GoldenCat/Tails01
- - Back to Eighth Movement
- - Back to A Dance of Angels
Heaven or Hell... Let's Rock!
Amber Post...
It has been a busy couple of days...
After the Angels settled in, world begin to rush around. Cesta himself took the ladies under his partial protection, what decreased the attacks a hundredfold. While under such protection, they trained, prepared, and set up... the tournament.
One of the great slave auction halls was prepared, set up as the tournament ring. The stands for bidders and watchers had to be increased fivefold. The bets and tickets sold like water. You had everyone who could conceivably get there in those two days doing so.
And so many applied. They were going to face almost an army, out there.... waiting for them.
And knowing foul play was par for the course.
The first day.
Cesta came to them, the grid of combat for the day all filled already. And things filled for a week in advance. Today, was the day things were to start. The first day of Descending Air. A crowd assembled outside, waiting for the angels to step out. Rows of adversaries waiting for their turn.
Of course, they knew the likes of poisoners would still strike outside the tournament.
But now... was time.
The Captain walked into the room with a smile to Vorpal. "So, how's it going, Pale Angel? Getting the butterflies already?"
Vorpal: Vorpal sits quietly on the edge of her bed, the heavy weight of Betrayer leaning against her shoulder. Gone are the mercenary leathers, gone is the plain black cloak. The Pale Angel is clad in little more than her soulsteel armor, the black metal clingy and statuesque over her torso. Knee-high boots, shining black and reinforced with bits of dark metal cover her feet yet leave her thighs bare. Her forearms are similarly covered with supple black gloves. Onto her shoulders she has swept a broad cloak of royal velvet, fur-rimmed and blacker than the heart of the Mask of Winters himself.
She sits with her eyes closed, yet Captain deSiri's words bring that familiar, slanted smile to her face. "A little embarrassed", she admits. "I will be wiggling my backside to many, many eyes tonight."
deSiri: "Been awhile, haven't it? Think ye lost yer touch, girl? You used to flash it to entire armies, or so I hear." He says with a smile, adjusting his scimitar shaped cap just right to close a little more on his hair. "But guess you never did it for sport, before, with a bunch of decadent nobles and merchant prince ogling and asking how much it would be for a night, hmmm?"
Vorpal: Fu, true." Vorpal nods and opens her eyes. "On battlefield, those soldiers had other matters than my bust and backside to think about when I bore down on them with my blade held high, screaming a bloody death on the top of my lungs. Matters such as running."
"But, famous soldiers do need a signature, don't you think?" she sighs and shrugs her shoulders. Black velvet rustles quietly with the move. "You have your twin scimitars. I have my bust, butt and banshee scream."
"Speaking of busts and butts", she adds, looking around the room. "Have you checked on the Dark Angel already?"
deSiri: "Beats me. But yes, now their only concern will be that pretty back." He laughs. "And wasn't she supposed to come here when she was done? Go figure, women and their beauty time..." He shakes his head. Somehow, Vorpal filed more as 'soldier' for him. "This is becoming quite an event. A pity we had to arrange it so quickly... those here by circumstance will get a lifetime of bragging rights."
Vorpal: "It's a shame you don't deal with me more often", the Pale Angel replies with a wickedly soft smile. "This is everyday business for us."
deSiri: "Now, now, makes me wonder how there's anyone left on the north, with that."
"Me, I'm just glad to have survived that damn grenade. I have to see about skinning every last one of those Firebrands..."
Selina de Windia: Selina finally enters the room, attired as normal...though without the greatcoat. The difference is, this time, that her gloves and boots seems to be a bit more shiny than usual. Almost as if Selina had stayed up for awhile polishing the leather...and the leotard itself seems to reflect a small amount of odd light...strange. Still not as shiny as some outfits, but it is not the utterly flat black it was anymore.
"Dressing up for parties is so bothersome." She says without much care about her new (and doubtless temporary) appearance.
Vorpal: "True", Vorpal responds. She has to admit the shiny finish looks nice on the Dark Angel. She'll have to see about having Selina do it more often. "But at least we don't wear dresses tonight."
Standing up and crossing the room over to the Dark Angel, the Pale Angel leans over and takes a sniff at her hair. "...is that natural?" she asks, frowning.
deSiri: "She's right on one thing, though." He says with a wide grin.
"It'll be a party."
Selina de Windia: "That is merely something I bought to clean my hair with...smells like green apples, right? Oh, and I added a little bit of those lust and awe powders Days gave me. Just a bit, though." Selina replies with a nod.
"It shouldn't do much to the crowd, there's not enough of it and the wind will blow it all over the place, but it should affect them subtly, at least."
Vorpal: Vorpal frowns.
So that's what's buzzing in my head.
She had crossed the room without thinking at all. For a few seconds irritation battles with the attraction she feels, but then she squashes both sensations firmly down.
This is not the time nor place.
And, she has a good idea there.
"Good", she gives Selina her self-confident smile. Turning over to deSiri, she gestures him to join them. "Let us begin."
Narrator: The captain himself was fighting not to go. His grin was to her, all to her.
And then, they walks out.
Out... and into the Arena.
Flanked by all of their servants and bodyguards, quite an entourage. Jalek moved his antennae towards Selina without meaning to. Bronze Butterfly was never so awe-struck by her teacher... and Aghar was the only one that seemed to not notice, guarding the Pale Angel's back.
And then, into the Arena. Listening to their cheering. The cheering of all those who had brought the tickets, all the seats taken, clapping, calling their names, calling for their blood, calling for their glory.
They stood in the same balcony as Arguin Cesta and the other great ones of Amber Post.
Below them... where they would fight, where they would bleed...
Arguin Cesta: He looks over his shoulder to them. Somehow, he does not blink at the Dark Angel.
"Good Morning!"
"Time for the encouraging speech to open the games?" He says with a sinister grin. After all, the Angels are the games.
Vorpal: It is like a prelude for a battle, the Pale Angel muses as she marches boldly to the balcony, bracing her eyes firmly against the harsh glare of light and forcing herself to not blink at all.
The heat and the passion, the sweat tricking along the scalp under the metal helmet. It is all there, she realizes as she scans the cheering crowds lining the benches. The bloodlust, the chanting of names, the thrill running down every spine in that audience... She can feel it all. Her own heart begins to beat faster in respose, the first shivers of arousal making their way along her body.
It is the time when two armies line up to the opposing sides of the field. Commanders thunder at their men, filling their veins with fire and preparing them to die. Stomping spears, swords clanging against shields, roars and oaths and insults hurled at the opposing army in a crashing cacophony...
Vorpal smiles thinly as she meets Arguin Cesta's gaze.
It smells like war.
"I'll pass", she responds, a trace of sultriness clear in her voice. "I might scare them away. But perhaps the Dark Angel would like the honors?"
Put that polish to good use.
Selina de Windia: "Hm. Me?" Selina thinks for a moment. "What kind of encouraging speech, I wonder?"
Vorpal: "An inspiring one."
Selina de Windia: "I'm an Abyssal as well, you know. I'll probably scare them and get their cocks hard...and their panties wet." Selina shrugs, then chuckles. "Ironic you're asking me. But who should I inspire, them? Very well."
Vorpal: "Just use your imagination", Vorpal replies, still with that thin smile, and makes some room for Selina by the balcony railing. "You'll do fine."
Selina de Windia: Selina steps forward to the balcony, remembering the addresses she used to have to stand and listen to, when she was younger. By the King, the Queen, and her father, and others, even Valencia. A bit of training by example, her parents had called it. And her mother adding that at least she didn't have to recite with the flute in front of other Dragon-Blooded to show what an excellent child she was, as she had done in her youth. Those years flash in and out of her mind in a few seconds, but she remembers them well...and then it is time for the present.
"Nobles, Faeries, killers of all stripes and other distinguished dwellers-in-the-North, today you shall witness something not often seen:" Her voice echos through the arena, no magic evident in it so far. She had worked on speeches when she was younger, afterall, and some of that still stuck. "A rally of Angels, Heaven's fallen darlings in a dance with those who would chain us to the earth. Two against many -- where we have conquered before, we now face a legion! Black on white, drenched in scarlet and crimson. You are facing Wrath today, you are watching Lust and Fury dance the arena!"
She pauses for a moment, then finishes her short speech, voice throaty with desire, still forcing it to echo across the arena. "Chain us, come defeat and chain us."
Vorpal: In the background, Vorpal is hard-pressed to suppress a grin.
Narrator: Her words bring them to rapture.
Even Cesta is caught watching her with awe and lust, his breathing heavy...
All cheering! Crying out for them! For the angels! For lust and fury!
Her words fill the Arena.
Her words seem to fill Amber Post.
All of them clap, enraptured!
And all those close to her look up to her, and her backside.
Things could not begin on a greater note.
On the other side, a court of those scheduled to fight them today.
All together, in military-style collumns. Waiting.
Cheering as well.
Enraptured by her challenge!
One walks foward. Over a brown horse, in an armor of yellow and green. On his hands, a great spear, dragons coiling about it. A cape that is like a banner. A noble knight, moving towards the center of the arena... the lucky one to be the first challenger.
Ser Andreas Lockhart, disfranchised noble, mercenary.
He rides to the center of the arena, sword held high, calling for them...
Selina de Windia: "Well, which one of us ought to fight him?" Selina asks, looking first at the man, then at Vorpal.
Vorpal: "I shall wait no longer", Vorpal states, firmly, and takes a step forward. Without waiting for an answer the leaps over the balcony railing and drops down, her own cloak flaring like a banner in response to the knight's challenge as she falls. Her banner is black, a direct opposite to the white flag of surrender.
Landing lightly onto the arena, she slowly straightens herself up. Where the Dark Angel used words and voice, the Pale Angel uses her gestures and postures alone. And there is no give in her posture as she slowly straightens herself up, allowing the cloak to fall back and reveal the armor underneath. And even as she rises, there is something about her that suddenly seems firmer, sturdier, stronger than ever before. It fills her to the brim with strength, enhancing her statuesque form, giving her every line and curve hard and unyielding smoothness.The sword resting lightly on one shoulder, she greets her first foe with a sultry glare. Eyes hot like embers, skin cold as purest snow she has, and she invites him to try and touch them.
"Come battle a legend. "
???: The knight looks up at the Dark Angel... as if offering the match to her.
And part of his gaze lingers there as he turns to the Pale Angel... and points his spear towards her, the coiling dragons along its length seeming to move as he waved it. "With pleasure, Pale Angel. And I shall be a legend today!"
He bellows... as he spurs his horse foward!
The Crowd cheers! The Mercenaries shout!
Colored strips fall down the arena.... as the knight rushes foward, his spear aimed straight at the Pale Angel's heart!
After all, her, nobody needs alive!
Vorpal: The Pale Angel watches his opponent approach calmly, the enormous sword resting against her shoulder, one hand on her hip. She does not make a move to step aside as the warhorse thunders at her in full gallop. She does not blink an eye as the spear gleams in the sun, speeding firmly towards her breast. She stands defiantly, her back straight, her chin held high and her armored chest thrust out, as if daring her foe to take the first strike.
The spear streaks forth.
She does not move.
The hooves pound on the ground, sending gusts of sand in to the air.
She does not move.
The final feet before the deadly impact. The Pale Angel finally shifts. With a simple flick of a wrist she reverses the gigantic sword and strikes the blade down into the ground, directly into the spear's path.
The spear's tip scrapes along the soulsteel sword. It draws forth a streak of sparks and a terrible shriek of tortured metal as the heavier weapon forces the pike out of its intended path. As the horse gallops on, the spear speeds past the Pale Angel, just under her raised arm.
Suddenly, Vorpal launches herself into air. The sword still embedded into the ground, one hand still holding the weapon's hilt, she hurls herself in a straight-bodied somersault over the spear. Landing into the other side, she yanks the sword towards herself with all her considerable strength, using the heavy blade as a lever to send the spear and the rider swinging off the horse...
- ... and he comes down, sumarily unarmed, the armor making clunky, uncomfortable sounds as it hits the ground...
Vorpal: A careless whisk of her hand pulls the sword back up from the ground, accompanied by an eruption of sand and dirt. Resting the blade against her shoulder once more, Vorpal allows the now-riderless horse to gallop past. Then she moves through the billowing dust with calm and measured steps, the black cloak swaying with every stride.
Towering over the sprawling knight, she raises one pale leg and plants a heavy boot onto his breastplate. Although those up in the audience will be too far to see it, such is the weight of her foot that the reinforced metal buckles ever so slightly under it.
"Yield. "
- The man looks up at her....
Wincing as the boot comes, stopping him from getting up...
Stopping him from moving, from doing... anything.
He tries, his hands going to her boot, trying to move her...
But the Pale Angel, as they say, is made of the same stuff as tombstones.
That takes a little while, until it comes, soft... "... I yield. I yield!"
Vorpal: The Pale Angel does not raise her foot. If anything, her boot seems to rest even heavier on the knight's chest. There is a barely-audible creak as the breastplate buckles just a little bit further.
Vorpal raises her gaze, slowly. Her hair swaying, she scans the surrounding audience, the balconies, the seats, the watching eyes, the cheering mouths, the lips drawn apart into a grin in anticipation of the day's first death.
"Do you hear that?" she asks, not looking down at her captive. "Soon, they will ask for your blood."
Another creak.
"You know the choice. Serve me, Ser Andreas Lockhart. Serve me and I shall spare your life. Serve me and you will have comfort, money and good use for your considerable skills."
Another creak. Her boot sinks just a tiny bit deeper into the metal. Vorpal looks back down at the knight, her eyes wide and intent like those of a hunting hawk. "Deny me, and I will squish you like a bug."
- His breastplate creaking, splintering by her boot, by the strength of this monster....
He looks up at her... sank neck-deep into despair...
"I... I shall... I shall serve you." He says, voice shaken, filled with fear.
Vorpal: "Swear it."
- "I swear. On my name. I swear to you, Pale Mistress of Death. I swear I shall serve you!"
Vorpal: For a few terrible heartbeats longer she stares at him, her gaze weighing him down, but then she nods, almost inconspicuously. "Good. Shudder and play dead. It will please the crowd and save you from the humiliation. They will drag you off the arena to where you can recover."
Narrator: He does as he is asked, eyes closing, pretending to be unconscious....
And as he goes limp, the crowd goes wild!
Vorpal: Vorpal throws her head up, glaring sternly at the cheering crowd. With a swing of her hand she sends the Grand Daiklave sweeping down in a broad arc. The soulsteel blade rakes across the ground in a half circle, drawing a merciless, festering gash into the arena dirt.
"There! " she bellows over the thundering crowd. "The first blood is yours! Drink it! Savor it! Guzzle it down! There will be more to come before this day is done! I promise you a sea of blood! Watch it boil and churn from the safety of your balconies and high benches! The Banquet of Wrath! Has! Begun! "
Chibi-Vorpy: (( ...oops. We weren't supposed to kill anyone... And I went and promised...))
- Vorpal's words are like flame thrown into alcohol.
The crowd goes wild, cheering, loving.
It had been short? Yes, it had. But right now, it did not matter... for they expected a longer fight, and her uncanny, inhuman skill surprised and awed... and her words made them cheer, scream, cry, love. She knew how to work a crowd. Oh, she certainly did.
But he was just the first. And the next was coming...
Vorpal: Drawing a deep breath, the sword on her shoulder, the Pale Angel steps off the "corpse" of the defeated knight and turns to face the gates once more.
One down. Around a few hundred more to go.
Kalevi: "Well... shit. This is something, is it not?"
The voice was that of a stranger, thickly accented in a rasping, guttural fashion. The face was not.
He stepped out of the shadows of the slave-pen with a swagger, coming on like a thunderhead crawling across the dying sky. A large, thickly built man with a mane of grey-white hair. He was dressed in a coat of gray, with heavy sable furs on the shoulders and blue jade buckles and blade-like tassels on the cuffs. She had never seen him in anything else.
"I did not realize it was you. " He told her, walking measured steps slowly around the edge of the arena, the devils grin on his face and his electric blue eyes crackling with excitement. "Not really you. Thought it was just another little Iranorian girl trying to take up your legacy by stealing your name. Surprising how many of those are about."
They had never spoken before. They had never so much as met socially before. Mercenary captains, barbarian mercenaries most of all, were rarely allowed to attend the ritual social occasions that brought enemy commanders into contact with one another. But she knew him none the less. She'd seen his face on too many battlefields; always on the other side, always against her. This was the closest they had ever come to one another, beyond one brief moment during a hard fought siege where their blades had kissed in passing as both road to rally their respective sides.
And now he was here, a half-forgotten ghost of the past, his cruelly handsome face hovering before her as he approached to an almost intimate distance. An enemy of old. They were hard for the Pale Angel to forget there were so few of them still alive. "So, old friend, you are yet living, hm?"
Vorpal: The sight of a ghost from the past makes even the Pale Angel pause. Her eyes widening, the stern mien fading from her face, she stares at the barbarian for many long seconds, watching him approach closer and closer.
Kalevi.
The name rises like an icy brand from the depths of the years gone by.
Kalevi, the irritating wasp who always escaped her grasp. Kalevi, the mangy cur who always found the loose board in her fence. Kalevi, the little trout who always slipped through the loops of her fish trap. The single commander who always went against the rule of the Pale Angel. He mocked her existence by repeatedly staying alive where all the others died. She had thought she would never see him again, not after Angel's End. She thought she had left him behind.
But now, he is here, in flesh, right in front of her. His breath is as foul as it was when their blades had met for that one brief time. That smell alone lures memories to surface in her mind.
"Kalevi." She finally manages to say it aloud. Slowly, the shock of the unexpected encounter passes. Her lips begin to draw upwards, wider and wider, stretching her face into a rictus grin. A lust spark ignites in her eyes. With a wordless shriek she yanks her sword up and sends it merrily down on an overhead chop.
Kalevi: ... and the big man danced away with a speed the bellied his size, letting her blade find the earth instead of his skull. The crowd jeered loudly at the show of caution, but Kalevi paid them no heed and began to pace again. He folded his broad arms behind his back, a taunting show of disrespect among most northerners, and gave her hasty swing a chiding shake of his head.
"You remember me as well then. I am honored. Where did we see each other last, Iranorian?" he asked conversationally, examining her stance and posture with a critical eye. "Was it that one bridge where you threw that fat little barons whole army into the river? Or was it that little fort we stole from under your nose until you started swimming troops through the water channels to take the gate? I am sure I do not remember anymore. So many times and they all just blend together, do they not?"
Vorpal: Grinning, Vorpal pulls her sword up from the crack it made into the ground. "Noo, no, no, no, no, I think it was on the hill where I stopped that baron's cousin's charge by felling the trees atop his men. How did you escape that one in any case? Burrow through a mole's hole? But you're right, all those battles just blur together."
Hefting the blade, she stalks after the barbarian chieftain, a crouching, bouncing approach. It does not take much imagination to see that she is attempting to keep a nimble rabbit from slipping through her grasp this time. "Hee, ha, ha, Kalevi, Kalevi, Kalevi..." she croons, raising the blade once more. Holding the sword upright with both hands over her shoulder, she sways it back and forth like a swatting bat, smiling eerily all the time. "I missed you at the Angel's End. I will so enjoy this new meeting of ours. No escape for you, noo, not this time, my sable, my weasel, my rabbit..."
Kalevi: "Angel's Fall? That was where they were supposed to have killed you finally, was it not?" he looked her up and down, making no real attempt to hide that the prime point of interest lay just bellow her throat. Kalevi tutted in a shaming fashion and shook his head once more. "It seems they were not very good at that."
"A good thing they did not hire me to help." He said The job might have been done right, then we would never had the chance to talk." "And I'd never get to see your tits up close. Legends always did say your breasts could drive men to conquer cities."
There was a rattle, a clinking of metal like coins spilling from an open purse, and nest of thin shadows sprouted from the barbarian's back, curling around him like the legs of a spider wrapping it's meal. Four thick khatars hovered at the end of thick-linked chains, their gleaming edges tingling with an electric pulse and spitting venomous sparks from their wicked tips, wavering warily through the air. Vorpal could remember these as well, the numbing pain that came with their crackling touch, the effortless fashion in which he bound men in their grasp. They were not a pleasant weapon.
Kalevi stopped his pacing and turned to face her fully at least and grinned at her threat without acknowledging it. Thunder shook the arena when had the clouds moved in? Another of the man's damnable tricks he had put to use more than once on the battlefield. As much a weapon of misery as any he seemed inclined to wield. As the rain began to fall and the sky overhead rumbled with a rage that deafened, the barbarian lifted his hand towards the heavens like a holy man calling down the wraith of an angry god...
"I yield."
Vorpal: Her eyes widen in expectation, her gaze burning even through the rain with searing heat. Her grin, lusty and maddened, display the broad rows of her white teeth. Today, she knows, will the be the day when the first one will die. After all those years of patient waiting and repressed need for revenge, today will be the day when the first drops of sweet, sweet vengeance will quench her burning thirst...
Hoo he ha ha ha, this will be sooo fun...
Even the comment on her imposing front battlements does not ruin her mood. Fully intending to savor the battle to its end, she raises the sword high above her head, eagerly anticipating the first attack, the first searing cut, the first pangs of pain as the poison will course through her veins. It will be nothing compared to the deep, sensual agony she will inflict on him in return... For today, on this arena, Kalevi the Weasel cannot escape.
And it is then that he says it.
"I yield."
It is like a bucket of iced water poured on her head. All that need, all that fire, all that passion instantly snuffed out and replaced with a chilly loneliness.
He.... what?
Yields?
Yields?
No fair! He cannot! He must not! He will not!
Her voice rises in another wordless shriek - she screams at the top of her lungs, at the highest pitch she can reach, letting it out in a single, terrible burst of violence and fury. She rushes forward, the gigantic sword arching overhead in a gargantuan swing, rising, falling, scything down, down, down on that wicked man...
...and flitting past an inch way from his shoulder. Betrayer sinks into the dirt with a thundering boom, with force that seems to make the ground shake and the stones of the arena walls rattle against each other.
She stands there in breathless silence for a second, her head bowed, her teeth clenched together. Her eyes have been tightly squeezed shut, to keep the tears from flowing.
"God, I hate you."
Kalevi: Kalevi did not move. Even as Vorpal let out another of her inarticulate screams. Even as Betrayer came sweeping in towards him. The air pushed on the edge of the blade made the fur shoulders of his coat rustle, made his long hair sway, but did not make the man himself do any more than let out a raspy chuckle. The bladed chains retreating back into his sleeves, he put a hand on Vorpal's arm in an affection fashion. His hand was broad and dry. Extremely dry, compared to Vorpal. It was about then it became apparent that his pacing had not been the wary stalking of a ready opponent, but simply a stroll that carried him to the other side of the area where he could take cover below a ramshackle lean-to normally used by auctioneers to stay out of the elements.
"I know, dear. I do know." He sympathized, though his grin made it more scathing than comforting. He shrugged irrelevantly as his hand fell away. "But, you will hire me anyway."
Vorpal: "Don't touch me", Vorpal pouts, severely hurt. "Get to the back room."
"Bah!" She snaps and turns away. "I lost my taste for battle." Whisking her hand angrily up into the air, she shouts: "Oi, Dark Angel! You take the next one!"
And with that, she strides away from the arena.
- - Back to Eighth Movement
- - Back to A Dance of Angels
