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+---- Thread: [P] If the hand is hard (/showthread.php?tid=4980)
If the hand is hard - Castalla - 05-26-2020
Of all the battles I've fought
Of all the lives I've taken
Of all the people I've lost
The crowd was uproarious, singing their bloodlust with voices hoarse from shouting. The ground pounded with the hooves slammed rhythmically into the sand, drumming out the beat of her steady heart. Through the cacophony and wild pleasure Castalla stood perfectly still, perfectly quiet. In her sensitive ears the thunder of the crowds had died down to background noise, the gentle orchestra to her concentration. To them this was entertainment, a night of violence and chaos. To the assassin this was little more than a normal Wednesday night, a perfectly ordinary workout. Already she was sizing up her opponent, another mare with a gaze hungry for blood. There was something unchecked in the mare’s earthen eyes, a kind of fear that had nothing to do with the pain of battle. Castalla had seen that kind of obscured fear in the eyes of many before her, the fear of failure, of her life riding on this victory. But it was not for her to know and it would be as fair as she could make it, Castalla would guarantee that. She left her opponents breathing, which was more than could be said for some combatants.
For a moment the impending battle harkened back to another fight, another arena. Fear stabbed at Castalla’s heart as it was a world of black stone and blood-scented shadows that surrounded her not brown dirt and sandstone tunnels. A familiar opponent faced her, his eyes filled with the same pain, the same terror and wildness as her own. This fight was to the death, to an end that was better than whatever King Oranus had concocted for them next. Friend against friend, sister against brother, Princess against Commander.
Not now. Not now. Not now. That voice in her mind whispered. The only dagger to penetrate the terrible vision before her eyes. Her nightmares were now waking- the very images she avoided sleep to escape, it seemed they followed her to the waking world too. But the wolf was lost, wholly given over to hallucination. Until…
Until she felt muscle connect with her chest, felt her body careening backward and heard the joyous jeers of spectators. Suddenly the suffocating noise of the Solterran underground was a blessing, a spear that stabbed through the silence of her past.
Castalla coughed the dust that had filtered into her throat, regaining her balance and narrowly dodging a kick as she blinked rapidly, clearing the lingering images. Instinct blessed her in that moment, her mind still reeling but her body well trained enough to slide left and right, jump back and forth.
Regaining her composure, the Wolf fixed her opponent with brilliant blue eyes, forming a strategy within moments. She was like a dancer, weaving smoothly in and out of reach, striking like a snake when the other mare was vulnerable. For her part, the other woman got in a few good hits and Castalla felt that familiar ache of bruised muscles and torn skin. Then it was over, the other mare pinned to the ground and Castalla breathing heavily atop her. With little aplomb, and ignoring the shouts of victory from those who’d bet on her, Castalla left the ring, melting into the crowd until she spied a familiar face…
@Tenebrae <3
RE: If the hand is hard - Tenebrae - 06-01-2020
and in my heart: all Hells
He does not need his magic here. Not when shadows already gather everywhere. They are found even in the razor sharp smiles of the feverish crowd who crow like ravens once did in Denocte.
He lets the shadows of the fight club sink upon him. They are nothing like his. These shadows are renegade violent, they seethe and smell of bloodlust and sweat. The very air trembles as if adrenaline pervades it. Maybe it does.
Tenebrae is a mirror of Castalla’s calm. The two warriors are the only calm ones here; the stillness of rocks amidst the rapids. The monk’s skin becomes saturated with the violence and his nerves tingle with the feel of violence that lays herself across his body. His torso knows this savage delight, he has felt it upon the training field.
Slowly the monk moves through the shadows at the edges of the club, where the crowds are thin, where people laugh with other business on their mind. But nothing else his upon his mind this night. He watches the way she fights, how her body ripples blows she receives and the strikes she lands in turn.
The man knows her body, he remembers the scars upon it. He watches as new ones are made. Castalla is a portrait of brutality and yet it glows upon her. Even as she pins her adversary to the ground she towers above them in the manner that a lion commands its prey. Then, she slips away without fanfare, her audience is too much of a frenzy to see the way she walks, like a silently through the crowds.
Tenebrae might think her phantom, the way her pale skin glows. But she lives, he sees it on the scars of her body. In darkness he moves toward her, he remembers the way her blue eyes watched the candles of the souls. Neither he nor she could ever light enough. He knows her pain.
He finds her side, silently. They move together, darkness and light, equal and yet so utterly different. And yet the same. Tenebrae turns his white-bright eyes upon her, looking at the crimson stains of her new scars.They are bright and stark upon her body. He can see the way her skin flushes with bruising. “You need not have come all the way here, Castalla. There is a perfectly suitable fighting den at home.” His lips are curling with a small smile. His voice is low, it does not lift above the din for her, it does not need to. They have always exchanged words in the quiet and the den seems to pause, to breathe just long enough for the warrior to hear the monk.
Then, there is a roar, rising to a crescendo as another fighter takes to the stage. Sand stirs and all the air fills with dank dust. Yet through the dust, the violence, the savage delight, a slightly pious man watches an ever-so-unpious woman.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~