Duel:Mathollak v Cresente, Match 13 of the 2023 Titans of Winter Tournament
Duelists: Mathollak vs Cresente Duel: Traditional 3 rounds with final defense, 20 minute posting limit. Stakes: Standard, autohit delivered by winner with allowance for final reply. Judges: Valrae, Kasyr, and Meri.
Broken City Center
Valrae || While the heart of Frostmaw still showed the scars of war, there were also signs that these deep injuries had begun the slow march toward healing. The broken street has been made new, the once cracked cobblestone fresh around all but the chasm at its center. Shops and buildings that had once been in various states of ruin were now fresh faced and new. Sturdy stands welcomed guests to perch on wide seats to witness the long awaited finals of the Titans of Winter. The sun was still high but tucked away behind thick gray clouds swollen with the promise of snow. Watery gray light slanted toward the snow littered streets as vendors and patrons slogged through the brown slush that pushed in from the streetsides. Shouts promising strong drinks and warm food rang out above the dull roar of the crowd. Bodies pressed close for warmth and space. The mayor of Cenril sat in a high box seat with her co hosts and what remained of Frostmaw’s leadership. She was dressed for warmth more than vanity, most of her tucked behind a thick coat the color of ripe peaches and lined with plush white wool. She waited for both contestants to take their place near the open heart of the city as the wind watered her eyes and reddened her cheeks. Finally, Valrae’s voice rose above the crowd. “Welcome to the Titans of Winter!” She had to pause for several heartbeats as the noise erupted. “Today, Mathollak and Cresente will face each other in the heart of the City of War!”
Meri chimes in shortly after Valrae, "Excuse me, but his name is Croissant. We apologize for the error." Meri tries to keep a straight face during this announcement but a smirk ends up creeping across her red lips.
Mathollak arrives in glacier of blood, slow moving and massive, creeping toward the site of a great battle that was by all accounts, victorious. Not so for the people of Frostmaw, who saw their great city punctured and were mostly returned to living like paupers in tents and huts. Much like their brethren to the West. Some of them were even arriving here, as part of the burgeoning tribe Mathollak himself belongs to. The red glacier. His entourage is especially tall, today, and stand out as usual for being all dressed in red. He leaves them his own heavy red cloak, excellent for fighting the frigid wastes, but not so good for fighting people. Underneath, he’s wearing what he has been: Mithril shinguards over spiked boots, a tasssled leather loincloth, cinched with a shimmering golden belt. A chain coiled on one hip with a celestial bronze cleaver affixed to one end, a leather bag strapped to the other. His chest is bare up to his shoulders, where a single pauldron reaches further with its warped spike than the hair tied in a bun on his head. His arms are unarmored but for one hand, wrapped in leather, perhaps to hide the deformity that using it so often as a shield incurred. In his hand is a pewter goblet, raised high to his fans in the stands, and the number of giants he arrived with standing in a loose group. “We’ve made it all this way!” He calls out to them. “Not just to the championship, but to a people battered by old gods of catastrophe, and more! They need our help, and we’re gonna give it to them. I raise this goblet to you my beloved!” He turns to Cresente. “And to you,” he winks, “my enemy!” Then notably, he shifts his gaze and his glass to both the giants that accompanied him, and to the ones who survived the great turnip war. “And to you! The original Titans of Winter!” With giant’s strength, a heavy stone axe, and some chains, he faces his opponent, eager to begin.
Cresente || With the gore and mud from his last battle long washed away, the avian could almost pass for handsome if not for the perpetual scowl on his face and his entire personality. While the restoration should have humbled most who witnessed the initial damage or heard of it from the international papers, Cresente’s mind was on the fight alone. Namely, the illegal gambling that had been occurring within the alleyways and amongst the seedier fans of the tournament. The gambling that was going to win him enough to secure a voyage to what he’s lost. The joking amongst the announcers fall on deaf ears. Emerging from a shadowed vantage point, Cresente looks at the flashy human before him and sneers. “Devotion to false gods is but a parasocial relationship gone awry.” The avian stretches his wings fully, their full span covering the ground below in shadow. “You have a gift for combat, I hear, so let that make up for it here.” His wings return to their relaxed position, and Cresente takes a bracing stance. Not one for the cold, he is dressed in his usual attire with a crossbow on one hip, a shortsword on the other hip, and several nasty concoctions and projectiles purchased or otherwise scrounged together along the rest of his belt. Beneath the trenchcoat, the glinting of heat-resistant armor can be seen. “Come on, then.”
Meri :: The battlefield is covered in a thick layer of snow that carries all the way to the edge of the chasm. At first, the area surrounding the chasm seems to be devoid of any sort of challenge for the duelists to endure. No oversized ice moose are being lead out onto the field. It is just the calm before the storm, however. Literally. Before either of today’s combatants can make a move, a strong wind picks up that is easily gusting at fifty miles per hour. The forceful windstorm causes the once serene battlefield to come to life, causing the top layer of snow to billow up and propelling it toward the edge of the chasm and then straight over. At some point, the duelists might expect to see the ground but it seems the snow is intentionally never ending. It would not be fun for the spectators if this magically created avalanche loses steam mid-duel. It will be a constant fight for the duelists to keep their footing.
Round One
Mathollak shields his face and his cup with his humbata fur cloak, and quickly sucks down the precious brew bestowed to him by his true love. The effects on his physiology are drastic and immediate; a thick maroon colored hide grows over the skin of his hands, arms, shoulders, following the tracks of his veins as the corruption meets at his sternum. A wicked and malicious grin salivates over the promised blood of his opponent, and then its gone as he disappears into a wave of oncoming snow, crouching low enough to dig his monstrous claws into the earth and pull himself toward his opponent, and halt himself from being carried off the edge. He comes up for air once, appearing much closer than he was originally, and then disappears again for a brief moment. Suddenly, not a moment later, he erupts from the snow like a glacial volcano of red, hurling himself with strength impossible for mortals against the wind of this fight’s hazard. Against the wind, and only vaguely in the direction of Cresente, his enemy of the week. A plume of black smoke, smelling like the inside of a volcano accompanies him like an aura, slivers of annoying lava intermingled with it, and ignorant of the frigid weather. It’s mixing with the snow as it tumbles, scarring it black and gray and orange, and guaranteed to burn the eyes and throat if it can touch those things as it might splash into them. Mathollak’s leap turns out not to be so far off course after all, as the wind bends his trajectory back toward Cresente. He raises his axe high above his head as he flies, and it becomes aglow with light like the color of churning lava, especially in the seams of the axe head. It creates its own aura of steam as snow falls onto it and immediately sublimes on its edge. The arc through the air Mathollak takes brings him to Cresente’s side just a jiffy after a polluted flurry of snow, and he swings his axe in a wide arc as he would land, a blow designed to separate the man’s thigh from his hip. The glowing fault lines in the axe promise to mirror those cracks in the next fragile thing it makes contact with. Of course, to Mathollak and the Piecemaker, everything is fragile.
Cresente grits his teeth. This blasted environment renders his projectiles and his favored weapon worthless here, unless he is extremely careful. As Mathollak downs his abomination of a concoction, Cresente also gets to work. He unloads his crossbow and ensures that the right bolt is loaded, moving his feet all the while as to not lose his footing. As an avian, the wind is strong, but not impossible to navigate in short bursts, and the high skies make Frostmaw seem like Cenril. For this opponent, he only has the one bolt of this kind, and it is the most expensive of them all. Were he a holy man, he would pray for it to land, Cresente instead prays that his accuracy is as good as it was in his youth. As he takes aim at the transformed human, he catches a glimpse of the lava red beast leaping from the snow. Changing tactics, the avian attempts to dodge the poisonous flurry, and failing, as he leaps upwards and uses his wings to let the wind carry him. Already he can feel his throat constricting and his field of vision lessening. Like this, he and Mathollak glide at the same pace closer to the crater, rendering him just far out of reach enough for the first swing of his axe to meet empty air. “Open.” He orders, aiming the crossbow. As they are, they are only ten feet from one another, and Cresente fires the bolt at close range directly towards the maw of the transformed Mathollak. Little does anyone realize yet, but the bolt is imbued with concentrated heretic blood and unholy magic, enough energy that even grazed skin contact would feel like being wrapped in broken glass while lessening the powers of divinity. Were Mathollak to swallow it as intended, Cresente was confident that his false prophet of a patron would abandon them entirely until it was purged. No sooner is the bolt shot at Mathollak does Cresente release the crossbow and plant his feet upon the moving ground long enough to springboard off of the ice and back towards Mathollak. Drawing his sword to match the Piecemaker, Cresente swings the shortsword from outwards to inwards in a swift motion, looking to sever the toughened hide at the shoulder joint to disarm him… pun intended.
Round Two
Mathollak plunges his head downward as the bolt from the crossbow sails past, and he peeks at it below his armpit. He can probably thank his smokey aura stinging Cresente’s eyes and having the blizzard blowing against his opponent for the miss, but he chalks it up to his own skill. And when he does land, he misses Cresente with the blade of his axe but he doesn’t miss the ground. And even this, is fragile when confronted with Mathollak’s axe. Jagged cracks radiate from the impact, destabilizing a wide swath of rock leading up to the rim of the chasm. At this point, Mathollak happily engages Cresente in close combat. For perhaps the first time ever, Mathollak fights defensively, holding his hands at opposite ends of his axe to increase his leverage and gain use over each end. He knows the ground is crumbling under Cresente, and uses it to his full advantage. With his hands gripped at nine and three, he shoves the shaft of the ax up and into the incoming blade, parrying it over his shoulder and following this motion toward a logical conclusion, driving the butt of his ax toward his opponent’s forehead, aiming to concuss him and knock him backwards. Then the ground falls fully away into the pit, and Mathollak spins away unable to weather the build up of snow at his back for long. He drives a claw into the ground for grip and uses it to pivot. Then to bury Cresente further, he tears that claw out of the ground, heaving up a dense pile of corrupted snow, imbued with his own aura. It cascades over the spot where they were fighting, where Cresente hopefully remains. Only it’s no longer snow, it’s like Mathollak melted the snow and infused it with so much of his antagonistic aura that it turned into a type of tar, heavy and sticky. Hopefully it will send Cresente to the bottom of the pit in a sticky mess of tar and feathers.
Cresente curses his waste of a perfectly good five thousand gold coins as the bolt disappears into the avalanche. Hopefully that secondary sales pitch he only half-listened to would come in handy later. As he parries Mathollak’s axe in an attempt to land a hit, he feels the distinct sensation of the ground giving way beneath him. Whether by luck or by good reflex, Cresente dips with the shifting ground to avoid the kiss from the axe. When the ground falls away completely, the avian is forced to spread his wings to escape the crater, using the shifting winds at the center to be carried back to an undamaged edge. It is only when he lands that he realizes that the ends of his wings have been damaged by the blighted tar, rendering him unable to close the wings completely. Try as he might, this storm is already too forceful to properly take flight in, especially with it blowing in all directions to funnel the snow towards the center chasm. Perhaps if he were a younger man could he take this heretic by the scruff where the reach of his axe can’t stop him from dropping him into the center of the crater. No matter, he does not need the entirety of the skies. With quick unflattering steps taken to keep from sinking into the moving avalanche, Cresente fights against the wind to take twenty paces away from the crater, and by design, the Mathollak he has abandoned opposite of the pit. Then, he turns around and takes a running jump, tarred wings outstretched, towards one of the last remaining fixtures of this battlefield: one of the iron-wrought lamps that had lined this area when it was once a city square. In the midst of this avalanche, the oil post is poised to become untethered to the ground any second now along with all the others in the snowstorm’s way. Taking a clumsily landed perch up upon the oil post designed high enough to stay out of reach of giants, Cresente looks down at his opponent only to realize the blighted snow has worsened his sight. Between this and the flurries, all he can see is a vaguely colored dark shadow moving amongst other dark shadows. Cupping his hands to his face, the avian then makes a warbling whistle that sounds eerily similar to that of a cackling crow, carrying across and over the roaring of the winds, the only call he can make without straining his voice. From the alleyways of Frostmaw come rumblings as the overcast skies turn even darker, becoming littered with black spots. Frost crows descend into the storm, first by the handful, then dozens, then hundreds. Cresente’s call has awoken every non-sentient relative of the avian family in the city, and they understand their mission. What each crow lacks in power individually, they will make up for in sheer numbers and by taking advantage of the fierce winds blowing towards the center. The murder moves as one, diving into the winds at angles that will propel them towards Mathollak no matter where he hides, intent on pushing him over the crumbling edges of the crater that are now growing because of his earlier movements. Cresente meanwhile scans the snow with his failing eyesight, searching for the glow of the projectile lost so that it may be used again. He would swear if he could.
Round Three
Mathollak isn’t prepared to follow Cresente to the top of that light post, doing so would mean a leap, not just of faith, but of stupidity. Cresente cries out to the heavens, an ironic thing for him. “I’ll shut you up,” he says as he reaches into a small bag while using the piecemaker’s earth-wedged head as an anchor. He brought a surprise for Cresente as well, it seems. And with little ceremony he pulls a bola made from black chain out of the pocket, spins it, and hurls it in front of Cresente. It’s off course, but the wind, and the reach of the spiked metal balls at the end of the bola do well to compensate. If they connect they’d wrap around, possibly bind his wings to his back, and drop him into oblivion. What Mathollak is least prepared for however, is the crow that slammed into his back on its way by. Blood trickles from his back and is immediately washed away by the snow, but he turns to see what the heck is going on. That crow was a herald to many, and the skies darken with their number. He fights off the first few arrivals as he trudges against them, but there’s no withstanding the entire airforce. He dives face first into the avalanche, having no choice but to endure it as all manner of ice and snow and rock flows into his face. It’s too much. In a desperate move, he rises up suddenly and slams his axe into the ground at his feet. Fault lines spread quickly through the rocky ground, and as birds and more slam into him, he plunges both hands into the new seam he just created. He pushes and lifts. A massive bowl shaped slab of stone emerges, channeling snow and birds over it as he fights to gain leverage. He moves into the crater created by the sudden void protected now by this enormous shield. But it can’t last. He knows Cresente isn’t done for, one way or another. With enormous effort, even with giant’s strength, he hurls the massive thing at Cresente, flipping like a giant coin.
Cresente uses the seconds of reprieve he has to hold a hand to the air and force a handful of clean snow into his eyes to wash away the blight. As he blinks away the ice water, Cresente blinks in time to see the tiny red glow of his crossbow bolt falling into the chasm with the endless avalanche. Perhaps this was a sign that he could make this situation work in his favor. The avian moves to act while the devotee is distracted by the swarm, until the bola weapon enters his field of vision. Snapping back on his heel, he saves his wings from being crushed for the third time this month at the expense of having the bola wrap around one of his legs. Cresente snarls as the spiked ends cut through his armor. To his chagrin, the one bit of stability he had been taking advantage of also becomes swept by the frozen sea, forcing him to land back on the blighted ground. He sees Mathollak tearing up the ground again and readies one last projectile, a very compact but powerful bomb from his belt holster. With a touch of flame from the bits of lava peeking out from the tar, the fuse is it and Cresente throws it not at Mathollak nor his shield, but at the center of the chasm. It disappears almost instantly into the abyss, and for a moment, the mercenary curses his luck. Then an eruption skyrockets from the chasm, turning the vacuum into a volcano of a sickly red color distinctly different from the passionate red that Mathollak wields for Delisha. The bomb has shattered the anti-divinity bold, mixing the heretics’ blood within with the snow both fresh and blighted. It cascades upwards only to arch back inwards to create a ring that rushes back towards the center of the crater where Mathollak hides, sweeping with it the carrion horde that still seek to rend bits of leathery flesh from Mathollak’s transformed body and make him more susceptible to trace splatter. The agonizing pain that would be felt on top of the forced transformation and the distinct sense of loss will hopefully reach their intended target this time. There is no time to relax or even acknowledge what has happened at the center, for at the same time, Cresente is forced to fight against the avalanche to carry his wounded body away from the crater as well, in hopes that the massive chunk of stone boomerangs with the wind back towards the erupting chasm and back towards Mathollak before it reaches Cresente. Realizing he may not have that luxury, he draws his short sword once more to face the stone head on. If he cannot cut through the stone nor parry it to lessen the impact, at least he can die the way fate originally intended for him…
Final Defense
Mathollak isn’t ‘hiding’, he’s seeking shelter, which is way different. With some confusion, he watches Cresente drop something into Xicotl’s resting place. But there’s hardly time to care for something he doesn’t understand when he’s battling an avalanche, he has to clamber out of the bowl he’s just created before it fills up with him at the bottom. As he reaches the rim, the explosion sends hellfire above him. He doesn’t know just how bad it will be for him to be afflicted by such a thing, but on principle he tries to protect himself against it. By attacking, as usual. As the heretical rains curl inward and come against him, he gathers up what’s left of his smokey aura, expending it through the heel of his spiked boot, with a stomp that crushes through the incoming snow and onto the ground. A massive thorn of glimmering red chalky looking stone erupts from it, sent from the same place as Delisha’s tasty brew. It’s like the horn of some great hellish ram, curling over Mathollak as the rain falls. The endless torrent of snow and winged beasts is parted around the trunk, but the rains are the antithesis of this beast’s great horn. As it’s continually pelted, it wears down, crumbles, like it was lava raining over an ice cube. Mathollak crouches against the inside of the curling horn as the spike breaks off and the ends wither, until finally there isn’t enough width to protect him. The pain that rips through him penetrates even his goddess’s protection, and everywhere his dark monstrous hide grew and guarded him, instead begins to necrotize before finally falling off his flesh in bloody piles.
Winner: Mathollak
Auto Hit:
Mathollak gathers up what’s left of his will and stands. As the heretic’s rain subsides, he grips his ax despite the pain and the blood that oozes from his flesh, flayed to muscle and sinew. No longer smiling, he paints the snow that cascades past him red with his blood as he trudges through the snow toward Cresente. He meets him halfway, and Mathollak once again takes up his ax against Cresente’s shortsword. The two exchange blows for what seems to be an eternity, until Mathollak appears to leave himself open and exposed on one side, his axe seemingly lodged in the dirt after an overzealous swing. Cresente succumbs to temptation, and cuts right where Mathollak wants him to. Mathollak deflects the blade painfully with the back of his hand, and pulls the ax easily out of the ground. It comes up quickly, glowing with power, and down even quicker into Cresente’s shoulder. As advertised, the ax’s cracks seem to diminish and reappear as bloody fissures radiating down into Cresente’s chest. Scars that will no doubt take some time to heal, if they ever do. Mathollak takes his free hand and hammers it into the flat side of the ax, punching a deep gash into the shoulder and freeing it at the same time as Cresente falls into the avalanche. But Mathollak isn’t done it seems, because he dives after him before he can fall, catching him by the arm he didn’t wreck. Now that he’s saved from perishing into that wretched mass-grave, Mathollak can be done.
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