VOLTERRA
Realism [+1]
Right off the bat you did a good job sizing up Rikyn and taking into account breed and state differences. The use of environment and companions was also well done. My main issue and why you didn't get a higher overall score is that I thought you consistently didn't take the right amount of damage. Rikyn rolled two sixes and you treated them dramatically differently and maybe not while also thinking about his damage stat. The instinct you had to avoid the shoulder in 1/3 was smart to some extent, but then you made a worse decision to stab an area full of vital organs and somehow have none of them affected. You mention also it's a place that's hard to pierce due to his skin being so close to bone, and yet you had it pierced. And then in Rikyn's 2/3 you just take heavy bruising, and while it trips Volterra up some it's a little low for a 6. The most important thing about a 6 is that it continually affects your character throughout the fight, it's not something you can forget. You didn't mention his damage in your first post in your second post or after much at all. Such an impacting injury would be something that would realistically be on his mind and hindering him throughout. You took the right amount of damage for a 3 in the last post, but not the right amount of damage considering that you had Volterra suddenly kick solid stone. Letting the kick follow through might have made for a bit of a bruise on his belly, but I don't think that's something with as much potential to harm him the lower leg coming in sharp contact with solid stone is.

Emotion [+1.5]
I understand that Volterra isn't the most feeling of characters, but I struggled to engage with him. He was rather distant about getting stabbed in the side. He was angry, sure, but he didn't seem to be at all flustered and it didn't give him nearly as much pause as a near fatal would maybe should. I really only got a sense of him by the end when he felt satisfied and really enraged RE his golem and the end of the fight.

Prose [+3]
Your inclusion of his dragons enhanced not only emotion but your prose. Volterra's attitude is in your words, and your prose is very clear cut. I would urge you to maybe engage a bit more with writing that is a bit more charged so we can connect more, but overall I thought you did a good job here.

" His confusion gone, Volterra is awestruck at the sight of the magnificence he has created, and his eyes sparkle with savage delight. It is a living manifestation of his rage, a personification of the volcano that bubbles beneath his flesh, roused by the two brutal hits he's taken.
Through his pain, the leviathan smiles a terrifying smile."
This was great and what I was wanting more of!

Readability [+2.5]
Similarly to Bunnie you mixed up em dash uses, and you also mixed it with a hyphen. That said, your style for the most part was very clear cut and easy to read.


Finally tally: 46.5 + (8*2) = 62.5 HP



RIKYN
Realism [+1.5]
You have to be really careful about writing your attacks and always be using the language of "attempt" and "try." You also tried in some places to do too much and account for every outcome, but remember there is only so much you can do. It's a lot to write all in one post that you get up close, attack, and then run away, and it really limits your opponent. In post two you maybe took the right amount of damage (though stay aware of Volterra's higher damage state,) but then you undid that work by attacking with the same part of his body that had just suffered some real injury. His attacks overall felt too ambitious, I think, especially after he gets hit. That said, after the beginning you recovered and had a very clever attack in your last post with having Vol kick himself. You took and recognized the past damage that you needed to after that initial undervaluing of it. In your defense, I caution you to notice all attacks and acknowledge them; Volterra's buck went unnoticed, though you handled Vadir well.

1/3: " I pull wide in the last steps and angle for a semi-leap at his right shoulder, using my haunches to propel me up and towards his elevated flesh"

You showed size difference here, but you also wrote it without much room for Volterra to avoid. "Angle" is iffy but works, but after the comma all of that is written as certainty and verges on powerplay.

1/3: "Angled down, the blade is meant to pierce and enter at such a degree if my blow is fated, forcing the flesh free and dangling if he pulls away while punctured. Even if it misses, I swing my head for a bite, hoping to strike with the flat of my sword"

Swinging and thrusting are completely different motions, so while I understand you're trying to cover bases he can't really do both at once, and if he's trying to do one after the other then that doesn't account for the fact that he might be successful.

Emotion [+2]
I like how you engaged with past experiences with Volterra and his dragons and compared him to Abraham. Who Rikyn is really comes to play when he gives in so easily to Volterra's egging him on and just goes for it, even though he feels he's outmatched. His response to damage is very true to him and his thoughts keep coming up to remind you its there. His thoughts on breaking a bone particularly got me.

1/3: "Twin trails break in the snow behind me, the smile lingering on my face full of a savage delight and a freedom that I find only in these moments of approach; some of my speed is lost for momentum and height of each bound, knowing the battle against the snow will only last as long as the blanket beneath us does"
I loved this, I thought it was wonderfully written and amped me up for the battle as much as Rikyn was.

3/3: "shaking like a wet eared babe"
Beautiful image.

Prose [+3]
The way you write Rikyn is very true to his character. A lot of him shows through and you're not afraid to show the reader his thoughts. You have lyric in your writing, but not in a way that is uncharacteristic of Rikyn's blunt and harsh thoughts, you tempered your poesy well. The free and direct discourse is great throughout.

Readability [+1]
The main trouble I had here was punctuation usage. I found often time you would use commas or em dashes when a period would have suited you much better, and as a result there were a lot of long sentences that felt sort of disjointed. The second to last paragraph in 1/3 and the first paragraph in 2/3, for example, are all or almost all one sentence and it makes the reader feel a bit lost and bogged down. I found myself lost when Volterra used his structure magic, for example, and Rikyn was stopping short. Overall though everything is very well written, I'd just take care to remember that in spars prosaic language can be your friend over the poetic sometimes.

1/3: "and I find myself smiling with a most amiable air in return, though not entirely at not being shirked"
This was odd, and it made me read the entire sentence around it a few times. Double-negatives are never really your friend, so it's best to avoid them.

3/3: " The motion is impulsive, the urgency for spatial evacuation making me forget how very stupid a move it is to put my weight on my bite-and-kick damaged hind end. " I struggled to figure this out, had to read a few times (though I like "urgency for spatial evacuation for sound purposes.)


Finally tally: 28.5 + (7.5*2) = 43.5 HP