the Rift


i'll take a hamburger; hold the lawsuit [Hotaru]

Oxy the Addict Posts: 322
Hidden Account atk: 5.5 | def: 7.5 | dam: 8
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2hh :: 9 [Tallsun] HP: 73.5 | Buff: DANCE
Unnamed :: Common Boggart :: Mayhem Sevin
#1
The moon glows overhead, your body free from pain and hallucinations, from the grasp of the moon bitch herself, and you grow wild with excitement. Muscles, having not known pain for so long, feel fresh and free. Your mind, no longer weighed down by the task of deciphering reality from fantasy, is left with too much time to think. You need action, a puzzle, a game to keep you from going crazy in the night. Besides, you’ve tasted blood again- tasted what it means to live without risk or reason, drawing off your daughter’s explosive energy, remembering what it means to be Oxy instead of… whoever you’ve become.

Out into the wilds you go, to the beach, because the moon shines brighter there. Your muscles, already thin from the use of your drugs, have also grown weak from inactivity. You need to feel the pull of the sand as you force your body across it and the drag of gravity working against you as you fight for traction. You long for the salty ocean breeze blowing across your dirty body, the crash of the waves too close to you to ignore but too far away to taste. You need to be strong again, and the beach will make you that way, if you can get there.

Your heavy body moves at a trot across the land, hooves falling into mud from time to time, the sloshing noise as you pull them free driving you on. It’s that same suction and that same friction that you’ll feel on the beach; the anticipation is driving you wild. Onward and southward, your muscles warming even on the cool night, loosening, becoming supple and easy. Your body is too free of bruises, your mind too full of strategies yet untested. You should have brought T1, you think as you grow ever nearer the beach, to show her what you’re like when you’re in action. Still, it’s the beach, and still, you dare not bring her there. Snowflake’s wrath frightens you too much.

At long last you see it- the gentle transition from grass and dirt to sand- and you smirk, eager and ready. “FIGHT ME!” you bellow as you step onto the grains, the warm sands piling up around your pasterns. Your trot is heavier now, your limbs responding slower as you ask them to move forward. This is what you had wanted- what you needed. There is still some springiness to the ground, a remnant of the flood, but only deep below. The warm Tallsun air has dried the uppermost layers of sand, leaving the terrain as challenging as you hoped it might be.

You know, as you trot towards the churning waters, a vine of locoweed being swallowed down, that you’ll have to rely on your cunning more than anything in this fight. You will not have the luxury of speed or agility on your side, no matter who it is that responds to your call. But you have magic, your stupid boggart, and your dark coloration to hide you in the night. Most importantly, you have your training. You do not fear this unknown; rather, you relish the challenge.



@[Hotaru]
Post| 0/3
WC| 529
OOC| Evening under a full moon on the beach. The upper layers of sand are loose, but deeper below they are still wet and springy from the floods. The temperature is mild, and a gentle breeze blows in off the ocean.
Standard 3 week timeline, teaching spar
Permission granted to use magic or physical force with Oxy at any time for any reason to any degree, with the exception of killing him.

Please do not tag Oxy unless it is in an opening post

Hotaru the Valkyrie Posts: 295
Outcast atk: 7 | def: 10.5 | dam: 3
Mare :: Unicorn :: 15.3hh :: 6 Years 3 Months HP: 67 | Buff: NOVICE
Alice :: Royal Hellhound :: Acid Brit
#2
As strong as the seas are stormy.</style>



The she-wolf had lingered on the beach after her plotting with the delirious, troublesome Oxy. It was a massive land with sprawling sands as far as her eyes could see, disappearing into a hot horizon made indiscernible by the rays of the sun. It swam before her gaze, and more often than not made her squeamish and sick to look upon it. Hotaru preferred the midnight hours, the ones that played moonlight upon her delicate frame and heralded blissful cold. Though it often reminded her deeply of…well…Phaedra.

Hotaru had always lived her life condemning love, relationships. What good had they ever done her? Her twin had put her through hell, her mother just as uncaring and absent as Tolio in Hotaru’s life. All she’d had as a filly was a distant shadow, a winged shape in the sky that kept her from too much trouble and danger. Phaedra had done nothing for Hotaru but pass on her blood, her lineage. It made Hotaru so profoundly sick that sometimes she would leave her cavern just to scream abuse at the sky. Sometimes she hoped Phaedra would hear her, from beyond. Other times, she slunk back to Arya’s warm, forgiving side, penance on her tongue for a mare long dead and undeserving of her blasphemy.

For so long her only guiding light had been the moon. It was her goddess who had seen the potential in Hotaru, the one shamefully given to her by Phaedra, and had become a model for the young rose to take after. The thief had bloomed beneath the idea that she could be something, and she had. Hotaru had taken her small, insignificant life and she’d made something out of it.

And then…and then her goddess, in whom she’d believed so faithfully, had killed her parents. Oh of course, it wasn’t the celestial herself, but in the end what was the difference? Hotaru had wondered incessantly whether she should hate or revere the immortal. Then, like a thief she could never hope to be, emotions had begun to batter past the frigid unfeeling plains of her psyche. And in the darkest hours of her life, she realized that any hatred she’d held for the mare that had borne her was laced in the horrible, gut-wrenching realization that all Hotaru had ever wanted was the love and pride that Phaedra had given so freely to Raeden. It was then that the disease began to fester, and try as she might to evade it, Hotaru began to fall prey to something as petty as hatred. How could she hate her Goddess for killing parents she’d never known, much less loved? And yet she did…oh how she did.

Despair coils tight under her skin, feeling as if she’s been forced into a body two sizes too small for the breadth of her foreign emotions. It fights for freedom, howling at the moon that taunts it from the sky, washing over her skin in what used to be such a comforting manner. Below lay the memories of Arya’s near-death, Raeru’s discovery, finding out Oxy was the reason she’d been orphaned. All of it bottled up and shoved away into the back of her mind. Hotaru’s job called for an emotionless state, a certain diligence and perseverance. Hotaru hadn’t realized until it was too late that all the bottles had broken, and her stomach clenched with the screaming desire to rend and tear, cry until her eyes were sore and her soul cleansed.

So when a familiar bellow echoed over the sands, drudging up that same bitter hatred for leaving her adopted daughter orphaned in the wake of her herd sister’s murder, Hotaru responded.

It was in a wordless way, but she raced down the beach without a single care for how it would tire her during the fight. She was emotional and conflicted, drowning beneath the weight of turbulent emotions she’d always taken care to never experience. Sand kicked out from her racing hooves as Hotaru streaked down the beach, Oxy only visible by the shape he cut out against the backdrop of the moonlit water. As she charged down towards the water, approaching from behind him, a furious scream ripped out of her throat. A challenge meant for stallions of olde, but one she stole from them to make into her pedestal. She entertained the idea of spearing him in the side, letting him choke on his own poisonous blood, but he was useful to her. For now.

Instead, she used her desperation to fuel her reckless run towards him, head tucked towards her chest, brandishing her wicked horn. Hotaru leapt for him like a wildcat, using the sturdier sands below to launch herself forward, horn pointed at his left flank. He the embodiment of all her failures, her sufferings.

---

Notes: Teaching Spar
Tag: Oxy
Word Count: {800/800}
Attack: {1/3}

Image Credits
[Image: 515265280ffff]

::Strong like the sea is stormy::

Please only tag starting posts, spars, and threads collecting dust!
Plot with me here!

Oxy the Addict Posts: 322
Hidden Account atk: 5.5 | def: 7.5 | dam: 8
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2hh :: 9 [Tallsun] HP: 73.5 | Buff: DANCE
Unnamed :: Common Boggart :: Mayhem Sevin
#3
Your muscles are warm and supple, moving easily as you stretch your legs, never stopping, never waiting. Who will come? The fibrous strands of your muscles quiver in anticipation, twitching in impatience, aching with the memories of bruises long gone, waiting for new contusions that will allow them to be better than they were before. Improvement does not come without pain; betterment does not come without work. You will know pain and you will work. You will come out victorious and you will grow ever stronger- a war machine that does not know how to stop until he is too old and broken to be of use any longer.

Still… why do you even fight any longer? Why push your already damaged body through pain it should not have to endure, through scratches and lacerations that will mean nothing come the end of your life? There is no rhyme or reason to your actions, no explanation to be found by searching through the synapses of your brain. You were born a fighter, raised a fighter, and when you fell to your addiction you were forced to be a fighter. Defending your honor (if you ever had any) was not an easy task and you learned quickly how to use your weight against your opponents; how to be mean and vicious, how to take no prisoners, to take lives instead of allowing surrender, if that was what was needed.

Nobody questions your honor now, though. Nobody mocks you for your habit or scorns you for your choices. They leave you alone, sequestered in the back alleys of your forest home, only Snowflake and the children coming to check on you. So, really, why do you still need to fight? Why do you continue to batter and break yourself? Perhaps it is because fighting is all you have anymore. You’re too old to change, too stuck your ways to become a different horse. You fight because it is the only thing you’re good at.

A scream answers the demand you had made, causing your muscles to jump to attention. That furious cry, that sound, that call in the dark… The locoweed swirling in your brain muddles the voice and you can’t exactly place it, but you whirl on massive hooves regardless, trying to find the source of the sound. It mixes with the crashing waves, the call of sea birds, the rustle of long beach grasses, and the gentle chirps of crickets in the night, so that pinpointing the origin of the cry becomes difficult.

The thunder of hooves against sand near you makes you agitated. It is probably only a second that you are blind in the night, but that second seems like eternity when you do not know from whence your assailant comes. It’s enough time for your brain to conjure wild images, your common sense fighting against your imagination as you try to determine if this is some wild beast of the night or a more predictable opponent.

A spark of moonlight against a pale horn finally answers your dilemma.

Too late, you push against the sand, trying to escape the inevitable destruction that this horn seeks to cause you. Too late, your body surges forward, attempting to dive past the onslaught that the pointed tip promises. You catch a flash of pastel hair as the horn digs into your left thigh, dragging backwards towards your tail, and you think you know, even through your intoxication, who this mystery woman is. She dares to challenge you? She’s so small and weak. A thief has no place on a warrior’s field. A barking sound- both pain and mocking- escapes your lips as you feel your flesh slice open. Your thigh tightens as nerves fire in response to the destruction. Your reaction is as much instinct as it is pre-meditated.

Hooves rise from the sand, bucking out, horseshoes glinting under the moonlight, reaching for Pastel, hoping she will continue past you, and that your feet will find purchase on her flesh. Your kick with your left limb is weaker than the right, your power hindered by the laceration that is now pouring blood down your left hind leg. The attack was so sudden and you are still green from lack of practice; you find that you need a moment to gather yourself- a feeling that scares you because you have not known it for so long. As your hooves touch down once more on the sand, you attempt to assault Pastel with your anemia magic, to slow her down and give you enough to gather yourself.

Spinning around again, you search for her through the darkness, injured limb cocked so that you’re not placing weight on it. Already, your breath comes quicker. Perhaps this will be a suitable test after all.



@[Hotaru]
Post| 1/3
WC| 800
OOC|
:: [Magic: DarkxWater (U) | Able to burst red blood cells, causing reduced hemoglobin levels therefore signs of anemia and oxygen deprivation and also damage platelets]
:: [Restrictions | Symptoms include muscle cramping, shortness of breath, increased heart rate, disorientation and causes bruising and internal bleeding for 30 seconds]



Realism
-It was good that you mentioned that running through the sand would probably tire her. I know you were running short on words, but I would have liked to see some mention of how running in the sand was slowing Hotaru down, or making her travel more difficult.
-As she charged down towards the water, approaching from behind him, a furious scream ripped out of her throat. I would just be careful with statements like this. She’s approaching from behind now, but he’s probably going to turn around since she screamed.
- Hotaru leapt for him like a wildcat, using the sturdier sands below to launch herself forward, horn pointed at his left flank. Same thing here, since he is probably going to move, dictating precisely that she aimed her horn at his left flank isn’t really correct. Make sure you put some sort of qualifier in there that gives me some room to change Oxy’s position.

Emotion
-Hotaru’s contemplations on Phaedra’s death were beautiful. Keeping emotion like that- so raw and tangible- in your posts throughout the fight really makes spars a pleasure to read.
-The way you kept the emotion up through the entire post, all the way to the end, was awesome. Sometimes people get to the fighting part of their posts and it gets very technical, forgetting emotion. You didn’t do that this time, so keep that up through the rest of your posts.

Prose
-Despair coils tight under her skin, feeling as if she’s been forced into a body two sizes too small for the breadth of her foreign emotions. Here, you switched tenses. Most of the post is in past tense, but this moved to present. Just keep an eye out for sentences like this.
-Otherwise, the writing was well-edited. Good job.

Readability
-No comments here right now, everything was beautiful.
Permission granted to use magic or physical force with Oxy at any time for any reason to any degree, with the exception of killing him.

Please do not tag Oxy unless it is in an opening post

Time the Dice Queen Posts: 144
OOC Account atk: 50 | def: 50 | dam: 50
Mare :: Other :: 5'7 :: 22 HP: 5050 | Buff: DROPKICK
Time
#4
Default to Oxy, +0.5 VP.


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