there is no safe place
for the hunted ones.
there is no safe place
when your body is
the site of the storm.
T
he attendant looks worried.
Across the room, Andras has been standing for hours, propped up against the far wall. He squints periodically as the heavy wood door creaks open like a mountain coming to life and light and sand spill into the small chamber. It is a familiar place. The groan of the crank, the shuffling of feet, and the unmistakable ring of anticipation is a cool hand smoothed over his cheek when the whole of the world outside this little pocket of space seems to have caught fire while his back is turned.
Next to the door is a sheet, which is the source of all the furrowed brows and the grim expressions. Andras hasn't read it. He has tried,, but was swatted away before his lenses would focus the words. Matches are not to be known in advance, the same attendant had said. The Solonia is about spontaneity.
Spontaneity.
As if the past few weeks have not been spontaneous enough.
The attendant looks worried, glancing from Andras to the sheet and back until he has to turn away, to look over the few Solterrans still left to participate. He imagines their matches across the arena, waiting quietly in the same vein, tense and stiff-backed and clenched in every muscle from head to toe. He breathes. The attendant still looks worried. When Andras looks back at her she stares at him, brows knit.
He is about to ask why, when there is a loud clunk in the sand past the door, and she breaks his gaze to lean into the crank, lurching the door open inch by inch. This time, the light falls on his face, his chest, and the warm air that pools into the doorway goes straight to his head.
"Hold on," says the same attendant, as he passes. He does, and she hands him a smooth, red arc of wood-- which he sees, as he turns it in the light, is a shortbow-- and a quiver to buckle to his shoulder. Suddenly, Andras is also worried. The girl wishes him luck, and the dawn king steps into the hot sun. It is all very familiar in a sad way. It is all very strange at the same time, as he runs one ghostly finger through the fletching of one arrow. He can't even remember the last time he shot a bow.
Somehow worse, still, is when he squints through his glasses at the growing shape opposite him, white and gold like the Solterran sun itself. Andras almost laughs.
"Our next match: Day versus Dawn, king versus king.
Adonai, Sovereign of Solterra and Andras, Sovereign of Delumine!"
It probably says more, that he's dead quiet, not even the unsteady crack of electricity to keep him company. When the cheering dies down, there is nothing but sun and silence. Andras bows his head low. "Your highness."
He wastes no time, after. They move away from each other again, circling back to a safe distance, and the match is called to start. Andras opens his wings and lifts into the air, raising his weapon. The bow shakes in his grip until Andras draws the string and forces himself to hold steady and breathe. He aims at the ground in front of Adonai, hoping only to buy himself some time. A man with anything to lose should flinch, he figures. He is thinking as far as getting Adonai moving and no further. Andras closes his eyes after he lets go. The idea that it hits nothing and the idea that it hits anything are equally unthinkable. He doesn't think about how the tips are probably blunted for safety (especially in a match that involves their king-- and another).
The only thing he can think, truly the only thing, is that he hopes Adonai is a better shot than he is. He didn't come here to leave without a scratch.
(Also if there is a way to give Andras disadvantage on rolls where he uses the bow because his knowledge of archery ends at "load, point some direction and shoot" it would truly and completely make my day thank you <3)
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
01-22-2021, 07:42 PM - This post was last modified: 01-22-2021, 07:53 PM by Andras
I am leaning against the wall of the medic room, breathing in its stale, closed air, when my name echoes down the hall.
I push myself upright just as an attendant bursts through the door. A light dusting of sand shakes loose from the ceiling. The attendant does not see me at first, her brows drawing together like knitting needles; I am standing behind a cabinet stacked high with boxes of bandages. Quickly, I ball up the piece of cloth I am holding and stuff it between two boxes.
“Your majesty?” Sweat slicks down the attendant's mane. The day is oppressively hot, not a wisp of white cloud to soften the sky, and she must have been sent running down from the king's box to find me.
I step out, a pearl of guilt brightening my smile. “I was looking for the weapons room, yet lost my way.” This is only half of a lie; I had been looking for the weapons room, until a fit of coughs had sent me ducking into this one.
“Oh!” She startles a step backwards, before recovering elegantly. “One of us could've showed you the way—it's a labyrinth down here.” She casts her eyes over the empty room. “But never-mind that, your majesty. I was sent to fetch you. It is time for your match.”
Now that I am in front of her, I see that she is holding something. The polished arch of a shortbow glints beneath a filter of weak sunlight, a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. She holds out the bow and then the quiver to me; I take them both mechanically, my touch ghosting down the smooth wood.
“The head arbiter heard about your preference for the bow, and expressed that it would be improper for you to be sent in unarmed like a common gladiator.” It is, of course, a logical decision. To a degree I had predicted it—it would be a slight to my class to allow me to fight with nothing but hooves and teeth. Yet the bow? It's a weapon with a strange history.
Mistaking my silence for surprise, the attendant ducks her head and adds, “Your opponent is identically armed. It will be a fair fight. As you'd wished, no further exceptions have been made for you.” I study her face carefully, for the unsaid, for the implied—until her shy smile grows degrees more nervous, unsure if she has done something wrong.
“Thank you,” I say then, slipping the quiver over one shoulder before strumming the bow's string like a harp.
§
“Have they found someone to distribute the wreaths in my place?”
“Yes. I believe it'll be the Regent, or one of the arbiters.”
I nod. “Good. The Solonia has been going smoothly. I am relieved.”
“Everyone is excited, your majesty. There has not been such cheer in Solterra for so long.”
“Yes,” I laugh. “Well, we are not so difficult to please as we think we are.” Give her blood, and give her glory. A Solterran lives to die on the sand.
The attendant smiles. “You are looking very well today, your majesty.” Her eyes skim my figure: bare of armor, slick from the anointing of oils, my hair knotted up in braids. The door to the cage begins to grind up in a whine of gears and straining pulleys. The arena sand is a sea of gold before me: gold—
And then an aberration of black.
§
“Our next match: Day versus Dawn, king versus king.
Adonai, Sovereign of Solterra and Andras, Sovereign of Delumine!”
§
We step up to each other like strangers. (Or are we? Is Pilate a tenable enough connection? Is Pilate watching us watch each other?) I stare into the lens of his glasses, their silver rims sparking like a hypnotist's trick. He is the first to bow. “Your highness.” It is bizarre to hear it from him. I would have preferred my name.
So I don't say his back. “Welcome to Solterra, King of Delumine.” My smile is slippery in the sun; the blow of the Solonia horn commands us to retreat before I can give a reciprocal salute.
He is off in an instant. A shred of sand, a whoosh of wings taking flight. Below him I am still, my head angled up, my brow drawn low, my wings held close and taut as I wait for him to steady his aim. He is uncertain with the bow, and negligent—or simply uneasy—of the shortbow's range. That much I can tell immediately.
The arrow draws back, back, back—and then, a pale streak, it dives. He is not aiming at me, not with any intent. Annoyed, I leap to the left; the arrow sinks to its fletching in sand. I grit my teeth. There is no advantage to staying grounded. Andras has taken the fight to the sky, and I am tired of waiting to be shot at.
The crowd's roar reaches deafening heights when I snap my wings out and take flight.
An arrow is notched while I climb to his height, the quiver's leather strap digging into the bone of my shoulder. Up here, the sun is scorching, the wind generated by my wings the only reprieve. I cut to his right yet climb higher still. If I wish to land a hit, I will have to time my shot with a risky nosedive towards him. It is why they armed us with shortbows: to make us circle each other like vultures to a kill.
Except we are both vultures—or we are both the kill.
I draw back the bowstring and take aim at Andras's right wing. The quickest way to take down a teryr is to sever a pectoralis muscle. “Are you doing me a favor,” I sigh, “missing like that?”
My arrow flies out without a sound.
smell like smoke, nuit de l'homme / it's been a while since we last spoke
« r » | @Andras
the fact that THIS is the most heated adonai's ever gotten i'm
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
01-23-2021, 11:52 PM - This post was last modified: 01-24-2021, 12:04 AM by Adonai
there is no safe place
for the hunted ones.
there is no safe place
when your body is
the site of the storm.
T
hey are friends; to Andras, it could be no other way. He sees Adonai across the arena and a laugh bubbles its way halfway up his throat before it hits the back of his tongue. Andras aims his arrow at Adonai's hooves and the flash of something that rolls over the man's face makes him giddy before he remembers himself. The lighthearted, lightheaded bliss rolls first into the pocket behind his eyes and then down the bridge of his nose where he breathes it in like the last gasp of fresh air left in the world.
Adonai rises like the phoenix he is, bright against the darkening sand, the same white and gold as his city. For a moment, with his wings spread and backlit by the sun as he rises, and rises, and rises, the day king almost looks like a god in his own right. Wreathed in flame. Clothed in the sun itself.
And he, dawn-king, weighed down by the fog of his home, a black spot on the dazzling gleam of Solterra.
"Are you doing me a favor," Adonai asks, "missing like that?" There is that something again, a flash of anger that sets Andras' own on fire. Sparks blow off his skin like a livewire before he can stop them.
The arrow sings past his side, whistling as it slices the atmosphere straight off his skin. Andras imagines it peeling, folding down off his wings like cut wood, or falling in flakes before the sand swallows it up, just as it swallows everything else, given a long enough time. He watches it go.
"Is that you returning the favor?" Andras laughs: high, wild, and frantic. The sort of sound that only comes out of beasts. He raises the bow again, this time aimed at the other man's wing in return. "You wanna try that again, friend?"
A spark, then a crack like thunder, as the crowd falls silent in the wake of Andras tucking his wings to his side and careening toward Adonai, propelled by a cloud of smoke, fire and lightning. Andras breathes: in, out, in, out-- until he is just close enough to loose his arrow, still trained (best he can) on Adonai's wing.
The crowd starts to mumble again, then resumes its full volume. Under its roar, Andras is laughing.
