Round 1: BlackAndBlueEyes Vs Knave

[Silence Sei]

You each have two weeks to complete your battle. May the best man win!

[Knave]

((WARNING: Knave's ability to bend the English language to his will is unstable, but by God his typing muscles are strong! Also, very long, and did not edit beyond my word processor. I haven't posted in a few days, so see what happens when I unlock my word-horde.))

Ace Mandelo performed as he fought, and did his best make human hearts pound with excitement. He was the champion atop a mountain of bodies in a stadium of applause. Yet there was no joy in the kill; life was cheap in Radasanth, and all he wanted to give those deaths was meaning; glory to all, glory for him.

Yet here he sat atop a rough, wooden bar stool, his lips dragged down by displeasure…the plan disgusted him. He supported his head with his head in one hand on the cold, black lacquered wood. The yellow brine of liquor sloshed at the rim of the mug beside him in his free hand’s grip, the “crack” of its landing—a swift rejection—the fading echo in the dark corners of the room.

Red luminescence from strobbing mists wavered and dimmed as they floated aimlessly, surprised at the sound. The souls now slaved as indoor lighting still knew him, and fled like comets from his displeasure. They were the defeated, the foolish; they once assumed the citadel’s services were free. They were wrong.

Taking the hodge-podge between pet and protégé, Az-ram brought Ace closer to the center of the Citadel’s secrets than any before. Not out of trust, though. That did not exist here in the dim red den; not among the dozen faceless hoods and their furtive whisperings. Not one monk from the dozen tables faced them, yet Az-ram had brought Ace under the piercing scrutiny of the monk’s peers. Ace tried not to wither under their gaze.

“….aah…alright…” Ace sighed. He settled his head to the counter and pressed his cheek to the cool surface, glaring through the golden ale and glass. If some legends were to believed, he might see the monk’s hideous, true form beneath his burlap robes and cowl. “We have a good relationship, don’t we? Why treat me like one of them?” He cast a glance and lazy finger to the souls above, each a fighter paying for their loss before they returned to life.

The monk sat tall alongside him, the burning bowl of his pipe doing nothing to illuminate the darkness of his hood. Az-ram’s beard, a white serpent from the darkness, furled at the tip and wavered as Az-ram breathed deep. The bowl flared, once, twice; the searing embers of herbs glowing hot, yet unable to scorch the wood of their pit any blacker. Then a withered hand took it away from his lips. The monk raised his head and issued toward the ceiling a gout of smoke; a sinister dragon content to fog the air about him before answering a challenge.

“Relationship?” He chuckled, “You come to me with questions you want me to answer, and you give me no answers of my own. Why…I’m not sure I know you at all.” Three years since they had first met, he was likely half-right, possibly a third. “And it shouldn’t surprise you that as you use of me, I use you; for my fun or for my profit.” Ace winced, remembering the last time there had been fun. Fun atop a meteor, a literal rock falling from the stratosphere…that had been fun for both of them in two very distinct senses.

“You test your tricks,” though the gesture may have lost all meaning, Ace rolled his eyes, “you give me a decent stage for my show, that’s fair and that’s what I’m contracted for.” He thrust a finger to the ceiling, invoking the radiant dead in this purgatory. “More than that, I do a good job, that’s why I deserve better.”

Az-ram regarded the man, his boyish features, his short and red hair, and unimposing height, the straw hat whose brim was tipped at his brow. Az-ram knew Ace to be naïve to short inspection, and too smooth when watched for too long. Now Az-ram judged this to be one of the moments where Ace was being childishly, if not playfully, stupid. “And what right do you think the rat has when he is in the sorcerer’s power?” He used a metaphor that made less of each than what they were. “I treat you well, and give you the finest courses when others would sooner exchange your bullshit for scraps. And who would think that the great “killer of men” would balk at a woman.” A series of ill guffaws followed, and Ace watched with wide eyes.

Their history had taught him the dangers of senility; Az-ram’s playful and malevolent tones giving Ace the scent of danger: an exotic death.

“Maybe…maybe you’re right…” Ace bit his lip and worried it gently, sincere in faking his own agreement. Ace understood that one wrong word might hurl him to some distant mountain range or the domain of an alien star. “And it’s not that he’s a she, chivalry being what it is,” a lie, “is fine and all, she’s a fighter from what you’ve said. The problem is that she isn’t willing…” Finally, he sat up, and taking the mug in his left hand, drank deep, trying to appease all by acting unaware.

“Ah, yes, you do care for your playmates, sometimes I wonder if you’ll even show them your real face.” A rhetorical point, barbed to hook on Ace’s nerves and draw out some hint as to his nature. He looked his friend over and saw not so much as a twitch at his growing suspicions. . If there was one thing Az-ram loved, it was slowly working out a mystery. “Will you take her home? To that little island in Scara Brae, that dirt farm your father lies on, to that ‘good country living’?” Oh! Az-ram knew the little bastard, he knew him enough to know that his foot prints rarely went far from the Dansdel or Citadel—and the closer they got to their end, the more they looked like something else.

At that last barb, Ace chocked on his ale, swinging wide a mug now two thirds empty, bits of froth dribbling down the side. “Haha! I don’t know, is she pretty?” He neglected to even hint at the girl to who most, including her, would think him taken with. She objected to the citadel; she stood before those towering doors daily, calling it a sin as they swung wide and he entered in.

“Not at all!” The octogenarian scoffed, the memory and touch of a woman, regardless of how recent (and it probably was for the blessing of magic*) stood in stark contrast to the sexless, brooding pictures. Dress store mannequins, stuffed with sawdust and freshly stitched, had more sex appeal. “She’s a dark, bitter thing; all fire, no warmth, and plenty of bite; you might like her regardless, she’s bound to put up a good fight.”

“But, Azza...” Likening a man like dirt to a fae child Ace met at the beginning of his journey became a new reason to laugh, the contrast of that tender child with horns and wings huge against this thing beside Ace now. He kept his feet flat on the ground lest they bolt when he was not looking. “It’s not even that she doesn’t want this! It’s that we’re not even going to be alone!”

Between ill friends some tacit agreement had been forged, and to memory, Az-ram could scarcely remember if there had been any argument at all. He ordered another drink with a wave and bark to the golem that stood in formal ware, moustache chiseled to perfection, hateful intelligence in the blue pits of its eyes as it watched its patrons. Ace watched alcohol run from its fingertips into his mug, and knew there was little separating them.

“Once you enter the stage, whether you fight alone or together is up to you.” Az-ram said on a done deal.

“So what did she do to deserve this?” Ace took another deep swig, genuinely glad to see the amiable atmosphere returning from what might have led to another inconceivably perilous situation.

“She fucked around once too often and too hard…heh, and she thought she could just walk away. Yet here we stand, years later.” Az-ram nodded to Ace, who, showing no sign, tried not to choke a second time.


!m! @O@ !m!

This was the stage, Radasanth undone!

The gloaming sunset painted the day scarlet and crimson and orange as it died. Overcast skies, the horizon a pallor for that solar funeral, and the stars at the other end of the world, a coming procession.
The haze hung heavy and low in the streets. It slicked every surface, to leave them wet and chilled. From the rooftops, some more than ten stories high, the very layout of Radasanth could be revealed, and every street and dip from Corone’s capital easily learned. A sweeping vista, darkening now, opened unto the world and its ends, above, at the mountain tops, and below, the time battered walls that surrounded the city, able to withstand fire and siege under battle in their ancient strength.

The city streets spread the from the head, a series of governmental palaces equipped with palisades, relics of a an era when kings and serfdom ruled, the flags of viscounts and those who held nobility by fortune of their offices hung family sigils (the boar, the entwined serpents, the face of Beggora in his holy fury**).
Among those buildings, low to the ground, was the circular, stone heart of Radasanth, the Citadel. Down, down, perilously down the source of all its power throbbed. The earth there often beating beneath passersby’s feet.

The houses of government transitioned in a single street to the bodies of commerce and trade, the district of businesses opening four times from the city’s center into colorful buildings, the days of tents outdoors a relic of the past and a boon to the poor as great black towers rose, and within them lots could be bought to afford no class to the parlor, but to afford him a roof proper, and from those towers great bridges met across and at the center overhead. In each district, were the guild’s shops, who by classifying above the layman’s work a trainee who had paid his dues who could no better and little worse.

In between the shopping centers, outwards from the center, and down the sloping streets, came the homes and residences of last the compartmented, common people, and first the fenced and wealthy elite. The rich’s wall were white, and their homes furnished with care, the comparison a dark one of beggared man and poorer woman tucked so tightly against the multitude in their beds that they struggled and gasped for air. But the time for politics was done, even in the court house, especially in the slum, because in the streets and buildings of people there could not be found one.

This city in the morning had been packed, thick with the going on of life, and now it was empty, many a long and winding road going on until the cities wall’s, now gated, brought every path to a brick wall’s close. Night was coming, and in his breast he brought a bitter and snowless eve.


!m!@O@!m!

“If I had to say one thing about those monk’s, Percy, I’d say ‘they clean up good.’” Two of the hunting party, out for a little girl, stepped through the streets. A rough pair, bundled against the weather tramped through the empty streets, enjoying the feeling of a world ended and empty.

Shivering, they had grinned with impish glee they stood stared through window at diamond necklaces, ruby rings, and gold in all its glory raised on felt to be displayed. They helped themselves, they smashed into the display window and kicked their way out through the front door of a jeweler’s shop with their pockets stuffed. The wreckage of a ransacked building was still behind them though they never looked back, bits of glass crunching beneath their feet into the cobblestones.

This wasn’t really theft of course, any battle’s pickings were free game, or the monk’s didn’t really care, but most took that to mean the same thing. “Not sure what they did with all the people, but this place is spotless of them!” Erick did not like people, truth be told, the big city of Radasanth possessed an odd way of bringing the misanthrope out of everyone.

“Hah, don’t be dense; they can’t shut down the city for a boring game of chase like this.” The taller, fatter of the two said, his pony tail and glasses equally greasy, his smile genuine and clear from one friend to another. “They probably just conjured it all up and stuffed tidbits of illusion into our heads.”

“Just the same, they might have given us help, a dog or two, or something we could sick on her trail.” Part-time brigands, full time bodies for hire, both men were accustomed to waiting, sometime for days in mud or forests or alleyways, but to hunt and chase was another matter. And more than that, though the wind had not dared to blow, the force of winter shook them to their bones. “Look at my hands; I can hardly hold my sword now.” Complaining really did make him feel better, even as he thrust fat fingers into the waist of his pants for warmth.

“That’s why people wear gloves, and don’t tell me those pudgy little things could handle a sword before!” There were three words in that sentence that made Erick’s unshaven chin tuck into the collar of his shirt, and his glare pierce the man who had suddenly become too familiar after years of working together. Then he was clapped on the shoulders once too hard, and the guffawing only increased as Percy had his fun.

Erick turned at swung out a sensationless fist to stroke the air as Percy hopped back, and, just like when they had been boys, a standoff of raised fists between the playfully cruel versus playfully vengeful ensued. Neither reached for their sword until the unseen voice asked the question above and behind Erick:

“Oy! Old men, have you found a trace of our lady fortune?”

The two whirled their eyes up to the black rooftops, the closeness of that amiable voice leaving no room for ambiguity of direction. They saw him in the dwindling light, his knees raised to his chest, his heels braced against the gutter, and a massive spear with a great bronze flame for a head rested on his shoulders. He was pale, but he was little more than a shadow against the august sky. Just the same, to meet those eyes under the brim of his hat was to feel small in a widening world.

But what man worth his salt shows fear or awe at a glance!

“Nope, can’t say that we have, and I take it that since you’re asking you ain’t seen nothing neither.” Percy said giving a smirk and taking an open stance, his arms not far from the hilts of his sword or dagger, each tucked into the belt of his gray, rough winter trouser. “This being a competition, however, we’d be glad to share in the spoils of a work well done.”

“And what’s in it for me?” The man asked from two stories up, a yawn visibly issuing from his mouth in a white cloud. “You guys don’t exactly look like professionals, more like people taking up a hobby of the old pitch, stab, and toss.”

“Well, if that’s the way you feel, then we’ll have to-“

“Let me take a look at you.” The man cut him off, standing abruptly to throw himself of the roof. He jumped into the air, but rather an fall freely, the spear, a collection of prongs and a blade, hooked into the thick iron, punched it through with a discordant clang, and halted his descent to a more a gentle slide as he loosed his grip on the wooden shaft.

The new comer, his face unseen as his back turned, lifted and pulled the massive spear from its perch. And when he turned they knew him. Their eyes were widening and their expressions mirror opposites between them, Percy one of failing nerve, and Erick gritting his teeth and restraining himself.

“K, so let’s see. A tall man with two weapons and a shorty with one.” They watched Ace grin at them, some animal challenge in the air as much as in the blood, it was amazing how a look, no matter how pleasant a person could be, made the muscles tense and the heart begin to race. He never unsheathed the knife at his side, never leveled the spear, but he invaded their party and sized them up. “So what makes you special?”

“A couple hands with a blade, Sir, and few years using them, same as yourself,” Percy said, the seven foot spear, better called a halberd by the look of it, to be too large to be thrown, it exceeded Ace’s height by more than foot. “Granted you seem to have set aside that short-sword for a longer one on a fat stick, and bought the slaver’s chains to bind up that arm, a curious choice for a chatty fool.”

“Oh this?” Ace chuckled raising the back of his left fist to show the huge, rusty links on his lengthy, green sleeve and hand. They clattered and grated with every motion, “ These are just something to pass the time, as far as being the slaver’s chains, that might be true, but I took them off a filthy demon’s corpse…in lieu of your mere and grand mere of course.” Ace was closing the distance, ten feet and walking, “still stinks of all kinds of evils too, rots and the nether curses and other things; you’d know all about that.”

The larger of the two, unfazed by a hard life, laid a hand on his friends shoulder, it was heavy and reassuring, and its grip made it clear that while Erick might grind his teeth and look through the wisps of his remaining hair, he was not to take this dangerous lead. They knew him now, and while he was not Letho Ravenhart and could never fight as Letho Ravenhart he was Ace Mandelo, and would fight as such: with more power than a runt like him should have. His arrival to the citadel had upset gambling parlors nationwide.

“So I take it this has gone from a team effort to a competition?” No more smarm, Percy’s hand was on his blade, the situation set to explode. “This doesn’t have to be bad business and there doesn’t have to be bad blood, Ace.”

“What’s so bad about anything here,” Ace looked incredulous, mouth agape and eyes laughing, “nothing for me at least! I mean, look at like this, there is a reason you know who I am, and a reason I think of you as flies on a bad meal. I’m entitled to swat you for being where you don’t belong.”

“He’s a clown, why are we negotiating with a clown!” There are very few men who can his rage that it changes the very font of their speech to a rabid fury, Erick Salvatootchie, by birth, by life, by name, was one of those people. He wrenched his shoulder from Percivelion hand, and seizing in his right hand the sword on his left hip leapt to charge. He was mid stride, and running, before he was stopped. The blow was faster than anything had a right to be, a blur as Ace swung down his spear. The shaft of Ace’s spear struck flat the bulging rotundity of Erick’s forehead.

“Aah!” Erick fell to the way side, waylaid a bout of dizziness and pain, rolling and clutching at the dent in his skull and panicking at blood that overflowed his fingers, the chill and his own life blood totally unknown to him in his pain. His breathing came in gasps; his legs kicked the earth without finding purchase.

A sigh, Percivelion looked at his white breath, and then his fallen and very much alive comrade. He was cold blooded; no passion would make him act, and the suffering of others had always been trivial, but he doubted he could flee. He looked on as Ace poked at his friend with his foot, and Percivelion only felt his pulse slow, his blood chill, and his grip on his sword tremble. He unsheathed his sword, it was cheap, unnamed, murky thing, but it would do. “If that’s how this is going to be, you who live here, and we who only come for a bit, why don’t you teach me something.”

“Alright, one second!” Ace gave Erick a boot to the arse, and turned back to Pery…before turning quickly to deliver another kick and elicit loader shouts and curses before devoting to Percivelion his time. What fun! “First thing to remember: you gotta have heart and you gotta smile.”

((It was supposed to be longer. I am capable of mercy. Go take a long shower and grab something to eat.))

*After all, the old Fallien proverb goes that, “A man who comes into power late in life immediately returns to his youth, over eager and twice as hard to even the most physical compromise. And woe be ye who stand in his way.”
** http://files.sharenator.com/rage_face_Finite_Picdump_1-s442x418-175726-535.jpg

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I'm tired.

That was the only thought that went through my head as my muscles strained to keep my opponent aloft. Not fear, fury, confusion, or any of the other feelings one normally suffers after they've been attacked for the fourth time in several hours: just exhaustion.

...so very, very tired...

My assailant's twitching, gurgling corpse dangled at the edge of my steel cable, fashioned as a noose and hung over one of the support beams of the quiet tavern we were in. I stood still, eyes closed and struggling against the weight of the man as he clutched at the wire, desperately gasping for the breath I was denying him. A faint smell of fresh urine filled the air. I could feel the man's eyes on me, pleading with me to spare his life. I would not. I wanted to look him in the eyes; let him see the cold emptiness inside me as I killed him, as I was accustomed to doing during a previous life.

I could not.

The minutes dragged by like hours, and I still stood there, clinging to the wire, even long after his struggling had quit and he suddenly seemed heavier. Eventually, I willed my wire to let him go. The heavy thud of his lifeless body echoed throughout the empty tavern. The man's mail clinked as it resettled itself on his back and on the dirty, sticky wooden floor. I couldn't bear to look at my attacker as I stood there, silent as the rest of the great city of Radasanth had mysteriously fallen.

It had been several years since I had taken my last life; since I had hung up my assassin's daggers and retired to an existence behind the counter of a moderately successful bookshop. But it seems that the cliche is true, and that the past has its way of coming back to haunt you.

I racked my brain, trying desperately to get a hold of myself and figure out my situation. I remembered closing up shop and going to bed the night before. I then remembered hearing a sound, and then... Nothing. Until, that is, I had awaken, face down on the cobblestone street in front of my bookstore on Janus Street, the front door ajar. The air in the city was cold. Usually a busy time of the day, there was not a sound, nor a soul within several blocks of the great city. I had found everything in my store and upstairs apartment as I had left it; save for a visitor lurking behind the New Releases shelf. I crushed his windpipe and pushed his nose into his brain with a hardcover copy of Roderick Windham's Myths of the Thayne, Vol. VI. I had been attacked three more times since then.

And I couldn't figure out for the life of me why. My past profession had left me with no shortage of enemies; but none of them had the power to quiet and empty an entire district of the great city of Radasanth. What had I done? Who wanted me dead so bad? Why, why, WHY?

My leather shoes treaded softly on the wooden floor as I absentmindedly made my way behind the old wooden bar. The steel cable trailed behind me, making a dull scraping sound as I moved. Whereas I had given my fallen assailant a wide berth, it draped itself right over his foul-smelling corpse. Along the glass shelves that lined the wall sat a decent collection of liquor, spirits, and mixers. I grabbed the closest bottle of scotch and a shot glass from underneath the scratched and dented wooden slab that served as the bar itself.

Turning upright one of the chairs that had been upended during our short scuffle, I sat myself and poured a shot of the amber liquid. I quickly downed that, then began to pull straight from the bottle. The scotch began to warm me, as all of my muscles screamed out in dull pain from today's events. A small cut I had suffered on my left hand had finally stopped bleeding. I could still feel the punch that I took to the face. A quick check of the mirror behind the bar confirmed that it was starting to turn into an impressive black eye. I folded my arms in front of me on the table, and buried my head in them.

And for the first time in years, I cried.

[Knave]

((Feelings, he seeks to slay my monster with feelings! Feelings of an almost human nature! This isn't my first battle, such things I have seen before! And now at the pen-ultimate height of my power, I shall hurl at you another wall!

Witness now, today, the mistakes you have sown reaped, be prepared to be as your character, unable to do naught but weep and moan. These are the prices you have bought on credit, and just as you have said it, that Knave is nothing to fear, you shall be shown that to be greatest gaff of your career!

Okay, none of that is even remotely true or likely, but Pink Floyd gets in your head and summons up horrible things. XD

In all seriousness, posts will likely get shorter as the characters get together, also, the story Al-Azeef is totally pertinent...and sorry if he seems like Ming the Merciless.))

The baker’s hut, the barber’s place, the cobbler’s, and the dress maker’s dens and the multitude ran down on either side of the street, each a collection of frost-touched windowpanes, stone and wood, and a plaque displaying in grandiose fonts epithets as to their owner’s profession and advertisements beyond any mortal man’s due: these were the only onlooker, and from all sides they watched a game of life.

A chaos of bronze clanged deeply as it batted aside a long sword, leaving the air reverberant with the joy of battle. Though the spear was huge, in Ace’s left hand it was more than wieldy, and with one hand on the middle of its shaft he retreated and bated the large man to follow him down Radasanth’s commercial streets. He was grinning, skipping backwards, running to the side, always one step ahead of Percivelion.

They kicked up dust; they broke the wind against their bodies; Percy bashed away at the only thing he could strike. He lunged forward, slamming his sword against Ace’s spear only to see his own sword deflected, and feel his own hand, through glove and flesh, shaken to the bone. Once, twice, three times this repeated until Percy’s grip ached, and on the third Mauvasia struck back so hard that Percy’s nameless sword nearly flew to the left through the air, nearly taking Percy’s arm and the rest of his body with it. He recovered himself, sweat rolling down his neck into his jacket.

‘Is this what Artemis Eburi fought? Is this the thing that shook Drago?’** Percy had watched these games for years, felt their intensity though the Citadel’s viewing globes in their many sitting rooms, and sat in the stands around the arena, he had seen Ace fight, but never like this, never so close, and never with this agility. The fights had always been hard to follow, but who would guess that to be pressed in one like this that even a seasoned criminal might get lost. ‘The longer this goes, the less time I have…’

Percivelion, issuing hard breaths that hung white in the air, jumped forward at a lean, and thrust out his murky blade to lunge. More and more Ace seemed to be on the edge of his sword, on the brink of his reach, but again his sword came imperceptibly short of nicking Ace’s neck. With another step and drive of his whole body forward Percy raised a conservative stab into a whole sale death blow.

He cut through the air before his blade sang a harsh tune as it caught in the up-thrust prongs of the monster’s spear, Mauvasia. “So how about your second lesson, since your first is a failure?” Ace twisted his pale hands on the spears shaft, and with a click Percivelion’s long-sword was trapped, it threatened to be torn from his hands under Mauvasia’s weight. Through the junction of their entangled weapons their strength shook, wavered, and clattered steel and bronze together. “Be open to change!” Sliding one foot out, and violently pushing Mauvasia to the ground, he threw down Percy’s guard, and swung it up so quickly that even as half of Percy’s world went black he suspected nothing as he stumbled backward to some idea of safety.

Only the flow of blood on his right cheek, the steady trailing of it down his chin, made him raise a black-gloved hand to his face, and his remaining eye to water as he screamed. He staggered, without turning his back he fled. “You’re a devil if ever there was one!” He screamed, his voice shaken by how easily a man not two thirds his age was making him a fool, “they sell you as cute, and sell your baby face as a child, but a mother ill needs such scum as you!” He could feel the cut to the bone, a pulsing agony that crept from one half of his face to another beneath his skin. There was nothing left for him if he were blinded and blinded twice by pain, but if he could talk…if he could gain a moment to talk he could buy his time with words...

Ace settled Mauvasia on his shoulders, and hung his arms as though poorly crucified, easily willing to set aside time for compliments as much as killing, “Ah! There it is!” he struck up a finger—bloody fucking eureka*—and jabbed it at a blind, bleeding man. “It’s not a feeling in itself, buy you’ve got to have feeling when you say something!” Did this man—this beast—have feelings, a slight inkling of compassion? “But in all honesty, my mother was a saint’s saint, so to find me here with the likes of you would be a bigger shame than to have had me at all,” bastard energies seemed to fuel him, even though he allowed this moment of rest he paced to the right, looking wistful while looking away, “but I think I’ve done her proud by being the best of the garbage!”

In a world half dark, Ace vanished from one side of the street all together. Percy whirled to the right, panic seizing his heart and limbs, waving his sword wildly to defend against a monster, a monster…who was smiling with him and had hardly moved. Anger, passionate enmity creased every line on Percivelion’s face, the bridge of his nose the center of a violent darkness. “Do you fucking get off on this? Just cutting a man enough to watch him squirm?” He had never been this angry, years of cold blood being flushed from his veins to leave his face burning even as half of it ran crimson. “Is that, ah!—,“ he gasped for shortening breaths, ready to fight because he knew he could not now flee, “oh I knew coming here was a terrible idea—a safe haven for things like you: that’s what this place is, isn’t it?” The pain was dulling, and…Percivelion did not care.

Pity? Yes, pity softened Ace’s expression. “I’m sorry.” He said it plainly, and shrugged, throwing up his free hand to stop a man he could see was ready to rush him. “I’ve been hard on you, and I am sorry,” all traces of the game he played seemed to vanish, his brow furrowed as tried to make one man understand another, “but you can’t expect to enter the arena here, where people come ready to die, and expect to leave unharmed” to make a man understand his fate.

“I’m not your enemy!” Percy saliva painted his words through the chill air; he could not be louder, and for miles around the city echoed with his inconceivable rage. All the cold in the world could not touch him for all the rage that made the veins of temples and neck throb.

Ace nodded, wincing at the power of the man’s voice as he gave voice to frustration and pain, but his answer did nothing to help. He said it simply, he said it like life was cheap, he said it as though a land lord were evicting a squatter, and he said it like he had the goddamn right to. “…but that doesn’t mean I don’t object to you being here.” And, as an afterthought, “And I suppose now is as good a time as any for you to take your leave.” Popping Mauvasia from his shoulder, he set both hands to his spear, the links of steel caught in his grip.

Wordless, a guttural scream, Percy ran forward, grabbing the dagger from his hip and ripping it free that he might fight with all he had. He ran only to be stopped shot through and stopped violently.

With a single explosion air and saliva as his breath was punched from him and Mauvasia’s long blade punched through his chest and out his back. Ace had never moved anything, but his left hand and let the spear ride the rails of his rusty chain to a new and unexpected speed.

Percivelion felt at the shaft, felt the ice in his lungs and his heart beat vibrating in the metal. With his eyes he traced the spear back to the hands of his killer, and he followed the arms up to meet Ace’s eyes.

“You happy? You had fun?” If he could not make his anger a physical thing, then he could at least be bitter about it. He glared into Ace’s eyes as his own life spread as a dark stain from the darkness of his jacket into dark beads along the spears. Ace’s knuckles were white as they were bathed in blood.

Ace’s smile died, something else there that could care less about one man’s loss of life in a world of decadent violence. “One last lesson,” he whispered so that none of the spells that might transmit his voice could catch his words, “when you’re a pawn for someone else’s amusement, there’s no such thing as fun, just work, suffering, and slavery; stick to killing and robbing in the forest if you can’t handle this city.” With a heave he levered the man the man down, and pulled his blade free of the wound that he bleed faster.

Setting down his spear, Ace took a knee beside a still, but not quite dead body. “Aaah…” Rubbing his hands together and breathing a heat on them he had not been certain he had, Ace took hold of the stranger’s left hand, and stripped it of its glove. Ace took the man’s dagger, he took the man’s sword, and, with neither a bow or thanks, gave the man the mercy of dying alone. He hoped they would never meet again.

This wasn’t about good or evil, fun or profit, this was about adding tallies to a name if he could not have anything of worth. Eventually, the name would pay for itself a thousand times over…for someone more dear and beloved and hated than he could ever properly say.


!m! @O@ !m!






The descent into the reserved viewing room was akin to a slow bar crawl into the night, the halls of the citadel packed with people, packed to the brim, as it always ways, narrowed and emptied overtime, and the descent into the hollowed soil of Radasanth a narcotic spiral that made of time an inconsistent and frivolous thing. The torches vanished, the depth too great for any flame to bear, and so will o’whisp fires surged immobile in the air. The path wound, the air was warm, wet and heavy with the moisture of a world alive. A world whose secrets had been deeply penetrated.

This was the way of the Ai’bron monk’s, and having made it so far to sit in the lap of a fine luxury, Al-Azeef Orin El-Alhazred*** was pleased.

The nation of Fallien had made him swarthy, given him the substance to resist the sun, but the size of him, the sheer girth of his arms and torso, the pillars that were his legs, and the black and oiled magnificence of his beard were the product of years upon years of strain, yet now, he sat in the plush black leather of his chair, elbow rested upon its arm, and his head in his hand. He had never looked so contented as when, through a forty feet by forty feet conjuration of events elsewhere, he watched a woman weep.

“I trust you like what you see?” The voice of a man beside him said, the monk appearing from the darkness abruptly with neither the door in this dark room opening or the sound footsteps. Az-ram had done this many times, but never seen a man stay so still and contented as this upon his arrival. Orin had only eyes and ears for the weeping of a lost child.


“Sweetest ambrosia; gods can drink nothing finer than what I drink in now…” The last word hung on Al-Azeef’s lips, his eyes narrowing and his smile growing cruel with monolithic, grinding teeth. He listened to her distress, and found that they show an eerie and fitting similarity with his own all those years ago. “There is nothing more fitting than to see justice. I’ve stood at my windows and searched the distance for it…and felt its absence more sharply than my own hunger or thirst. She killed another, but she spilled my blood, and this all the difference…”

*Say what you like: Ace is a ridiculous bastard. (http://popartmachine.com/artwork/POP+ART+2810944/0/Pop-Art-Photo-Object-2810944-painting-artwork-print.jpg)

** “More dead bodies soon to come!”***

***A Plies reference, one that is boastful and arrogant, and a conceited declaration of victory before I even begin my second and first attack.

****This is an allusion for those of you who made it to bottom of the page without noticing, it’s one of those things lit nerds get up to when they want to start a scavenger hunt.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

I sat in quiet contemplation for the better part of an hour and a half of a bottle, I would guess. The few tears I shed caused my day-old makeup to run. I wiped it off with the sleeve of my black cotton blouse top as I took another pull of scotch.

This wasn't like me at all. I've been in more harrowing situations than this. I spent an untold amount of time in Knife's Edge during the civil war in Salvar, slinking in the shadows and offering a dagger between the ribs of anyone who was judged as "needed to die"! I've helped guard merchant caravans caravans from the scumbags that lurk in Underwood! Small-time lords, mid-tier magicians, and several criminals with aspirations of climbing the ladders of one of the many disreputable organizations that have taken root in Corone have fallen to my daggers, fists, and wire. So why should a bunch of random attacks from cheap hoods in a downtown Radasanth that has been mysteriously emptied out scare me?

Godsdammit, I'm one of the fabulous Freebirds! Sixth generation assassin born and raised! I mean, sure, I was kicked out of the family; and yeah, I retired from killing people for a few gold coins here and there. But this was in my blood.

I decided that I wasn't going to take shit from anyone today, as a couple of unlucky souls already found out. I had to find out who was at the bottom of this. I've made so many enemies over the past decade and a half, it was kind of hard to keep track of them all.

I stood up, the scraping of the wooden chair against the floorboards echoing throughout the empty tavern. I did a quick check of my inventory--my two daggers tightly strapped around my waist, a quick rap of my knuckles on my stomach let me know my corset was there. I recalled the length of steel wire back around my upper arm, under the sleeve of my blouse and hidden from view. I snatched up the clear glass bottle nearly empty of the amber alcohol and walked over to the door of the tavern, paying no mind to the thug that I hung from the rafters not a half an hour ago.

Throwing open the wooden door, the burst of sunlight pouring over the tops of the empty buildings in Radasanth made me squint. The air was crisp and cold, like a late autumn afternoon. The only sounds in the city were my breathing, the dull scraping of leather shoes on cobblestone streets, and a light breeze rustling through plants that decorated windowsills and private gardens. Normally I cherished being alone, but I found then and there that it was rather unsettling. An entire city district, devoid of any living being save for ones who apparently wanted me dead. And that was fine with me. Their funeral, trying to take me down.

I wasn't sure if it was the reminder of my pedigree or the scotch, but I started walking east along Nichols Street with new-found determination. In spite of my buzz, I tried to tune my senses as much as I could to the approach of any other adversaries. Right on Mordrick, right again on Smithton, straight through the main highway, and left on Underhill. I continued wandering around the barren streets of Radasanth, with no sign of any pursuers. Either their searching was as random and hopeless as mine, or they were better at this than I gave them credit for.

Then, I had an idea. Not a good one; actually, it was probably one of the worst I've had in a long time. But it was almost guaranteed to make their job and mine a hell of a lot easier.

I forced my way through a door of an empty apartment building, pushing myself as I climbed up the stone stairwell to the roof of the building. From up there, I could see a good portion of the city. Dirty urban sprawl laid out before me, and off in the distance were the nicer, richer parts of town.

I downed the remainder of the scotch for good luck. Perched on the edge of the faded grey stone building, I cupped my hands around my mouth and screamed at the top of my lungs. "I know you fuckers are out there! Well, here I am! Come and get me!"

The words echoed through the empty streets of the city of Radasanth as I sat down on the solid rock to take a quick rest. My heartbeat quickened as I prayed that this folly would end soon.

[Knave]

(Chopped this out of my soul, got class and work in swift succession, will edit later. I do not condone reading unpolished or unsightly prose, its bad for the health.)

Ace preferred naked ape chest beating.

This was dull, stupid, wasteful, and no amount of spit could dislodge the taste of blood from his mouth. Ace sat atop the facedown body of an older man, having picked from him his heavy coat and set it on his shoulders and added the man’ Boredom was responsible for this change.

Only boredom could explain why a man normally content with a victory would now scavenge from the bodies everything he could lay hands on. The spear was held loosely, its shaft across his leg and its blade against the gravel. Naked steel blades protruded from Ace’s belt, two short knives staining his pant’s leg and a rapier devoid of its scabbard sawed into the downed body as Ace made himself comfortable.

Ace raised his head toward heaven, raw exasperation—“Ah!”—escaping him violently as he raised his fist and spear to stretch and beat the air. “Okay!” With that he stood, looking left and right for something to spend his energy on. Logo-fabrum street proved the frustration of his resolve, and glared through over the white down of his coat at the hoary fog that hid from him everything at twenty yards.

On either side, were stores for food and stores for books and taverns, and above, the bourgeois apartments’ stone balconies hung, and not a body alive that he could draw into the this charade. He glared at the mist, but the fog rolled on, and he doubted that it had any secrets he could drag to light.
Turning, his annoyance showed in a severe expression, his lips drawn tight, and his eyes brows staring dim and low. “Okay…nothing left to do but the extreme.” Impatience was getting the better of him, whispering things that only hindsight might reveal to be bad ideas. Ace knew enough about the town to know that a block over was tavern whose alcohol was pure.

He clasped his fingers, bones cracking, the shadows of a wicked plan flickering in his eyes. “If She isn’t going to come out, and they won’t make it easy for me to find them, I can at least resurrect an old friend.” He stepped lightly, near skipping at the thought of taking her down the street! Feeding her all manner of things! Introducing her to all his friends here, and sharing with them the merry delight of a warm personality. Gods, he missed fire.

Just thinking of her dance made his grin something primal: huge beaming eyes, teeth bared in the fashion of a raging ape. He bolted. Sprinting, skipping, his feet light on the ground and his blood finally moving toward something he wanted. He was a clatter of jostling weapons; his spear thrust through empty air. Ace Mandelo had thought about burning Radasanth down before.

But! There! On the wind, a voice rang through the air! It belted Ace from frenzy to whirling at an intersection and listen to heavenly words as they called to him. ‘What hunter announced themself’? Oh, no one else would call danger so beautifully!’ There was no question that the quarry was cornered, and it was all Ace could do not to pump his fists, chop and pop his feet from the ground in giddy joy.

“Just a minute! Be with you in just one minute!” Ace called back. Everything had to be perfect. Turning, he approached a shop front, nearly pressing his face into it before finding it too frosted, only the shadow of a reflection peering back at him with narrow, approving eyes. He polished it with a sleeve, ran his hands through his hair. He checked his teeth, attempted to discern the aroma of his breath. He found everything in line, and, like a vulture, preened twisting left and right and placing his knives in their proper order though he could do nothing about the stains.

There was one last thing to do as his heart pounded and wanted to run toward the object of his desire. He gave his grinning face one last look in the mirror, and slapped himself. It was hard, it stung, it watered his eyes; it killed that ridiculous smile. “Yep, that is not something anyone needs to see up close.” He looked at himself with reserve. He had gotten carried away before. “Gonna enjoy this one.” He chuckled, turning toward the siren call; its magic echoed through the city’s hollow streets. Turning, he stepped through the mists.

“You called, Babe!” His word’s preceded him, and when he saw her atop the roof, ready and waiting, he threw his arms wide. “And I am here! Now come down so I can see you properly.” His heart churned blood through his body, it was a struggle to stand still, and his voice trembled as his mouth ran. “A-and…let’s start with introductions, I’m Ace, and I’m the fucker; barring misfortune for us both or failure on my part, it might just be me tonight.” Ace doubted that he was the only one left, but in diminishing the competition he could be here first.

All in the name of defending the kill.

[BlackAndBlueEyes]

"You want me to come down there," I shouted back at the man in the street, "just to make things easier for you? Is that it? Do I look like an idiot to you?" I crossed my arms defiantly as I leered over the top of the tenement. From the rooftop and through the scotch-induced blur clouding my vision, I couldn't make out much of the man. Just a tall smudge of darker cloth against a backdrop of dull grey and brown cobblestones and buildings constructed of wood and rock. I could catch the glinting of sunlight off of several--no, numerous swords that dangled like metal coattails off of the back of his belt. I ventured a guess that moving around was quite uncomfortable for him. A lesser man or woman would have probably cracked wise about this joker having a small penis and trying to overcompensate for it.

The two of us stood in silence for a second as a light, crisp breeze blew through the barren city streets. Garbage in the alleyways nearby rustled as I contemplated my next move. This new ruffian had to have been at least a good thirty or forty feet away--too far to put my wire to any good use. I also could've thrown my daggers at him, but any normal person would have time to dodge--not to mention by the time I got down there, he'd probably have them in hand and would no doubt lunge at me... If it came down to it, I guess I could start grabbing some of the clutter lying around on the roof and tossing it at him like an old housewife too lazy to climb downstairs and properly thrash the young boys raising hell in the streets below her window.

...oh, who was I kidding. There was only one way to take care of this.

I opened my mouth to say "don't go anywhere", but shut it when I realized how silly that would've sounded. "Oh, yes, I know you're here to kill me! Don't go away now, I'll be right down! Want me to put some pencil marks on my skin to show you where I can be best cleaved or stabbed?"

"Maybe I am an idiot," I mumbled to myself as I threw open the metal door to the stairwell and climbed down two at a time, nearly stumbling on the last step of the second floor. I slowed my pace as I moved silently through the common room, rubbing my eyes to try and scatter some of the haze. I rested my bandaged hand on the handle of the door and took a deep breath. A silent prayer passed my lips before I quickly opened the door and stepped outside.

The man before me was tall. He had neatly-combed red hair--oh hell, I don't have the patience for this. Without warning, I reached behind me for the hilts of my twin damascus daggers. The two ends of my quarter-inch steel cable uncoiled itself from around my biceps and snaked down my arms as I dragged the daggers out of their sheathes and raised them into the air. A split-second before I flung them forward, I guided the wires around the handles; commanded them to wrap themselves tightly around the hilts just before they flew through the air. The wire uncoiled itself from around my arms and allowed the twin damascus beauties to fly through the air unhindered: One well over the right shoulder of this new assailant, the other at a good clip to his left.

I paused briefly until I saw that the knives overshot their mark admirably. Quickly shutting my eyes hard, I forced my latent telekinetic energy through the wires and forced them to change the daggers' trajectory. They both reoriented themselves mid-air, and made a bee-line straight towards the back and kidneys of the one asshole who dared answer my rooftop call.

[Knave]

“I’m sorry, but right or wrong, this is happening.” Ace called from the streets mists, shrugging the black coat from his shoulders as the only thing he considered needless. “ You might as well put a smile on it.” Those two sentences mad up the entire story of his life, but rather than admit it, Ace folded his arms and planted his feet as though he had all the conviction in the world. He certainly felt like he had all its weapons though, near all varieties too! One huge weapon means nothing in the face of a person’s need for variety.

Not that he would need it, this pale spindle of woman hardly looked like she could stand as she stared down coldly at him. “The rules say you won’t get out of here alive, and as bad as it is, I’m not in the business of mercy.” In spite of having the spear, Mauvasia was difficult to wield by the shape and weight of it alone, Ace shook his head as he gauged the distance. ‘Not a chance.’ Though one of his knives might clear the distance, it would miss by all, stolen by the wind to leave him one blade shorter.

”The sooner you get down here the sooner we can all go home, whatever happens after can’t be that bad.” He laughed, gazing at the two story building. He noted its many frosted, dark windows, and lone door almost hanging from its hinge. “And its not like your equipped for a siege either.” And to his reply, from the distance, he heard nothing, but saw the tremble of muttering lips, and watched that black harpy on the buildings horizon vanish back over the roofs edge.

“Well, at least she cooperating.” He sighed, proceeding with each step of his stride met by the ‘plink, plink’ of his blades against one another. He had his head high, courageous daring reading across his face as he went forward. He watched the shadows through the windows, listened for any sound at the door. The apartment’s stoop gained steps the nearer he came, the silence deafening, and every noise made louder with anticipation. His boots clicked against the stones he walked, returning as harsh thunder instants later. He did not know his own emotions then, he wanted the contest started, he wanted it to last, he wanted it over...and he was almost willing to run straight at the darkness that filled the building and...the ruined door swung open.

It seemed like Az-ram was right, but, “Perhaps if I was drunk.” Ace mused quietly. The woman looked at him in the most severe fashion, her features little better than skin stretched from the beak of her nose to her hairline, that it itself serviceabely tied so tightly that it completed her image as a sexless corpse. “Probably.” But now was not the time for such things.

The campion raised his hand wave, to beckon as he was about to call, black gloves ending at the bare skin of short green sleeves, only to be interrupted by her burst of motion, drawing her weapons from their holsters. On steel cord they were in the air before he could lower his hand or speak. At fifteen feet, she was good, but Ace never flinched as the blades flew to either side.

Steel cords raced by him, all he needed to do was reach out with an open hand to touch them, but instead he stared at Madison. Her gritted teeth, her outstretched arms, and open hands, she welcomed him as he felt he deserved. He might as well do the same. Never mind the blades behind him, the road ahead was clear.Ace took one step, another, and in the space of two feet bolted between the lines. He flipped the spear down from his shoulder, a spike lance. He threw his entire body into a violent lunge. Prudence was for the living, everyone here was damned.

[Silence Sei]

BlackAndBlueEyes advances to Round 2!