Fight:Cintra v Kuzial

Road to Milous

Kuzial has been stalking through the now menacing Sage Forest; the ancient home of the elves filled with pernicious dangers now the drow have taken over. The Patron of House Stavret wanted nothing more than to find some lingering elves to satisfy the unending hunger of his vicious blades, but none he has found thus far. So when he sees the woman walking along Milous road alone, he cannot help but flash a an evil, sadistic smile. Drawing silently in one hand a dagger, and with the other pulling forth the E' et-Nilah Blade, an ancient drow sword once owned by the ruler of all of Trist'Oth, the dark elf patron waits just a moment, before erupting from the shadows of the trees with a war-cry that sounds strangely euphonious, coming in the lyrical language of the drow, despite the obvious malicious intent in the sound. When he nears the woman, the drow flashes his sword up and across in a sweeping strike aiming to cut the woman's head off, but it's a feint more than a truly deadly attack, for using his own sword as a visual block, the dark elf lord throws his dagger underhanded at the woman's stomach, seeking to imbed the razor-sharp blade into her flesh to satisfy the psychotic patron's desire for death.

Cintra is a creature that thrives on first impressions. She knows that her vulnerable persona is too tempting a target, but also realizes her own mortality. Thus, her senses are keen for danger, and she hears the drow's explosion from cover before he can truly show himself. She pulls up short, turns belatedly in his direction, and a look of horror spreads across her face. "No! How could..." is all she has time for, and then the blademaster's two weapons are splitting the air with the intention of tearing her apart. Acting on her belief that her attacker might be easy to surprise, owing to her appearance and vocalization, Cintra does something instinctual and lightning-fast. Drawing upon her considerable magic, she conjures a jet of red light around the places where she believes the blades would strike home if she were to remain still; simultaneous with this display is the woman's reversion to her natural height of perhaps two and a half inches. Now a pixie,and having completed the conjuration that might well convince Kuzial that he has struck his foe at least one decisive blow, Cintra zips soundlessly up and back, trusting that the drow is blinded or at least confounded by the red in his vision enough not to spot her furtive movement. For added effect, Cintra even conjures a brief burst of sound akin to the gurgle of a dying woman from the general vicinity of that now-fading red light, then causes a nearby branch to thud to earth, as if to mimic the noise a body might make in collapse. Just after doing this, the illusionist looses her true attack, simple and potentially devastating. She folds her tiny hands and looses twin needles of fire from between her knuckles. These tiny lances are all she can manage in the split second since she sprang into action, but if they pierce their intended targets - the Drow's eyes - he will not only find himself blind, but may find those flames ravenously consuming his skull from the inside out.

Kuzial snarls in feral anger as the light shifts before his eye, though he is not entirely confused by her deadly ruse. The patron is a creature of instinct when he fights; a hunter almost without peer with blades in his hand. It would require more than an illusionist trick to truly befuddle the powerful ruler of House Stavret, though he is lost to where his opponent has gone. With his own vision impaired, he calls upon his latent drow power and drops a globe of darkness over the pair. With his eye shut he focuses entirely on his other senses as he begins to pace to the left. The falling branch recieves a second thud, like it did when falling to the ground, the moment it falls, another of the drow's daggers being pulled from a hidden sheathe and sent at it in one smooth motion, even blinded within his conjured darkness. The sound of metal striking wood is unmistakable, and with another feral growl the drow prepares to erupt into a frenzied attack at everything close to him, to find out where this vanishing woman went. But he doesn't need to utilize such actions, as the crackle of thin arcane fires sent towards him tells the drow exactly where she is. He reacts quickly; crossing his hands before his face and keeping his eye closed. He's rewarded with a burn on his wrist that easily evades his armour and begins to ravish the limb from within. But the smell of burning flesh, even his own, has ever been a sweet scent to the drow. With a savage smile lost in the darkness, he uses his uninjured arm to drive his sword forward, towards where the pixie flew, while at the same time enacting the E' et-Nilah Blade's magic. From the sword's tip, blindly birthed are three tendrils of darkness. They snake out, before twisting quickly around themselves, weaving with all the skill of an Underdark Spider a vicious web. Kuzial carries on like this, poised with his sword extended for a long time, before he spins once, drawing the netting he created into a tight package, before completing the move with a vicious slash of his sword, which tears through the magical trap with the intention of cutting in half the elusive pixie, if she were trapped like a fly in his web.

Cintra knows well that any advantage she has in combat rests with her ability to stay on the move. Taking direct hits is neither within her training as an illusionist nor on her list of likely future goals. She is startled but not entirely unnerved when the globe of darkness drops over the immediate vicinity, but continues to fly through the blackness, weaving a little magic of her own. She knows this Drow trick, and while she cannot replicate it, Cintra can add another dimension to it. The quality of the darkness does not change for her, but all at once a baffle of dead silence settles into the same globular pool of space. If the drow is suitably shocked by this sudden deathly quiet, the other trigger of this illusory trap will rob him of what remains of his sight as well, at least until such time that he endeavours to lift the sphere of blackness. The two will both be deaf and blind. Cintra is so engrossed in flying to and fro, conjuring her own brand of malevolence, that she is nearly caught by the web of fell enchantment being spun by the Drow below. Her senses are acutely tuned to the use of magic, a knack she intends to use in this dark, silent arena of combat, and she flinches away at the last moment. This flinch saves her life but does not save her pain, as she happens to touch the web at the moment just before Kuzial rips it to shreds. The flat of his enchanted blade strikes the darting pixie a glancing blow and sends her tumbling end over end through the air. The impact upon the blade is so minimal that Kuzial might not even feel it, and her trajectory such that Cintra is more winded than truly wounded. She fetches up against a tree-stump, probes delicately with her refined magical senses and locates the emanations from the drow-made blade. Fixing her mind upon the image of this fearsome weapon, she spins a web of arcane force which battens upon the drow, imparting to him a very believable sensory hallucination of his blade turning in his grasp to drink his own blood. As ever, Cintra is relying on the element of surprise to cause the drow's mind to finish the tenuous link and form a blade of self-wrought damnation that will turn mere fright into truth.

Kuzial silently lets out a sadistic laugh as the pixie illusionist weaves her own magic into his midst, adding a lack of sound to the already blinded vision of the two combatants. The drow simply doesn't care. He devoids himself from the need to use his sight and his particularly fine hearing and instead focuses entirely upon himself, letting his psychotic mind feel the ebb and flow of the battle itself. The slight thud of winding the tiny pixie was felt by Kuzial; too fine are his skills not to notice. But equally he is aware that he didn't kill her. So he again begins to pace to the left, moving like a stalking tiger in the deafening darkness around him. Occasionally he slashes his sword, hoping by the will of the Fates to strike his opponent, but soon enough his closest ally shifts to be an apparent enemy. His own pernicious weapon, seeking to harm him? He had fought his battles with this sword, matching his will against the sentient sword's own, even once being taken over by the sword's malevolence. But never before had it truly betrayed him. Unsure what to do, he removes the globe of darkness, feeling the rush of sound and sight return to him, at the same moment he hurls his weapon away. It clangs across the ground, rolling until it comes to a stop, and without it, Kuzial seems far more mortal than before. But he isn't unarmed... far from that. He pulls from his belt with one hand the crossbow Kirien gave him, before using his burning hand to draw forth another of his daggers, though this one drips with a green, grotesquely hued liquid - an obvious, deadly poison. The drow, spying the pixie, begins to run for her. He feints leaping left and right, though never once takes his eyes from the illusionist. He fixes her within his mind, refusing to believe anything other than she is there, and she is prey. When close enough to Cintra, he snaps up the crossbow and loosens a bolt at her. But despite the fact his aim is perfect, he knows hitting a flying pixie with a bolt is almost impossible. So the moment its launched he hurls the crossbow in its wake, before extending his hand and waiting. He would see which way she evaded the crossbow, if evade it she does, before he'd hurl the dagger at her... hoping with some forward knowledge of where she will go, he will be able to skewer his tiny adversary before turning her into dinner.

Cintra has scant moments to be thankful for her ingenuity as she senses the Drow wrestling with his blade. Evidently, her magic had been strong, but not quite strong enough to finish the fight. Knowing that her assailant will need to find her, Cintra also realizes that doing so will probably mean that he will need to lift his conjured globe of darkness. She sets one last trigger into the spell when he does, a simple cantrip that will create a bobbing, weaving duplicate of herself flying erratically this way and that. The spell is set off sooner than she expects, however, and results in Cintra having to scramble to get away from the enraged Drow. His original efforts appear to have focused upon the copy, which has no intelligence of its own and dodges straight into the crossbow before exploding in motes of yellow light. Cintra herself, shocked by this broken spell, is not within easy reach of the Drow's dagger at this moment in time, having been spared the weapon-master's clever feint by the use of her decoy. She knows that she will have only a split second to act before Kuzial becomes aware of her true position, and she does her best to make use of it. At different points during her flight through these forest eaves, she has become aware that many wasps live in the dead trees nearby. One of these pests happens to be nearby, and Cintra focuses quickly on this insectile threat for the wrath of her spell. Using the creature's form, she creates thousands of copies in a blink, a replication spell that feeds on itself and creates the illusion of an angry swarm. This she directs with a wave of one tiny hand for the Drow below, intending to encapsulate him in a furious cloud of ephemeral buzzing death. With the last of her waning strength, Cintra causes Kuzial's blade to levitate with the use of a single blast of air, then hurls it ungraciously toward the Drow's back, meaning to skewer him with a single deadly thrust from his own weapon. It is her hope that the blade-master will be too distracted by the phantom wasps to gauge the nature of his plight; her own stores of magical energy, not to mention her physical abilities, are fading fast, and it will be only a short time until she is forced to land and become vulnerable.

Kuzial snarls with animalistic anger as he is fooled by the pixie's tricks yet again. And as the onslought of wasps comes towards him, he reacts quickly. Channeling through the soul-stone insignia on his neck, he causes the furious faerie fires, a power all drow innately have, to erupt around his body. Illusionary wasps are fried by illusionary fires, and as the fading motes of light trail around the drow's body, evaporating into nothingness as his fires die down with the wasps, he senses his sword coming. He is tied to the blade by bonds stronger than steel; too long has Kuzial and E' et-Nilah been together. So when he senses the sadistic sword's delight at being hurled at his back, the weapon longing to taste Kuzial's flesh, he simply leaps up, twisting as he does to grab the weapon's hilt with his uninjured arm, before landing gracefully back on the road. The last few illusionary wasps are ignored entirely, and thus lose their power over him, even as he drops the fires from around his body and eyes the pixie with a mixture of contempt and distaste. When he speaks, his voice ripples with anger, though it still remains strangely lyrical. "You couldn't feed my beetle, let alone me. But if I see you again, I'll cut you into even tinier pieces and sprinkle your remains across my forest." That said, and without further pause, the drow turns on his heel and stalks back into the heart of Sage. He doesn't fear the pixie attacking him from behind, he is ready for it if it happens. But he is sure she will not want to fight more with the drow, just as he has no desire to face her. Too small, too clever, there's easier prey to be had, hunting her is not worth it, unless, of course, she pisses him off.. then only death will stop him enacting vengeance.