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Lazo -> RE: =EC 2014= Cellar Arena (9/2/2014 17:39:03)
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The icicle passed through empty air, clattering against the floor and bouncing against the wall, robbed of most of its momentum. It continued to roll away towards the opposite end of the arena, but by then, it had lost Pithy’s attention. The Fae’s dive towards his sword had taken him out of the projectile’s path, but it left him open to the blue-eyed woman. She succeeded in wounding him where Pithy had failed.
But, unlike with Pithy, her opponent had been ready, and the woman had used her rapier. As the Fae grabbed ahold of his sword and pressed against hers, the warrior’s grip proved too sure and the blade too long to retract without abandoning it.
Pithy felt a swell of anxiety. The warrior aimed to take her with him. That could not happen. She would not be cheated out of this. But she could not ready a spell in time, and was too far from the pair to intervene. She could only watch as the woman tried to twist away, unable to stop the heavy sword from biting into the woman’s left arm.
But then it was always this way, was it not? Her expectations rarely remained unsubverted.
The woman wrenched her blade out. The Fae did not struggle further. Pithy stared at the woman’s arm with an unreadable expression. It hung limply at her side, blood welling readily in the maw of that long wound. There would be no clotting inside this cellar. Idly, Pithy wondered how long it would take for blood loss to claim her. Surely not long enough to make a real impact. Somehow, she knew little time remained. The dry air felt almost electrified to her.
And yet a feeling of intense dissatisfaction hung over Pithy’s shoulders.
Her opponents were wounded, one unable to continue fighting, while she was unharmed, if slightly bruised under her clothes, and she had conserved much of her magic. An outstanding success, were this a normal encounter, but not here. Here, she was meant to put up a show. Here, she was meant to attract the attention of an Elemental Lord. Had she lost track of that, somehow? Her involvement in the earlier fight had been conservative, never committing herself. The protagonists of that fight had been the blue-eyed woman and the Fae, the two incurring the real injuries such a clash entailed, while she had been relegated to a mere destabilizing factor. Like a sheet of ice over the floor.
Perhaps the Ice Lord will find some poignancy in that, she mused dryly.
A swift motion distracted her, and her eye snapped away from the wound before locking into the woman’s own. What was in those blue eyes gave her pause. The smile sent a shiver down her spine. The expression held a familiarity of an all too different and discomforting sort. For a moment, Pithy was shocked. Was her heart racing?
She almost failed to notice the woman’s approach. She did fail to raise her rapier in time, such was the movement’s speed. Pithy felt oddly reassured about her earlier assessment. Blood loss would certainly not take her soon enough to make an impact.
Reflex had her take a step back, such that instead of being gutted like a fish, the tip of the blade sunk into the base of her jaw. The pain seemed to stretch the moment, to the point Pithy could have sworn she heard the blade grating against bone as it slid upwards, but before it managed to cut entirely through her cheek, it glanced off something hard. The blade parted the curtain of hair covering the right side of her face, revealing something that looked eerily like a lattice of crystal. In the next moment, it was covered once more.
Pithy reeled, and the woman took advantage of her position even as she dismissed her enchantment, gaining ground as Pithy backpedaled. An errant swipe managed to score a cut against her ribs before Pithy managed to brush the blade aside. The red blotch that bloomed at her side contrasted heavily against her white clothing.
Recognizing the grim reality of the situation, the side of her that howled over the unexpected pain was unceremoniously shoved out of the way where it would not distract her, while a detached part of her mind stood back, allowing reflex and experience to take over as it studied her opponents movements with the trained eye of an experienced fencer.
Her features hardened. With each exchange of rasping blades, she began to cede less and less ground.
The woman’s style felt odd to Pithy. There was a certain awkwardness to her, very slight, as if she was unused to the weapon in her hand, but it was not what caught her attention. Her movement felt raw. She used the rapier as a slashing weapon all too readily. Graceful, fluid and practiced, to be sure, but she could not identify the rigorous structure instruction enforced in most fencing styles she had come to know through the years. In fact, she would not have been surprised to learn that the woman’s technique had been derived entirely from experience.
There was something to be said of such talent.
Unfortunately, the parallelisms drawn by Pithy did not lend themselves to compliments, a fact only worsened by the current situation. Part of her scoffed at how little provocation she needed to begin drawing comparisons, but the observation was swiftly dismissed. She hung tight to the resentment. It was almost reassuring. Rivalry and a desire for redress had made her into what she was. She would not have reached these heights were it not for that witch, an admission that never failed to leave a bitter taste in its wake.
But this was her moment.
The change was subtle, but noticeable. A small alteration of her stance, more solidly balanced. She did not retreat from the onslaught. When the blade came for her, she batted it away with a contemptuous motion.
She lunged forward in retaliation, rapier poised to pierce through the woman’s midsection, taking to the offensive. Even as she did so, Pithy prepared for a follow-up. She would not bother with feints, choosing instead to batter at the woman’s defense.
She needed to finish this quickly, she knew. The tides could very easily shift once more if the woman used that hastening enchantment. It was magic she recognized, or a variation of it. She had used such a spell before, in fact. Decades ago, as an apprentice, sorcery of this sort was the only way she could measure up against the others in a physical contest. Her first instinct was to replicate the enhancement as she had years ago to even the odds, but she caught herself. Due to the nature of her magic, casting such a spell on herself would more than likely cause her lasting harm.
If only I could slow her down, or impair her footing...
Her earlier musings came to mind, and she immediately began channeling magic into her free hand. The power flowed without its usual resistance, and Pithy entertained the notion that her passenger was suddenly worried about her well-being.
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