Duel:Jarith v Rikailin, Match 6 of the 2017 Frostmaw Tournament

Duelists: Jarith vs Rikailin
Duel: Traditional 3 rounds with final defense, 15 minute posting limit
Stakes: Auto-hit to the winner
Judges: Sabrina, Lionel, and Valen

Faith's Respite

As you move toward this area a hush seems to come over the passage. Many tapestries hang on the walls to block out the echo that is normally encouraged, and the lights seem to be more moody and dim than in other rooms around this. The room before you is protected by large wooden doors, their handles carved from blue iron to show their importance. Unlike most doors in the lands, these seem to be very well oiled, opening without the slightest sound. Once inside the room, the thick incense can be almost tasted, it is so heavy on the air. This room is not often ventilated, seeming disrespectful to the gods who are paid homage within its well-crafted walls. Any sign of time’s abuse seems to be wiped clean in this area. Even statues who were damaged are buffed to perfection, their cracks or missing parts filled with precious metals or stone. This place is the sacred land of the gods, each deity given a perfect place to pay respects, no matter their alignment or current following in the lands. There are a few attendants walking about, garbed in priest’s robes, laying offerings of herbs or coin in the bowls at the feet of the effigies.

Leone said, "Welcome to the sixth annual Titans of Winter Tournament! Here we gather where the Frostmaw shamans have molded and shaped this area, altering the original state into some fresh hell. The temple's interior is covered with a magical sheen. It seems as if it's been protected against damage, fortified against the fighting that is set to take place. An extra aura, visible and spectacularly colored, surrounds each diety's statue. The prismatic bubbles will soon become important, as they inflict the main aspect of each diety upon those who pass through them: Arkhen's statue inspires a feeling of confidence, while Cyris's aura imparts a sense of drive and purpose. Cire infects with a beserk, out of control sensation. Aramoth imbues a passion for survival and success in combat. Delisha evokes feelings of hedonistic sadism, and vakmatharas conjures an insatiable bloodlust. All conspire together to make our combatants a glass cage of emotions. Good luck to Jarith and Rikailin!"

Rikailin is a peculiar creature. Undoubtedly of elven heritage, she is nevertheless as tall as most men, with her tapered ears peeking out of a mass of tangled hair as dark as sin. A vampire, though not of her own choosing, and yet this lady is as closely connected to the earth as she can stand to be, bonded to flora, fauna and all of the natural elements as deeply as any druid could ever be. She stands near the doorway, away from the statues and their vaguely-sensed auras, without moving, without breathing; the vines, moss and leaves liberally wrapping her lithe frame from neck to knees are motionless and unremarkable except by their very presence. Rikailin is not accoutred for battle as would be most fighters, even among her own profession, but tradition clothing and battle implements are not only alien to her now, but almost wholly a distraction. They slow her down. They get in the way. A body moves best when it is least encumbered. Her sightless blue eyes are dead still, locked with unnerving precision upon her foe, but it is not the battle-druid's own sight which informs that gaze. Instead, her visual perception is present thanks to the enormous black wolf at her side...a dire wolf, to be exact, with whom Rikailin has been working tirelessly over these last days in order to make their mental link more reliable. There is an understanding between the two, a mutual arrangement of need rather than the wholly unnecessary power-play of master and servant. The wolf will do as Rikailin wishes, but largely because Rikailin's gifts have given it a slightly enhanced ability to do what it was made to do: hunt. Thanks to Rikailin's infusion of magic and tireless toil, the dire wolf is more aware of itself and the world in which it lives than ever it was before, possessing even more intelligence and cunning than it otherwise might have; it shares the battle-druid's own consciousness, in fact, borrowing, in its way, from her own understanding of things, and sharing with her the things it sees and hears and smells. What the wolf knows, Rikailin knows. One slender hand rests atop the wolf's right shoulder, fingers tangled in its fur, as she waits for the signal to commence her onslaught. Battle-druids are trained weapons of elvenkind, meant to avenge the earth and to protect it from those who would do it harm. Rikailin is among the best of them, with skills honed over many a long and lonely decade. This is a tournament of combat prowess and has nothing to do with the protection of Sage Forest or any of the other lands of Hollow, but when one has lived as long as this woman has, a twinge of conscience is hardly a worthy barricade to action not taken on behalf of the world at large. She will do what she must in order to triumph here, then return to her duty. Her impetus is both straightforward and unyielding. When the signal is given that battle is to begin, the battle-druid gives her dire wolf a fond pat, and instantly the animal erupts into motion, issuing a hellish howl as it bounds across the open room toward Jarith. Its intentions are clear from the way its lips peel back from enormous, white teeth; if it gets hold of the man, the beast will endeavour to rip him apart, and it seems both big and brave enough to do so. For her part, Rikailin throws her hands over her head, fingers splayed back toward the doors which give entry on the chamber. Condensation begins to spread in short order, first forming into a miniature fog-bank behind the battle-druid and then rolling over her, creeping inexorably forward and filling the room. It is thick enough to make breathing a little unpleasant, but its primary purpose, for now at least, is to rob this knight of usable eyesight. The vampiric elf moves forward then, cat-silent and sinuous, following the sensation of her wolf, letting him attempt to engage the enemy for now. When he reacts - as surely he must, if he is to survive this assault - then Rikailin will formulate a reaction to lay him low.

Jarith isn’t new to dueling inside a house of faith, but the irony is not lost on the knight who had blatantly forgotten and disowned such beliefs in his long life. The smell of Incense is heavy in the nostril, cloying and he expels it with a frosted breath before drawing up the spiked round shield on his right arm. The magic is ripe, and yet the knight’s abnormally slowed heartbeat remains steadfast, those pupil-less blue eyes fix upon the vamipric wood-elf and there is no emotion to play across those regal features. The dire wolf is a known creature, the beast large and imposing does not sway the northern borne one way or the next. Upon his master’s charge the great beast moves, howling into the tapestry dampened room; a churning of clawed paws tracking over the stone floors like granite upon glass. The lord Knight responds with the drawing of his family’s last created longsword, left handed he wields the weapon and yet his charge is shield first into the oncoming creature. Grip upon that leather binding, the crimson of gauntlets clinking as Jarith draws impetuously close. Years of battle leave the male calm and fast of thought, the clawed edge of the hand-bound armor cutting the straps of his spike-tipped shield as the Knight rears back and unleashes the shield forwards into the beast. An artistic turn counter-clockwise round the beast places both hands into the hilt of his blade to strike through the animal before he spins out and charges the quickly vanishing Rikailin. The female would find that her opponent did not do long distance battle, he would fight close as he could and not let up. Blade back he would slide on those leather boots over the smooth stone and slash in a deadthly diagonal, aiming from her left hip to her right clavicle.

Rikailin is intimately connected to her wolf, and senses what is happening through its own awareness. The shield distracts, the blade bites, and the wolf screams its agony before hitting the ground on its chest and skidding several paces. It lies there, twitching and terribly wounded at the feet of Cyris. None of its limbs are wounded, and suddenly the wolf finds itself lunging upright again, blood leaking in a froth from its muzzle as it limps after Jarith, full of an overwhelming sense of purpose to do what it had originally intended. For her part, Rikailin can hear the scuff of leather on floor as keenly as if Jarith is standing next to her, and unlike her northern-born adversary, this druid does not do close-range fighting unless she must. She begins to backpedal, moving as quickly as she can to delay the inevitable meeting. When Jarith's weapon tries to carve her diagonally across the torso, the battle-druid's body suddenly begins to glow, and the vines upon her person suddenly make their malevolent purpose known. Most are thicker and a little tougher than hemp rope, granting her a garment of natural and rather unconventional armour. Several vines from along her torso lash outward, twining lightning-quick around Jarith's weapon even as Rikailin herself allows her knees to fold, falling backward and hitting the ground on hips and shoulders. A thin rill of blood on her belly tells her that Jarith's weapon has found a chink in her defenses, albeit not a very big one; she has been spared the full might of that slash both by her earlier evasive action and by the simple impediment of the vines she wears. Now sporting a bare patch on her midriff, Rikailin rolls, lunges and regains her feet. Her long legs drive her into a headlong run, moving away from the northern-born man, who she can still sense thanks to her badly-injured but dauntless dire wolf. Having gained a little distance - and standing all unknowing near the statue of Vakmatharas - the battle-druid whirls, raises her hands and expels a powerful burst of raw arcane force. A twinge, like the sensation of a headache about to birth itself, makes its presence felt deep in her brain as her magic goes to work. The fog-bank, which by now has blanketed nearly the entire room, suddenly begins to tighten, to sseek Jarith wherever in the room he might be. Chilling peals of laughter begin to fill the room as that tightening cone of mist begins to heat at an alarming rate, until it has formed itself into a steaming cyclone. Rikailin's own teeth are bared now, fangs wicked and sharp, and her eyes are hazy with the desire to see this man boil. A well-cooked meal, she thinks, will taste all the better. All thoughts of tournaments, of sport, have left her mind, temporarily at least; for now, there is only the desire to spill Jarith's blood, to cook him alive, to destroy his weak flesh. Her heart, such as it was, is gone, and only this insatiable, heedless bloodlust remains.

Jarith moved to an armored knee as his blade’s slash was skewed by the serpent-like vine which near wrenched the weapon from his longsword up from his grip. The knee slowed him to a halt but granted in it’s lacking the vampires an escape route. The sound of the wolf snarling from behind turned him and he rose into that prepared crouch, drifting back and into Aramoth’s bubble, bursting as Jarith’s armored frame reaches it, the enchantment blossoms over the altered elf a drive to victory and survive the battle, ‘Die on your feet, never at your knees.’ A proverb of his nomadic peoples that propels the knight of Frostmaw from his defense onwards to attack again just as that cyclone blossoms into an infernal heat that was uniquely familiar to the purged knight as he moved headlong into the fray once more. His purging had left him with a pitiless lacking in magical prowess and thus he would use all in possession in this action to freeze and make frigid and brittle his armor at the onslaught, protecting him from the impending heat as his previous opponent the wounded dire attacks again. The flat of his blade parries those large jaws, deflecting them up as the wolf charged him again, this time his Thrust would be aimed through the determined creature’s chest and released from grip. So far from him there would be no rush by the frosted knight, the heat was indeed taking a toll as it melted his incantation away readily. Jarith was far from his back of tricks though and true to the almost Nordic nature of his people, drew forth two hand axe from the base of his spine and with an acrobatic twist and chilling war-shout released the first from his right and then the other from his less skilled left. They would turn end over end, the first aimed at the grinning and evil-sculpted maw of Rikailin, the next aimed at her expected retreat, his chest heaving from the effort and weight of the inferno blazing against his cool flesh, blistering and bursting along it.

Rikailin :: Her ally, the dire wolf, is dying. It is this thought which reaches Rikailin in her hellish, fevered frenzy, giving her enough clarity of mind to begin moving away from the statue near which she has been standing. Only now does she seem to fully grasp the nature of the peculiar enchantments of the room, and while she does not yet understand the specifics for all of the statues, the battle-druid comprehends that each must confer some different emotional burden, good or ill, upon whosoever stands within its influence. The dire wolf's dying eyes see those axes, and Rikailin's acute sense of the moving air in the room give her a more complete picture. She tries to duck the axe aimed for her face, but its blade scores a deep furrow along her scalp at its passage, eliciting an angered shriek from the vampiric elf. The other axe, however, is a different matter. The battle-druid's right fist drives out like a piston, striking the blade and knocking it aside with a clatter of steel on stone. Her knuckles have been slashed to the bone in the doing, but the battle-druid is far from bested. In her distraction, the superheated steam is largely dissipating, leaving a cloying, uncomfortably warm miasma in its wake. She knows that Jarith is bigger and very likely stronger than she, but suddenly she feels...confident, almost unduly so, as if she cannot possibly fail. Having stopped her previous dash, she is standing, all unknowing, near the statue of Arkhen, awash in the aura of certainty and confidence the effigy exudes. The vines around her body once more begin to glow, but this time their purpose is different. They suddenly begin to undulate down her arms and legs, then up across her face and over her head, temporarily sealing her within a cocoon of spiny, tenebrous armour. As her wolf expires with a gurgling, pained gasp, Rikailin uses her remaining bond with his departing spirit, fixing upon the location of the northern-born before breaking toward him in a headlong sprint. Her wounds are relatively minor, and her magical expenditure thus far low; vampiric strength and speed soon ensure that the distance between the dueling pair is closed, and the battle-druid, no longer quite so confident but still grimly resolved to do what she must, begins to assail the northern-born man in earnest. Tiny holes in the living protection about her head and face, each with a breadth no larger than a finger's width, iris open to give the woman the ability to hear and smell what she is doing, but this is almost unnecessary. Rikailin's vines are the true terror here. They lash and snap, coil and writhe, thicken and bend, meaning to react as best they are able to whatever Jarith might be doing. Better yet, the battle-druid uses them to augment her own attack as she literally pounces on the northern-born man. If she can, she intends to bear the man to the ground, lie atop him belly to belly, then choke, slash, punch and strip the life right out of him. If she cannot do this, the druid will content herself with chasing him, harrying him, lashing him with vines and throwing surprisingly strong thorn-laced punches at any part of him she can reach. Even against armour, even in the face of overwhelming cold, this assault is bound to succeed sooner or later. The greater her resolve, the brighter the glow, and the vampiric elf is lit by an eerie green nimbus of light. Her rage may be artless, but owing to the aid of lianas and creepers and thorns, it is a lethal force before which few can stand.

Jarith was invariably roasting as Rikailin’s bloodlust had so desired, skin showing from armor having turned read where blisters burst an oozing blood and otherwise remaining ones stayed. His chest was hot, and it forced that abnormally slowed heart to beat faster, urging vessels through his body, forcing larger breaths which expelled frost only to have it die as steam as his body attempted to cool down. Laborious with his breathing, the knight has not a care for the effectiveness of his attack and it shows as he manages to keep his feet and glare his baleful blue eyes at the retreating war druid. The heat’s lift does little to remove its success on his body, as the female finds herself once again imbued with confidence she streaks a line forwards. The resemblance in the moment to a dryad is noteworthy as she charges forth, and Jarith finds himself hesitant for the spanning of heartbeats, backpedaling slowly into the sphere of influence meant for Delisha. The northern born was perhaps simplistic, but the meaning of the orbs he’d thought was for protection of those vital statues which had been so well guarded previously. Without that knowledge she possessed he continued back, so the vine-sprung druid launched herself it would not be he alone who felt the bursting wave of that Hedonistic sadism as it washed not only his battered frame but her own. Plate-mail normally so terribly strong was weakened by the rapid heating and cooling of it’s structure and her augmented strikes would rain blows upon the knight’s face, chest, and ribs. Each one succeeds in driving air from labored lungs until he can lift the crimson-red of those claw-like gauntlets and with a gritting of bloodied teeth into a death’s head smile before striking upwards with those brittle armaments. He would roll in to the first, a left-handed punch for the fine line of her vine-wrapped jaw that hopefully would help the knight roll his adversary over and begin his own kneeling attack in wave after wave of punches that aim for the concealed slender, if athletic frame of the vampiric elf. The attack would start with those weak pieces of hand-bund armor but much like the metal of his plates begin to break and crumble under the strain. However if not successful with those first strikes, they would remain aground trading punches endless with that strange smile upon his face as the knight of Frostmaw seemed to plead for more punishment.

Rikailin is largely unaware of the nearness of Delisha's likeness, and thus can only sense the presence of magic as it washes over her. She does not care. All that matters is the subjugation of this man beneath her. Were they fighting? Why were they fighting? When he tries to flip her over, her tongue runs over her lower lip and she lets herself be flung, hitting the ground on her back and immediately spread-eagling herself, tense and ready and trembling. "So that's how you want it?" she pants, trying to seize Jarith's head with both hands. "Like to be on top?" She grunts as one of Jarith's strikes hammers home, causing her consciousness to scatter for a moment. She is soon brought reeling back into focus by the need which moves through her, setting her on fire. She does her best to wrap arms and legs around the man, both to stop herself from receiving more punches and to better facilitate their bodily contact. The vines wrapped about her form begin to ripple away from first her face and then her extremities, writhing like sserpents thrilling to a touch. She looks up with her sightless blue eyes into the face of the man atop her. "We...we don't have to fight, you know." Another of his punches gets through, thudding against her ribs, and she clutches him all the tighter, a sound halfway between a growl and a moan rising in the back of her throat. Her scalp wound buzzes with pain, her jaw throbs, but she is still alive...very, very alive, perhaps more so than she has been in quite some time. "Oh, stop that." The vines are moving even more slowly now, trying to creep surreptitiously around Jarith from all sides, the better to bind the pair together. Unbidden, an image of a black widow spider comes into the battle-druid's mind, and she laughs, a low and throaty sound. "If you stop hitting me," she whispers, "we can stop fighting and--" The movement of her body makes clear what she intends, but the predatory gleam in her blue eyes tells a different tale. Female black widows, after all, are infamous for killing their mates.

Winner: Jarith