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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

Fight: Challenge  - Do not go gentle into that good night

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Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 146 — Threads: 16
Signos: 0
Deceased Character
#1

Fight Type: CHALLENGE
Prize: Sovereignty of Solterra
Contact Made: Yes

Character #1: @Raum
Bonded: No
Magic: Yes Active magic
Armor: No
Weapons: No
Current Health: 7
Current Attack: 13
Current Experience: 10 (i really should update it one day LOL)

Character #2: @Seraphina
Bonded: No
Magic: No
Armor: No
Weapons: No
Current Health: 17
Current Attack: 23
Current Experience: 50




Shivers wrack his body as Denocte's Ghost steps out from the black overhang of the sentinel trees. He is no longer a phantom as he stalks in the open, lit bright beneath the moonlit night. All about him the Steppe is silent, watchful, waiting. Upon him is a ransom, upon his tongue is still the blood of the Night Court Queen, within his memory is still the soft resistance of his best friend's trachea. He is a wanted man but he stands here, as bold as the moon above him, as savage as the storms that blow out at sea.

Peace is water in Raum's grasp, it slipped away and now his cupping hands are bone, bone dry. Fury is a twisting, contorting, rotten thing within his belly. With rabid, visceral delight it places one limb in front of another, again and again until he is adorned in silver and brilliant within the middle of the open. He does not deign to hide in shadows in this moment. He does not need to blend his skin into another beast. No, Raum stands bright as quicksilver, as sharp as a blade. Seraphina had been gone too long and Day Court has taken too much from him. It had choked him with dust but now he stands with righteous revenge as sweet as berries upon his tongue.

"Seraphina!" The Crow's voice is lightning to match the crackling electricity of his blue, blue eyes. His tail slashes like a serpent's against his sides. Corvid, his skull tilts as he listens to the whispers, the midnight groans of the meadow and its restless grasses. He studies each shadow and waits for the Day Court Queen. "I want what is yours," he growls, leonine. There is a lion roiling beneath his skin. His magic burns, begging release. 

When had he last passed through Bellum Steppe? When he last saw Rhoswen, he knows. It was when they finally broke like flotsam beneath the ire of their wondrous storm. Everywhere is the whisper of his Day Court girl, everywhere is the whisper of their daughter. His ears are flat upon his skull and he stands proud - no longer slinking, no longer the spy. He will not infiltrate from the inside, not today. No, this day he will take before all of Novus.




Summary: Rum enters and challenges Serpahina for her position as Day Court Sovereign.

Attack Used: 0 (UPDATE THIS WHENEVER YOU USE AN ATTACK)
Attack(s) Left: 2 (UPDATE THIS WHENEVER YOU USE AN ATTACK)
Block Used: 0 (UPDATE THIS WHENEVER YOU USE A BLOCK)
Block(s) Left: 1 (UPDATE THIS WHENEVER YOU USE A BLOCK)
Item(s) Used: LIST ANY ITEMS USED, IF ANY

Response Deadline: 30 January 2019
Tags: @Seraphina, @kay, @Sid, @inkbone, @Lauren, @Sparrow





[Image: x341oLX.png]

You're one microscopic cog

in his catastrophic plan





Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 399 — Threads: 81
Signos: 100
Inactive Character
#2

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

I have burned & burned, but is it burning
if there’s no one there to see?


She is a smudge of charcoal beneath the trees. The former Crow is not the only shadow given life; the Day Queen is dark and slow beneath the dappled light, each steady pace deliberate. The moonlight steals the color from the landscape, but she is already monochromatic, crafted from polished steel. She knows what she is here for – she knows what she has to do.


She faces Raum coldly, her eyes impassive and unimpressed. If she could hear his thoughts, she might have laughed. Fool boy. Always quick to blame the other. Never mind that he is older than her. You did this to yourself. I should have killed you long ago. For what you did, I never should have shown you lenience. That is something that she is learning, like all lessons, slowly and bitterly. She was a girl when he attacked Bexley; she was a girl when she found Rhoswen and that soft, small girl, still bathed in the ashes of her kingdom; was she still a girl now?


“You want the power,” she says, softly. “Do you know what it means?”


Her life belongs to her court. It always has – there has never been anything else. For her quiet and her distance, for her innumerable failures and missteps, she would give anything - anything - for the sake of the Day Court’s people. As she watches him, her mismatched eyes narrowed to bright, reflective shards, she knows that what he wants is not the same. Perhaps once she could have had sympathy for a broken bird, abandoned by his flock. Perhaps once, she could have pitied an orphan boy taken in by a wild-hearted man with too much love to give and too many people to give it to; perhaps she could have ached for a boy raised up from nothing and trained to kill.


When she sees him, however, she sees little more than a murderous madman grasping for the capacity to crush - for armies and followers and respect, for blood. He has no love for her court, and he has no love for her people; if anything, he resents them. She has seen her people bent-double beneath the weight of a tyrant before.


She’d sooner die than watch it happen again.


She does not wait for his answer. For better or for worse, she will be able to discern it for herself soon enough.


When she had crept forward to approach him, she mapped the pocks and divots in the hard, rugged terrain that surrounded them; her spar with Ammon, lifetimes ago, taught her the danger of slipping. She outlines the details of his frame. He is lean and limber, built for speed and stealth, but he is a shape-shifter, in some capacity, and she supposes he might be able to use his supposed face-changing to change that – or to change her perception of him. Crows had knives, but he is blessedly unarmed, and that is one less thing for her to worry over.


She is still in one moment and springs into motion in the next, ears snapping back against her skull. It takes only seconds to close the gap between them and only seconds to rise up on her well-muscled hindquarters, charcoal hooves aimed to batter him. She seeks to slash at his chest and his throat, to pummel whatever bit of flesh stumbles into her pounding reach – she wants bruise and blood, and, even in her wanting, she is measured.


She has no time to panic at what is to come.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags |  
notes | I <3 you




@






Summary: Sera shows up, contemplates life, Raum, and her really questionable decision-making process. She then proceeds to charge at Raum, rear, and tries to assail his chest/neck with her hooves, aimed to scratch and bruise.

Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 1
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 1
Item(s) Used: N/A

Response Deadline: 2/1
Tags: @Raum, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless







I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORS
and there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.


please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence








Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 146 — Threads: 16
Signos: 0
Deceased Character
#3

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
 

Seraphina pours out from the dim light. The shadows peel back to reveal her form like lips from the silver-white glow of teeth. Everything about Seraphina is a rictus to him. But Raum does not smile back.
 
He drinks her in. And she is electricity that sparks every inch of his being. He is the live wire ready and waiting. He drowns her in the blue of his gaze – for it is water to the electricity of their encounter. He would drown this whole steppe, if he could.
 
Fury is savage within him, it is a flame that licks the silver of his skin and turns it bright as a torch. Raum is a wildfire with frostfire burning inside his silver skin. He waits for Day’s Queen to make her first strike.
 
She does not disappoint as her words reach him across the bare expanse between them. No longer is she a rictus to him, for now Raum’s lips are twisted too. Does he know what power means, Seraphina asks.
 
Of course.
 
Why else was Raum here? In his heart there is no desire for the ascension of Day. No, the only thing within his heart are its desires for ashes and ruination. His smile is a beautiful thing (if one dared to look upon it with a mind full of devastation, of course), for only then can you appreciate its chaotic beauty.
 
“I know what it means, Seraphina.” The Crow purrs, leonine. “But maybe you do not? How long have you left your kingdom idling? You are more a ghost than I right now. Does your Court even remember you? If so, do not distress, because, should I win, they will be begging for your return.”
 
And then the battle begins. The silver queen is in motion, all her power is within her. There is no magic she wields, no companion to emerge from the gloaming. No, she is plain, but oh she is powerful. Raum had not leant himself to battle prowess so he needs to be tactful this night, his might is incomparable to hers.
 
Sera launches and Raum spins. The Steppe, held fast in autumnal hands, is dying and thirsty for the coming rains. Seraphina rears up and aims high, for his face, his throat. To be clubbed by a hoof in either place is a dangerous thing.
 
So, like a flag caught in a changing wind, he spins away from her headlong advance. His hind limbs kick up dirt and dust beneath them. A cloud plumes up into the air and he hopes it may throw her aim off. Raum twists and hopes to land his haunches in the path of her flailing forelimbs. His hindquarters are thick with muscle and fat and would serve as a better place to be struck. The damage would surely be worse if it struck his face, his throat… But, regrettably, Raum is not quite fast enough and indeed Seraphina strikes down upon him.  A hoof catches his loin and is heavy with her weight, its edges worn by stone and sand. It cuts him like a rusty blade and blood runs true.
 
Seraphina aimed for blood, she aimed to bruise, and yes she has earned both. His left loin is warm with its trauma and it aches to move, but move he does. Better a wound there, he thinks, than the delicate structures of his neck or the critical parts of his face.
 
The Day queen has not retreated, so the Crow completes his spin, throwing his weight upon his haunches as he bites through the pain in his loin. He kicks out with both hind limbs, firm and strong His hooves reach out with the marked precision of a Crow finding its prey upon a vast meadow’s face. He is light, he is nimble and he knows he is not as strong as she. But, a carefully placed blow could be enough to shatter a limb. So he aims for one of her forelimbs, below the knee, where muscle is absent, tendons vulnerably exposed and the most weight is innately carried.
 
His kick is fast like lightning, seizing the moment he has her close enough - too close and his hind limb cannot get enough extension to unleash its full force, too far away and all power is lost with its extension.
 
Then, facing away from her as he is for his attack, Raum shoots forward, aiming to put space between them, to keep himself moving as he watches for her next attack.


@Seraphina <3 you too boo








Summary: Seraphina attacked, aiming to strike Raum with her forelimbs, Raum spun away causing Sera's attack to strike his left loin and causing bruising and bleeding. Then, he completes his spin until his hind quarters face her. There, he kicks out with both hind limbs, aiming for Seraphina's forelimb (any) below the knee. He then puts some distance between them in order to await her next attack.

Attack Used:
Attack(s) Left: 1
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left:
Item(s) Used: N/A

Response Deadline: 4/1
Tags: @Seraphina, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless





[Image: x341oLX.png]

You're one microscopic cog

in his catastrophic plan





Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 399 — Threads: 81
Signos: 100
Inactive Character
#4

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

I have burned & burned, but is it burning
if there’s no one there to see?


He has her close, and it is only a split second’s reflex that keeps his relatively-powerless kick from connecting with the frailest portion of her leg; his hooves slam into the flesh between the knee and the shoulder. She lands heavily, a dull, throbbing pain running up her leg, but she ignores it. (She is vaguely aware of the copper tang of blood.) It is nothing too awful, and the least of her concerns at the moment. Her priority is that toothy shadow, and, as he springs forward, she does not follow. Her eyes narrow. He is pure speed and agility, and she has no desire to chase him down. He is quick, but he is also fragile, and his movements contain neither her force nor her stability. If she can bring him in, tempt him to her, she might be able to use his own recklessness and rampant fury to her advantage. Seraphina was all but born a soldier, after all, and, in spite of her title, her mind remains that of a soldier. The chance of a wound and the risk of allowing him the next attack could be mitigated for a greater reward.

She steadies herself, cool eyes wandering his frame. Her poise is defensive, tense as a bowstring drawn taut, and every inch of her skin crawls with adrenaline. In the back of her mind, she whispers a prayer to Solis. Surely, even if this is his will, – even if it is his will that she loses - he would not let his kingdom fall to the whims of a monster. She sees that wicked smile, and, within it, ash and smoke, burnt buildings, the dead.

In the momentary lull, she speaks.

“I might fall, Raum,” she says, quietly, in a voice as calm and certain as cold steel. “Perhaps my idleness will be the end of me, this time. Perhaps you will undo everything that I have created. I know just how quickly fate can change...how easily the sands can shift. But know this – you will never be enough to bring my people to their knees.” She does not speak of their loyalty to her, or even, in truth, to the concept of the Day Court – she speaks instead of their incomparable resilience, far greater than any other nation in Novus. A tyrant had held her kingdom before, and still her people had not fallen to him or his accursed line. It would be her most egregious failure to allow it to fall to a tyrant again, particularly like this, but, even if she failed, as she had so many a time before, someone else would rise. Day would not bow meekly to the whims of a crow, clever as he surely thought himself and burning as he was. He ran from his kingdom, from his lover, from his daughter, from his king, from his people, from everything; his destruction, which his vengeful implications seemed to place to squarely on Solterra, could only be attributed to his own weakness. Her people tolerated rampant violence and volatility, but they did not tolerate cowardice, even if it seemed to be hidden behind a convincing mask of unrepentant fury and reckless abandon.

She waits for him like a crouching panther.

“Come get me,” those empty eyes taunt.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags |  
notes | it's the first day of classes, and I can physically feel my soul draining out of my body, so have a post where nothing really happens. so all hell can break loose next, I guess.




@






Summary: Sera shifts just enough to avoid being kicked on her lower foreleg, but she still ends up with a gash and a relatively minorish injury to the tendons above her knee. She then proceeds to steady herself for Raum's next attack, says a prayer to Solis, gives a short, dramatic monologue (that's probably just a hint of a taunt), and thinks about just how proud she is of the Day Court, because she's a patriot. She doesn't actually attack him in this post; she wants him to come to her.

Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 1
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 1
Item(s) Used: N/A

Response Deadline: 2/7
Tags: @Raum, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless







I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORS
and there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.


please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence








Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 146 — Threads: 16
Signos: 0
Deceased Character
#5

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
 


Oh Seraphina, do not mistake Raum for fragile. A man untrained for war does not make him fragile – most certainly not when he is in the height of his prime (as Raum is). There is nothing delicate or so easily frangible about Raum, for frailty and fragility would not have helped him fight Isra the Night Queen (blood for blood and magic for magic – they had been an equal pair that night).  Fragile would also not have allowed him to pin a fellow Crow by the throat or stab a once-god to near death...
 
Raum is taller that Seraphina. He is muscled and lean, fine, yes, but not fragile. But Raum has the hot, agile blood of an Arabian and the speed of a thoroughbred surging through his heart. As a gift of both, Raum is so frighteningly fast. It is how he has spent his 7 years gathering ghosts – fast enough to kill each one with his dagger and escape with his life. No one unable to fight could ever acquire such achievements.
 
It is electric joy, sick and bright, that slips through him as his blue eyes watch blood begin to weep from the wound upon Seraphina’s forelimb. With such a move, might she be slower now? She may likely tip to her other forelimb… favour that and not the other. From the distance between them, Raum studies Sera, he looks for how she instinctively guards – he will aim for the body part she leans upon most. That is what Raum was trained to do: a methodical takedown. He also never aimed to rush his murders and so, when Seraphina does not move, he too settles back.
 
Raum stops moving as she speaks, his skull tilts like a Crow and he rests the hind limb on his injured side. It is a chance to rest the aching muscle of his back, the one that took her landing blow. It might have been a risky place to be struck, but his back is strong and muscle heals better than bone and tendon. A strike to his face might have blinded him, affected his breathing, his ability to think clearly – so many things… Yes, this, oh this, is easier.
 
He smiles at her words and, for all his beauty, his smile is a monstrous thing. It is a rictus splitting his face; it is poison in the air. “Are you so sure of that?” Raum’s voice is silk in the dusty air their battle has made. “A kingdom with an absent queen lends itself to low morale. If I win, at least they would have a present king.” He would have laughed if he knew how she labeled him a tyrant. Yes, he will be a tyrant, he will rule with an iron fist and seek only chaos and destruction. Raum fights now for no reason other than chaos, to hurt the world as much as it hurt him. “I will enjoy turning your Court to ashes and dust.”
 
His gaze is silver punishment and it does not lift from Seraphina. Always Raum is the one to strike first, his anger peaked before any other. But not this day, this day he settles back and waits as Seraphina waits for him. They stand as two titans set for war, two storms rolling into one another. He wants to see her move, he wants to see how she limps, how she uses herself with her injury. Raum is a learner after all.
 
“Ladies first, your Majesty.” And in defiance (since the space between them is plenty and his electric eyes watch her all the while), Raum lowers into a mocking bow.
 
((ah, he is a Grade A –insert chosen swearword here. But I am rather grateful for your nothing post, I have been super sick so it has given me a reprieve :) . We can kick off again <3))

@Seraphina - aaand everybody catch your breath xDD (In my case literally since this epic flu took out my lungs)








Summary: Raum watched how the wound was affecting Seraphina. Took her bait, threatened to ruin Day Court. Continued to be rude and waits for her to attack.

Attack Used:
Attack(s) Left: 1
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left:
Item(s) Used: N/A

Response Deadline: 10/2
Tags: @Seraphina, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless





[Image: x341oLX.png]

You're one microscopic cog

in his catastrophic plan





Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 399 — Threads: 81
Signos: 100
Inactive Character
#6

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

you went to the furthest verse of daring / but there you tripped on the high pedestal of justice / and fell
dead, you destroy my life


He does not, unfortunately, lash out, but that is fine. She watches him watching her, observes the way that his gaze lingers on her injured leg – and something comes to her mind from one of her earliest battles as Solterra’s Emissary. She raises her head thoughtfully. He is an assassin. He will seek a weakness, and he’s found one, however minor. Perhaps she can use that to her advantage.

“I won’t run from my mistakes, Raum.” Don’t mistake me for your night king. She has made so many of them; they are lead weights on her shoulder, an ever-present collection of ghosts that would like nothing more than to swallow her whole. Sometimes, she thinks, that perhaps they already have. She was three years old, a girl on the cusp of adulthood, when she was made her nation’s head diplomat, and she was only months older when she ascended the throne; she had barely passed her fourth year when her regent betrayed her and what little she had remade of her kingdom burnt to the ground. Tensions with Denocte grew towards a peak not so much later than that, and then the gods returned, and then her kingdom was swallowed by ice and snow. Seraphina had never been meant to play this role, and she was only too aware of it. She had never been prepared to lose what it would take from her; she wondered sometimes if she ever had it to begin with. She was a child-turned-killer, a faceless drone to be used and used and used for greater forces until there was nothing left of her that could be taken away. She has learned a few things since her ascension. Loyalty isn’t enough. Determination means nothing. Cleverness and intelligence mean little in an unpredictable, shifting landscape. All that matters is resilience. She wakes at night sometimes, covered in blood, the smell of ash still choking her lungs. She rises, half-asleep, a spear stuck between her ribs, stumbling towards a light that won’t come for her yet. The dead occupy her as often as the living; she sees the eyes of dead children and burnt civilians staring at her between the bookshelves in the library, glassy and cold as polished stone. They watch her as she wanders the streets of the capitol, stalks the sands of the Mors. She knows the face of her own god, and she wonders, still, what he thinks of her; none of his blessings, magic and familiars and pretty enchantments, have ever fallen upon her. She is certainly not some chosen queen, and, years into her rule, she knows that she was foolish to assume that simply taking the crown and doing her best with it would be enough to fix what her nation had become.

Really, she has failed magnificently as a ruler.

Still, she keeps standing.

“My absence is one of them. But I wonder…do you really think that you can turn Solterra to ash and dust? I have watched my kingdom burn twice. I have seen it ruled by a tyrant – and I know enough of its history to know that Zolin was hardly the first. Still, we persist.” Her cold, uneven eyes narrow. “What damage you might do will be swallowed by the sands, in time.” This much is a certainty. Tyrants all meet their ends. Life goes on.

If he takes her crown, she will not sit idly by while her people break and burn for her mistakes.

Oh no. She will see his life bleed out, in this moment or another; neither crown nor king mark her loyalty to her people.

She watches him bow, his mockery rendering nothing in her impassive expression. “Ever the courteous one, Crow.” Her tone is cold as ice. She sees in front of her wreckage, and it is not unfamiliar. She knows how it feels to be used and thrown away, made into something monstrous. She knows, certainly, how it feels to be destroyed. “Why are you doing this?” She does not wait for the answer. She can hear it later, however this battle is to end.

She considers, and then she leaps into motion.

Still favoring the leg as she lunges towards him, she seems to stumble over an uneven ridge in the shadow-pocked ground, crumbling towards the ground; she falls towards him, tumbling low, eyes wide and lips curled in some manner of offended distaste. However, as she lunges towards him, convincingly unbalanced and apparently collapsing, she reveals her feint - still lowered, she catches herself – though the gesture was never truly uncontrolled - only when she is as close to him as she can muster, and, still low, hefts her weight forward and aims a vicious kick at his foreleg. Whether or not her hoof connects, she will be quick to spring back, tension running every inch of her wrought-iron frame. She moves to put as much space between them as possible, readying herself to guard as best she can against whatever assault might come her way.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags |  
notes | I <3 Raum so much, even if he's a jerk. Celebrating the night before my 20th birthday with some good old seraphina suffering(?), as one should.




@






Summary: Sera continues her back-and-forth with Raum, and she thinks about how much she sucks at her job for approximately the hundredth time because she's a broken record. This is what happens when you put an 18-year-old in charge of a bloodthirsty sand hellscape nation, I guess. She also makes up her mind to come at Raum like a bloodthirsty fury at some point if he wins, so, uhh, stay tuned for that, I guess. She asks Raum why he's being Like That, and then she pretends to trip while she's charging him as an nod to a much older battle, only to use the movement and proximity to lunge out and attempt to kick him in the foreleg. She then springs back up and tries to put some distance between them, prepared to defend herself against whatever he tries to do next.

Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 0
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 1
Item(s) Used: N/A

Response Deadline: 2/13
Tags: @Raum, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless







I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORS
and there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.


please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence








Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 146 — Threads: 16
Signos: 0
Deceased Character
#7

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
 



Why are you doing this?
 
Her question echoes in the quiet. It resonates above the sounds of their harsh breathing and it reaches him like ice.  But Raum is already as cold and heartless as the dead and her words inspire nothing within him. Instead, he watches impassive and remain so, even when she charges.
 
He had been waiting for her, after all.
 
Raum’s nape arches in, though his eyes remain unyielding (concealing emotion, concealing his every thought), he readies himself for battle once again. He becomes a boxer upon his feet, the fleet footed Arabian blood keeping him light and ready. Nimble and spry, even as he tires with their battle. Their brief respite was over and Seraphina’s challenger is ready. He wears her words as barbs in his skin.
 
The Day Queen’s fury is a palpable thing. It scents the air and all begins to tremble. Across the pocked ground she charges, a silver bullet from a gun. And then, oh then, she trips! Seraphina stumbles forward, tumbling, and for a moment, for the tiniest sliver of a second, the Ghost believes her. But Seraphina is up fast, it is a wonder she stays upright, even with her planned feint. His momentary surprise is gone.
 
Raum’s opponent is low, low and his instinct is to get higher for her attack could only come from below. And, such as she is, Raum feared her offence might aim for the lowest parts of his body. Indeed, Sera lunges close, kicking out at his forelimb, but Raum, already alert, leaps laterally in a spook. It was a bid to clear his lower limbs from her attack. The air whistles by his cannon bone as her hoof strikes past – blessedly clear.
 
Yet Raum offers her no moment of respite. As Sera leaps backward, still facing him, still recovering from her low attack, the Crow seeks to take advantage of her lower positioning. Lunging forwards, gritting his teeth through the ache of his bruised back muscles. He could not keep the position long, but at least his hind limbs were uninjured and strong enough to propel him forward. Raum aims to keep pace with her, he rears up and surges after her as his forelimbs strike the air, bringing one down hard, aimed directly for Seraphina’s head (as she rises from her attack, he hopes). That forelimb punches down hard and, as it goes it changes, swift with magic. No longer is his forelimb that of a horse, rather, it is the broad arm and clawed paw of a grizzly bear.
 
Raum’s power is weak, tied into his emotions and short lived. But it is enough to change one limb into any living animal, it is enough that when his ire is riled, it changes to compliment his mood. A grizzly’s paw was designed for exactly the frontal attack he delivers and Raum swipes like a bear upon his hind limbs. He drives his bodyweight forward, into his rearing, slashing attack. His long, black claws beg for flesh and blood and bone.
 
When the Crow lands, his attack complete, his forelimb is no longer a bear’s but the slender limb of a horse once more. Fleeting is his magic at this level and weary it makes him. He staggers back, using his magic last had been a bid to keep his energy up to the end. But now, his attacks done, his defence complete, the stallion staggers back weary. His heart ricochets within his chest and his breath is heavy, heavy.
 
Upon his skull his ears lie, fine as spilled flutes and as sharp as broken glass. “A good fight.” He utters, those electric blue eyes glistening. “Thank you.” But there is no gratitude in him.



@Seraphina <3 Thank you for a fun fight :)








Summary: Seraphina being low aided Raum in sensing she was going to aim for a lower body part and so he leapt sideways to avoid her strike, blocking it completely. He then tried to take advantage of Seraphina still being low from her previous attack and having to move backwards, by lunging after her and rising up into a rear. He lashed out at her head since they were both still facing each other and one of his forelimbs, courtesy of his magic, turned into a grizzly bear paw, his attack mirroring a bear strike. He kept his magic until last as he knew it would wear him out.

Attack Used:
Attack(s) Left: 0
Block Used: 1
Block(s) Left:
Item(s) Used: Magic used

Response Deadline: 16/2
Tags: @Seraphina, @Sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless





[Image: x341oLX.png]

You're one microscopic cog

in his catastrophic plan





Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 399 — Threads: 81
Signos: 100
Inactive Character
#8

☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼

and my spirit, with its loss, knows this; though small against the black, small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost



[TW: gore]



In the desert, a moment was the difference between life and death.

One wrong move and a Teryr snatched you out of the sky; one wrong move and a Sandwyrm came snapping out of the sands and dragged you beneath the surface. Jackals. Davke. Things that squirmed and swallowed, things with teeth - so many teeth. The one thing that it embedded within you was a constant, consuming sense of danger, a sort of razor-wire tension. Seraphina was always tense, always watchful. It was the only reason why, in spite of her numerous brushes with death, it had yet to close its stony jaws around her.

That did not mean that she was always quick enough.

She saw the attack coming before it hit her, but she did not have time to get out of the way; her reflexive shifting managed to save her right eye, but those massive, tearing claws still dug into the side of her face with the sickening crunch of breaking bones. They all but carved open her silver flesh, dragging down her cheek and along her throat, tearing out great gouges of flesh – and hit the collar with an ear-piercing screech, carving small divots into the rough, bent metal. She stood, for a moment, and, abruptly, swayed on her feet.

And then she fell.

There was no room to speak – there was barely room to hear Raum’s final words. They rang through her mind as though she was hearing them through water, and, though they managed to register as some sort of smug taunt that would normally have sparked her annoyance, now…now they were nauseating. She fell onto her side, blood pooling around her skull and throat; her skin hung off her cheek in ribbons, occasionally displacing small clumps of pink flesh. She couldn’t feel the broken bones; she could barely feel her face, for the overwhelming pain of it all. She twitched, barely, her breath coming out in shallow gasps and sweat pooling on her brow; red dribbled from her lips and nostrils. Her right eye was closed, shielded from the thick stain of blood that swirled around it, but her left remained open, glassy, staring up at the sky, the thin crescent of silver moon, a mockery - white haze. Her gaze blinked in focused. She knew, within reason, that she had lost.  That hadn’t been out of the range of possibility. She’d known that she could die, too. She knew that she was – dying, she’d been dying before. But no, not now, she couldn’t fail like this, not now, not to him-

Day would survive. Day would always survive, they would fight back, he wouldn’t win-

“I might fall, Raum.”

But she sees those children, playing on the docks. She sees Eik, Bexley, O, Teiran, Rhoswen, Sabine, Mathias, El Toro, and so many others, and she sees them bloodied, broken, burnt alive – and it was her fault, her failure. She was bleeding out, and she was wandering the streets of the capitol as a ghost, some sort of apparition…she could see her citizens, her people, her nation, structures built up and burnt down, a hundred year’s history reduced to ashes, to smoke. Her pride in her nation’s persistence reassures her that this will not be the end, and yet…

How much can they be expected to lose to persist?

Her legs twitch. She struggles. She is desperate to move, to catch him, to kill him - even if she does not live, she has to catch him, she can’t let him -

Her head lifts a few centimeters off the ground, and then it falls back down. She still struggles. Her limbs kick weakly, her sides heave – but she can’t move. She can only feel the press of hot, oozing liquid spilling out around her, clumping in her fur, in the dirt…

Solis. Solis please, no, no, no. I don’t need to live, but I can’t let him – he can’t-

I can’t fail them again. Solis? Solis? Solis, please. Please, can you hear me?

But there is no sun – only the moon, heavy and taunting in the night sky, laughing. She has to get up. She has to get up; she can’t fail them again. Ashes catch in her throat, and smoke. She is not sure if the blood she smells is her own or some distant, haunting memory. A girl is caught beneath a burning pillar, and she can’t pull her out, but maybe she’s already dead, her eyes are like glass marbles, she-

-drives a spear through a Davke boy’s ribs, runs through the palace halls, desperate to get to the battlements, desperate; and then she is in the trenches, ground down into the mud, pressed against the bloody corpse of some younger boy who didn’t survive the battle, his collar wrenched off his throat by magic in a gesture that was somehow poetic; and then she’s staring into the eyes of the first man she ever killed, watching little rivulets of blood drip down his chest, drip out of the hole she just drove into him, and where had all her prayers and all of her trying ever gotten her? Soldier-pet of a tyrannical madman. Failed Emissary. Failed Queen. Never quite enough. Always two steps behind, hamstringed, never quite loved, title given form, but she’d kept fighting-

It was too much – too much. Too heavy. It was all so heavy, and she was drowning in it, drowning in the red and the sand and the sea, in a swarm of flailing limbs and ash and choking smoke. It was cold. She felt like she was frozen – freezing over. The landscape around her might as well be white, covered in endless sheets of snow and ice, and she couldn’t get away from them, they were swallowing her, they would eat her alive-

Please.

Please. Did it mean anything? Did it mean anything at all?

Somewhere she’d realized just how fragile things were, but she’d forgotten, and now whatever good she had done would be swallowed up, rendered useless - rendered to nothing. Could she fight a sandstorm? Could she hold back the tides? But she couldn’t call it pointless. She had to believe that the struggling, the hurt, the standing-up-all-over-again had – had meant something.

I might fall…

Somewhere she is on the banks of the sea, her lungs full of foam and salt. Somewhere she is wandering those dunes, sweat-slick and alive. Somewhere, she is in the capitol, staring into that fountain in the city square. Somewhere, she walks the Canyon walls, pulls herbs from the rocky crags. She is so far from home, and there is so much blood. Where is that familiar warmth? Where is the sun?

Please. Please, I don’t- I can’t- I have to-

The sweetest death is one for one’s people – it is the most honorable way to fall. But there is something cold and hard in her stomach, a searing shame. Her death solves nothing. Her failure renders the sentiment useless. If only she could move, if only she could follow him, how long has it been, how long does she have-

Her mind cycles through images. Sun. Sand. Sweat. Sea. Those flowers growing alongside the oasis. Her advisors, gutted and bleeding out on the marble floors of the palace. Desert wind, dry and searing. Stinging. Emaciated citizens, stalking the back alleys like ghosts, coughing, plagued. The kiss of the ocean against her sides. Dead eyes of her regiment, of the children she grew up with. No perfect image – a shattered mirror. She had to – fix this, she couldn’t see her people fall to another madman, couldn’t watch her nation fall apart all over again, but she-

There was so much blood, and she couldn’t get away from it, she couldn’t run, and how many people were dead because of her? How many people were going to die because of her? How could she ever make the difference? How could she ever fix what was already done?

Please. Solis, please, I…

It’s cold and wrong, and she is dying, and there is no one here – just the moon.

She wonders if it is okay to be selfish in her prayers. Just for a moment.

Please. I don’t want to be alone. Don’t leave me alone.



----------------------------------------------------------



tags |  @Raum @sid, @inkbone, @Sparrow, @nestle, @aimless
notes | she's not actually dying, lmao.




@








I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORS
and there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.


please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence








Played by [PM] Posts: N/A — Threads:
sid
Guest
#9


Congratulations!


@Seraphina has forfeited the fight; @Raum is the winner and takes the crown!
This thread will be locked and moved to the Ruris Archives shortly.

All damage taken in the thread is still applicable and cannot be retconned.
Seraphina can claim this as a "completed thread" for signos redemption, as it meets the 4 post + exit requirement!
Raum cannot claim this as a "completed thread" for signos redemption, unless he posts a final exit after this announcement!




RAUM
Participating in a challenge : +1 EXP
Winning a challenge by default: + 1 EXP
Winning a challenge: earns Sovereignty of Solterra
Winning a battle: +25 signos
Gain a Regime postion (Sovereign): +5 EXP
TOTAL: +7 EXP; +25 signos; rank switched to Day Court Sovereign

SERAPHINA
Participating in a challenge : +1 EXP
Losing a challenge: loses Sovereignty of Solterra
Losing a Regime position ICly: -2 EXP
TOTAL : -1 EXP; rank switched to Day Court Outcast

All gains and losses in this thread have already been applied, so there's no need to post in the Experience Updates, Signos Redemptions, or Rank Updates threads!










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