YAY VIOLENCE WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES [OPEN]

[inthirds]

WHO: Zelgadis and others just get in here ok
WHERE: A vacant lot all groomed and abused for sword&sorcery practice
WHEN: Next week...pick a day
WARNINGS: Idk yet
SUMMARY: Magic and swords and spars and spectators and whatever else happens happens ok? ok
FORMAT: No (whatever you want)

Comments

we don't need no stinkin timelines

[speedofnaked]

It wasn't hard to figure out where Zel was going every day. It was so inadvertently obvious, it never needed to be stated. And that was fine with Terra; it left her to follow her own habits in the meantime, catching up on a City that hod not stopped moving, growing, changing in their absence.

But for all that needed to be done, it didn't mean she couldn't drop in on the person she saw most frequently. She popped into that familiar lot with a practiced warp, landing seated atop one of the still-standing but much abused earthen pillars of Zelgadis's own creation.

The heels of her boots clunked dully against rock, but she made no overtures of greeting to catch his attention. She was content enough to watch, for the moment.

[speedofnaked]

She gave a helpless shrug. "I didn't bring a weapon besides myself," the absence of a blade at her hip obvious. The subsequent definition, reduction of self was so easy as to be unintentional. "Next time?" she offered, watching his expression, "unless..."

[inthirds]

"Unless it's kept to magic," he offered, having not let much of a pause break up her thought and his. "I don't mind either way; it's up to you."

[speedofnaked]

"That depends," she returned, the teasing smile coming back to her face. "How badly do you want to get hurt?"

[inthirds]

He couldn't stop himself from snorting, shaking his head to quickly water down the effect. A corner of his lip curled and flashed teeth in his smirk, giving her a sideways glance.

"I guess that depends on if that can even happen," he said. "I'm the one with thicker skin, here."

[speedofnaked]

She laughed, pressing two fingertips against his shoulder as if that would be enough to push him back. He would, she knew, oblige the gesture, and clear space enough so she could move forward and a little bit away. It wouldn't do to start a spar right atop one another, with her practically pinned into place.

"We'll see."

[inthirds]

At her hand's command, he backed away, though not right away. He let himself lean in first, then rock back on his heels to a retreat, allowing his blade to slide and drop off his shoulder and trace a shallow line on the ground as he moved, backing up until the discarded sheath was in view. It only took a moment to put all of that away, sword and pack and what scant items he'd brought along, stuffing them somewhere well out of the way of...whatever it was that would be overtaking the area soon. Best not to assume too much; Terra was the one who knew how to freeze him in place.

He still hadn't figured a good counter to that, he thought suddenly. Well. Aside from landing the Shadow Snap before she could. He'd just have to be more keen to keeping his hands in a casting form, just in case.

[speedofnaked]

She, on the other hand, did have a counter for the Shadow Snap, as Zelgadis had shown her precisely how it worked. Any spell bright enough to erase her shadow -- Fire, Pearl, Ultima, anything like that -- would suffice. Stop required little more than patience, if a person didn't have someone willing to dispel them from it.

But time tricks were boring, and not how Terra wanted to fight. Instead, when the familiar white power surged to her hands, she flung her hands wide with a call of "Poison!"

On Zel's end of the lot, noxious green globules emerged from the ground, rising and wavering like hot wax in water, the scent even more disgusting than the sight. Contact would not soak him, and no physical residue would remain once they had evaporated into air, but if it held, it would do quite the number to his body, be it flesh or stone.

[inthirds]

The sight was bad enough, but the scent was jarring, and any posturing he may have been up to or just thinking of was no longer on the table. An arm came up to cover his face, eyes watering, while the other moved to conjure something to blast the awful stuff away...though it seemed to vanish on its own. He would have been relieved if he didn't feel fit to keel over all of a sudden. He'd never encountered a spell like that; he thought it dirty, a little cheap...but if that was meant to take him down, he decided fat chance of that.

"Flare Bit-!" he called, sweeping his free arm ahead of him and loosing little high-speed bullets of fire across a wide range. Two or three sweeps, a chance to scrub his eyes and refocus, make a plan...something.

[speedofnaked]

As was her usual strategy, Terra merely held her arms crossed in front of her face, blocking the path to her eyes, and suffering through the battery of flames. The only real worry was of clothing catching fire, but it had endured through worse fires; it could handle this. Enduring pain did not mean standing idle, and once the flames cleared she smirked, sweeping her hands down in a crossed X. Fire (level two) manifested as an erupting spike of flame from the earth, piercing through gravel from below like a fang.

There were cliches about this, but fire was always her strongest element.

[inthirds]

Zelgadis leaped backward, skirting the flames (so much for dry eyes, dammit) and sliding on his heels to a stop. As the flames raged, he whipped his arm forward again and called, "Demona Crystal-!" and sent a zigzagging trail of ice speeding ahead and encasing the remains of the inferno.

He hurled a pair of frozen arrows from one side as he strafed away from the new, steaming structure.

[speedofnaked]

Again the arm rose to protect her eyes, but Terra was laughing this time, finally taking to run. The first arrow pierced her arm, but the second missed completely. "It would have died on its own!" she called back, seeming unconcerned with the injury.

The spell then wasn't an offensive blow, but regen to her own wounds. It was no blast of cure, healing everything in an instant, but the steady, continuous recovery would put her on closer footing to his impenetrable body.

[inthirds]

Whatever biting protest or remark he may have had died in his throat with the swelling urge to hurl. That poison wasn't fooling around, not by half. He had to take a knee, one eye open and one hand to the back of his neck. A healing spell of his caliber doesn't cure ailments, but it's all he can think to do to clear his head.

Dug Haut, one of his signatures; that didn't require much precision, just a bit of push. And that poor lot once again went into a mess of shooting rock and stone.

[speedofnaked]

Terra almost felt guilty for how visibly he suffered from the toxin, a momentary hesitation where she thought about sending the antidote his way, but such generosity is chased from her mind at the quake. The ground shook enough that her teeth rattled and chattered in her skull, and why hadn't she cast float from the outset? This pain could have been easily avoided.

But Dug Haut was not Quake, and where her trembling of the earth came with the illusion of the ground being torn asunder, of gaping pits and an hour's fall until death, Zelgadis's was far more real and significantly more dangerous. Fang after fang of stone erupt from the ground, sharp teeth biting at her path.

He had her on the run, at least for the moment, and that was enough to stave off her retaliatory attack.

[inthirds]

He rose when the wave of nausea ebbed, chasing her with a gaze. It seemed always fire with her...so he stuck with the barrage of ice, the arrows first, then bringing both arms forward to send another Demona Crystal that filled the cracks in the earth with ice on its way to its explosive end.

[speedofnaked]

Terra took the arrows at a run, and the sharp slices into flesh made her teeth clench and her muscles tighten against pain. Regen healed in waves, true, but it was not unending healing; blood rolled down her arms and a cut on her temple with little regard.

As the ice closed in around her, trapping her within, Terra pressed her hands against her face, protecting her eyes and her mouth, and giving her just enough give to speak.

It took longer for this spell to build, warm power gathering in her hands against her cheeks, and her body shivered in the ice. For a moment, she wondered if this was how Tritoch felt, frozen in ice for a thousand years in the cold mines of Narshe. Such a fate would never be hers.

She could not shout in the ice, and so when the word "Meltdown" passed her lips, it seemed to go no further than her own palms. Even barricaded in ice she could feel it, the wind so strong it made the earth shake and the ice tremble, melting at alarming speed. The heat of fire without source buffeted against the enclosure, and in