Osiris Open 2017 Round 1: JDD2035 vs Duffy

[Shinsou Vaan Osiris]

"The palace Pandemonium had architecture like no other. The reigning monarch some three centuries earlier had shipped in an architect from an overseas district. She knew his ideas, although perhaps common where he came from, would be sufficiently exotic in her kingdom to inspire awe in the populous. And so instead of the peaks in the roof, she had gold domed towers instead. She had an open porch at the front held up with most ostentatiously detailed pillars, painted in brilliant white. Inside there were no doors on the ground floor, only arches. The flagstone floor had been shipped in also and was made with a stone of soft blue hues that had never before been seen in the district. After completion it's designer had been executed to ensure he could never make a replica. It was then that the halls of Pandemonium became possessed. A trail of blood appearead throughout the great corridors. With each passing moment it grew thicker, and a phantom of the great palace's architect drifted through the halls, paling her skin to a translucent white. With each tick of the clock she wanted the king's heart to stop, just stop, to watch his eyes become glossy and vacant. The blood of his last victim had begun to dry, more brownish than scarlet. She was no longer human. Every choice had lead her here, to the side of the demons."

Brotherhood report #014

[jdd2035]

Captain Cain Jodin had fought several power houses over his several visits to the Citadel. He had fought a thunderstorm in a bottle about a year prior, he had before that fought a shape shifting naturally armored half giant and several other combatants. With the kind of opulence that this particular setting was Cain had a feeling that his opponent would be and incredibly talented individual.

Cain had entered the arena setting equipped with his pistols, saber, sea coat and his lucky tricorn hat. He passed along the blue floor and vaulted ceilings. His hessian boots lightly clicked along the flagstone floors and echoed along the multiple corridors. Once he found a spot at the end of one of his corridors looking down towards the central chamber. There he checked his equipment his charges were dry in his pistols, and the caps were fresh. His saber had been sharpened and double stropped to the point where one could actually shave with it. Finally his number one sea coat was in fantastic shape and brushed cleaned.

Now was the waiting game, he would learn how much power his opponent had within him during the fight it self. Now it would be only a matter of time before the the beautiful blue flagstones would be a blotted mess of brown and crimson.

Cain smiled with excitement.

[Duffy]

“Really?” Duffy rested his hands on his hips.

The palace before him rang with the sound of silence. Its beauty slain by the whispers of phantasms and tainted with the memories of people dying for their art.

“He’s certainly got a flare for the dramatic.”

The red headed bard removed his hood, unclipped his cloak and let it drop to the ground. Beneath, he wore a simple white shirt, woollen waistcoat laced with gold thread in patterns of ivy and madrigals, and a wicked grin. A sword hung on his hip, boots fell apart about his sweating feet, and a pair of muddied shorts told tall tales of a journey best forgotten.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. I just expected a sand circle or a field, something conventional.” He looked across his shoulder to his sister, waiting in the wings, and tried to appear confident.

“Shinsou is anything but.” Lilith had the small misfortune of meeting their illustrious host over one too many drinks in a tavern she’d rather forget. Whilst they had seen eye to eye, she did not quite trust him. “He seemed a little too keen to have one of us participate in this ‘grand adventure’.”

Duffy had volunteered before the assassin had truly explained the nature of the tournament. Fresh out of hell, or wherever he had been since his death, he wanted to prove himself to his siblings, to see forgiveness for leaving them to fend for themselves. Of the three, only Lilith seemed to understand.

“I will wait here, I’ve seen you die enough times to know it’s not a pleasant or glamorous experience.” She stooped to pick up his cloak and bundled it through the strap of her satchel.

“Your vote of confidence inspires me,” he stuck out his tongue.

Ready, he trundled over the gravel lane that lead to the palace’s decadent entrance and took deep breaths to measure the air. It smelt like iron. When he reached the top of the cracked flagstones and stood beneath the grand archway leading inside, he turned to wave and bowed politely. Before Lilith could wave in rely, he was gone.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she grumbled. She plonked her backside on a rock, and fetched two needles and a spool of wool from her satchel to pass the time.

With tentative steps, each footfall echoing through the dim corridors of ochre and turquoise, Duffy continued inwards into the palladium. Doorless archways lead him through abandoned halls and dusty ante chambers. In another life, he might have ruminated on the people who might have lived her. He might have wondered about the mindset of a king or queen or tyrant that thought it necessary to hide one’s insecurities behind buttresses and battlements. Now blissfully aware of his mortality, one, presiding, stinging thought occupied his mind: his opponent.

“And so young bard boy entered hell, and with it his own nightmares,” he began to sing. “Sword by side, with beer soaked hide, he heard the first bell ring-a-ding!” The ditty bounced through the palace, declaring him arrived and all too eager to do away with a game of cat and mouse. He stopped at the centre of a courtyard, atop the roots of a long dead tree and midst sun bolt he kept ears, eyes, and soul firmly pricked for signs of his opponent.

[jdd2035]

Cain heard the singing through the ringing in his ears as it echoed through the chambers of this palace. Now Cain did have a powerful sense of fair play and thought that if circumstances were different he could challenge his foe to a singing contest like halflings did from time to time...or was that riddles? Unfortunately circumstances were not different this was a fighting tournament and so he closed in on his opponent crossing over towards the central chamber.

Upon seeing his opponent Cain in his most genteel fashion gave a salute and stated "I am Captain Cain Jodin. It's a pleasure to meet you. Fill your hands." The in one smooth, fluid motion his hand came up along his thigh his middle, ring and pinky finger curling around the pommel of his cap lock pistol lifting it out of the holster; while at the same time his thumb rolled the the hammer back into its armed position and his pointer finger wrapped around the trigger. The instant and it wasn't even a tenth of a second that the barrel was leveled at his opponent the pistol went off sending an iron ball three tenths of an inch in size flying at eleven hundred feet per second.

In the twinkling of an eye a second shot rang out from his second pistol. Cain then darted away into a near by corridor.

[Duffy]

The bullet entered Duffy’s body above the clavicle. For a brief, scintillating moment, Duffy remembered what it felt like to be alive. Then, as elation came crashing down in a humbling torrent, pain washed over him.

“Shitting hell!”

He dropped to one knee, nausea obliterating his focus and stealing his words. The palace rocked and went to and fro in his field of vision, mimicking the tearing of muscle and the scraping of bone as the iron pellet embedded itself. Deep. Unforgettable. Reminiscent.

“I’ll fill my hands with naught but words!”

Undeterred, he changed the pace of his spell song. Rumbustious, folk lined lyrics emerged as pain ignited his determination. He clenched both fists, and drove them into the floor. He rose, eyes aflame, nerves tingling.

“For I am bound to sing a song. I’ll incite hatred, love, and war with verse and a lyric long.”

About his feet, flickers of fire emerged from the ether. Ruby, in her scarlet glory appeared in his image, guiding him and offering aid despite her continued fury and rage at his revival.

“Cut me with your blade, fell me with your bow, each time I am wounded, I will let you know.”

Each line ended in a deep baritone grumble. The second shot skimmed past his ear, a cliched follow through on a very real threat.

“I fight with memories not lies, and ignite the hearts of men, I stand before you as a ghost, as a theatrical friend.”

Raising his arms up, the embers turned into gushing spirals, smothering the bard in the warmth of siblings and secrets. They lashed against the oozing wound, searing flesh closed and re-affirming his stubborn, bastard nature.

“Run and hide, you can’t deny!” He levitated briefly, as the phoenix’s embrace turned a mortal wound into a battle scar, knitting flesh with heat from the heart of a sun and buying the bard vital time. He landed upright, arms dropped to his side, and a swirl of blue ribbons dancing about his hands.

“This is. My battle. Song.”

The last note followed the pirate through the corridors of the palace, threatening to smash the tiles and topple columns in a cavalcade of rebellion. He rolled his shoulder slowly, testing it. Whilst it still twanged, the scar told him he was not going to bleed out before he got so much as to swing a dagger in earnest. He bounced from boot to boot to limber up, and with the warmth of the Aria still in his bones, he conjured two elven daggers into his palms and gave chase.

[jdd2035]

~What was it with mages and their ability to prattle on and on.~ Thought Cain as he reloaded his weaponry. That had to be a boon to any one having to fight with a mage. His first pistol he loaded with regular shot and powder. His other caused him to pause, what he hated was to pull out a trump too early in a fight.

Cain he wasn't a spell casting dynamo like some nor could he power through the kind of storms that spell casting dynamo's could conger. No he was Captain Cain Jodin he was tenacious! Cain grinned as the mages songs echoed through the corridors and loaded his second pistol. The Captain began to laugh as he stepped out and fired his first pistol with that quick ~POP~ that always came from a finely crafted firearm. He waited a long instant long enough for the first pop to finish its reporting echo then he fired his second pistol.

His second pistol how ever was not loaded with powder and shot, not the standard stuff at any rate. There was no pop, there was first a powerful hiss as unadulterated visible tap energy surged through the barrel of the pistol and around Cain's wrist and hand. Followed by a growing high pitched moan punctuated by a deep ~BOOM~! Condensed raw tap energy erupted from his second pistol screeching towards Cains opponent at least as fast as the iron ball did previously.

[Duffy]

Prepared for another volley, Duffy drew on the power of the Aria in a hairs breadth before the cavalcade of lighting struck. The crackling prangs interlaced with the whirling vespers of energy that bore him from reality. He stood on a jetty at the heart of a mercury sea, looking up at the rolling visions of a million worlds that formed in the clouds. He took a deep breath. He checked his wound.

“Fill your hands, he says.”

Sarcasm dripping from his tongue, the bard steeled himself as nausea swirled in his stomach, the tell-tale sign he was returning to Althanas.

“I hate bastard pirates.”

He emerged three feet forwards and one second later from where he vanished. Continuing his advanced, he spiralled the blades gifted to him by the plague bearers of Raiaera threateningly. With every swing of his arms, his shoulder screamed, clotting hole re-opened with a rush of blood to the head.

“And so, in earnest he did sing, but nobody could hear him, and so he brought out Note and Rhyme, and filled himself with blood to the brim!” His last verse brought silence to the ante-chamber. The effervescent, smouldering wall where the lightning bullet struck crackled out. His footsteps thundered, but made no sound.

He drew on his sister Lilith’s gifts, and about him, as he bore down on the good captain with an onslaught of cutting, precise strikes, a ghostly geisha emerged from the void and sat on a crumbling pillar stump to set up her shamisen. Outside, Lilith began to play her own, corporeal instrument, gifted to her by a mother from another life and learned in an okiya until her fingers bled, and bled some more.

The ghostly melody filled the jungle without, and the battleground within. Duffy’s eyes sparkled. His skin blossomed with prickly heat. His heart pounded with the all too real threat of death.

[jdd2035]

....Pirate, Cain was no pirate. He was a noble privateer and his prey was fair and legal. He was no black guard, bloody minded pirate. Forsooth!


" `Vast that bloody singing!" Cain shouted smashing his head into his opponents face at triple the velocity that was normal. Gripping both of his pistols and using them as parrying cudgels in combination with his he did what he could to divert his opponents aggressive attacks.

Cain's eyes kind of turned into an even brighter shade of emerald as his face contorted into a predatory grin. The pistol barrel that shot the tap energy seemed to still be quite hot, and it gave him quite an idea. Letting his opponents daggers get tangled up in his number one sea coat while he drove the hot end of the barrel into his adversaries shoulder wound.

The over powered attacks did their work how ever with his shoulder popping partially out of place causing him to give some sort of animistic howl of pain. He may not win but by hell and high water he was going to make his opponent work for it.

[Duffy]

The headbutt Duffy could just about tolerate. His knees wobbled, his resolve undone by the guttural fighting style of the good captain. He brought his blade, a forty-five-degree angled riposte, but his attack fell short of the mark when the smouldering barrel of a gun connected with the oozing scar tissue on his shoulder.

One knee smashed into the flagstone, bare and brazen and red in a split-second. The elven daggers clattered to the ground, their wing strikes spent, their blades unfettered by blood and guts. The haunting notes of the spectral shamisen continued, their tone mirroring that of the conflict at the palace’s heart.

“This is the final countdown.” One final song. One last push.

“This is the final verse I’ll sing, today…”

Duffy pushed himself upright, shoulder singed, and air filled with the ashen remembrance of a Raiaera silk shirt. In combination with a succour grimace, the shamisen took on a darker tone, haunting the palisades and crumbling cavalcades of the Pandemonium.

“This is the moment of truth!”

A flash. A bang. A wallop. Theatrical debauchery swaddled the bard’s limbs, blue ribbons of light that had preceded a thousand lie-minded battles with tyrants, gypsies, and thieves. From nothingness, Duffy pulled a black handled katana from the ether, it’s blade seemingly created from air.

“Will you fight, or will you stay?”

Cain’s expression told him all he needed to know about how this conflict would end. He let the spell song die, and, pouring energy into the ghostly shamisen, he let it speak on his behalf. The blade began to hum, umbral lines forming along its Akashimen keen.

“No more pissing about. No more cheap tricks.”

He dropped to a low, samurai stance, one shoulder loose, one taught. It was unpolished, unfocused, and hamstrung by the growing pain and numbness in his wounded limb. But, if Duffy had learned anything in the last five centuries, it was a cornered rat fought harder than any.

“Show me that sea shanty snarl!” He dashed forwards, rotating the katana in a cleaving arc that aimed for Cane as it descended, two-handed, towards that bastard pistol hand.

[jdd2035]

If Duffy had time to draw his sword and give a speach, Cain had time to pull his. It was a beautiful curved sword that seemed to crackle with life as it was pulled from its scabbard. He gave a flashy duelists salute as he performed the salutes downward slash an electrical discharge crackled from its blade before fizzling out. Cains cavalry saber was now an ordinary sword.

This last tussle would be as fair as Cain could make it.

Duffy charged forward with two hands! Cain smiled, he had accepted that he was on the bitter end of the rope fighting a vastly superior opponent. Then an idea crept into his mind and his grin grew even wider. As the samurai sword was brought to bear Cain locked his blade with Duffy's and let the impetus of the collision push him onto his back. The split instant Cain landed he drove his foot into Duffy's stomach and pushed hard with his feet.