[Quest] if she was the earth

[Random Events]

in the desert, i saw a creature

The crowd is riotous today, their voices melding together into a single, ceaseless roar that from a distance may sound like a teryr’s screams. They call for blood, her blood, and they would not be denied. 

The sun gazes down on the fighting pits without blinking, and the entire desert withers beneath its stare. The day is hot, even for Solterra; the early morning is not enough to provide relief from its searching gaze. A line of sweat begins to trickle down the backs of the observers, and the flies descend like a greedy cloud upon the dust of the arena. The citizens of Solterra line up, unable to contain the eagerness leaping frantically in their throats, filing one by one into the stands surrounding the pits. And then, they wait. 

It is the Davke girl who’s brought in first, shoved unkindly into the sand once her shackles are removed. She is bare, save for the empty leather strap wound about her left foreleg. Her weapon is missing. 

The crowd sneers down at her, pointing and laughing and hurling insults. The pit master allows them, encourages them; the bids are coming faster than the collectors can take them, and he is in no rush to stop them. Only once the crowd has had their fill does he signal to the arena keepers, allowing them to reveal her opponent. 

The metal grates screech as they are pulled up, the inhumane shriek cutting through the air like a knife. But from within the cave comes another wail - a rasping, rumbling growl that rises above the din. The earth itself shakes in response, silencing the crowd so that their cheers die in their throats. From the darkness steps a shadow, and only the bear’s yellow eyes and drool-slicked teeth glisten brightly. It points it snout at her, opening its fearsome mouth wide, and roars. The spacious arena now seems cramped and claustrophobic with both Avdotya and the bear standing upon its sands.

Perhaps she can hear Zolin laughing over the bear’s challenge, or perhaps she can hear the pit master calling for her spear to be brought in. Perhaps she hears only the sound of her own beating heart, and the Solterran wind racing through the nearby dunes. Or maybe she can hear her blood beginning to sing in response: and something in her blood shifting, stirring, coming awake -

They toss her spear down before the bear, well out of her reach. The crowd howls its approval as the beast steps forward, lips pulled back in a snarl, and stands protectively over the weapon. The claws of one paw scratches deep gouges into the wooden shaft. 

Overhead the vultures and carrion crows begin to circle. And as the pit master calls for the fight to begin, the laughter of the boy king rises above the voracious cheers of the crowd. 

But the sands shiver again around her hooves as the bear howls again, rising onto its back legs and swinging its paws at the sky. The desert itself is watching, whispering, waiting; and so perhaps Avdotya is not as alone on her side of the arena as she appears to be.

---

This quest takes place in the past, and is a combined Active Magic and Enchantment quest.

@avdotya finds herself tossed into the fighting pits for Zolin's pleasure. Her spear has been tossed beneath the feet of her opponent - a great and snarling bear, starved and poked into a frenzy. She must defeat the bear to save her own life. But perhaps she will find she is not quite so helpless as she appears...

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Enjoy! -sid

[Avdotya]

You're a survivor,

it's written in blood across your lips

---

Beaten. Crumpled. Weak. 

The viper has lost her stinging bite, left broken and withered down to a mere shadow of her former self. It is clear in the way she lays in a heap on the ground that Avdotya has shed her desire to fight- that perhaps it is death’s cold embrace she now awaits instead of her next opportunity to wreak havoc upon the boy king and his castle. She has held fast for so long, maintained her will to resist and fed her hope that somehow she would feel the Mors’ hot sand underfoot again someday. For so long

But alas, even the mightiest must shed their strength when reality comes calling.

So she does not rise when a man appears before her dark, dusty cage, standing there expectantly and without words. He rattles its bars only to elicit the subtle turn of a weathered ear, at which point he is prompted to grab her chains and simply drag the mare out to the raucous arena that calls for her execution. She is on her feet by the time they reach the dark alleyway leading out to the pit, refusing to abandon what little dignity she has left to her name. Even covered in dirt, she knows that if she is to die here in front of Zolin’s hungry dogs, then it will be with grace.

And yet even grace is hard to come by despite her best efforts. The gamekeeper unceremoniously throws her out into the harsh light of the arena, down to her knees and into the dust with the song of a bloodthirsty crowd all around her. She blinks uncontrollably in an attempt to adjust to the sun - the sun, oh, how she has forgotten its heat on her skin - and staggers clumsily back to her hooves to face whatever beast it is that snarls angrily in the shadows. The animal is not what holds her attention, however; her eyes, finally able to focus, are already locking on Zolin in his lavish suite. He stands there surrounded by food and lavish pillows, mares huddled at his side jostling for an ounce of his attention. They are not who he cares for in this moment, though. Zolin, of course, is too busy relishing in that damned Davke girl's imminent death. Even from down below she can hear his horrid laugh. 

She hears it while the anticipation builds in her bones, she can hear it as the great grizzly emerges and unleashes a gods-awful shriek. She hears him when the bear’s jagged claws rake across her entire left side and as she stands dripping and smeared with blood. Everything else in the world is muted except for him- she feels nothing, she sees nothing, she knows nothing. His laughter, unrelenting, is quite possibly the last straw that forces her back to the ground, laying there waiting for death to find her. Now more than anything, the Davke yearns for it. Solis, kill me, she begs... but then, in some cruel twist, the keeper orders her spear to be tossed into the pit. It hits the ground, sending a wooden echo from the shaft that seems to eat through every other ounce of sound and silence it all. For a moment, Avdotya finally hears nothing. Nothing except:

Fight.

The word comes over and over and over again. Fight, Avdotya. She does not know the voice, but somehow she feels it in the way that one feels the wind against their face or the sun upon their back. The ground itself seems to reach up around her, insisting that the young mare to get up. Get up, get up! Each time it repeats, Avdotya feels her body swell with an ethereal strength, like she is being possessed by some otherworldly figure.

Fight.

Her legs do not quiver when she pushes herself to her feet, her gaze doesn’t falter from that of the grizzly’s. Her body sings for the fight now, ravishing at the sight of that unholy beast when he breaks into a wild charge. The woman hungers for his blood as he does hers- he may not be Zolin, but the boy king is all Avdotya sees on that great bear’s head. Her mind spirals into a frenzy and her bones follow suit. In the thrum of the excitement, her spear is summoned to her as naturally as if it were another part of her (as it always has been) and the moment that old weapon finds its place at her side, Avdotya truly feels her most deadly. It hits like a shockwave, that burst of power, and suddenly the desert around her awaits her command.

Feverishly, the ground begins to quake, reaching up for the bear’s legs and pulling them out from beneath him. It sends him into a thunderous fall, one that met the Davke’s path almost perfectly - all she needs to lurch forward and drive her spearhead square between his eyes.

The crowd is quiet. Zolin is silent, but Solis is not.

Fight, Avdotya.

This, the viper decides, is the day the boy king dies.

@Random Events

THE DESERT VIPER

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