[JUDGED] Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Printable Version +- HELOVIA || The Way to the Sun (http://helovia.com) +-- Forum: Out of Character (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Archives (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11) +---- Forum: Battle Archives (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=64) +---- Thread: [JUDGED] Birdsong battles [open training spar] (/showthread.php?tid=16529) |
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Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Ophelia - 12-02-2014
RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Mauja - 12-04-2014
i am the vanguard of your destruction
[ couldn't resist, mate... ] Break every bone I have That will not change a single thing... They had not broken his bones; they had broken his soul. "They". Interchangeable with he—the one who had manage to lose everything, simply by not daring to hold on. He had let them go, because he hadn't known how not to. And if he blamed the world, old Sparkplug, or something else.. well. If you always pretend nothing's wrong, how will you ever change? He sighed softly as he wove through the unfamiliar terrain. It didn't matter how many excuses he made, or how much he tried to pinpoint when he'd lost sight of the joy in living, or.. anything, really. The only thing that mattered was what he'd not done about it. What he hadn't dared to do. Because wasn't that exactly what had gone through his head, before he left Helovia again? "Oh I can't go north because the one I'm looking for might actually be there and then I have to face myself and what I feel and all these things and then go to the Edge and potentially get killed by a bunch of moronic hypocrites who can't see further than they piss." Mauja snorted, cautiously rounding some unknown structure. He didn't know what it was. Didn't care. As long as it didn't bite him it could stand there for all he cared. All the same, blue eyes watched it warily as he slid past, wondering where the hell he'd ended up. He'd gone south again, down from the frigid north and into the arms of gentle spring—but why, he wasn't quite sure. Wasn't the north Ophelia's place of desolation, for wandering and thinking, the refuge she went to when things were too heavy on her mind? So wouldn't that be the logical place to look for her? Then why had he left those vast, empty spaces again? No matter how much he wrestled with himself, he could never figure out if he was running again, or if it truly seemed more likely someone down south would know of her whereabouts. Maybe she was dead. The thought cut through his mind like a knife, to the point where he actually stopped dead in his tracks, nostrils wide and eyes blank. No.. she couldn't be. He—he wouldn't let her be dead. As if he could do anything about it. Hadn't seen her for years. How many wolves had he saved her from? Blinking in the sunlight, Mauja peered about himself. Where the hell was he, anyway? He'd walked into the sky, and.. the more rational part of his mind made a sour face and turned away. It was way too trippy. Or depressing. Maybe he had died. On silent wings the owls glided ahead. If he had bothered to feel, or to ask, he would have sensed how suppressed Diego's thoughts were, urged outwards and blocked by Irma, and the vague, ticking anxiety mingling with her blood. But he didn't. Just trudged on, watching the odd surroundings with wary, absent-minded interest, until his frosty hooves found a circle of sand and his eyes a creature clad in the palest of whites, with locks dipped in cold blood. A creature as fleeting as a deer and as regal as a lion—fierce and dangerous, lost, and so utterly, fundamentally beautiful. With a look of stunned awe on his face Mauja stood where he was, haphazard and awkward, heart and mind spinning frantically as the owls settled on the wooden railing at the arena's edge— "Ophelia," he whispered, to himself, just a hushed breath escaping dark lips. After all this time.. after all these years... Her perfect image grew blurred, and he blinked furiously trying to clear his eyes, but it didn't help. It wouldn't go away. It couldn't go away, not with the way his heart was wanting to burst out of his chest. So he simply stood there, crying softly in the sunlight, and drew a shuddering breath in. He knew where they were. He could feel it in the sand, in the space, in the faded scent of adrenaline and blood. "Will you dance with me?" he asked her softly, neck arching as he took a single step forward, graceful as a dancer. [ 0/3, @[Ophelia]. ] RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Ophelia - 12-12-2014
RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Mauja - 12-15-2014
i am the vanguard of your destruction
What the hell was he doing. His own fractured existence was forgotten, broken down and pushed aside by the overwhelming nearness of her presence. His world shattered like glass, a thousand tiny fragments raining down in a hail of prismatic colors—in that moment, everything lost its meaning. Even the beating of his frail heart was consumed by her radiance, every thought, every feeling but that aching sense of adoration, simply obliterated. Words fled the desolation of his mind. Mauja, idiot that he was, had not set a further goal—had simply pinned everything on seeing her again. The gears stopped turning. He couldn't—didn't want to—comprehend what he saw, the cracks lining his world, and the rampant darkness threatening to come pouring through. It was all in the details, in the small things he could barely focus on, the dull look in her eyes and the uneven, jarred gait. The way she looked older, somehow, more tired and tested, the scars and bruises on her soul reflected through her eyes. He knew a moment's bitter anger. Then it was gone, and he simply felt exhausted. Had he expected anything but this? Had he, truly, after all he was supposed to have learned, thought that he'd be greeted with much the same enthusiasm she used to show in those days before he had vanished? Had he thought whatever bitter marks he'd left upon her perfect memories would've been washed away by laying eyes on his pathetic, bedraggled corpse again? Had he, truly, thought that she would save him? When you're starving, hope is all you can eat. His eyes were leaking, but it wasn't enough—he wanted his skin to split open in mockery of a shared dream, and for blood to well out of the cracks instead of gilt light. His eyes alone could not weep enough for times lost and dreams broken by that soulless gaze. Her horn pointed at his heart, the heart he wondered how it still beat, but he could not remember how to move, or find a reason why. He had seen her again, and now she thundered towards him with a promise of pain to be repaid. He had seen her again, and seen how his presence dimmed her glow, and tore something in her composure apart—he had seen what he brought with him. Pain and suffering. So let it end here. White lids closed over blue eyes, and hid his look of pained adoration from sight. Black wings spread from the mess of his heart, and his soul teetered upon the brink of existence, waiting to take flight. He was over. He was done. A thread of disappointment needled itself through his thoughts, a single note echoing in the stillness of his acceptance—a whisper, not a word, a touch that was not a touch and yet a touch all the same. It traveled along the darkened edges of his mind, and she knew him too well, she understood, so she could not be angry, she could not feel betrayed, but yes—she was disappointed. His resignation was not theirs. He could not let his selfishness be the death of them. So his black wings folded again, and his eyes snapped open almost as soon as they had shut. That he was the one who had started this was irrelevant, and gods, what had he been thinking? He didn't want to hurt her, never had, never wanted to, but— He found his haunches, found his feet, all four of them, and tore right with all the gracelessness of a startled animal. The soft sand shuffled and whispered beneath him, drowned out for a moment by the gasp torn out of his throat; fire, he remembered fire, this feeling of flesh ripping and blood pearling against snow-white fur, and how in the blinding moment of impact he could not feel where he was hit. The nerves of his left shoulder screamed, a jagged red line drawn across the flatness of the bone. Black nostrils opened and closed, faster now with the adrenaline of pain spiking his blood. Perhaps it was not a matter of hurting her. His tired mind flailed to grasp the logic as he reversed on his haunches. Perhaps it was a matter of proving.. proving.. what she meant to him? By hounding her in battle? It didn't add up. Heedless of the devastation she could wreck with her hindlegs he thundered after her, mind blank, intention nothing but to simply run into her. In a moment's reversal of roles he had become the hunter, but there was no true love for the chase in him: just a vague, uneasy sensation, a burning notion that he had something to do—prove—here. [ 793 words, 1/3, @[Ophelia] ] Summary: skitters right to avoid being speared, taking the hit across his left shoulder. turns upon his haunches to try and ram her from behind. Music: Audiomachine - The Truth Dramatic Mau is dramatic. RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Ophelia - 12-15-2014
RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Mauja - 12-18-2014
i am the vanguard of your destruction
Movement forced blood through broken veins, pushed it to the surface of his skin—it was a macabre smile painted across his shoulder, a thin-lipped mouth moving silently in synch with the muscles underneath. The air kissed it, bitterly. Pain tore at his frayed nerves as his body lurched forward, hammering the forgiving sand mercilessly. He beat it, time and again, and it simply shrugged, and didn't let him down. Why wasn't more of the world like sand. His blurred vision of this white angel disappeared, lost in the blue sky as he threw his head up while she fell, delicate and slender form hitting the dirt with a thud. It reverberated through his mind, a noise that made his bones tremble, and it just felt wrong. He wasn't here to put her down, he was.. he was here.. he was here because he had a heart... And it hammered in his chest, made him feel weak at the knees as he backpedaled. Fresh tears spilled from his eyes, both shoulders aching, one dull from impact, one jagged and obnoxious; demanding. But he had no time for them, except to savor that he was cracking open—he only had eyes for her, his mind tearing itself between past and present much like hers. He had seen this before. He had been through this before, in another dream, with another woman, one of soft blackness and deceit as profound as his. They had charged with an army, forced themselves through enemy lines, and with each step that they came closer to victory his heart had rebelled. For he had known what lain behind their protection, he had known who they had been sent to kill. The only difference was that he was standing still, now—and the dragon's mouth that opened wide against his face did not cover the entire sky, but for all that he cared, it might as well. Silver jaws and sharp, sterling fangs glittered in the sunlight as the porcelain doll they protected rose. Mauja had never been one to like pain, but now he wanted it. His eyes closed again. It matched his heart. Winter itself bit him in the face, froze his tears and drove daggers into his flesh—his skin crawled, muscles jerking, a jolt driving itself all the way into his chest. It was not fire. He was almost disappointed. When he opened his eyes again, she was lunging like a wolf. He let her. He deserved it. He wasn't here to beat her up, he wasn't here to defeat her, he was here simply because he'd happened to walk upon her and because the easiest way to do something had been to abuse where they were. If he'd stopped to think about it, he wouldn't have said it. And now, he was paying for it, tasting it in the pinched skin on his left shoulder and the tug against the wound's half-crusted edges. His head went up again, eyes rolling back; gods, his entire head ached, he felt like he'd been battered against a wall, but at least he felt something. For once, he relished the pain, drank it in like sunshine and truth, and—hesitantly—swallowed the bitter dregs that came afterwards, with sanity and thought. Once, he had allowed Voodoo to use him as a beating post. Now, he was doing it again—putting himself above and beyond the rules of the combat, winning by not committing, because if he didn't commit, he couldn't lose, right? And that was his problem. He never committed to anything. Always had one foot out the door. Always ready to run. Slipping out the back quietly. And now, he had done it too many times—would she ever again trust him? Until either of them died, and they knew the truth of his loyalty? Was he forcing her to live like he had? Always doubting? Something in him gave way, doors closed and others opened. With a strangled yell he threw his head towards hers, eyes pinched shut as he braced for impact—it didn't matter with what part of his skull he hit her or where it landed, it didn't matter at all, because the only thing that mattered was the power building in his soul. Something, something was on the verge of happening, a roaring blackness threatening to swallow him, and in the disintegrating chaos of his mind a river of flame swept forth. It burned against the darkness, it burned against the hot tears of shame and guilt, and it burned against all the pain—it burned in the shape of a swan, still locked up in his chest. Upon the fence the owls sat, eyes unblinking. Neither of them moved. This was, after all, not their fight. [ 797 words, 2/3, @[Ophelia]. ] Summary: takes the dragon's breath full against the face and Ophelia bites his left shoulder, not too far from the wound. he then tries to bash his head against hers, with very little aim. Music: E.S. Posthumus - Ebla Edit, with permission from Aud-- This was part of what I had to cut out of the post when trimming it down to below 800, but I just.. want to put it here, to keep it somewhere. "If he'd stopped to think about it, he wouldn't have said it, wouldn't have done it, but he'd always wanted to—secretly his mind had painted images of her thinner body and her deer-like grace, and wondered how fierce the lion in her soul was, how deceptive her skin." RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Ophelia - 12-20-2014
RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Mauja - 12-22-2014
i am the vanguard of your destruction
He was no phoenix: he'd been burned a long time ago, but he had not risen from the gray swirl of ashes. There had been no rebirth for him, no new life in the colorless dawn—Mauja was as hollow as a burnt-out husk, blackened bones and dry veins. The spaces in his heart, the ones that ought to be full of love and life and joy, were barren, desolate, empty of all but fleeting moments of pain. He didn't weep for her. He felt no pity for her (guilt, shame, but no pity—her life was not his to judge). He wept for himself. He wept for broken wings and hollow hearts. He wept because she was beautiful, lissome and dangerous all at once. Maybe, just maybe, he wept for them. The nerves of his head had begun to scream, and it had very little to do with the fact that he'd bashed his skull against her shoulder. No, it was the slow, creeping agony of thawing, of hot blood chasing the biting chill away—sweeping tendrils of fire, matching the odd burning in his soul. Flame had never been his. What was it doing now, unfurling inside of him? He had no time to pause and analyze, but he wanted to, and in that moment she fled from him. Blue eyes slid open to the unforgiving sunlight, glittered upon droplets of perfect red. She was bleeding. The world slowed. It ground to an agonizing halt, his breath full of the smoke of guilt; his anger began to burn again, struggled to escape his throat, but he choked on it again. She was bleeding, a tiny gash like a mimicry of the stinging one slapped across his own shoulder, and he knew without even the owls' input that red coated the sharp tip of his horn. Even his memory filled in with the moment's tug against the muscles of his neck, the telltale sensation of hitting flesh, even if just briefly. She was bleeding and it was his fault. Commit. Because after all, he was bleeding too, and that was her doing. He was past believing that trading eyes for eyes solved anything, and whatever strange thing smoldered in his soul certainly wasn't aimed at her, but if he couldn't rise to this challenge.. if he could not be a worthy opponent.. he would've failed her as profoundly as he had by disappearing. So Mauja, the fell flame, turned to face her. She broke his heart a thousand times over simply by existing, and laying eyes upon her made him want to shatter—for a moment it flashed across his face again, that look of pain and worship, but he swallowed it. Steeled himself. Frozen tears coated his cheeks but no new ones blurred his vision, and the blue of his eyes was as emotionless as iron. She broke his heart again with the emptiness of her gaze. And then she was running, the sand as morbidly cheerful in helping her reach him as it was the other way around, and he planted all four feet firmly. He was done with running and he was done with.. with.. with standing around and being beat up? Yeah, right. Why did he have to give up before he'd even tried? It was getting old. He fell into the darkness. He fell into the flames. He let go, and the burning swan reached out, swept him up in its wings and spread them wide against the blue sky; his soul was free-falling again, through a golden blaze, the world spinning around him in a sickening blur. As the flaming bird streaked out from his chest it seared his skin, singed his long hair and blackened his pale fur—long wings beat against the spring air as it sped away next to them. Somewhere in the confusing haze of the unfamiliarity of the power, and the agony which had spawned it, he felt a tug at his senses, another lash across his shoulder. The scent of fresh blood overpowered the one of old, and he shifted upon the forgiving ground, trying to curve away so that her horn would not continue along its path and into the mess of his ribs or the crook of his hip, and something in him outright died from the proximity. She was too near. She was near at all. She was alive. She was broken and wounded but there was a wolf in her and he, he.. he tried to not wish about the past, tried to instead think of the future. If they even had one. Black lips peeled back from blunt teeth, and in a desperate attempt to hold on to her he lashed out, seeking to latch onto her spine. Don't leave me. Please. [ 800 words, 3/3, @[Ophelia]. ] Summary: as she hits him, a burning swan spawns by his chest and streaks away, probably rather close to her. he takes her horn across his shoulder and curves away to avoid further damage, and then tries to bite her topline. On another note, it's really hard to fit all the words I need into 800 ;~; I want to bake more emotion and technical stuff relating to his injuries in but there is not enough space! -flailflail- Music: Kent - Ingenting RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Ophelia - 12-23-2014
RE: Birdsong battles [open training spar] - Official - 12-31-2014 By my verdict: MAUJA is the winner!
OPHELIA Realism [+3.5] :: There was little consideration of the surroundings or breed differences, but I realize that this was an emotional fight more than a technical one. Emotion [+3] :: You hit me right in the feels straight from the beginning and never stopped. Awesome! Prose [+3.5] :: A couple extra commas here and there, for example: The sound of his hooves on the sand was a soft thud, and Tinek, circled overhead, spying the grouchy Irma and now another owl, a darker brown one. Readability [+3] :: No comments or concerns Finally tally: 30+(13*2)= 56HP *******************************************
MAUJA Realism [+3] :: There was little consideration of the surroundings or breed differences, but I realize that this was an emotional fight more than a technical one. :: I would have liked more mention of how his injuries were affecting him. Emotion [+3] :: I really connected with Mauja. Every word drew me into what he was feeling and why he was doing what he was doing through the entire fight. Great! Prose [+4] :: Obviously well-edited. Great job! Readability [+3] :: No comments or concerns. Finally tally: 40.5+(13*3)= 66.5HP |