Pit Prep. Day 2 (solo)

[Valorae]

3 Winter 511 A.V., approximately noon onward She had awoken earlier in the same cell. In her hosts’ good graces they gave her something to sleep on while locked away in the dark. It was cool down there, but it was defiantly worth further up. She had no idea how far she had fallen. The hours were slow moving and quiet. You lose sense of time easily enough. The silence is both serene and… taunting. You could scream all you’d like and no one would hear, or at least no one would care. It was a familiar feeling, being left in a hole in the dark, alone. Moments like this were something to be coveted. There was room enough to hear yourself think; to get yourself in order. No amount of strength had helped me; not that I have any. It had always been an enduring spirit. It’s two sided. I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted anymore. The place for me, as it was becoming evident, was in a hole. I help waiting to hear the crack of a belt and feel the liquid drip over me, but it never came. That was a relief too. I just want to clear my mind and let it all fall apart, this dream. Just let it all blow away like sand castles… Just think of that place, the garden at the top of the mountain. You’ll get back there soon. Don’t be afraid. You’ll learn the skills to reach it again. She’ll be waiting. She’ll be happy. But I need to use the shape edge. It’s short, but it will reach further than I. I will cut them. They will all be cut down…bushes in the…jungle. Focus on the mountain. We’re going up the mountain… Too weak…I’ll need to build…muscles… I could hardly lift myself. I will lift myself many times. I fell many times. I will no longer fall, but roll, or leap on the air. I will climb the mountain. And at the top, when I see Her, she will smile at me, and we’ll be happy together again. That… … That place… That place without a name… Climb the mountain. Valorae. Climb the mountain, Valorae. She will welcome you home. My arms hurt, I hear noises… She opened her eyes and brought her hands together. Her back was against the wall and she sat with her legs crossed on the map. Her head will still being held high and calm. She looked to the door for them to come. She only heard footsteps. It was too early. She resumed her journey to tranquility…

[Valorae]

Her arms were still sore from the mistakes of the previous day. She had rested well, and it was noon now. She felt no hunger, and the soreness was something faint and alien. She had heard the patrolmen outside of her hold. She was waiting for the day she’d be taken to fight. She was ready to fight, in her mind, but her body was all but prepared. When dawn came over Sunberth, and Syna’s rays brushed over the world, the ethaefal took form and felt not the bounds of mortality. Awaking in the dark with no gain from sleeping, she was left to her thoughts, maddening thoughts. She tried to drive them away with silence, to just focus on her goal and realize it. It was a form of meditation, little to her acknowledgement. She wanted to remove stress for just a while longer, to fend off insanity loneliness brings. Maddening… Are you mad? We’re all mad… We’re all mad… Faint laughter… You’re crazy. I’m not crazy. It’s a dream. She’s coming. No one’s coming, no one wants you. It was also a time for prayer. Not a prayer for Syna, but a prayer for Syna to come for her. She had swept her away from the world of the west to paradise, and now left her for pain in the east. Valorae had no even realized. She had looked the same as she had when first fallen, and kept falling. Her hair was longer. She picked and bit her nails sometimes. It kept them short and – She started biting her thumb nail. It was hardly protruding from her finger. – and it kept her calm. Climbing the mountain… She tried very hard to recreate the ____ of the Ukalas. Everything of it. It had no name in this world. She could not understand it. This world, this evil world. I’m coming Syna. She had forsaken the goddess of the sun, Syna, for in all her prayers she was unanswered, or perhaps unheard. She had tried, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t true prayer. It was a plea for help. Syna had helped her; she had saved her from this world. Now she just expected it, and it didn’t work that way. Her faith was dissolving in pain and hate. She needed to badly to be saved by someone. What mortal could possibly do that for her? She set off on her journey up the mountain of … I see the mountain. I see the trees. No one is here, but I. I see the flowers and smell the flowers and flowing…streams. I see the path ahead, and it will lead me up the mountain. Through this valley and up the mountain I must go. The path is long and smooth… She opened her eyes abruptly and shook her head violently. She removed herself from her meditative stance and brought her legs together against her chest. She reached over her knees and held herself. She was disgusted. Her mind wandered into the past and present. The business of the world, the history, horror stories not even little children should hear. They seeped into her mind like poison, and turned all her hopes to hopeless. Kostaja… She reached up and grabbed her horns. It wasn’t real. She crossed her legs tighter and sat there. “Syna… Syna, help me.” Her words were whispers of the common, unfit for the ears of the divine.

[Valorae]

The path was long, but not so easy. There were cruel people who walked the same path to climb such a mountain. Some live for power, others for love, wealth, status, or just making other people suffer. Sadists. She had seen many of their faces on Sunberth’s streets even. The bad outweighed the good. She had grown to assume this was the norm. Dark thoughts of her own had been seeded in the depths of her mind. She tried to block the dark memories out and refocus. Not even a minute in when she tried to readjust herself the door was opened and the torch light was blinding. She was squinting as they bagged her head and grabbed her. She was escorted someway and then another. She had not taken notice to the pattern of the linear paths under the ground. They deposited her in the same room in the same manner, bag off and left. The room was as she had left it the day before; the dirt was still covered in other tracks. She saw the sword at the far end and wandered over to it. She looked around the room more, taking note of the detail of the place. It was all lit by torch light and supported by stone. Should this place ever collapse… it was better to not think of it! She took up the sword up, blade pointed downward. She held the hilt and shifted her arm quickly, letting go for the hilt a moment. The blade started to turn, and she switched her grasp on it. Switching the position of a weapon felt familiar enough. The idea had been floating through her mind if it were possible. Other ideas of how to go about it passed through her mind. Now was not the time. She took the sword and pushed it through the air in an infinity pattern. It cut through so swiftly on the one side; it fascinated her. She wanted to hold a metal one. She knew there was a greater power to be unlocked. She envied it. She finished by turning it back and striking forward with her right hand, left foot forward, and in her stance. She stepped forward and tried to strike again. That felt wrong. She reset her stance. She struck forward and pushed forward, a simultaneous step with both feet, pushing off of the back mostly. The art of war was coming back to her rapidly. She might have been Suvan before the Valterrian. She started to chain her attacks together. She’d lash out with a quick strike, then overhead with a power strike. Her body movement made the difference, right and left, with or against her stance. She tossed the blade to her left hand standing still and resumed the same practice. Cleave and strike. Move them away from your target and… strike! She couldn’t imagine being in true combat with this weapon. The theory of seeing the opponent’s imaginary blade move… it was deceptive. Her arms reminded her of the repair they were under very soon. She might have only been at work for half an hour trying to feel the rhythm of the blade. She put it back and thought again. Her strength had always been lacking. Getting filthy hands off of her…kicking rocks practically. She needed her strength. She needed to lift herself. She lay down and reached behind her head. She remembered him doing it before. Disgusting scents of sweat…lingering…poisonous… She kept her knees up and began to crunch steadily. She felt the burn at fifteen. She promised herself to keep going. Twenty five and she had nearly slowed to a stop. She promised herself five more. One…she felt it building…Two…the burning…Three…it was too damn much. She stopped and just lay there, breathing. She felt the throbbing in her abdomen. She reset her hands and pumped out another. She stopped again. A minute later she finished. She continued to lay there in rest. She turned over on her stomach and got her arms under her. She fanned out her elbows and got onto her toes. She struggled to start, but began to push herself up. She felt her arms wobbling when she got to the top. Her stomach hurt very much; they should not have been done first. She let herself back down and did another. She stopped to breath at the top. She took another breath in and let it out as she went back down. She tried once more, reached the top, and fell down more than let herself down. The frailties of her body were detrimental to the extreme. She was fodder at this point. When she finally rolled back over and picked herself up, her abs feeling slightly better but unable to work without risk of cramp, she stood up and looked at the sword. She just started playing with it. It was interesting to her. She studied how it weighed and moved through the air. Whirling it through the air her entire arm moved with it, and the weighted end struck. It was an extension of her, the momentum carried with the same vicious intent. She resumed her drill of striking with the sword, building combinations of strikes. She swept inward and back out, and then struck forward with all her might. That wasn’t saying much from her weakened body of an already fragile form. She noticed that beyond striking with the point straight outward, or slicing along the thinned edge, the tip broke the air by itself. She made the right angle from her grasp against the blade and plunged it upward. She switched the blade downward and stabbed down, the hilt against her thumb. She had made no order of her hands or the routines. She tossed it over, handed it across to her other hand and struck, and then back again. The blade never flew more than a foot in the air, and even then she was chasing it. The kinesthesia was a very conscious effort, and she took note of where it would be and where it was safe to move the blade. She kept it close to the chest, and always pointed away. Her foolish workout from an hour before had slowed her body much from before. She still had her legs though…

[Valorae]

She had never realized the versatility of the female form until she explored it. That would be…today. Having spent her time working out and deriving movements of the blade, she pushed her limits improperly. Now she paid for it. She felt the sensations of tension though. She needed to stretch them out. That’s what she’d do for the next perhaps half hour she had left. There were other purposes for this room. The guards were very precise with their timing and movements as well. She sat back down and bent forward reaching for her toes. She felt it in her back and a bit in her lower stomach as well. She held for maybe a minute more until the pain was steady. She held her breath in her chest with her mouth open. She released and sat back up feeling light headed. You must do this. She stood back up and began to straddle the air, reaching for the ground. It had hurt, but it won’t again. Men are brutes when they seek their goals. Their recklessness was taught to her, and she knew well the consequences it brought to others. Pain, once more, was her lesson. She was less than a foot from the ground with her full straddle split already. She tried to push down, get on the heels of her feet and go all the way down. A half hour she spent stretching this way, and thinking. Just go further…Just… She closed her eyes and tried to let her weight down with her fingers and arms. A quarter of an inch she let it push down and she held herself. She gritted her teeth and drove herself down the path to freedom. She remained still as the flesh inside pulled itself apart further. Little bits had already started to repair, and ripped again with any movement she made. You are going to the mountain, down the path that you must take. You will go through the woods and come to the summit. You will climb the mountain. She will receive you and you will rejoice. Her lips parted and she bit her lip. It stung and she let her mouth open. Her lips were tense like her body, her eyes wrinkled together shut out from the view of the room as she visualized her journey. The path will end soon, and you will be let loose into these woods; through them awaits the path to the mountain. The path is hidden, perhaps, and…treacherous. She tried to sink down a little further. The stretching had become a dull pain after two minutes of holding the position. Alas, she kept pushing down. Half an inch further and she’d absolutely tear a muscle. Monsters lurk…no, there is just the mountain. There is no jungle, no path, just the mountain and the slope of the mountain. There is Her palace on high and I am welcome. I am on the mountain. I am scaling the mountain. She pictured herself walking a path, climbing a shallow hill on her two legs. She saw herself coming up a hill again and again seeking the peek. Purposely, for this was wrong. It was not that easy. The mountains she had seen looked like this with rolling hills before them long before you reach the true highest peak. Where she wanted to go, where she wanted to be, it was a place she had never been to before, and knew not the way. She went down an eighth of an inch before she rolled back and lay there again. It was so strange. It hurt so…good. She felt the elasticity of her legs, how the muscle had stretched some great length - in perspective to the body perhaps - and the soreness that came with it. But it was a relief to have let herself go and rest. She moved her legs together and over each other. She felt all of the other muscles mildly sore. She would hone them too, in time. She would teach them to bend and snap with a strike like her arm and the sword, but on another day. They came for her, picked her up and bagged her. She tried to keep up, but they had no problem dragging her half of the time; she was light. She was let back into her chamber and the door was locked shut. She would eat later and then rest. She needed to rest. She didn’t think of the mountain or Syna the rest of the night. She only thought of how much she’d done, and would plan to do.

[Archelon]

Thread Award "..." And the Results!!!!: Valorae : SkillName 1-5 How/why? Philosophy 1 Musings about the past lives memories of the mountain Shortsword 3 Meditation 2 Bodybuilding 2 Acrobatics 2 Stretching counts Lores: Training: Steps of Beginning a workout Would you like some extra turtle sauce ? : Interesting keep them up ; only 3 weeks though I'm awarding weapon(shortsword) as it seems the best for Valorae's height/weight/body type as an eth. I'm also seeing wonderful development on the aspects of Syna. Most players with eth's or gnosis marked don't quite understand how that would effect their character's so much. I'm liking this trend . Even if it's so in stride with the "emoness" of ethfael