View Full Version : Insatiable
It was the first time Madyrn had stepped foot on Corone soil in years.
The sun was there to welcome him to the day, as it often was, illuminating his golden hair and bringing a smile to the elf’s face. It was the kind of day that upped spirits, manifested in the crowd of people who were uncharacteristically sociable with one another. Madyrn felt strong and healthy.
Scara Brae and its Scourge, the organization he worked for, were now things in his past. When he chose to turn against his comrades during a mission to steal an enchanted artifact, he effectively authorized his own wanted poster. They would be after him now, so he’d travel across Corone by foot, sticking to the woods, in an effort to make distance away from them. He’d taken the ferry to the mainland as soon as he could, but knew the Scourge’s tentacles extended far enough that this port would be monitored. He didn’t want to book passage for a big trip just yet.
So he put his hair in a ponytail and maneuvered through the crowd. Attractive even by elven standards, Madyrn returned a lot of smiles and greeted a lot of passerby, genuine in his good-natured words or at least appearing so. He stopped for nobody but remained polite, moving from the port to the bazaar district.
It was in his nature to study the people around him, to know who lurked about at all times. He saw other elves, which pleased him, but one person in particular stood out to him. He didn’t recognize her at first, but she was moving through the crowd with grace, filtering through the people like they were tall-standing grass.
It was Karuka Tida. He hadn’t seen her in four years, and back then he had tried to assault her in the simple interest of raping her.
Those urges were strong even now. Something about the struggle got him going in a way that consensual sex couldn’t. Similarly, he often desired pain in his partners, wanted to see them cry or scream. They were often killed. He often ate them. The sight of blood made him hunger for it uncontrollably, put him in a trance that ended only when he was long away from the scene.
Seeing her rekindled old urges, even after all this time. He decided he would follow her at a distance, and confront her when she was in a less populated area.
Since Seth was busy satiating his need for blood in the Citadel, Karuka had taken care of their travel arrangements. She'd purchased two tickets for a morning departure to Dheathain and then bought some essential items for herself. She didn't know when - or if - she would ever return to Corone; she had no plans for it in the foreseeable future. She didn't know if she would even make it out of Dheathain. Her world had been an uncertain mess for the past two and a half years, but it had been a long time since she'd felt so much doubt in so simple a thing as the next week.
She moved through the crowds as though they weren't there, natural grace and agility letting her move through. The scents of Radasanth, of stale urine, throngs of people, and fresh cooking, were dim to her. Every time she entered a city from the woods, she noticed its conglomeration of scents, the appealing and the revolting. But by the time an hour had passed, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feel had faded for her. She didn't like cities. They all felt like graveyards with spirits bustling around, trapped.
But even in the hollow existence that was Radasanth, there was one place she would miss, one place that let her have a quiet moment to think.
It was a simple, tiny empty square that was mostly consumed by its fountain. Decades ago, it had been a bustling, busy square, part of the heart of Radasanth. Now, though the water still bubbled up sweet and cool from the fountain's core, there was no one. The city had grown away from this tiny spot of quiet refuge, and so she claimed it for herself for a little time each day when she was in town.
She hadn't noticed anyone following her; she relied on her clairvoyance to tell her if there was an attack coming and so hadn't paid any mind to the goings on around her. Nor did she see the golden haired Elf now; her back was still turned to the street from whence she'd come. She set her bag on the ground by the fountain with an unusual gentleness for a bag that was just full of stuff and set her staff down on the lip of the fountain.
With her hands now free, she reached back and shook out her long red hair. At the roots it was a deep red, deeper than blood, but along the length the color faded so that it was a brilliant fire red at the ends. It was getting too long for her tastes, she just never thought of getting it cut when she actually had an opportunity.
Finally she tied the hair into a knot that gathered it at the nape of her neck and started to sit down. Seth would find her when he was ready to. After all...they had a boat to catch in the morning.
Madyrn’s blood ran cold through his veins as he followed the woman, his face twisted into a grimace that made his usually beautiful face gruesome. His hate was ugly, his anticipation dangerous. When they separated from the general populace of the city his heart began to beat faster.
He followed at a distance as she put her back down, pausing by the fountain. The sun still shone on him, but it gave him no joy. Madyrn had forgotten his humane side, for the time being. Drawing both of his weapons, he began to sing – low enough that she wouldn’t be able to hear. The song hit the air with tangible power, creating an effect that, should it work, would hit the target and numb one of her limbs for a short time.
He was upon her as quickly as he could be, leading with his sword in a stab, held way out in front of him to hit her as early as possible. He wanted to see her blood, to taste it. It was a long time coming.
Her wizardry was something he remembered. One didn’t easily forget the sensation of lightning coursing through their bodies.
The hairs on the back of Karuka's neck raised; there was about to be an attack. Her right hand shot out to grab her staff, and her left hand gripped the shaft just as it went numb. Her fingers settled into the light grooves they'd worn in the warm wood during many battles over the past several years. Already she was spinning around, trying to find the source of the unprovoked violence. It had been coming from behind, and Karuka sidestepped lithely to avoid a golden haired Elf and his sword.
With less speed and power than she was used to, due to her entire left arm not responding well to her commands, the redhead whipped the head of her staff toward his head, hoping to hit him with the lightning-embued tip to knock him unconscious, ending this battle quickly so she could try to figure out why he felt the need to attack her. Her booted feet settled firmly on the gray cobblestone of the street to lend more power to the blow she meant to end the fight.
The face, twisted in a grotesque rage, was vaguely familiar, as though she may have insulted the man a long time before in a tavern while inebriated. But unless he was the rare sort of Elf to not take some light ribbing over drinks in good grace, she couldn't imagine why he might want to harm her.
Over the course of her four years' long adventure, the day Madyrn had attacked her in the forest had blurred into an unmemorable encounter. Of course she remembered it in vague shadows at the back of her mind, but for now the attacker - and his intentions - remained a mystery to her.
Madyrn hissed involuntarily, frustrated that the woman dodged his attack. Not only that, it seemed, but she had countered elegantly.
He was moving quickly, however, and Karuka’s numb limb slowed her just slightly. Instead of cracking him in the head, her staff hit the center of his back. It drove him forward and down, so his head dunked into the basin of the fountain, soaking him.
He rose immediately, throwing his hair back behind his head. His armor had protected him from much pain, but it had increased his momentum just enough to thrust him forward. The elf found himself enraged, losing his thoughts in a sea of angry fantasies.
Feigning incredible pain, Madyrn suddenly turned upon Karuka and slashed with his sword, as hard as he could in a horizontal slash. There was no skill in it; it was powered by pure anger, frustration, an incredible thirst for blood that he felt rising in his throat. He was salivating.
As he followed-through with the slash, his left hand came around and threw his kukri toward the woman’s face.
Karuka certainly couldn't remember ever encountering someone so...well...clumsy. The sheer brutality and artlessness that governed Madyrn's strikes was so far beneath anyone she had ever encountered that if someone had told her this little ball of fury had been one of her first experiences on Althanian soil, she'd have flat out denied it. The last time she'd been attacked by an Elf, he had very nearly cost her her life.
She batted aside the brutal hack with practiced ease and a bit of unnecessary force. After a little bit of moving it about, her mysteriously numb left arm was starting to respond to her commands again. She suddenly reversed the direction of her staff to send the thrown kukri skittering noisily across the courtyard, away from its owner.
Before the golden-eyed Elf could recover from his brutal but unbalancing attacks, Karuka lowered her stance, planting her feet widely apart to give her balance. Her left hand gripped the back of the staff and her right hand gripped the middle. Like a bolt of lightning, she slipped the other end between the Elf's legs, levering upward harshly to throw him into the fountain.
"Cool it," she snapped, her first words coming out in harsh annoyance. "At this rate, you're going to make me kill you for no good reason."
Madyrn felt his breath leave him, felt a tightening of the muscles in his groin as Karuka’s weapon struck him. He gasped as he was thrown into the fountain, dropping his sword by the side and abandoning the fight altogether – for the moment, anyway.
He made no effort to swim up to the surface, trying to maintain some dignity as his pain gradually subsided. The cool water helped comfort him, in some small way, but the damage was done. He lifted his head from the water when he could hold his breath no longer, taking a large gulp of oxygen.
He groaned for a moment or two as Karuka stood waiting. Evidently she was not the type to go for the kill against someone who had once tried to kill her. Madyrn found himself wondering why, wondering how someone could forgive such a thing, when he looked up and made eye contact with her. That’s when it hit him.
She didn’t remember.
He exhaled loudly and stood, his clothing hanging awkwardly from his body as if they were several sizes too large. A passerby wandered on, the lone witness to his afternoon swim besides himself and Karuka.
Rather than speak, the defeated elf waded to the side of the fountain and flipped over lazily, falling flat on his back against the hot stone of the ground. He gasped for a few seconds, and it was clear that he was done. “I’m… sorry,” he managed. It sounded sincere.
“I haven’t eaten in two days,” he spoke. The words were lazy, pained. The words of a vagrant who had no skills which anyone wanted to pay him for. “I tried to find work, I really did…”
He groaned again, shut his eyes tightly. Any elf his age could pass for a teenaged one, and he was banking that Karuka did not grow up in Raiaera. “I wanted your money. Anything is better than starving.”
He didn’t expect charity from the woman, would never expect it from anybody that he assaulted. What he expected was for her not to kill him. Tida didn’t have a killer’s face, and he’d be dead already if she did such a thing for fun.
Karuka's eyebrows drew together as she looked down at the waterlogged and defeated Madyrn, scrutinizing him closely. Something didn't ring quite right in what he said, something sounded off at its very core. Maybe she just couldn't buy that a starving, desperate kid could make a face like that.
Now that she looked at him without rage contorting his beautiful features, he looked vaguely familiar. She still couldn't place him, but she was almost certain she had seen him before somewhere, more than just in passing. Karuka's index finger tapped rapidly against her staff as she decided whether she was going to trust that he was hungry and just fighting for self preservation or decide he was a liar and hold him there until Seth got back to eat him.
She decided on the former. She'd seen so much killing and death on the world of Althanas that if she could avoid needlessly killing some poor fool that had chosen a target much stronger than he was, she would. She took a step back, letting her grasp on her staff loosen.
"It's starting to be harvest time, I'm sure some of the local farms would be more than glad for an extra set of hands. Probably at least feed you, and give a little money."
She made a gentle gesture toward the street. "You should be careful who you attack. There are people out there much stronger than I am, and they would kill you simply for having attacked them."
Madyrn felt relief, but didn’t let it show. Karuka appeared to believe him after considering it for a moment, which meant he would not die for his mistake. It was amazing how far she had come in just a few years; when they’d first encountered once another, it was the elf who was the better melee fighter.
It made him reconsider what he’d been doing for the last few years. Scara Brae offered little challenge for someone with as much potential as he had. He’d even neglected his song magic, despite how potent his spells could be. Caught in the small-time world of Scara Brae, Madyrn had lost perspective.
He nodded, swallowed and sat up after a great effort. Pebbles tumbled from the back of his head back to the ground. “I’ve tried. Nobody’s willing to give up what food they have when they don’t really need the help. It would cut into their profits to hire more than they need, and nobody believes me when I say I’d work just for a meal and a haystack to sleep in.”
Madyrn stood, let his hair fall in front of his face. It was matted and clung together in an ugly way, made his golden hair copper. He groaned and slowly retrieved his weapons, sheathing them in as harmless a manner possible.
Inside, he was seething. He wanted to get behind Karuka and thrust his kukri into the small of her back, tug upward, rip her open and spill her insides all over the heat-scorched gravel. He imagined them sizzling there in the sun. He showed no sign of thinking such a thing.
He’d been hiding his face from her with those wet locks, wary that she might recognize him and decide to finish the job. Madyrn knew he should make distance from her, as soon as he possibly could. But he couldn’t make his haste too obvious.
“My apologies,” he said, trying to regain some dignity. “I’ll try to find passage west, maybe there is work in a smaller town.”
Karuka watched the blond Elf carefully as he went about collecting his belongings. Why was he so familiar? She didn't think she'd ever seen him in a tavern before, that just didn't seem right. Maybe she'd fought him? That wasn't likely. She remembered all of her Citadel fights in detail, and most of the ones on the road as well, unless it had been taking care of something minor.
It wasn't until he bent over to retrieve his kukri that he really sparked a memory. Now she remembered. She'd barely been on Althanas a month when she'd been attacked in the woods on her way around Corone. He'd faked a bad limp and an arm injury with no blood to show for it, and begged to be taken to Underwood. When she'd pointed it out, he'd attacked her.
Four years had passed since the last encounter with this beautiful Elven man. Four years separated the naive and optomistic little ragged twit she'd been with the jaded, poised woman she'd become. She hadn't thought she'd come so far; the last time she'd seen him, she'd barely made it out alive. This time, he hadn't even been a challenge.
Barely were Madyrn's final words of apology out of his mouth than Karuka set the butt of her staff hard on the ground. It rang out hollowly on the stone, and her bright blue eyes narrowed slightly.
"I never did get your name, that first time we met. Out in the woods...on an otherwise perfect day."
Madyrn paused. She remembered him, now.
He’d turned away from her and was already beginning to walk away, but stopped only a few feet from the fountain. He had a clear run ahead and thought he could get away if he wanted to, but for whatever reason the elf decided running was not his best option. Certainly not for his ego, which was already wounded.
Instead he decided to drop the ruse, turning to face her. He licked his lips passively, shrugged and met her eyes with his.
“And you won’t get it now,” he said, just a hint of venom in his voice. Overmatched as he was, Madyrn wasn’t about to reveal his name or anything about himself. He’d already decided that Karuka wasn’t going to kill him, and he wasn’t going to question his own thoughts now.
“Maybe the next time we meet, we can have a pleasant exchange. For now, I need to find some dry clothing.”
Changing into a dry outfit wasn’t his only plan for the day – Madyrn had been given a new perspective and goal. While avoiding the Scara Scourge was his primary motive, he now had a reason to return to Raiaera. Recalling a time long ago, the elf remembered hearing about forbidden song magic, far beyond the power of what he knew currently. The power to raise the dead, the kill outright and to inflict horrible pain; a necromancer in the elven lands, recently resurrected, was said to have such power.
And while Madyrn found the idea of dedicating his life to becoming more powerful a foolish thing, it worked so well with his current objective that he could find no reason to stay in Corone a day longer than necessary. If nothing else, he could get some information on this forbidden song magic.
“I often find it hard to control my impulses,” he said, and in this he was sincere. “But if I see you again, things may be different.”
With that, Madyrn began to make his way back to the populated area of the city.
An amber hand gripped a sturdy staff as Karuka considered, briefly, taking revenge for the attack years ago, but the grip relaxed after a moment as the redhead let the thought pass. There was no honor in killing such a weak opponent. There'd been no joy in fighting him.
She didn't know if he had any specific plans for if they ever did meet again, but she wasn't going to worry about it. She didn't have any good reason to.
Karuka sat down on the lip of the fountain, letting one long leg dangle idly and pulling the other up to rest her arms over. Her sharp blue eyes stayed fixed on the area where the Elf had disappeared from. Had she really grown that much stronger in the years she'd wandered Althanas? She'd always felt weaker, since the day she'd lost her magic, but now...
How much she'd changed had just been shoved roughly into her face. She hadn't seen it, the slow improvement with her fighting abilities, the gradual shift from flailing wildly with a mop and HOPING she hit something to the refined style she'd adapted over time. Not until now.
But for all she'd grown and changed, something inside her told her she was not yet all she could be, all she was meant to be. And that something was driving her to find answers.
Dheathain... It was the closest thing to Ireland she'd ever known, and the place that felt closest to home. It beat with a wild spirit, a fierce spirit, but didn't outright rage like Fallien. If there was anywhere that Karuka Eithne Tida O'Sheean could look herself in the face and find her answers, it was in the wild jungles.
Come the dawn, she'd be on her way to those jungles.
Lord Anglekos
03-23-09, 02:43 PM
"Insatiable"
It was requested for little to no detail at all for this, so if either of you have any questions with my judging please PM me or AIM me at blackdecadence19.
STORY
Continuity: 6.5. Although this was mostly because of Karuka explaining her intentions to going to Dheathain in the first place, I did like Madyrn's influence of their previous encounter interjected in there.. I wish the thread had gone on longer so I could've seen what happened next.
Setting: 4. Little to no interaction from either of you, save for the fountain.
Pacing: 6. I liked how Karuka used Madryn's attack to explain her nostalgia and recognize how she had changed. Again, I was disappointed at how short it was, but all and all this wasn't bad.
CHARACTER
Dialogue: 5. Honestly I found it dry. It wasn't bad, and I could easily imagine your characters speaking such way, but it felt like dry pork going down my throat.
Action: 5. As with dialogue, it was dry and unoriginal. Accurate and pretty well written, but otherwise...
Persona: 7.5. This was your strongest section, I felt. At first, Madryn, your character confused me, but after reading him through he reminded me of one of my own characters, which helped me understand him. Karuka, I can tell you're well practiced in writing with your character; you have her persona almost perfectly down pat.
WRITING STYLE
Mechanics: 8. Just a comma that wasn't there, etc...Things easily fixable.
Technique: 6. There were a couple fragments I found odd and a couple of your sentences evolved unto run-ons. Otherwise it was fine; nothing spectacular.
Clarity: 6. I pretty much could understand everything that was going on, but I'm sure I could have empathized and understood even more had there been more of a back story or the thread had continued on. Maybe a sequel, you two?
WILD CARD
5. I look forward to seeing more work from both of you.
FINAL SCORE: 54.
Karuka Tida gains 2500 EXP and 300 gold pieces.
Madryn gains 750 exp and 200 gold pieces.
Taskmienster
03-23-09, 06:18 PM
Exp and Gp added!
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