Earning Your Stripes [Siiri]

by **Cayenne** on February 23rd, 2012, 4:10 am

At the rate she had been being dragged after the beast, her arm popping out of her socket would have been the very least of it. It likely would have been completely detached. She heard an odd hissing sound as she was using her daggers to slow her weight down, and if she thought to look up, she would have seen a very large, black snake, its mouth opening, revealing jaws of recessed fangs, grasping, reaching...

What a way that would have been to go back to Taloba from her Trials...

The Gods had to be smiling on her, because she landed on the big, round belly of the creature, which lay dead on the jungle floor, bouncing off and rolling hard on the ground until she collided with something sturdy. “Cats always land on their feet, little warrior,” the dark-skinned man grinned down at her. She’d ran into his legs. He wore a leather loincloth that had been decorated with bone, and little else in terms of clothing. He was heavily tattooed and painted, his hair wild, and his grin revealing sharpened, elongated teeth. His eyes were dark, but flashing. Siiri recognized him, dazed as she was.

This was who she was hunting for.

The sometimes-Consort of the Goddess-Queen from a relationship that had its roots from before the Valterrian. “Up with you, daughter of Myri. No Myrian warrior lays stunned on the ground for long, does she?” Her body ached and hurt, but one of his big hands was in her face, then, grabbing her wrist to help her up. The Alvina was as tall as she, power evident in his grip as he let her get back on her feet. She’d find that nothing was broken, though her hand was numb, her wrist ached, and the arm he’d used to pull her up with had just been snapped back into place from being dislocated. “Especially not out here. You know better, Siiri of the Snapping---” he was cut off suddenly as something came out of the trees, and he crouched, the roar he emitted surging through her bones to her very core as he grappled with what looked like a scaly-skinned human female, curvaceous and barely clothed, wearing gauzy, useless, albeit decorative wraps of green and black, her strength apparent as Navre wrestled with her, the muscles flexing in their arms and legs, in Navre’s exposed back as they grappled.

“MY PREY!” she hissed at him, glaring at Siiri through green eyes even as she tried to reach for the Myrian, pale hands swiping and missing even as Navre’s arms flexed and forced them up. “You will be MINE, little jungle woman. MINE!” There was a stronger hissing in the air. The black snake. There had to be more than one - the sound of hissing was all around them. Siiri could well imagine what would happen if the serpentine woman ever got her her hands on her, even as she slammed Navre to the ground, reaching for the Myrian again, only to have her half-brother snatch at her leg and force her down to the ground, pulling her backwards. The hissing was interrupted by the sort of growls that woke the city at dusk and dawn, like those of the massive Myrian tigers

“I am your opponent today, sister,” Navre snarled at her, and Siiri realized that the strange female who had been stalking her had to be Siku, and she was out for blood. She was witnessing a fight between immortals, even as a large panther emerged from the shadows of the trees around her to tackle one of the thick black snakes. Her pack was nearby, and while her body ached, the choice was up to her to do something or nothing, depending on how far she wanted to push herself.

by **Siiri** on March 22nd, 2012, 3:40 pm

Branches and leaves rushed up to meet her, their sharp edges scratching and biting the skin of her exposed flesh. Siiri did not even notice. The ground was coming up fast and her full attention was focused in avoiding the painful and likely life-ending collision against it. A few meters just before she hit, Siiri released her hold on the daggers, kicking against the tree trunk with her legs at the same time, hoping to propel herself forward and catch one of the branches opposite her. With no idea about the laws of gravity worked however, Siiri did not achieve her desired result. She still fell, following her now-toothless daggers to the jungle floor.

She was lucky she landed on the kithskin's belly or her knees would have exploded out of alignment from the impact. Or worse. As it were, she bounced off the creature's still-warm corpse and rolled forward to kill her momentum. There was a loud pop near her right shoulder as she tumbled to the ground but Siiri paid it no heed, not realizing she had dislocated her arm until she failed to catch herself on her subsequent, not to mention violent, rolls.

When her world stopped spinning, Siiri found herself by the feet of some warrior. Did one of her watchers decided to intervene and assist her in her Trials? Despite the grogginess from her brief tumble, Siiri's first instinct was to lash out and berate the hasty Myrian. This was supposed to be her test, to determine if she was worthy enough to join the ranks of the famed tiger riders! Anyone helping to to pass it would only cheapen the achievement! She opened her mouth to say just exactly that - but no words escaped her lips when she saw who it was she had been about to address.

Navre stood before her.

Siiri's jaw fell as she stared at the Alvina, her mind blanking out as she realized that the Patron of Cats himself came to watch her perform in his honor. She did not even notice the divinity snapping her dislocated arm back into place as he helped her to her feet. He was speaking to her but to Siiri's ears his words might as well have been the roars and rumblings of the felines he was worshiped for, so stunned was she by his presence. And then he was actually roaring, the fearsome blast ripping through the jungle, silencing all other sounds around them.

It knocked Siiri's wits back into her as well, allowing her to take note of the presence of another being nearby. It was this person - or divinity rather - that Navre had reacted to. Siku had been watching her as well, it seemed. And perhaps aimed to do more than just watch, as she had just intimated. The sudden hissing from all around them indicated that the Queen of the Serpents did not come alone.

The collision of the two Alvina left Siiri feeling very small. Here before her were two children of the divines, fighting for her - one intending to do her harm, the other protecting her as only the consort of the Mother, the Goddess-Queen, would. Both were fearsome to behold. Navre was quick and agile, powerful in his own right, but Siku's greater strength was evident as the two grappled. Siiri's heart pounded in her chest as she stood frozen, watching. The warrioress wasn't prone to admitting fears to herself, but she truly felt helpless after witnessing Siku's power. It was only Navre's presence that prevented the pale goddess from ripping her to shreds. Should she help him? What could she do in this clash between titans?

Move! Do something! she screamed at herself. MOVE, DAMNIT!

The rustle of leaves to the side distracted her. The head of a large black snake emerged, its beady eyes locked on her form, rearing to strike. Siiri blinked. A massive panther and launched itself against the serpent by the time she had opened her eyes. All around her she could hear the sounds of similar struggles. The minions of the divines fought with them, for them.

Only she stood alone.

Only she was without an opponent.

Siiri could have ran. She should have. What could a mere mortal do in a battle between gods, after all? And yet she didn't. There were snakes all around her. Massive snakes, yes, capable of pulverizing her bones to powder should they get the chance to wrap their coils around her. But she was no helpless prey, was she? No, she was not. Siiri would not allow herself to be one.

Something more than a Myrian's duty to keep the jungle clear of serpents spurred Siiri into action. It was something primal, some deep-rooted passion that lit a fire within her. It was hate. It was rage. And it was directed at those scaled creatures all around her.

Snakes...SNAKES!

Snakes were all around her. And the Mother of all Snakes numbered among them.

Things needed to die.

Siiri was sore, her body battered from her fall, and from all the exertions she had days prior to fulfill every part of her Trials. But she wasn't broken, and so she soldiered on, rolling forward and staggered to reach the greatsword that had remained strapped to her pack. She fell and she stumbled along the way. Still, she got up and did not stop her approach until her hand closed upon Slayer's hilt.

"Shara, be with me," Siiri muttered as she yanked the weapon free. "This one's for you."

The greatsword flashed up and sped in a horizontal arc, leaving a headless serpent in its wake and freeing the panther struggling within its grasp. She paid no heed to either. Siiri turned to look for more things that needed to die, but her emerald eyes seemed to linger longest upon Siku as she fought with her brother. She wanted nothing more than to run her blade through her.

Strange though how her hands couldn't seem to stop shaking.

OOC Note :

by **Cayenne** on May 8th, 2012, 3:36 am

Even as Siku and Navre fought, and even as Myri and numerous teachers that Siiri had had over the years had insisted on, keeping a battle awareness of everything going on around you was very difficult in the jungle. Oh, it was easy for those deyhan who lived outside of an environment that sought to kill them so it could lay its eggs in your corpse, or drag you home to feed its young, or tuck you in its meatlocker until you were nice and rotting and tender and good eating, but when you were in the jungle, it was often a matter of life and death, although it took practice to do. But Myri was the Goddess of War, and keeping track of the moving parts of a fight that went beyond yourself was something that Siiri had learned to become good at. Here, there were no slow learners. There were the quick and the dead.

Siku and Navre grappled. It might have been her own personal bias, and deep-seated animosity towards Caiyha’s bitch of a daughter, but it seemed to Siiri that Navre might have had the upper hand. Maybe it was all of those sessions with Myri. Hopefully. Because no matter how often Siku tried to get her hands on him and slam him down, or crush him, he was scoring his own. Her white skin was beginning to marble with bruises. With Navre’s darker skin - he was more like Siiri in colouring than the Alvina he fought with - he surely had his own, but in the lower light, they were harder to see. He’d taken more slams than Siku had. The massive panther that Siiri had freed by lopping off the head of the snake that had been crushing it was slow to get up, but when it did, it shoved at her, pushing her away from something - she realized that the jaws of the decapitated snake were still opening and closing, like the creature had yet to realize it was dead. While she wore good boots, these snakes were not natural.

Her arms were aching and screaming after a good swing of Slayer. She had had a long day - and despite being at the apex of her physical conditioning, she had traveled hard, fought hard, and faced quite possibly more of her share of obstacles than she might ever see in her life again. One had just been dislocated and set back into place; she had fallen Goddess knew how far out of a tree after lassoing a Kithskin, slowing her fall with the daggers and jumping away from the tree, landing on the ape’s big, relatively soft, belly... Trying to lift Slayer for yet another round made her body protest. But every Myrian was armed to the teeth, and Siiri surely was no exception. It was fortunate, perhaps, that nearly all visible, possible opponents were fighting their own battles against others - Navre and Siku, snakes and jungle cats. The panther she had freed had joined one of its friends and the two of them seemed embroiled in a tug of war over a mostly-dead constrictor; a spotted leopard was busy trying to get yet another massive-headed snake, this one patterned with an odd array of blues and purples, to expose something it could bite.

What many did not understand about the Myrians was that beyond fighting on their own, they were even better at fighting as a unit. Like a chain, a Fang was only as strong as its weakest link, and working together was crucial. There were a dozen openings if she cared to try her hand at them, and it was all a matter of strategy.