like savage horses kept within - 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: like savage horses kept within (/showthread.php?tid=24337) |
||
like savage horses kept within - Mauja - 06-28-2016
i am the vanguard of your destruction
The sun burned behind a cover of stormy clouds, a corona of light blazing through the patchwork gray but failing to cast any shadows. It was a monster locked up, its fangs, the sun rays, kept behind drab bars. Sealed away. Burning in its fury in a cage. (He saw a lion, its mane ablaze, its breath acrid smoke, steam rising from paws pressed hard to a dark rock floor—) But as his wary eye lingered on the pre-storm sky, the air heavy with a promise of rain, he felt a twinge of disappointment. The sun was no mighty, raging lion, no celestial beast trapped far away in limbo, on some days kind, on some days a monster; the sun was the Sun, an equine god and somewhat of a prideful asshole. Reality was cruel, imagination was better, ( Or was it just an offer of distraction, made out of Mauja hoped this wouldn't be the one when they broke. With his long, pale hair in a disarray about his face, strands of it pulled out like a spiky halo, he found what he was looking for. The wavering trees thinned, gave way to a small grassy clearing; it had been grazed down to stubble, interspersed with a few rocks and roots, but it was mostly solid ground. Immortal or not, Mauja didn't fancy getting to know what it felt like to actually break your bones. Pausing there, ears flattened against the low roar of the storm, he turned to look at Sacre. The red markings on his face and flank were muted to near-gray despite the fact that it was only late afternoon, but the amassing clouds had darkened the sun even further. You picked one hell of a day to ask me for a fight. "Violence is evil," he said over the noise of the storm, blue eyes narrowing against the press of air. "I wish I could call it simply evil, but sometimes, the evil of the world is greater than the evil of violence in and of itself, and violence then becomes a necessary evil. And until the day those who would seek to take what is not theirs, those who would seek to harm others intentionally, are gone, violence is a thing we must know. Do not enjoy it. Do not relish in hurting someone else. If you must be proud, be proud over the strength of your body and the control you exercise over yourself; do not be proud in the blood you draw from another's veins. Use what you know, do what you can do, to defend others, those who become the prey of the greater evil." His ears were flat to his neck, hiding from the storm, and he looked ahead again, something sad in his eyes. How much to say? How much to let Sacre figure out for himself? Just because someone was under attack, it didn't meant they were wronged—much as Mauja detested acts of revenge, they happened, and sometimes, they were emotionally justified, but.. what did revenge fix, honestly? Nothing. "The most difficult thing is to listen to your enemies, instead of judge them," he said quietly, soft muzzle brushing against the buckles of the leather bag until it fell to the short-cropped grass. A moment later, the crystal staff tumbled down beside it. His heart trembled, as it always did, when he grasped the leather between his worn teeth and lifted it. It still weighed almost nothing, and yet it meant so much, and with a gentleness he couldn't erase from his movements he tucked it in between the roots of a sturdy pine. In silence he retraced the few paces he'd gone, and picked up the staff. It was colder, harsher on the teeth, heavier on his jaws—impractical, as he was not back at full strength. He'd probably throw it away before the fight was over. He moved into the clearing, and turned to face Sacre. Bracing for the storm. [ 0/3 || 800 words || @Sacre ] BOMBARDA MAXIMA RE: like savage horses kept within - Sacre - 06-29-2016
RE: like savage horses kept within - Mauja - 07-01-2016
i am the vanguard of your destruction
“Have you ever enjoyed it? Drawing blood that is.” Lips twitched humorlessly as the wind threw his forelock about his face, white hair snapping before his eyes. And what do you say to that? When you have lived your entire life a warrior, mercenary, and witch-hunter (executioner), when you have been fueled by nothing but pure, raw hatred, when you have been at the forefront of your own crusade— "Yes," he simply responded, the small word nearly lost to the low roar of the world, ocean and storm, the thunder of his own heartbeat. Yes, I was once something else than what I am now. If your horn was your pride, your superiority, your advantage, was not stabbing someone to death the ultimate proof of how much better you were..? “Teach me,” the fox-boy said as Mauja tucked away that little piece of his heart, a leather satchel with a few odds and ends d'Artagnan had left him. His ears angled back as his muzzle brushed over the worn leather, heart treacherously imagining it could still catch the faint whiff of his scent (—but it was long gone). Sacre kept blurting out his reason—his justification, all wild youth and innocence, his dark locks tangling in the wind. "Perhaps," Mauja simply breathed, before his teeth latched onto the crystal length and he left all those things behind him: words, reasons, lectures, visions. All he took with him to the center of their arena was pain. (It blossomed underneath his skin like a flower, a wave of heat, something surging up from the lowest, darkest corners of his heart; a wound too deep to have healed yet.) The empty space where so much love had been. It didn't matter where he stood (what he did), because there was no light to blaze into his eyes (because he's not coming back). It didn't matter which way he turned, for the fickle wind threw the forelock into his eyes anyway. His jaw clenched around the staff. At least he was not kept waiting; Sacre billowed out of the deeper darkness, muscle rippling under a fine, relatively unscarred coat. There was no light to highlight the contours of his body, and with his storm-whipped mane he seemed oddly ethereal, as if he wasn't quite of this world— It surprised him each time, how much he just wanted to stand still and take a beating. But what would that teach? Defeat? There was no glory in martyrdom, nothing for Sacre to learn if he didn't fight back—so he broke the ice, started to swing away to the right, but it was a little too slow, a little too late. Dark hooves collided with his retreating haunch, smacking solidly into his left thigh; and there was that brief, sweet sweet moment in between the impact of the pain, less than half a second when it simply reverberated deep into his body, pressure and— —pain. Like a fire lit beneath his skin a deep ache spread within, and—he blinked rapidly as he began to throw his head to the right, fighting down tears he had no business shedding (—but it hurt, like he was brittle, had turned to glass over the years). The storm roared around his head as he swung the length of the crystal stick towards Sacre's hocks, hoping to give the nearest one (—his right?) a good smack from behind. Because if there was one thing Sacre had on him, it would be speed and agility, so if there was one thing he could do to bring him down a notch... [ 1/3 || 596 words || @Sacre ] PETRIFICUS TOTALUS this sucked lmao RE: like savage horses kept within - Sacre - 07-22-2016
RE: like savage horses kept within - Mauja - 08-07-2016
i am the vanguard of your destruction
The butt end of the long staff swung through the charged air; it whispered, softly, quietly, the first tentative hum of a battle hymn. But his blood did not answer. There was no slow, insidious crescendo of a violent song in his veins—only silence as the crystal staff rattled against a black hock, sending a tremor down its length and into his mouth. Not even the painful wrench on his jaws, the grind of quartz against his teeth and tongue, evoked much of a response in him; it wasn't that he was numb, so much as disinterested. With a distasteful grimace he let the weapon tumble from his mouth. He didn't even bother to press his advantage as Sacre stumbled away into the storm-gray shadows ahead of him, merely rolled his tongue and poked the sharp spot in the corner of his mouth where the sensitive skin had been snagged by crystal. It sent a jolt of pain through him, a taste of blood, and he took a moment to offer the staff a sour look. To be completely fair, Mauja wasn't used to hitting things with a staff, so it wasn't all that strange that the impact had not only dislodged the weapon from his mouth, but also hurt it. Whatever, he thought with a grunt and a flick of his tail, trying to remember what the fuck he was doing, why he was there at all, how to care— Why was he doing this? Time and again, why did he do this? Ghosts chased themselves across his piercing blue eyes as he glanced at the approaching kitsune, the smell of blood rank in his sensitive nose. He did this because he cared, right? Because he wanted to help Sacre? Because he wanted to make his body remember the fine, precise dance of war, to better protect his homeland should the armies come for it again? Noble, good intentions—so why couldn't he make himself move? Why couldn't he ignite, get out of the fucking way, give it his best? The harsh winds whipped tears into his narrowed eyes, and with a disdain whose source he could not name Mauja moved away from the bounding many-tailed fox. His left thigh protested, but the flare of pain felt muted and distant, as if it wasn't quite his; he wobbled on the first step, limped noticeably on the second, and grunted as the sparking whip licked his hide with a faint touch. A jolt went through him, ears briefly perking forward before flattening again. Ouch. He was glad he hadn't been closer to her when she struck. He stopped moving, locked in place, left hind hoof resting on its tip to ease the muscle. "What," he began to say as Sacre turned, blood marring his hock where some sharp point on the staff must've snagged the skin, "am I doing?" Teeth grabbed the skin on his right shoulder, pinched nerves tight, and he just stood there, feeling it throbthrobthrob in time with his haunch. The pain spiked each time his heart beat. "I'm not very good at this, am I?" he offered whimsically, a little blood-mixed saliva pooled in one corner of his mouth. And still, he was just standing there with a piece of his skin painfully stuck between Sacre's teeth, not even able to feel any ounce of pride that the black's turn had, indeed, seemed slower than previous. So his plan had worked. So what? Oh, hey, it's storming, great day to stand around getting bitten— The worst of it? He was letting Sacre down. He was supposed to teach him something, and if one thing was true, it was this: your enemy didn't stand around and wait for you to beat the everliving shit out of them. There were some warnings before he moved, though; he planted his left hind hoof back in the grass, soaking up the pain, and his gaze hardened. Then, he struck, quick and controlled like a viper; he threw his head to the right, angled it down, aiming to bury the tip—and only the tip—in Sacre's exposed neck. [ 2/3 || 689 words || @Sacre ] RE: like savage horses kept within - Blu - 09-03-2016 Time limit exceeded. Sacre defaults to Mauja. Mauja earns 0.5 VP. |