Redemption Bracket: Tobias Stalt Vs Odium

[Tobias Stalt]

"You'll never understand." The baleful and dejected response was blunt. Tobias sought no answer, no further indulgence from the man who would not be reasoned with. In truth, Tobias could not have held such tenacity against him. Both men were steadfast in their beliefs. The truest tragedy in all lifetimes was the same: opposing beliefs begat conflict. Conflict was the sad truth of the world they shared.

Around them, the temple's tears twisted, and Tobias flicked his eyes upward. The sword seemed to swing in slow motion. In a man's life, he came close to death only a handful of times. Some men saw that end and shied away, but Tobias and death were old friends. In Salvar, he had lost his band of ragtag brothers to the Sway's cruelty. His mother had died in his youth, and he had already lost brothers in arms from Alerar. Lament's own hollow eyes overlapped his own as the blade bared down, and the teardrops burned at his eyes.

Blades kissed in a sudden and passionate embrace. With a zeal beyond his own, Tobias' body heaved in a sorrowful effort. The Dwarven steel reflected a scene of chaos as it touched his opponent's weapon. Grating metals howled their disdainful cries, and Tobias held the blow at bay.

"Despair is a currency in this world," he would not refute his inability to defend the mangled men. Their bodies were twisted, blasphemous mirrors of what they once were. Despite that harsh reality, the Soldier clung to his grim duty. "Their deaths were inevitable."

The two men stood at odds, deadlocked blades holding them back from one another. Hateful eyes met Tobias' tearful gaze, and in that instant neither man looked truly alive. His next words sent an otherworldly chill through the room. "So are ours."

The world ceased in its sacrilegious wails at his words, and Tobias slowly closed his eyes. Powers present in the room shivered and wailed their horror as the youth trembled, and blood spewed from his open mouth. Caked in filth, Tobias forced his lips into a mocking smile. He was spent, used and abused in ways unimaginable. Power rippled through him and bled into the desecrated temple, and the forces at work railed against him.

Eyes more hollow than the abyss itself stared into Constantine's being from the lifeless body that defied him but a second longer. Spasms ripped through the uniformed youth, and he crumpled. Tobias was dead before he hit the floor.

Hands ripped outward from the floor angrily, and they sought to destroy the body of their master's unexpected oppressor. Tobias' hollow corpse shimmered with a pale glow, energies he had never fathomed in life rending his ruin from within. A piercing wail came from above, impregnable darkness shifting and slowly fading.

Constantine was free to flee, but Tobias had trapped himself for eternity. Face down in muck with a sad smile, Tobias had always told those closest to him that his was a wasted life. The last breath had left him, but the tears still flowed from darkened eyes. Tobias had found his fate, and he met it on his own terms.

Walls rocked in a frenzy, and columns crumbled beneath an unseen weight. In the throes of her lust, the demoness remained oblivious to her impending end. The circular energies that held her drained away. Eldritch light flowed outward and dispersed like a dying sun.

Bits of ceiling crashed into the floor, and the doorways began to collapse on themselves. Windows shattered and glass peppered the bloodied floor. Finality had fallen on those who dared to dream. Reality was a cruel mistress.

[Odium]

Blood sprayed from Tobias' mouth like wine from a punctured skin. It splattered across Constantine's face, covering him in gore, and had it not been that Tobias' strength faltered in that moment he would have surely died. He reeled backwards, sword falling limply to his side as he recoiled in shock. The Knight of Tears' body folded beneath him and he fell to the floor in a lifeless heap. Only two beings still stood in the ruined temple: Constantine and the gorgon succubus, who tore at herself in lustful frustration. He could hear her serpents hissing even from here as they devoured themselves. Rare was it that Constantine had ever felt so alone. Ravaged bodies littered the floor, and now those skittering hands had come forward on tapping fingertips, crawling over Tobias' body like deformed spiders. They probed at the Knight of Tears' eyes, replacing the tracks of his tears with bloody stripes. Now, so quiet, so small, Tobias' dead body conveyed none of the ferocity he possessed in life.

Constantine considered this a moment. Then, the column nearby collapsed in a ruin of stone and dust, dislodging a large slab of the ceiling above it. More than a few of the priests' bodies were crushed as it tumbled out of place. The story continued throughout the rest of the temple, as if Tobias had been the keystone holding it all in place. Now cracks spiderwebbed throughout architecture that had held strong against the onslaught of centuries, and Constantine was spellbound, marveling at the haste with which everything had gone to hell. He realized, in a moment of terrible irony, that everything happening was so very... tragic, impossibly so. Like a nightmare. He began to laugh hysterically as he picked his way over the crashing debris, carefully avoiding the most destroyed areas. He watched the gate and the first few steps of the long descent downward with hideous longing.

And then he heard the cry of AT LAST and spun, brandishing his iron sword, sweeping blindly at the shadow he knew was coming for him. The succubus ignored his halfhearted attempt at self-defense barreling into him, her leathery wings propelling them forward and into a wall. He felt ribs crack beneath the impact. Air gushed from his lungs. His head pounded and pounded and he could hear the adrenaline in his ears like a waterfall an arm-length away. Sweat-soaked hair fell over his eyes and as he gasped for breath he stared into the deep, amber eyes of the voluptuous demon which regarded him victoriously. Acidlike spittle slipped off her fangs and burned a scar into Constantine's face. Fear lit his eyes up like lightning in a woolen sky. Overhead the vault of heaven stretched over them, moonlight streaming through new holes in the ceiling, everything so empty of stars. The rift into another plane had closed, somewhere along the way, with nothing more than the bruised succubus it had spat out as evidence it had ever been there at all.

She moaned in his face, reeking of carrion. Predator breath. With one claw she stroked his cheek, absently digging bloody furrows into the skin. Tears black as ink formed in her eyes and she wept bitterly, thankful for her prize. Her other hand groped between his thighs, tearing at the armor and cloth separating her from that which she sought. She bled from a hundred wounds inflicted upon herself, as in the absence of another she had been her own canvas. Now she had a new page on which to scrawl the language of her lust.

"The power of a dream," she sobbed, "is to remind the dreamer of that which they miss most... of fire in a broken hearth, of warmth in cold loins, of happiness in countless yesterdays... The power of a dream is to torment, as I have been tormented. But now my eyes flutter in awakening, and all I see is you, precious thing, glorious champion, and all I see is a man in need of his prize." Constantine opened his mouth to speak but she silenced him, "Hush, sweetling. You won't be my first in need of a little nudge forward." As she pressed her mouth against his, gnawing at his lip, her hand closed on his groin and pain flashed through Constantine's body like a hot lance.

Though it was not there he felt it slip inside him: a psychic proboscis, like a mosquito trying to suck blood from its prey. The succubus sucked and sucked, probing Constantine's mouth for the sweet nectar of his life which should have flowed through him and into her. All she found there was dust. Her eyes flitted across his body, waiting for the telltale signs of his flesh creasing as all the years left in his skin became hers. A few snakes nipped at Constantine while others bit at themselves, their hunger still strong as ever. Finally the succubus pushed him away, slamming him hard against the crumbling stone behind him. Pain radiated from all his wounds. The side of his face was a bloody ruin. His gray eyes had grown glazed with exhaustion. He slumped to the floor and she crouched between his legs, scrutinizing him with those cruel yellow eyes. Their slit-like pupils dilated. Her twisted snarl became a flat line across her face. Her hand wandered from between his legs to his heart, resting there for a moment.

An audience of flayed hands had gathered around them, and now they clutched at themselves, mirroring her fury. The serpents atop her skull peered down at him, unmoving except when their tongues flicked out to taste the air. He glanced past the succubus to where he knew Tobias' corpse lay, at last at peace, and found himself envying the dead soldier. A hard slap and then another across his face, the succubus' talons raking him again and again, brought his gaze back to the sultry demon which straddled him. Weakly he tried to grab at the amulet of the Fade hanging from his neck, tried to raise the statue to his lips and kiss it, kiss it and pray that even one of those unholy creatures might come to save him.

She slapped his hand away, leaning in to sniff his cheek, her own tongue slipping out to taste the blood there. That close, Constantine could smell the sulfur on her skin.

"I knew I could taste something off about you," she wailed, lips contorting into a pathetic grimace. "The smell of that thing hid the musk of death on you." She indicated his necklace with a trembling claw. "Now who knows how long I'll have to go hungry?" She watched him for a second more, then lashed out suddenly. Constantine's eyes widened and, in a sudden fit of strength, he hauled the succubus off his knees. His hands went up to his throat as he gasped for breath.

Meanwhile, the succubus looked at him balefully, batting her eyelashes playfully and giggling at the chunk of flesh she held in her hands. It burbled blood and twitched for a few moments, much like Constantine himself, as his life poured from his ruined throat. She laughed, held it up to inspect the skin, and opened her mouth as if to swallow it. Staring upwards, however, an expression of horror crossed her face for a fleeting second before a piece of rubble directly above her plummeted to the earth. She did not even have time to scream as the rock slammed into her face, flipping her body into a failed flip through the air as it cracked her head into a thousand bloody slivers.

Gore seeped out from beneath the stone. A few snakes that had escaped her brutal demise writhed like a clot of worms, before they too went still. The hands, what few had not been crushed similarly, skittered away in search of a safe haven to hide. To Constantine, all this passed in mute silence, like a boring play one cannot concentrate upon and so takes it as time to reflect. Presently, he reflected on the fact that he had now died twice, each in a manner tragic enough to amuse the warrior he had just vanquished. As more wreckage fell to bury him in a makeshift tomb, he marveled at the darkness which clouded his vision...

And, in the last moments before death took him, at the cold whisper which crept out of that darkness and into his skull, more penetrating than Tobias' dwarven steel:

What is the power of a dream?

[Max Dirks]

This was easy one of the most setting driven battles in Althanas' history. It was an emotionally charged piece that had epic splattered all over it, except it was held back by the very thing that made it great -- over emphasis on imagery. While focusing on the lucid setting, you forgot to bring the story along with you. Storywise, it was like South Park's parody of Game of Thrones. I was constantly waiting for a pizza (ne' a climax) that never came. It was like reading a 16 bit RPG where two characters with taunting abilities just stood there and flung monologues at one another. Their sprites bobbed up and down while the background continually morphed into something new. All criticism aside, this was easily the best battle of the tournament so far BY A LONG SHOT. I'm glad you both consider Althanas home, because four years from now you'll be the Devons, Sighters, and Lethos of your age.

This was a close one. Read on for individual commentary. I'm lazy, so there will be no tables. TS is Tobias Stalt and OD is Odium.

Tobias Stalt | Odium

Story - 6 | 5 (The beginning was admittedly slow. Overloading the senses in the beginning of the match VIA imagry, symbolism or motif can create unrealistic expectations for the remainder of the battle. OD: Your introduction was simple & poignant. TS: Your introduction was convoluted. I realize the underlying dream motif is equally complex, especially if you want to confuse the reader as to whether things or real or not, but I really struggled to follow what was going on. You redeemed yourself, though, with one of the most emotional conclusions I've read on the site. Excellent work)
Setting - 8 | 8 (See above)
Pacing - 5 | 5 (Pacing is low not due to writing errors, but rather to the combination of an imagery overdose, long boring monologues and blasts of repetitive similes. Improving the action and using shorter sentences could have improved your scores here independent of other issues).
Communication - 5 | 5 (See above)
Action - 5 | 5 (TS: It seems you took my T1 complaints to heart. After witnessing you dodge every attack under the sun for two rounds, it was odd seeing you go down after only a few attacks. I realized Tobias might be in a weakened state, but this was odd. OD: I can't fault you for your interaction with the setting, but like with Tobias, I needed more interaction with the characters. If you want a good example of how take actions quickly without breaking pace, see Roht Mirage v. Leopold. In that battle they had entire sword exchanges in a sentence.
Persona - 7 | 7 (I got an excellent look at both of your characters).
Mechanics - 7 | 7 (Spelling errors were minimum. Both of you tended to abuse commas though).
Technique - 7 | 8 (OD: This is the best score I've given out in Technique. You used all of my favorite literary techniques in this one. I saw true metaphor & even foreshadowing. The symbolism was excellent and I love how you fucked with me until the bitter end on whether the encounter was real or not. Superb work. TS: You stuck to the basics, but did them well.
Clarity - 7 | 6 (After careful review, this category decided the battle. Tobias' writing was much clearer to read, and why it didn't always match the technical depth of Odium's writing, ultimately it was easier to follow what Tobias was doing compared to Constantine)
Wildcard - 6 | 6

Total - 63 | 62

Tobias Stalt advances to Round 3 of the Redemption Bracket
Odium, sadly, is eliminated.

Tobias Stalt earns 863 EXP and 63 GP
Odium earns 225 EXP and 75 GP

Though you don't meet the score requirements for JC nomination, I am a notoriously low scorer and am going to nominate you anyway. The battle has its flaws, sure, but this is a prime example of how you can move battles with setting and technique and I want to share it with writers on Althanas. Congrats!