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YOU'RE THE CLOSEST THING TO HELL I'VE SEEN SO FAR Her voice is sultry, and the coquettish tangle of smoke that flows from her lips succeeds in ensnaring the brute's senses. His eyes darken, hunger flowing like wildfire through him, until he reminds himself where he is - on a battlefield, not in a whorehouse. Now is not the time for such lecherous thoughts, although it doesn't stop the thrilling tingle in the back of his mind at the notion of this with her. Exchanging sweat, trading blood...it is the most intimate activity that two creatures can partake in, save for sex. They collide, and despite Auriel's smaller size the collision knocks the wind from Volterra's lungs as well. He coughs, but the damage is minimal compared to what she suffers. She slides backwards a few steps, and the sheer dominance of this act drags a wolf's growl from his lips. Him, mastering her, forcing her to submit to his bulk by backing away from him, unbidden. His teeth, too, find their mark, and when he snatches his skull back he can taste the iron tang of blood on his tongue. She's delicious, just as he knew she would be. Hunger taints the hellion's features, a masculine grunt ripping free from his red-tinted jaws. The contact, the slap of flesh on flesh, has tempted the beast inside, stoking the fire that blazes inside him. She is woman, and she is close. He wants, he needs...but this is supposed to be a spar, not his chance to get his jollies through close contact with her. Business, not pleasure, he keeps telling himself. But that's hard to focus on when she's so close he can smell her. He steels himself, remembering that this is precisely why he's doing this - so he can learn how to control himself around female opponents. After all, when he is a king, a warlord, he will not be able to demand to fight only men. Sooner or later he will cross swords with a mare in a true, bloody battle with something more than pride on the line, and he needs to have a tighter hold on his cravings by then. Else his epitaph will read Here Lies Volterra: Slaughtered Because He Tripped Over His Own Dick In Battle. Alas, her womanly wiles are working, despite his best attempts to resist them - he's so distracted by her mere proximity that when her knee comes for his chest, it's sheer coincidence that saves him from damage rather than any great thinking on his part. He shifts his colossal weight backwards a fraction, aided by the hard ground beneath his hooves. Her knee whistles past his chest and her horn just misses his neck, to his own surprise as much as anybody else's. A sardonic smile flashes momentarily across his mouth as he remembers silently fuming about Ciceron dodging almost every attack he threw at him, how hypocritical that makes him. But, he reasons, taking a brutal hit so early on would affect his chances of winning, and that's all he cares about. Because who knows what his prize may be if he rises victorious? On the sidelines, his dragon growls, feeling the familiar and dangerous thrums of lust flowing from his bonded. The giant sidesteps to his right, aiming to face the mare's left shoulder, then launches himself forwards again with a feral bellow. Once again, he tries to slam his massive chest into her, in an attempt to bowl her over and own her with his weight - this time, he aims for her left shoulder, to try and send her sprawling to her right. His teeth, still tingling pleasantly from their previous impact with her flesh, aim to rain down a volley of bites upon her withers and spine, hoping to bruise and brand her with his mark. He is, after all, not the most experienced fighter, despite what his fearsome appearance might suggest. He has not yet developed a distinct style or decided which attacks work best - he knows only what his instinct tells him, that his sheer size and brute strength won't let him down. What he lacks in battle nous, he aims to make up for with his fierce slamming attacks and his blatant disregard for his own safety. That, he hopes, will be enough to get him through these early days of fighting, until experience replaces testosterone and lends him a more varied array of attacks. At the same time, he summons his magic and aims to lift the ground into a small plateau beneath Auriel's left hindhoof. He hopes that this, combined with his attempted chest slam, will unbalance her and cause her to topple over to her right. ________ 2/3 - 778 words |
THINGS I LIKED:
- I loved reading Auriel in this post, especially the way she's thinking of how to use her 'womanly wiles' to beat Vol! Her emotion was well-written, especially her determination to fight so she can protect her family, and her being distracted by his closeness (he's in my head like ;D)
- Your writing is really clear and concise, which is a godsend for your opponent in fights! I didn't notice any glaring grammatical or spelling errors, which is a sign of good proof-reading.
- You didn't attack too much - two is a nice number of attacks to do. A bombardment of four or more attacks can really get confusing and mess up the timeline of a fight, and it's a trap that a lot of people fall into as they want to cause as much damage as possible. However, I always find that 1-3 attacks are better than 4+, not least because 800 words isn't enough to adequately describe that many attacks. So you're definitely on the right track by doing two well-described attacks rather than more poorly-described ones.
THINGS TO IMPROVE:
- Noting the size difference between them was good, however it's also useful if you can implement how that will affect the fight. Like, will she re-think some potential attacks because he's bigger than her? Will she try to use that against him, or use her superior speed stat to her advantage?
- Having Auriel slide back, be winded, and also have a quite nasty bite wound is a lot of damage considering I only rolled a 1 in the damage section. If you look and see 8 points of damage dealt, it can make you go 'ohcrap' however that's only because of Vol's high damage stat. A 1 roll for damage is the lowest roll you can get (except a miss of course xD). I'd say a 1-worthy wound is slight bruise from either the slam or the bite - the damage you took is probably closer to a 2 or 3.
- It's very rare that blunt horse teeth would be able to draw blood, especially on the thick skin of another horse and especially on a place like the neck, where the skin is tight over the muscle. Chances are, Auriel would have suffered a bruise rather than a badly bleeding cut.
- 'Aiming my right knee for his chest in a way that would push him up and back, away from my side'. Given Vol's superior size (and the weight of a horse), it would be very unlikely that Auriel's knee would be able to push him up and back, and could do a lot more damage to her knee joint than it could do to Vol. Also, the wording of the end of this sentence, about her 'side', is a bit misleading/confusing as they're currently face to face, so he's nowhere near her side. Finally, be careful with the wording - 'in a way that would push him up and back' could be deemed to be PP-ing, as you should probably have said something like 'that would hopefully push him up and back', just so it doesn't seem like it definitely WILL do that if it hits. It's up to the person who takes the damage to decide what it does or doesn't do. Similarly, here: 'Concurrently, I tucked my head further and jabbed my split horn at the base of the left side of his neck, though not hard enough for the tips to go deep enough to do any life-threatening damage'. Words like 'attempt/aimed/hoped/tried' etc can be unsightly and disrupt the flow of a post, but they're a necessary evil in order to keep you from being docked points for PPing c:
[ you can't stray from what you are, you're the closest thing to hell i've seen so far ]
[ use of force/magic on him is permitted aside from death/maiming ]
