In The Pits (Open)

[Starr Redmaw]

Open to one.

Deep in an illusory recreation of Scara Brae’s wild lands, in the heart of the salt stained Shea Woods, a tribe waited. The Ai’bron monks had delved into their history books to find description of the requested arena. They found themselves perplexed, for there was little chronicled on the place north of the Windlacers.

Hey had thought goblins inept, wild, and maddened savages.

Apparently, only one of those was true. They happened to organised, industrious, and quite fond of ritual sparring…they just left out the ‘to the death’ part when they lured somebody, or something, into the pit.

Starr Redmaw had come to the Citadel to find answers. He wanted reasons for the wars and ways of the Scara Braen.

He would do anything…

Anything at all…

“Give me a sign…,” he said with defiance.

The flames of the fire pit danced. Smoke curled into tendrils of potential, before they rose into the sky and dissipated. Starr Redmaw, occasional prophet, full-time shaman, peered into the shifting shapes. He tried to divine a reason, a portent, and an excuse.

“Anything to get me out of here…,” he wheezed. Giving up on his attempt to bolster his nerves.

All around his withered skin, beyond the mud and sluice, a tall, spiked fence penned him in. The arena was sunken, and above, teetering over the edge, a gaggle of cackling Innari jibed and leered. They were baying for blood, and they did not care how, or from whom their hunger was sated.

“Anything at all…,” he continued. His voice was hoarse, from fatigue and dehydration, and his heart beat in the depths of his chest. He clicked his spine, trying to stand straight, but gave up. He leant on his staff, which rattled with fetishes and beads, and dropped his gaze to the distant door.

On the horizon, the sun died, but Starr was not lucky enough to see it. The sunset was beautiful, but the goblins of the Red Raven tribe did not pay it any attention. The only red they longed for would come from below. The drums on the edge of the camp grew louder, their beaters driven to frenzy and outrage with every swing of bone, stick, and blade. The tanned leather skins bounced, and feet stomped in tawdry union.

“Here ‘e comes!” the crow roared in unison. The gate opened. “’Ere ‘e comes!”

Starr braced himself, though this only amounted to a raised eyebrow, a whistle, and a roll of his neck to loosen the stiffness. He felt warmth rise in his stomach, and linger in his fingertips. He clung to it, hoping to draw on the sensation to conjure some sort of illumination. He remained blind to the future, and grew fearful.

“May Skargo guide me…,” he mumbled, a final observance of faith before he gave it all up for the madness that his god succumbed to in summer – he felt the wild hunt take him, and, before an opponent stepped into the arena, he charged.

Scrabbling over mud, rock, and sodden puddle, the fetid base of the arena offered no resistance to the shaman’s frenzy. Though far from a warrior, what Starr Redmaw lacked in skill, finesse, and strength, he more than made up for in blind obedience, dumbfounding self-belief, and ridiculously bad breath.

[Krausus]

OOC-I will be entering with both my characters so do not be suprise s when Prophet post right after this guy. I will attempt to keep it regular. We going for 10-15 or 20-30?

With a billowing coat Sirius walked into the Citadel and to his usual area. Apparently someone had taken it for their use. He smiled and shrugged out the the metal plate he kept strapped to his back. He tapped on it quickly and said a few words and it formed a small razor. With quick precision he trimmed off his stubble leaving only a goatee on his chin.

"Well, to war i go, and to the death it may be, but i face Fate with my mind clear and in full possession of my functions, so on this day i will not fail."

He put the plate in the locker he had bought out and took out a simple hat and put i on over his frazzled crimson hair. He walked into an arena and smelled an overpowering aroma of smoke, and saw only a small spike before he turned a corner and saw the fire pit, with an arena around it. With wooden spikes retaining them from the crowd.

Sirius looked at the goblin on the other side. Then said, "Hello, I assume you will be my opponent. I am Sirius, and i will stab you out of existence..."

[Starr Redmaw]

Starr cackled as his opponent made idle threats. Unlike those threats, the shaman was anything but. He continued his charge; haphazardly crossing the expanse tha divided his staff from his opponent’s blade, and his stanching hide from the more refined attire of the human ahead.

Only at the last minute, when his blood-curdling cry petered out, did the Innari realise his mistake. For a moment, foolishly, he had allowed his kind’s hatred of man to overwhelm him.

“No!” he roared. His clawed feet slapped against a puddle. The mud splashed up in gobbets of nature’s decadence, and he cocked his head to one side.

The crowd, jittery and rumbustious, stilled their jeers and chants.

“I am your opponent,” he continued, aloof, unstill, and unsure of himself. He rested on his staff, its gnarled length teetering in his left hand’s grip.

The Innari roared in unison, as if to object. Smoke continued to spiral upwards. The ground continued to beat with the infernal racket of distant drums. Nature swooned the atmosphere, and the air fought feebly to resist.

“But we are gnats in a storm!” Starr raised his hands, as if gesturing to the world at large, and then, as if taken by madness once more, he continued his scuttling charge.

His feet slipped and slid through mud and reeds. His crooked nose, snotty portholes to his cankerous brain, flared with every advance.

Before his opponent could piece together just what Starr was, the shaman posed a more important question. What would happen when the bulbous tip came crashing down towards the man’s forehead with all the momentum the goblin could muster?

[Krausus]

Sirius raised and eyebrow at the attack, and slid to the side slashing out with his sword, the fluidity of it, so natural, as he missed he ended the slide, stopping like he knew exactly where he was. Which he did. From so many lives in the dark caves of Lakiu, a small system under the earth, he had spent many years, which passed as days, a week maybe in the Door.

"Scara Brae, excellent. A goblin too! I find you interesting, but in a good way!" He commented as he strode over, his greaves pressing the mud flats that was the arena.

He looked up and down, and danced to the side of a flaming piece of gods know what from the crowd. He smiled grimly. With a fluid motion he drew his swords behind him, and ran across the spike surrounding the fire. Sirius lashed out in a savage strike, and flew through the air in a clean strike, aiming for the arms of the small. Thing.

[Starr Redmaw]

Starr’s ferocity doubled as the strike contacted with his scarred flesh. He roared a guttural, undulating sound of pain and anguish.

“No!” he jittered.

His creatural fingers clawed at the wound. His blood, rust coloured and thick, began to ooze from where skin parted and muscle was exposed. There was nothing glamorous about the cut, nor heroic. When the pain ceased to be feverish, and dropped to a low dull throb, tempered by adrenaline, Starr looked ahead.

“Scara Brae?” he cocked his head to one side. His cruel, crooked nose sniffed the air. It was humid, full of scent, and intoxicating to the shaman. In the wind, he felt fear. In the skies, he felt desperation. He was not sure whose.

“It’s a fascinating island and you…,” the swordsman erred. He seemed to examine Starr, who found the notion uncomfortable. “A goblin…”

Starr hissed. The treeline danced with fire that rushed up from nothingness. As his rage grew, so too did nature’s. The Innari, after all, were embodiments of Scara Brae’s heart. They were its keepers. They were its historians. They were its army.

“I am Innari,” he screeched.

With a trail of blood in his wake, the Innari skittered forth. Waving his staff with rampant glee, he approached his opponent. He approached the defiler. He approached the demon. He approached the intruder into the forest.

“We speak for the woods!”

At the last moment, he span. He swung the gnarled tip of his staff, fetish laden and clunky, at his opponent’s thick skull.

[Krausus]

Sirius danced out of the way. Almost. Before he had a chance to get out of range, the staff hit his temple, HARD. He fell to his knees and his back arched as agony shot down his body, but he screamed in pain as it rebounded through his bones.

"I am Sirius. I have seen this pain before" He growled through clenched teeth.

He allowed a small burst of pain to radiate out, pumping adrenaline through him. He staggered to his feet and turned into a model of rock hard certainty.

"I will not fall."

[Starr Redmaw]

Starr Redmaw, on the other hand, would fall very hard. He was so surprised his staff had managed to scratch the titan, he did not respond in time. Torso met crooked nose, and wind left acrid lungs. He fell back, head to the dirt, and found himself quite undone.

“Eglin,” he wretched. In the tongue of the Innari, full of metaphor, empty of grace, he swore very loudly.

The crowd, or rather, their voices, echoed through the fiery hells. The put seethed with tension. The goblins, though phantasmal, felt real looking at them. Their eyes glowed in the pillar of light, their stench maddening in the infernal heat. Starr lost his sense of smell years ago, but he always felt bad for humans so near to his kin.

“Eglin!” he echoed.

Having quite enough of rhetoric, and of not throwing enough shit, Starr clambered upright. In a flourish of fetish, snot, and sweat, he readied his staff. He glared at the creature, nostrils flaring, and hearts racing. In his skeletal frame, the two beating muscles pumped ochre blood around his withering body. A little oozed down his chin, where brute force had met with oafish stubbornness.

“If you no fall, then you die standing!” he bellowed.

He stretched hands wide, and legs apart.

He raised voice high, and stakes higher still.

With a rush of blood to the head, for once, Starr felt alive. He pointed his staff forwards. He scooped up shit with it, tossed it racket to ball forwards, and ignited it. He had been taught to fight fire with fire, after all.