Hhressh. Called in some wards and informal neonate circles the Monitor, and the Visitant. Seydon marked him tall for the Shujora, two-and-a-half metres at the shoulder and well-proportioned, built like an aged oak with the sinuousness of a willow, his scale-hide flat against boxy muscles that lacked the puff and pudge of fat reserves. His hands were well calloused. And they were trying to put Seydon through the dirt.
Outside the training grounds and the long scute-shingled halls where the Shujora endlessly taught, lectured, and sparred, was a modest atrium created from the confluence of four low-roofed hab-blocks. It nested several blocks away in the east, closer to the bustling and sun-coloured bazaar streets and dazzlingly stark market plazas. Carmine dyed awnings shaded some of the light, blazing the earthen floor in hot tones of burning scarlet. Like the inside of a facsimile abattoir, heat and the lurid crimson shading even the shadowed corners made the brick-stone atrium feel like the pit of a burst blood clot. The neonates called it the ‘Sho-Khun’re’. The Palaestra. Occasionally, Hhressh drew in a few promising ‘golden claws’ and put them to his test. Not an iota of it was sanctioned by the elders. The Palaestra belonged to fools deaf and blind to the spirit of their lessons. No back-alley brawls tinged with condemnation could replace or usurp the simple truths brutally apparent in their art. Hhressh was persona-non-grata and his private matches a dark blemish to their tradition, but nonetheless he drew some hidden admiration among Shujora that quietly applauded his unorthodoxy. The Monitor gauged power. Or believed he did. Seydon discovered later Hhressh’s challenges to the Grandmaster, to Kovrek, and had lost to the elder in consecutive bouts.
The Palaestra thundered. Hhressh’s hind-claws raked the ground and drew low banks of lingering dust that stung in Seydon’s eyes. The lizard was a dun blur; his form was like gelatin, virtually shapeless, forming and re-forming between distance strikes utilizing his incredibly reach and close grapples that brought all his great physicality down onto his opponent. Seydon dimly noted the lizard’s footwork bouncing and sliding him about the atrium floor like it was a novice’s ‘first ring’. On the line. Off the line, careening the Dunaan about with his blows, flicking his tail round to snap Seydon’s feet out. Hhressh had the tempo. The pace and the rhythm of the bout was in his control, some contemptuous edge in his character ensuring Seydon knew it. An open palm slapped him across his cheek, clawing open his cheekbones and brow. It was a hammer-strike. Force-power made the air quake.
His opponent’s technique was almost perfect. At best, Seydon forestalled Hhressh, trading glancing limb-strikes that traded pound for pound, back and forth. Briefly, they’d answer each other’s strokes and counter-blows, circling away before slipping forward again into the centre of the Palaestra. He felt pitted against a wall of iron. Hhressh had the Palaestra, having already asserting the ground as his and forcing Seydon to come try take it. His shins clubbed into Seydon’s ribs, breaking the wind out of him, cracking his taloned heel into the center of his sternum and pitching him across the atrium. His shoulders met with albedo-caked stone. Distantly he heard Hhressh laughing, the sound like steam hissing through a sieve. The reptile came on once more, leading with tail-cracks stinging at the air inches from his eyes, punching for his midriff, his nose, his throat. A wall of scale iron. He’d be broken if he put up more resistance. Perhaps Hhressh saw no honour lost if a foreigner was killed on the Sho-Khun’re grounds and perhaps better yet, the victim would only be a ‘soiled-meat’ mutant throbbing like a septic wound in the Force. Blood swamped Seydon’s vision. His ears rang from another blow, despite his guard. An iron wall, oncoming… Difficulty resisting… There was a way, a crack to widen, if he just had the wits to reason it out and the strength to endure! Quickly! Black gods, he thought, this should all be snap decisions and muscle memory! If he survived, he'd be hard at it re-learning and refining his CQC. He'd maybe have to learn a new system entirely. Hhressh was bowling him over like a gale across a reed.
…A reed. Seydon saw it now. He waited for Hhressh to come and the lizard obliged him, crashing at him as he stood virtually trapped against the Palaestra’s red-washed walls. Clawed hands reached for him. Seydon paced forward, into Hhressh’s reach, weaving round his bulk and letting Hhressh’s weight and speed do the work. He tapped his elbow into the centre of the lizard’s spine, helping drive his mass straight into the walling. Hhressh rebounded off the cracking plaster and brick, into Seydon’s waiting grip, twisting and throwing the lizard off his legs to the earth. Dirt and a thin cloud of smarting dust rose as Hhressh’s hide impacted. The rhythm had broke and now, Seydon kept it broken. He went for Hhressh’s skull, wrenching at his head, thumbs pressing in against his flat eyes while his hands twisted about. Control the head, control the body, he knew. Hhressh clawed up at his throat but he caught the lizard’s thumb by the knuckle and
bit. What was belying about Dunaan was their raw strength kept so very carefully muzzled. Strength even in their jaw musculature. His teeth carved through scale, into tissue, down to muscle, tendon, and bone. The lizard finally vented a raking shriek.
He kept Hhressh to the earth, pinned there with select joint-locks that trapped the lizard’s weight and height. Seydon wrenched one arm around, felt the elbow and shoulder begin to grind with protest, pinching blood vessels, nerves, and muscle tissue against each other. Hhressh began to thrash. He stole the fight and the breath out of the Monitor with a curt jerk that splintered the bones in his joints, wrist to shoulder blade. The red, hungry light in Hhressh’s eyes blinked out. Seydon pulled his fist away, the knuckles skinned and weeping angrily. A sizeable, bruising indent showed on the scales between Hhressh’s filmy eyes. He hadn’t killed the Monitor. When the reptile came to, he’d have a blinding headache and a good arm rendered inert as jelly. Seydon stood to his feet and began wading out of the Palaestra. He possessed sense enough to grab his swords waiting for him by the mouth of a long, shade-cooled passage leading out into the afternoon streets. Blood and sweat and odours of exertion stank sourly in his half-clogged nostrils. The wolfs-head medallion hanging from his glistening throat dripped darkly with spent gore.
Amea Virou
Bok Bwi'kan
Griet van Vliet
Seydon of Arda
Vyri
Kelsie Sylvan
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