Confidence in the Domination

[Visla Eraclaire]

Closed to Enigmatic Immortal

The doors to the Citadel chamber loomed high in front of a short young woman, unarmored and unarmed. Visla reached down to her belt and laid hands on two potions, a flask of fortitude and a potion of swiftness, verifying that they were still with her. It had been necessary to drink the third before she even arrived just to be able to leave her cane behind. Her traveling clothes, worn from years without replacement, mundane as they were, shimmered ever so slightly with a wizard’s ward she had prepared before departing her sanctum.

In short, everything was ready, or as ready as it could be.

Visla was not a warrior by any stretch of the imagination. She had fought others out of necessity or strange circumstance but a handful of times in her life. Until that morning she had never seen Althanas’ famous Citadel. Unable to teleport to such an unfamiliar locale, she had set out to fly there at dawn and pondered her reasons for doing so the whole way.

The Citadel was, of course, a game, and she was a person much in need of occasional diversion. Still, it was a game for the brutish and bloodthirsty. While the sorceress had a terrible temper at times, she had no score to settle against the anonymous combatants offered to her. Entertainment simply could not justify it. If she was merely bored, she could have bought a book, seen a play, or played a game of chess in the parks of Radasanth.

No, this was a regimen, a necessary thing rather than one undertaken freely. The one thing about her time as a warlock that Visla did not question or regret was her desire for independence, a freedom that could only be secured by power. It was that quest that had lead her to dabble in dark magics. Ultimately, though she sought to stand on her own two feet she ended up entangled and dependent on the font of her infernal power, the grim succubus Aelva. In spite of all this, the need for personal strength was not a belief she had abandoned. Her methods were more scrupulous and her demeanor more amiable, but she still sought the abilities that would allow her to carve out a place in the world where others could not harm or bind her.

That was the resolve she held firmly in mind as she pushed the doors open to the arena. As she passed through the portal, a beam of sunlight streaked down into her eyes from a conjured sky. Wind swirled around her as she found herself atop a grey stone building of a tightly packed city center. It was no city she had ever visited, a construct of imagination on the part of the Citadel’s monks no doubt. The buildings seemed to choke each other with their proximity, presenting a staggered series of short jumps, makeshift bridges made of wooden plans, and wrought-iron catwalks.

The city below roared with an illusory vigor, competing with the sound of the wind to fill Visla’s ears. She planted her feet firmly in the center of the building and attempted to survey the horizon for a target, hoping that he was not lurking unseen in the crowds below.

[Enigmatic Immortal]

Again he stood inside the swirling energies of the citadel, letting the room take shape to his grand design. Again he watched as the pulsating magic of the ancient building create each detail of an illusionary world. Again he breathed in the unique scent of reality that was not real, tasted the air with his tongue that was not air, each fabricated molecule a curiously magnificent sensation that was all to real, and yet at the same time, no more real than the pages in a book.

Jensen Ambrose stood atop the highest peak of his newest creation, a network of construction catwalks and hastily formed boards that led from one skyscraper to the next. He took in a lungful of the air as his body took a calming breath as one giant sigh escaped his lips. The people below moved around like tiny ants, flickering around each other to get from one preordained station to the next. He smiled down to them all as he took one red apple from his modified trench coat and wiped it along his skin tight black shirt. Satisfied he took a large bite out of it, feeling the crisp bark it let out as juice dribbled down his face.

In a relaxed state he leaned against the side of a pillar to a building in mid construction. The iron beam his feet rested on wide enough for one man to walk at a time. He had no restraining harness nor pulleys set up to brace him if he fell. The idea itself chaffed him for two reasons. One was that the man was a member of the Knights of Apocalypse, a secretive order with a genocidal goal to one day bring the world back to a neutral state before the horsemen come to end it. The second reason was more practical than the first. He was an immortal, and the thoughts of death were abstract and skewed to him. Fearless wasn’t the correct term to use; no it was more akin to a fleeting desire of not caring.

The knight wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, looking to the side as he managed to find his opponent walk in. He gave the woman a once over seeing a fragile looking thing with no aura of bloodlust nor a warrior’s intuition outside of the basic squires handbook of checking your surroundings first. He lazily walked along the iron plank like a cat, stretching his arms up wide as he felt his stomach exposed to the wind and got a chill feeling down his spine as he yawned bringing back his hands and taking another bite of the apple as he perched on the balls of his feet resting his hands upon his knees.

The woman looked to be an adult in the sense that she lost all that innocence that was a tell tale sign of youth. Her Umber hair flowed in the wind behind her like tiny tentacles feeling out for a meal. Her face was hidden to him, but her size and shape told him she was kind of cute. The immortal never felt wrong on these impulses and he snickered to himself as he watched her like a house cat watching birds through a window. He took another bite wiping the juice off his lower lips as he munched away lazily.

She had no clear signs of formal education in the arts of battle, he was positive of that as she looked down to the side of a building for him, seeing where her enemy lurked. Jensen had always figured one should always look up first when in a strange new land. That may have been a thought process he came up with only because he was perched above her, however. Either way he let out a soft chuckle before he stood to his full height looking down upon her.

So many ways to do this, but he concluded on one with a vile smile as he cupped his mouth with one hand.

“Hey, nice ass lady!” he called out to her, dropping the apple as it plummeted all the way down as his fingers made their way for one of his throwing knives.

He held it ready, but decided to first hold his action.

[Visla Eraclaire]

The wait was beginning to gnaw at Visla as her eyes strained, gazing at rooftops, staring down the arcades below. The crass remark from her opponent was a welcome end to her search. She spun and stared up toward the direction of the sound just quickly enough to see an object plummeting to her, round and red.

The sorceress flung out her hand and extended a barrier of force in the direction of the missile. It bounced off the shimmering hemisphere with an unceremonious clunk. Her eyes wanted to follow it, but she kept them focused on the unfinished building above until the spotted a shock of ruddy hair and the poised humanoid form it was attached to.

Quite nimble, she thought, as she released the shield with a flourish of her wrist and readied her response. As she pointed two outstretched fingers toward the highrise, umbral tentacles seemed to choke all sensation from the area. A shroud of inky darkness, not thin and light like a shadow, but onerous and thick blotted itself upon the skyline. The substance had no true mass, and yet it hung in the air like a great cloud, muffling even the sounds within.

Satisfied, Visla look a moment to glance down at the object that had come to rest at her feet. Her alchemical training lead her to expect some sort of bomb and so she stared carefully as she saw a brown strand extending from the top like a fuse. She crouched carefully and…

“An apple?” she spat out, halting her cautious appraisal mid-squat.

The sorceress booted the fruit across the top of the building and down onto the heads of the unreal crowds below. She turned her gaze upward to the darkened blotch and awaited retaliation.

“If you’re out of apples, a grapefruit might be nice!” she shouted.

[Enigmatic Immortal]

Jensen smiled to himself as the woman had turned to see her opponent for the first time. Her little taunt made him very amused, impressed to have an opponent who saw the fun of battle. That or she had no clue what she was getting into. In mattered little to the knight as he concluded what he would do to rile this one up.

From this height he couldn’t make out every facial feature, but she wasn’t an ugly low class Lavinian street worker. Nope, she could possibly be one of those up scale personal escorts that had a down payment of two hundred gold and a three week advance reservation policy. He curled his lips as he processed what she had done to a simple apple, and it became all to clear what she was.

“Mage,” he whispered to himself lifting his hands outwards to her looking around the sky as the breeze made his hair flitter in front of his face. His hands enclosed as the sound of clapping filled the air, his enjoyment increasing as he lowered onto his haunches again upon the iron plank.

“It’s a little refreshing, doll face,” Jensen shouted back in a sincere tone. “If I may be frank the last few nutcases I walked into battle with were ugly whore children.” he bowed down to her as he kept the grip on his dagger tight, ready to throw on a moment’s notice. While she looked harmless, she had displayed an aptitude for magic. That made her dangerous regardless of anything else a simple once over could discern.

“A very refreshing change of pace,” he rubbed his hand behind his head as his eyes looked to her. The immortals tongue licked his lower lips in a seductive manner, laughter escaping in a soft chuckling wheeze. “The name is Jensen Ambrose,” he bowed low to her again like a noble would to a lady at a dance before he came back up and sized her image in his sights.

“Now that I have my introductions out of the way, shall we dance?” He asked laughing wildly as he tossed his throwing knife towards her. Hit or miss he didn’t stick around as he bolted for the ladder to lead to her level. Chances weren’t to good he would survive a magic blast, and worse off it she collapsed the building he knew he definitely wouldn’t survive that.

What she could be capable of was inconsequential to the immortal, all that mattered was the thrill of battle as his laughter echoed in the construction site.

((He is moving in the construction zone, due to it's current state it shouldn't take long to spot him as he has no hard cover.))

[Visla Eraclaire]

Visla heard muffled sounds from within the darkened area, as if the man within were delivering quite a speech. She simply stared for a few moments, but eventually curiosity got the better of her and she snapped her fingers and dismissed the obscuring mote of darkness. He was finishing his grandstanding as the veil of shadows fell away, and Visla caught his name and a noble bow.

She smirked and returned the gesture, bowing deeply and calling back

“Lady Visla Eraclaire, at your service. I can provide a great many such services, but I’m afraid all I have for you is—“ her attempt at a witty remark was cut short as no sooner had she raised her head back up from bowing that she caught the glint of steel flying at her.

Caught up in the theater of it all, she had no time to raise her shield again and the dagger struck true right below her collarbone. The point dug its way into her flesh but stopped short of nicking her ribs, slowed ever so slightly by her wizard’s ward. Still, blood began to drip down her chest in a unseen trickle beneath her traveling clothes.

The injury made her flinch long enough that her target made it to the ladder unhindered. As he was mantling down toward her, she regained her composure and flung her hand toward the metal rungs that would bring him dangerously close. The excitement of battle was one thing, but the prospect of a close-up encounter was far from thrilling to the sorceress. She focused her will and unleashed a plume of electricity along the iron grips and steps of the ladder, coursing upward along its length.

Hoping this would buy her at least a temporary respite, she turned away and scampered some added distance from the edge of the roof where the ladder led. Taking cover behind a small brick protrusion that housed the stairwell down into the building, she reached to the right side of her belt and uncorked the vial she found there. With little time to spare, she chugged the heady contents of the flask of fortitude.

As the potent brew reached her stomach, it had its intended effect. She felt the pain from the wound in her chest fade into a tingling haze. Her skin became thick and leathery and her bones hardened like those of a mighty beast. However, such protection and insulation came at the price. A rush of intoxication filled her veins, as the contents of the potion were about half alcohol.

I should probably have tested this before, her rational mind thought somewhere within the liquor-fueled haze.

[Enigmatic Immortal]

Jensen’s steps echoed in the construction site, his boots pounding the metal iron as he sprinted towards the ladder. He jumped off the side of the platform, his hand catching the side of the ladder as he swung into it and he felt his chest beat against the cool metal. Taking a quick breath before moving the knight scurried down the ladder like a trained professional, his feet skipping steps at a time as he laughed wildly into the air.

The immortal’s opponent was out of sight for a fleeting moment, but the air above him seemed to heat up before a soft hum was heard in the still sky. The hairs on the back of the knights head stood upright instantly and he felt that premonition of danger. Taking time to decipher what it was turned out to be a bad idea, the lightening arcing onto the ladder and rolling downwards towards him at a speed he couldn’t humanly react to in time. The jolt of electricity pulsed every vein making his heart sputter for a brief moment. Each nerve in his body came alight with life as if his brain sent out a signal to feel every sensation at once.

A numb euphoria took over Jensen’s better senses, immediately washed away by a tingling sensation as every part of his body felt like a thousand needles were sticking into him. The warrior free fell from the ladder in a downwards fall akin to a tumbling statue as his fingers flexed out in a twitching spasm. He didn’t know how high he was but his flight had ended swiftly.

Back muscles screamed out to him alerting he crashed hard into something, the sound of cracking wood and a rush of dust washing upwards to the heavens like a fleeing flock of birds. A grunt of pain escaped his lips as all the wind in his lungs was released in an agonizing fashion that made his chest contract with pain.

It felt like Jensen's body rebooted, a feeling of wakening up for the first time after a long nap. The knight's eyes fluttered open, wheezing several times to get fresh air into his lungs as he processed whether or not he broke ribs in the fall. Thankfully he hadn't fallen to high from the ladder and he immediately began searching for his opponent with fleeting eyes.

The mage was no where to be found and the immortal weakly lifted up his hand that still violently twitched with the after effects of the lightening attack. He made a silent vow then and there to never trust a woman with good looks in the Citadel. Weakly he managed to roll himself to his side where his left hand pressed against the floor, feeling returning to his limbs as he steadied himself. With one more agonizing wheeze Jensen forced himself upright. Each joint shook out like a dog, removing the sensation in his limbs as he regained control of his body.

“Alright,” Jensen said weakly to himself. “Let’s try this again with a little more tact.” he muttered as he jogged pathetically towards an unfinished wall slouching against the concrete material letting his fingers slip to his weapons as he quickly peaked out to the opened roof top. He didn’t see his prey, but he noticed there was only one place she could have gone eying the bricks that hid the rooftop access point. He debated on rushing her or staying put in his hard cover, trying to envision the outcome of both choices.

After only a second of thinking he thought to rush her. If a mage had broken concentration they couldn’t effectively cast spells, and the immortal wasn’t sure if she had another spell that could just squash him like a bug under a heel.

With decision in mind he pulled out his punch knife and a throwing glaive holding each at the ready, rushing silently in a painful trot as his feet moved in swift steps to get to her. He grinned wildly, the prospect of seeing the girl up close appealing to his more manly thoughts.

[Visla Eraclaire]

She heard her opponent coming from the other side of the brick. Within her brazen liquor-soaked mind, it was a welcome sound. Under the effects of the potion, the spiteful emotions that fueled her sorcery were sharpened even as all her other senses were dulled. It gave her no additional power, but merely an eagerness to flaunt her abilities. By all accounts she should have had her opponent on the ropes. From what she could hear, he had taken the full brunt of her electrical discharge.

The wisest thing to do would be to continue flinging energy at him as he tried to close the distance, deflecting as necessary with her force shield if he managed to get in on her. This was absolutely not what Visla had in mind. After all his remarks about her appearance, she was eager to show him the vile leathery skin she had formed for herself. Her plainness was a point of pride at this point and catcalls sounded in her ears more sickeningly than insults.

The footsteps were growing ever nearer and she gathered energy to overchannel her magic. It would leave her powerless for a time, but she figured she could take the rest of the day off while they mopped her opponent off the roof. As she heard him just around the corner, she spun around and let loose her mighty salvo.

“Fetishize this, whelp,” she crowed as she came into view, her face a thick mask of almost feral hide and her arms glowing with energy on the brink of eruption.

The full force of Visla’s disdainful arrogance sharpened itself into a lance-like beam that would quickly close the distance between her outstretched hands and the oncoming man. A white hot center pulsed with untold power, sheathed in a baleful crimson, and leaving trails of shimmering arcane light in the air as it traveled. The lance was every bit of magical energy in Visla’s body, focused into a single mighty blow.

As it left her fingers, she felt an exhaustion unlike any other. Her body was fine, vital and capable, but her mind ached at the loss of the power. A terrible withdrawal gripped her from the very instant she let go of the spiteful spear. Even through the haze of intoxication, it was a powerful disincentive to overchannel her spells again, and she reeled backward as if from a staggering recoil.

[Enigmatic Immortal]

Jensen watched as the sorceress turned around the brick house, magical energies swirling her body as the air became heavy once again. The swirling vortex aimed towards his head and he saw her feral mask of hatred peering upon his form with a disdain and arrogance attributed to one who felt in complete control of their situation.

Jensen was already in mid trot, picking up his pace when he saw her as his throwing glaive was tossed before him heralding the knight’s coming as he howled in mirth. He felt every ounce of his blood boil as the laughter echoed deep within his throat and escaped his lips in a joyous praise to the call of battle. Each note pounded his ears, his skin feeling the magical energies pressurize on the vortex before the woman warlock.

His laughter was cut short as the beam on energy came outwards like a mighty lance of legendary proportions. The swirling mass of energy dissolved his throwing glaive with ease, obliterating its existence from the world like an eraser to lead on paper. Jensen’s eyes popped open in terror, a true terror of a painful death he wasn’t looking forward to bearing.

The energy burst forwards like a tidal wave smashing through a dam, eating the air and vaporizing the ozone with a burnt smell filtering into his nostrils. He had scant moments to make up his mind on what to do, a split second to decide if he would live or he would be a stain on the floor. The knight let the instinct to survive take over, trusting his body fully to the whims of his impulses as he jumped forwards on the ground rolling under the worst of the attack. His shoulder exploded in pain, his teeth jamming tight as he let out a frustrated seething growl as burnt flesh filtered his nasal passages. His punch knife fell from his fingertips clattering behind like a discarded piece of trash.

He skidded on the ground, his perfect roll to dodge the attack interrupted when he was hit in the shoulder, crashing upon the concrete rooftop like a bouncing ball, collapsing upon the ground in a heap after several bumps and tumbles. He breathed heavily as he felt the heaving of his breast move gently up and down. The immortal took a quick look to his shoulder and saw that the top of his skin had melted in the blast, only smoking traces remained of his flesh.

But he survived.

Giggling like a school girl he rolled to notice that his foe was also seeming to be taken aback, her face showing utter exhaustion as her form was hunched from launching a devastating attack. When he realized his prey had spent her energies he began to let his giggles grow into a dark chuckle before it picked up speed as he laughed, his feet moving towards her lifting his hands and reaching for her leathery face.

“Show me that face of yours, cutie!” Jensen sang, his voice edging out as the pain crept into his tone. “I wanna see your beautiful face up front and personal.”

[Visla Eraclaire]

Bunnying approved

Drained of her power, Visla’s fury at her opponent was utterly impotent. As he continued to lunge toward her with inconceivable intent, she glanced down at her last potion. She staggered backwards while trying to uncork and drink it, but even in his injured state the man seemed to be overtaking her. Just as she pressed the vial to her lips, he hands grasped at the hardened mass that was her face. He grabbed at the toughened flesh like a mask he was trying to remove as she swallowed the last of the crimson mixture and awaited its hastening effect.

Unable to pry the leathery covering from her face, the lecherous being’s hands reached over her neck. The unarmed, magically exhausted sorceress barely kept herself from vomiting the contents of the phial right back up. The few seconds before she felt the jittery speed of the potion of swiftness were perhaps the longest in her life. Her first instinct was simply to run as she felt the disgusting creature’s hands groping at her, even through the deadened sensation of leather-bound flesh. And yet she stood still, gathering her meager physical strength just as she had done with her magic, into a single strike.

Clinching her ringed right fist, she let fly with a wild punch. She was untrained and weak, but the speed granted to her by the potion made her arm launch forward toward the man’s jaw with reckless abandon. As her knuckles crunched into his face, she felt a sharp pain, even through her thick skin and hardened bones. Magical enhancement was no substitute for knowing how to punch, but the force alone knocked the molesting beast back onto the ground.

As she drew back her hand, it throbbed terribly, but she stepped up to where the man lay on the rooftop and delivered a series of kicks to his stomach and the remnants of his shoulder as she shouted. Her words were imprecise, uncouth, and filled with rage. She stressed each one as she struck another blow with her foot.

“I don’t need your flattery, you sad miserable thing. Even without my magic, I’ll beat you to death right here!”

Visla knew the potion would leave her exhausted after a few minutes, and so she relished every last moment, even as her foot became sore and her boot sullied with blood. When at last her muscles could move her no more, she used the last bit of her haste the hurry over to the roof access and prop herself up on the brick wall.

“If you ever look upon my face,” she said, panting, “it will be the last thing you ever see.”

As every bit of energy, magical, physical, and emotional was drained from her body, only the stoic questioning of her mind remained. Why be so enraged at such a petty fool? The very idea of such baseless, ill-intentioned flattery sickened her. Visla was far from a paragon of honesty, but her austere appearance was a badge of honor. To call it anything else was an affront greater than calling a nymph-like creature an ugly swine. For beneath the beauty's perfect appearance lies a confidence that it is so, and beneath Visla’s intentional plainness there was only insecurity.

More pressing in her mind, though, as her insulted rage subsided, was another question. Wasn’t this all supposed to be a training exercise? If so, she had surely failed. Even as her opponent lay battered on the ground, she was utterly drained as well. If he possessed even an ounce more strength, his insidious thoughts might be put into action. The very idea turned her stomach. It would seem that for all her power, she was no more in control than she ever was. It was not the dark nature of her former infernal dealings that had turned her to rage, but the darkness within her own heart.

[Enigmatic Immortal]

In a flash he was standing, in a blink he was reaching for her face tugging at her leathery skin howling like a jackass. In a split second he was on the ground, blood spurting upwards in a drifting arc from his mouth as he felt a tooth dislodge itself from his lower jaw. The punch was uncalculated, it wasn’t a trained blow that a warrior would have done. It was a hit from someone who was enraged, who was wounded deeply from no mortal weapon but from her actions.

Jensen felt his stomach spike in pain as the now swift sorceress’ boot came down like a stampeding elephant. His shoulder exploded as if the energy beam had hit yet again and the blood from the wound poured down to the ground, a silent yelp of agonized torment leaving his lips as a warm pool of his own crimson life force cradled him. The female warlock moved with impossible speed and her eyes, the glimpses he cold catch of them told him a story.

In every battle Jensen always watched the eyes his foe. An entire life can be looked upon like the pages of a book to one who was trained to read its impossible dialect. The immortal could read every feature like a doctor could look upon a cadaver and point out all the histories of the body in question. It wasn’t a precise science, far from it. Jensen had been known to make a few calculated mistakes, but as he felt the pain rack his body and watched her zoom in and out of sight he focused his aching thoughts upon her.

A generalization came from those hazel orbs, a rigid sharpness of one who was confident in all she had done. This sorceress probably grew up with utter chaos around her and vowed to make the best of a situation. A flash of light, a shining shimmer, her eldritch powers were a part of her as hair would be to a person. Chances were this is the power she used to form and shape her being.

Jensen grunted in pain, her kicks knocking the wind out of his lungs as he wheezed from her assault, taking in large pained breaths as he coughed up blood staining his teeth red. He began to approach the fetal position to block her attacks, but as she kicked he felt his muscles deaden, her heel doing more damage than the force she put behind them. The sorceress impaled his flesh shallowly, tears of torment streaking his face mixing with his blood on the ground.

The black of her hazel eyes had a fracture, a chink in her armor that exposed her weaknesses. Peering into them as she focused kicking his stomach led him into the sanctum of her inner soul. It was here that all the walls she put up were crumbled, where the chaos reigned supreme and she couldn’t make the best of it. Painful past experiences, utter failures that chaffed her heart, insecurities that gnawed at her like a leech, drinking every drop of her blood. An entire world of understanding could be found in this room of her mind’s eye, but he didn’t have long to visit. He glanced at her insecurities, a split second to see what made her heart waver and bring forth all the rage of an exploding volcano.

She had stopped, her breaths ragged and heavy matching the wheezing little breaths of Jensen’s. Both were gasping for the air, the fake breeze of the citadel washing over them as she doubled over, glaring at Jensen. The immortal let his breaths even out, reverting to his training as a warrior of the apocalypse to steady himself. As he did so he just looked into her eyes, seeing her face and leathery skin and matching it with that one fraction of herself he saw within her.

A trace wheezing noise came out of Jensen’s mouth. A pathetic attempt at mirth as he clawed his fingers into the concrete rooftop, pushing soft traces of gravel into his palm and letting it drip from his hand like sand. He felt no impulses from his busted left shoulder, and he realized she had made that limb useless to him now. He took in a deep breath, letting it out as the pain in his stomach roared in rebellion of his actions, demanding he stay down, but he forced his will to negotiate with his body and force it stand.

Slowly one leg spread out, the other drawing in as the knight leaned heavily on his one good arm, resting his knees upon the ground. He glanced to the woman, but she had no energy, physical or magical, to perform any effective defense. Had Jensen been stronger, perhaps he could have taken opportunity, but exhaustion was already making his arms and legs quake as the muscles she kicked seared with pain.

Weakly Jensen was upon one knee, resting his arm on it as he stood with one painful grunt, his body now vertical as he took in a deep breath like one would do when lifting heavy objects. When he exhaled he let out a wheezing chuckle as his lungs regained strength. This chuckle turned into a coughing fit, bending him over as he spat up large amounts of mucus and blood to the floor.

He picked himself up and looked to her, one hand reaching slowly for his throwing glaive as his eyes looked to her with affection.

“I see it now,” he rasped out with a dark tone. “Your no warrior,” he pointed to her with a bloody finger weakly. The energy alone to do that made his head rush with fatigue, blinking it away as he weakly looked to her, letting out a sneering smile. “I know that, because it’s hidden behind your gorgeous eyes, beautiful,” he let out a soft laugh as he prepared to throw the weapon at her. “Your real face of insecurities, your failures, not that ugly mask you wear everyday. The real thing is so beautiful to me!” he laughed now, his infectious maddening laugh that had broken the minds of many opponents before.

The immortal hunched over and looked to her with deadly intent, feeling the laughter bubble up inside his stomach as he called out to her. “I can see your gorgeous body, cutie!” He let out a howl of mirth knowing of her insecurities in his cat calls. He let them out like a waterfall, whistling to her and screaming for her beauty, letting her know how amazing her body was.

Jensen did this, because no blade would be sharper than the one in her own insecurities.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Visla did everything she could not to look at the man as he presumed to pass judgment on her. It was wrong, at least wrong enough that she didn’t accept it. At the same time, his words showed just enough insight that they couldn’t be easily dismissed as well. They hung there in the air, lingering overlong, awaiting a reply that never came.

The breeze, the crowds, the rooftops, and the very light in the sky vanished from around them. A cold stone room and a massive set of doors replaced them. They were the same doors Visla had pushed open so confidently only minutes ago. She turned to them and walked sluggishly as they swung open. A pair of robed monks scampered in, ready to tend to wounds. Visla waived hers off, even as she allowed the sedating influence of her flask to wear off. She clutched her shoulder and kept walking.

She could feel herself returning to normal as she neared the exit. Her skin softened and her hands tingled with the return of magical energies. Before she crossed the threshold, she turned back briefly and looked at the monks tending to her opponent, the man who called himself Jensen. Her fingers twitched with the urge to set his body alight one final time. She clinched her fist and walked back over.

He was still coughing blood as the monks cast their rejuvenating spells, weaving back together his arm from the burnt remnants and sealing the cuts on his face. Visla stared down at him, her hair curling to either side of her unblemished face. She pointed her fingers at him, already glowing with a fiery energy.

“If you truly wished to know me, you wouldn’t pretend like you already do,” she said coldly.

She slipped her hands back in her pockets as if sheathing a weapon and walked slowly away without glancing back. She gripped the keystone in her pocket and spoke the word that would take her away.

“Home.”

As the comfort of her sanctum appeared around her, she threw herself on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Jensen was right about one thing, she was no warrior. She was not a blade that needed sharpening, but a fragile piece of porcelain whose overuse would only lead to chips and blemishes. She sighed and let herself fall into sleep, even as a trickle of blood still flowed from her chest.

[Silence Sei]

You’re both experienced enough that I feel I should tell you the truth. And the truth is that this battle did not impress me at all. You know where to find me for questions and concerns.

Visla
• STORY ~

14/30

Continuity (5/10) ~ There could have been areas other than the citadel that Visla could have well chosen. In fact, I felt there were probably several areas you yourself probably thought of for her ‘training exercise’. The citadel only seemed to bring Visla out of her element, and it felt awkward and strained to me.

Setting (5/10) ~ Nothing really fantastic about the setting or how it was described by either party.

Pacing (4/10) ~ The way you lead us into the fight seemed to unroll a lot slower than your opponent. By your third post, I had grown bored with the fight as a whole.

EI
15/30

Continuity (5/10)

Setting (5/10) ~ See Visla’s comment

Pacing (5/10)
• CHARACTER ~
Visla
19/30

Dialogue (7/10) ~

Action (4/10) ~ The action was okay, but it took forever for anything to really grab my attention.

Persona (8/10) ~

EI
19/30

Dialogue (7/10)
Action (5/10)
Persona (7/10)

WRITING STYLE ~
Visla

18/40

Mechanics (5/10) ~ Couple of places I saw that may have needed a comma or two. Average mistakes, average score.

Technique (5/10) ~ I couldn’t notice any special devices used, per se.

Clarity (5/10) ~ There were times where I was confused about Visla and Jensen’s locations, and as such, had to reread posts to gain my senses.
Wild Card (3/10) ~ I expected this to be a good read and was a bit disappointed, much as it pains me to be mean and say that.


EI

18/40

Mechanics (4/10)

Technique (5/10)

Clarity (4/10)

Wildcard (5/10)


Totals: Visla – 51/100
EI – 52/100

EI gets 2250, and 100 GP

Visla gets 675 exp, and 50 GP

[Taskmienster]

Exp and GP added.