Round 3 Veteran: Roht Mirage Vs Leopold

[Silence Sei]

Matches begin at 12:01 Central Standard Time tonight. Will Leopold find sand in places he doesn't want it or will Fallien's Daughter fall to the Gentlemanly Bastard? Have Fun!

[Roht Mirage]

Hoak looked at the grand arena door with some of the trepidation that combatants must feel. His brow furrowed, adding wrinkles to his wrinkles. She was drunk and emotional, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time, That kiss was just her being... silly. Resolutely, he gripped the handle. It was slick under his palm, just slightly. Even slight sweat was unthinkable for an Ai'Brone, those who personified the Citadel's stone foundation; impenetrable, protective, beyond reproach.

She's young enough to be my granddaughter!

He pulled open the door. It was silent and ominous on its hinges. A breeze struck him, warm and dry from the withdrawal of a Fallien night, and he stepped upon the sand. The door disappeared, allowing the red breath of dawn to warm and tug at the back of his robe. In respect to the two combatants, the arena had been created in a state of night - sand for the Fallien native, darkness for the nocturnal predator. That predator, however, had never appeared, and Astarelle Set'Roh had yet to leave. So, the arena had been left to its own devices and its own time. The sunrise warming his back was, oddly, not premeditated by Ai'Brone hands. It was organic and spontaneous. He smiled, savoring it.

At a leisurely pace, the monk walked through the desert. Jagged plateaus rose like malformed and misaligned teeth. Cacti stood among them like tableaus of men desperate not to be eaten. Their natural green was just beginning to bloom after the red shift that separated a desert night from a desert day. Hoak could smell their sweet blossoms, or was that the fruit? His last journey through the true Fallien had been so long ago. Decades upon decades, though he chose not to dwell on it.

At the top of a wide swell, he came upon the campfire that would have been the arena's focal point if all the actors had taken to the stage. Now, it was a cool, ashen scar upon the dune. He huffed. Where are you, woman? Tracks led away from and back to the site three -maybe more- times over as if a human-sized firefly had been making erratic passes. It was impossible to tell which track led into another, or even which was the freshest. There was, however, one distinct path disappearing toward the next dune in the direction of the shrinking shadows. A shoe lay discarded some distance out, making the tracks lopsided until another shoe appeared, upside-down, at the cusp. Hoak chortled, shook his head, and followed.

Over rises and falls, in and out of red-rimmed shadows, he followed the tracks and the refuse that accompanied them. In one depression, unlaced iron bracers lay across each other. At an exposed peak were two shorn squares of black fabric. He plucked one up, stretched it between his hands in bewilderment, then let it drift away on the dusty morning breeze. If I find a brassiere next, I'm just going to turn around and leave.

The tracks continued into the swollen shadow of a high plateau, the highest in the area. There, they bee-lined for the craggy face and disappeared. Hoak craned his neck back, wincing at the dark edges of broken rock. Erosion had blunted them somewhat, but still... a fall from the heights might grate a man like soft cheddar. Desert madness, he recalled from his youth. There was a proper Fallien word for it, and undoubtedly some myths about spirits stealing the souls of travellers. He couldn't quite remember. Once, he had met a man so afflicted. Dehydration could have a truly terrifying affect on both body and mind, so much that the desert people had naturally fallen to superstition and awe. His Ai'Brone brothers, he was sure, hadn't conjured any such spirits in the arena, and it had only been a matter of hours that Astarelle was left alone. The monk became weary as he circled deeper into the shadow of the desert's tooth.

In the ruddy shade -where colors bled together like watery paints- he found Astarelle's staff. It stood sentinel in the sand just before a sharp drop. Three streamers of blue fluttered from its skyward end. One tickled across his stretching hand. Hair ribbons? His toe butted against stone, and he looked down. A solitary slab had become a table for an assortment of green pods and bruise-purple fruit from one of the shorter breeds of cactus. A desert pear, he thought it was called. Some were naked. Their spines -scraped cleanly off by an expert hand- lay in a small pit beside the table. He smeared a finger across the exposed flesh of one fruit and brought it to his mouth tentatively. It was sweet, sharp, alien; still better than anything he remembered from those desiccated caravan rations.

Sand crisped behind him. A single footfall. He detected the slight darkening of the shadows. “Mmmm,” he emoted loudly, finger still in his mouth, then spun. He caught a wrist. A woven bracelet creaked under his grip. There was a high-pitched squeak, then a gasp as he flipped the stalker over his hip.

Whump.

Astarelle's grey eyes, wide and wet as lily pads, stared up at him as she gulped loudly. Her hand was frozen with one finger extended. Her jaw was slack, her cheeks pale of their Fallien warmth, her hair fanning in all directions. The intricate mark above her brow shone with a thin sheen of sweat. Hoak's eyes flickered, reading her face for delirium as he let out a calm, controlled breath.

She forced her arm farther through the bracelet, pressed her finger to the billowing robe at his chest, and said timidly, “Doop. You're it.”

He let out a sigh that became a good-hearted laugh halfway through. “Ai'Brone don't play tag,” he informed her as he helped her to her bare feet. Out of simple curiosity, he glanced down her body. The woven reeds circled her wrists and ankles, matching her staff. Her shins were bare up to the cut edge of her leggings, over which draped a crystal blue skirt – short in front, long in back. Her corset was slightly askew and smuggled more than a little sand in its crevasse. He quickly looked up to the sapphire pendant settling around her neck, then back to her eyes. They had a heavy cast to them.

“It's time, isn't it?” she asked. Both brows and one corner of her mouth twitched down.

He nodded, opened his mouth to say something stone-like and professional, then simply patted her on the arm. “You sure did make this place home,” he said softly. Color returned to Astarelle's cheeks in a blush. Hoak quirked a brow. “Did I say something odd?” She responded with a sheepish grin and a tilt of her head, directing him to look out over the desert. He turned as the sun peeked over their alcove and drew back the curtain on her night's work.

In a wide recess between dunes, there was a sharp border carved as wide as a house. There were small peaks, a ridge of them, colored grey. A trough snaked alongside, marked in dark sand to imply moisture. There were patches of artfully placed brush -oases- and a long stretch of sand so pale and smooth it shone almost like glass. An island was set into the false river, sapphire specks twinkling on tiny Irrakam rooftops.

Fallien, built in grand miniature with loving detail.

“Home,” Astarelle breathed, her voice wavering. Hoak nodded and made an appreciative sound in the back of his throat. His jaw was too slack to form words. “Could you...,” Astarelle began awkwardly. She suddenly grabbed his hand. “I'm not ready to leave yet. Could- Could you bring the next one here?” Her eyes pleaded wetly.

Hoak met her gaze. He didn't stand a chance.

[Leopold]

Leopold Winchester was not accustomed to summonses. At the head of a now large mercantile empire, he did the summonsing. People, goods, and alcohol fell at his feet, not the other way around. He stormed into the arena ready to wipe the smirk of some young upstart’s face, smash his soul into the dirt, and pierce his heart.

“Oh.”

The sun danced flaxen in the cloudy sky. His pallid skin shimmered silver and icy in the twilight. Intrigue. Mystery. Uncertainty.

“It’s you.”

Leopold pulled down his shirttails, undid the top button of his jacket, and checked his shoes. Sand. Sand everywhere. He had only been in the arena for a minute at best and already he was sweating. The last time he traipsed across the desert resulted in four pairs of sweated-through slacks, two ruined doublets and a large tailoring bill.

“You are a hard man to find!” he roared.

Climbing the last rise of the minute dunes, he undid his jacket button. Gold clasps enshrouding him in midnight fell away. Beneath, a simple white shirt, black trousers, and hobnail boots befitting of vagrancy were his only armour. Save for his wit and bitterness Leopold trundled down into the caldera of sand undefended.

“Wait…,” he erred.

Several things fell into place, but several things fell out as well. Three weeks ago, Sei Orlouge had tasked the merchant to find the ‘Sand Bastard’ and wipe the cocksure smirk off his face. Undoubtable, that quarry was before him now, but two things were amiss. Breasts. Not overly large, but undeniably of the female form. The second emerged verbally.

“You’re not a bastard!”

This was, contrary to civility and convention, not the perfect opening line. It was true, though. Astarelle was not a bastard. At least, he was a she, so she was not a bastard in the literal sense. Metaphors had always confused Leopold. Rhetoric and creativity was his wife’s domain, for he relied on cold fact (and coin) to speak wonders of the world.

Astarelle, still maudlin’, gave the merchant little attention. Leopold on the other hand gave her all his. He continued across the river, clearing it in one giants’ stride, and stood a hundred feet away to her left. She was devouring something that looked like a pear, seemingly too engrossed in the sweet and pithy flesh to notice him. After an awkward silence, she turned, held an unbitten half at arm’s length, and smiled.

“I’m good, thanks,” he rejected with a frown. He rested his weight on his right leg, clicked his fingers, and did away with his jacket.

Purple light, ribbons of effervescent malice plucked his garment from his arm. Into the ether, or perhaps the night, the military overcoat faded. In its place, plucked from that same strange vortex emerged a long black shafted spear. Its tip was a sabre, of the cavalry sort. Its handle was darker than the sky. Its blade, enchanted by bitter enmity, could tear a winged beast atwain with the simplest and lightest motion.

“I’ve a message from an old friend,” he smirked. His dogged teeth and sunken eyes added malefic to his words. “You’re over stepping your mark.”

He kicked the shoes and bracers at his feet, discarded in naiveté. They landed a few feet behind him at the shores of the Attireyi. Reflecting the water’s cool flow, they stood as tombstones to whatever defence the girl could muster. Ignorant of who he was facing Leopold leered. He landed on his feet, lovingly learning about his soon to be livid mistakes longingly.

[Roht Mirage]

She had hoped for a little discourse, a shared meal, maybe a bit of appreciation for her artwork that, inevitably, would disappear to the same pit that swallowed the Citadel's illusions and the combatants' blood alike. What she got... wasn't surprising. But, she did sigh around the pear in disappointment. There was a twitch of bewildered annoyance, also, that kept her from acknowledging his -unwarranted- rage. It itched teasingly.

Hoak had been nice enough to -completely without her asking- gather and deliver her discarded armor before leaving the arena. Surely, it wasn't his decision to drop her opponent right into the middle of little Fallien. The confused man had already trodden his way across it before she could even point out how the dusting of grey sand -remains of a granite tower's collapse during the Cell- imbued the false Zaileya range with a sense of impressive height, or that the darker sand -birthed from a flooded Cell chamber- lining Attireyi's dry bed made it seem, at the very least, damp. He did oblige to jump the “river”. That was probably the only compliment he would bestow to her work.

“I never liked that gear, anyway,” Astarelle said with a dismissive wave of half a pear. She spit out a seed in his general direction, then ran the back of one hand across her lips. It was true, now that she thought about it. The bracers and shoes were just more pieces of her costume, like the tattoos had been. A Fallien daughter relished the feel of sand on her feet and sun on her arms. And she was a true Fallien daughter... for now... in this place.

She tossed the unfinished pear toward his feet, ruining it with grit. “You know what,” she said as she came demurely to her feet; face to him, eyes on his spear point. “I really should mess this up myself rather than have it just disappear.” Her staff, apparently of its own accord, jolted from its perch and slapped into her outstretched hand. It grazed the desert floor as she took long, sideways steps to circle away from him and move herself onto the raised mural. She stepped toward Fallien's south-eastern shore, passing the white shine of Nirrakal's glass fields. The thin layer -one grain thick- granting it that color was her usual means of disguising herself as a Coronian. She left it where it lay.

“I'll be the polite one,” she said with mock reluctance. Her bare feet dug into the sand as she swept her staff wide, casting a heavy splash that fell short of Zaileya's mock range . She hitched her hip toward him and planted the staff like a banner, then sneered over its upward end. “Dear stranger, may I-” She stopped, glanced at the staff's bare nub, then frowned. Quickly, she flipped it a half circle so that the end with ribbons was pointed to the sky. They waved a cerulean thank-you.

Astarelle focused on the man with the poorest of attitudes -though some decent magic tricks- and she said the words that, from her, could foreshadow either a fun evening or a broken jaw. “May I have this dance?”

Map is here for reference. Astarelle is at the south-eastern shore.

[Leopold]

Entering an arena with so much hatred in your blood, it boiled scintillatingly did not lend itself to well-timed steps. It had been so long since anybody save his wife had asked to dance he was stunned, deadpan and brilliantly, into silence.

“I’m afraid I can only muster the Coronian Hustle.” He paused. Astarelle’s blank expression suggested she did not know the anachronism. “It’s what Coronian noblemen call the three essentials of court entertainment: waltz, tango, and foxtrot.”

“Whichever you prefer, then.”

The ribboned staff told Leopold all he needed to know about how out of his depth he was. Though Kithdir-junior and Outlander Post redox formed an exotic background at his feet, he was still treading familiar ground. Most evenings at court in Corone, Scara Brae, or Raiaera ended with the man out danced, the woman in control, and his pockets emptier for the privilege.

“Oh, please,” he sneered. “I may be uncouth, and here to do a deed dirty, dangerous, and dire…,” he smiled through crooked, stained teeth. One tarnishing feature on an apparently ‘in demand’ form. “But a lady always has the first step.” Corone was ‘progressive’ in many ways, the most outspoken of which was the woman’s premier place in politics and the arts.

If Leopold lead, Ruby Winchester would find him, stab him in the gut, and kick him to the curb long before ‘Roht Mirage’ finished her dervish duet. To that end, he held his spear mid-shaft behind him: clutched in his left hand. He held out his right, cupped and gesturing her forth across the diamond roils of the greatest river in the world. With an air of bourbon, banishment, and baking flesh about him, he waited to see why Sei Orlouge feared her so much.

[Roht Mirage]

The reaction and line are spot on, good sir.

Either the man had a quick and adaptive wit, or none at all. He responded so candidly that, for a moment, Astarelle couldn't be sure whether or not he knew “dance” was a metaphor. His aloof-yet-ready stance with the spear quickly settled the matter. Still, she pondered. It didn't have to be just a metaphor.

In what felt like another life, Akashere had trained her in the way of fighting; staff and fist for when guile had been exhausted. Those sparing matches had been a dance. The two of them had become one being – versus yet united. She couldn't put this man into Akashere's role, though. The thought made her rising blush sour into a grimace. That was a place long ago left empty, and it would stay that way to preserve the memory.

She dared to hope, nonetheless. If his gentlemanly airs would hold true, and if he would oblige her, it would be nice to dance over Fallien once more.

Astarelle stepped toward him, curving her whole body with the motion. Her staff, she drew upward, dragging it across one outstretched, stationary hand as if it were caressing her. She rocked high on her toes, then moved toward him in a short, sinuous kick. “You were sent, and yet you thought I would be a man?” she asked mirthfully. The roll of her torso as it caught up with her feet demonstrated just how foolish that notion was. “I don't mean to tell your employer how to do their job...” With a half-turn that ended on slightly bent knees, she rocked back to sweep the staff past her head and into the knee-high mountains. “But, he sounds like an amateur.”

Like a cut bow string, her body snapped upright. The staff's end cleaved four of Zaileya's peaks into the air and toward the contract-man in a chaotic spray. Amid the lingering grit, Astarelle spun the opposite direction, bringing her staff grandiosely about to strike at his other side. It was a tell as obvious as the twitch of a dancer's hand whispering, “Spin me.” She didn't seek his lead, though. Her legs already tensed for the step that would bring her under the inevitable clash of polearms and close enough that he would have to draw back should he wish to skewer her.

She would rise with no weapon readied; only a willing ear, a broad grin, and a wary eye. The grey sand atop the mountains and in the air called to her, whispering its readiness... just in case.

[Leopold]

Eyes locking, hearts racing, expectations quashed. With a simple motion, Astarelle undid Leopold’s attempt to unnerve. Then, and only then, did the man bastard realise why Sei Orlouge feared her so: charisma was a deadly weapon in a time of war. People followed, and idolised people who could sweep, quite literally in this case, the world aside with a glance.

“Cute,” he said sharply. His lips, already dry and cracked, creased into a wry and wrangling look of worry.

“I try to be,” she winked. Her eyes reflected the waning twilight of dawn into day. Dancing in the dainty dual diamonds Leopold saw dastardly deeds. There, in those two pools, she further revealed herself to the merchant.

“Don’t try too hard,” he retorted. Flattery, on him at least, was not going to work. Spear left useless, he resorted to a man’s third best weapon (behind his gender and his sword arm), a quick, cheap shot sucker punch.

As the dust from the crumbling Zaileya settled so too did the merchant’s stomach. He shed the fever of apprehension and anxiety and allowed adrenaline to take over. Unfortunately, for him, Astarelle was far too quick – born of the desert winds themselves, to fall for such lacklustre gambits.

“Advice I mirror!” she goaded.

Before he could do anything about it, she was once again away, spiralling and pirouetting-of-a-sorts out of harm’s way. They came to a standoff, ten feet apart, and Leopold to his credit matching her lead. He stomped.

“You literally want to dance, or metaphorically?” he asked with a furrowed brow. Behind him, at the centre of the miniature river, Irrakam trembled. Like a sandcastle lapped by encroaching waves, Jya’s Keep half gave way on its northern circumference.

“Is dance anything but?”

Leopold could only mumble in frustration.

“Oh sod it,” he spat.

Ironically, Leopold started to ‘dance’ metaphorically. He too froed. She roll-tucked. He span-stepped. She wobble-wobbled (which is about as elegantly as Leopold describe something experts would no doubt have applauded). Every action caused a reaction. An exchange. A rebuff to a rebuke, and an advance to a retreat. The harder he tried to wipe the smirk of her face, the broader her smile.

“There’s an artist in you yet,” whispered the Fallieni as she rolled out of a deft spear slash. When she landed, nothing. The desert forgave her transgression.

When Leopold leapt forwards to follow-up with a dirty thrust, Fallien cried in defiance. Irrakam shuddered. Jya’s Keep gave way, a landslide of sedition. As The desert’s toll intensified. His forehead beaded then burst its dam. His back stuck longingly to his shirt. His sight blurred, and his stance wavered. He was dancing, but not in step to the heart of his environment.

[Roht Mirage]

Fallien's fiery eye opened wide atop the spectating plateau. Its rays caught the sparkle of sand blowing from Astarelle's violently-tousled hair. The heat caressed her face, drawing out only a luster of moisture. Her laughter finally flowed free, ringing to all corners of her own personal Fallien, then out to the sands beyond. She felt an old partner in the wind, and she let it lead by tugging at her skirt. It's been far too long.

Her staff followed behind to tease at the man's spear. She felt the knock of contact, then heard the scrape of iron-cored reed against metal. When she completed her turn, he was a step behind in the measure of their dance, and he wore the haggard face of a hungry jackal caught in the sun. The corners of her eyes drooped as her mouth settled from laughter into a matronly smile. “Shoes. You don't need 'em,” she advised curtly. One foot lifted to wiggle desert-painted toes at him.

His expression was nothing but incredulous.

In demonstration, she backed away from him with elliptical, dragging steps. Her toes kissed furrows in her wake, then settled. Sand welled between them in a secure embrace as her other foot took its turn. Curve by drawn curve, she backed herself to the mountains, leaving a pattern as if she had tried to braid the sand.

The highest peak rose -adorably- behind her. It was said that the Zaileya range's tallest point guarded some of Fallien's most precious secrets; monuments of a time before the Vadhya, when the land was unbroken, lush, and populous. In this age, both scattered tribes and river-locked city dwellers dreamed of reaching that place; a measure of triumph as well as discovery. Astarelle met it with her rump. The mysteries were squashed.

“I'll wait,” she said obligingly. One leg crossed over the other as demurely as if she took a seat at a dinner party.

The gentleman -with the teeth of a beggar, strangely- relented, grumbling as he began to loosen his boots with one hand. “I'll never get the sand out of them, now.”

She shrugged radiant shoulders. “It's as unavoidable as dawn or dusk. Believe me. Living here, you have to put up with sand everywhere.”

He gave her a cockeyed smirk; not salacious, just amused.

“Oh, bury you,” she scowled. Her staff fidgeted in her hands, once more planting upright with ribbons aflutter. “So,” she continued as if the words had turned cumbersome, “Who sent you?”

Please don't bunny her out of her current position. The other bunnying was awesome, though.

[Leopold]

Leopold did not see any point in hiding facts from her. Doubt crept into his mind and undid his loyalty. It had the same seditious effect money had on lesser men, and gin had on his wife.

“Sei Orlouge. He sent me. Know why?”

Astarelle rocked back on her mountain/seat, laughing hysterically. The tremolo rolled over the dunes, toppling Bedouin empires and shifting the face of the non-Fallien to waylay il’Jhain and obfuscate ruins.

“I guess you do…,” the merchant said flatly. His mouth, a thin, malnourished line turned into a grim show of contempt. He was not sure if it was for Fallieni, or Mystic.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. You must misunderstand. This is just a game we play. He enters me in tournaments without asking for permission. I, without asking for permission, claim chunks of his castle to house destructive orphans. Never mind. That one is a long story. Therefore, now, he has sent some muscle to poke me -muscle that dances rather well, I might add- and I will counter with, I suppose, unleashing the boys upon his personal quarters. Them and breakable objects: by the depths, that's a storm in the making.”

The more she talked (and boy, did she talk), the more Leopold questioned Sei’s motives. ‘Sand Bastard’ seemed like an overly cruel and demoralising phrase for ‘independent thinker’. He smiled at last; that had always been Sei’s weakness. People who did not follow his grand ideologies were outsiders, a cancer to remove. Irony.

“Why are you laughing?”

Astarelle, giddy with euphoria Leopold doubted he could understand continued to be giddy. She toppled another mountain, sending miniature camels roiling through the landslide, and guffawed with a tilt of her head to the encroaching dawn. Sunlight, kissing golden forehead, illuminated a portfolio of intrigue.

“Your rivalry will cost life, and I am here to make sure it is yours.” Realising the pain of failure was not worth the loss of potential in a new ally and friend, Leopold readied himself.

"You know this is just a friendly rivalry, right? Sei knows.... Doesn't he?" The Fallieni’s mirth was swift replaced with slowly forming concern. Her smile, however, remained intact, intoxicating, and intolerable.

By way of reply, Leopold waved his left hand in an arc in front of him. One orb appeared at three, twelve, and nine o'clock. Each one hummed with midnight. Each one sung with darkness. Each one chimed together in goodwill and malice.

“Ask him yourself.” With a triple punch, the spheres shot at Astarelle in mishap and melee.

Leopold steadied himself, glowing in the azure and vermillion light of his Old God origins. He levied his spear tip at Astarelle, holding it forth like a sceptre, and went to step after them in case she danced right around them in loops and cartwheels and calamities.

[Roht Mirage]

His strike was inconsequential. Astarelle had set about preparing the moment that pivotal question hung from a noose of her own making. “Doesn't he?” She felt a knotting of her core, reminiscent of those clandestine days when she had worn the wrong face, spoken with the wrong voice, and found herself laid visible and vulnerable. The orbs of night -how dare they challenge Fallien's sun- only made her hasten the subtle trickery.

At her whim, a dozen sapphire chips in tiny Irrakam finished coalescing at the Jya's ruined keep like heavy-footed mourners. They formed a shape reminiscent of her pendant's silver inlay, then flew upward as one. On the first pound-grip-push of his bare foot, the gem formation was at an arm's span above the sand. On the second, as he closed and the orbs thrummed like hunting rocs, she clamped a hand over her pendant.

The entire northern half of the Zaileyas exploded around the orbs. A breath behind, his spear pierced through the spray and into an iridescent, fragmenting outline where her chest had been. His weapon's tip carved a burrow into the violently-diffused mound that had once been Fallien's arid birth scar.

Astarelle, smirking half-heartedly, stood upon the Jya's grave. The pendant was whole in her hand, fragmented children and all. She let it fall against her chest and blinked away the blue, crystalline glare of her teleportation. She noticed, with a weak chuckle, the disrespectful placement of her feet. The Jya was neither her queen nor her god, and Irrakam -albeit lovely- was never her home. Hers was elsewhere in Fallien, unmarked, and perhaps no longer where she had left it.

Fallien's true secrets were not at the peak of the Zaileyas. They were ghosts in the shifting sand, and treasures in the vault of her mind.

“I try to avoid Sei,” she said wistfully to the disappointed -but unsurprised- gentleman as he turned and wrenched his weapon free. “You know. The telepath thing.” She taped a finger to her forehead and winked as if sharing a joke. Her heart wasn't in it, though.

With a scowl, he lectured, “The powerful do not tolerate childish games, and those who play them from their own thrones are doomed to topple.”

Why, that's almost a compliment, she mused behind a wavering expression of mock modesty. However, the mockery faded as she scanned the remains of her miniature continent; half the mountains gone, the borders blurred, only the deadly glass fields shone, untouched, at the foot of poor Zaileya's remaining teeth. Between there and the deformed riverbed, her discarded armor -whispering ”Cell chamion”- lost its shine to the settling cloud from the man's destructive terraforming.

She turned back to him. He warily stalked closer, his bare toes now acclimated to the desert's soft flesh. His face was pensive as if summoning more darkness from whatever pit it came. She let her smile falter completely, not even twitching as a sprig of black sage -once a tiny tree on the peaks- caught in her hair. “I'm too big, now,” she monologued, her voice quiet and resigned. Her staff dipped. Its ribbons brushed across the darker sand in Attireyi's bed.

“Literally or metaphorically?” Sei's agent asked, wary, as if it were a riddle within some masterful plot.

In answer, the giantess lunged from Irrakam's stump, over the river's bank, and transitioned into a staff-whipping spin. The darker grains that had textured the river swept into the air behind her, struggling to catch the end of the staff. In one rotation around her lithe body, enough claimed victory to form a short spear point. The rest obliged to trail in a wide, obscuring streamer.

The dance resumed as rapid and violent as two battling birds of prey. Her steps were heavier, and her body swirled upon lines of force. Their weapons clashed, his batting hers solidly askew, over and over. This was a step he recognized, for aggression could take only so many forms. On each clattering contact, he slide back from the airborne wave of sand that followed her spear, then closed again. Her toes seized the desert. Her knees pulsed high for momentum. She swept her weapon toward him from every conceivable angle, but he did not break. As a capering fly could tease, so could an impenetrable wall - an impenetrable wall stalling for time.

Over his off-hand, another orb of midnight hissed into existence. Astarelle planted one foot, pivoted sharply, and broke her circular dance with a frenzied lunge. There was just enough momentum left for her to twist, to take the orb upon her shoulder. It kicked like an oasis steed. Her spear flew clear from her grasp, and her body -breathless- spun in accordance with the ruinous force.

He smirked. The bastard.

Her undamaged arm snapped toward his closing spear, as did the disoriented sand. It covered her hand, forming a burnt-gold glove that hardened as she gripped the pole and heaved it to the side. Blood splashed in a slim line from the glancing cut, painting red her heaving breast and the corset below. The other arm lifted weakling behind her, beckoning. Pleading. A smirk -pained- came to her face as well when she felt the answer. Serpent-like, she flexed her head and shoulders to the side just as her spear, point first, rocketed toward her and slipped past. It whispered a promise of vengeance a hair's breadth from her ear.

The contract-man, however, had seen the trick before – when she had pridefully countered his earlier prestidigitation. He also, though he might not know it, read admirably the tells of dance, battle, and the space between. Doning the same serpentine grace, he leaned in the opposite direction and caught the wavering spear in a hand that, a moment later, might have spawned another tear of the moonless night.

Astarelle's weak hand seized the back end of her staggered staff. Dutifully, sand shepherded the bond, sealing tight the grip that her fingers could not manage alone. The dancers, each with a hold on the other's polearm -and each with indignation in their eyes- jerked backward to disarm. Four closed fists held fast, channelling the force to their shoulders and rolling them. Back slapped to back; butt to butt -give or take two inches- and arms of metal, reed, and flesh became a twitching knot high behind their heads.

The sun's obstinate rays cut through the duelling auras -tempered sand versus vermilion gloom- of the conjoined scarecrows.

“What is this step called?” he rattled, even his words seeming to bead with sweat.

Astarelle's answer was strained by the split flesh drawing wide over her rib. “Bury me if I know.”