"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
I'm so glad that he let me try it again
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
Well, I need a little bit of practice and you seem like the gal for the job, so what say you to a quick little tiff?
I'm just kidding, let's rumble.
-Loser visits the winners kingdom
Ground Rules
-Ladies first (age before beauty, after all)
-2 posts each
-No time limit between posts, though I'm personally going to shoot for a 4 day span
-No substitutions
-No complete dodges
-I attack, 1 counter-attack per post
-Traits allowed
Lupei
15'3"
Anglo-arab Hybrid
Stallion
Wolf Shifting, White fire manipulation
Maneless/Tailless
Eee, so excited they are finally duking it out! Here's her stats if you need them:
Talulah
16 hands
Hybrid (more Andalusian-looking though)
Mare
Grey
Immortal, Self-sustenance (doesn't eat, drink or sleep), Metal-aging (metal-skin), Ring of Power (can turn invisible)
When she comes home, she doesn’t have the time to dwell on the fact that she’s been gone.
In this way, the challenge is a blessing in disguise. No sooner has Talulah taken a step into the Dale, the bugle call sounds. She has no choice but to answer it. She has no choice but to leave Ramiel’s golden gaze boring into her retreating form, his questions stalled on his tongue like a storm over cool air. She has to go before he realizes just how long it has been since his mother was there for him, before he can acknowledge the phantom embrace of her neck around his. A blessing, the steel-grey mare reminds herself as she crosses the challenging grounds, the dust rising and swirling around her legs. One more hurdle before reconciliation can begin.
Because there is far too much that needs fixing.
Her mind is still fractured by all of her losses, the pieces like frayed ropes tossed into turbulent waters. As much as Talulah tries to cling bits of memories or thoughts, her grasp is too soft to hold on. She can’t bring herself to examine what had set her adrift in the first place. If she remembers the angles of his face… If she dwells on the feeling of his burnt skin sliding against her metal skin… If the sharp end of his life cuts into her thoughts, she loses herself all over again.
Her hooves find the half-moon edge of the fighting arena and she halts. And by the time the dust settles again at her feet (a still day; neither rain nor cloud will impact their duel this time), her challenger is there. He looks to be of a comparable size, but that is where the similarities end. The stallion is a cascade of unnatural colors, mint green washing down into teal over his belly and legs. He has no mane to speak of and no tail that she can see. Talulah supposes he’s not terribly odd in this age of strange colors and accouterments, but he is rather striking. She’s more interested in what lies underneath his sea-palette coat. Surely, a man who looks like this one has been gifted by more than an otherworldly paintbrush.
The battle commences without fanfare; it is her turn first.
The steel-grey mare pushes her momentum through tensed muscles and propels herself toward him. It is not a far distance that exists between the two of them, but she eats it up quickly regardless. There is fuel to her charge that exists beyond duty. The Chamber has wronged her personally and very early in her life. She remembers all too well the feeling of their chains tightening around her ankles, the inky darkness of their slave pens. It might have been many generations ago now, but she has never forgotten. It is one frayed rope she has never let go of.
Assuming Lupei hasn’t remained stationary while she barreled towards him, Talulah attempts to keep him headlong against her, matching his movement in order to do so. If she is successful in this endeavor, she will be just ahead of him when the gold band on her right foreleg comes to life. She will be close enough to see the reflection of its slight golden glow in his eyes, close enough to watch his confusion or anger or ambivalence light up right alongside her talisman. Then she disappears.
She is counting on the element of surprise, because surely he will expect her to move once invisible. Surely, he will not think she’s wasted a chance to sneak around behind him and attack his exposed backside. But she does. Becoming invisible does not mean becoming soundless; the rhythmic thud of her hooves on the dirt would have alerted him to whichever side she veered around. Instead, she wastes no time throwing her upper body into the air, lifting her forelegs up into as balanced a rear as she can manage. But what goes up must come down. Talulah falls forward and aims her feet towards Lupei’s mint-colored chest. It is not the largest target she could have given herself, but it had had the highest probability for surprise and success. If her hooves drive down and against his chest, she imagines the injury to his pectorals will give him a hard time moving his shoulders or lifting his neck. If it is not a directly-centered hit, her blow will likely fall to either his right or left shoulder, impacting one side greater than the other. The possibility exists that she will not land a hit at all, but she doesn’t pause to consider it. There is no room for questioning in the heat of battle; there is only action.
Once her hooves hit the dirt again, she takes off around his left side. Only when she is a few paces away from him does she let herself become visible once more. She lingers just away from Lupei, sides fluttering with her quickened breath. One attack down, one to go. One more hurdle, the metal-mare reminds herself.
I'm so glad that he let me try it again
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
Mindless. He is mindless. A feeling creeps over him - that familiar old sensation coiling within his gut before it explodes outwards in a rage of channeled fury. Patient, knowing better than to underestimate the mare whose skin glints in the sunlight (Reflective. Interesting.) He watches her leap forward into a brazen attack, directly targeting his front. Given that the space between them is rather short, she covers the earth in minimal time, allowing him a brief moment to prepare. He quickly retreats a few steps, bunching his hind biceps beneath him like a rigged coil.
His intentions are to lessen her attack, whatever she may be planning, by putting that indeterminate, yet minute, distance between them. If she lunges, she may miss. If she’s planning a frontal attack, she may not strike where she intends. He watches her mirror his movements (clever girl) like a seasoned athlete, and then, when he least expects it, she vanishes. Invisibility - shit. A hard trait to counter but he’s yet to reveal his secrets. Expecting, as she so aptly pre-determines, that she’ll take this opportunity to dart out of his reach, he stations his left hind securely into to the earth and pivots to his left, front legs crossing over each other as quickly as he can manage to follow her unknown movements.
It’s only in the silence that follows that he realizes he’s fallen into her trap. Her front legs come harshly down against his right triceps, the fact that she is wholly metal does not make the blow easier to bear. This will limit his motion with the affronted leg, and as she quickly skirts to his right, revealing herself to be some distance away, Lupei knows how he will counter to shift the scales into his favor. A ball of flame erupts from him, white-blue, shooting skywards to make a long arc over her before landing on the hardened earth and expanding - stretching to become a circle around the two of them - like a water droplet whose backsplash spreads itself outward. The line of fire in the sand connects behind him in an instant, the flame rising into a scorching wall of heat.
They are trapped, together, and he forces the wall to his command, tightening the circle in order to bring her to him. She could test the heat if she liked - even metal bowed to flame as hot as his stolen gift. If the silver mare was as smart as she proved herself to be, she’d stay within the circle and inevitably be drawn to him. He won’t have to strain his injury, but they will have to fight in close quarters. He re-positions so that he’s looking at her directly; hopes that the enclosure he’s made for them will force her to change direction and face him head-on once more. Then he eases (as smoothly as he can manage) forward to close the distance between them, watching her closely as the wall tightens with each step. He cannot assume that she won’t use her invisibility again, but he can limit where she will choose to try and escape.
He’s upon her now, and he deflects any possible counter she may chose to execute by pivoting again, this time to his right, and showing her his backside, left hind leading as he aims a solid kick in her direction. With any luck, he’ll strike along her front legs or perhaps even glance a blow to one of her shoulders in return. The enclosure he’s managed to erect cannot be more than twenty feet across now - they’re in a tight spot. Though he knows by now that her skin is metal, it also gives him good indication about where he should strike last. Thinner skin on her face, around her legs … with a good final attack he could wound her yet.
All in time. For now he chooses to continue along his chosen path - giving her a rather good view of his teal rump for measure. His ears flick back, but his body pushes forward, and with it, so the wall expands once more.
Talulah wonders, mid-air, if she’s revealed her cards too early. Should she have waited to play her hand? Should she have saved her disappearing act for the moment he was about to strike instead? Perhaps invisibility is most effective as a defensive, rather than an offensive, tactic. But it is too late to change her mind, too late to ignore gravity’s call. He tries to evade her invisible assault by twisting to his left, but it isn’t enough. The soft give of his skin beneath her hooves is all the validation she needs that she’s made the right decision. She hits him squarely on his exposed right shoulder (not the target she intended, but a successful blow had been her primary goal, anyway). She doesn’t have time to evaluate the change in his movements before she is off again around his left side.
Well, she had meant to go around his left side. His blind pivot to his left, however, forces her to change course and veer around his right side. The Dalean soldier comes back to visibility just as a wave of heat rushes over her head. The base of her neck tingles in response to a fire that is all too familiar. It burns the ground here but also ignites her memories. She doesn’t even have to look at the white-blue flames licking the sand to know where they originated. She doesn’t have to trace the ever-closing curtain of unrivaled fire to know its source, to fully realize the implications of its wielder. Somehow, somewhere along the line, Lupei’s story was intertwined with Tiberios’. And the only possible final chapter to the story was written in blood. Either their bloodlines had crossed somewhere (is he yet another child by Tiberios she didn’t know of?), or he had taken the once-Falls’ king’s gift by simultaneously taking his life.
She’s never known what killed Tiberios, after all.
And it has to have been a what, not a who. The black sabino’s body had been mangled beyond recognition, beyond sense. Whatever had murdered the scorched man, it hadn’t been the dull hooves of another equine. She has taken comfort in that, at least, when the nights are darker without his flames to light them – at least some great, unavoidable beast had felled him, not political gain or the whims of their devious world. He had been consumed by the jaws of a fearsome beast, like her own mother; they are deaths that had wrenched away parts of her soul, but hadn’t been without cause. Unless. The word echoes in her mind like the tolling of a bell, as it has countless times since she discovered his death. Unless it had been both beast and horse.
She can’t and doesn’t suspect that the very same creature lies dormant within Lupei. The wall of flames that he summons sends her mind spinning (his living, whole face and his dead, shattered face take turns appearing in her head) but does not stop her legs. Talulah shakes the thoughts violently from her head, even as she is already trying to evacuate the fiery circle before it is complete. She closes in on the remaining open space and she thinks she will make it. But the stallion’s control over the blaze is too great. Her muzzle slips through just as the white-blue curtain hisses closed, singing the tip of her nose and immediately blistering. The grey’s hind-legs bunch under her with her forceful stop, each displaced particle of dirt hitting her belly its own kind of blessing; she shudders to think what might have happened if she hadn’t been able to in time.
But just as she thinks she is safe enough, the wall moves in even closer. Handcuffed in her motion and far too close to the crackling wall, Talulah back-steps until she has enough room to spin on her heels. Her gaze immediately locks on the mint and teal man, her amber gaze hard and scrutinizing. She understands his plan to draw her in and she is rather perturbed it is working out as he intends. So instead of making it even easier on the Chamberling, she keeps her backside as close to the wall behind her as is safe (not that any remote proximity to the wall is safe). Quickly, Lupei charges in response. It is an easy distance for him to close; she hopes it feels more like a vast, perilous desert with his injured shoulder.
He is on her in no time. She waits to move until he is there (why not conserve the energy?) and ducks to her right just as he swings in front of her to his own right. His hind legs raise in a flurry of movement, but she is already turned away too much to see it. She senses, rather than sees, that his blow is imminent. She feels, rather than avoids, the contrastingly sharp pain in her forearm brought about by dull hooves. She is fortunate. If she was any other horse, it might have crippled her to the death. But she is different; her body is different. The metal shield she wears as comfortably as another’s own skin falls in an ombre of density along her legs. His mark hits along her well-protected radius. Had it struck lower, she might be downed rather than wincing in pain with every step of her left foreleg.
Lupei shoots away after his attack. Talulah does much the same, picking up a canter that is impaired by her throbbing left forearm. They are heading in opposite directions around the bowl of fire like comets, destined to collide on the opposite side. Even with the fire-wielders’ expansion of the wall, it doesn’t take long for them to reach each other. The grey can feel the heat against her right side. Her eyes water from it, but she blinks the tears away as quickly as she can. Once again - if she has been successful in tracking Lupei – he is right in front of her. But this time, she is partially handicapped. When she leaps to her left further into the circle of fire, her leg screams with the effort. The metal-mare grits her teeth and leans into her front left leg, kicking out against Lupei’s right side. She hopes she has jumped far enough ahead to hit him further back. Perhaps she will crack a rib or two under skin that is less muscled along his barrel. If not, she might land a blow on his other shoulder or further down on his foreleg (let him see how that injury feels).
Talulah moves into the middle of the ring and goes invisible. She just needs a moment to collect herself, to steady her breathing. By the time he moves to find her, she has moved as well. The grey allows herself to become visible again only when she has found the fire’s edge. Hopefully it will distract and disorient him for a minute.
I'm so glad that he let me try it again
'Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
The end is near - he can sense it when his blow lands accordingly. Though the fire has done its job, keeping her captive on his own terms, it sends her directly back to him. The impaired stallion moves slower, reacts less effectively when she picks up her strained canter and directs herself on a path to collide with him. He thinks her mad, but continues anyways, not willing to let the silver mare out of his sights until she’s made a move. Quickly, the two meet again, his blue gaze watching her closely as she waits again for the opportune moment. With her shift to the left the stallion hunches down, choosing then to shed into his beast skin. Her blow is aimed high - directed no doubt to land on his right side in order to square away a rib or two. But since he’s half-wolf already the kick grazes above his right hip, sending him tumbling through the wall of flame and rolling along the dirt outside.
He yelps, feeling the impact sharpest in his front right, but senses the soreness that will follow from his barrel roll. The black behemoth spares no time, righting himself and pressing forward to leap back through his signature flame with an ethereal snarl. He lands squarely, eyes darting around the inflamed cage while she pulls her magician’s trick. There - suddenly she’s whole again and pressed near the wall. He’ll have to be quick if he’s to enact his last attack just right. From where he’s positioned he can see her left side clearly, that glinting skin a warning to his teeth. He can’t be bothered with another injury, and she’ll no doubt inflict greater damage on his smaller body. But the wolf darts forward anyways, favoring the tender leg while bounding ahead in what seems to be a brave last hurrah.
From the way he’s moving she can expect him to pounce, teeth at the ready to grip and tear along her left ribcage, where the silver mare’s skin is stretched taut and thin. He pushes ahead, choosing only to stop when it seems he’s about ready to attack. She’ll be confused - and he hopes all of her attention will be focused on him, hopes she’ll be distracted enough by his halt. The wall of flame vanishes, retracting in on itself until it’s only behind her and then compacting to take the shape of another wolf - this one built of blue-white heat.
With her right exposed and her eyes hopefully on him, it leaves her vulnerable to an unexpected blow from her other side. The fire-wolf leaps where Lupei did not, aiming for a crashing attack against her right flank that could engulf her in flame. He chooses then to back, step by careful step, eyes trained on the vanishing mare while he reserves what little energy he has left. For now, the fight is over and the two have given their best. Lupei only hopes it will be enough to tip the scales in his favor.
Talulah TOTAL: 4 Round 1: 0
o not the best setup; appreciate the weather forecast, but what of the dusty ground impacting the battle, and what of the opponent’s breed/build (because color doesn’t much matter in a fight unless of course it’s gray because it’s metal, etc.)
- she seems really close to him for this particular attack, and I almost think she’d need to be slightly off to the side, not head on
+ not bad description of the hit options – maybe a little more detail would be good, but appreciate that you take into account possible movement on Lupei’s part
Round 2: 4
+ I like how you compensate for the directional error in Lupei’s post, finding a reason to her to be off to his right instead of left
+ I appreciate that you took damage from the firewall, though would she blister given that she’s metal? I assume she’d overheat or warp more than blister (semantic here, really)
+ Good dodge and damage from his attack
+ Clever second attack, though I might note in the post it wouldn’t be as powerful given the damage to her forearm, but as a whole good description of the possibilities and clear direction in what’s happening
This is not really a point based note, just an aside, but battle posts are pretty long, and while I totally enjoy character development, would suggest keeping it to a minimum in a battle post.
Lupei TOTAL: 2 Round 1: 0
+ good damage w/ clear directions, easy to understand, but she heads around his left, not right – be careful with making sure you read the other post correctly
+ Good counter attack – like that you mention his fire is particularly hot so it should affect metal, but I might have elaborated just a hair on what white-fire is
- you cannot “deflect any possible counter” – be careful with phrases that are power playing. While I think I know what you might mean, it needs to be spelled out
- think about your attack here – if Lupei is head on and he pivots all the way around when he’s right on top of her in order to get his butt in her face, she has a ton of time to react. While yes, a horse can move pretty quickly, this is a huge space to cover still when there would have been smarter approaches to get into a position that would allow a buck, because at this point she could be invisible and moving around and Lupei may not even hear her over the fire and his own movements. Also consider where he might kick if she moves, because she hasn’t stood still. I don’t need all the options, but a couple. Or is he likely to just straight up miss if she’s moved?
Round 2: 2
+ Good damage to her attack
+ Love that the counter attack is essentially a trick to confuse and distract her – really clever given her metal skin
o Good final attack, but I’d still like to see some alternatives if she’s moved, because she’s probably moved
