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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 22:00:19 GMT -6
((There's kind of a plot here? If this is not allowed, let me know and I'll delete this thread.))
The handle of the dagger was ornate, a red ribbon wrapped around the handle itself, and what might have been a tiny carved flame or rose protruding from the end opposite of the blade. The orange mist that drifted around the blade suggested the former, the heat apparent as Haix ran her fingers as close to the blade as she could stand before pulling back with a hiss. Only the fact that it was the only weapon she had been able to get her hands on kept her from throwing it to the ground and leaving it there to blacken the grass. Instead, she merely jammed it back into the sheath it had come with, shaking her head at how far she had fallen to resort to using such a thing.
Though it was cursed with soft-skin magic, it was all she had, and it would certainly work better than some splinter of bone. At least here, out in the overgrown boundaries of the city, there would be no one to see her practicing with it. And, hopefully, it would not drink too deeply of her as she handled it. (1)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 22:22:12 GMT -6
The ssashirk left the weapon hanging from her belt, successfully ignoring the way it pulled the belt down slightly, not quite successfully convincing herself that she could not feel any warmth creeping from the oiled sheath against her scales. She still refused to remove it, leaving it there to drain away whatever strength it might take from her. There was little enough time for her to grow used to it if her plan worked.
She left it banging and rubbing against her side as she moved through the tangled overgrowth, hop-skipping her way through vines and thorns, and even a small patch of squishy ground that brought up no small amount of nostalgia. She did not stay there for too long, leaving behind the squelching earth with a quietly hissed prayer as she passed a hidden but loudly buzzing hive. The place outside the fence, the place she had prepared, was a place of harder and clearer ground than that. (2)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 22:37:48 GMT -6
When she found the perfect spot, there was still enough for her to do that she found herself nearly forgetting the cursed blade at her side. The worst of the crawling plants, their roots so near the surface, were torn out in sprays of soil, tossed into slowly growing mounds that ringed her hidden away training spot. The trees nearest the edge continued to provide her with shade as she stomped the ground back into some semblance of firmness, but she soon found herself guzzling down the last droplets of water from the skin she had brought.
She left. And when she returned the next day, an extra skin of water was not the only new thing she dragged with her. The other was the sack that chittered and screamed, it's surface rippling and deforming with every step as the creature within continued to struggle. By the time Haix made it to the clearing, she could barely feel her back, but her arms had enough strength to allow her to slam the sack into one of the trees, the sack now still and silent.
(3)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 22:50:06 GMT -6
The lerrel was then pulled blinking from the bag, a small amount of bright red staining its grey hide. It's limbs were bound together, and so it was simple for her to loop a length of rope between the legs and arms, working faster as the lerrel twisted in her grasp and snapped at her with tiny, but very sharp, teeth.
That worried her, for the rope was not so thick that the teeth might gnaw through it, the lerrel not so thick that it might not figure out it could do something other than squirm and flap it's leather wings. She released it to worm it's way across the ground, nearly to the mounds of dying vegetation before she grabbed it once more. It opened its mouth fully, its screams making her long to simply bit its head off, and instead jammed a taunt piece of rope behind its teeth. Now the screams did not make her want to press her hands over her ear-holes, though the buffeting wings and squirming of the lerrel made it no easier to tie the gag in place. (4)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 23:02:56 GMT -6
Hanging it on the tree was much easier than the rest had been, the rope thrown over a limb and the lerrel hoisted into the air with a jerk as its muffled screeches of defiance turned into a still muffled scream of pain.
She watched it spinning in place, wings frantically fanning the air as it tried, and failed, to right itself. Once she was sure the rope was not going to snap under the lerrel's exertions, she turned her attention away from it to consider the sheath resting at her side. She roughly pulled the blade free, the instant change in temperature now that the sheath no longer contained it almost enough to make her drop it. But no, she held onto it, arm outstretched as though it was some kind of dangerous fungi that had to be kept far from the mouth lest she inhale its spores. The blade was shaken a few times, a bit of the heat-fog dissipating into the sunlight as it fell free.
(5)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 23:12:43 GMT -6
She had not felt any weaker now than she had the previous day, had she? Was the curse-magic of the blade so great that she would not notice it sapping her strength, or was it drawing strength from some earlier victim? Another muffled cry from the lerrel brought her back from her thoughts, a laugh bubbling up in her throat. Some creatures really had no patience at all, but she would be glad in this case to hurry up for the little lerrel. She could not let it get too exhausted, not when it was more than just a living practice dummy.
She took a few moments longer though to sweep the blade through the air, to jab at the beams of light that filtered through the trees as she tried to get used to the movement. The cursed dagger certainly looked more like it would work as a tooth to pierce than a knife to cut with. (6)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 23:25:43 GMT -6
He was confused, scared, angry, and in quite a bit of pain.
The lerrel could not feel his paws, could not spit out nor bite the foul-tasting braid of fiber from his mouth, and he was still just as hungry as when the lizard had appeared with a small bounty of nuts and fruit. He had fell upon them happily enough once the lizard had been scared off with a howled threat and beating of wings, but he could not remember what happened after, why or when he had found himself trapped in a dark place, paws tied together so that he could not scratch his way out, the taste of bile on his dried out leather-strap of a tongue. There had been fruit in the bag as well, a few small sweet things that he had gobbled up before realizing how trapped he was, but any lingering sweetness had been scrubbed away by the thing in his mouth.
He was still fighting to free himself, feeling a slight bit of give in the rope holding his front paws, when the lizard stopped her silly dance and came over. He screeched at her, eyes narrowed into a glare, and he turned his attention to the slight bit of slack when he felt the burning pain shoot through his side, smelled the burning hair. (7)
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Post by Alma on Apr 28, 2019 23:36:19 GMT -6
What was left of the lerrel was not easily identified as the same creature it had been minuted before, sprays of glistening red jewels of blood decorating the tree and Haix's scales, pooling onto the ground below in miniature lakes and pools. She had barely managed to croak out the correct prayer before it stopped moving, an embarrassing oversight on its own, but no so much as how absolutely pathetic she had been at hitting the correct points with the dagger. Even hanging in the air like a soft-skin pinata, the lerrel had foiled her aim countless times with its twisting body and flapping wings, several strikes barely managing to do so much as clip a wing.
She took a step back from the ruin of blood and fur with an embarrassed laugh bubbling up from her throat, even more glad that no one had been around to see how bad her aim was. It had taken a ridiculous amount of strikes to finally plunge the dagger into the thing's heart, and the only reason she managed that was because it had begun to slow down as its life dripped away from the missed attempts. (8)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 0:04:28 GMT -6
She peeled back a piece of the singed fur, and nibbled at the still bloody though slightly cooked flesh beneath as she considered just how best to improve her aim. Less of a frenzied stab would help for sure, perhaps a little less stiffness of the arm when she lunged with the blade. She had begun to panic a little when the lerrel showed signs of dying too quickly, although that was more due to the required sacrifice for the blade to not turn on her than anything else.
Speaking of the blade, she had not doubt it would not be drinking any of her anytime soon. Cleaning the dagger was another challenge in itself, the blood that had stayed on cooking in seconds to harden over it like a shell, then blackening as the heat of the blade continued to burn it. Running it over the rough bark of the tree tore off charred flakes of blood and wisps of smoke, the rest being wiped free with the not entirely dead leaves of the ground-covering plants. (9)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 0:14:40 GMT -6
The blade cleaned and sheathed once more, she set about peeling and eating the remains of the lerrel. The blade had taken its life and any strength it might have had in its life, but with how much effort the day had taken, she was happy to feast on the remains. The guts were left in a mount at the foot of the tree, a trail of ants already investigating it as she cracked open one last bone to scrape out the slurry of warm marrow to finish off her meal. The heart, or what was left of it, was also left to the ants, a few muttered words said over it as she reluctantly let the insects have it.
With all of that done, she took the rope whose end was still red and sticky and tied the sack to hang from another tree. Unlike the lerrel, this was no sacrifice, no ritual needed, so she took her time, bouncing back and forth as if the bage, gently swaying in the breeze, was a blade or mace aiming to do to her what she had done to the kikiki lerrel. (10)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 14:23:46 GMT -6
It was a simple enough thing to dodge the bag in the beginning, the wind barely enough to gently swing it towards her position. A quick break from the practice was taken to fill the sack with some of the uprooted plants and rehang it. The dagger was left sheathed, the ssashirk unwilling to damage the sack before she had a chance to use it for dodging practice. With a hard shove, she sent it swinging away from her, waiting until the last moment as it swung back to step aside. Waiting until it was almost too late would give any attacker less time to respond.
It also meant less time to dodge, and the bag clipped her side with a smack, sending it spinning as it swung through the air. She was rubbing her side when it nearly hit her again, only narrowly avoided with a backwards hop that the bag's lacking momentum failed to allow it to reach. (11)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 22:18:02 GMT -6
She kept lashing out at the bag, shoving it one way and then another, sometimes after a successful dodge that occurred only because she leapt to the side early, usually after a less successful attempt that the scales did little to block. The wind had begun to pick up as well, adding wild and unexpected swings for her to be hit by, the bag catching her from behind once and nearly knocking her off her feet. After that hit, she moved away from the tree, drinking from the skin she had brought and glancing at the swarm of insects that blanketed the lerrels remains.
Leaving them to their feasts, the living blanket hiding the remains from sight, she returned to the issue of her failed dodges. It was not as if she would need to dodge that well for what she had planned, but she preferred to at least make some show of it. She would stay with the bag a while yet. (12)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 22:29:45 GMT -6
Dodging the bag at the last possible second became slightly easier after several more meetings of burlap and scales, the ssashirk stopping for another minute to study the bag and estimate just how fast the bag was moving. More importantly, she made a few guesses on how close the bag could be before she could not wait any longer if she hoped to avoid the collision. The first of these estimation proved to be off, rewarding her with yet another smack, the second avoiding a hit altogether, though the third hit when a sudden gust of wind aimed it where she had stepped to.
There were more steps to the side and less hits as time went on, until Haix could dodge the slow moving sack with some regularity. She doubted any opponent would be so slow or so gentle, the blunt, winding force of the bag much softer than she expected the strikes of even a soft-skin to be. That suited her. (13)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 22:37:50 GMT -6
Now she placed herself on the attack, unsheathing the cursed, but hopefully sated, dagger to try her hand at striking an unbound target while trying to avoid being hit by it. She spared a glance for the lerrel, regretting that she was not on the level that she would have been able to practice on even such a small creature had it not been bound. Then she was back to the sack, striking out at it with upward and downward thrusts even as she tried to step out of it's way.
She was not largely successful at first, even the practice with the lerrel not enough for her to time her strikes so that they would sink into the swinging bag rather than slide off the edge, the contact not lasting long enough to even blacken the burlap. When she did manage to get the blade in, the dagger slipped from her hands, sliding free of the bag to tumble to the ground.
The bag then hit her as she picked the weapon up. (14)
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Post by Alma on Apr 29, 2019 23:05:22 GMT -6
A bitter chuckle, giving away to something much louder and more genuine as Haix threw back her head, jaws as wide as the lerrel's had been as it screamed defiance. Had anyone been near the small clearing, had anything more intelligent than the questing insects exploring the ruined flesh, the laughter echoed between the trees might have sent them fleeing as fast as they could from the source. Or, for the curious and foolish, might have brought them running to see what amusement could be hidden out on the fringe of the labs. But she had chosen her place well, and there was no one to hear the laughter, nor the hiccuping sound that ended it.
Haix returned to her match with the bag with renewed vigor, though enthusiasm was not enough to improve her aim any more than it shielded her from the blows of the bag. Time was, for the bag soon left trails of singed plant matter through its many holes as it swung through the air, suddenly splitting as the dagger was caught on a rough edge, the blade splitting the bag as Haix maintained her grip to try to jerk it free. What remained of the bag was untied to salvage the rope, the torn remains of less interest to her than it was to the few inquisitive and hopeful insects crawling over it.
Even a soft-skin, with their hearts as weak as their flesh, would prove to be a stronger opponent than the sack of vegetation she had so struggled against.
The thought stuck in her mind as she used the whetstone ever so carefully on the blade of heat, striking and running it along the edge as the soft-skin books had instructed. It was a good one, one that made her frills lift slightly as she considered it. One that did not leave her even as she went to rest, that ensured she was back the next day on the other side of the fence. Even a soft-skin, of that she was sure.
(15-Levels counted.)
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