The Long Thaw

[Izvilvin]

(Closed!)

The Citadel served a variety of purposes for a variety of combatants. For some it was a valuable tool to train and spar, for others it was a chance to experience the fear of death, to conquer emotion. For others, it was a release.

A creature saturated and bathed in destruction could live only so long in peace. One grew complacent in the silence and dropped his guard – he could falter at the first sign of danger. To keep ever vigilant and sharp, a man like Izvilvin Kazizzrym, whose muscles and nerves were forged in the perilous underground of Alerar, could not go long without testing himself. His days as an assassin long behind him, there was only one place to safely do such a thing.

And so he stood atop a plateau overlooking a wide valley, its cliffs adorned with a myriad of flora he did not know. The greens of the horizon spanned the entire spectrum of the color, melting into one another in harmony. The valley itself was glaciated and strewn with jagged boulders. Izvilvin was thankful to be miles away from such a hazard.

Where he stood was where the battle was meant to take place. He stood on a plateau near the summit of a high mountain, one of many in a long range that formed a half-circle all along the sides of the valley. The stone below him was smooth and flat, light in color, almost as if it had been sanded down by a patient carpenter. Weeds sprouted from various cracks in the stone and the edges between ground and mountsainside, but there was nothing else of note in the immediate area. There was nowhere to hide and nowhere to run, unless a combatant was knocked off. The chance of that happening would be slim, however, as the surface Izvilvin stood upon was large enough to accommodate a fairly mobile battle.

The drow gazed out over the majestic scene before him, his arms crossed over the magnificent Delyn breastplate he wore. Two short sheathes dangled from his belt, and dangerous daggers were strapped along his legs. There was a chill in the air that was carried on the wind, blowing long, thick white hair out behind the warrior’s focused face.

Having cast his cloak aside, it now lay in a pile by his feet. It had been a long time since Izvilvin let himself enjoy a breeze.

[Cydnar]

My ascent to the top of this make belief land was one of solitude and reflection, dedicated to the reasoning behind my being here. The days had been long and tiresome, but I had found myself wandering from the crystalline spires of Donnalaich more frequently, using the geomantic powers of my kin to travel swiftly beneath the cold stone and sodden marshes of the world. The Citadel had become a whispered fable in the under dark in recent days, and I had taken it upon myself to ready arms to test its mettle.

You could perhaps forgive me for questioning such reasons; I have never considered myself a war mongered son, never taken thrill in the swinging of blades and chastising of motions purely for sport before. But somehow, as the icy stone, paved smooth with the footfalls of a thousand invisible, non-existent climbers carried me upwards, there grew a faint spark of expectancy in the depths of my clavicle. My heart knew what to expect, my blades however, did not.

Sun and sky beaded down in heat rays, so much so my eyes strained to see the figure that stood on the vast opening as I turned the corner, arrived at last at the supposed meeting place. The monks in the entrance hall, the dark straw and ochre stained hovel, and an ante chamber of death had given me instructions, and I was thankful that I’d listened. As the bright white veil lifted with my steps forward, the sight I saw did not comfort me to any degree. Although it had been many decades since our kind had mingled and become one, I knew there would be vestiges of undying enmity between myself, and the drow that stood before me.

I waited, hoping myself to be out of earshot on the outskirts of our melee field. Nerves were an odd feeling, like poison running through a marmoset’s body during its last moments after a viper’s strike. Like the World Snake’s vicious maw, I felt sharp, closing, and vicious. From what I could see at this distance, the stance and demeanour and the hastily cast aside cape meant this opponent was ready, and oft more capable than I would ever be. The breeze flicked my long white hair up and to the sides, like a nest of the snakes twirling in my stomach. Resigning myself to whatever fate awaited me, resilient only comforted by the fact we could not die here, I stepped forwards, hands held together in the small of my back.

With humble steps I moved closer, announcing my arrival with an overly dramatic if not vague announcement. “So humble is the breeze, to lift us on high to the lofty crown of this strange land you have created. So mighty is the sword on our mutual waists, I cannot help but ask,” I stopped to his left, at a distance I guessed to be no more than a hundred feet, “why do you stand here, in this ‘Citadel’, why fight so, why express yourself so? Is not the artisan’s brush or the knave’s pious nature enough for my ancient, if amicable kin?”

I drew no weapon or made no threatening motion, not visible at least. In the palm of my concealed hand I conjured, with a flickering tongue under my breath a small crystal, quartz, of course, and a deep and dark purple shade that seemed to glow with its own inner damnation. I slowly expanded on it with every word, forming a chunk that was smooth to the touch and roughly the size of an apple. I waited for his response, smiling and watching his clothes and my robes flap gently in the growing maelstrom.

[Izvilvin]

Izvilvin heard the man long before he arrived, for through his blades had been rested and his calluses softened over the months, his senses had not dulled in the slightest. He made no move to turn and face his approaching opponent, choosing to savor the remaining moments in which he could appreciate the scenery.

He gave pause as the man spoke, his focus shifting from the sight before him to the words now filling his ears. Izvilvin had spent most of his life speaking the drow tongue, but since his escape from Alerar had worked hard to achieve a firm grasp on Common. Up until this point, he’d been rather proud of himself. These words, however, and their advanced nature and usage, confused the warrior enough for him to feel slightly embarrassed. Tactics such as symbolism were thoroughly lost on him. Thankfully, he got the gist of the question.

“Choice was not something I was given,” he said aloud, thinking for the first time in many years of his childhood in Alerar. “To let my reflexes dull is to weaken the only thing which keeps me alive.”

Finally he looked at the man. He had sharp features and skin so fair it suggested a non-human heritage. More so, he was incredibly lithe, standing with an easy grace common of elven folk. And yet, Izvilvin thought, there was something distinctly un-elven about him. The possibility which entered his mind was so ludicrous and sudden that he had to investigate it.

“Vel'bol zhah ol dos lac ghil, ka naut xonathull?” he asked in the drow tongue.

((“What is it you seek here, if not battle?”))

[Cydnar]

The dense accent that replied was so very familiar, yet so distant from the Elvin I knew to be my own. For my fortune, the Hummel Elvin was descended from the coarse drow and the high Elvin tongues of our forefathers, so I could understand sporadic words to piece together an assumption. His lack of shock at my announcement suggested that he too was of keen mind, ear and body.

“To better understand myself.â€� It was an instinctual reply, the sort that threw itself out of your lips without conscious thought. I bit my tongue after saying it, trying to remember the vestiges of my Elvin tongue to better aid our communication in the process. “Órfën osen ongló Ã�ën ävéhï ïvedló heten ïfëlë Ã*vëngé otën ëmén. Ã�en Ã*shwú otën ïndfá áen éwnen ëánïngmë, ëyondbá hattó ivenga ybën odsgä, áïthfë ndaen irthrightba. Ósën hówsé ëmen, onglÃ* óstlë róthërbó, heten áywën fóen hëten ladébó, rïngba emen ótén Ã*félÃ* nïen äén hoúsándtï utscú ndaen iróútéspÃ* foén heten éárthó. Hówsó emen hëtën órldwá ouyén láimcú rówsgá ulldÃ* fïën ëftló nsávïóúrédúth óotén ónglÃ*!â€�

Although more lightly sung than drow, Hummel was still a deep intonated language that expressed sorrow of the millennia in the shadows suffered by its people. I gave a passionate recollection, drove all the meaning I could find into the expression of my being. From our differences in language, no doubt he would only guess half or more of what was said, but the words for kinship, lost, needing and challenge were the same to all those who shared the pointed lobe, those who were of Elvin blood. There needed to be no translation there, only acknowledgement.

“Whatever language we shared, whatever history we possess, let us fight as if we were not known. I carry no enmity for the drow, but many of my kind do, for what transpired in the war that gave rise to the Hummel is a difficult transgression to forgive. I am Cydnar, knight and Salthias of the House of Nummar, disciple of geomancy, and Knight Templar of the World Snake, the Thayne Yrene. It is a most humble meeting, brother elf, but with a name comes meaning.� I brought the hand holding the crystal up and around, holding it aloft and lifting the stone up with a telekinetic thought. I spun it, its grace and simple silent movement beholden in awe.

“Show me, show me the blade and the glory!� I pulled back my hand and tucked the spinning quartz into the fold between my hauberk and robe on the right side, like a shaman reaching for unseen tantamount secrets. Bringing my free hand up and over in an arc, like a coiled serpent, and pushing my left leg back and pointing it sideways to carry my weight, I prepared myself for the opening gambit. Leaning forwards, I perhaps looked like a Taoist, an ancient priest mid-meditation, but it was a position from which I could launch the orb, recoil and draw Freya, the drow after all were notoriously quicker and ferocious with blades. What fate would carry me, what god would protect me against such unbridled and precise fury?



“For so long I have lived the life given to me. I wish to find a new meaning, beyond that given by gods, faith and birthright. So show me, long lost brother, the way of the blade, bring me to life in a thousand cuts and pirouettes of the heart. Show me the world you claim grows dull if left unfavoured too long!�

[Izvilvin]

His curiosity was rewarded, though not with the jagged accent of Alerian drow but with a tongue which melded it with something melodic. The words carried with them the raw and precise intonation of someone who craved desperately to share. There was no question that Cydnar was sincere, and Izvilvin found himself intrigued.

His early years in Corone had been in some ways lonelier than his decades in the caves of Alerar, in part because of his heritage, but greatly more so because of his inability to communicate with the few citizens he came across. It was a chance meeting with a young human named Khalxaen, whom Izvilvin would not and could not ever forget, that taught him how to communicate without words. The focus on tone and pitch and emotion and desire were things the warrior could not unlearn. In truth, the more he learned to speak to people, the less Izvilvin communicated.

It was with this in mind that he held his tongue after Cydnar was finished speaking, instead stepping silently away from the precipice and making his way to the middle of the rectangular clearing that had been prepared for them. The sound of his dark moccasins against the smooth stone echoed sharply against the mountain.

Instinctually he knew that he had long ago been programmed to hate Cydnar. The man was of non-Alerian elven descent, of that Izvilvin was sure (though the intricacies of the man’s words – their kinship, the details of the Hummel people - had been lost on the drow warrior). The Alerian drow were xenophobic, their society impregnated by irrational fears and hates. If a different dark elf had stood in his place, Izvilvin knew this conversation would have long been over and battle would have begun at first glance. The realization had him thinking of who he was, who he could have been if his life had taken only a slightly different turn.

He would indulge the warrior’s request, of course, drawing Icicle into his left hand and Mjolnir into his right, dual Kampilan swords. The white-hot lightning blade, sizzling loudly in anticipation, was an aggressive counterpoint to Icicle’s soothing blue glow and gentle, cold mist.

“I am Izvilvin. Banished from my homeland, fled from the home I eventually found, turned away from the friends I once made. Izvilvin of nowhere and of nothing. If my name once had meaning, it long ago was lost.” His words clearly revealed the difference between himself and his counterpart: that Izvilvin had long ago given up on discovering a new meaning to life.

So he begun the only thing he knew how to do, rushing forward suddenly, leaning forward to gain speed while not overbalancing. The frigid air blew his hair back and swept over his ears, his adrenaline began to rise, his feet slapped the ground with measured steps – moving with supreme confidence.

This was how he understood himself.

[Cydnar]

As my hand fell to tuck back to mirror the other, I listened to Izvilvin’s introduction and relished at the nihilism, at the abandonment of knowing oneself in favour for a physical reliquary of being. I had come to know myself through mental anguish and identity, perhaps the drow had done the same once, long ago, but that inner self was now replaced with a vocabulary far removed from dining, love and family.

The lightning on one of his blades gave me a deep cause for concern, but the ice was calming, soothing almost, mirroring the chill crisp sedation in the air of the mountainside. With fruitful buoyancy and exuberance, my opponent gave chase, kicking into a run that was cushioned by masterwork shoes and dexterity I could not hope to mimic.

I leant back on the left haunch, shifting my weight from right to left and lifting it up. With such a motion I felt the world turn, and the crystal in my hand wobble. Once again my hand rose, arcing to point at the advancing figure like a delicate dance movement, a flourish of artistry before the critique to come. “There is always meaning…always hope.� Resting my foot on the side of my knee, I formed a courtly stance to stabalise my form. If Izvilvin sought a new meaning, and I sought the same, perhaps the mutual illusion of place, time and purpose at the crown of this strange land could benefit us both.

With a rush of air I brought my right foot down and stomped hard, kicking gravel to one side as the boots I had come to wear too thin with battle dug in. My arced arm came down, spiraling up and around and stopped slung wide, away from the drow. It formed a counterbalance so that the crystal arm could swing without impeding difficulty. With focus, I pushed hard against the surface of the sphere and threw it, with all the accuracy of a slingshot aimed blindly towards its hopeful target. I had no time to solidify it further, or to shape it into anything remotely effective, but in the confusion, I could serve an edict to a more fruitful ally.

“Hope for tomorrow, hope for today, hope for the easing of yesterday.� I took hold of the crystalline tip of Freya, the most beloved of my blades and unhooked it from my belt. Standing upright, feet side by side and arm still outstretched, the heavy hematite ore sheath rested easy like a cane, it’s tip prodding the rock, it’s quartz embedded hilt cooling the pallid skin ungloved and unprotected. As the drow cleared the gap as speedily as the aura bolts on his sword crackled, I lifted the staff slightly yet brought it down ominously; my hand fell away as it dropped, and with a small click, the blade and sheath separated, the former flying up three feet to be caught, pulled back and spiralled around with grace, and the latter falling to the floor. I tilted my wrist slightly to the right, clicked my neck, and felt the World Snake coil around my soul to guide my judgement.

I waited for his blade to find mine, waited for us to draw quarters, waited for meaning to come to life.

[Izvilvin]

It had been months since Izvilvin engaged in battle against anything intelligent. Boars, serpents and rodents did not offer much resistance or challenge when faced with a hunter so practiced as he was. He caught them with near practiced efficiency, muscle-memory guiding him through the killing blow and the ritual which followed to prepare them for dinner.

For that reason, he did not have the confidence to deflect the projectile as he once would have. A year ago he could even have severed it in mid-stride without missing a step; this time he cut to the left and dodged it, suddenly pivoting and extending his strides to close within melee range of Cydnar, whose weapon was suddenly standing at attention before him.

In a single second Izvilvin took him in. Cydnar had a height advantage and more leverage as a result, but the drow warrior’s muscles were taut with constant use, and he was able to expertly use his weight. The cumbersome weight and length of the staff was an advantage in Izvilvin’s mind, for he favored rapid, measured strikes with his brutal blades. He anticipated the exhaustion of his opponent.

He slid along the slick surface of the plateau and dipped left, but quickly planted his left foot and doubled back to the right in a deceptive feint that had him approaching from Cydnar’s left flank. Leading with Icicle, which at once showed itself to be much less docile than it appeared, Izvilvin brought both blades around high in a smooth arc, bringing them down one after the other in heavy slashes designed merely to test the material of the staff and to see how his opponent moved.

[Cydnar]

The brightness, the clarity, the sheer vigilance of the drow’s movements scared me, more so than I’d ever admit. With a rage like a thunder clap he curved about the plateau and embraced my form with a downward arc that could’ve split rock asunder. I would be rived and torn and emancipated, if it were not for my own feeble grace bringing up my blade to take the force of the blow. “Argh!� I roared, my knees buckling somewhat under the impression left on Freya’s form.

So this was living? This was the truth the drow seemed to profess in his motions. I could not think straight, but I drew some sort of moderate conclusion from the ringing of blades across the chill and lucid horizon. “ÄmnátÃ*óndë!â€� I declared, straining before leaping backwards and tucking the sword down and up behind my back; its tip pointed to some distant and unseen frontier, my eyes still stuck firmly on my opponent. The dual sounds of my feet patting onto the rocks a few feet away and the heavy bass rhythm of my short breath only served to make the fury of battle spin deeper in my veins.

I knew that I must last, that I must preserve, but against such rime-bound fury, such intricate enchantments, and such deadly carnal drive, what hope had I, a child of the under dark castigated from his ancestral war song? I spun the cold steel of Freya up and down and returned once more to the same stance I’d begun the battle in, this time, I brought my second blade up and unsheathed it slowly. With one held sternly level with my shoulder to the right, and the second low and pointing to the rubble and lichen shrouded rock before my feet, I nodded to the drow and beckoned for him to make his true forte, his true emotional surge.

“Hówsá emen hywén heten Úmmelhä ëarfá óúryë Ã*ndcú osén!â€� I spoke softly, and earnestly, and as I proclaimed my challenge and weakening hatred, an eagle flew down over the cliff face above us, its call echoing out across the deep seated forest floor that stretched out far to the distance beneath us. This was a magical place, conjured from whatever memory the strange and instinctual Izvilvin held courtship in his own mind. It was a majestically formed setting for such a brutally simple cause, but I guessed there could be no other way to appreciate the dramaturgy and the destiny bound in each confrontation, in every little movement an elf made on the world we claimed as our own.



Damnation!
Show me why the Hummel fear you so!

[Silence Sei]

You want no commentary? You got it. If you have any issues with this judgement, IM me.

Cyd

Story (17/30)

Character (22/30)

Mechanics (10/30)

Wildcard (4/10)

Total: 53/100

Iz

Story (15/30)

Character (21/30)

Mechanics (8/30)

Wildcard (2/10)

Total 46/100

Cydnar Yrene receives 2750 exp and 10 GP

Izvilvin gets 825 exp and 5 GP.

Both combatants receive a unsellable 'Yellow Belly Certificate' stating that both combatants chickened out before the fight was over. Courtesy of your friends at the citadel.

Shame too, looks like it would have been good.

[Taskmienster]

Exp and Gp added.

Welcome to level 1! Cydnar!