She ran a sandpaper tongue over her bleeding lips and gums, turning her head to spit. Her footpads slide over the loose dirt, and she felt the corner of her mouth twitch up into a grim smile. Feral. That was how she felt. Doubtless that was how she looked, her fur matted where tarnished leathers didn't cover it. The rest of her covered in scars that now seemed ancient, alongside wounds just starting to heal. Initially, they'd had to drug her to fight. Initially, it had been a struggle just to force her into the Arena. She'd thrown her sword down and taken the beatings. Again. And again. And again.
One could only get thwacked upside the head so many times before it did something to cognitive memory. First it had been how she'd even found herself in this purgatory. Where was she again? Next was where she'd come from before. She hadn't been born here, surely? Her name was last. That one was disorienting. The opponent had managed to fracture her wrist before she snapped back into reality.
By that time she wasn't permitted a weapon any longer. She was meat, and nothing else, meant to be bruised and bloodied solely so that the crowd could look on and cheer. The ynnwn was not a particularly impressive fellow in anything other than gods-given size; his movements were thuggish and reduced to whatever he could manage to latch onto with slow-moving fists. Her protest was forgotten along with her history. In its place was nothing but instinct, purely animal. She lunged at him, claws sliding out of their beds, jaw opening to show fangs. She scrambled upwards, found his jugular, and bit down until she tasted metal and heard his strangled breathing.
When she stood again, she was reborn. Pain and trefoil had washed away recollection in a haze of agony and drugging. She raised a fist towards the astonished crowd, shrieking her defiance, shrieking because her confusion left no room for fear and only space for rage. Their cheers energized her. They filled her with the need and desire to win.
And win she did. Match after match. She climbed through the ranks that stubbornness had managed to let her fall. Phoenix, they called her, Phoenix from the ashes. They had no idea how appropriate that name rang true. For that matter, neither did she.
Now she fought the better stock. Now she stood in front of a nolthrir, eyes cold, motions deadly-quick. Both were bleeding. Both were struck. His shoulder held a puncture that wept constantly. He was breathing hard, but so was she. The match was close. The audience was watching with bated breath and a collective sigh with every landed hit.
It was time that won it. She had endurance on her side. She was used to pain. Why, she couldn't quite remember, but it got her what she wanted so it didn't matter. When he finally stumbled, she advanced, plunging the sword through his chest like a knife through softest butter. The crowd went wild. She was exhilarated.
He slumped, and Dakkru's clutching fingers curled around him and whisked him away.
It was only at this point that she still felt it. That moral tug, that inherent wrongness. The wait a minute, this isn't right here, something is wrong. It reached through the foggy violence and tapped at her conscience insistently. She would freeze, jaw slightly parted, in an inexplicable stupor. Why did you kill him? That's not right. Who are you? Who are you?
That was when they triggered the collar. It was infused with so much enchantment she couldn't begin to guess what it all entailed. First it sapped her energy. It drove her to her knees, a weak husk, a limp mess of limbs and weakly protesting growls. They would advance and drag her back into her cell, toss her inside to recuperate on a straw mattress and a bowl of thick porridge.
The akkaio blinked her eyes. The world was a blur for a while. She took measured breaths, waiting for the paralytic tingling to leave her limbs. Then she sat up slowly, and looked around her, her eyes searching in the dimness to see her unlikely compatriots whose freedom was also given up inside the rusty iron cages.
[Take it from here! You can be:
A fellow fighter of any particular race or attitude recalling similar events
A guard skulking in the corners or taunting somebody
An onlooker from the crowd who came down to poke fun
Anything that comes to mind!
Time: Current. Location: Deep in the sewers. Other ambiguity will later be explained.
Further details to be revealed. I plan to bring this arc in game at some point. For now, jump on in!]
She vacillated between wanting to rip out the klyros' throat, and feeling abject horror at every bloody line she carved in his flesh. The thrill that usually came with a hit was dampened by the fact that another face kept flashing in tandem with that of the weathered, old Dlayo. Each blow wounded him physically, and pricked a memory painfully in her own mind.
When she finally thrust her saber through his heart, saw the slack-jawed surprise on his face, and felt him slip from the end of her blade, something snapped. The sword fell from limp fingers. Her breathing became labored with horror. The face that stared back at her had mixed so solidly with memory that it was unmistakable. A friend. A dear friend. Yes, and she'd just killed them. As the blood trickled from his mouth and the Dlayo fell forward to the ground, vanishing into the realm, she threw back her head and let out a guttural snarl that was purely animal in its conveyance of rage and pain.
The collar burst to life. It swiped away the memory, but it was deep-seated and precious. It could take the image, but not the emotion left behind. The akkaio shook furiously as they drug her back to her cell, still snarling, feral and half-mad. After they'd locked the doors she attacked the bars furiously, to no avail.
Only the sound of the approaching ylian stalled her. As she saw him shove his way past the guard, she threw herself away from the door, wide-eyed and hunched like a beast on the prowl. He reeked of a particular kind of magic. One that she felt close to as though it were lodged in her very blood. And he was powerful, powerful enough to crush her throat if he could reach that far.
She pressed herself flat against the wall and stared as her collar thrummed softly, almost in time to the muttered prayers of the StoneBreaker that she could still hear beseeching Talad.
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Too old. Too weak to fight any longer. There was no effort to heal the old Dlayo. No matter his history with the fighting ring, whether he had joined by choice or by force, it mattered not to them. Besides, for dramatic effect, the audience always got stirred to a roaring frenzy when the dark, reaching fingers of Dakkru claimed a victim at the end of the night.
But there was one small victory for him. Perhaps nothing but a token in exchange. The collar cracked and broke apart, leaving him completely free of its effects. Whether they had been great or small, that mattered little. There was freedom for him if he could make it through the coldness of the realm, if he could drag himself back to the shimmering gate and see what lay beyond. In the distance, a cakaras screeched in challenge, perhaps a dare for one last fight against the imminent end that time brings to all.
He could remember one thing, though. One odd thing about the way the fenki had looked, right before she made her mark and carved into his ribs. One very odd, puzzling thing, from a creature that was meant to be too rabid for such demonstrations.
The fenki had been weeping.