For all that talk about being raised by the streets when it came to wielding Sparkmarrow, this fight here and now was teaching me there was still a whole gob of shit I needed to learn.


Lesson Number One: You Can’t Pussyfoot It


Tembovu literally rose to the challenge, rearing to the highest possible impossible height he could reach, and there was a brief moment where he was laid out in front of me, his muscled body poised in excellent condition but vulnerable to a sweep of Sparkmarrow’s blade if I positioned it right. I took a step back to give myself room, and that was the moment a whole mess of shit fucked up for me.


First there was the--hesitation. It lasted for a second and only for a second, I swear, but there was that trepidation I couldn’t shake about attacking a real, whole person with my Pa’s sacred sword. This wasn’t Drolgatha; this wasn’t any of the Rift gods, sick with their own insanity seeping into the world as I knew it and corrupt it just as they had corrupted their own homes. This was Tembovu. Here was a dude who had shown me nothing but his own brand of rough kindness, a guy who was slowly yet surely melding himself in my head towards the “Friend” branch of my brain. He wasn’t a guy I wanted to cut, is what I’m saying.


So I hesitated (just a fraction of a second, I swear) and it was enough to throw my whole momentum off, for the weight of Sparkmarrow in my mouth to be skewed just enough to pull a muscle awkwardly in my neck. I tried to raise Sparkmarrow in that instant--but it wasn’t high enough and it wasn’t fast enough and Tembovu’s horn came crashing down against the flat of my blade with a CRASH, a shower of sparks cascading from the impact. Which threw my momentum off some more and my neck was straining with the awkward way I was holding Sparkmarrow--and I backpedaled away as quickly as I could, to gain some distance between us and refocus my whole strategy--


--cRACK--


--but in that moment I stepped on a piece of glass that lay hidden in the grasses beneath us. I was lucky; the sharp point of it wasn’t directly under my frog, which would’ve been a bitch-titty to deal with, let me tell you. It was still jutting out far enough to catch my heel, though, and I could still feel that stabbing in the back of my right hind foot with enough force that the shard of glass became stuck there. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It would be fine as long as it wasn’t pushed too far inside, which was gonna be an easy task, y’know, since it was a foot and all I do with it is hold the weight of my whole ass against it. No pressure, right? (Oops that was a pun)


I hissed from between Sparkmarrow’s hilt, jammed tightly as it was between my teeth. With a massive jerk of my head, I shifted the blade’s position from the left side of my body to the right side instead,  the sword at right angles with Tembovu’s horn and challenging expression, egging me on even though I had already messed up so bad. I couldn’t push off and charge him like I wanted to--y’know, cuz glass in the foot ‘n everything--but I heaved off anyway towards him with most of the power coming from my shoulders. I threw my head to the left and Sparkmarrow’s blade whistled out in a wide arc in front of me, its crackling blade clawing for his left shoulder, his front side, anything that was unfortunate enough to be in its path.





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A: 1/3
D: 0/1
WC: 629
Damage Tracker: 
-Shard of glass caught in right hind foot




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