Liliya

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot Post is up.

The Australos Fight Camp

"Learn," Aibhilin nodded as she spoke the word, chewing with half of a cut of rat meat still in her mouth as she conversed, too impressed with the girl's apparent dedication to her newfound occupation to concern herself with table manners. She hadn’t been eating at a table anyway, and the only other person sitting with her had been Devlin. She didn’t actually like Devlin much, but he’d always been here, made for easy and familiar company. She had had a friend in Bhilinai’s Tear who in turn had a friend she couldn’t stand. Her friend, the one she had cared for, had died of an onset of fever which would not break. The mutual friend, the one she had not cared for previously, had become a lasting part of her life before leaving home in search of the arenas of the Empire of the Crimson Throne. Devlin was much the same to her now, had been conversational with Hektor though too wordy and smart assed to hit it off well with Aibhilin herself. She didn’t see him that way anymore, not after Hektor’s death. He was a cursed barbarian, a lousy fighter and an even less appealing human being, but he was her cursed unappealing human being, because he had been Hektor’s cursed lay about friend.

Aibhilin wondered if she had initially gotten the point across that here learning meant fighting, beating and being beaten by your fellows. Hopefully Rags didn't expect that this was going to be an enjoyable experience, because even if she somehow miraculously beat any of her three students she had considered for the bout there was almost no chance that it was going to be a painless experience. If she did manage to beat one of her students without it having proven to be a worthy encounter she would make the girl beat them nearly to death simply to impress upon the other students that failure was not an option, and to ensure that it would be remembered by all in attendance, including Rags herself. She was of the opinion that although you swallowed what damage you had wrought upon your foes it wasn't something you were supposed to forget. Battle was thrilling, incredibly so at times, and the memories of the conflict were as prized as the trophies you took from them. Half a blur in the heat of the moment and whose retention and quality of clarity was to be fought for longingly in contest with one’s own mind, the tale and the memory were sweet succor when unable to fight after your career had come to an end.

What was rarely fought for, and far less remembered in a half haze as opposed to that of a crystal clear reflection was the look in the eyes of a beaten opponent as you delivered blow after blow upon them after they had ceased to fight, their bodies having given way and the realization that they might die on their backs having set in. This was not the part of the contest most wished to remember, and she would make this girl see it in the eyes of her opponent if she won to make doubly sure that she understood what it was she was getting into. After that point she would ask her once more if this is what she truly wanted, and offer her the chance to stay or go, be that to the lands she had come from or to the village on the opposite side of the mountain which provided their food and other provisions. She wasn’t sure what the girl would choose yet, couldn’t be sure, and although she would have enjoyed having her as a student in the camp she would not attempt to sugar coat the grim reality of what this place, and those who called it home, truly was. Here reigned bringers of death upon the sand.

"Here we fight. We learn to fight by fighting," Aibhilin choked through as she finally remembered herself and decided swallowing was appropriate before continuing her conversation. The students had their meals, more importantly Rags, the victors, herself, the staff and the Auxiliaries had their food. She didn’t mind interrupting the students who ate last and were likely only half way through their own meal as is, it might just give them the added initiative to want to really put the hurt on the newcomer. They were training to be professional killers and shouldn’t have needed that extra justification, but they were also foolish in the way that all youths are foolish and likely none of them were terribly interested in doing this for the reasons she was. She had enough experience to see the larger picture, to understand that if she didn’t get the truth of this life expressed to Rags here today then she would die in her first fight upon the sands. Her opponents would have been shown the truth, would have trained every day to bring death and to avoid having death brought upon themselves, while Rags would be of the understanding that this was more show than life and death survival. It wasn’t worth the food she would eat in the years before her first bout to have her go and die in her first match.

“Revhinult, Aevaur, Aighrit! On the line!” the students dropped what they were doing and hurried to obey. They had known that someone was being chosen to introduce the newcomer, and though it was unlikely any of them had thought it would be them save perhaps the ever brooding Aevaur all had known to be ready in the unlikely case that it would be their name called out by the Doctora. Most had not finished their food, and it was possible that Aighrit had only just started at his meal given his current position as the last in the line, mostly because he was generally too happy looking for Aibhilin’s taste. “In your skirts, prospects!” They hadn’t quite reached the line, a so-called patch of dirt along the courtyard wall that had no distinguishing features save for the mass of footprints which had been beaten into it over the years and had simply been called that from long before Aibhlin’s time, but once they had they quickly set to removing their jerkins, snakeskin boots, chauses and coifs. What was left was three young men in knee length skirts largely constructed of hanging vertical strips of snakeskin leather with bronze scales sewn to them over a leather undergarment primarily meant for the purposes of modesty.

They stood in a line from the lightly muscled five foot ten seventeen year old with skin that would have passed for bronze were it not for the almost green and sickly undertone and a close shaved head of what may have been auburn hair, to the maybe five foot seven sixteen year old dark of skin by birth rather than lifestyle and possessed of what was closer to a gut than muscle, clearly unamused in expression beneath dark hair more natty than curled and falling in a mop just over his eyes enough to require him blowing and picking at it on occasion to keep his field of vision clear. The line ended with the boy, Aighrit, who had served Rags food to her, and though the three kept their eyes straight ahead and did not look at the Doctora or Rags in strict discipline hammered into them throughout their duration at the camp he was still as smiley as before. If it phased him that he had been taken from his meal as soon as he had been given it didn’t show, though Revhinult, the comparatively tall bronze student, was steady faced and emotionless and Aevaur was openly glowering at the perceived inequity of their having been taken from their hot meal and ordered to attention on the line.

“Pick one to fight,” Aibhilin gestured to the three students on the line in their skirts. “Win, lose, doesn’t matter. Fight well is all that matters,” she took a practice blade from off her sword belt, generally relegated to use in display of a technique while standing in front of the students or when pairing up against a victor in a sparring session to more actively impress a certain weakness of their weapon handling upon them without overt risk of harm, and extended it hilt first in her right hand toward Rags, palm upwards and hardly gripped at all. The students carried virtually identical practice blades on their own sword belts, each of them as well as her own about a foot and a half long and of cast bronze, their hilts wrapped diagonally in snakeskin leather to improve their feel in the hand. They were too dull to cut but heavy enough to leave brutal bruises and even potentially small lacerations or breaks should they contact an angled, fleshy or particularly susceptible joint such as a finger knuckle or wrist with sufficient force. “Not sharp, for learning. It can’t kill. It will hurt.” Aibhilin ran a finger over the false edge for clarification, intending to display that it couldn’t actually cut.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

She could see his back, his neck, and every fiber of her being told her to strike with the reckless abandon of a hungry wolf seeing her opportunity. Every instinct except for the small, lizard-brained but overwhelmingly potent understanding which had been bred into, stamped upon her subconscious from early childhood. A normal champion of the arena would not understand, would have charged into the ploy without a second thought or moment of hesitation. She had never been taught properly at a young enough age in the art of the dance of blood upon the sand, and for the first time in her career it might have been an advantage to her. Her first task was that of the oppression of the weak and the constant bickering of tribes over control of water, slaves, and the choicest bits of food that could be taken from those near slave foragers beneath her. Both the slaves and the tribes used ranged weapons, both in the form of your average projectile lobbed in an effort to disrupt your opponent and hopefully break a poorly disciplined line and in the form of bone darts spouted from old world pvc pipe and tipped with the venom of the most potent vipers and other venomous snakes which occupied the wastes.

This beast had no doubt been searched before being allowed to compete in the arena, would have had anything too large or too glaring taboo in this generally melee combat to have carried in a handbow let alone a windlass capable of tearing through her armor and turning her inside out. What could have made its way through, however, was something as small as a blowgun. She had looked him over without noticing one, but that didn’t mean anything. It could easily have fit into a hidden compartment within his armor or have been secreted in some other fashion less pleasurable to think about, and should he be intending on pivoting at the knee and putting the dart into her fleshy, exposed arms, shoulders, or face then she could have died right then and there, vainly attempting to wrest enough control over her deteriorating musculature and nervous system to ensure that he would join her in the grave whilst he ran circles about her hacking away at her polearm, then her arms, then her legs, and only finally at her neck if he was merciful enough not to allow her a few more hours of pained breath a stump of a torso too weak to move except to spit up her internal organs upon a stone bench in the cavernous fight den below the arena.

There didn’t appear to be anything attached to the axe itself, though she wouldn’t have considered the attachment of a thin enough wire as to allow it to be tugged back upon her or used as leverage to trip her as she advanced on him. That kind of technology didn’t exist here, and would have shocked all in attendance were it to be witnessed in use upon the sands. What she did understand was death by the venom of a viper posited beneath the skin vicariously through the use of a dart and a hollow tube. He could of course be planning something else, to lob a dagger in her direction or turn and leap toward her as she approached with his other axe and what could be a secondary weapon, but she doubted it. Wouldn’t be likely to be effective against her steel armor in the case of the former, and would be dangerous at best a strategy against the superior forward facing position of a wielder of a longer and more prolific killing tool in the latter. He could have something else entirely in mind, but these were the thoughts capable of her grasp within the fleeting moment she had to react, herself being from a world too largely regressed technologically to understand gunpowder or explosives.

She was about to introduce this heathen of the law of blood and sand as to why polearms were preferred to blowdarts by those with the funds to pick their choice of arms. She contorted at the hips, now facing nearly perpendicular to her opponent, her right hand, arm, and shoulder virtually obscured from her opponent’s view should he turn while remaining almost on top of the punch dagger carried on her hip, releasing hold of the polearm with her right hand entirely, and tucked her left elbow to her chest and turned the outside blade of her forearm to the haft of the polearm, placing the blade of the axe out in front of her face from the perspective of her opponent, only the top of her eyes and her steel half helm visible above the axe blade. All this was done while she broke into a sprint toward her opponent. She was no beginner, and never took the time to position her feet and hands before getting into movement. All of her actions were as one, with the mechanical and all too perfect precision of someone who had done this ten thousand times, who boasted a degree of spatial awareness and body control alien to the average untrained and inexperienced masses.

There wasn’t so much as a square inch of her flesh showing from the perspective of her opponent unless he managed to side step and get off the line. That wouldn’t matter. Her position was better, he would be forced to turn and fire as she gained on him giving him the least chance of success, or to wait until she was within striking distance with the axe blade of the halberd carried in her left hand to fire at the whites of her eyes, and it was far easier, far faster to react to his movement facing away from her and having to side step or pivot to face her then it was for him to turn or move, aim and fire at a wall of glistening steel and bronze. Should he turn and fire as she approached she would simply roll the dice that he wouldn’t get a good shot, his chances given her positioning and having every bit of herself either armored or hidden from view by either axe head, helmet, bronze polearm haft or simple angle of her body in relation to his, before getting into range and thrusting forward with the spear point at the tip of her halberd. She would also thrust at this point should he not turn, and run him through square in the back. At least that would be what she would attempt to do in that case.

If he turned as she gained on him and tried to fire full in her face she would watch his shoulders to determine the direction he would pivot to face her, and step diagonally to the opposite side whether his left or his right, keeping her right arm out of his view and launching a blow from her axe blade down and toward his head and neck. This wouldn’t kill him given she would only be striking with a tucked elbow and only traveling from her own midsection a couple of feet to his head before striking steel to steel, but the axe was heavy and she was moving, and would be pivoting at the hip in time with her slash. It would be enough ballistic energy to knock his teeth out if he caught it square in the face, and should he fire it would still leave her as shielded as she was going to get. Should he turn and launch a strike with his axe she wouldn’t particularly mind. Her halberd was longer, and had a spear point. His only options would be to go low, and she was confident that despite his reach and the axe he wasn’t going to outrange the top quarter of her halberd along with her own arm length, or to strike at her weapon itself.

Should he use two weapons, or an axe and a hand to accomplish striking at her halberd he could likely wrest it from her, but she would still be moving and could close the distance, let him have the halberd and before it hit the ground have drawn and struck in a straight line from her hip with the punch dagger on her right hip into his open belly, flank, underarm, or even his neck were he still crouched, a possibility if he was to attempt to strike low. This is what she would attempt in response to these stimuli of course. For all she knew he might throw a glass vial filled with bees square at her axe blade and the barely visible eyes just above it as she ran, blinding her momentarily and sending her into a wildly rolling spiral of collapse and violent spasms on the sand as she waved desperately at the swarm, attempting to rid herself of the pests and regain her feet weapon in hand just in time to have her head taken neatly off at the shoulder by the meeting of his twin axes and her spine. Whatever game he was playing at, she wasn’t satisfied by his initial gambit. Hopefully he had more fight than this.

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot It's totally whatever you want to do. Time skip to the fight if you'd like, or take the bowl and find somewhere to eat if you're interested in exploring Rags feelings on the camp and it's occupants further. The students probably wouldn't talk to you, or eat with you until Rags is accepted, but there's plenty of material there to work with in developing her understanding and view of Australos, or if you want to skip to the fight Rags would be given a practice blade and her choice of the three opponents.

The Australos Fight Camp

@Silver Carrot Sorry about the delay, it was a busy day irl.

The Australos Fight Camp

Pity. She’d have had words at least with any who had harmed her people. Then again, she had never had much of a reason not to like her people. Her family had fed her, treated her and her siblings well, taught her enough to excel at her task and produce for herself whatever she had set her mind to. It wasn’t for dislike of her people that she had left home. Who knows what the family or band or whatever this girl, Rags to hear her say it, had come from had been like. It wasn’t uncommon in the wastes for women to be treated as chattel, and her’s was a people barbaric enough to have names for human beings like Rags. Could have been given to her by the Auxiliaries she supposed, perhaps her own name wherever she had come from might have been feared on her part to have sounded even less regular or palatable to whatever she must have thought of the people of the camp, though it never crossed Aibhilin’s mind that they might not have even had a particular purpose for the convention of giving names to individual people. Her own culture was heavily invested in the name, and in the expression of individuality as a member of the tribe. Hardly a collective of the many over the few, Bhilinai’s Tear.

She didn’t ask for further clarification on the matter of course, or even look to the girl as she covered the distance to the fire. She was rather upset about her painting, and curious as to whether Rags would choose to stick around after she’d let Revhinult beat her until she couldn’t stand on her own power. Maybe he was a bit much, he had several years both of age and time spent training in the camp over her, as well as a foot at least in height and likely double her weight. He wasn’t anything special, would probably be dead within the Season after his first bout came to pass, but he was her best unblooded student at the moment, and pairing her against a victor was not something she deemed appropriate. She had been a skilled combatant when she was required to prove herself against a fighter with four ears to his credit, and though she had survived the experience it was hardly the same to expect Rags to do the same as she was. She was still young enough to grow, and if she had the birth for it she would grow under the training regimen and food intake the fighters at the camp were subjected to as a rule.

More importantly she had time to learn. Aibhilin had been too old when she joined for the general curriculum, and had only made it work because of what she had brought with her from Bhilinai’s Tear. This girl could be better instructed from the beginning in the nuances of combat in the arena as opposed to the tribal bickering and the hunt of the foragers she had been taught. Aighrit was closer to Rags in age, and as she was inclined to believe the more promising student in the long term when compared to Revhinult, at least assuming he grew. As of now he was smaller than she would have liked despite the year and a half of the diet and training regimen he had endured, and measured up at only a few inches and perhaps a half larger than Rags. He was a smart one, like the girl she had just welcomed to the camp, and had a greater grasp over the training than any of the other students had been able to claim only this far into the training. He could be a real competitor someday, but for now it might serve well enough to task him with introducing Rags to the brutal nature of the business in which the camp made its living.

The healthy middle ground would be Aevaur. Almost directly in between Aighrit and Revhinult in size, skill, and duration of training, in addition to being a grumpy, malicious fighter with a penchant towards taking more damage than he rightfully should before throwing it all back at his opponent with a vengeance. Aibhilin decided that she would line the three up, have them remove everything but their practice blades and their skirts, give Rags a practice blade and let her pick an opponent for herself. Maybe she’d pick the biggest, or the smallest, or one who seemed to be in between the other two. Could give her some insight into the girl’s thought process she supposed, and it removed the necessity of making the decision from her and placed it firmly on the newcomer. It wasn’t a realistic welcome to the life of a pit fighter, she had never once chosen her own opponent in the entire duration of her stay at Australos, but it was common to follow practices that gave the students ownership over their own decisions. It’s easier to swallow that you picked an opponent who clobbered you then it is to accept that someone else set you up against someone they didn’t think you had a chance of defeating.

Aibhilin was upon the fire now, and only once ten feet away from it turned to the girl. “Eat, Rags. Eat much,” speaking of Aighrit she had forgotten he was set to the task of handing out the food, and he approached herself and Rags with a full bowl in one hand and a bronze forked utensil in the other, butt end forward. The boy was pale, too pale in truth though unless you had knowledge of the fact that he had spent the majority of his life above ground most in the wastes would have taken him to be a common underdweller like Aibhilin herself, more grey than pink and more cold then cool in undertone, fair haired with close cut ringlets and pale grey eyes. He was smiling, that one was obnoxious and was always smiling, as he extended both hands towards Rags, though he kept a more than appropriate distance between himself and the newcomer. In one hand the bowl of freshly grilled meat, in the other the utensil, offered butt first. He wouldn’t speak a word to her, none of them would, but it was a more friendly greeting then Aibhilin would have expected for Rags. Food and a smile, you’d think the place was an inn or something. “After you eat, you learn."

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

@Doc Doctor Post is up. Sorry about the wait, had a busy day.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

So far as experience, she had plenty. Not that Aibhilin could read the mind of her opponent, but she could see his eyes gravitate over the more battered aspects of her person. Not with the eyes of a casual onlooker, or else they’d have almost certainly have fixated on her more visually pleasing features. She wasn’t unattractive, had a large bust and shapely figure assuming you didn’t mind that she was more heavily muscles than your average male athlete. She even had a pretty face considering her occupation. The beast was looking at her hands, her arms, the long, biting scar poking out from her clavicle to her right shoulder visible despite the pauldron as she wore no sleeves. He might have figured from its angle that it likely protruded far down in a diagonal cut to her torso despite the pixane and coat of plates which obstructed a clear view of said area. He would have been correct to assume as much. She couldn’t get as firm a read on his experience, though she didn’t doubt that he had not gotten to this point by skill at arms alone. He had bled along the way and learned through example, probably in a pit deep beneath the earth and known for the brutality of its people in the unending quest for dominance over those that were not you.

They weren’t all that different, she and the man standing some handful of yards in front of her. Almost certainly had more in common than she and the emperor and gleaming throng of uppity heirs to the laurels of their ancestor’s conquests viewing the pair as they met to fight and kill or die. This was nothing new to her, nor did it bother her. All pit fighters dream of that one match in which they agree with the opponent across from them to turn their weapons together upon those in the stands who deigned to think themselves the betters of these all too similar champions of death through extended contest of blood and metal upon the sand, these well-tuned and completely optimized machines of the killing game who could pulverize their skulls bare handed without the slightest of resistance on the part of the lofty viewer. This was a dream that was never to be realized, not by her nor him, or likely by any alive today. In this world those people watching them dance what would be the final dance for one of them commanded legions, and there was no number of pit fighters who could withstand the destruction wrought by even one of those well-tuned and completely optimized machines of death in the other game, the game of mass slaughter through strategic warfare.

In this world what mattered was taking as much as the wealthy would allow you to take, and if that meant risking your neck it was accepted as a simple bargain. Far better to live and die this way than working in a mine for a bronze shard a week and too few rations to send you to your slumber without first experiencing grueling hunger pains, listening to the cries of your children as they took to their sleep even hungrier than you. The ones who gave their children enough to eat themselves starved and rotted away under their own greater demand in expenditure of energy to continue at your work and bring home the food and pay necessary for any to eat at all, and in the end left their family to starve without their employment to provide for them after being put at long last in a shallow grave or made in body to provide a few final meals at the expense of your own flesh. In this world it was better to kill than be killed, and it didn’t matter who the opponent you faced was, regardless of if their story and your own shared similarity greater than that of the ones making you do the killing for their amusement.

All that mattered was the law of blood and sand. She would be the executor of that law once more for the amusement of the crowd, and this opponent was as good as any to provide her next pair of ears. She raised her left hand and flicked the band of snakeskin that had been tied to her sword belt over her coat of plates, laced horizontally and parallel to the belt so as not to be used as any extra leverage as the belt already offered an opponent against her in a grapple. She had to have the sword belt here, it would be unbefitting a pit fighter to enter combat without her blade regardless of whether or not she intended on using the thing, but the necklace had no particular reason to be worn about her neck, not here. Upon the necklace were sixteen pairs of ears, right to the right side of her torso and left to their own, each shrunken and shriveled intentionally as to preserve them as best as possible without chemical agents. Many were clearly just barely held together, some even seemed to have taken damage in successive fights after having been removed and tanned only to be sewn back together after being severed or smashed, but they were plainly human.

Whether or not he understood that they were trophies from fights in an arena such as this one or not, and whether he assumed she wore the number she did because that was the total of her victories or because wearing any more on a belt would simply require a second belt to be worn, they were packed together as is and another belt would add an entirely new place to potentially use as leverage against her in an extended bout, it didn’t matter. The drums had begun sounding, and horns of bone and metal were crooning out their phantom wails. She would fall back with her right leg and extend her left, bending slightly at the knee and easing the halberd into a two handed grip with the spear point trained upon her opponent should he allow her to do as such. It was time, and no amount of thinking or fancy speech was going to change what was going to happen next. This was axe time, and she’d never known anyone to outthink an axe to the head. “Fight well, friend,” her lips extended outward across her face in a devilish smile which threatened to split her head in twain, teeth bared and eyes gleaming in the distant firelight. She lived for this.

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

@Doc Doctor

The Thing That Should Not Be - Aibhilin vs Zande

She held her right arm out and upwards, bronze hafted halberd in hand with her left bent at the elbow and held crossed over her body. The axe head, the pick opposite and the spear point on the tip were of steel, but the haft was of a single cast and aglow in the dim light of the flaming braziers atop the viewing stands. They didn’t need to be lit, it was day and though no direct sunlight pierced the ashen sky overhead it didn’t require artificial light to see normally. The smell of the smoke produced by the fires was sweet, and was less dark and pungent than translucent and off white. It was all an elaborate depiction of the wealth and power of this place, the capital. Here no expense was spared and every luxury imaginable was indulged. Not only was the light unnecessary, but it was an expensive mixture of scented additives and animal fat boiled into an oil with which to bind the sweet smelling and incredibly expensive incense so that it might permeate the air of those lofty heights, all to the enjoyment of the powerful. They did all this even as they paid a small fortune to coax the champions of the arenas out of retirement to amuse the crowd.

She saluted the emperor nonetheless. She could make out his image in the gilded box that constituted his throne upon the dais, and though she couldn’t attest to his features she did note his hand make a slight waving gesture to the side. It was her que to get this over with and hurry to die and make way for a more impressive candidate. She did not intend on making this quick, nor did she intend on allowing another the chance at the trophy of the beast’s ears. She had kept an eye on her opponent since she entered the arena, but now gave him her full attention. He was sitting cross legged in the middle of the arena waving her over. He was well armed, two axes, claws on his boots, a blade closer to a short sword than a dagger, two additional daggers, all of which was likely of quality steel, and was even better armored. Hauberk of some foreign construct, breastplate, pauldrons, and rearbraces all of steel plate and in good working order. Must’ve cost a fortune. She knew because she was wearing a nearly identical suit which had been paid for in bronze and leather earned in blood upon the sand of arenas the Empire over.

The coat of plates she wore over her hauberk of steel lamellar was owned by her employer, though the rest of it had been purchased with the death of opponents just like this one, and she was looking to pay for the luxury with this, her seventeenth victory. Her duty to the emperor over she waved with the head of her halberd at her friendly opponent and slowly began walking toward him. “Good to see you here, friend! I wouldn’t ask for any other to meet me on the sand this day,” she was friendly, warm even in her speech. She’d known these types before. Some growled at you like animals before a fight, others were friendly, some emotionless and stoic. It didn’t take her by surprise anymore. If she was allowed to she would advance to within thirty feet of her opponent, cool and calculated the entire way. She could drop the halberd into a two handed grip in a flash and use the spear point to keep distance between them if he charged her at this distance, and though he could always throw one of the blades her way before leaping to his feet and following up with a ballistic hail of blows from one of the several side arms he carried in addition to his axes she wasn’t too concerned.

Her armor was sturdy and of good make, she wore a steel half helm and had enough time to be reasonably sure that a thrown axe would find little meaningful purchase. Beyond its value as a distraction and surprise technique meant to cause less well trained opponents to drop their guard and crouch or leap haphazardly about trying to avoid the axe, all the while ignoring the true threat moving towards them with the sharp, deadly precision of a lion, it was unlikely to be as meaningful as simply using it to try and wrest control of the halberd from her at the haft. Her right hand wouldn’t be moving far from her right hip this fight. If he wanted to play at disarming her or forcing her into acrobatics of polearm she would most likely give him the thing. She didn’t have enough fingers on her left hand to match him in a battle of axes versus longsword and dagger. She had, however, loosed her grip on her halberd with her right hand hovering close to her right hip, made contact with her punchblade and struck forward in a blisteringly fast motion made possible by the proximity of hand to blade and blade to opponent in drills ten thousand times over.

Doubtful she’d use the longsword this go around unless something changed. Things always changed in fights of course, and she was prepared for whatever she might be facing, but as of right now the plan was fairly clear. Use the halberd to keep distance, expect him to try and wrest it from her and, if the timing goes well and both of his axes find themselves on her weapon at the same time and at the right distance, drop the thing and put her punchblade through his belly before he has time to blink. Nothing fancy, nothing hard and nothing smart. Just the basics and a cool head. “You don’t much look like a monster, friend. Don’t personally care if you did kill a bunch of Auxiliaries. I’ll see you given a proper burial after you die,” she would stop talking and allow the halberd to find itself in both of her hands with her left leg and arm forward, her left hand a foot below the head of the axe at her own waist level and her right and rear hand at her own right hip along the length of the halberd spear point toward her opponent if he made any aggressive motion toward her at any point during or before the banter, and would remain with the halberd held high and in only her right hand at a distance of thirty feet should he remain seated.