Accept the Pain
Equipment: Sword of the Tenth | The Panoply
Tags:
Ishida Ashina
|
Tren Chaar
Location: JEDHA - En Route to JEDI MONASTERY
Theme: Military Aggression
There is, he has experienced, a moment of time before a kill that has a certain type of sweetness to it. And no, that is not to be understood as an alternative way of saying "I enjoy doing or seeing that." It is, in fact, quite literal for the horned man.
In that split second before his weapon - whatever that is at the time - cuts through or pounds the flesh of his foe, there is a...burst of flavor on his tongue. Traveling from rotten taste bud to taste bud, driving him to swallow a delicacy that is not there. He has repeatedly described it to his fellows across time as the finest honeyed wine laced with thin scents of fresh-picked berries. Or, well, whatever comparable description the idiot could give. Most importantly, regardless of the description, it was a taste of home. A centuries-old memory surging its way, worm-like, through the electrodes of his mangled mind. As if the world around him is celebrating the coming death with a small taste of the ambrosia his family would serve after every performance his sister had on stage.
There is no such taste in this moment. There is no such celebration to be had. As the woman danced through the horde and now engages him in combat, reminding him in some way of that sister who now was lost to him forever, there is no ambrosia. There is only a bitterness, the carving of air, and the forcing of the offensive march. This was bound to happen, even if he didn't want to admit it. Likewise, if he did not know it.
And...he did not know.
He could not know, in spite of the fact that the reasoning for him to acknowledge it and grasp it was openly standing there; screaming at him as a scorned lover left standing in the rain. Barking at him with an ever-tearing throat that for every fight he did have all those years ago, he would never have allowed his enemy to even consider that their attack would connect with any part of him - armor or flesh. Lamenting that this woman was able to not only do that but also nearly caught him off guard, that his skills have atrophied or that the modern-day warriors are far better than the cowards he had maimed so long ago.
Laoth perceives none of these facts. He only maintains his fanged smirk, glad to have a fight worthy of his dullard's passion, of his brutish efforts. Only are they recognized by his forgotten self - the drowned self. The lost self that wants to reach out and retake control of its body that is currently being driven by an imbecilic shell of am and make him fight like he used to once again. Like a true warrior and not a nitwit purposely extending the fight for his own childish enjoyment.
This atrocious change in conditions is made none more evident to that self than when, after this luminous woman dodges his responding attack, she also avoids each of the subsequent series of carving swings intent on slaying her. A dancer of the blade, weaving around the terrible edges of the Sword of the Tenth. A relic weapon that has been drenched in the blood of thousands of innocents, soldiers, and Jedi. It should have been so deadly in the hands of the titan, yet it is currently incapable of cutting the flesh of a single woman?
The drowned self finds this shameful, but Laoth cannot feel such shame. And while this avoidance of not only death, but also injury, is not as clear cut as one might have assumed given this woman's meteor-like speed, it is enough to make that drowned self all the more aggravated. Ironically, this only makes the oaf that is Laoth all the more gleeful. She's not dying immediately. She's not bleeding. She's fighting back. This is fun!
His strikes become quicker, more vigorously thrown as the two move their feet in a chaotic intro to a rhythmless tango. Steps are accompanied by drum beats of plasma and choirs of screaming soldiers. Each dancing to their own tune - it would have created a mess of a showing if the two were on a stage back on Devaron.
Flawed and disordered is the initial portion of this fight, at least until the woman suddenly produces a second blade with the speed of a Starweird. Utilizing the scorching bane of the darkness to block the final heavy swing of the horned man's blade, the woman shunts forth a gleaming curved razor toward's the unprotected section of his chest. It is like molten starlight, reflecting the light around it in a stream of precision that careens towards the beating heart of a dark sun that should have been dead long ago.
The image of the approaching razor is reflected in his gaze like a mirror, and the glee briefly leaves his face; his seemingly eternal smirk breaks off into a crooked frown. His deep blue eyes shift from their reddened wide stare into a furrowed almost blackened glare, a sense of seriousness crawling over the area around the two combatants. For the horned man, time slows to a crawl, and the haze of his powder-addled mind slips away for a solitary moment.
He has to be quick, quicker than her. Is that even possible?
Out of self-preservation, the titan shoots his free hand up from his side and grips the gleaming razor in his fist. The edge slices through the leather of his glove with ease, drawing tar-black blood from a fresh gash in his palm. It runs down the inside of his bracer, wetting his wrist and forearm. He hides a grimace, the first true instance of pain since his freedom from the tomb by God. He saved himself, but the pain still radiates from his chest. Laoth looks down, hissing at the revelation that the point of the razor still managed to mark its intent upon his breast. Black blood runs down in a thin line from the cut, staining the red of his chest straps. Had it struck true, it could have punctured deeper and into his lung. Such precision to have in conjunction with such...rapidity of motion. Laoth looks to the woman, hastily acknowledging the increasingly orange glow from the mark of contact of her lightsaber and the Sword of the Tenth. If it remains in this clash for much longer, it could slice in half.
"Quite the skill you have, Jedi," he says with a strange temperament that belies his frowning expression and previous savagery. "You are the first in years to make me bleed. Not many hold such achievement." He is quick to move against her after letting his words settle into her mind. A miasma of contradictions that he could use to his advantage if that lost self was a bit more permanently recovered than for a single moment of preservation.
He lifts his hand into the air along with the razor still gripped in his fist. The point carves its way up his chest from its mark and barely avoids nicking his neck and jaw, but is now being held at a slightly acute angle, pointing towards the dying sky. His next actions are surprisingly swift in spite of his girth, though still nowhere near as quick as his foe. Rotating his body and armament, the titan drags his sword against the edge of the scorching bane so as to then shove it upwards and trap the razor in the empty space between both sides of the weapon. In the same breath of exertion, he then lets go of the razor from his fist and twists once more with violent force, ripping the woman's blade from her hand and sending it flying towards the entrance of the partially excavated monastery. As she moves to recover from this sudden loss, the horned man takes his wounded hand and grips the woman's throat, lifting her into the air just as he had her weapon. Black blood weeps from the gash in his palm and smells distinctly of silver and sulfur. The blood of a Devaronian subjected to his own hubris.
Hubris that makes its consequences known once more.
"You fight well," he muses with an increasingly strained voice. Maintain it, Jedi. Make...him...learn."
Just then, the fanged crooked smirk returns and the eyes redden anew. A roar of pure primal stupidity escapes his throat and suddenly is the woman tossed from his grasp, hurled towards the entrance of the monastery like a sack of meat. Loath lumbers after his quarry as she soars through the air, gnashing his teeth while dark curses bubble and boil on his tongue.
The real fight had just begun.
