or meteor. It didn’t move quickly – being that it simply slid and tumbled along – but it didn’t need to.

As the attacker showed an indistinct face, and a body ironically covered in leafy camouflage, Alcyone thrust her hand out and the fire leaped down the stairs, its large amorphous mass seeking to engulf him in flames.