Daala
01-26-2006, 07:41 PM
((An homage to my desire to do some combat writing as of late, and my curious sick-y-ness. Enjoy!))
What a ghastly, overbearing smelter...the suns shine like the eyes of some long-forgotten pantheon, harsh in their witness to a land that should've been forgotten by those that should bear more sense in this matter.
She isn't entirely sure why she was trudging through the dunes. Only that there had indeed been a purpose, so why not keep on keeping on? In the end, truly, was there much difference in wandering through an alley with or without the asset of reasoning? A bleached shithole of an alley this is, but flanked with valleys of a dull red disposition, it is an alley indeed.
She gingerly brings a slim and slender digit to her temple, but knows that what ails her ferments in a deeper state. It is a strange thing, aching from time to time, but predominantly consisting of a disorientation. Though she sways from side to side, it is not a mark of the environment, not the piteous plodding of the down-trodden sand rat, but a very slight stumble, not terribly unlike the stupor of inebriation, though she is as sober as a true-flying falcon.
Stumping boots...they pock the cascading tides, denting the sweeping continuity. A thin violet veil is drawn back to make way for a flask of delightfully nourishing nectar, and an arrow bearing a barbed head shears through her side. It is to her fortune that the thing glances by, protruding through her front; a clean removal would be infinitely facilitated. In any case, the arrow had not even concluded its piercing path by the time the nectar spills to the ground, no longer cradled in those slender hands, and there is a sound not completely unlike the breaking of a tender tide at some faraway stretch of coast, but louder, more urgent in its dynamic, more staccato in its pronunciation, and an effervescent streak of oily darkness hurtles towards the general...the roughly proximate direction from whence the arrow fiew forth.
A small ache in her head; to experience it, one would think that it should be easily ignored, and yet it exerts a strange power upon her. An idle, muted whisper urges her to take her time, aim her shots, or she will surely miss and surely be shot and surely she will die. Most of her mind is dominated by the ache, though. She closes her eyes, gingerly touching her temples yet again, and she is stricken with another arrow. This time, she is less fortuitous, and her belly is most certainly punched through. Oozing, dull blood quietly responds to the beckoning, but the flash of pain suffices to reacquaint her with reality's ministrations.
She sees them now; scraggly looking fellows, three of them, to all appearances no strangers to the desert. No, she is away from her turf, an unannounced house-guest to a place far older than she, but these men were right at home. It takes perhaps a half of a second to locate the presence of Zangmon, her pet Voidwalker, to seize upon that presence, and yank him to her side with a terribly ferocity. Within another moment, her hand is shoved within that perpetually flowing swirl of blue and black, and Zangmon vaporizes into the parched sky, dead. Power renewed flows throughout the woman's veins, and her wounds slowly begin to stich themselves together.
While she runs, jerking from side to side, abruptly leaping, crouching, changing directions, she breaks the head off of the first arrow; a clean, simple procedure. As for the second, it is jerked free from her belly, tearing with is a fearsome clump of flesh and fluid. Her hand claps to the gaping hole at her mid-driff before her intestines might pour forth; a detail cosmetic at best, given her undying disposition, but important all the same. She continues to hop like a rabbit, and the flesh revives itself beneath that clutching grip, and not two seconds before she would be able to take it away, a third arrow sings through her calf, exposed in mid jump. She vilely curses, pulling it free despite the agonizing limp that would soon result. But more than ever, she is satisfied with her choice not to bring an associate into this. These bandits were hers and hers alone.
They're in trouble now, because this time, Daala does it right. It is with a deep inhalation that she struggles to forget the seeping juices trickling all about her, losing themselves to the stark sands, the unforgiving crests, and she makes a psuedo-diamond shape with her two thumbs, her two forefingers, and brings the sand rats into sight. The bowman first. Another curious noise, like the first, and that bloody knave stumbles, taking a step back, twice, thrice, a yawning stretch of his chest twisted and utterly obsidian, almost livid with decay, and he is dead without a sound. His compatriots leap forth. The first is content to move slowly, walking to her with a cautious tenor in his stride. The second bears no such qualms, hurtling forth with a shimmering spectacle of ivory steel brandished in the whispering breeze.
She stands her ground; were her veil to have not blown away in the earlier confusion, it would've concealed a very small smile, perched upon her lips like a curious hawk, bemused in its countenance but with a predatory focus. A cocktail would do for him; the first, a lovely curse learned in her younger days, of little practical use without another, seemingly unrelated incantation. The Curse of Recklessness, the man's lips curl in rage, veins bulging forth with an almost proud dignity, spittle subtly streaming from clenched jaw. He is perhaps twenty paces away when another hex, she lets fly; were it not for the Curse, he would have ran any which way, quivering in a fearful haze. The combination of the two inspired him to be quite completely immobilized, and he was well-served to collapse to the ground uner their combined, weighty influence. She walks forth not slowly, but still with a very relaxed saunter, not unlike a feline's grace. The man's companion grows alarmed and speeds up, but it would be to no avail and none bore any illusions of that. She stretches both of her hands forth to the trapped rat, caressing his cheeks with infinite compassion, gently tickling either ear as her hands move forth as though to bar his hearing, clutching to those reddish-brown ears. The sound echoes a third time, magnified by the outlying escarpments, and were it not for a slender neck, a servicable pair of shoulders, and the rest of the figure of a human gentleman there would be no inkling that the singed patch of dust once bore the distinction of existance as a head.
The third man reaches the scene. His weapons are thrown to his side, and he sits down, a sour grimace upon his countenance, a surly sigh whispering forth as leathery fingers find a brandy flask, greedily downing much of its contents.
She turns to regard him. "Are you not going to defend yourself?"
"Why? You've killed my mates easily enough. Shot you three times, you light-blinded bitch, but I can't see a scratch, now can I? I won't dignify you with an opponent, just a bloodbag waiting to be spilt."
"I see. What is your name?"
"Calvera. Wallach."
"I see. Calvera, I'm going to kill you now, do you know that?"
"Yeah. I guess so."
She winces, and another attack grips her skull. Who was this man? To her observation, he must've crossed her in some manner. Bodies...yes, this scruffy looking fellow must've attacked her. Her flesh aches; slowly, the memory of the thing came back to her. Not too slowly, though.
"Why did you attack me?"
"Because I'm an anointed of the Church of the Light, charged by the Gods to bring peace to this land. I'm a bloody brigand, you sow."
"I see. I suppose I won't be seeing you around, then."
The next day, were one to happen upon the locale, one would've found two curiously charred corpses, bearing the garments of a common desert-rat bandit, and one skeleton, thoroughly bleached, and to all appearances an artifact of the dunes at least fifty years young.
What a ghastly, overbearing smelter...the suns shine like the eyes of some long-forgotten pantheon, harsh in their witness to a land that should've been forgotten by those that should bear more sense in this matter.
She isn't entirely sure why she was trudging through the dunes. Only that there had indeed been a purpose, so why not keep on keeping on? In the end, truly, was there much difference in wandering through an alley with or without the asset of reasoning? A bleached shithole of an alley this is, but flanked with valleys of a dull red disposition, it is an alley indeed.
She gingerly brings a slim and slender digit to her temple, but knows that what ails her ferments in a deeper state. It is a strange thing, aching from time to time, but predominantly consisting of a disorientation. Though she sways from side to side, it is not a mark of the environment, not the piteous plodding of the down-trodden sand rat, but a very slight stumble, not terribly unlike the stupor of inebriation, though she is as sober as a true-flying falcon.
Stumping boots...they pock the cascading tides, denting the sweeping continuity. A thin violet veil is drawn back to make way for a flask of delightfully nourishing nectar, and an arrow bearing a barbed head shears through her side. It is to her fortune that the thing glances by, protruding through her front; a clean removal would be infinitely facilitated. In any case, the arrow had not even concluded its piercing path by the time the nectar spills to the ground, no longer cradled in those slender hands, and there is a sound not completely unlike the breaking of a tender tide at some faraway stretch of coast, but louder, more urgent in its dynamic, more staccato in its pronunciation, and an effervescent streak of oily darkness hurtles towards the general...the roughly proximate direction from whence the arrow fiew forth.
A small ache in her head; to experience it, one would think that it should be easily ignored, and yet it exerts a strange power upon her. An idle, muted whisper urges her to take her time, aim her shots, or she will surely miss and surely be shot and surely she will die. Most of her mind is dominated by the ache, though. She closes her eyes, gingerly touching her temples yet again, and she is stricken with another arrow. This time, she is less fortuitous, and her belly is most certainly punched through. Oozing, dull blood quietly responds to the beckoning, but the flash of pain suffices to reacquaint her with reality's ministrations.
She sees them now; scraggly looking fellows, three of them, to all appearances no strangers to the desert. No, she is away from her turf, an unannounced house-guest to a place far older than she, but these men were right at home. It takes perhaps a half of a second to locate the presence of Zangmon, her pet Voidwalker, to seize upon that presence, and yank him to her side with a terribly ferocity. Within another moment, her hand is shoved within that perpetually flowing swirl of blue and black, and Zangmon vaporizes into the parched sky, dead. Power renewed flows throughout the woman's veins, and her wounds slowly begin to stich themselves together.
While she runs, jerking from side to side, abruptly leaping, crouching, changing directions, she breaks the head off of the first arrow; a clean, simple procedure. As for the second, it is jerked free from her belly, tearing with is a fearsome clump of flesh and fluid. Her hand claps to the gaping hole at her mid-driff before her intestines might pour forth; a detail cosmetic at best, given her undying disposition, but important all the same. She continues to hop like a rabbit, and the flesh revives itself beneath that clutching grip, and not two seconds before she would be able to take it away, a third arrow sings through her calf, exposed in mid jump. She vilely curses, pulling it free despite the agonizing limp that would soon result. But more than ever, she is satisfied with her choice not to bring an associate into this. These bandits were hers and hers alone.
They're in trouble now, because this time, Daala does it right. It is with a deep inhalation that she struggles to forget the seeping juices trickling all about her, losing themselves to the stark sands, the unforgiving crests, and she makes a psuedo-diamond shape with her two thumbs, her two forefingers, and brings the sand rats into sight. The bowman first. Another curious noise, like the first, and that bloody knave stumbles, taking a step back, twice, thrice, a yawning stretch of his chest twisted and utterly obsidian, almost livid with decay, and he is dead without a sound. His compatriots leap forth. The first is content to move slowly, walking to her with a cautious tenor in his stride. The second bears no such qualms, hurtling forth with a shimmering spectacle of ivory steel brandished in the whispering breeze.
She stands her ground; were her veil to have not blown away in the earlier confusion, it would've concealed a very small smile, perched upon her lips like a curious hawk, bemused in its countenance but with a predatory focus. A cocktail would do for him; the first, a lovely curse learned in her younger days, of little practical use without another, seemingly unrelated incantation. The Curse of Recklessness, the man's lips curl in rage, veins bulging forth with an almost proud dignity, spittle subtly streaming from clenched jaw. He is perhaps twenty paces away when another hex, she lets fly; were it not for the Curse, he would have ran any which way, quivering in a fearful haze. The combination of the two inspired him to be quite completely immobilized, and he was well-served to collapse to the ground uner their combined, weighty influence. She walks forth not slowly, but still with a very relaxed saunter, not unlike a feline's grace. The man's companion grows alarmed and speeds up, but it would be to no avail and none bore any illusions of that. She stretches both of her hands forth to the trapped rat, caressing his cheeks with infinite compassion, gently tickling either ear as her hands move forth as though to bar his hearing, clutching to those reddish-brown ears. The sound echoes a third time, magnified by the outlying escarpments, and were it not for a slender neck, a servicable pair of shoulders, and the rest of the figure of a human gentleman there would be no inkling that the singed patch of dust once bore the distinction of existance as a head.
The third man reaches the scene. His weapons are thrown to his side, and he sits down, a sour grimace upon his countenance, a surly sigh whispering forth as leathery fingers find a brandy flask, greedily downing much of its contents.
She turns to regard him. "Are you not going to defend yourself?"
"Why? You've killed my mates easily enough. Shot you three times, you light-blinded bitch, but I can't see a scratch, now can I? I won't dignify you with an opponent, just a bloodbag waiting to be spilt."
"I see. What is your name?"
"Calvera. Wallach."
"I see. Calvera, I'm going to kill you now, do you know that?"
"Yeah. I guess so."
She winces, and another attack grips her skull. Who was this man? To her observation, he must've crossed her in some manner. Bodies...yes, this scruffy looking fellow must've attacked her. Her flesh aches; slowly, the memory of the thing came back to her. Not too slowly, though.
"Why did you attack me?"
"Because I'm an anointed of the Church of the Light, charged by the Gods to bring peace to this land. I'm a bloody brigand, you sow."
"I see. I suppose I won't be seeing you around, then."
The next day, were one to happen upon the locale, one would've found two curiously charred corpses, bearing the garments of a common desert-rat bandit, and one skeleton, thoroughly bleached, and to all appearances an artifact of the dunes at least fifty years young.