Collidias Rex
Proficient with Plot Armor and Natural Weapons.
Yu Li moved carefully as she slid the door closed behind her, eyeing her company silently. His presence was not expected; not here in the women’s onsen. She eased forward to the edge of the water, standing opposite him.
She tried to smile, but it didn’t reach all the way across her face. A numbness closed in on her, and she looked down. With silver-white hair and sharp cheekbones her reflection watched back, trembling in the still waters. Her grey-eyed gaze fell upon the grip of her katana, where her palm rested. She didn't recall placing her hand there. Her body knew something that her heart refused to believe.
She hadn’t made a sound, but the man turned to meet her with amber eyes that bore no expression. The fading sunlight lingered in his fiery orange hair like a halo of flame, and his fingers were curled around the grip of his wakizashi, where it had rested before she entered the onsen.
Yu Li opened her mouth, but the silence remained untouched. For an agonizingly long moment she stared back, until a tear beaded in the corner of her eye and her hand closed on her weapon. As the sun set on the horizon and a shadow moved across the land, the nimbus of light faded from the man’s hair.
They were past the point where words could make a difference. The only thing they shared any longer was a language in common; the one all men spoke when they had no other option.
As one they turned, and like twisted mirror images they walked around the pool, closing the distance between them. Yu Li’s chest heaved, and a new layer of sweat plastered her silvery-white hair to her face. The man’s stride was steady, forceful and weighty in every step. As one they stopped, with ten feet between them.
Yu Li moved, untying the sash from her head and dropping it to the ground between them. She spread her arms wide as it touched down, fixing her eyes on his and displaying herself openly. The silvery-white of her hair rippled down her neck and across her skin, blossoming into a coat of fur as two pointed ears jutted from her head. Her face sharpened into a snout, and a trio of bushy tails emerged behind her. She placed her hand on her weapon once more.
He in turn removed his sash and dropped it, mimicking her gesture - standing with his arms wide. No further changes were made. He placed his hand on his weapon once more as Yu Li’s face warped with a forlorn snarl.
There was no room left for platitudes. The imminent dialogue had been a long time coming.
Her silver blade flashed and air whipped past as the man jerked back. He lunged, his blade flying for a gap. Yu Li swept her blade across and backstepped in turn, streaking a swathe of steel before her assailant. He sidestepped, parried, blades clashing shrill and sharp and cutting through the silence. The two withdrew, weapons raised. A slender, luminous blade of mithral in her hand; a pure, dark blade of adamantine in his. An opening remark.
Yu Li’s chest heaved and she panted. The silence between the two was so thick that every breath was forced. She finely drew a circle in the air with the tip of her sword, strafing away from the pool. He followed in turn, crouched low like a hunting animal with his weapon held in a vicious backward-grip, like an icepick. Yu Li knew it well - he could have just about pounced on her, and she could have laughed and giggled.
His rebuttal caught her mid-thought.
He exploded forward, fire and fury. She panicked, swung, but he moved like a jagged line. He ducked, parried, dived in but she threw herself away. The world spun in slow-motion, and the candles drew luminous lines in her retina as they spiralled in the background. Pain - pain tore through her elbow and everything launched into motion. She rolled, shoved a hand against the cobblestones and heaved herself away. Awkward, clumsy, desperate. He crashed after her, a devouring wave of fire.
Yu Li crashed into the water, twisting upright, sweeping her blade. It cleft the space between the two as her attacker jerked back. She backed from the waters edge, and the numbness grew thick and cold as water rushed into her clothing and fur. Her head fogged with the turbulent lightness of vertigo, and with the weighty aching of lethargy. Her face felt warm, her eyes were wide. Gazing past her blade at the man, she saw how the light jarred at the edge of her blade. A groove in the cutting face, a notch where her blade met his. It was the nature of adamantine to destroy all it touched. Her stomach churned and the sword shook in her white-knuckle grip as she stared at the damage. She retreated further from the edge.
The man’s face betrayed something for a moment when his lips upturned into a grin, but his eyes remained motionless. He circled with greater weight in each step, a sense of momentum like a lion circling its prey. He had the high ground.
Yu Li’s eyes darted about frantically. She fixated on something behind the man. The moment he turned to follow her gaze, she spun and raced for the opposite edge, throwing herself against the lethargic waters with an uproarious splash. The man caught himself and raced around the edge, moving to cut her off. But Yu Li had caught him out - she threw herself onto the rocks at the edge and heaved herself upward. The weight of the water sucked her in, but she swung her tails upward with a mighty heave and a shower of water. For a split-second the man was blinded, and dim candlelight danced between a thousand droplets and the silver of Yu Li’s blade.
A clash of steel, a parry. He surged forward, Yu Li wrenched her blade up and around, but he lifted, deflected. A knee hammered her gut, and she felt her breath leave her.
Sickening candlelight glinted off the black of his blade.
She heaved her sword against his, and the blades rasped together. Sparks flickered, pebbles scattered underfoot and Yu Li stepped away, flicking her wrist and shoving the wakizashi away from her throat. She thrust, jabbed thrice as the man danced back and forth, closing and falling back. She abused her reach, blade extended to the fullest, and the two shifted to-and-fro like waves falling upon the beach and retreating into the sea.
Something caught her eye. She thrust, and circled her blade in the air. In the moment the man lunged again, she hooked her sword around a candle. A flick, a thump, a splash - the candle slammed into his cheek mid-lunge. Her blade arced like water around a stone, and she struck him across the shoulder. His tunic tore and red bloomed from the skin, trailing after the silver blade.
He snarled and sunk back, eyes alight with a newfound malice as Yu Li righted herself. His composure was breaking - but he wasn’t the only suffering. Yu Li gritted her teeth as her gaze labored on a deeper notch in her blade. Her blade was breaking, and she had accomplished nought but a shallow cut.
No. No, there was something more than. The wildness in his eyes, the seething … that was familiar. She knew that too well. Her ears pinned back against her head as she fought back a sob, shook her head violently to break free of the feeling. She sniffled and took a deep breath. She shifted one foot back, held her blade evenly, searched for avenues she could be attacked. Though her eyes brimmed with tears, where they had once been wide they were now narrow, and her pupils had constricted to pinpricks under the darkening skies.
They launched into blows as one, meeting with a staccato of rasping and striking metal. One twice thrice, blades twisted, lashed, thrashed and ground together. A waltz at arm’s length. She stabbed, he parried, he slashed, she blocked, she kicked him in the leg and he thrashed, summoning a whirlwind of frenzied slices into the space between them. He surged and she flowed - she took his lead, saw his every argument and turned it against him, touch-touch-swipe in counterattack at his advance, poke-poke-poking at his every gap, retreating and keeping him away. She swung high and he dodged low as if he could read her mind. He dived inward and she dodged outward, as if she; his. His ferocity and her grace collided like a man thrashing in a river, trying to harm the current itself.
They read one another like books, and the meeting of their weapons became repetitive like a choreographed dance, each strike like a sharp and clear note. She searched his every step with calmness and patience, and he; hers with an increasingly manic hunger.
Yu Li could no longer hear the pounding of her heart nor the heaving of her breath, but she could hear his. His ragged, arrhythmic breathing, his agitated shifting between trading blows. She couldn’t hear her heart, but she could feel it pulling apart at the seams. The man had flown into a frenzy, and scars now decorated her beautiful sword.
He launched into another volley, and he misstepped. Mithral flashed and the blade caught his shoulder again. It lurched back, caught the counterattack, then curved for another stroke. In a moment of calm between them she saw nothing but rage in those amber eyes. The man roared and hurled himself into the pool, away from her blow.
She paused - she should have lunged, killed him as he recovered, but she hesitated instead as he gathered himself and assumed combat stance. His teeth were bared, his red hair matted and soaked through, his eyes bloodshot like an animal’s. Yu Li sniffled again, she shook her head as she choked on a sound, but she maintained perfect, unwavering form.
The man moved toward her even in her elevated position on land. He roared and lashed out. Their blades met.
Panic, fear, shock. A clang. A crack. Yu Li shook a thousand times in a split-second as her silver sword cracked and broke. Splinters of mithral shed no light as they fell into the water, and the upper half of her blade was consumed soundlessly beneath the surface.
A foot on her ankle, and she was being dragged in. She flailed, hit the water backward. She screamed and water invaded her mouth, hands scrabbling for something, anything to hold onto. They caught something - something going for her throat.
She kicked, squeezed as tight as she could around his wrist as he forced her against the bottom of the pool. His knee crushed down on her gut, squeezing the air from her lungs as she shook and thrashed about. He gripped his wakizashi in both hands and bore down with all his weight, and Yu Li desperately pushed against him. The water stirred at her throat, her vision flashed in and out as the blade pushed closer to her jugular. A dark, pure blade inching her closer and closer to death … and a broken blade of silver laying on her chest.
She heaved left, right again, and she screamed as she wrenched down and aside. Pain, agony split her shoulder as the wakizashi buried itself. She roared through a mouthful of water and with her good arm, she grabbed the ugly broken blade and rammed the jagged tip upward.
There was nothing for a blissful moment. There was nothing - and then a weight lifted off her.
She tore herself free, throwing her head free of the surface and gasping for ragged breaths of air. She flailed, and her fingers found the edge of the pool behind her. She pulled herself upright, choked on water for a second longer, and managed to wipe the hair from her eyes.
There was no more ‘the man’. There was just a dead person propped up in her lap, half-straddling her as blood clotted the water around the sword buried in his heart.
Gone was the man she had fought - instead was a layer of fine orange fur, a pair of pointed ears, a narrow muzzle and a trio of three bushy tails. The animalistic rage had departed, and in that moment he just looked … sad.
Yu Li moved the body off her lap and she stood. Her eyes were wide again, and her fingers shook as her discipline abandoned her. Those trembling fingers reached to her shoulder, and with a snarl she yanked the wakizashi from her wound. Though stained, the blade was unharmed - though the handle was cool. The warmth had already departed. She gulped down some ungodly mixture of water and air, and with fumbling movements she collected the hilt-attached half of her katana.
A shimmer of candlelight glanced off her blade as she sheathed it, and her silver-white hair dripped into the rippling waters as the man’s body sank below the surface. She stared at him, clutching her shoulder. She blinked. She shook her head quickly, she tried to force some kind of emotional response. She took a deep breath. Slowly, she reached for the wakizashi’s sheath.
She removed it from his belt and she fitted it to her own, sliding the wakizashi home. While the silver and black blades couldn’t have been more different, the grips and sheaths bore identical motifs. They were a part of the same daisho, after all - two halves of a matching whole. A pair of weapons to complete each other.
A shimmer of sunlight glanced off the new moon overhead, and the silver-white reflection danced in the still waters as the sun sank below the horizon. She fell to her knees, clawing at her face. She wailed. She cried, she covered her eyes and tried to block it all out. She screamed. Slowly, she covered her face and curled into a ball.
They were past the point where words could make a difference.
And they had long been past the point where she could say goodbye.
Last edited: