He knew the warrior would return to the ground. As far as Gaucho was aware Meg had no magic of her own, and no companion. Her attacks could not deal the same damage as his could at a greater range. Thus he did not need to follow her into the sky: she would either wear herself out, flitting about solo, or she would grow bored and return to the ground. Whichever it was, the dun could be patient. One of the first rules Meg needed to learn if she was to increase her warrior-prowess, was never to let your opponent dictate the battle.
Always be in control.
Even without his sight, Gaucho had never lost control of this battle. He wouldn't start now.
Her body flitted in front of the sun, but even that wasn't the best indicator of where she was. She was too high above him, and her shadow dispersed across the grasses making it impossible to discern where she actually flew. Through Mara's gaze he watched her soaring, watched the pained beating of her wings where his flames had touched her. He hadn't wanted to damage her body too badly - should the murderer show themselves Gaucho needed all of his warriors to be ready - but he couldn't but help to force Meg to learn this one very powerful lesson: know your opponent.
If she was naive enough to think that he would go easy on her, she was wrong. He wouldn't aim to kill or permanently damage, but that was not the same as going easy. She had been foolish enough to come straight at him once before, and had been burned.
Was she really so foolish as to do it again?
The image of her through Mara's eyes as well as the darkening and sharpening of her shadow upon the grass made it clear that she was landing in front of him, similar to the move she had done only moments ago. Fire blossomed on his wings - growing brighter and hotter - as the thought of burning her in precisely the same way flooded his mind. But no ... he would show her that he had more than fire up his sleeves.
As her hooves touched the ground and began to pivot, Gaucho's right leg raised. It slammed down almost instantly, rattling and rocking the ground upon which they stood. The dun hoped that it would offset her balance, causing whatever she was about to do to fail.
Whether it worked, or whether her attack was simply ill-timed or just weak, Gaucho didn't know. He felt her hooves slam into his chest, adding semi-circles of dirt and dust to the blue stripes that already lingered across his brown skin. Immediately his ears pinned backwards as a grunt of pain was shoved violently from his lips. His left side - already sore and battered from her first attack screamed out, radiating pain seemingly across his entire left side, although his mind told him this was not true. The injury was localized to his left shoulder and across his chest, even if it didn't feel that way.
Mentally biting through the pain Gaucho lunged forward. He would not let his agile warrior escape to the skies again - not when she was so close. He didn't need Mara's vision to tell him that she was in front of him - her hooves and the movement of the grasses did that all on their own. The Wildfire surged forward and to his left - wanting any collision between he and the darker mare to be on his right side which was far less battered than his left. He hoped to collide with her left thigh muscle with his shoulder, potentially dragging his spikes along the muscle if he could. At the same time his oddly white teeth snapped at what appeared to only be air, although he hoped to find the skin of her wither or even her left wing.
Although Mara would not bite the pretty warrior for fear of causing lasting damage to her nervous system, she did try and distract her. The steel coloured snake's jaws opened wide as she hissed, and hissed, and hissed. Venom dripped from her fangs as a sound like sandpaper came tearing out of her jaws. Should the mare turn backwards to look upon her attack, hopefully the sight of the reptile within Gaucho's antlers would be the first sight she saw. Enough to perhaps deter her from retaliating.
Timeline: Regular
WC: 742
Attack: 3.3
Summary: Gaucho uses war stomp once Meg lands to try and lessen her attack or throw her off. Her hooves squarely hit his chest. As they pull away he lunges forward and to the left, trying to ram his shoulder into her left thigh, and he bites at her wither/left wing area while Mara hisses trying to be intimidating.
Teaching notes:
In its forging, a sword must be plunged into fire repeatedly to make it strong. It seems that fate conspired to make Meg into a sword. In Helovia, she had encountered flames that burned both inside and out, ones that pained and ones that fortified. ahhhhhhhhh I loved this!!
A warrior, she reminded herself could not hesitate. - SO MANY GOOD LINES. Seriously. I could quote so many things from this. You 100% nailed the atmosphere and emotion in this post. I really loved it.
- I worry about her use of rank magic. It comes across as inappropriate to me (we'll see what the judge thinks), but you are not allowed to go back and re-write things that you've already written. So last post when you attacked you finished your post with Meg flying into the air - so this part of the spar has already been written. She didn't use her magic then, so she can't use it now. It would almost be like her changing what she did completely, and say, attacking him on the ground instead of flying into the air. You really have to be careful about that. This is part of the reason why you don't want to leave blank space in a spar, because you can't go back and respond. I think it would have been perfect if she had just flown through the fire, mentally freaked out about it, and attacked as you already wrote that she did.
- Okay. I know this is a SUPER hard lesson to learn, but I think you did it again :p Imagine this (if I threw realism to the wind), and had Gaucho fly after her as fast as he could, sending his fire-animals at her. By what you've written, she lands and then bucks; but if I'm in the air, what are you doing on the ground? If I throw fire at you, where have you left yourself room to respond? That's what's so hard about flying battles, it really really is. Here's how I would have written it: "Although Meg assumed Gaucho would remain grounded due to the injury on his wing, the warrior wouldn't count on it. As she dove she kept her eyes peeled on the Sultan's bulk, ready to adjust her movements should he shown signs of movement or of taking to the air. If he did so, her attack would be to ram her shoulder into his. Also if he were truly grounded, she would try and ...." This leaves LOTS of room for you to adjust. You're almost not even writing the actual attack, or at least, you're only writing up to the second that her body hits his, and leaving everything else open.
All in all this post was EXCELLENT. Don't worry too much about the things I mentioned - You'll get the hang of it. It's a combination of knowing what types of attacks are open to your character (if you go back and read old spars [I recommend Booms/Kri] you'll get a lot of ideas. At least, that really helped me when I was starting. But you're nailing all the other important things - emotion, prose, readability, etc. Realism is only out of 5 points so don't fret too much!
The ending of this was SUPERB. You didn't write too far after your attack.
.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
⇒
[JUDGED] The same heart beats | Meg
