YOU CAN'T STRAY FROM WHAT YOU ARE YOU'RE THE CLOSEST THING TO HELL I'VE SEEN SO FAR Flesh meets flesh with a glorious slap, and she reels to her right. His heart pounds at the impact and his loins twitch, the sweet success almost overpowering his senses. His jaws slip into a wolf's smirk, his tail held high and proud as he ploughs into her, peppering her neck with bites. Each time his teeth find her skin, it sends another wave of ecstasy through him, like a great tide of beautiful, scorching lava. This feeling is the polar opposite to what he's used to in battle. In all of his previous fights, he's been fuelled by rage, powered by the primal fury of war. Each time, bloodlust has devoured him, forced adrenaline to rage through his system and lend greater strength to his limbs. This time, however...he has no reason to be angry. Auriel isn't ninja-bitch-dodging each attack he throws at her, nor is she hellbent on trying to kill him. He doesn't hate her, he doesn't feel the bestial need to annihilate her; he only wants to win, to assert his dominance over her and reap whatever rewards that brings. Without the fuel of hatred to drive him, it's surprisingly easy for his mind to wander - to notice each sumptuous curve of her body, to contemplate how that would feel beneath him as he lavished it with pleasure rather than pain... No. This is why he needs to practice fighting such attractive opponents, to train his mind to focus, to learn how to win even without his temper fuelling him. She swings, agile, a swan across the ground, and suddenly he's seeing stars as her wing clatters him squarely on the chin to leave a small, light bruise in its wake. It smacks his teeth together, jarring his face and causing a headache to form in the back of his skull, much to his irritation. A gargling laugh escapes him as he shakes his lower jaw, testing that nothing's broken, ensuring that he hasn't shattered any teeth. "Not bad, for a little thing," he coos, flashing her a flutter of his crimson eyes. He begins to step backwards, trying to create space between their bodies - space allows him to charge, to throw his weight around, to crush like a fucking freight train. Fighting in close proximity is not advantageous to the monstrous young stallion, who has the turning speed of a beached whale and who relies on momentum to lend his attacks their full force. It's probably this backwards step that saves him from having his eardrums destroyed by her banshee's scream as it rips through the air like a thousand fingernails on a chalkboard. His ears slam backwards, slicking flat to his skull as broken glass pierces them. Pain erupts through his head, adding to the gentle throb from her wing attack, multiplying it, exploding it. He bellows, a great roar of dismay bursting free from his jaws like the primal howl of a dying wolf. What is this sorcery?! Magic, of course. What else could it be? What else should he expect from the girl who poured smoke from her nostrils? He would be a fool to think that he could use his own magic and have it go unpunished... Confused, half-blinded with pain and badly disorientated, the hellhound lunges forwards again, aiming to cover the small patch of ground that he'd just vacated with his backwards step. His ears ring, his head screams. He can't see, can't think, and he relies soley on his memory of where she is - he aims for her left side again, for the shoulder he'd just crashed into with his chest. When he's close, or when he thinks he's close, he throws his weight to his hindquarters and leans back on his haunches as he lifts into a rear, hauling his already massive body upwards with a considerable huff of effort. He flails his forelegs forwards and down, aiming to crunch them down onto her withers, to try and make her entire front end bow beneath his weight and bring her to her knees. He wants her to be forced into submission beneath his weight, hoping his hooves will smack into already bruised flesh and cause the evil, ear-shattering scream to change into a gargle of pain. But, despite the way his heart thunders and his ears scream like burning witches, another laugh escapes him. Shit, this is what a battle's all about. Unexpected attacks, being tested, being met blow for blow. For a girl, she fights like a fucking tank, and he loves it. The pain distracts him from his lust for her, but there's still a distinct throb between his heaving thighs, a dryness in his mouth and a thirst in his heart. ________ @Auriel ! 3/3 - 788 words

THINGS I LIKED:

- Again, I loved Auriel in this post. You've already got a great grasp of her character and she's a joy to read! Considering you haven't played her very long, it's really exciting that you already play her so well :)

- And again, your grammar and spelling was excellent. There were a couple of sentences that seemed to jar ('The moment was dizzying, tempting to pass me by and leave me to fall' was one of them that just didn't read quite right to me) but overall you do a really good job of proofreading and removing any little niggling errors! 'Readability' is one part of the judging rubric and as long as you proofread your posts and make sure there's no tense changes, typos etc, it's really easy to rack up the points. So it's good to see you're already along the right lines!

As a side note, you've had some pretty shit dice rolls in this fight. Believe me, I know those feels xD To roll a miss and have your opponent roll a really heavy hit can be so, so disheartening and make you want to go 'screw it' and just cobble together the bare minimum of a fight post. BUT always bear in mind that the writing part of the fight gets doubled, meaning it is actually fairly easy to overturn a dice roll HP deficit as long as you're good at the writing part. Like, say you have 10 less HP than your opponent after the dice rolls. It seems like a lot and can be intimidating. BUT if your opponent scores 2 in the writing part, this is then doubled to become 4, and added to the total HP. In this case, they'd now have a HP advantage of 14 over you. HOWEVER, you only need to score 7.5 in the writing part in order to win - that would get doubled to 15, and victory is yours :D 7.5 is easily achievable by the vast majority of fighters, so always stay confident and fight until the end even if the dice screw you over, because you just never know! I try and go into every fight thinking 'right, so long as I write to my highest capability, I can basically overturn anything up to a 10-point dice roll deficit'. Once you've got that positive state of mind down, it makes you not want to dropkick your computer quite as much when the dice are feeling mean xD

THINGS TO IMPROVE:

- This time, compared to last time, I don't think you took enough damage for the dice roll. A 6 is the highest you can roll save for a critical hit, so a 6-worthy wound is basically the ouchiest of the ouch. You're taking broken bones, ripped skin, massive bruises etc. It isn't mentioned what damage she takes from the chest slam (it mentions that it hurts more than the last, but try to describe wounds in more detail - light bruise, small bruise, heavy bruise, bruising over a large area?). His teeth hit, but less so than the previous time, and even though it's mentioned that the earth plateau hits, it isn't clear if she falls from this or if it even hurts that much. Overall, that's probably about a 4-level of damage.

If it was me in your shoes reacting to Vol's set of attacks and a 6 dice roll, I'd probably have done something like: Had the chest slam hit, creating a deep, widespread bruise that caused my character to stumble badly to the right and pull a muscle in their right foreleg as they desperately flail it to stop themselves falling over, aided by the earth attack under their back foot. Had a couple of the bites hit, but only a couple due to the stumble taking the character away from the bombardment. Remember, if your opponent's attacks don't seem to warrant such high damage, you can take it from literally any environmental source you want - tripping, walking into a rock, pulling a muscle, poking yourself in the eye, anything! You also don't have to take damage from every attack, as long as you take heavier damage from the attacks that do hit.

- On the topic of describing wounds, it was really unclear whether or not Auriel actually fell over as a result of Vol's attacks. 'The earth beneath my left hind hoof moved up and sent the rest of my body falling to the right, the force of his chest aiding my descent' isn't clear whether or not she actually falls over, or just stumbles badly. If it's the latter, then you could have put in some more description of exactly WHY she didn't fall over - did she rebalance her legs, spread her weight? Try to be clearer when describing the results of attacks, otherwise the judge will have a field day taking points off you for lack of realism/adequate description. You were 44 words shy of the maximum word count, so definitely try to milk as much of that word count as you can in order to fit in more detailed descriptions!

- I was really confused with some of the action-y parts of this post. 'I was forced backwards again' - this is misleading as he's attacking her left shoulder, so she'd be pushed to the right rather than backwards. 'I picked my left hoof up and used my right to launch myself to the left of my opponent' - which left hoof, front or back? Which right hoof? How would lifting the left hoof help with her movement? When she launches herself towards Vol's left, is she trying to face him in a T-shape, or run parallel to him? Also, there should be a mention of 'attempt' in this sentence! Even though it's not an attack, it's PPing to say she definitely ended up on his left. 'I thrashed away from him, bringing my wing up and aiming it at his jaw' which wing? Which one of his jaws, upper or lower, or both? Remember, try to describe your rights and lefts as much as possible and be as specific as you can!

Sorry for the huge notes but at least you're getting your money's worth! ;D