forward-flowing tide of time [MYSTERY FIGHT]

[Official Day Account]

Her name is Zarqa. 

She has lived, always, on the outside of Solterra. 

In fact, Zarqa is hardly “from Solterra” at all. No, the old mare exists—even “living” seems a stretch—beyond the city walls, in the desert. When asked by travellers passing through (which is rarely) she tells them, “I am from the desert.” Not, “I am from Solterra." Zarqa rarely visits town or leaves the ramshackle adobe cottage she calls home, with her plants hanging to dry and a garden in the back bereft of water. Nothing much grows there.

Everyone, then, is surprised when she enters the competition. She arrives at the tournament in a long black robe. It seems like a poor clothing choice, considering the overbearing midday sun. But any who glance at it will find it captivating. It shines, glimmers, twists. One might even discover if they look hard enough it seems to reflect the light and colour back at them, a microcosm of all that it sees and all that you might see. Your eyes, your face, twisted up into the dark fabric that moves in a way reminiscent of quicksilver. Sleek, metallic, but liquid. Malleable. 

Zarqa is paired with Aghavni, for a matched fight. She enters the Colosseum to a quiet crowd. In fact, almost no one is there. The day is waning; already the sun begins to dip below the far horizon and Caligo’s moon is up, shining silver-dollar sleek and silver-dollar bright.

She waits patiently for Aghavni to enter the other gate. Perhaps later, after the fight has begun, they will say it was not so random after all. But not yet. Not in the quiet almost-night with a setting sun. See, so few things in the desert are accidental. No, the desert waits a hundred years, patiently, a serpent biding its time. So it is with Zarqa for no reason other than distantly, as if through many clouds, she sees a vision of a girl that no longer exists. For her, the history of Solterra has always been laid out so simply, like a story told from childhood. 

There is no one left alive to tell her it is her eyes, a nearly transparent, pure-ice type of blue. There is no one left alive to tell her it is the robe, and the many lives that have been woven into its fabric. It’s made of the ashes, children whisper. The ashes of funeral pyres, and she weaves into it all the knowledge and all the history of Solterra—she weaves it into the robe from the ashes of the dead. 

So what dead have spoken to her, Aghavni? What have they said?

When Aghavni enters, it is not difficult for Zarqa the Immortal, Zarqa the sorceress, to take her magic and produce an illusion: Zarqa’s outward appearance, a plain buckskin besides the eyes and robe, begins to change. The colour of her mane goes darker, deeper, into a black with no penetrable light. It begins to twist into exquisitely beautiful curls. Next are the eyes. From ice-blue to dove-grey, and a change to the tilt of them, too. Then the broad features of her heritage become sharper, elvin. A crystalline, jagged horn sprouts from her brow and glows with a type of inner bioluminescence, a light that spills out over and into those dove-grey eyes, lighting them like embers. The buckskins colour, too, changes; it becomes splashed with white, socks, an irregular blaze across the face and one ear. 

Aghavni would be staring at a perfect image of the girl she might have become, if the ways of Solterra were not so cruel, and her father so bold. Zarqa wraps the cloak tightly around her shoulders and steps forward into the sands. “Aghavni,” she coos, and her voice drops to a quiet whisper. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” The black, silken robe billows out around her shoulders; from beneath it swirl strange, opaque clouds, the colour of pearls. Zarqa is not cruel. 

She is only a harbinger of the unfinished. 

@Aghavni 

CREDITS

RULES: 

1. This will not be a judged fight. Instead, this counts as a "feud." However, it will follow the same guidelines AS IF it were a judged fight/challenge. This format is quoted below: 
1. Form/Entrance: Character #1 enters (and posts the fight form).
Character #2 has 1 week to respond.

2. Entrance/Attack: Character #2 enters and has the option to make the first attack.
Character #1 has 3 days to respond.

3. (Block)/Attack: Character #1 has the option to block, and makes their first attack.
Character #2 has 3 days to respond.

4. (Block)/Attack: Character #2 has the option to block, and makes their next attack.
Character #1 has 3 days to respond.

5. (Block)/Attack: Character #1 can block (if not used), and makes their next attack.
Character #2 has 3 days to respond.
6. (Block)/Exit: Character #2 can block (if not used), and ends the fight. 
No response needed, but Character #1 can post an exit (no attacks or blocks).
2. No serious harm will befall your character unless you would like it to. Please DM @syndicate on discord if you would like to further discuss this! 
3. Characters are allowed to use what is in their surroundings to combat their mystery opponent. For example, perhaps Character Z enters the arena with a sword given to them to borrow before entering the arena. This weapon or armour cannot be used OUTSIDE of this thread. But I encourage you to be creative! 
4. Have fun!

[Aghavni]

W

hen I was younger I often asked my father what my mother looked like. All the paintings done of her had burned in the fires, and the ones done of us all, reclining on cushions like three sleek hounds, had been too large to fit in the back of an escaping caravan.

I suppose that I asked my father what my mother looked like because I knew the answer would hurt him. I could not blame him for my mother’s death but I could blame him for leaving her portraits behind. It was an unkind thing to do, but I have never claimed to be particularly adept at being kind.

I remembered my mother in snatches: the scent of the rose oil she rubbed into her skin; how she hummed folk songs when she walked through the gardens; how her legs were like stems, anchored with stacks of gold bracelets; the little bone dagger she kept behind her pillow.

Of her face, though, I remembered nothing. It was either that or her dead besides me, her white throat like an open mouth.

To that, nothing was a kindness.

It was my nursemaid who’d told me, when I had asked (in a moment of longing—it was summer and the night was thick with cicadas; we were somewhere near the Vitreus, halfway to Denocte) if I looked like my mother. “Don’t you! All limbs and eyes, just like you. And her hair—” she’d said, while brushing mine. “Your mother was the envy of all the Court for that hair of hers. Every night I combed it, like I do for you now. It was as lush as spring and as black as melted obsidian, or—or Caligo’s night in a bottle. Never saw anything like it. If you had her hair you would look nearly identical.”

“Like you,” my father said, when I asked after breakfast the next morning. “She looked like you.” The displeased way he said it (which differed from my father’s customary terseness by a negligible amount; yet even young I had been unusually perceptive) would discourage me enough that I would go weeks before asking again.

Yet I did not miss the way his eyes went to my hair. Bone-white in the sun. My father and I shared a secret. When he saw me, I knew that he saw me as I had been. With the hair my mother had given me.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

My father and I shared a secret, and we will both carry it to our graves. 

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

The shock sweeps in like a tide, like a tsunami with five ships in its bowels. Who are you? It—my anger—catches me by surprise as much as it will her—Zarqa—because I cannot battle when angry, when I am anything other than blank.

My fan slices the air where her—my—face had been precious seconds ago, before I know how my body will follow. 

I improvise and it is sloppy, an opening for any fighter deft enough to end up in this arena, with me, a Hajakha, a princess, an emissary, as her opponent. My father does not believe in chance. Neither do I.

Clouds of sand fly up around me as I lunge viciously forwards, lifting my legs at the last moment into a half-rear to hook them around Zarqa’s neck, or her cloaked shoulders, or—nothing, if she is quick enough. My first attack is thrown; half wits and the other half luck. I had never expected—

I gnash my tongue against my teeth. “Yuz o‘g‘irlash!” I hiss. Face-stealer in Sahvahn, the tongue of the nobility. The God-chosen. She has stolen more than my face; she has stolen my mother’s as well.

Before my hooves make landing with the sand, I utter a silent prayer.

Solis give me strength.

@Official Day Account
_{Aghavni can be hurt/maimed, even badly, in this battle! in fact I kinda do want her to get hurt haha, though the degree is up to you c':}

aghavni
—
« open up and bite it, bite it (bite it) »

♢

Summary: Aghavni enters the ring and doesn't notice anything is off until Zarqa steps in close and shows her her face. Aghavni goes into a long monologue/flashback that recounts how her face is basically a copy of her mother's and then freaks out, because Zarqa is not only sporting her face but her dead mother's. She slices her fan down near Zarqa's face (involuntarily) and then lunges forwards, aiming to wrap her legs around Zarqa's neck or shoulders. She's spooked badly though, so she could miss entirely.

Attack Used: 1
Attack(s) Left: 1
Block Used: 0 
Block(s) Left: 1 
Item(s) Used: weapon (steel-edged fan)

Response Deadline: June 21
Tags: @syndicate @Official Day Account (not an official judged battle so not tagging any staff)