Round 2: Lute and Hammer Vs League of Nightmares

[Silence Sei]

Round 2 will start midnight Tuesday, CST. Good Luck!

[Ciato Orlouge]

He turned his sword towards the ground, dragging it around to make small little spirals in the sand. He could hear the cheering from outside. The crowd was compromised of people who were no better than animals, not understanding the significance of the blood curling screams. Ciato Orlouge sat upon the wooden bench; a bench that had been filled with many warriors early in the day, now only filled with Draug and himself. The two men had been patiently awaiting their opponents for the second round of the Lornius Corporate Championship, after a successful defeat of the great Letho Ravenheart in the first round.

The cave-like entrance opened with a groan, shedding the first rays of light the two vicious combatants had seen since the last poor soul went out to get slaughtered. Looking at his partner with a nod, Ciato stood and made his way outside into their arena. His eyes could barely make out the crowd above the ring due to the bright lights of the arena. He could hear bottles and mugs slamming against the chain link fence that kept things from getting in or out. His eyes shifted towards the ceiling, the Mystic's blue orbs noticing that the metal links covered them in a dome-like fashion.There was a copper like smell in the air, blood that had recently been spilled, staining parts of the sand at their feet. He kicked the grit around, causing a minuscule twister to arise; there was only about an inch of sandy grains beneath them.

“This is all very reminiscent of The Cell,” Ciato noted, before aiming his sword into the air, rousing a loud cheer from the audience. In his time outside of Orlouge Drantrak, the Mystic had discovered that the masses had a penchant for those who pandered to the crowd. The nobleman was also completely aware that feeding into the masses would not be the monsters strong suit. As such, Ciato pointed his sword towards the opposite end of the arena in the most elaborate way possible.

“I am one half of the team that beat Letho Ravenheart!” Ciato’s words cut through the crowd, deafening the cheers as if they were hanging on his every word now, “Is there anybody that thinks the League of Nightmares will fall?!?!”

A huge ‘Hell NO!’ was shouted in unison from the public. Ciato extended his arms, as if to beg his opponents to show up and attack him. At this point, the Mystic felt as if there was absolutely nothing that could stand in his way.

The arena had about a thirty feet diameter to it. It was perfect for close quarters fighting, as there was nothing but dirt all around them. No hiding spots, no way to talk ones way out of it, absolutely no escape. It was exactly everything Ciato and Draug could hope for in an arena. The Mystic kneeled down, taking a few grains of sand in his hand and letting the earth sift through his fingers.

“Hope you’re ready, Draug,” Ciato stood up with a smirk. “Because this nightmare is just starting.”

[Abomination]

The light poured in from the mirrors cleverly placed to reflect sunlight in a wide arc across the arena. While it was bright in the fighting circle, Draug could barely see the masses of raving spectators beyond the metal fence in the darkness. Was everyone in Lornius this crazy? He should have recruited this whole damn island for the Cult. They were in the massive cellar of one of the largest bars in Lyridia, refurbished into a prizefighting pit. As he stepped out in the dirty, sandy floor, he looked down at his hands, flipping them over and over again.

Ciato noticed the strange action of the Homunculus, "I'll be damned if I can ever see some emotion out of you, but now I'm starting to tell when something's on your mind. Care to share, partner?"

"He's still alive, I know it," grunted Draug. They had to leave Terrinore before they could confirm Letho's body in the rubble, but there was the distinct possibility that the ranger was still alive. In fact, Draug was sure of it. "I haven't killed him yet."

"Don't worry about it. You'll get your chance someday, I mean the guy practically leaves a trail of destruction. Anyway, do you have any information on our opponents? I've never heard of them."

Draug looked at Ciato and shook his head slowly, "Orcs. Both of them." Even the Cult's sources were rather light on details aside from those released by the LCC commission. After a pause, Ciato took the hint that Draug knew nothing else and turned around to continue enticing the crowd. He seemed to enjoy being the center of attention.

The Homunculus coughed, tasting blood on his lips. He put his hand up to his mouth and wiped off the dark red liquid, staring it at with prejudice. Despite all the available victims in Terrinore, he did not take the time to replace his dying organs. He still had a while to go before they started to fail entirely, but the symptoms were starting up already. Soon his needs would be satiated by having to rip organs out of some hapless victim. Maybe his opponents would be kind enough to share some of theirs.

[Erirag the Poet]

"Kitotat hoshat vadokan gologri..." Erirag's voice faded out as the percussion from feet stamping in the stands above them picked up. As they'd waited their turn in the pit, she'd taken a moment to pull out her lute and pluck at Thingur's catgut strings. The battle on the beach in which they'd stood in fire and rain had her expecting more of the same from the second fight in the Lornius. Yet, they found that this time around they'd been ushered from the wilderness to a more urban jungle, one in which buildings and crowds made her think about the songs she'd written about cities. Though she was working on teaching Otto a song that compared a night-time cityscape to the bones of an elf laid out in the moonlight, this place was anything but quiet and moon-touched.

The door rattled open, disturbing the notes of her lute and the echoing voice of her partner. While Otto didn't have the fine grasp on tune that the bardess did, the way he'd stumbled over the orcish words made her feel proud. She was bathing in the elation of sharing language with one of her own when she was washed in the reflection of the midday sun from the mirrors that had been placed through the arena. Metal clanged as mugs and bottles ricocheted off the fencing between the pit and the stands, it shuddered and rattled as meaty fists grabbed at the wire and shook. The song she'd been patiently repeating to the shorter orc was overtaken by the enthusiasm of their audience.

Standing up, she smoothed her grass skirt around her and set the lute to the side where the rest of their personal effects had traveled with them. From the entry, she could see the sandy floor that they would grapple and struggle on. She could see the form of their two opponents move across the empty space as the people of Lornius called for blood and the death of the orcs. Most of all, she could smell. She smelled blood and sweet, alcohol and tobacco. Most of all, she smelled death. A grin stretched across her face and she turned her large olive form to Otto before giving him a tentative thumbs up, a signal she'd taken to mean that all was ready if her observations of humanity meant anything.

"This day," she said, trying her best to enunciate her Tradespeak words as Otto had been trying to teach her. "It good day to kill."

With that, she turned and began to stalk into the arena. Her hips swayed, the bones and shell strewn around her hips and neck rattling as she moved. The rodent skulls in her hair bounced as she whipped her gaze back and forth from Ciato to Draug. Erirag's confidence only soared as she noted that their opponents were nothing like orcs. Victory was almost assured. As she flexed her muscles, preparing for an attack, she made a mocking bow.

"Me Eriag!" her voice was lifted, the strong projected echoing of an entertainer well rehearsed in reaching a raucous audience, "You die now!"

[Otto]

"... Kuli nagraufrom; Sapat ashtri armaukob", Otto's brow furrowed with effort as he dredged up the next line of the song, courtesy of Erirag's tutelage. Towers grow; dead baby bone hampers. Or something like that - between her imperfect Tradespeak and his own practically non-existent Aleranian Orcish, some things had almost certainly been lost in translation. Oddly enough, when she'd first begun to teach him the songs of her people (though an Orc himself, his upbringing had been too far removed for him to consider them as his own), it wasn't his mangling of the language that had made her wince and cuff him over the head. He knew he had a terrible voice so he had taken to singing under his breath; paradoxically, he had begun practicing for performances that nobody would be able to hear. Three inspirational lectures on Erirag's part and a mild concussion later, Otto finally broke the habit and sung his first song from start to finish. For his trouble he had been rewarded with a surprising rush of elation and a rather fixed smile of encouragement upon Erirag's glazed-over face. Every day, though, more and more of his caterwauling was being replaced with something that passed for music, and it was always nice not having to hammer out the dents in his helmet quite so often.

Otto cast a questioning look towards Erirag to see if he had gotten it right this time, but the giantess was not paying attention. The noises of the crowd had jumped in pitch and volume: the battle was about to start. He turned to the large door as it opened, lighting up the antechamber with an intensity which surprised the younger Orc - he had been expecting gloom and guttering torches for the underground fight. Yet the brightness had nothing on the soup-thick stench which roiled out from the pit. There was sweat, smoke, ale, even a hint of piss, and as usual with these sorts of institutions, those aromas were overrun by a smell of blood so thick, you could leave out a bowl of porridge overnight and come back to black pudding in the morn. He locked eyes with Erirag, who gave him a thumbs up.

"It good day to kill", she said, and Otto nodded in agreement. As far as Erirag was concerned, it usually was.

With spear and shield in hand, he trailed a short way behind his partner on their way in to the arena and took up a position several feet from her left flank. Since he had a much shorter gait, Otto normally found himself lagging behind the giantess. It was not something he particularly minded; he did his best to keep his gaze straight and level most of the time, but when his concentration lapsed his eyes would usually end up resting on Erirag's sashaying hips. Consequently, he had taken to keeping the visor on his helmet down when in these situations - but not today. He liked to sniff out a battleground first in order to get an impression of the place which his eyes and ears alone could not provide. What he smelled now, while Erirag was putting on a show, was nothing much out of the ordinary: the pit had seen much violence in it's time, its aroma of blood formed of progressively-aged strata. He toed the sand underfoot; soaked in blood and battle, it was just the sort of thing Anvil would love to fold into a sword. A fine blade it would make, too.

That's odd...

He sniffed the air again and caught a hint of fresh blood. Very fresh. And... wrong. Otto looked to the other side of the arena where their opponents loitered. The white-haired fellow bore a steel rapier, the mark of a precision swordsman. He even looked familiar... Otto did not think they had met before, but after the fight, he might ask the man whether he had any kin in Corone. Then Otto looked into the eyes of the other, and had to suppress a surge of fear. It came not from any one attribute, but various subtle - and not-so-subtle - signs which, combined together, suggested that the golden-haired combatant was not altogether human. Otto turned his head slightly to the right and spoke to above the din of the crowd.

"There is... gijakob, uh, raum gijakob", he hazarded. Even if their opponents could hear him, hopefully Erirag would be the only one to make sense of his fractured Orcish. "It smells off. Bad. Not mir gijakob. Be careful."*

With that he hefted his shield and spear, ready to follow Erirag's lead.

---

*Otto thinks that the words translate as follows: gijakob = 'blood', raum = 'new(ness)', and mir = 'good'.

[Ciato Orlouge]

The closest thing Ciato Orlouge had ever seen to an orc at this point was his older brother Steppenwolf. When the Mystic set his gaze upon the beasts, his sword was lifted into the air without hesitation, prompting another rowdy cheer from the drunken mules above. He watched carefully as the miniscule male member of the matching monstrosities spoke in a foreign tongue. Ciato quirked an eyebrow at this, his mind trying to race back to his schooling.

Mystic’s had a pretty well adapted education, and for a family as high up on the social hierarchy as the Orlouge clan, that education was triple enforced. Ciato’s mind thought back to his days of translating the language of the orc, and more specifically, trying to pinpoint the dialect. Blood. He definitely said blood….what was that other word…fresh? Known? Not ….well blood? Is he talking about Draug? Ciato looked back to his partner, a slight smile gracing his gentle looking features. The tone in which he had spoken hinted at hesitation, and hesitation would always lead into fear. A fear of the mish-mash of man-made parts that called itself Draug was an opportunity Ciato could not afford to pass up.

“Draug, think you can handle the man?” Ciato used his free hand to slide across his hair. He wanted to show his opponent’s that they were truly not even worth his time of day. The fact that Ciato could roughly translate the words of the orcs meant that he held an advantage over the creatures. He just had to make sure not to show his hand to his opponents, and this round would be his. Yet another stepping stone in the glorious legacy of Ciato Orlouge.

Draug nodded, and Ciato turned to face the female. The Mystic had not felt this excited about taking down an opponent since he and Draug bested Letho Ravenheart in the previous round. Compared to the gun slinging Marshall, these two giants seemed like a nice vacation from the stiff competition. Orcs are huge, but they’re naturally slow, and they play dirty. It’s just like a training match against Steppenwolf.

Ciato leapt from his position, his sword pointed outward as he made the dash. A dust cloud rose up from the ground upon Ciato’s take off. He knew that he had to strike fast, and strike hard. As he came closer to the lady-orc, he could smell the odor of her natural scent, undaunted by the civility of perfumes and other fragrances. It was almost overwhelming enough to send the nobleman on the retreat. He pushed through the stench however, and aimed the tip of his sword towards the exposed breasts of the behemoth. “A souvenir for our second round victory, my dear” he taunted.

First, a quick test of abilities, Ciato thought, then the real fun will begin

[Abomination]

Draug wanted to avoid talking to Ciato as much as possible. The man infuriated him, whether it was his arrogance, pride, or delusions of grandeur. It was however not unlike other members of the Cult. They all had selfish desires, but the difference was that Draug was under orders to cooperate with him. It was the first time he wasn't directly under the command of his mother, and something didn't sit right with him because of that. It was possible for him to consider the orders the same as hers, but he was starting to understand The Dark Mother and her true desires. Despite his slight frustration, he didn't have the capacity to question the situation. All he could do was follow his orders and fight.

He started to walk around the arena in a circle around the smaller orc, Otto. Of course, he had no concept of their disgusting language. He had never fought one of their kind before, and the height difference was strange; One was like a monument, while the other was shorter than Ciato. Deciding to test the waters, Draug's mouth opened wider than any human's would. His right hand reached into his throat and pulled out a steel sword, covered in blood from the blade gliding across his swollen throat tissue. The poisonous blood dripped from his mouth and from the tip of the blade as he lowered it. He only needed one hand to hold the sword and swing it with enough strength to cleave a man in two. Unlike Ciato, Draug took things slow. He wanted to savor every cut, every crunch of the orc's bones. The Cult taught him to relish the moment.

"Crush that green-skinned freak!" came a yell from beyond the fence. Like a chorus, the crowd erupted in jeers, taunts, and insults. Draug was more accustomed to screams of terror and gurgles of pain than someone actually encouraging him to murder, but he was too focused to care about the spectators. He kicked up the sand as he walked, the strength of his gait belying his lanky appearance. The smells did not bother him, the sounds were like echoes in his mind, and in his vision he could only see the orc, his target and source of life-giving body parts.

He dragged the blade across the ground, causing a grating sound. He intended to walk right up to Otto and swing his sword in an upward diagonal arc, casual as can be. He was no different from a butcher coming in to kill an unsuspecting animal.

[Erirag the Poet]

Otto's words rolled by like the shadows of fish moving just under the surface of a darkened pond. The din of the crowd was mounting as tension and intoxication danced together. She caught the broken orcish - more easy on her ears than the common tongue of mortals. She had to admit that the man was learning the language of her Alerarian tribe than she was taking up ttradespeak, and she felt a surge of pride even as her mind tried to work out what her comrade was hinting at. Of course there was a smell of bad blood in the air; not only did blood gush on the sands of the arena but surely organs had spilled bile and filth as well. However, Otto thought it was new and wrong, and she trusted the armored orc completely. Another glance as their opponents spoke still just showed a couple of humans, however. She glanced over her shoulder and nodded at the blacksmith, assuring him with complete confidence that as orcs, they were far superior in every manner.

"Smicopul sharaobi nar daumab zouk'hai." The word zouk'hai was said carefully, as if it were the most important word she could find to give him. In a way, it was. It was the word for "us" that she'd begun to use after their previous fight in the Lornus, and it meant everything that was hers - but better than anything else of hers. A word of kinship, she'd taken him as one of her own tribe despite his short stature and proclivity to clad his skin in metals. What importance was his armor? She'd grown up on the mountains of Alerar, her feet and her heart resonating with the metal deep within. Otto was simply an orc that was the mountain, a force that would not be moved or bowed. While he may have felt uneasy in Draug's presence, she knew that he could not be humbled by these little flits of nothing before them.

The crowd reacted to Ciato's movement and voices rang out, frantic and fevered. Erirag's attention snapped back to the arena as the mystic charged at her. She snorted in derision and brought her arm up to the left, fist clenched. His blade met her mid-forearm and was pushed to the side. She meant to break his face in for daring to pierce her heart, though as she moved her body forward in her attack she was distracted by a sharp pain on her arm. Her leathery skin, thick enough to protect from the elements, had been cut and bright bubbles of ruby welled to the surface around the edge of the sword that still sunk into her flesh. It wasn't a terribly deep cut, but it enraged her. She'd been wrong about this fop of a man. The way he held himself, so different from her companion, had made her sure that his sword would be blunt and uncared for. With blood falling on the sands, the crowds began to howl in approval. The chain fencing clanged and rang as more debris hit it. A full mug of mead had been thrown in enthusiasm and the cold suds splattered across the ground and Erirag's back.

Fueled by her anger over her own mistake, she continued to move into the attack ignoring that flesh was rendering as his sword moved with their steps. Her other hand pulled back and moved forward in a rushing punch, the hammer of a hand almost the same size as Ciato's skull. She stared down at him, brows furrowed in a glare as she snorted a grunt with effort. Hot air rolled from her nose over pursed lips and bared fangs. He may be able to sting her, but she was still assured that the well-prened mystic was but an annoyance.

Orcish translation:
These little scraps of human cannot hurt us.

[Otto]

One single minute in the confines of the arena, and Otto's nose was already blocking itself shut against the pungent fog of the place. His ancestors had come from the wilderness, leading lives much as Erirag had done, where a stray gust of wind might carry the merest hint of blood for a mile and spell the difference between a meal and a hungry night. Spending too long in the stifling and crowded air of the pit was the olfactory equivalent of staring too long into the sun; Otto's poor nostrils had to shut themselves tight lest the combined stench of old blood, vinegar sold under the guise of mead, and unwashed sailors who had in tow half of Lyridia's dockside whores begin to dissolve his sinuses. That was just the beginning of it, too.

The crowd-pleaser was occupying himself with Erirag, which left the creepy one trained onto Otto. Those black-and-yellow eyes weren't that disconcerting by themselves as one did not grow up on the streets of Corone without seeing the weird and wonderful variety which life had to offer - and as far as that went, strangely hued eyes weren't all that outstanding. His sense of uneasiness changed to apprehension as he watched the man distend his maw wide, made a brief detour through morbid fascination when a hand reached inside his mouth, and finally stopped dead at mild terror as it slid sword out from bloodied throat. All the while Otto did not see a single flicker of pain mar those flat, dead features.

For some reason, he couldn't help thinking that it far outstripped anything the fop or Erirag had done so far in terms of performance.

Erirag saved him then, perhaps. "Smicopul sharaobi nar daumab zouk'hai," she said, and Otto broke free of the trance. Us. He was one half of a team, of which the other half had been the only one apart from his family to willingly share any sense of kinship. For the conscript, that had been as an oasis in the desert. It meant there was no excuse to let her down.

"It's him", he said, and made a short jabbing motion with his spear towards the approaching homunculus. "Bad gijakob".

The smell of befouled blood was clear even to Otto's malfunctioning nose, since the sword was slick with the stuff. There was no way he wanted that on him: Otto's shield hand set his visor down and he delayed his charge, planning to test the creature at range with his spear. He noted the way the sword was dragging through the sand, and the slow gait... whatever it was, it knew how to capitalise on its appearance.

In contrast to the slow-moving horror, the fop had just made a brave assault on Erirag. Otto risked a quick glance at the other pair and saw his partner's predicament.

"Sharp edge weaker than sharp point", he said, turning back to Draug. His tenuous hold of Orcish had almost deserted him, so he adopted a simplistic form of Tradespeak. "He fight like gologri".*

A rapier was a good thrusting weapon, and deadly even against armoured fighters since it was suited to seeking out and piercing weak points. Erirag had been relatively lucky to catch the edge of the blade since they lacked the sheer chopping power of their thicker, heavier cousins. If the giantess heeded him then she should have no problem taking out the little dandy - especially if she pretended that her opponent was, in fact, gologri.

Otto kept his knees bent and his centre of balance low, the speartip tracked his own opponent's circle round the outside of the pit until its target came to a halt. Now he was closing the distance, still moving slowly, still dragging that sword through the sand...

Otto didn't want to play games. When Draug was just out of reach, the Orc took a step forward and thrust high towards his opponent's chest. His jab was aimed at the opposite side to his opponent's sword-arm, to increase the distance his opponent would have to swing the blade so as to swat the spear away.

---

Gologri = 'elf/elves/elven' (?)

[Ciato Orlouge]

Ciato did not react to his sword only scratching his foe. He intended for the blow to kill, and anything else left a tinge of disappointment throbbing within the Mystic’s heart, but his body would show no indication of such pain. As the bare-breasted and brutal behemoth brought down her giant club of a fist, Ciato hopped backwards, the punch meeting with nothing but the ground and causing an even bigger cloud of dust to arise. The crowd cheered as their ‘hero’ evaded the attack of the ‘villain’. What irony that I would slit all of their throats if given the first opportunity, Ciato mused.

As for her, Ciato kept nimble on his feet, hopping around the dust cloud that Erirag had created, causing his own smaller puffs of brown to kick up into the air. There is something vaguely familiar about everything she's doing. From the calling me a 'scratch of a man' to the smash first and think later fighting style. The question is, who… His eyes widened as he reached his conclusion, the smile on his face turned to a dropped jaw and his brows lowered in anger. Erirag’s fighting style was that of the one man on Althanas that Ciato Orlouge hated more than anybody else.

“Steppenwolf,” he muttered, his grip on his sword tightening around the hilt. His heart pounded; time itself seemingly slowed down with each throb the organ produced. Ciato had spent years fighting his younger brother, Steppenwolf Orlouge, but the nobleman had always found himself coming up short against his kin in physical match-ups. Ciato’s eyes now focused more intently on the cloud, his mind reminding him of loss after pathetic loss, his body beaten upon the ground, pools of blue forming around his form as the pink haired sibling laughed with such annoying mirth.

The crowd began to get rambunctious, throwing their items with a greater force and urgency. He ignored the riots that had begun to start due to the lack of any real action. A few had begun to change their choice of champion and opted to cheer for the oddly sized orcs instead. Ciato swallowed hard, his mind was now fully concentrated on the form he saw in the middle of the cloud, a form whose silhouette looked more like a ghost from the Mystic’s past.

Ciato screamed a declaration to the heavens that silenced even the rowdy crowd for a few moments. His hands were biting into the handle of his weapon so hard, small trickles of azure had begun running down his arms. His eyes lost color as he landed from yet another short hop, jumping straight and attempting a stab. He moved to the side, stabbing again, each thrust carrying with it a scream as it tore through the wind with a wild warrior conviction. Sweat began to drip down his features, each little bounce in the nobleman’s step joining with a quick thrust. There was no method to the attack, and it lacked any good form or grace that Ciato Orlouge was typically known for in combat. The thrusts were like that of a magician's assistant jamming swords into the box that contained her boss. The cloud would hopefully settle into the visage of an orcish corpse and a Mystic's victory, ratherthan an unharmed magic man.

All he could see was Steppenwolf Orlouge, the man who always beat him. It mattered little to him now if he advanced in this tournament or not. He just wanted this orc dead, and he would now stop at nothing to make sure that such a thing became reality.