MelonHead

The Colosseum Re-Opens

The chained man backed away, finally showing some degree of caution towards the point of the spear that had cut him twice already. Brennus was starting to wonder if the man gave a whit about his own life, and then his mind shot back to the strange arrival of his enemy in chains. If he was the slave of some horrific creature of the underworld he was likely a plaything, tortured and defiled constantly by those terrible powers. What a pitiful creature he must be. Brennus now sought to kill him to put him out of his misery. At which point he began to babble in a language the Iceni was not familiar with.

“Dicere sensus!” Brennus barked at him in his bastardised Latin, expecting him to at least speak the language of the civilised world, like the burning, ghostly, figure up above.

Without further ado, Brennus made quick gathering step towards his foe, drawing first his back-foot level with his front, before stepping forward with his lead left. He would repeat this step to bring himself within seven feet of his enemy, continuing to pursue the man for a few steps at least if he sought to maintain distance between them. At the moment he reached this optimum thrusting range, Brennus would stop endlessly pivoting his spear and jab slightly forward towards the man’s upper torso, before revealing that he was not fully committed to the strike, retracting, and instead thrusting at his right inner thigh.

[TZDL2017] Junction vs Melonhead - Preliminaries

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New Beginnings Tournament.

“My name is Anna, silly, you must listen more carefully.” Her timid smile disarmed the insult in her comment. Xaih already intrigued her up close. She hadn’t expected such a seemingly kind welcome from a relative stranger, though it had been a long time since Anna had anything resembling normal discourse with another person. Perhaps she had simply grown bitter and cynical through forced isolation. She fixed the girl with serious eyes. “I think we may have a little in common, perhaps, but secrets, secrets. Would you sit with me in the corner over there?” Anna was not overly shrewd; however, this room was full of her mentee’s enemies, and paranoia was something she had in abundance.

If the girl was willing to walk away from the main huddle and sit next to Anna, she would ask her a question.

“Tell me Xaih, are you afraid?”

@Xaih

[TZDL2017] Junction vs Melonhead - Preliminaries

Bow stave in hand, the hunter lurked. It would be best to just gloss over why he was here, because he wasn’t even sure himself. Fight a man who wields death or something, that was the call to arms. Thomas sighed sarcastically, he could clearly see the man about three hundred feet down stood on the road, from his position in a low crouch just to the left of the west side of the road in this little farm. He was hiding in a patch of wheat, well concealed to a point. Considering most of his quarry had unearthly ways of detecting him wherever he hid, he wasn’t too optimistic about maintaining stealth for any length of time. Yet who knew, perhaps this time he’d get lucky.

The archer was clothed in a gambeson of hide of dark colouration, and his black masked kettle helmet was similarly dark, which wasn’t necessarily the best camouflage in a wheat field. He’d had to cut a small area to lurk in with the sword at his hip, working quickly while the armoured man was unaware.

Missing introductions seemed a little rude, but Thomas recognised needs must, best to just end it quickly before he had to worry about being killed by some magic he couldn’t fight fairly. He drew one of thirty arrows from the quiver at his back, watching it transform into a demonically wizened shatterhead, and nocked it to his bow, slowly drawing back the string. He crouched in that position, drawing power into the weapon, watching.

The Colosseum Re-Opens

Amazingly, despite having left any semblance of defence to the very millisecond, the man managed to make an additional step and then crouch before the spear cut was finalised, blocking it by crossing his forearm over his body and lifting it into the air at such speed to be barely considered human. Obviously as a spear is a lever, the question of jerking it backwards effecting its downward momentum was moot, but that was beside the point. Brennus was already dragging his spear back by this point and behind his body, which led itself nicely into a vicious draw-cut at the man's forearm, likely deep enough to disable the limb, or at the very least cause him to bleed profusely.

As Brennus had stepped further backwards and the man had remained stationary in a half crouch, his spear thrust had not materialised. He had intended to let the man impale himself on its point, after all. Brennus simply stood watching him from seven feet away, left foot forward, spear point held menacingly between the two of them. It was clear he was fighting an opponent with superhuman powers to have avoided the point of the spear with such last moment evasions twice in a row. Brennus was taking no chances.

Because the man was no longer rushing him, he would not be able to make a grab for the spear. Brennus instead was pivoting the spear, causing the point to rapidly dart upwards and downwards, making it impossible to tell where he planned to strike until the last moment. Not that it mattered, this man was not human.

The Colosseum Re-Opens

The man perhaps was overconfident in his footwork. The spear’s point would not simply miss his face because he was moving forward, for several factors.

Brennus had first thrust from range, the ground to cover was significant, and that stood against the man’s intentions. Brennus had also stepped backwards upon launching his own cut, carrying him at least as far backwards as his foe sought to move forward. Finally, a spear is more malleable than the man gave it credit. Brennus simply pulled the haft of his spear further back behind his body while making his cut, subsequently bringing the point to bear towards the man’s face, and him having taken no action to defend himself, he would suffer. Such was only human.

Furthermore, Brennus could lead into his follow-up. Upon drawing the haft back sufficiently to still cut the man’s face, his left leg drew level with his right, and as he stepped back with his right foot his spear would be level with the chained man’s throat. With the man rushing him, it wasn’t necessary to put much force behind a thrust as he was doing the work for him. So Brennus simply brought his right hand in line with his body again to thrust his spear forward a little towards the man's throat. The chained man would do the rest of his job for him, likely skewering himself on the point, and ending the fight before it really began.

New Beginnings Tournament.

In one quiet corner of the lobby a small puddle of water had formed from condensation and steady leakage. By design or simply due to poor building maintenance, the puddle grew and grew until it was almost two foot wide, though hardly deep. Strangely enough, without any fan-fare beyond the sudden gushing of said liquid upwards, a human being suddenly materialised in the puddle. In such a place, the woman’s arrival was by no means all that spectacular and she had not had any intention of trying to impress anyone. It was simply the best way for one such as her to get around.

The woman was a strange one. Her reddish hair hung limply across her pale face and down past her shoulder blades, seemingly drenched with water. She was beautiful, but so very sad, her lithe form donned in the ragged remains of a once proud wedding dress. Water dripped constantly from her clothes, giving off the impression that she had just taken a lengthy swim in her strange attire, and her bare feet padded across the lobby as she moved with unconscious grace.

She moved with purpose, an intense look breaking through her melancholy visage, her cold, watery, eyes fixed on the girl known as Xaih. Why this woman had an interest in her was uncertain, and in some respects, the interest was not her own. There was something else besides a human soul inside this tragic woman, and it yearned to contact the water elementalist, it was like a compulsion.

The only time this red headed lady saw fit to move her eyes elsewhere was to glare angrily at the men in the room, swaggering braggarts for the most part, she would have liked to drag them down. Yet the Liaison, a figure with which she had a passing acquaintance, offered his protection here. While simultaneously sending these figures to fight and die for the amusement of others. Such hypocrisy was not lost on the woman. She stepped close to the girl.

“Xaih, my name is Anna, I want to help you, if I may.” Her accent was a lilting Irish brogue, but her voice was very sad, and belied a great melancholy. She stood there before the girl, oddly self-conscious, dripping water on the floor.

@Xaih

The Colosseum Re-Opens

Brennus’ thrust went wide, cutting a neat groove across his enemy’s stomach, but not opening him up as he would have liked. Reacting on instinct and training, the Iceni warrior began to pull his weapon back, before realising his opponent was trying to stifle the retraction. He turned anti-clockwise at the torso, lifting his body straight as his right hand pulled back the shaft of his spear to the left side of his body and crossed over the front of his left arm. This had the effect of not only retracting his weapon far faster than the chained man might have expected, but also swerving it wide of his strike. Brennus was left in a momentarily awkward position with his spear held up almost to his neck and his arms crossed into an X in front of his body.

However, there was a surprising amount of power to be found in that bunched up position, as the Iceni was keen to demonstrate. Pulling his right leg back past his left, as his right arm unfolded and shot down to his right, he was able to spin his spear in a tight arc that saw the point move first up, and then to his left, before shooting back down with surprising force in a diagonal cut to Brennus’ right. The point of the spear would cut a nasty path across the front of the chained man’s face, quick and powerful, it could easily blind him in his right eye or simply disable him outright as the soft flesh was rent by cold steel.

This cut served a dual purpose, as it also allowed Brennus to return to an effective striking stance and make some distance from his closer ranged foe. He’d end up left foot forward, right back and slightly turned, ready to thrust again.

The Colosseum Re-Opens

Simply put, his enemy could not have given him a better opening. Brennus was advancing directly behind his shield, and the man had opened himself up by wasting time with an unnecessary effort swinging a chain at nothing more than a diversion. As the chain swung into his shield it would be out of position to defend the man as Brennus passed over into leading with his right foot, shooting his spear forward in a vicious jab at the man’s lower torso. A gut shot would put him in good stead to end the fight quickly, and with a long pointy stick to cover the range, there was naught the man could do about it this late as he had chosen not to move from his position.

Brennus did not really have any reason to fear a two and a half foot of chain while he held a six foot spear in his hands, so immediately after attempting to put the end of his spear in the man’s body, he’d retract the weapon and swap footing, ready to launch the series of thrusts that would end the fight.

The Colosseum Re-Opens

Brennus’ jaw dropped to the floor as a fiery apparition took pride of place before the Emperor, its voice booming across the arena. The Iceni had only a basic grasp of Latin, but he recognised the ghostly figure was telling him to fight. Now this was too much for the mob. Some recognised Caesar, his name rocketed through the stands in a hysterical rush. Many simply fled at the sight, the Emperor darted from his chair and hid behind his guard as they ushered him away from the burning figure. A cold sweat ran down Brennus’ brow as he fought to master himself in the face of such ungodly machinations. Like any fighter, he concentrated on what he knew.

The chained man approached him, somehow covering over a hundred feet in a ‘few steps forward’ to stand about ten feet from Brennus. The Iceni hadn’t bothered to take a defensive stance up until this point, but with a flash of movement, the Brit punched forward with his left hand, throwing the left side of his body forward and releasing his hold over his large oval shield. He sent his shield flying straight at the man’s upper ankles, and in the follow up, passed over with his right foot and took hold of his spear in both hands ready for the thrust, which was to be determined by the chained man’s movements.