Re: Inexorable Altercation [Round I- The Sleeping World of Rock]
06-30-2010, 01:21 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
Granite tastes like dust. Magic, as any wizard will tell you, tastes like tin. Anyone can recognize the taste of salt, and silver has its own distinctive bite. People don't think about mineral flavors very often, but most can recognize a wider variety of inorganic flavors than they realize. Annaliese, for instance, was tasting iron at the moment. A lot of iron.
Anna scrambled to her feet, a task made much more difficult by attempting to do it quietly and with one hand clamped to her nose. Okay, so. Clearly the mana in this area was unstable. Ordinarily that spell wouldn't wear off like that; they must be near some sort of natural leyline or something. Messing with the flow of chakrums. Chacka. Something. Magic energy, okay?
Anna took a couple tottering steps towards the still-open balcony doors; after that man who had yelled at her had moved his attention elsewhere, everyone had seemed to forget about her again. This suited Anna just fine; she didn't need a bunch of psychos and murderers concentrating on her anyway. Not that she couldn't handle it, obviously, it was just... Untoward. Couldn't go around upstaging everyone, I mean really that sort of thing...
It was while she was occupied with this train of thought that the witch wandered into a corridor leading away from the arena. As often happened when she was in the middle of her internal monologues, Annaliese was even more out of touch with the world around her than usual.
Greyve had been meandering through the corridors for most of the time since the round started: he'd encountered a few small rooms full of bizarre runes and even fuller of little exploding rock spirits; the half-oni had had little trouble disposing of the little pests, and had rather enjoyed grabbing them as they launched at him, swinging them around with their own momentum, and sending them barreling back at their companions. Still, there hadn't been much challenge, and he'd been promised real opponents.
After clearing yet another apparently-pointless room of its explodey denizens, Greyve leaned against a wall, metallic fingertips pinging against the stone. As usual, without the sounds of violent spirits trying to blow up on him, there was no sound other than what Greyve made himself. After a few moments of lounging against the stone, he sighed and stood up, heading to a pair of corridors that led out of the room. He picked one at random and started down it, then started as he heard some unidentifiable noise behind him. The half-demon turned and went back into the chamber he'd just left, looking around and completely failing to divine the source of the now-silent sound. His eyes narrowed, then he heard it again. From the other hallway came the unmistakable strains of conversation from a ways off. Smiling and cracking his knuckles, Greyve headed for the source.
... And really, who could be blamed for that sort of thing? Anna had her knife out now, after having used it to remove a large cobweb from her path, and was absentmindedly gesturing with it as she talked to herself. It's not like she'd asked to be involved in some sort of interplanar deathmatch. Nobody ever asked Anna's opinions, and she had so many of them. Maybe this was just the opportunity she needed to stand out, make people realize who she was. For that matter...
As he'd travelled down the corridor, Greyve had spotted a knife-wielding woman coming the other way. He pressed himself against the wall, banking on her not having spotted him in the half-light, and crept towards her. His heart pounded and his lips curled into an involuntary smile as he approached; he held in the satisfied sigh as she made to move past him, and his gauntleted hand snaked out to grab her wrist. She yelped and made to pull away, but the toned demon just pulled her closer and twisted her arm behind her. He chuckled quietly to himself as she struggled, Forcing her back along the corridor the way she came. "I... Don't make me... Magic!" The woman's other palm came out of nowhere and dealt a glancing blow to Greyve's chin; he winced, and pinned her other hand to her side. She continued to pull back, forcing her captor to move back the corridor towards the arena.
If he hadn't been so excited about his first battle, the half-oni probably would have exercised more caution, or even just finished Annaliese sooner; as it was, he was enjoying the thrill of having an opponent, and was paying too little attention to his surroundings. He'd forgotten that the voice he'd heard was male, and therefore hadn't realized there was at least one other person in the room he was moving towards.
Anna, for her part, was panicking far too much to consciously decide to move towards the others; it was simply terrified instinct to move backwards away from a threat like this. It wasn't often that she was manhandled by muscular six foot men, and even more uncommon that those men had small, curved horns peeking out of their hair. Actually, there hadn't been much manhandling at all in Anna's life, and possibly as a consequence of this, a panicked little voice in the back of her mind was screaming the word INCUBUS over and over again. It was this voice that made Anna the sort of woman who, if she lived in modern times, would carry a small bottle of mace in her purse, despite holding the firm conviction that looking like she did, she'd never need it. It was also this voice that, under the gazes of everyone else in the arena who had by now noticed the struggle moving across the balcony, forced her to do something otherwise completely out of character. Whimpering quietly in the back of her throat, the witch slammed her forehead into her assailant's face.
Greyve yelled, and his mouth filled with the sharp taste of iron. In the brief moment that his hands involuntarily released, Annaliese pulled away from him, and leveled the knife between them. She yelled "I'm not afraid to use this!", but the figure-eights the tip of the knife was performing proved her a liar.
Granite tastes like dust. Magic, as any wizard will tell you, tastes like tin. Anyone can recognize the taste of salt, and silver has its own distinctive bite. People don't think about mineral flavors very often, but most can recognize a wider variety of inorganic flavors than they realize. Annaliese, for instance, was tasting iron at the moment. A lot of iron.
Anna scrambled to her feet, a task made much more difficult by attempting to do it quietly and with one hand clamped to her nose. Okay, so. Clearly the mana in this area was unstable. Ordinarily that spell wouldn't wear off like that; they must be near some sort of natural leyline or something. Messing with the flow of chakrums. Chacka. Something. Magic energy, okay?
Anna took a couple tottering steps towards the still-open balcony doors; after that man who had yelled at her had moved his attention elsewhere, everyone had seemed to forget about her again. This suited Anna just fine; she didn't need a bunch of psychos and murderers concentrating on her anyway. Not that she couldn't handle it, obviously, it was just... Untoward. Couldn't go around upstaging everyone, I mean really that sort of thing...
It was while she was occupied with this train of thought that the witch wandered into a corridor leading away from the arena. As often happened when she was in the middle of her internal monologues, Annaliese was even more out of touch with the world around her than usual.
Greyve had been meandering through the corridors for most of the time since the round started: he'd encountered a few small rooms full of bizarre runes and even fuller of little exploding rock spirits; the half-oni had had little trouble disposing of the little pests, and had rather enjoyed grabbing them as they launched at him, swinging them around with their own momentum, and sending them barreling back at their companions. Still, there hadn't been much challenge, and he'd been promised real opponents.
After clearing yet another apparently-pointless room of its explodey denizens, Greyve leaned against a wall, metallic fingertips pinging against the stone. As usual, without the sounds of violent spirits trying to blow up on him, there was no sound other than what Greyve made himself. After a few moments of lounging against the stone, he sighed and stood up, heading to a pair of corridors that led out of the room. He picked one at random and started down it, then started as he heard some unidentifiable noise behind him. The half-demon turned and went back into the chamber he'd just left, looking around and completely failing to divine the source of the now-silent sound. His eyes narrowed, then he heard it again. From the other hallway came the unmistakable strains of conversation from a ways off. Smiling and cracking his knuckles, Greyve headed for the source.
... And really, who could be blamed for that sort of thing? Anna had her knife out now, after having used it to remove a large cobweb from her path, and was absentmindedly gesturing with it as she talked to herself. It's not like she'd asked to be involved in some sort of interplanar deathmatch. Nobody ever asked Anna's opinions, and she had so many of them. Maybe this was just the opportunity she needed to stand out, make people realize who she was. For that matter...
As he'd travelled down the corridor, Greyve had spotted a knife-wielding woman coming the other way. He pressed himself against the wall, banking on her not having spotted him in the half-light, and crept towards her. His heart pounded and his lips curled into an involuntary smile as he approached; he held in the satisfied sigh as she made to move past him, and his gauntleted hand snaked out to grab her wrist. She yelped and made to pull away, but the toned demon just pulled her closer and twisted her arm behind her. He chuckled quietly to himself as she struggled, Forcing her back along the corridor the way she came. "I... Don't make me... Magic!" The woman's other palm came out of nowhere and dealt a glancing blow to Greyve's chin; he winced, and pinned her other hand to her side. She continued to pull back, forcing her captor to move back the corridor towards the arena.
If he hadn't been so excited about his first battle, the half-oni probably would have exercised more caution, or even just finished Annaliese sooner; as it was, he was enjoying the thrill of having an opponent, and was paying too little attention to his surroundings. He'd forgotten that the voice he'd heard was male, and therefore hadn't realized there was at least one other person in the room he was moving towards.
Anna, for her part, was panicking far too much to consciously decide to move towards the others; it was simply terrified instinct to move backwards away from a threat like this. It wasn't often that she was manhandled by muscular six foot men, and even more uncommon that those men had small, curved horns peeking out of their hair. Actually, there hadn't been much manhandling at all in Anna's life, and possibly as a consequence of this, a panicked little voice in the back of her mind was screaming the word INCUBUS over and over again. It was this voice that made Anna the sort of woman who, if she lived in modern times, would carry a small bottle of mace in her purse, despite holding the firm conviction that looking like she did, she'd never need it. It was also this voice that, under the gazes of everyone else in the arena who had by now noticed the struggle moving across the balcony, forced her to do something otherwise completely out of character. Whimpering quietly in the back of her throat, the witch slammed her forehead into her assailant's face.
Greyve yelled, and his mouth filled with the sharp taste of iron. In the brief moment that his hands involuntarily released, Annaliese pulled away from him, and leveled the knife between them. She yelled "I'm not afraid to use this!", but the figure-eights the tip of the knife was performing proved her a liar.