Fight Type: Battle Prize: The friends we made along the way (exp) Contact Made: Yup!
Character #1: @Andras Bonded: n/a Magic: vexillum - arc flash Armor: n/a Weapons: n/a Current Health: 15 Current Attack: 25 Current Experience: 27
Character #2: @ipomoea Bonded: rhoeas the criost deer Magic: dominus - nature spirit Armor: n/a Weapons: shape-shifting enchanted dagger thing Current Health: 60 Current Attack: 60 Current Experience: 117
Andras
He does not ask, really.
They are standing together, quietly. Andras has come to the Court to deliver a stack of paper: reports on the past, quiet, year, a few messy, scribbled notes about comings and goings around the city, and an envelope that he slides under the bottom sheet-- a detailed testimony from one of the guards as to Emersyn's state-- which will go unopened, he's sure, just as all the ones before them have, as well, gone unopened.
Andras looks at it for too long, possibly. He purses his lips. When his focus breaks, when he finally looks away from the table, the stack, the envelope, it is only to say: "Fight me."
He is surprised to feel desperate, surprised to find himself searching the king's face, for the glint or two of violence that he knows lives in the cheekbones, the soft brow, the bridge of the nose. He is surprised by the absolute depth of his longing, the one that waits only long enough for Ipomoea to nod before pushing him out of the room and away from the ground, lifting like his own heart lifts and laughing like it, too.
So, the battlefield.
So, the early spring ground, drier here than in Delumine but still soggy enough that it sucks at his hooves when he lands.
So, the roar in his heart, the drum of blood and magic as it races around his body, the familiar crackle of electricity when he thinks of the point of impact, the sting of broken skin, the bright white screech of his fear with a blade pointed straight at his throat. Andras trembles but it is not with that fear.
No, when he sees the king, when the keen of his magic rises to a choir in all Andras' hollow parts, he does not feel fear, or anything like it. Only joy. Only bliss. Enough to make his head spin.
"Let loose." He says to Po, more of a demand than a comfort. "It'll be fun."
The Warden squares his shoulders and grins like a dog: teeth on teeth on teeth.
Summary: Andras very eloquently asks Po to spar with him, and immediately flies to the site to wait. He notes that the ground is still wet from the winter in places. When Ipomoea finally arrives, Andras half-chides-half-begs him to let loose and live a little, before squaring his shoulders, smiling, and waiting for the first attack.
He is trying not to think of Emersyn as he makes his way to the Steppe.
Or the cottage that stands on the edge of Illuster meadow, the roof of it collapsed and open to the sky like an eye staring up, unblinking, at the sun. He is thinking of his garden, and unicorns tangled leg-to-leg and horn-to-horn beneath the weeping willows. There is a path that runs between the rose bushes, half hidden by overgrown by canes and blossoms, a path he follows now in his minds eye. Each step he takes is not a step leading him on to war and ruin, on and on to a mock-battlefield littered with the memories of fallen soldiers — but a step leading him past roses that grow ever darker, petals unfurling in shades crimson then burgundy then black.
But every time he blinks he can see it, and her, and the vines twisting half-dead to claw their way through that torn-apart roof like monsters freeing themselves from their graves. The smell of saltwater and brine and death (the sea has always smelled a little bit like death), flowers covering up bones, blue flashes of light turning everything stark and grotesque.
When he blinks he is standing before Andras, a flash of blue so bright it is nearly white illuminating both their faces.
He could laugh then, at the irony of it all — at the hunger lining the points of Andras’ face, hunger he is sure is reflected back to him in his own eyes. But a war is no place for laughter, even when the only war is the one that lives inside both of their chests. So he smiles instead, and when he blinks again he begs a little more of his fire and fury to return.
It works.
The ground beneath his feet trembles, and he is not sure if it has to do with the thunder of the pegasus’ heart or the roar of his own veins answering the call of it. His magic leaps into his throat, ready and waiting — but he swallows it down, feeling it burn and scratch at his lungs all the way. Each step as he moves closer to Andras feels easier than the last, and soon his body feels alive with magic and desperation and the bright, flashing arc of lightning behind his eyelids.
“I think most would disagree with your definition of fun,” he tells his Warden — his friend — but he does nothing to tell him he’s wrong.
He is only moving. And as his steps turn from a walk, to a trot, to a run, it is both to war and to his garden that he is galloping. Somewhere behind him Rhoeas is pacing, watching and waiting, but for now —
oh, for now, it is Ipomoea’s turn to remember what it is like to feel close to death.
He runs and he runs and he does not stop until he feels Andras’ flesh against his, rising up on his back legs with his teeth reaching out for the curl of his neck. And for the first time, he wonders what it might feel like to be struck by lightning.
Summary: Ipomoea comes to the Steppe reminiscing about the good ol' times he's had with Andras when they nearly killed their Emissary together. After a brief pause, he begins to gallop in a head-on charge for Andras. When he reaches him he aims to bite somewhere along his neck, and tries to pull him up with him as he rears.
I think most would disagree with your definition of fun.
Maybe so.
Andras is still grinning when he asks, "Would you?" though he knows the answer. He has wondered for almost two years how to open the tap on Po's rage. The warden watches him, sometimes, when he can be bothered to, when he is not so tired he feels like he's drowning: that same feral undercurrent that sits on the point of his shoulders and rides him day and night, the slight ache in him, magic that sings just as much as it roars. He's always wanted to see it. He is all fear and awe when it comes to the surface.
If his grin still has room to widen, it does, like it's trying to tear him open teeth-first. He would laugh if he wasn't so breathless, if Po bending his neck and hurtling his way did not make him feel something that he can never quite find anywhere else. Here is the fear, finally, come late to the war. A different fear. A reverent fear. A dizzying fear.
It is almost too much to bear, almost too good.
Andras waits in a torturous passing of seconds: one, as Po leaps into action; two, as he eats up the ground that separates them; finally three, when Andras lurches forward just as the king comes to meet him and all that crackling and magic goes dark, turning to almost holy silence.
They touch, shoulder to shoulder, only thing that makes sound for what must be miles around. Andras feels the hooves graze his shoulder then as he rises, and the teeth that close around the base of his mane--
--Andras cracks like thunder when an explosion detonates just below both his hind hooves, one after the other, catapulting Andras forward on the blast wave that follows, kicking sparks from his heels that land with them on the cold dirt before winking out of existence. Po is on his hind legs already, and Andras, through the fog of his rage and delight, knows that it will do him no favors. He would apologize, if he knew how. If he cared to.
The warden hits the ground like he imagines the king must have done, off-balance and scuffed, entire ruts left where digs his heels in to stay upright, and as he steadies himself he is cackling.
Summary: Andras makes an unnecessary quip about the battle because he is giddy with excitement. He decides, for once, to wait just a few seconds as Po approaches him before jumping forward to meet the attack head-on, though most of his forward momentum is stopped by Po hitting him. The attack is a success, and Po grazes Andras' shoulders with his hooves but most importantly grabs exactly where he aims on the back of the neck. Though it makes his eyes water Andras uses the close proximity to launch his attack: detonating two low-scale explosions behind his hind hooves to regain that forward momentum and hopefully knock Ipomoea too the ground. He does not land gracefully, himself, and has to stumble and dig his hooves in to brake and stay standing. A great time out with friends.
There is a certain peace in the thoughtlessness of a fight. In the mindlessness of it. In the way he only needs to worry, for the moment, about the feel of his teeth scraping along the back of Andras’ neck and how he will react to it.
He does not answer Andras’ question. He does not need to.
Ipomoea already knows his Warden — his friend — knows the answer perhaps better than he knows it himself.
It should worry him that battle still comes so easily to him. That the war, for him, has never ended but lives on and on and on now in his veins, in his heartbeats, in the magic thrumming in his bones that is begging (always begging) for more. It should worry him that he has to remind himself to soften his blows, to strike the muscle instead of the joints or the throat.
But he’s still looking for the bloom of blood on Andras’ skin and it’s drowning out everything else. He’s still waiting for the metallic taste on his tongue to remind him you were born for this, in the way a desert-born thing is always made for violence. Ipomoea has been waiting for war and it makes another fissure rise between all the other cracks of his heart.
And when the explosion comes — every electrifying jolt of it, echoing through the hollow parts of his bones in all the ways he always imagined it would — it makes every other thought wink from his mind like the sun dipping below the horizon.
He does not remember hitting the ground (he does not remember falling through the air, or letting go of Andras’ neck, or the way the grass of the field suddenly rose like a wave to catch him gently.) Later he will remember the rush of it, the weightlessness, the feeling of every single hair on his body standing on end, the sound of Andras’ laughter racing like a shot of lightning through the darkness of the field.
Later he will remember the way that laughter awakened something in the pit of his belly, something that had only been sleeping since they went to their Emissary’s cottage all those months ago.
It races out of him now with the roar of a teryr spreading its wings in the desert. Until every bit of sand and soil surrounding him rises, and grows teeth, and claws, and the faces of wolves howling not at the moon, but at Andras. They are still howling when they cross the small space separating them, as he drags himself to his feet and looks on after them like a hunter commanding his hounds. With every step they are better formed, with every step they are more beast than earth. Until they reach the warden at last, and his hold on them tethers like a rope cut.
He does not know if they still have their teeth when they reach him.
Summary: Ipomoea is struck completely by Andras' explosion and is left disoriented. His second magic comes to him by instinct, forming a few wolves from sand and soil to race after Andras (assuming they are still in close enough proximity to each other.)
Due to failure to respond by the deadline, @Andras forfeits the fight and @ipomoea wins!
This thread is being left unlocked so that the thread can be continued (as discussed with Cannon!) The characters' official experience has been updated to reflect these changes (along with any signos rewards sent), so there's no need to post in the Experience Updates or Signos Redemption threads!
IPOMOEA
Participate in a Battle or Challenge: +1 EXP
Winning a Battle or Challenge: +1 EXP
Winning a Battle or Challenge: 25 Signos TOTAL: +2 EXP, 25 Signos
ANDRAS
No "Participate in a Battle or Challenge" experience is gained if fight is forfeited by lack of response. TOTAL: +0 EXP
