OPEN | so be easy and free,

[poleaxed]

WHO: Jone and thou
WHAT: jock stuff.
WHEN: Post Orzammar.
WHERE: The training yard & Tennis Court.
NOTES: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

a. FOR TRAINING.

If you need a sparring partner, Jone is at the main training yard during most daylight hours. She may have promised to work over some new techniques with you. She may have promised to assess your skills. She may have never spoken to you before, and you're just here to train.

For once, she isn't cajoling from the sidelines, trying to get new combatants. That doesn't make herself easy to miss, though. The self-described six-foot bitch, ginger hair shining in the sun, is always up for a go.

"Hullo, then. Let's get to it."

b. FOR TENNIS.

Or maybe you're here for another sort of skill. The Tennis Court is completed and ready, and Jone looks to be happily in her element. Shirt-sleeves peeled back to reveal solid muscle, she bounces a tennis ball against her racket, ready and waiting.

Maybe you were promised a match. Maybe you want a rematch. Maybe you're just curious. If you stare a second to long, Jone will wave you over. "Oi! We doing this or not, mate? If I stand out around much longer I'll start peeling."

c. FOR EVERYHING ELSE.

There's wildcard.

(I'm up for anything. If you're not sure, feel free to hmu.)

Comments

[nonvenomous]

“It could happen this way,” says Silas. “It has happened this way.”

To date, he’s always been rescued by someone with more martial capability. The thought draws a sigh up out of him as he sinks to sit opposite her, pressed out slow through his sinuses. Controlled.

He lets the dagger fall through his fingers into the dirt.

“Perhaps we should workshop my best approximation of a corpse.”

[poleaxed]

"Ha, ha." She says. "No, what I'm thinking is... we're assuming you'd fight linear. Knew a bloke, always going on about linear fighting and the other type... don't remember what it was. But d'you know what I mean?"

You know, this thing she's explained very badly?

"Use your magic, use your environment, use your bloody cat. I can take it."

[nonvenomous]

“That seems a little unfair.”

What, with her and her pole in opposition. He rubs his shoulder without thinking; the leather there is crossed by lines of fresh material where it’s been slashed and punched through by owl talons -- seamless slashes of lighter leather across the darker, dirtier stain of the older stuff.

Granted. It’s quite dark to see that kind of detail.

The sharp delineation between his pale hide and the skullish shadow hollowed in black around his eyes does make it easy to see the way his brow arches as he thinks it over.

“Are you willing to exert a little more effort in return?” As if she’s been going easy on him.

[poleaxed]

"Si, you saw me fight a dragon. Some knowledge worshipper you are."

She pushes his shoulder, playful, fraternal. "I won't do any serious damage. Maybe you'll end up with a limp, at worst."

[nonvenomous]

“You had some assistance.”

The push to his shoulder sees him dragging his heels in to stand, his dagger plucked from the dirt and swiped off along the side of his leg as he goes.

“A limp might save me from travelling back to Orzammar any time soon. I’m ready when you are.”

[poleaxed]

"Born ready," is all the warning he gets, before she lunges forward. If this were a real fight, if she was trying to fuck up a sneaky mage, she'd go for the head or the hands. Since she doesn't want to concuss Si, her pole (the axe, she imagines) swings down toward the wrist of his dominant hand.

[nonvenomous]

There’s an answering catch and jolt where instinct snaps him to react with movement too decisive to feel like a flinch: he utters something sharp between his teeth and her “blade” glances hard off an invisible barrier before it can close on his wrist.

The momentum of the blow is shed as if by the dish of a shield, redirecting down and away for him to riposte with another flashbulb snap of electricity.

This time he does not hold back: lightning cages through his fingers to leap for her core, acid green in the night and stung through with white sparks. It flashes cold in his eyes to lock her muscle over her bone, stripping control for an instant he intends to spend wedging his wooden dagger up beneath the jut of her chin.

[poleaxed]

"There we go!" Lightening sparks around her, and she feels lit up by it, like a metal rod in a sandy beach, just waiting. And it hits, and it's fucking amazing. Hurts like a Stormrider's kiss, her teeth chattering, but that pain is useful.

She staggers forward, still crackling, attempting another volley. This one meant to jab his legs out from under him, see what happens. She's testing the shield more than her endurance, but if he thinks she's thick, that's fine. Most do.

"You gonna give me another scar, Si? Never had one on me face."

Patter, distraction, that's good against mages, too.

[nonvenomous]

The shield is gone, so far as the point of her pole can find: it passes through unmolested and he lurches back to avoid it, watching her stagger with bright-eyed fascination: the sort typically reserved for watching creatures sprout wings or open a second, hidden mouth. Shocking Grasp is a spell designed to disable, to disarm, to create an opening.

He hasn’t actually tried it on anyone here.

“That seems like an oversight.”

He spins it up again with a flourish, tendrils of electricity sizzling, climbing his sleeve in wait for her to close the distance. Firing on her face feels uncalled for, even if she’s literally calling for it. The join of jaw and neck, however --

[poleaxed]

"Don't be a tease, luv."

The thing is, you get in close. Polearms are ranged weapons, meant to keep the enemy at bay, keep your options open. Jone has only ever used hers like that as a feint. Weapons with long reach are good for drawing the enemy closer.

She doesn't give him any space, still staggering toward him on jolting, jangling muscles. It feels like shit. Every moment is pain. It feels amazing. Every second is power.

She aims for the spell-casting hand again, thoughts of protecting Silas gone. She wants to see what happens, what new pain will rupture them both, caught together as they are in the most intimate confluence Jone knows.

[nonvenomous]

An uncertain huff is the only answer she gets -- he could keep backing up, and she could keep following to swing after him, round and round.

There is a switch.

As before, the pole deflects at the last second with a spoken word, lightning arcing over the shape of a spectral buckler as the charge of electricity in his grasp leaps from one casting hand to the other. There is no dominant side to this magic; he simply stands his ground into the push of her pursuit, and unloads a second whipcrack of electricity up into her at close range.

[poleaxed]

The crack, the pain, the tension, it's brilliant and all wrapped up in the sweet intimacy only family can give. It's real, it's really real, or it wouldn't hurt so bloody bad.

Energy crackles in her palm, and she thinks it's him. The pain of it certainly is. She reaches forward in an attempt to knock him off balance, and something other than his footing shifts. The wooden pole in her hand explodes as a percutient blast of green erupts from her hand, hitting Silas squarely in the chest.

"Fuck!"

yeet

[nonvenomous]

He’s really put some english on it too, funnelling the discharge with everything he has through close contact, his fingertips buzzing numb back to the wrist --

He looks to the light peeking through her palm at his periphery. Hm.

Electricity doesn’t have a chance to falter. It chases after him in a sickly sputter as he’s ripped off his feet, lifted and plowed backwards into hard-packed earth. There’s a crunch in there somewhere -- cartilage crumpling, bone wrenching over bone where he’s slid to a hard stop on his shoulder.

The sound of a man on the ground struggling to suck air back into his lungs is no doubt familiar to her.

[poleaxed]

"Fuck, fuck, fuck-"

Jone races to his side. She doesn't think of rifts or the fade or the shard in her hand, none of that matters. She pulls Silas carefully to her, checking pulse and breathing and looking for any sign of... anything.

She can't actually fix this at all, can she?

"Silas, Maker, fuck, I don't know what- bloody- I'm sorry, luv, can you move-? Can you?"

[nonvenomous]

An unintelligible, grumbling hiss lifts into an, “Aaaaaahah,” when she shifts him, cold sweat prickled dark at his temples, under his jaw. His breath is quick once he has it back, the loll of his landing pad shoulder a little too loose out of joint.

Here and there, slivers of splintered pole are embedded in his leather plate. One looks to have nicked his brow, only narrowly missing his eye. It’s bleeding the way head wounds are wont to. But he’s fine. This is fine.

He reaches with his far hand to stay her anxious pawing while he’s still pulling himself back together, pat pat, one knee drawn in with a grimace.

“It’s alright,” strained, he closes his hand on her wrist to lift it -- the better for him to squint at her anchor. But the burrowing, burning pinch at his shoulder is deeply distracting -- his brows say the rest. “Do you know how to set a shoulder?”

[poleaxed]

"Of course, of course-" Now with a set objective, she stops dithering, and gets to work. Moving around Silas to get a better vantage, she sets one hand on his elbow. Sitting behind him, she murmurs, "lean back a bit, luv."

She'll fix this. She'll jump at the chance to fix any of the thousand things she's broke.

[nonvenomous]

He tenses as he complies, breath stifled down into a cold, sweaty pant. His faith in Jone’s ability to crush a skull in her hands is boundless; his faith in her bedside manner is faltering at best. This is going to hurt.

[poleaxed]

Of course it's going to hurt. He's alive, isn't he?

Tense as he is, Jone deploys an old trick. "Alright, count of three. One, two-" And she shoves it in, feeling the satisfying pop of shoulder and arm reconnecting.

[nonvenomous]

It’s better to relax. He knows this, and makes the effort, letting off slack through the line of his shoulder even as he draws in a breath alongside her count --

He jerks against her, any sound he might have made strangled behind the clench of his jaw.

But the arm is back in, fingers flexed under the moon and stars bearing witness to this weird spectacle.

“Thank you,” is only polite for him to say. “May I see your anchor?”

[poleaxed]

Jone pats his shoulder, knowing he won't want any more comfort than that. Unable to imagine such a thing, honestly. He's such a singular person, she fears infringing on that grand independence.

"Um, alright, lad." She holds out her hand, surprised to find how green it is, even more than usual.

[nonvenomous]

A pat at his shoulder is just the thing, the adrenaline-fueled rattle of a late shiver stifled beneath the lock of a held breath, only just now expelled as he peers seriously at the sliver glowing in her palm. They are still on the ground -- probably for the best, with static creeping at the fringes of his vision.

“Is it painful?”

Given givens, he is not especially shy about clawing his thumb in to dig here and there, where the shard shines brightest.

[poleaxed]

Jone does not react at all to his prodding, which may make her admission a surprise. "Yeah, reckon it does." She considers it. "Think it's been aching a while. Didn't notice."

[nonvenomous]

Silas sighs again, more deeply this time, and releases her hand back to her to think without it.

“You should tell me if it does anything else strange,” he says, after a moment. “Or if the pain worsens or persists.”

[poleaxed]

"What's..." She frowns, thinks, and disliked either. "I don't mind telling you, but Maker, Silas, I blasted you across the courtyard. Sure you're alright?"

[nonvenomous]

“I’ll feel the worst of it tomorrow.”

The hot run of blood from his brow notwithstanding. He ignores it, busying himself instead with the process of plucking carpentry nail-sized splinters from his studded leather plate: the haggard resolve of a freshly bell-rung scholar who’s been flung ass over kettle by a monster or two in his lifetime.

“I am finished training for the evening.” To be totally clear.