CLOSED | i feel certain i am going to rise again

[limier]

WHO: Wren + Herian
WHAT: While you were expressing yourself healthily, I Studied the Blade
WHEN: Vaguely this month
WHERE: Gallows
NOTES: Annulment stuff, a total excess of hair

The hour's early, the grounds distant.

Time and isolation chosen to purpose, she's terribly aware of how this might appear to the unwary. Sixteen years and half a foot between them? To say nothing of the cause for their association.

That she's left off armor isn't an entirely a matter of perception, as little as she wishes to antagonize an already-tense bit of sparring. Most Amsel faces will not be so well-covered as mail and plate, and they both need the practice at it. 

There's a skin of water laid out upon the bench, beside a heavy key, a blade to match that already in her hand: hacking out the recursive motions of one yet warming up — perhaps harder than necessary.

"Knight-Enchanter," The sword dips to earth; she turns and seems a brief moment to look right through her. It recollects, though as she catches glimpse of that mauled ear, something pinches between her brows and doesn't quite leave.

It's one thing to speak with a ghost. It's quite another to see one risen.

(To try and bludgeon it with a length of steel.)

"I was — ah — uncertain which style you might lately favour," A short gesture to the bench, and if she just keeps treading these small mundanities, maybe they won't swell up to drown them both. "But the simplest edge often cuts sharpest, no?"

Best for everyone that these are dulled.

Comments

[dashing]

Herian just tilts her head at that, though it serves more like a very slight sideways nod. Acknowledgement, in either case, though she's not sure she agrees entirely. The world might have wished them dead, but perhaps— perhaps them choosing it on their own terms was better than brutality.

Perhaps that was naive. Herian had never been one to accept a quick solution over the challenge of a fight. Exceptions might be made to spare others, but never that.

Her block is rushed - Coupe's blade bites into her skin, shallow but stinging, and she corrects as quick as she can.

"I did not consider what I did not anticipate to be necessary," she bites out.

A twist, and a sweep, that in a real ("real," as if this were all play) fight might suit to cut the enemy's legs from under them.

[limier]

It catches her midway through the swing — a fist this time, and not the sword — motion too fully committed to counter the sweep, she’s no choice but to fall or lunge into it, and fuck if she’s about to fall,

Something happens.

She lunges, and something happens. Her face goes momentarily slack; abruptly, too distracted to pull the punch (its force still blunted by a falling arm), to do much but stab suddenly into the dirt. A jarring shock up the shoulders. As improvised canes go it’s literally not much to stand on. She’s really only questionably upright.

"Sssssshit," Wren hisses, in finest flowing Orlesian, truly the language of civilization. "Shit, shit, shit."

This is not especially knightly. Or intimidating. Or dignified, if what she thinks just happened happened. That this wasn’t anticipated either —

"Forgive me," Wren finally grits out, unmoving. "Your teeth?"

Her own fist’s not cut enough to have done any damage there, she’s certain, but Amsel's blood is on her knuckles and it bears asking.

[dashing]

Herian's first instinct is to twist so she can swing an elbow into Coupe's face; she resists the impulse, sucking in a breath and spitting out blood in a messy splatter on the dry dirt. She looks at the Templar before her, blood on her teeth, a gash in her lip that is already swelling and a little purpled from the impact.

Ice is not her specialty, unfortunately; many of the healing elements of magic elude her, and she is not convinced that cauterising her face is really the answer to this scenario. "I've dinner planned with a friend,"

(a date, but she is not saying that to a Templar who knew about Vipond, and who just punched her in the mouth)

"hopefully they are complete enough that food might not overcome me." A quick test with her tongue suggested they are smooth, intact, and she presses with her thumb to double check nothing is come loose. Despite the mutual destruction and all else, she offers Coupe her hand to ease her up from being supported by the sword. Honour, manners, all that knightly business.

"Ready for another round?" It's dry. Very faintly, quietly dry.

[limier]

She casts Herian a look. But she accepts the hand, hauls herself up with a short nod of gratitude. (Pride is for people who can afford to hobble their way through Val Royeaux.)

"Your technique has improved." It hardly bears stating that her own has declined. "The other blade,"

She limps to the bench, resists the urge to brace a hip. "If you've not been parrying with the hilt, it bears practice."

There's no reason the thing might not still be useful, even those times the Fade forces solid about her. Wren sets the sword aside to offer out a rag, jerks her chin again to the key.

"A cabinet, for reports. I imagine that might —" A wince as something twinges. "— Ah, might wait. For dinner. One would not wish to be overcome."

If that's wry, it's not at Herian's expense.