02-24-2022, 10:05 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-24-2022, 10:08 AM by Reave.
Edit Reason: adding name to subject because I'm a dummy
)
He had made a promise the last time he had been here. A vow he fully intends to keep. So he has returned, older, more experienced. He likes to think wiser too, but that point may be debatable. That hardly matters though. Not when such iron resolve fills his chest. Others might be put off by their losses, ashamed of them. Reave chooses instead to learn from them. To grow. To become more skilled.
His hoofsteps are muffled by the carpet of fallen leaves heralding winter. Some leaves still cling tenaciously to branches overhead, but they would not last much longer. The early morning air is crisp, a chilly mist still clinging where the sun had not yet burned it away. Rune glides silently overhead, occasionally visible through the spindly branches of the canopy overhead.
His steps are steady, his shrouded features uncharacteristically serious for a change. There is a feverish gleam in the sharp blue of his gaze, a barely leashed tempest in each step he takes. The edges of bone and skin do not bleed as they once had, but a tenderness remains. He might have waited until that too was gone, but he had been too impatient.
Reave doesn’t speak this time. Mazikeen would find him, of that he has little doubt. And if she did not remember why he had returned, he would remind her when she arrived. In any case, his path is unwavering and his target would soon be clear if it was not already. Craft and Anatomy.
His mother had won their favor, and he fully intends to reclaim them. No matter how many times he must face a woman he considers a friend. Whether she still feels the same about their friendship, he doesn’t know, but it would not stop him. It hadn’t the first time he’d come, and it certainly would not now.
****
- Reave is challenging for Craft and Anatomy’s entity, which is to come with him to Nerine if he wins.
- Five days between posts.
- Three rounds with one attack and one defense each.
- Mazikeen or her champion will go first.
Reave’s stats:
Hybrid (tall, lean, warmblood-type build)
16.1hh
Glowing Bone Armor (covers shoulders, barrel, hindquarters, head), Vision Manipulation, Memory Reading, Foresight, Immortality, Bone Armor Carvings, Harpy Eagle Companion
there's fire in your blood
This time, Mazikeen is sleeping when the intruder alarm rings through her mind. She rises immediately, though she knows many others in the kingdom could - and would - investigate. At the very least, if she saw someone else already talking to the visitor, she would return to the warm, golden side she leaves now with the press of a kiss.
It has been a slow, happy start to the morning so far, and she carries that warmth in her heart even as she takes to the chilly skies as a white Haast’s eagle. Mist obscures some of the landscape below, but Mazikeen does not have to search long to realize who has come. She recognizes the companion circling in the air. So she releases a loud, piercing call - a greeting and an acknowledgement both to the other, smaller eagle and the bone-armoured stallion she knows must be nearby.
Mazikeen did expect Reave to come back, but she hoped it might be a more social visit than their last encounter. She had once found so much enjoyment in battle - in the challenges it presented and how it forced her to problem solve. Once, she would have considered a fight with a friend to be a social visit. But the love for battle that had inspired her to sign up for the Alliance died the first time she had to fight Gale for her life and woke up without her heart or eyes. It then got hammered into the earth by everything that followed, and not even almost three years of relative peace could save it.
She would fight for Hyaline and her family - her heart was just no longer in it.
Her attention focuses on the ground, and through the branches of the trees and the mist, she can make out the movement of the chestnut stallion. She angles her wings and drops in elevation. Reave is not far in the woods from where they last fought - the trees here are not as dense as they are closer to the cliffs, but there are enough to make the 10-foot wingspan of this form hard to maneuver amongst them. So she becomes a much smaller peregrine falcon, tucking her wings in close as she twists beneath the crowns of the trees and then weaves through the trunks. Reave is a few dozen feet off to her left, and though she wouldn’t mind circling to formulate a plan, she is wary of his vision manipulation abilities and doesn’t want to risk losing track of where he is by delaying too long.
So she banks to the left - flying at the same height as Reave’s head and aiming for as straight of a route as she can manage to build up speed. There aren’t as many branches to contend with at this height, but she still has to compensate for a few ill-placed trees.
It is a similar rush to what she had greeted him with last time. Her movement eats up the distance quickly and disturbs leaves and morning mist alike in her wake. She is thinking of her past battles, the ones she had enjoyed, as she keeps her bright orange eyes locked on her target - Reave’s head. Mazikeen does not miss the changes in him, and though she knows she could turn this into a conversation by forfeiting, that is not the route she takes.
Once there are only a few feet between them, she shapeshifts again. She does not become a bear this time, and instead she is suddenly a giant, pale, saltwater crocodile. This isn’t a graceful form outside of the water, but since she is essentially flinging herself at Reave, she does not need it to be. It had worked well enough in the Alliance when she had fought the grey pegasus, and she is hoping that revisiting those brighter times might make this situation less horrible.
Even though her momentum had been tempered by needing to weave through the trees, she hopes the falling weight of her new body is still enough to knock him off balance or even off his feet. Though the males of this species are more magnificent in size, the approximately 400 pounds that Mazikeen weighs as a crocodile is not insignificant. She does not need anything more than gravity to assist her slightly flailing form as she falls towards the ground, whether there is another body in the way or not. Since she is much larger than she had been as a falcon, she hopes that the distance between them will quickly shrink and give Reave less time to react. And if she hits his body, with some luck, the scales along her underside are enough to protect her from that hard bone armour.
Even if he is not entertained by her choice of opening attack, she sure is. When she’s on the ground again - dry leaves fluttering around into the chilly morning air as they are disturbed - she twists to keep Reave in her sights, and those gigantic crocodile jaws open in something of a smile.
----
@ Reave
Mazikeen's Stats:
Hybrid (quarab with a splash of stockiness from mustang blood)
15hh
Limitless self-manipulation, Phoenix-type immortality, Glowing horns, Glowing markings, Fire aura, Weak self healing
Reave rolls a 3 for damage: Low Damage (small scrapes or bruises, don’t impact movement)
Rune’s cry as he returns the larger eagle’s greeting would be enough for Reave to know he would soon have company even if his companion had not shared Mazikeen’s location with him already. He grins up into the canopy as she swoops downward, the curl of his lips filled with the same reckless energy as his steps. He picks up his pace, his long strides eating the distance as he weaves through trees growing rapidly more sparse.
He doesn’t slow when he sees the falcon through branches. It isn’t until she swoops in for her attack that he offers any reaction beyond the grin on his lips. Though they have only had one fight between them, he recognizes her strategy from their first confrontation. Not terribly original, but then, it doesn’t need to be if it’s effective.
It seems Reave isn’t feeling terribly original either. Even as his feet skid over the damp earth in a hasty halt, he lashes out at her sight in an attempt to throw her off. He doesn’t try for finesse this time around, instead targeting her pupils and willing them to expand. It requires far less focus on his part than creating a whole new image, but if successful, the sudden influx of light might not only blind her, but prove painful to boot.
It’s certainly not kind of him, but he has never been a kind man.
When he withdraws, he has only moments to duck from the flailing limbs of the enormous crocodile she had shifted into. His abrupt halt and ducking head appears to have thrown off her aim enough that, though she catches him across his crest with a wild whip of her scaled tail, he is left with little more than a mild thrumming along the flesh behind his ears. It would undoubtedly bruise, but that is a worry for another time.
The moment he hears her flop to the ground, he lurches in the direction of the sound. Due to his abrupt stop, the bulk of her flailing weight had probably been a little more in front of him than she intended. He hopes that means he does not have much distance to cover between them as he launches into his own counterstrike. He also hopes he had blinded her enough she wouldn’t be able to blink it away in time to see him coming.
Though wary of Mazikeen’s crocodilian teeth, he doesn’t allow it to stop him from lifting his forehand from the ground and driving his weight towards the center of her long, flat body with as much force as he could muster. Her 400 pounds of weight might have done some serious damage if she had caught him on the head as she intended when she fell towards him, but it wouldn’t be nearly so advantageous beneath the almost 1200 pounds of flesh weighed down by heavy armor he brings to bear. Or, well, perhaps not quite 1200 pounds, but even the roughly 60% of his weight that he carries in his forehand is not an insignificant amount.
Unwilling to risk her teeth or claws, regardless of whether she shifted into another form or not, Reave retreats as swiftly as he attacks, keeping his gaze focused and wary. He has little enough in the way of defense against her multitude of forms that he would need every ounce of wit he could muster to counter them. He is too aware that he is not nearly the fighter she is, but one thing he does not lack is pure stubborn determination.
@ Mazikeen
@ Officials
Mazikeen rolls an 8 for damage: Moderate Damage (open wounds or significant bruising, will impede movement)
there's fire in your blood
Mazikeen had expected Reave's first attack to be used today, but that doesn't mean it is any less infuriating. The sensation of someone messing with her eyesight is so familiar to her now - not just from Reave but from other members of his damnable family. It aggravates her enough that she wishes she had left the scar tissue covering them after Ryatah had healed her. Losing her eyes might be worth the things she would miss seeing - like the faces of those she loves and the first hint of sunshine when it rises above the mountains - but it might just be worth it to avoid the familiarity of this violation.
Should she claw them out herself now, just to rob Reave of the opportunity?
It is more tempting than it should be, but she takes a less dramatic approach - changing her eyes from those of a falcon to those of a horse to those of a wolf and then a mountain lion. These alterations in the structure of her eyes lessen the effects of Reave's attack. However, she still gets a headache - but it is hard to be sure whether that is from the influx of light through her pupils, the concentration it takes to change such a small part of her so often, or the significance of her aggravation. Likely a combination of all three, and the headache helps full her anger either way. For the first time in a long time, bright markings appear across her scaled back as she lands in the dirt as a crocodile with dragon eyes. As the sun continues to rise, slowly causing the morning mist to dissipate, the firelight of her glow is less apparent - less of a glaring warning signal - as it competes with the streaks of light coming through the branches of the trees.
The sunlight shows other things that have changed about Reave, like the carvings on his bone armour, but she does not have a chance to notice or remark on this just yet.
Her anger distracts her from doing what she should - namely, getting out of striking distance. Reave rises up, and though Mazikeen tries to focus enough to change herself into stone, she is too slow at that particular trick. She had managed it while fighting with Gale, but this fight simply does not carry the same weight. Though she is annoyed now, she had been blind with fury and grief as she had wrestled with that demon near the bleeding corpses of their children.
So right now, with her claws digging into soil made rich by decaying leaves, she cannot conjure a protective form of stone. She manages only to shift her weight away enough that when Reave's hooves come down on her glowing back, they strike to the left of her spine and bruise the ribs there - knocking the wind out of her.
Her ability to self-heal has always been slow to act, especially when she is angry - as though it requires a calm heart to actually do the job it should. At this moment, there is little relief provided as she involuntarily grunts at the impact. She knows that bruised ribs will make both breathing and moving painful, but pain has rarely deterred Mazikeen from action unless it belongs to someone else. If anything, it helps focus her on the present a little more.
Reave's strike caused the air to rush out of her, and she knows the bruises will make movement hard, so as she inhales an agonizing breath, Mazikeen does what she knows best - she changes her form. Like the falcon to the crocodile, Mazikeen chooses her next shape based on something that she hopes will eliminate the space between her and Reave quickly. So, where there was a low-lying crocodile, there is now a Thunderbird - crackling with electricity. Mazikeen pushes herself to the absolute limits of the size she can take without draining the energy she will need to finish this fight (making her now just over half the size of a bus). A larger form means more prominent ribs, and her body protests against changing shape with an injury - a cry of pain erupts from her as she grows and twists. Moving the wing on her left side causes her vision to grow spotty with the pain, but she flares them both out anyway. Her right wing cannot extend out very far because of a few trees in the way, the feathers catching on twigs and her large shoulder even snaps a small branch as it pushes against it. But Reave had been on her left. So, even though that is the one that hurts the most to move, she stretches it out as she grows into this new shape and hopes to catch him with it on his retreat. As a foal, Mazikeen had run afoul of a swan and knows that wings can pack a bruising blow and these particular feathers also have the ability to produce a small electric shock (as she once discovered by accident). So hopefully, through the simple act of significantly growing in size where she stood and stretching out her wings, Mazikeen can avoid moving her bruised body as much as possible and still have an effective attack.
Her giant beaked head twists around as well, intent on keeping Reave in her sights even though she knows she cannot truly trust what she sees.
Reave rolls an 8 for damage: Moderate Damage (open wounds or significant bruising, will impede movement)
Though he is hardly an expert warrior, the speed at which things occur in the midst of battle has been proving both frustrating and savagely enjoyable. He had struck at her sight to defend himself against her initial attack, but she appears to have anticipated him as much as he anticipated her. Her rapidly shifting sight is enough to stymie him at least partially, causing him to pull back before his continued attempts to alter her sight drains him of too much energy. He has no time to dwell on it however.
Not if he wants to hold his own against her swift retaliation.
He doesn’t even have the time to feel the satisfaction of landing a solid blow against her. She is already shifting, despite the pain he suspects she must be feeling, by the time he swings to his right and begins his retreat into the trees. Her form continues to grow, feathers sprouting and wings flaring as she rapidly consumes the space with her bulk. Reave cannot seem to escape fast enough, but as his face brushes past a low-hanging branch, he jerks his head back and snags it in his teeth as he moves by.
His forward momentum pulls the branch roughly from his mouth, causing it to snap sharply back into place. As paltry a defense as it is, he hopes it will be enough to slow her. Her sheer size means that unfortunately there is not nearly as much space between them as he would like. The crackle of electricity and snapping branches is all the warning he receives before her enormous wing wallops him.
He had bared his left side to her fully in his retreat, and though his steps had been swift, his flank is still directly in her line of fire. The impact of her wing packs a surprising punch, causing him to stumble a step, but the electricity turns out to be the true threat. His armor can’t protect him against that. Every feather that touches him sends a shock jolting through him. Leg muscles seizing, Reave let’s loose a grunt of pain. When the electricity fades, his hindquarters sag beneath him, threatening to give out as his muscles continue spasming intermittently.
Though Reave is no stranger to pain, there is something particularly alarming about a force that can cause him to lose control of his own body, however brief it might be. It’s only his stubbornness that keeps him dragging himself forward until his hind legs work properly again instead of locking into place with each ungainly, hopping step. The burning weakness that lingers would not disappear so easily however.
Just as Reave is returning to execute a new attack, Rune dives from the sky with a screech. The large eagle’s wings snap wide as he nears, talons outstretched, aiming for Maze’s face. The bird can’t touch her of course, but he hopes it would distract her as Reave comes up behind her. The bone-armored stallion can’t hide the grimace on his face as he lurches forward with slightly unsteady steps. He desperately wishes he had better offensive abilities because he absolutely does not want to touch those feathers again.
He doesn’t even try for finesse, instead pushing himself forward as quickly as he could in order to use his body as an impromptu battering ram. He’s not sure how much luck he has left, but hopefully enough that whatever electricity she had been able to generate had already been expended into his flank and that her bones are hollow like any birds. A hollowness he also hopes will make them more prone to fracturing beneath his onslaught. Of course, despite having an avian companion, he’s hardly an expert, so everything is pure conjecture based on a plan of attack hastily put together in the spare moments he’s had to think about it.
Rune pulls up sharply just before he would have reached Mazikeen as Reave barrels towards her from the opposite side. Reave wouldn’t be dancing nimbly away from this one, so he can only grit his teeth and hope that she is as weakened as he and unable to retaliate before he can stumble away.
Mazikeen rolls a 6 for damage Moderate Damage (open wounds or significant bruising, will impede movement)
there's fire in your blood
The grunt of pain that she can hear from Reave when her wing connects with him sends a tiny jolt through her heart. She is more annoyed now than angry, and the remaining glowing markings beneath her feathers fade away. Her compassion has always been inconvenient in a fight - so Mazikeen still has to remind herself that being without it had been far worse.
There's worry in her orange eyes as she painfully folds her wings while watching Reave take a few steps with uncooperative hind legs. She had only known the Thunderbird's shock to be minor, so this effect on him troubles her. This guilty feeling inside her should serve as a reminder to stick to elements she knows well, like fire, but she has been enjoying experimenting.
The guilt and small respite from the fight do not last long. Rune screeches and Mazikeen instinctively looks to him as he swoops down. Although she knows that companions cannot touch anyone other than their bonded, it's one thing to know and another thing entirely to have an eagle flying right at your face.
Next comes a cascade of reactions, each so fast on the heels of the other: flinching from Rune, reprimanding herself for getting easily distracted, and then the impact of Reave colliding with her right side just as she is turning her great head to look for him.
Her folded wing takes the brunt of the impact, the muscles and the bones inside. They are larger and slightly sturdier than they would have been if she was a smaller bird. Still, Reave's body is not insignificant - just like her crocodile body had not been compared to his horse bulk - and she is sure there are some fractures, if not outright breaks. Only her experience and instincts keep her eyes from closing and giving injury all her attention - Mazikeen does not intend to make the mistake of getting distracted twice in the same fight.
Because while the pain is undoubtedly distracting, it is also manageable. And she can still remember their last meeting, so she'll take fractures and bruises and even broken bones over the horror of her own dredged-up memories. The physical pain is not sweet, but it is better. Or, at least, it is better until she gets it into her head to shift again. This form in this spot is clearly vulnerable and only so maneuverable. And although she remembers the Thunderbird that had lived in Hyaline, she doesn't recall any of the other tricks associated. Mazikeen wants to be able to move more than just her head and stretch out either her limp left wing or the one on the other side with the bruised ribs.
She thinks instantly of the armour of scales, and her body reacts to these thoughts, shifting quickly like she has done throughout her entire life. One heartbeat and the pain is manageable and the next it is horrifying as bruised and fractured bones try to alter their shape.
This time, Mazikeen's pained cry is loud enough to shock her back to her senses, and she quickly grits her teeth to cut off the sound. She does not know if anyone is close enough to hear, but she will not risk any others getting involved. Did Reave want the entity badly enough that he'd fight through anyone? Would he threaten her young daughters if they came over to investigate?
They were friends once (or maybe they still are, it's hard to tell as they trade injuries), but Reave wasn't the only member of his family to make her laugh and then cause trouble. Gale had too. And Nashua. And Aela. She had spent years carefully rebuilding her ability to trust, and it did not include this set of siblings.
So as the fractured bones in her wing attempt to change shape, Mazikeen's scream is muffled by her closed mouth. Her beak turns into scaled lips that curl backwards with the effort and blinding pain. Her attempts to change her injured wing ultimately fail. It would take too much of her concentration, and she's well aware she'll likely blackout from the agony. That self-healing ability once again missing in action - it had not helped her whenever she fought Gale, and it doesn't help her now. It will only work later when she manages a fitful sleep and calmer heart rate.
When the rest of her is a serpentine dragon, only a foot taller at the shoulder than she is as a horse, only one wing is present. And it is the injured, feathered wing that is folded loosely at her right side. It no longer crackles with electricity, her concentration elsewhere. It is easier to move in this smaller, flexible form. She twists around, attempting to keep Reave on her left and away from her more injured side. Both of her sides are in agony, but she'd prefer to take her chances with the completely draconic left side with its bruised ribs than the one still sporting a wing from her previous shape.
Despite the desire to rest, there is no part of Mazikeen willing to give up. As a dragon, she has breathed fire before, but the un-changed wing gives her another idea. She thinks it will be easier to keep with the same element, even if it is unpredictable and she has little experience wielding it. So when she curls around a tree and opens her mouth - it is a thin torrent of electricity that emerges.
Mazikeen is not sure of her aim, having little practice. After seeing how electricity affected Reave moments ago, she does not want to attempt a direct blow. Therefore, she tilts her jaw upwards and shoots for the trees above them instead - hoping to snap off a branch and encourage the bone-armoured stallion to retreat.
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