Duel:Leoxander v Shishi, March 17 of the 2017 Frostmaw Tournament

Duelists: Leoxander vs Shishi
Duel: Traditional 3 rounds with final defense, 15 minute posting limit
Stakes: Auto-hit to the winner and 500 gold
Judges: Lionel, Hildegarde, and Sabrina

Heroe's Fall

Welcome to the sixth annual Titans of Winter tournament! It’s heating up with roguish Leoxander against the deadly Shishi, who will win?! At the Heroes Fall, a great many brave and noble soul has died in their quest for fame, fortune, glory and a fair maiden’s kiss… Will our two fighters fall prey to the sleeping dragons who lurk within? I hope they can fight quietly, we wouldn’t want to wake our snoozing scaly friends. Snoozing scaly beasts aren’t so snuggly after all, you best watch out or else you might just fall! Beware the cave, but beware the fall for that’d be the most embarrassing way to go of them all. Howling winds and blinding snow, I do so hope you can put on a show.

Shishi is underdressed for the wind and other weather swirling around the cave mouth and the ledge that the assassin stands between. Black neck tie, as usual, white shirt, and black pants. At least his socks are thick, and wool, and warm. He looks out towards his opponent; who is not a stranger this time around, but an old… acquaintance, to say the least. The vampire’s irises undergo their accursed color change, heralding in the odd halting of the movement of any shadows in the immediate vicinity. What once were oceanic blue eyes now glow a wicked crimson while the so-called Blue Demon shouts out to Leoxander, “Let’s make this interesting, eh? 500 gold pieces and a shot to the winner. Aye?” This is called out while the two gladiators are being announced, and whether Shishi gets an answer or not by the time the fight officially begins, he is charging towards the lycan male with his own shadow elongating on the icy ground behind him, as if it were being stretched like an elastic band. An odd gust comes from -inside- the cave to Shishi’s side, and to those with any kind of sense of smell, they’d be able to tell that was not some natural phenomenon, but the breath from a snoring dragon, snoozing in the cave. Shishi, once he’s about a meter and a half from Leo, leaps and leads with his left knee towards the other man’s chest. Meanwhile, that stretched out shadow releases all the tension being put on it, and a black fist made of solidified darkness comes flying towards Leoxander’s face from just over Shishi’s shoulder in kind of a downward arc.

Leoxander could comply to quiet. 'Quietly' was his forte. Then again, he had some understanding of Shishi's shadowy skills and knew he was at match. He pulled up his mask over his newly shaven features, securing it up over the bridge of his nose, but it was just a slight protection from the flakes of ice pelting with wind. He didn't bother to step aside from the entrance, perhaps a poor decision on his part, but a risk he was to take. "You got it, mate." He spoke, simply. Once more, the rogue wore a harness of several different styles of knives, a couple extra concealed in vambrace and boot. In addition to twin steel holstered on a second belt, two egg-sized charcoal painted orbs were loosely latched to leather. And so he waited, in his dark attire, for the moment to come - and it would. With his dexterity, he suddenly flattened back in limbo to avoid the knee, but perhaps not the shadow. In that position, quickly looking back, he drew several Kunai styled throwing knives from his harness to chuck two, three, at his opponent, but that black fist sent Leo back at a range toward the stone wall of the cave, and perhaps alerted the dragons nesting nearby. As soon as he could manage, the man was up pushing and dragging up to his feet, taking the bow from his back in hand. "I should have figured you'd go there."

Shishi , as Leoxander also might know, is a maniac. So, of course, after he avoids the first throwing knife as a product of sheer luck and takes the second unpleasantly in his back up near his left shoulder blade, staining a spot of red on his white shirt around the entry point, he tries to turn and catch the third in his right hand and he succeeds! At least, as much as one can succeed at catching a very sharp object in their bare hand. He grits his teeth and bares his fangs as fingers and palm press against the metal and draw more blood that seeps down in drops at first, and then a long stream, and then subsides to drops again to the ground before he throws the kunai back Leoxander’s way towards his right thigh. The slam, and Shishi’s own bellow of pain at his two new flesh wounds, does indeed wake one of the dragons. She stirs and groans, groggy and grumpy, stretching while the vampiric assassin steals something from her lair, darkness. A wave of the stuff comes crashing out from the cave mouth, like a rip tide that seeks to wash Leoxander clear off of the cliff edge. If that dragon wasn’t angry before (she was), she definitely is now that all of the shadows have been swept out of her home and it is now unnaturally bright inside the cave as a result.

Leoxander saw the earth crumbling, but he maintained his place in the back of the cave for now. He did not have shadow at his disposal, but he reached for a certain arrow from the quiver on his back, and recognized it by the thin fletching of rougher feathers, streamlined for more power at a lesser range. With it came a braided wire attached to the end of the metal shaft, just thin enough as not to disturb a point-blank flight as he aimed. And at the nose, a barbed bowfishing point similar to a two-flued harpoon, meant to latch onto prey for retrieval. That was exactly Leoxander's intention. The draw of the metal buss cable creaked for the forceful pull, but the obsidian limbs held strong in his white knuckled hold. While Shishi was distracted cutting open his own hand, tail feathers slightly grazed Leo's jaw, both sharp eyes open and locked on that point between Shishi's shoulder and chest, though it was always a wonder how the pirate could see through that dusty blond in his vision. The release snapped, wire unraveling like a coiled snake attempting to strike, and in less than a second or two, he twisted his hand around the 'rope', hoping for an anchor in the assassin's body. If not, perhaps it would bounce back in the recoil to catch on when he ripped that line back in. Leo was ready to dodge if it missed. But he was more prepared to drag Shishi forcefully into the front of the dragon's path, at the center of the grounds. Even as the dragon might rise up and pinpoint to his lycanthrope heat as well.

Shishi and Leoxander fighting for sport and the vampire turning the lights on in your cave has got to be one of the rudest alarm clocks imaginable. The dragon agrees with that sentiment and, while the lycan is firing his hook arrow, comes rushing out soon after the torrent of darkness the accursed assassin coaxed away from its natural position inside the cave. Shishi twitches his head, and the rest of his body down and to the side to miraculously get out of the path of that close range projectile, but the smart tug that Leo puts on the braided wire sees the hooked arrowhead coming back and digging into the assassin’s lower back. Shishi is not the werewolf in this fight, but he lets out a howl in pain all the same as everything goes wrong all at once. The dragon, a silver, of course, comes barreling out of the cave and can’t rightfully decide, in her fury over being woken up early, on just which of these two titan gladiators she is most angry at. So she just keeps on going, and has her leg clotheslined by the tether between Shishi and Leoxander. Clotheslined is probably not the right description, because their combined weight does not stop this furious silver in the slightest and she just throws herself off the cliff edge, tumbling just so that both Shishi and the lycan if he holds on like he seemed to be planning to, are dragged off, but not dropped into freefall. Instead, whatever is still attached to the wire is taken for an unpleasant flight through the cold and snow, Shishi managing to grab onto the wire with both hands, one of them smearing blood onto it, so that all of his weight isn’t straining the meat of his behind that is stuck on the arrow hook.

Leoxander caught the knife Shishi had thrown in his thigh, but adrenaline and lycanthrope blood ran so hard he hadn't even noticed it at first. He was limp, now, but didn't bother to use his bow again, despite the odds. There was a last resort he hoped would succeed, knowing his competitor as he did. One of those supposed 'charcoal eggs'. Made by a certain alchemist in business. Still he is suddenly being dragged toward the entrance, and despite the duel, he isn't willing to let Shishi go for a g'damned tourney. So a treaded boot catches onto the side of the cave with a dragon as his back. He turns his head half way, knowing the amount of gold and title he will forfeit, and then finds and ice crystal to wrap the wire around tightly in hopes it will hold. Rather than assist Shishi up, Leo turns to grab one of those 'eggs' off his belt and throws the alchemist made concoction down to blind the white dragon, risking what injury he must to make certain Shishi does not fall.

Shishi ’s hands burn against the wire tethering him to Leoxander when the lycan remains on the clifftop and stops the assassin’s fall. The sudden jerk that stops his freefall causes more pain and dislodges both the hook (very painfully) and the kunai that until now was still sticking out from his shoulder blade. The throwing knife tumbles down to where heroes have fallen previously, probably landing on one of their snow covered skulls, and Shishi is left hanging on for dear life while the shadows he had pulled from the cave slowly gather towards him like a black fog moving over a lake. While a blind dragon thrashes above, The Blue Demon takes advantage of the captain’s ‘kindness’ and starts to climb back up, the dark mist hovering just beneath him, thickening into a kind of safety net should his grip slip or Leo suddenly decide against not letting the vampire fall.

Winner: Shishi (Shishi decided to help Leoxander take down the dragons for his autohit post)

Leoxander realizes that is the end of the duel, but if possible, he would be there to grasp Shishi's hand and pull him onto the flat land of that cave. Leoxander thumped Shishi on the back with his good arm. Leoxander unwraps his left bandaged hand before holding Shishi's in his right.

Shishi gets helped up while the pair avoid getting thrashed by a blinded dragon. Once he is on solid ground again, The Blue Demon hands Leoxander back his hook arrow, which, let's face it, has a chunk of Shishi still on it and intimates that he'd like for the rogue to shoot it again, this time into the leathery wing of the dragon, or anywhere that it can take hold on that beast.

Leoxander studies Shishi, and there is the resemblence of a smirk. He arms his bow and aims toward the dragon. "Be ready to run, mate." The compound bow is fired, right toward the white dragon's wing.

Shishi nods and smirks, "Aye~" The bow is fired, finds it's mark in the wing of the beast, which doesn't even seem to notice, and Shishi is immediately working his 'magic'. He congregates shadow at the opposite end of the wire line and tosses it over the cliff edge, where it suddenly becomes incredibly massive, enough so to pull on the dragon's weight and see the creature sliding, and flapping massive wings to avoid being dragged off the cliff edge, but no dice. The shadows become heavier and heavier with each passing second and soon the dragon is tumbling down the cliff face. The pair of rogues run, like they were prepared to. Leo owes Shishi a shot.