Club Thumpin'

[Nachanksy]

Closed to Count.

Fires beating in the heart of woods and men. Nature ablaze, winter’s memory long forgotten. In a clearing in the midst of the rebirth, a girl. Bear fur cloak to her ankles and hair braided with blood, bone, and bits of twig. Bark curled around her wrists as bracelets as rings of pledge to the gods. Sister of the Wood. Daughter of the Wild. Bear.

“Is d’man ‘ere?” she clucked. He tongue wagged, and her metaphorical tail whipped. Paws, scooping in great arcs ploughed through the pile of autumnal leaves before her stooped self.

The arena was a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet long. A measured and learned man would have called it a circle, but to Nachansky it was a clearing. Roughshod and ready, a perfect place to spar with the strangers of the world. She was to become chieftain someday, and someday she would need testing. This place, of sand and stone on the out, and worlds of dream within was the place to take that test.

“I be done waitin’,” she added. Disgust was visible in her breath, little demons dancing in her echoes ablaze with anger and tension.

Yew and oak hemmed her in. In the trees, fires continued to burn. Ochre, orange, and violet flickered in the twilight as the summer dusk began to turn foul into summer’s night. Great door stood opposite, a portal for her opponent to cross into the illusory woodland. She stood. She drew a knife.

“Man dem come!”

[Count]

Before he even stepped through the door, Alexei felt a broiling heat trying to push it's way past him. When he finally stepped through, he took in his surroundings. A lush, green forest was ablaze. He, along with his female opponent, stood in a clearing. Stepping forward, using his scythe as a walking stick, he addressed the knife-wielding woman. "My name is Alexei Gardeheart. Its customary for people battling to the death to know the name of their victim. May I have yours?"

He removed his hood, revealing his platinum hair and brilliant green eyes. Moving his scythe to both hands, he mentally moves his shield from his back and stops it diagonal to his face. He moves into a running crouch attacking with an upward diagonal slice of his scythe as soon as he got in range. "Let's see how well you move!"

[Nachanksy]

“Bear,” the girl roared. She roared because the scythe made her, and her wits about her gave her volume, pitch, and tenacity. “But you,” she hissed as she landed a few feet back, “can call me Nachansky.”

The slight, lost on he, profound on her, foretold the girl’s demise. Gods and monsters aside, assuming her ways were better than his were, if he even had them, soon to prove her undoing. She sniffed. She took a deep inhalation of air, burning bright and brackish, and cocked her head to one side.

“Alexei.” Her lips pursed. It was an alien name to the girl from the wilds. Common tongue though they both spoke, the meaning behind his nomenclature was mystical. He was from lands beyond. Beyond here. Beyond there. “You dem’ ‘hero’ they be talkin’ bout?”

No sooner than she had asked the question, the answer became apparent. He was no hero. Nor was she. Nor was anyone. Reputation preceded him as the winter did the autumn. Cold before it became cold. Dead trees before dirty boughs.

“No,” she said flatly in answer of her own enquiry. She span her knife, child’s play to his scythe between forefinger and thumb. “You no ‘ero.” She pointed the blade at his chest. His eyes sparkled, icy and glacial. She admired him for that alone. “You be just ‘unter, searchin’ dem prey.”

Waiting for him to talk no more, she scuttled forwards a mound of fur, flesh, and femininity. She slashed at his belly.

[Count]

"Nachansky..?" Alexei wondered aloud as the wild-woman dodged his strike. She moved quickly, as he would expect someone that seems to have lived in the jungle so long; lithe and agile, she was.

Nachansky muttered something about Alexei being a hero. By no means was he yet a hero. He still had a long way to go...

He sidesteps the strike to his stomach, and moves to touch the woman's wrist, hoping to freeze her knife hand and remove her attacks from the equation. As he does he notices a warmth on his side, and some very slight pain. The woman had actually cut him. He misjudged the original distance between him and Nachansky. "This woman can move... I must be careful with her..." Alexei thinks to himself.

[Nachanksy]

Despite the flickering flames foul in the foliage, cold struck the Bear. Winter was no stranger to the girl, but all the same, she was unfamiliar with the guest in her body. She stumbled back. Aloof. Cautious. Pained.

“What dis’?”

The question, posed in broken Tradespeak inflected with the colloquial tongue of the Coronian wilds was poignant, but pointless. She knew what it was. The same, ancient enemy hurt her homeland and tore her tribes apart: Magic. Myth. Mysticism.

“You be dem’ mages!” she scowled. Her black face paint, a mark to others, majesty to her, glistened with sweat as her body tried to fight pain and find poultice in adrenaline and self-belief.

She hated magic more than anything did. On that merit, she now hated Alexei. Through no fault of his own, flaxen hair and debonair graces aside, he had made his impression on Nachansky. She dropped the knife and it ran away from her. Stone blade tantalising on the forest floor, she scooped it up with her off-hand. Her hair a mop atop her head danced like tentacles as she looked through her unkempt fringe.

“I ‘ate.” What she ate, Alexei would have to work out. She smirked. Though she knew ‘correct speak’, she would not stoop to his level in tactics or tongue. “Try dis, den’,” she continued.

Running forwards on three limbs, her frozen arm dangling in her windy wake, she rammed into the scythe-wielder’s presence. At the last, her knife, unaided and untrained, rose swift.

[Count]

For a moment, all Alexei saw was black. As his sight came back, he looked down and saw the blade sticking out of his ribcage. The pain was so intense; bones were broken. Having lost his concentration, his shield drops to the ground like a boulder. This was the first time he had been pierced by stone. It wasn't a feeling he liked. The rough-hewn blade was jagged, it would leave a scar.

Angered by this pain, and at the woman who caused it, he threw her back, knife still in his ribs. He reaches up and pulled out the weapon. He tosses it into the woods beyond and into the firy blaze. He rushes towards the woman, and slices the air in a downward strike towards her shoulder with his scythe's wicked sharp blade.

[Nachanksy]

A brief truimph followed by swift defeat was more damaging to Nachansky than the scythe’s cruel penetration. It cut into her skin with ease, treating the bear fur as though it were air and embedding itself snuggly into her clavicle. It scraped bone, slicing into marrow like an axe’s razor edge into soft maple.

“Dada,” she gurgled blood.

She meant to say father, but only the image of her bulwark parent rung true. The word, meaningless babbling, danced through the clearing and fell in with the crackle of embers and the roar of crowds. At least the image in her mind’s eye brought her peace. It would not bring her release, not yet. Pain never shed so easily.

On her knees she fell, falling free of the blade and afflicting herself with further agony. Her hair, black locks half-dreaded by abandon flailed in her wake. Her arms, limp and useless, fell to her sides. Without a knife to knick-knack, they were hindrance, not haughty defence. She felt the grass beneath her bare knees, and felt at home, even in strange company.

“Take dem life and live on,” she challenged. Her chin was slick with blood, already congealed, and her heart beat so heavily in her chest she rocked back and forth in an invisible breeze. Her eyes, piercing white orbs set against the black face paint across her face burnt into his angelic gaze. “End dis,” she added.

The Bear closed its eyes and waited for the hunter’s impending glory.

[Count]

He watched as Nachansky fell to her knees. In her eyes, Alexei saw the pain of defeat. She muttered through blood for her father, a sight too pitiful to behold for some. A bloody mess, hair everywhere, she looked as though she were happy. Maybe not to have lost, but feeling like she would be killed in her own element. Her home.

Alexei turned and focused on his shield. It took some time, but je finally picked it up with his telekinesis and places it upon his back. Using his full scythe again as a walking stick he starts walking towards her. "I am thankful for this battle. I have things i must do so must continue to win. Goodbye, Nachansky."
As his final words to the woman leaves his lips, Alexei raises his scythe, and brings it downwards her heard, to cleave it straight from her shoulders. With this, the battle will be over.

[Quentin Boone]

Because the thread doesn't meet the minimum 10-post requirement for judgement, you'll both just receive EXP and GP. If either of you want feedback on your writing, please feel free to PM me.

Nachanksy receives:

327 EXP
44 GP


Count receives:

327 EXP
44 GP


Congratulations!

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!