This round begins at 12:00 PM PACIFIC TIME on Friday! Good Luck!!!
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This round begins at 12:00 PM PACIFIC TIME on Friday! Good Luck!!!
Quote:
All dialogue, and 'bunnying' of Resolve and Mordelain will be pre-approved between respective owners.
Everybody in the world needs a path to walk along. We all need something to guide us to wherever it is we are going. Some may not know where that destination lies, and some may never know it, even when they get there. For a weary traveller to simply believe in a goal is all that most require.
Mordelain Saythrou, however, was tired of not knowing. She had walked a path lonesome and laden with sorrow for two centuries, not quite sure if she was walking forwards or back. Every time she turned a curve in the road, she felt more and more certain that something was amiss.
Then a curious thing happened.
“You came along and stabbed me in the gut.” Her expression turned from stoic and emotionless into a cruel, self-mocking smile. She held out a hand, an extension of friendship and welcome, and shook the girl’s own in a bond of friendship.
“Well,” Resolve said, trying not to sound too sure of herself, “it’s what we both were there for.” She retreated a few steps, her soft foot wrappings scuffing over the surface of the gazebo’s floorboards. “If I did not gut you first, I daresay you would not have hesitated to run me through with that spear.”
The planes walker could not argue with that sentiment, not one bit. They had met what seemed like months ago now in the Citadel in Radasanth. Neither of the pair expected to cross paths again beyond the sanctuary of the arena. It was part of the allure – killing without reprisal. Looking at the girl now, Mordelain realised why. She felt guilty, tired, and sick. She had seen her die, right before her very eyes, and felt no remorse in her deeds.
“Perhaps on this fine day,” she looked up with glistening eyes at the glaring sun directly overhead, “we can put those skills to a better use.”
It was all that needed to be said. Pleasantries could be exchanged in the time between rounds, should they be fortunate enough to survive and advance. Mordelain settled her gaze onto the gazebo at the far end of the immeasurably long privet lawn and waited. She gripped the edge of her left glove with her right hand, a sign of a nervous disputation.
“At the very least we may learn a thing or two about horticulture,” she curled her lips shrewdly. Her decision to allow the arena to be down to chance and a roll of the die was coming back to haunt her. The lawn was closed off completely, with a gazebo at either end in pure white; both structures were laced with climbing ivy and jasmine flowers. The hedge that hemmed them in was some thirty feet tall, and though Mordelain could not gauge the length, it was at least four hundred feet wide. She had no idea if there was anything beyond.
Every ten feet there was a small rose bush in a circle of sand cut into the grass. They were no more than five feet tall, and they were equidistant from one another, but in no set pattern beyond random happenstance. In the sunlight that danced down from the heavens bees and dragonflies danced their mating waltzes and hummed their chordate cries. Mordelain stomped a foot down hard on the pristine decking, to remind herself that she had ascended blind in a tube up to the arena, and then wondered what the tournament organisers had said to Resolve, if anything at all.
The words echoed in her ear as she adjusted her glove, gave the exorcist a comforting smile, and tied her hair back into a rigid bun.
“Don’t…touch…the flowers…” she whispered.
One moment Luned was pumped, the next she was riddled with crippling anxiety and doubt. This conflicting attitude wore Flint's patience thin over the past few days, her bouts of insecurity making any attempt to practice or strategize rather frustrating occasions, and their last night of preparation went from nearly productive to the scribe wallowing in past horrors thanks to heavy sampling of the complimentary wine. It was a miracle their friendship persevered, but here they were, risen into in a pristine white gazebo before a lovely field of luxurious grass and beautiful flowers, presumably ready to kick some ass.
Well, kind of ready. Luned was impressively well off considering the hangover she should've earned, the dark circles under her eyes and pallor of her already fair skin only making her look more intimidating, though in a way that hinted she'd give their opponents some sort of plague over stab them effectively. If anything, it'd hopefully at least gain her some berth.
As they stood there and gathered in the unlikely arena, Luned took a deep, calming breath which she quickly regretted. The air was heavily perfumed with pollen and it tickled her sinuses, resulting in a squeak of a sneeze that earned an unimpressed sidelong glance from Flint.
"Hay fever," Luned sighed, rubbing her nose with the back of her wrist. From there she patted her pockets, found the one containing her fountain pen, and withdrew it, a fine piece of Aleran craftsmanship freshly cleaned, filled, and ready for use. She really did look the part of an unassuming scribe, clad in a rather drab, slate blue dress that harkened to her uniform from her days as an apprentice. It was mid-length, revealing her old leather boots and a glimpse of stockinged knees, and the top was conservative but well-fit, a narrow belt around her waist along with her one small knife. She rolled her sleeves up to the elbows, baring the pale, freckled skin of her forearms, and gripped her pen like the weapon it was.
"Hm." The man continued inspecting the field, skeptical of its pleasant simplicity, and then nudged his partner to attention. "Look, they're there."
Lo and behold, their opponents had just come into view across the way inside an identical structure. Luned looked up, blinked, and narrowed her eyes at a glimmer of all-too-familiar crimson and violet. No. Fucking. Way.
"Women," Flint muttered as he tried to make out what details he could from that distance. "Remember what we discussed about long and short range…? Luned, are you paying attention?" He caught her edging back in an obvious attempt to cower behind his slightly taller, much broader figure. With a groan, he rubbed his temple. "What are you doing?"
"Resolve's out there," Luned said in a hoarse whisper, as if they could hear her from all that distance.
"Who?"
"My best friend."
"Well, didn't she know you would be here? You should have weighed the risks of being matched together––"
"No," the scribe grumbled pitifully. "She didn't know. I didn't know." Some friends they were.
Flint never had a best friend, but he understood the concept and why the presence of one in a place like this was maybe problematic. He sighed through his nose and hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, and eyed the newcomers across the way. They, in turn, were no doubt trying to piece together why one of their opponents was hiding behind the other.
While he tried to determine which the friend was and which the stranger, Flint considered his options. It was his natural inclination to think Luned useless, being charming and freckled and cute and dressed in a skirt, and wielding a pen. In direct contrast, he was broad, bearded, mean, and dressed in skull-stomping boots, black leather, plated bracers, fist-wraps, and at least fifteen pounds more muscle than a human being needs. Of course, appearance meant little and Flint knew it: Luned had a habit of saving his life. Maybe that’s why he was here.
Because he didn’t have friends, and he affirmed that. Housewives have friends, and children, and dullards. Flint had accomplices, or lackeys, or cats-paws, and two or three times a lover, but never friends. He denied that he was protective of this little scribe, and instead decided that she was akin to a student to him. Yes. She was a student of the world as he saw it, a trainee on the brutal path.
Flint knew that the world was an oblivious place, peopled with predators and the cruelly indifferent prey they fed upon, and the only thing that mattered was power. Sometimes, in Luned’s darker moments, he saw hints of that same realization in her. Such wisdom was rare in the world, and deserved nurturing, and if she just came to see it all as he did…
“What’re we gonna do?” Luned whispered, nudging him in the back.
Reverie broken, he muttered to himself and turned to face her. She recognized his bearing and straightened up, ready for the pep-talk. He made a displeased sound, unused to his habits being familiar to someone.
“You will fight your friend,” he declared.
Before Luned could object – and he saw it coming – he continued speaking: “How can you not? If you don’t, I will have to, and what kind of kindness is that? You wanted to do this, and fate put you here, opposite your…” He paused, trying to think of the term she’d used. “Your best friend. Are you afraid of her?”
“A little,” Luned said, peeking around his shoulder.
“No!” Flint sighed. “What are you?”
“Oh right,” Luned said, screwing up her face in the best approximation of Flint’s unnerving stare. “I’m fear.”
“Yes,” Flint said. “We are fear. Your friend…”
“Resolve.”
“…Resolve? Resolve. Of course Resolve is just as shocked as you are to be here, opposite you, tortured by the same doubts. She feels fear, and it is yours to use. And you must not pity her. You are revealing a truth to her, teaching her about fear, and in turn you will learn about her, because a person is only true when fraught. You will see her not as she has portrayed herself, but as she is, laid bare. All resentments, old hatreds thought buried, all will come to the surface, along with shared secrets and shared triumphs. If you fight her, your friendship will be stronger than you ever thought possible, and your partnership…”
“Flint?”
Luned was staring wide-eyed over his shoulder. He turned around, just in time to see a confused blur of coffee-and-cream colored skin, exotic white tattoos, and a pair of angry blue eyes, and then he took a solid right hook to the jaw.
The pretty little green reminded Resolve of Trayas and therefore of immensely irritating fairies, so in the first few moments she spent surveying the intended battlefield, she crossed her fingers they'd be blessed with decent opponents. That was really the best she could ask for; the rest was up to them.
"What's in the flowers?" the girl asked after Mordelain's strange comment, though it was likely rhetorical as if she knew, she'd likely have elaborated. This thought carried out with her voice over the lush, emerald grass, studded by fragrant and unassuming roses, to bring her watchful gaze to the opposite gazebo. "They just told me to look out for gopher holes."
There were figures there, but the sun overhead was bright and Resolve squinted to focus on them. One of their opponents was an intimidatingly built man, not in height but in sheer bulk, and for a long moment his partner was difficult to see as her form wavered behind him. When he turned around to face her, however, the exorcist got a glimpse, and her stomach sank.
No way.
Luned's costume was much less of an obvious signature as Resolve's vibrant, layered sari, but she always seemed to wear some varying shade of that damn gray-blue, and from the familiar way in which the distant woman held herself, Resolve just knew. "Shit," she cursed, alarming her companion.
Mordelain looked to her questioningly.
"Dibs on the guy." This quick, non-negotiable decision was made for two reasons. The first, and most immediately apparent, was the fact that Resolve wasn't sure if she had it in her to harm the mousy scribe, an individual who had never been on her radar as anything but meek and, well, helpless. It was one thing to face an old sparring partner, but this was so utterly different it was excruciating, and Resolve's fingernails dug into her palms as she clenched her knuckles white.
The second reason came to her slowly, but as it sank it, it sent her into a rage. Luned was different since returning from Salvar, and her most recent disappearance brought her home injured, shaken, and withdrawn. Resolve knew she hadn't heard all of what happened in Salvar and figured her confidante would eventually share it with her, given support and time. This last episode was different, though. Resolve only learned later, through Agnie, that Luned went to Ettermire and returned not alone, but with a strange man.
Whoever this individual was, he knew the new Luned and Resolve didn't. Her most cherished friend was a stranger now, and if jealousy was an all-consuming flame, Resolve was on fire. She took this sick feeling and displaced it into fierce motivation, and within seconds, she had but one goal: to kick Flint's ass.
The girl could only hope that channeling her fury would keep her mind off whatever her partner was going to do to poor Luned. She unwillingly conjured gory images of the scribe's head atop the woman's partisan like a pike, Mordelain bathed in her blood like gratuitous warpaint, and in a panic she pushed them desperately from her mind.
To concentrate, Resolve's pale eyes focused on the offender and she allowed the rest of the world to drop away into formless blurs of green and gray. Her hand instinctively checked for the sword that was strapped to her waist, her fingers encircling the grip tentatively. The loose end of her sari, usually free-flowing for dramatic effect, was tucked smart and secure under the wide leather belt, and she was satisfied that she cut a dashing figure. The vibrant colors of her short sari contrasted remarkably against her brown skin which was riddled strikingly with white, tattoo-like designs and scars. Her long legs were hidden under black leggings and tapered into heavy stompin' boots, belled anklets from Fallien carrying music with every step. She felt powerful, and she looked it.
Resolve took that power straight across the field in a beeline for the other gazebo. To her surprise, the man didn't turn around. He didn't even realize she was there until Luned, who earned the coldest shoulder in Lornius Corporate Challenge history, pointed her out.
Flint turned to look and, without hesitation, Resolve drew back and slammed her fist into his jaw. That punch contained all the unspoken frustration that built over the past months and, when it struck true, the exorcist grinned in unabashed satisfaction. She immediately drew her sword, intending to make quick work of this, and went in for a quick slash across his abdomen.
Mordelain had never had any friends to even begin to understand how Resolve must have felt as she advanced quickly as the wind, through the rose peppered bushes and the delicate sunshine. She had to admire the stoic and determined nature of her partner. Though long lived compared to most, the planes walker could not think of anyone in her life that she had admired more in a shorter space of time. She smirked.
“Gladly,” she replied, though more to commit herself to the plan at hand. She could not see anything more about the man than the fact he was indeed a man. He did not appear to be ablaze, horned, or levitating; tell-tale signs of imminent danger. With a jubilant advance, Mordelain descended the few steps to the grass and let her bare feet press against the jade green blades of grass. She felt instantly at one with her surroundings, connected to the nature that may, or may not be their undoing.
She vanished.
Standing at the heart of a forest as immeasurable as it was beautiful, Mordelain tensed every muscle in her body. She pricked her ears. She listened to the rain drops as they fell through the tree canopy. She listened to the distant, yet unmistakable sound of a waterfall, and then relaxed. Of all the nine worlds of the Kalithrism, Bulganin was the one she most often found herself on. Its pulsating life and strange flora and fauna proved to be an inexhaustible source of entertainment to her in the long dark days of isolation. The sight of purple Luda Berries hanging from the Nona trees on the edge of the clearing to the north filled her with nostalgia.
“Must be mid-morning,” she said, clocking the birdsong overhead and the shadows of the Spider Monkeys as they continued to scattered away from the strange, tall, and lanky creature that had interrupted their mating cries in the heart of the Northern Woods. “Good.” Her voice was calm, but her body was shaking. Despite the sun, her simple black breeches and white blouse offered little in the way of protection against the tepid climate.
Three days prior, by the reckoning of Althanas’ strange time customs, Mordelain had left the island of Lornius for this very spot. She had buried in the tree stump she skittered over to the items she would need to give her the advantage in the first round. She had not known whom she was fighting with, or against ten, so when she vanished head first into the recess, rotten and dank, she was not sure what to pick out.
“This?” she re-appeared, a kukri in one hand, and a small feathered hat in the other. She bit her kip. The hat was thrown back in, and the kukri was tucked into her belt. She disappeared again, and spent several minutes selecting her attire, and weapons, for her eventual return to the privet lawn and Resolve’s side.
She chose her traditional garb, the bandoleer, rolled feather hat, and deep grey and purple cloth almost a distant memory to the planes walker, who had become accustomed to the lightweight cloth and Bedouin garb of Fallien’s scorching wasteland. She bounced up and down; happy her wet feet were now protected by cloth and leather, and listened to the bells on the ends of her jester’s cap tinkle to life.
“You look fabulous,” she said dryly, realising how stupid she must have looked, given what she was preparing for. One last duck into the mushroom covered recess produced a long length of wood, a second kukri, and at the shaft’s tip, a devilishly well-honed partisan head. Each of her two kukris, and the partisan, were bound in spider silk that was bright red; they stood out against the infinite tapestry of jade, olive, and mahogany that was Bulganin. The blades of the knives caught the light, and flashed with green malefic before they vanished beneath a blood red sash.
“For murder…” She took the partisan into her right hand, and set its tip into the mud.
Mordelain listened to the birdsong with her eyes closed for ten minutes, before she reached instinctively for her pocket, produced a small, ornate pocket watch, and flicked it open. Instantly, her sense of time became omniscient. She understood where, what, and how she was here on this world, when she had been on Althanas not so long ago. It was, indeed, mid-morning, according to the watch’s elaborate many handed clock face. On Althanas, it was still exactly the same time she had left. She pictured Resolve, frozen mid swing, and the petrified cry of surprise that would promptly echo through the hedge’s well groomed foliage.
With a pull of energy that felt like being broken into a thousand pieces, Mordelain let herself fall into the void between the nine planets. For a second, she was weightless, nothingness, and everything all at once. With a hell honed aim she appeared reborn anew on the opposite side of the arena. She landed just a few feet behind the girl that Resolve claimed was her ‘friend’. Fortunately for Resolve, Mordelain was more than willing to oblige. She lunged, in a similar fashion to resolve as she made for Flint.
Unfortunately for Luned, as she turned on a heel with a whelp, this meant a sharp, mirroring punch to the unprepared jaw.
As Resolve swung for Flint, the scribe couldn't help but feel a modicum of selfish relief that her friend was quicker to act than she; but, at the same time, she felt quite badly for Flint. He really had no idea what he was dealing with. She amended her answer from a moment earlier… Luned was very afraid of that young woman.
Fortunately, while she didn't have much to her name in the line of combat-relevant training, Luned was born with two helpful traits: a shrewd mind and cat-like reflexes. Without even a solid thought to commence the motion, her thumb popped the cap off her pen, the small metal object hitting the floor of the gazebo with a small clink, her left arm lifting at the ready––
And then Luned felt the presence of someone behind her. She turned just in time to see Mordelain, newly blossomed out of thin air and dressed impeccably, dive in for a hit that mirrored the exorcist's initial attack. The little scribe dodged, but just barely. She ducked slightly and sidestepped, then, in a moment of pure badassery, tore out of the gazebo and onto the green as if her life depended on getting as far away from the armed woman as she possibly could (which, instinctively, was true).
Now, she was well aware that her opponent could teleport at this point so hightailing it was likely futile, but this bought her just enough time to scribble a couple characters in ancient High Elven on the pale skin of her forearm. Her penmanship was janky from the hurry, something that made her cringe in itself, but she was willing to sacrifice the quality of her art in exchange for the gift this simple piece of writing brought her. The sepia ink glistened against her skin in the sunlight only for a split second, then the mark seemed to become just as much a part of her flesh as her many freckles.
As Luned whirled to face Mordelain, who she assumed had followed, she slipped her pen back into her pocket with her right hand and tested something with the other. A triumphant, yet terrified smirk played on her lips when she discovered it worked, a tingling heat budding in the palm of her hand, and she commenced a plan to continue evading her opponent until just the right moment.
Flint could make the rare claim that he was accustomed to being punched in the face. He could not recall a woman ever punching him the face, and that seemed to make a difference in exactly the opposite way expected. Resolve repudiated the stereotypical softness of her sex, and indeed had delivered one of the meanest hooks the brute had ever received. As his head snapped to the side, his jaw sent a shot of agony and anger up his spine, and he retreated a few steps. There was no time to think, only to react. His head came straight again, his eyes reflecting every ounce of hurt and outrage he felt, and then his left arm shot down.
Resolve’s sword met Flint’s forearm and stopped, thwarted by the metal plate concealed between the layers of leather he wore between wrist and elbow. Now it was his turn to grin. “Resolve, I presume,” he said.
His hands moved with practiced ease and speed, the left forearm guiding the edge of the blade downward, the right hand shot forward in an attempt to catch her right hand at the wrist, and he stepped in and shoved his shoulder toward her all at once. His needs were threefold: to eliminate the advantage of superior reach afforded by her sword, to disarm her because swords are sharp and getting cut is unpleasant, and to leverage his weight.
Introductions were best saved for the safety of whatever forum in which they would inevitably meet next, a situation likely heavily moderated by their mutual friend consisting of tea and passive aggressive glances, and not in a scenario where fisticuffs were expected and encouraged. At Luned's insistence, Resolve may have had it in her to be polite to Flint, but social niceties would have to come later; she had things to do, men to butcher.
The exorcist blatantly ignored her opponent's cheeky greeting and quickly found herself disarmed, though the hulk of a man may have found that his tactic was almost too easily effective, her hand dropping the weapon like a hot potato as soon as he leveraged his weight into the motion. As the sword hit the wooden floor of the gazebo with a clatter, nicking the pristine white paint, Resolve stepped into her next move without missing a beat.
The girl attempted to wrench her wrist out of his hand, yanking it against the weakest part of his grip where the tips of his fingers met his thumb. As she did that, she capitalized on the fact that Flint's weight was unevenly balanced onto his closest foot by hooking her left leg around his right. Pulling sharply at the ankle, she tried to force his knee to bend, which, combined with using her free arm to shove her weight against the back of his shoulder, would send him face-first to the floor.
Flint felt his grin go slack when the sword clattered to the tiles. Everything was immediately wrong, and every subsequent moment could only progress toward the worse. Later, when time was on his side, he would wonder why the punch hadn’t been his first clue.
He grunted involuntarily as she yanked her wrist free of his grip with alarming ease, and then shifted her limbs fluidly, ankle to ankle, a twist at the hips, and a practiced push at the shoulder. Things were moving fast now, too fast for control, and thus the pair was proved at least equal. He was getting beat up by a girl.
His body reacted automatically while his mind puzzled, thrown into a spiral of panic sparked by a sudden immutable revelation: this woman was stronger than he was. Had his illness contracted in the Ettermire sewers been even more serious than it seemed? Were his muscles atrophying even now? How long did he have before he was helpless and useless, the very antithesis of the power he craved so desperately? Was he destined to be prey, after all of this?
No.
Flint relented under Resolve’s push, bending at the knee as she hoped, but dropping faster than she expected. He went down onto one knee and drew his hooked ankle in tighter against her pull, leaned away from her, and at the same moment twisted at the hips and raised his arm to deflect the hand she used to leverage her strength down on his shoulder. At the same moment, he used the same twisting motion to help propel his other fist upward; a shot he hoped would meet her unprotected side just below her ribs. The damage would be minimal, but he had to hope she did not share his familiarity with pain – he needed space, a second chance to understand this creature.
Rage, confidence, unwavering focus even in the face of the unexpected, skill, and stronger than a man with a hundred pounds over her? Flint was both intimidated and infatuated, and without some luck he was liable to end up head-over-heels in a more literal sense.