Duel:Khitti v Mathollak, Match 7 of the 2020 Frostmaw Tournament
Duel: Traditional 3 rounds with final defense, 15 minute posting limit. Stakes: Auto-hit to the winner. Judges: Orikahn, Talyara, and Uriphiel
Weapon Storage Room
You’re in a decently-sized and tidy storage room with walls filled to the brim with weaponry both traditional and exotic. Claymores and short swords; scimitars and scythes; lances and ball-and-chains. It’s a veritable paradise for collectors — and a deadly arena in rare cases like today’s. Owing to anomalous shifts in the planet’s magnetosphere which, roughly once a year, manifest strangely in the frigid northern regions, every unsheathed metal weapon seems prone to detach from its belt or holster and fling across the room at sweeping speeds. At the moment, sword hilts and steel lances merely waggle back and forth ominously, a sign of things to come. Yet as the match continues, you will be subjected to a growing flurry of fear. Just as your duel concludes, the terrifying bladestorm will finish, as if Aramoth himself synced it to your brave battle.
Mathollak begins to feel the effects of Delisha's delicious brew almost immediately, and the primary effect is always the same: an insatiable desire to fight. His breath deepens, and as he exhales, the steam of his breath thickens and becomes like a dense smoke that envelops his body like a cocoon. The smoke crackles with red lightning as he stands inside. As soon as he gets the cue to begin the fight, he begins charging like an angry bull out of the smoke, and with slight changes to his appearance. His helmets got two long horns sprouting from the top, his bracers have melded into his flesh and his hands have grown larger and bonier, with his nails growing long from the tips of his fingers. Stomp, stomp, stomp, his footsteps thunder in the tiny room as he runs at her, and with only a few steps away, he lifts his battleaxe over his head and hurls it at Khitti. It rotates once before slamming its blade into the spot where she was standing. But he doesn't expect her to be there, he expects her to dodge. Hopes for it, because then, he'll intercept her, grab onto her arm with one of his grotesquely mutated hands and hoist it up. The other he'll attempt to plunge into her body. One into her gut, one into her ribs, and one into her chin.
Khitti had no need for a brew; she always had an insatiable desire to fight. Once Mathollak became like a bull in a china shop, Khitti too sprung into action. She’d dodge as predicted and he’d catch her by the throat. He’d not quite get through to pulling out her innards before she’d thought quickly enough to shadowstep out of his grasp, but he does manage to pummel her in all three places before she disappeared in that signature poof of black smoke. The redhead reappeared behind him, a hand to her ribs as if it were actually going to help anything, and promptly spat out a blood at the floor. That wasn’t the only assault she’d get, however. The weapons had started flying, and now, another was slicing through the soft leather armor she wore, a gash made in her left leg. Khitti’d had little time to react to anything, but perhaps she didn’t have too much at all. Instead, she shadowstepped around thrice, dodging--and failing somewhat terribly--to allow for axes and daggers and swords to fly towards the mutated follower of Delisha. A scythe would rise, amongst all the others and in typical necromancer fashion, she flocked to it like a moth to a flame. Shadowflames and shadow-ice were summoned up around the blade, the wielder of the Black Tides conjuring up her favored necromantic art. As Mathollak was assaulted in that flurry of blades, Khitti’s own chosen weapon for the time being sent wild slashes at her opponent, as the redhead swung it about furiously, using it as a sort of defense as well as obviously an offense.
Mathollak has become a bit clumsy and reckless due to his potion, and as she disappears in a cloud of smoke, weapons begin flying off their walls due to the strange magnetism of this place. The first sign to him of such a thing is a dagger that dings off his helmet, the second is a massive spiked iron club that slams into his gut. He doubles over, but manages to hold onto the club. In a hurry to stop the weapons assault, but not with much care, he grabs the leg of a table and pulls it up in a show of great strength, using it as a shield. The distraction leaves him open to Khitti's attacks however, and the scythe wraps over the top of his shoulder. As she draws it back in preparation for another attack, it creates a massive gash and he's forced to drop the table-shield and retreat a bit. As he does a massive chain connecting two spiked iron balls flies toward him. He's ready for this one. He plants his feet, swivels his hips, and swings his iron club like a bat, smashing into one of the balls. The two of them fly toward Khitti in a wide horizontal spin, functioning almost like a bola for big game. If they hit, they'd wrap around her like a tether ball before smashing into her body.
Khitti || Despite all the blood she was currently losing thanks to this weird magnetism and it’s onslaught of sharp, pointy and blunt objects, Khitti was grateful for the distraction she was given. In a moment of panic, the scythe is thrown at Mathollak, blade first. Alas, it’s not enough to keep those ridiculously spiky balls from their current destination: her. Having seen Brand do it in the past, and more recently Quintessa, albeit with natural elements, Khitti summoned up a buckler-sized shield of shadow-ice, making it as thick as she possibly could. One ball slammed into the ice, leaving shards of ice to fly where they may, and effectively destroying the temporary defense. The contact would leave her arm heavily bruised in the coming hours after the duel had ended. The other ball, with all its spikes and heaviness, swung around Khitti as had been intended by her opponent. The spikes would dig their way into her back, the sheer pain of that mixed with the pummeling force of the weapon itself sending her lurching forward and leaving her to quickly catch her breath. Once again one with the magnetism, the spiked weapons would rejoin its brethren. More blood was spat out in a rather unladylike fashion and an glare sent towards Mathollak as she reached for the weapons that flew past her, taking the chance at more injuries as she hurled them at the follower of Delisha with angry screams of frustration, each one briefly aflame with shadowfire in an effort to cause more damage.
Mathollak felt almost no pain from the scythe cut thanks to the cold. It was mostly numb. But the freezing effect made part of his back rigid and stiff. he couldn't dodge her attack. Not on his own. But as soon as it became airborne, it too became affected by the magnetism, and by the other flying weapons. A dagger's blade tipped the shaft of the scythe in his favor and it started coming at him handle first instead of blade. The butt of it slammed into his shin, knocking his foot from under him and toppling his bulk to the floor. But now he had the scythe. What could he do with it? She was across the room and there was a spinning maelstrom of iron weapons between them. He had one terrible idea. He stuck her weapon up in the air, and the spiked ball-bola snagged it, pulling the scythe and Mathollak into the storm. He's hurled through the air as a passenger with great speed, and when he's coming up to Khitti, he releases the scythe, and becomes the biggest projectile in the room careening toward Khitti.
Khitti || In all her fury, Khitti lost sight of what was really important: what was Mathollak going to do in response to her flurry? It would not occur to her that he would fly through the air on not one, but technically two of these weapons. Projectile-Mathollak would succeed--probably a little too much--in his attack. The templar of retribution was mid-air drop-kicked right in the wall behind her. There’s a frosty burst of Frostmaw’s ever-present ice and the very material with which the shack, and the room itself, were built with, the lot of it crumbling and covering Khitti as she fell to the floor in a heap. All the while, her head had bounced against the wall, a bit of a concussion ensuing. Her vision now blurry and a bit of ringing in her ears, the human was at even more of a disadvantage that she was before. Wherever the hell Mathollak had found himself after that attack of his, he’d now find himself amongst a “hailstorm”--it wasn’t actually hail, however. It was fireballs. As a last ditch effort to even just keep Mathollak the hell away from her, Khitti conjured up two streams of those signature dark purple flames of hers from her palms and moved them in an arc in front of her, attempting to create a wall of fire to block his path.
Mathollak knew he connected with Khitti, but in the aftermath found himself prone and buried in the wood that once formed the wall behind him. He pushed off his blanket of rubble only to see a pair of dark magical fireballs coming toward him. He was defenseless, mostly. As they approached, he grabbed his helmet by one horn, pulled it off his head, and slammed the hollow cradle over one of the fireballs and into the ground. He weakly lifted his half frozen arm to defend against the second, stopping it from progressing into his vital areas by letting it burn and smolder against his grotesque but massive fingers.
Mathollak creates an opening for himself holding the fireballs at bay. When it seems like he has nothing left, he abruptly charges to his feet and catches Khitti unaware. He's unaware too, of his own injuries. After putting too much weight onto his wounded leg, he falls short of his intentions, but still manages to stumble into Khitti, wrap his good arm around her, and collapse into her in an extremely unwieldy tackle. Her head bounces into the floor, his head bounces into hers. He leans up ready to pound her into dust, but finds her unready to defend, and resigns.
Khitti was knocked unconscious! And thankfully not pummeled to death. At the very last moment, Brand had shown up incredibly, fashionably late to the duel! So, as per the unspoken rules of marriage, the Catalian hauled his poor broken wife off elsewhere, yet again. Because she literally cannot stop getting her ass kicked by people.
Winner: Mathollak