Torstein continued to close the space between them, lumbering, lumbering closer and closer. He was a behemoth, more than 6 hands taller than her, lined with thicker muscle, built with heavier bones. Oh, Teiran knew he could crush her skull and each miniscule bone in her body if he so desired. It was easy to see his strengths. His weaknesses, though, were what she wanted to know. The heart, so readily opened up to the world, was the simple one, but what else was hiding beneath his ivory and plum skin? Oh how when Teiran had been young she could have only dreamed of being powerful enough to crack a skull with but one kick. There was something decidedly alluring about the raw strength and intensity that was evident in this man. It spoke to the girl in her who had been forced to fight for her life against other children, all trained to do the same thing. Kill her. It spoke to the girl who had been thrown to the wolves and somehow survived, if only by the skin of her teeth. Teiran knew she was strong for someone of her size, it was, of course, her greatest asset in battle. A lot of her opponents overlooked her, underestimated her. A lot of them paid for it. The spines on Torstein’s chest split open a little further. Some may have been hesitant to look upon the mass of living, moving muscle and tissue, whether they were weak in the stomach or in the mind. Teiran, however, studied it intensely and the scholar deep down inside her was admittedly curious. She had seen battle, blood and flesh and exposed organs were nothing new to her. Not dead ones, anyway. This was something entirely new, and oh how tempted she was to want to put a dagger into it, just to see. He spoke and still closed the distance between them, and the air was electric with this strange tension that they have. “I suppose it is a good thing neither of us is picking a fight with the other, then,” she responded, as invariably as always. Or were they? Was this some strange dance they were doing, testing each other, before one of them made the first move? Teiran thought of the last time she’d had a proper fight, and it was when the Davke had attacked. How long ago, then, was that? What was a soldier without a battle to take part in? Torstein was but a few feet from her now, to her right. Only her head turned toward him, her hooves fixed to the same place on the Colosseum floor they had been. Then the maw of his chest snapped closed, the spines nestling in against each other. She did not flinch, her sage eyes lowered to that place on his chest. It was a challenge, calling out to her, begging her to put her skills to the test. But he was right, she did not have any weapons on her, and she was no fool to think she could put a hoof through that and, even if she managed to make contact, keep it when those spines closed. “Yes.” There was no point in lying to him. Teiran had no hidden dagger within these walls that she could pull out and surprise him with. “Today is your lucky day,” but still she wished, wished, wished. She knew she would leave this place unsatisfied. |
@Torstein
