Red Cellar, Home Of Pagoda Brand Bottled Water: Shadar vs Christoph

[Shadar]

She sang like the first birds of morning, high and sweet though it wasn't more than a hum. She even looked softer, her ruby locks less fiery, her amazonian face less dire, as she cradled Shadar's head on her bosom and embraced him in her wide eagle wings.

"I'm sure he's here," Shadar whispered, waking slowly. The song lilted in curiosity, but didn't stop. "The imposter, or-" The words dropped off, either from sleep or his unwillingness to voice them. He remained silent and motionless for a great while longer as Brigitte hugged and rocked him in the alcove of the great stone hallway.

Eventually, an interruption came. "Shadar," said one of the Pagoda monks. It was more a demand than a greeting. Brigitte looked up with a face equally as disdainful.

"It's okay," the half-elf grumbled from within her protection, and she pulled her wings back to her sides promptly, though unhappily.

Shadar stood from the floor looking like he had woken up behind a tavern, his short silver hair matted and flattened on one side, and his clothing holey and blood stained. He still managed a glare for the three robed monks, just because he saw the smugness in his eyes. Numerous times, he had told them that only Brigitte could heal him, though he didn't care to bring up the mechanism of it, and they still scoffed like it was nothing but childish grandstanding. Ai'Brone are all the same, Citadel or not, he thought with all the heat wasted in his gaze, for it washed off their backs pointlessly. Such righteous, impassive stones, the monks of illusion.

The lead monk nodded as if to say, "Of course it's okay," but he spoke in a diplomatic, almost infuriatingly polite tone. "We have judged that your opponent was the victor in the last battle."

Shadar's eyes smoldered, Brigitte stood hurriedly with her defiant nose in the air, and a rough voice laughed in the air around them. "Well, duh! He dove right onto a metal toothpick!" No one paid any mind to the disembodied speaker, for the half-elf and the harpy knew he only wanted attention, and the monks had endured stranger.

"However," continued the monk as if he hadn't stopped talking, "There is a vacancy within the rank of Master. You will fill it instead of suffering a demotion. A challenge already awaits." The speaker and one of his followers nodded curtly and floated down the hall, while the remaining monk waited to guide him to the arena, feigning uninterest despite his drifting, inquisitive eyes.

Brigitte wrapped her wings over her bare breasts. She probably would have hissed, too, had Shadar not leaned in close with his shoulder to her's and his mouth to her ear. "Thanks. I'll try not to get as beat up this time," he whispered, somehow combining appreciation, annoyance, and a hint of shame into the span of three seconds. With an encouraging nod, she watched him leave in the monk's shadow.

He walked leisurely, forcing the monk to shorter steps, and did a good job of making it look unintended as he repaired and cleaned his clothing. A touch from his long, inky gloves was all it took to drink the stains into the Void and rebuild the torn fabric over his heart. With the evidence gone, he didn't want to pound his last opponent's face in... as much.

"So, any scruffy guys hang around the high class section of this place? Any who look like bandits?" he asked with false enthusiasm when he finished preening.

"You will have to advance to see," the monk droned, a standard textbook response if there ever was one.

"Yeah yeah," Shadar sulked. He should have been angrier, but a healing from Brigitte left him too damn relaxed sometimes.

~

His arena fixed that in the few seconds it took his shoes to fill with water. In the time it took to spit "Bloody hell!" he had levitated over the ankle deep puddle and began absorbing the unnecessary moisture from his footwear.

"Hah! Same rank, crap accomodations," laughed the disembodied voice from earlier as it manifested before him as a were-jackal, and just as lightweight as you'd expect a humanoid jackal to be. But, the dream demon had a style to make up for it. From the insidiously purple fur, to the princely robes, and the thick diamond embedded above his eyes of fire, he was anything but non-threatening. It varied, though, whether the threat was to a person's health and safety or just their perspective on the natural order of things.

Shadar didn't respond. He didn't need to. Baring the creative use of slang, the mental demon was absolutely right. Compared to his old arena, that lovely cube of death, this was... well, literally the basement. Dark, molding stone stretched away to give the room some size despite the low ceiling, but the open space was broken every few strides by thick vertical pipes. They each bore red pressure knobs like trees had boughs, overkill on the designer's part. However, the design seemed to have bigger problems, hence the puddle from wall to wall. Somewhere, the guilty drip could be heard, but it was visibly lost in the unsteady light of glowing orbs plastered to the ceiling.

"They need repairs," Shadar said with an odd smile. He couldn't help but imagine the entire Pagoda sinking into a pool of its own fluids. It made it a bit more bareable to be levitating just over the waterline, keeping his long black coat out as best he could, in the building's bowels. Or wherever this was.

"They need a door," added Jackal, equally as pleased, but only because he liked what prisons did to mortals. He too hovered over the waterline, making it look like nothing but reflective carpet.

Shadar glanced about, though he didn't doubt it. His opponent would arrive through the same teleporting doorway that he had, stock Ai'Brone decor that it was. "If we're gonna wait, could you at least knock off the self-illusion? It looks bad enough in here already," he grumbled with a hand massaging his temples.

"Nope," Jackal chirped. When Shadar looked over his hand, Jackal licked his chops, savoring the half-elf's annoyance like sweet sweet candy.

[Christoph]

Christopher Knighton had never believed in predestination. To him, such outdated fatalistic philosophies were throwbacks to a more primitive age and a cowardly method of escaping personal responsibility. As far as he was concerned, the idea of someone blaming his or her own personal failures on fate was absurd, laughable, and frankly, pathetic.

“It didn’t go wrong because of the gods or the universe,” he would say. “It wasn’t ‘meant to happen that way.’ You just screwed up.” He wasn’t an atheist; he was simply of the opinion that whatever gods there were generally had more important things to do than meddling in mortal affairs. Unusual and unexpected things happened now and then, of course, but such was the randomness of life.

As he walked into the hallowed halls of the Dajas Pagoda for the second time in three days, however, the chef began to call his beliefs, or lack thereof, briefly into question.

Him getting the opportunity to visit the place had been unusual enough. Leaving Corone, he had hitched ride on a cargo barge bound for Salvar, his home. During the seven-month ordeal that was supposed to have been a three-month business trip, the chef had learned that being a great cook made it easy to get free passage on almost any vessel. Unfortunately, his economically clever travel method backfired when the barge’s rudder broke, causing them to take an emergency stop in Scara Brae that would last at least a week. At that point, he decided to occupy himself by visiting the famed Dajas Pagoda. That wasn’t anything unusual by itself.

No, it wasn’t until he was paired up against the legendary Dan Kross that the whole thing became a tad unbelievable. When the traveling cook actually came out as the victor and was invited back to do battle with a Master, Chris could not longer confidently claim that it was all a coincidence. Still, he wasn’t quite convinced.

Perhaps when they make me the Grand Master I’ll start believing in fate, he mused to himself as he made his way to the next great test.

* * * * *

Apparently, the test was going to be a rather wet one. If it hadn’t been for his several long ship voyages and his lifetime of trudging through Salvic snow, Chris would have been repulsed as his shoes and socks became saturated with water in moments. It’s certainly better than ice or salt water, he thought as he stepped completely clear of the magical door. The unusual portal quickly vanished, leaving the chef trapped in the enclosed chamber.

At least, the place certainly felt with its low ceiling and dense pipes that filled the room like metal trees in an industrial forest. There was an obnoxious dripping sound echoing through the chamber from somewhere, which explained the state of the urban swamp that he was about to fight in. His instincts told him that he wasn’t alone, yet he couldn’t hear the wet sloshing of any feet save his own. Once his eyes adjusted to the inadequate light, he realized why that was.

The silver-haired master, seemingly of Elfish blood, was actually floating in the air just above the water. It was an interesting trick, especially to the challenger who found himself wondering just how the elf was doing it. Chris considered himself to be a fairly accomplished magician, but he’d yet to figure out a spell that allowed him to levitate. It seemed so simple, yet the most he’d managed was being able to jump really high. He made a note to ask the Hierarch how he had learned it after their fight.

“It appears that we are to fight,” said the chef. His first order of business was to buy enough time to assess his surroundings and devise a plan. When he’d done battle with Dan, Chris had just rushed into it without thinking until after blows were being exchanged. It nearly cost him the match. He’d been as lucky as he was clever; he couldn’t depend on such good fortune again. “I don’t mean to state the obvious, of course. It’s just that my last opponent confused me for the caterer…”

[Shadar]

Shadar twitched his head to the side, meeting his opponent's eyes and screwing up his face into something unreadable. "Good," he said with a brow raised as he hovered a quarter turn around to face the man. "I don't want to dine in a place like this." He didn't know what he had been expecting. Another buff brawler, an elemental, or maybe some scantily clad battle vixen, the last of which might have tickled his fancy just a bit. But, Brigitte was outside, and she had eyes like augers, so it was probably for the best.

"Nice hat," he added, quirking up one corner of his mouth. So... he’s a chef, he mused, more to convince himself than anything. Granted, the chef was a bit more built than the usual kitchen drone, and he had that annoying noble tilt to the nose, even if he didn't mean to. Shadar found himself relaxing. He knew there were always surprises in battle, but today's surprises would probably be muffins. Blueberry would be nice.

Cooking puns. Cooking puns. Stall while I come up with some, Jackal said in the back of his head. The dream demon had wiped out his illusionary projection as soon as the portal appeared, probably saving his introduction for a moment of maximum self-promotion, which was just peachy with Shadar. Best case scenario, he’d end it before Jackal even had the chance.

"First," he said quickly and raised a finger before the chef could make a surprise attack. Shadar had done exactly that against the brawler, and it had cost him his preferred arena. But, more importantly, he had missed the chance to gather information. With the monks and their eternal oral constipation, his only source was his opponents. "Tell me. Yari Rafanas, the Bandit King. Heard of him? Seen him? Anywhere around here?"

Stupid questions, he knew. Everyone knew of the Bandit Brotherhood's greatest leader, and anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew he had died. However, there were a good amount of people with less than that, and they seemed to think Yari Rafanas, a Yari Rafanas, was still around and recruiting. Efficiency dictated that he silence the imposter instead of every single follower, but he had to find the man first.

Shadar crossed his arms behind his back, looking much like a bored string puppet tied too high, and shot a glare through the subterranean gloom that said, "Be quick about it, too." He wouldn't need very long to finish the work that had started within his concealed gloves, which suddenly throbbed with iridescent veins of prevalida. A cool liquid metal grew and twisted in his palms, yearning to become something deadly.