Liliya

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

Had she planned things to work out this way? Of course not. It had been a hell of a last second, these moments were always tense and this had been no exception. She knew that he could simply keep bending away, at the ankle, the hip, at the shoulders, even if it brought him to a full tilt at his hip in a position of lying on his side on top of her, the point at which she could bend no more. What his bend at the knee and movement of his hips and groin toward her had brought, however, was opportunity. She wouldn’t have reacted in this way if he had remained outstretched above her, but whether she had misjudged her opponent or whether she knew this would invariably happen would be left to the historians of bouts in the arena to discuss. What it did cause was her to turn at her side lifting with her right shoulder to a half lying position herself, her left arm still locked around his right ankle and attempting to put her body weight upon it with her left side directly onto and downwards into his left leg, while she allowed Zande to bring her upper body, along with her arms currently locked around his ankles, towards his center of mass.

No doubt this would slow his movement, but it wouldn’t stop him. He was larger, stronger, and in no clear position where his leverage would be taken away. She couldn’t stop him from doing this. Beyond keeping him from turning away from the direction his ankles were pointed, in this case to each side and far enough to largely force him to not be able to turn around and get onto his back rather than remain face first in the sand, she would be largely incapable of making him do anything. It wasn’t what she needed, not now. What she needed now was to impress upon this foe the true nature of the law of blood and sand, and with each passing inch as he dragged her closer to himself while his body was planted facing down to the earth below he would approach his eventual doom. It hadn’t taken him a second to reposition his knee and bring his hips and groin toward her, and at the whiff of something decaying and foul she almost stopped in her tracks. Should she be a lesser trained foe she might have hesitated. Aibhilin did not. The monster had forgotten a key point in this equation, one he was aware of but had lost in the confusion.

She had manipulated his limbs and muscle and tendon groups with her arms, her underarms, elbows, wrists, and had done so for a reason. Now moving toward her with his own body bringing itself closer each moment to her own and, if successful, having crossed his legs below herself atop one another in the movement, at the ankles of course as that was where she had had her own leverage though the shins, knees and thighs attached, so well as the hips and shoulders beyond would still not turn opposite the direction of the ankles upon whom rested the body weight of a large adult woman well-muscled and experienced in grappling, he would be reminded the importance of this seemingly obscure bit of information. Had he moved away from her at the groin he might have escaped the peril now awaiting him entirely. Had he been wearing different footwear he would have noticed this a moment before. In the end this was the path which the sand had set before the two combatants, and the one that would be tread upon by them unto at least one of their deaths. This was the path where the opponent, distracted or perhaps unaware, had forgotten all about the danger of the small piece of metal held in her right hand.

Thrusting with as much power as could be mustered from a straight shot lying on one’s side, which even though she could and would attempt to put her right hip into the blow by bending at the right shoulder and kicking the hip out as well as using her body weight and leverage over his legs to put a counterbalance and driving point into his legs and the ground below with her opposite side was still not much even for such an intimidating opponent, but which had been boosted exponentially by the fact that her opponent’s momentum and mass were traveling in the opposite, conflicting and antagonistic direction relative to her strike, which made this a plausible course of action even if she was met by steel. She was aiming for the groin of the monster which had farted in her general direction, straight, under and past his skirts which from her angle was easy enough for the maximum chance at avoiding entanglement and potential metal plates sewn into the material. Should the blow meet with flesh or with mail or plate through which it, meant clearly as a stabbing weapon shaped for armor penetration managed to penetrate, she would then drag along and down his thigh, aiming to complicate his femoral artery and potentially leave him a stuck, bleeding, neutered eunuch of a pig on the sand.

She could and would have attempted to simply thrust through or slash across his Achilles tendon after taking him to the ground, but it was no great secret that he wore significant boots and, before he had moved, her arm would have been close enough to lean over and thrust toward his groin, but at an extreme angle contrary to her own. With this movement he had managed to give her what she needed, an opposite force with which to be dragged into better position and a clearly presented target which could cause the kind of damage she needed to inflict to have a reasonable chance of escape. He would still need to turn and swing or attempt to reverse her position or take his own before being able to get his own blades into her in return and, if successful, Aibhilin would have just inflicted a humiliating and deeply effective blow, likely significant enough to buy her time to reposition and move into the next phase of the combat. At worst he would manage to somehow, without having much of a clear line of sight on her especially from that angle, back, over, and behind his own ass to the opposite side and under his skirts, deflect the blow entirely, but she doubted it would be disarmed entirely.

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot So we were in a position where Aighrit had his legs wrapped around Rags waist.

She then gripped his arm and tried to bite him. What he attempted to do was release the guard (his locked legs) under the distraction of hitting her with an elbow thrown from the same arm that she was gripping and pulling her mouth down upon, in something that looks kind of like this.

Assuming that at the same time there was an elbow being thrown. All that happened here was Aighrit trying not to get bit and distract from what his legs were doing by using his arms, a common arena roleplay technique (usually people are paying attention to where the pain is coming from or the flashy thing going on, even if the real threat is somewhere else. Same principle as a street magician saying, "look over here," while she does some fancy trick with flash paper in her left hand while her right hand is actually the one pick pocketing your watch or whatever.)

At that point Aighrit is moving his right leg around Rags torso/belly because he wants to get off his back. This is the dangerous part for him, as if Rags notices in time she can attempt to move over his now defenseless torso and get her knees around his waist or, if she's real quick, his shoulders. The caveat for him is that she possibly just got elbowed in the face and won't have perfect reaction time. If he gets his leg around to the opposite side it would look something like this;

And at this point Aighrit is reaching around with his hand and half sitting, half sliding to try and get around Rags back to wind up seated behind her, with his arms locked under her's and his blade at her throat.

Obviously without drawing them I couldn't get the pictures to be totally correct, but hopefully they're a little bit of visual clarification.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

@Doc Doctor Been out all night, totally too tired to write a proper response. I'll have it up tomorrow, sorry.

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot Been out all night, totally too tired to write a proper response. I'll clarify tomorrow.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

@Doc Doctor I saw the post, but it's too late for me to start on another until tomorrow.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

@Doc Doctor The kinetic energy from the blow would still be a major hit to the shoulder, the pauldron spikes are of course not going to take noticeable damage but the reverberation would probably echo through the steel, into the hauberk and padding and break the shoulder, but I'll give it to you and Zande that he's a bad ass and just tanked it without the shoulder being meaningfully injured and with the wherewithal to grip and hold a halberd with the hand of the same arm. Moving left is probably not actually enough to get out of the way of her punch dagger, but he knew she was up to something with the right hand so I'll assume he really bolted back and outside to overcompensate and get into range to use the halberd as a range-control tool against a presumably small thrusting weapon like her punch dagger, which left me only one real option. I hope you're up for round two of Doc Doctor vs. Liliya: Wrestling Edition.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

This, “beast,” as it turned out, was truly deserving of the title. If she was a less well-trained combatant she would have hesitated, given him the moment he would need to take the advantage and get her on the defensive. It shouldn’t have been possible, aiming and blocking a strike from an unforeseen angle while firing with the opposite hand into her face with a blowgun. How he had even managed to get the long way around her axe head and make meaningful contact she couldn’t have said. She was fast, and moving in a straight line to his head. He was faster. So much so that he precisely calculated the angle of her strike, the dimensions of her weapon, and managed to get around the axe head in a blow that even without the slightest bit of thought should have taken longer to reach from his angle than it would take from her angle, and he was reacting! Should he manage to become the proactive opponent she would invariably lose, die here on these sands, and never return to her school, her students, never even manage to spend the small fortune she had been paid for accepting this bout in the first place.

This was something she would not, could not allow. As contact to her weapon came from the wrong side and at the wrong angle her hand was already off of the blade, less so because she thought it through and more so because she was missing a pinky and much of a ring finger on that hand. This didn’t matter with a two handed grip, nor did it matter for the blow she had attempted even one handed. It was the kinetic reverberation that challenged grip, not the forward momentum of a swing, and it was the signal she had been waiting for to go with plan B. The halberd had thudded, hard, into the beast’s pauldron, but not only was he faster than she, he was a veritable outsider. His arm was gripping the halberd she had just loosed from her grip in time with her own right arm going for her punch dagger, her left leg moving forward and toward the enemy. He wouldn’t have time to reposition the awkward halberd or his axe, not meaningfully enough to matter. In the moment it would take to grip the blade her left leg was moving toward him, punch blade gripped in her right hand and her left arm extended to contest any weapon that made it’s way into her threat zone by accident or otherwise.

She had him. Flanks exposed, belly exposed, arms occupied and too high to react. His blood was her’s, and none too soon. An extended bout with this monster couldn’t be won. But as she took the two feet necessary to extend and thrust, he was another foot, another half-step away. If she took that step she could no longer guarantee success. It wasn’t possible! What kind of monster was this, that could float across the sand as though an Outsider possessed, the mocking face carved into its mask of steel and death the only emotion it gave, breath hot enough that she could feel the phantom traces of it in the ground she had just covered should she have had the time to think. She didn’t. A quarter of a second was all it took to make the difference between life and death on these sands, and the law of blood and sand demanded the death of her opponent or, in her defeat at the hands of this flesh and blood monster, her own life extinguished and forever cast into the void nothingness of the end. Aibhilin was ready neither to meet that fate nor to allow the Imperials the satisfaction of watching their pet monster, so fast it moved beyond anything she had ever witnessed and mocked her at every turn, of delivering her to it.

She didn’t consciously understand what was to happen, but the lizard-brain tempered by years of blood, sweat and tears in the brutal training endured by those who bring death upon the sand told her all she needed to know. He could reposition now, if only with the eighth of a second and half-step the monster had somehow snuck into the equation of the blood game in defiance of convention and expectation, but it would be enough to counter her punch dagger. It would be what he would naturally understand to be coming. She had seen his eyes pass over her hidden right hand with the other eyes, the ones of reptilian wings and mocking silence which told you that someone was watching you though you could not say how you knew, and were usually proven correct. A strike to the likely places would be met either with the flat of a blade or the point of a spear, though there wasn’t time for even this beast to make a meaningful thrust or bring down a meaningful blow, or so the lizard-brain told her. There was time now for one, and only one course of action should she intend on returning home after today, and she did intend on returning home.

Her hands showed all the signs that he would have expected to inform him that she would strike with her punch dagger toward his mid-section despite the sudden change in distance, and she knew that if she did it would be her final mistake, not in her conscious mind but deeper, in the dark, dripping cavernous places of the before-mind passed down to her by thousands of generations of no-women, the pre-humanity of the primordial ooze of the world before the old world. She instead of taking the half step with her right leg and thrusting with her punch blade in time for the opponent to have repositioned and prepared for her now obvious strike pushed off of her planted leg and shot down, low and with the confidence of an experienced grappler, extending her arms and tucking her legs to her chest in the air, intending on taking the monster’s legs simultaneously and moving through them to the opposite side of his body, sliding on the sand after contact and all the while as she dragged him and slowed. She knew somewhere in the background that there were claws on his boots, but she also knew that they would be seeking the confidence of firm ground at the moment, positioning themselves to allow the monster upon whom they stood the capability to block her thrust, turn it away from himself, or simply put the tip of her own halberd in his left hand in the path of her charge.

If they somehow perked up and caught her in the shoulders or neck it would be through, but she subconsciously knew the opponent wouldn’t likely have predicted this course of action. His concern was the punch dagger, his step backwards to offset her footing and purchase the half of a quarter of a second needed to reposition his hands, and the weapons held within them. He was moving backwards, seeking firm footing. She would take this from him. He was eying her right hand, and focusing on his own hands, weapons carried in each. She would strike where he was unconcerned, momentarily unaware of lost in other concerns. It was the best chance of success she would get against this foe, this Outsider who defied the bounds of anything she had ever witnessed in the arena in just a fleeting moment, defying her at every turn. If she succeeded in taking his legs she expected it would send him falling, face first toward the ground. He would attempt to spin in the air and land on his back. This too she would attempt to take from him. She wouldn’t release her grip on his ankles as she pulled forward, instead wrapping her arms tight around his ankles unless her opponent had managed to avoid the strike entirely.

No doubt he would try and turn in the air, though if she had her way he would find that his hips, bound to the whims of his ankles, would not spin in Aibhilin’s grasp, turned just to the sides away from her head and shoulders and held with the absolute confidence of a grappler. As she slid, assuming she had struck and managed to keep control of the opponent’s ankles, he too would slide, and if held at the ankles would be unable to turn in the air and would find himself in danger of running himself through on his own weapons. She had tucked her legs to her chest after lunging forward and down for just this purpose. Not only would he be unable to fall with the sharp of his axe upon one or both of her legs, but if this course of action had occurred to this point whatsoever he would either have to cast them away or turn his wrists to turn the sharps of the blades flat side to himself, easier said than done with a locked Halberd with both an axe and a pick held in a single hand. More importantly this would mean he would have to be using his hands to control the direction of his weapons in his own grasp as he fell, and if he caught himself it would be on his elbows rather than his hands, with said hands likely below his forward falling weight or awkwardly held away from his body at diagonal angles to the rest of his body, right to the right diagonal and left to the left diagonal. The hafts of each would be below him, and though there was a chance he could recover the Sparth after falling the Halberd, should this course of action have occurred at all, would be denied him for the rest of his time on the ground.

Its haft was eight feet long, and should be below him if she had her way. Recovering such a long handled weapon one handed from below your body while trying to turn onto your back would be absolutely impossible. As she was lunging he would be concerned with the expected strike from her punch dagger, his own retaliation against her or whatever preemptive measure he might prefer, as well as finding firm purchase on the sand below with his own feet, hopefully to concerned and preoccupied to react intelligently to her probably unexpected takedown with his clawed boots or a simple sprawl. Should she take his legs as he was adjusting to falling his mind would be preoccupied with his blades potentially running himself through, looking for her legs below him to run them into and finding none within striking distance, and trying to turn in air or find purchase with his clawed boots, all of which should deliver him no purchase if her precision was correct. Can’t turn at the hips in opposition to your ankles, can’t cut with clawed boots that are held firmly by the opponent, or so Aibhilin’s life would depend upon. This all would take a half of a second, from the quarter second spent finding only an axe that nearly took her fingers and would have should her grip not have been already compromised by missing fingers from previous encounters and a pauldron covering an undaunted shoulder beneath with her slash, to her step which found her a half step and a half of a quarter of a second behind her opponent, to her lunge, attempted takedown, and the associated grips, tucks and movements.

In the next quarter of a second, should this all have come to pass Aibhilin, still gripping the ankles of her opponent, would work her left arm around her right, Zande’s left ankle tucked into the inside of her right elbow and locked by her crossed right arm, his own right ankle still tucked into the inside of her left elbow and pulled tight to her ribs after having been attempted to be pointed with the blades away from her during the fall, at which point she would make a last cross at the wrists, and using her tucked legs and whatever purchase and upwards momentum they offered her, would violently and methodically jerk to the right, in the opposite direction from his body and pivoting at the shoulders and outward with both of her own elbows. This would not be the kind of jerk given to inform an opponent that you have them in a lock during sparring, but the controlled, calculated motion of a fighter who knew how much force would be necessary to break an opponent’s bones, and delivered if successful with an easily sufficient amount of force to shatter the right ankle entirely. The beast may have floated across the sands before, but should this all be successful it would no longer.

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot Post is up. No worries on the length of the post, a lot of arena posts are literally;

"So-and-so swung their blade low toward the opponent's leg from right to left with their left and rear hand as they stepped into range with their right leg, attempting to cut them off low while aiming with the reverse gripped dagger in their right hand to strike from their right shoulder forward and down into the opponent's potentially now exposed neck assuming they crouched and parried low to stop the initial strike,"

That is a totally valid and legitimate post in this format. Less words then an average paragraph, but totally explains the character's position and their intended action.

The Australos Fight Camp

Aighrit hated this part. The hurting part. He didn’t want to hurt the girl, but he would. Her blow struck, and harder then he would have thought from a newcomer. She had known combat before, had hit with intent to harm before. He didn’t doubt her strength, or her desire to prove herself to the camp. It was the only way she could see a path forward to food, home and companionship, or so he assumed. It didn’t change that he had been chosen and by her as an introduction to her new way of life, should she stick around after the fight. He couldn’t know whether or not she would, but he wouldn’t blame her either way. What he did know was that if she could hit with that much ferocity, and despite his guard and his having checked her blow at least in part at the shoulder then he did not want to find out what she could do with those teeth, currently taking aim at his own bicep. Her plan would work, he wouldn’t roll over onto her shoulder and risk causing a dislocation to stop her teeth and he wouldn’t hold the lock and risk her ripping his bicep clean from his arm and into her jaws.

Would she actually be able to chew through his arm? Of course not. Humans don’t have the jaw strength nor the capacity to choke through that much blood and viscera in time to continue their onslaught upon the rest of the limb. But would she be able to take a chunk out of his arm large enough to land him in the camp physician’s quarters for weeks while she trained along with his camp mates and he lounged around in recovery accomplishing nothing? She absolutely could, and it was good that she would target him in this manner, he knew the Doctora would appreciate it which at the end of the day was what this contest was really all about. It forced him to make a decision, to react and improvise. Either violate the law of the camp by causing her real physical damage, or get out of this without giving his opponent the leverage she needed to get her knees around his shoulders and pummel his face into a battered pool of gooey pink waste.

As her right arm made contact with his left he would lean into her grab and twist away from the direction of his lock, which she would almost certainly allow whether she was consciously aware of this or not. Unless she had supreme body control it would be almost unthinkable that she could will her body to turn further into his grip, as it’s natural reaction is to turn away and out of whatever predicament had found her shoulder and, to the body’s natural understanding, her entire arm to be put into harm’s way. As he twisted away opposite his lock he would also tuck at the arm, crossing his forearm over his bicep and turning at the left shoulder and neck upwards and from his right to his left, her left towards her right as her body was parallel to his, in an attempt to send his left elbow crashing into her forehead with all the force he could muster from his position on his back. When the opponent is shooting their own head, supported by a gripped hand, toward their opponent’s bicep, whose space in time was now occupied by an elbow on a crash course with the opposing force, this was actually quite a degree of force despite the inability to fully work his hips into the strike, being on his back.

He was aiming for her forehead on purpose, of course. He could have tucked and spun at a lower angle, gearing for her teeth or her neck if he was intending on causing a maximum amount of damage. Hitting her forehead at this angle would be as likely to hurt his arm as it would be to hurt her forehead, the thickest part of the skeleton he could have struck from this angle. It would also be the only place he could hit without risking breaking her teeth or collapsing her windpipe, neither of which were acceptable options to him. A broken nose would heal, though to be straightened for aesthetic purposes would require a second painful break done by a physician. His own had been broken on three separate occasions, none of which had been pleasant experiences, but teeth and windpipes could not be replaced. Besides, he’d been knocked about the jaw several times and though he had yet to have lost a tooth on the sand it was a terrible pain for weeks after a good hit to eat, chew, swallow, and she’d be eating an already extremely uncomfortable amount of food over the next few weeks. Exacerbating the unease of suddenly being expected to eat three times the average ration of a working adult would be just as devastating as dislocating a shoulder to her upcoming training regimen.

Whether or not he managed to connect with his elbow to her forehead he would have in that moment steadily, sneakily released his lock at the ankle and knee between the two legs behind her, hoping that if he had connected it would be enough of a distraction to keep her from noticing. If he did connect Aighrit would then attempt to loop his left leg around her waist and quickly around it to the opposite side of her body, using his right hand which had previously been holding her in the abandoned lock to get as good a grip on her left side as he could, her having bent at the waist to attempt to bite his left shoulder having put her waist and lower ribs well into the possible gripping range of his right arm looped around her back. Should he be allowed to get his grip on her right side with his right hand and get his left leg around her waist and to his own right side he would then use this position to move his torso, with the leverage of his right hand on her torso and his right and still mostly in place though no longer locked in place leg, towards her back in a half sitting up, half skidding along the sand with his lower back and backside motion, ending if allowed to sitting up behind her, his right leg now planted to her right side and his left leg along her left side, with his right arm still gripping at her right side and his left arm, blade still in hand, being relegated to crossing the blade at the flat side awkwardly across her chest and angled diagonally towards her right shoulder.

From this point, if so allowed, he would raise his right arm with the inside of his elbow placed at her underarm and his right hand gripping her right shoulder, his left arm moving upwards with the blade in tow to place the outside flat of his left elbow at her left underarm with what would have been the sharp side of his blade were it not a dull practice sword held across her left shoulder at the tip and angled down diagonally low and left to the hilt still held in his left hand should he not have lost it during the time in between. There would be no pressure, no strike, no lock from this position. She could even attempt to stand up and lift him as though he were a backpack even if he managed to get this far before she intervened. It was meant for only one purpose should it be successful whatsoever. To show that from here he would be able to slash her throat open. Of course he could be reacted to at any point in between sending the elbow and attempting to change guard and take her back. She could avoid the elbow or, far more likely, simply take the elbow and notice his left leg crossing her waist. She would notice, of that he had no doubt, the question merely being if she would notice in time after taking an elbow to the forehead, if she had taken the elbow to the forehead whatsoever, to do anything meaningful about it.

Even after this point, should he have managed to get his grip on her right side with his right hand, either at her waist or her lower ribs depending on if she had shot back and to an upright position after taking the elbow at which point her waist would be most practical or remained low to his body in an attempt to continue biting at the soon to be leaving left arm through the elbow in which case he could more easily manage the lower ribs and had successfully moved his left leg to her right side in preparation to change his position she could throw her own legs back and around to his right and far side, lying atop his right arm and both of his legs entirely and attempting to pin them beneath the weight of her lower body and forcing him to react with just his left arm which would still be within range of her head and both of her arms at that point, although she would lose the advantage of leverage.

Lying on top of an opponent’s legs and arm from that angle would likely mean he could simply get to his knees and throw her off of himself, as she would have no real ability to hold that side of his body down except with her own body weight and that being half spread across his legs, half of his torso and an arm with her having only the two unsupported legs and half of her body itself smaller than his own to hold him, while he would then have a blade directly in her face, albeit one that she had two arms and teeth to wrestle with. This however would be assuming that the elbow had hit whatsoever, and though he had every belief that it likely would as she was lunging for that arm with her head and her grip on the arm was pulling in the direction of her face, something he was putting force into, if it did happen to miss then he wouldn’t have time to change his initial plan, and the chances of her stopping him and taking an advantage would be highest. Still, without risk there was no chance at reward, and Aighrit had to simply trust in his own skill at grappling over his opponent’s.

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot Sure thing, post whenever it's convenient to you/you're not sleep deprived.