Solo The Ring

[Lenz]

21st of Summer, 514 AV
The Blood Pits

Ringing.

The sound was acutely maddening- the noise arousing nerves in her ears as she tried to shake her head of the infuriation.

She blinked rapidly, the floor becoming impossible to decipher from the ceiling. She tumbled backwards, her head buzzing and her jaw feeling swollen, yet she steadied herself and stood back up.

She was in a ring, a pit of sorts, another man in a few feet in front of her. He was bouncing on his toes with a surpassingly dire expression plastered onto his face. He almost looked smug with elicited an ever burning fire deep inside the woman’s heart.

“Smile at me?” she garbled inaudibly.

I believe he did.

She opened her mouth and spat on the ground only a mere foot from where her opponent stood jumping slightly from off the ground. She glared at him, her mouth bleeding slightly and her eye slowly growing a feint purplish bruise.

“Attack me peasant,” she growled.

Her stomach turned over on itself. The walls of her intestinal tract were slowly caving in. They were drawing themselves away from the acidic layering and confining themselves into a smaller space. She felt like she was going to vomit but simply assumed it was her head causing the nausea and not the anxiety that was quickly overwhelming her perceptual understanding.

She was in danger- it was clear as day and this man before her- her opponent- was not going to let her leave without a few lacerations and broken limbs. She had already damaged her face and suffered from some internal oral bleeding. She couldn’t recall whether she had checked to see if she was in fact missing a molar or two but as she touched her tongue to the roof of her mouth and dragged it to the back of her throat, she felt all teeth accounted for.

“Come at me!” she shouted again before stepping forward, her hands held up high.

She was in a defensive position, but with a flourish of intimidation. Her initial stomp forward proved that she had the higher ground- that she was the dominant predator in the territory. Although this man- her current foe- was exceeding the six in a half foot marker he was no match for her.

She took another quick jab with her foot. This threw him off balance. He took an even hastier step backwards at the sudden retaliation and finally managed to recover himself. His pride? Not so much.

She had insisted on him posing any form of emotion. Emotion made people weaker. When someone portrayed their emotions as if on a pedestal- any kind of feeling- their guard tended to falter. This was something Lenz witnessed firsthand. Her experiences were becoming valuable to her and viability was something she craved over the past few weeks.

“Are you afraid?” she muttered, trying to taunt the man into showing his aggravated side.

A punch with anger and ignorance behind it is a stupid punch, and one that the redhead was willing to turn against him.

That is what she did. She took someone else’s strength and held it against their will all as leverage and to her advantage. It was wonderful and exhilarating to switch the tables and prove herself as not weak but as an authoritative figure.

She was small, yes, but not small enough. She was tall and ferocious with a mind like a lion but with insanity swirling inside the darkest corners of her abysmal comprehension.

What would the outcome be of this fight? Win? Lose? Dying trying or would she succeed with her mouth full of honour, but her body writhing in the pain of earnest defeat- a defeat she couldn’t shun without killing herself?

[Lenz]

21st of Summer, 514 AV
The Blood Pits

The man did as she had anticipated. He lunged forward and stuck out his arm. His fist was curled into a ball and it was sailing straight forward her jaw but she prevented the harmful attack by stepping briskly to the side and using her arms to grapple ahold of his forearm and twist it.

She pivoted on her foot and shifted her weight until she was standing behind her enemy with his arm held firmly in her grasp. She did not waste any more time with him. She pulled the arm to the right a little more and proceeded to kick him in the back of the knee.

He fell to the ground, growling in pain at the tension on his upper ulna’s tendon.

She exacerbated things simply by raising her leg and stabilizing herself. Her balance was secure as the usefulness of feet was depicted with a kick to the side of the head. He toppled to the side, his ear most likely inept to hear anything for the next few days.

Lenz smiled and turned to look around the establishment. She didn’t know where she was. She had somehow ended up in a dark alleyway and then into an even darker and more ominous building with bulky men with deft strength but no brains.

She was surrounded by them and their scraggly beards and tattooed arms were flying this way and that. Some had jewelry stuck through their faces and others had mud slathered on their necks and cheeks. Was it some sort of intimidating tactic or some initiation into a gang or cult?

She shrugged it off and had continued into the building. The first thing she saw was a crowd of people cowering over a ring, two large and muscular men dancing in a circle, facing each other with their hands up in terms of defending their abdomens.

Lenz watched avidly as she noticed each and every block and each and every blow that was sent from all individuals who had the guts to step in. She was one of those individuals.

She wasn’t drunk, she wasn’t high, she wasn’t asleep walking into town without a clue as to what she was doing or getting herself into. She was fully conscious and aware of her actions and it was these actions that had her wind up on the mat with her face buried into the fabric and the hard, cold flooring of the house.

She had gotten up, she had wiped the blood off her face, she ignored the oncoming tears and she had kicked the man in a vulnerable spot- one with pressure points and one that would take down a boulder of a man in a heartbeat.

The sensation she received from exploiting the bodily concepts of others was enthralling. Her knuckles connecting with the flesh of cheek; the palm of her hand brushing against the skin of forehead; the ball of her foot careening off of the fabric of the skirt that covered abdomen. Everything was a joy to perceive, but she wouldn’t become cocky as of yet. She still needed to sway, to progress and unite her feelings- exposing them in the form of tactical training and understanding of the human body.

She knew pressure points fairly well which in turn became useful to her in the long run. Among other things, she knew she was more intellectual than this man. She had a better, more reinforced background when it came to education and even common sense.

She would beat him- she could beat him and she would beat him even if it called for the simplicity of her thumb against his windpipe.

So here she was with a crowd cheering for her excellence and bravery and for her training in the martial arts, but here also was her fate turning upside down as the man she had assumed she knocked out was standing up again. Only this time he didn’t look nearly as amused as he had when his fist went through her cheek bone.

Lenz turned when the cheering and clapping ceased. She pivoted on her heel and faced a beast- a monster of a creature with every kind of resemblance there ever was to man. She eyed him with sheer force and the only willpower she had left to muster from the depths of the caverns of her soul.

But why did her mouth have to open? She was doing so well as she was- why did she feel obliged to shout out a taunting command- one that was certainly serve her more pain that she had already endured.

Her mind was reeling at a thousand words a minute. Her eyes were scanning the crowd, observing their facial features, but at the same time they were examining her foe and taking in what he looked like at that particular moment in time.

Double tasking had never created success in the past, so why did she assume it would now? Was it the adrenaline that was currently pulsing through her veins and arteries? Was it overconfidence that swam through her nerve endings and concocted false outcomes of wins and lavish wealth? Was she seeking popularity of proof?

She shook her head, but did not stop talking.

“Do you still want more?” she jeered subconsciously, her tormenting voice still ringing through the crowd and the establishment they occupied.

What was she doing? Why couldn’t she just stay silence and enjoy the pride and wondrous experience she was currently getting? She didn’t know, and instead of dwelling on all the options and alternatives, she spoke again, saliva dribbling off her upper lip and tongue.

She was still being stupid and taking her advantage too far. She was becoming cocky and she was adamant about showing it, for some reason or another.

“Don’t be a weakling you petcher.”

Shyke.

[Lenz]

21st of Summer, 514 AV
The Blood Pits

The man smiled with malignant sincerity. It was a look of pure hatred- but one with disastrous intent. It made the woman with red hair shiver.

The hairs on her arms and legs pulled up and raised themselves so that they felt course rather than their smooth stagnant comfort. She did not feel comfort now. This was different- she was in trouble and she felt uneasy at that expression that had latched onto his lips and left in the blink of an eye.

His lips curled and he groaned or did he growl? at her presence. His malefic gesture he made with his hand suggested she would die, but from a knife across the throat? They were fighting using their bodies- their arms and legs- not with weapons like daggers or blades of any sort. She was timidly confused but only for a second before the brute made his next move with curious yet cautious understanding.

The moment was quickly becoming more portentous, but it was also quickly getting out of hand. It was no longer in her control as a rapid hand slapped across her face, sending her body convulsing to the side. She landed in a heap a few feet from her opponent’s feet, but she did not give up.

She was brave and she was independent and she was strong. Her endurable tendencies were coming in handy as she pulled herself to her knees and then courageously rolled to the side as a foot was slamming into the floor of where her head had recently been laying.

Hoisting herself up, she gracefully lifted her leg and pivoted on her other foot. Twisting her hips she sent the ball of her bare foot to the side of the man’s face. It careened off his cheek and sent him pole-vaulting forward.

Lenz did not lavish in the success of her attack. She hoisted up her arms so that they were both covering her midsection and a partiality of her face. She drew her eyebrows down and gave the most intimidating, scrutinizing glare she could achieve before curling her own lip and growling in response to his previous actions.

She dropped to the ground so that she was now level with her enemy and with one knee on the ground and the other slightly hovering over the mat she shifted her weight and turned, twisting and pivoting on her knee until her raised leg slammed into his face again. She quickly jumped up again, maintaining the higher ground, but there was nothing preventing or prohibiting the next course of action from occurring.

The man, whom she assumed was named some slang term for ‘killer’ or ‘beast’, was already recuperating from the attack. He was on his knees with a malignant disease spreading over his facial features. She was afraid to touch him for fear of becoming poised by his darkness. But she was at a loss for the man lunged forward from his kneeling position and collided into her chest, wrapping his arms around her waist and lacing his fingers from behind her back.

Lenz was pushed back. Her head hit the mat unsurprisingly hard. Pinpricks of black marred her vision, causing her to wonder what had happened to her sight. Was she going blind? What was this ringing sound in her ears that was more vexing than insults that ran like fast currents in a river?

The man had landed on top of her, pinning her to the ground and preventing her from recovering her standings. She was the weaker of the two now and in this current predicament she wouldn’t get out alive, conscious in the very least.

Heat overcame her body and continued to press into her so that she felt like she would explode at any minute. She gasped, trying to find the breath she still had. She held in a large gulp of air before preparing for the worst she knew was coming for her.

She was right about that.

His knuckles started to rain down on her face. First her lip cracked, spraying blood all over her face and into her eyes. Next, her nose started to bleed. Thankfully there were no signs of a break in the bone or even a fracture, but that’s not to say that it wouldn’t be disfigured relatively soon. She hadn’t broken it as of yet, but she was sure that if she allowed this thug to continue harming her it would be. And what was her reward if she moved?

Pride.

Frigid and dense pride.

She strived for pride and pride was something she was willing to fight for with her last, dying breath in the selfish and terrible life she had ever lived. She liked to prove her worth and the very existence of contempt drove her over the edge of the cliff.

This current position, with a man on top of her and her under his weight was most unnerving. He might still have his pants on and he might not be holding down her arms with one hand and undressing her with his other, but the concept still remained the same. It was fresh in her mind- the memory of that night and she was not going to lose.

Not to this man! She would rather die than lose to something of such volatile origins.

[Lenz]

21st of Summer, 514 AV
The Blood Pits

With her cheeks quickly growing numb, she used the length of motion she contained in her legs to kick and thrash. She wrestled with the man for a few moments before using her strength to knee him in the arse, earning a cry of pain from his lips. He weakened his grasp on her hips, giving her the moment she needed to throw him off her abdomen.

Once she was free she took no time trying to gain back her breath. She planted her foot and jabbed her foot into his midsection. He groaned, but the sound was dissatisfying. She needed more from him and she needed it now.

She was sure she was beating his stomach contents to a pulp, his intestines included. She was splintering ribs and callousing the foul flesh that crafted the entirety of his body and the entire time she could have cared less.

With her left eye swollen, her lower lip split in half and her nose bloodied, she continued to use her lower body’s power and kick the living essence out of his body. Each and every time she sent a foot to his midsection she screamed out vulgar words. Pathetic cretin, unnecessary dick, pitiful human among others.

The man finally conceded, sticking his arm in the air as to signify his defeat, but Lenz didn’t stop. She continued to berate him with her fists as he toppled her knuckles onto his brow and into his nose. She was crouching over him now until she was pulled off of him by the others that surrounded them and watched with their mouths gaped open and their minds clouded without clear judgment. It was a surprise that they had even comprehended the man’s danger when she was leaning over him with a grin full of deleterious.

“No! Let me finish him!” she shrieked as she was being carried away.

Before she knew it she was tossed out of the ring. Some were cheering around her and others were wary of her sanity. Both sides were right in their internal thoughts, but only one came out on top. The ones that questioned her insanity.

She began to revolt, rebellious activation construing the metamorphosis that was starting to conquer her intelligence and visual perception. She slammed her head into the head of the man in front of her and twisted the arm of the woman who was grasping her shoulder. She kicked the man beside her in his knee and created a riot in the establishment. Everyone started freaking out, attacking their partners and thinking that everyone was against them- their enemy- which they were in her own mind’s eye.

Finally they had come across the person who had started the catastrophe. She was a woman with redhead and dark hazel eyes. They managed to grasp her writhing body and toss her out the front door, leaving her in the dust before secluding her with the slam of the entrance door.

“Petching imbeciles,” she spat.

Her rage still quivered in the base of stomach. It was distorting the schematics of her intestinal tract. The acid was bubbling out of control- there was no counteractive ingredients to subside the pain that was clenching her sides and ribcage.

She gripped her abdomen and started to walk slowly away from the bloody pit. She couldn’t concede to the dominance of her emotions, but how else would she retire the aggravation that was swarming inside of her?

Beads of sweat began to form on her forehead. She wiped at them with the back of her sleeve and decided to pick up her pace. She planted her left foot in front of her right and lunged into a full on sprint. It was a dead attack, her feet slamming into the pavement as if it had tried to kill her with its solidity.

She didn’t know where she was going. All she knew was that she needed to get out of the city. With this desired achievement in mind, she ran through the alleyways, racing against time and befriending the wind as if it was her last life support- the last thread she could hang onto that let her survive in her putrefying life.

She continued to run, her heartbeat hammering away in her chest until she emerged from the desolate and deteriorating buildings. She wasn’t near Tent City and she wasn’t near any buildings that lingered past the border line that suggested ‘within civilization’. So where was she and why did she feel confused but not quite lost?

She sought a tree, positioned to her left, and made a headway jog to it. The first thing that came to her mind was to beat its porous bark inwards so that it revealed its inner wooden shell and not the dense skin it wore with neutrality. She wanted to expose things for what they really were, but wasn’t that what she was doing to herself just now?

Was she a witch in disguise? Was she a crazed person with the need to watch others suffer? Was she insane or lost in the purgatory world between reality and vision? She shuddered and wrapped her arms around her torso, walking quicker through the forest until she could no longer be seen from the outside.

She found a decent sized tree and positioned herself in front of it, releasing her grip on her arms. A breeze blew through her hair, sending her fringe into her face. She brushed it away before hopping on the balls of her feet.

She lifted her leg and threw it towards the tree. It slammed into the bark and chipped a few particles from the wooden texture. She hit it with the ball of her foot, still bare because she had refrained from wearing shoes this day.

She rocked back on her heels after the impact and felt the pain as blisters popped from off her feet and the substance from within them oozed out the sides of the wound. She gritted her teeth and prepared to attack again.

She turned, twisting her body before pivoting her foot that was stuck stabilizing herself from a grounded position. She raised her arms for defense and her combatant stare defended her self-esteem as she turned and struck the tree with a twisting back kick. Her foot marred the bark as well as her foot itself. She braved through the stinging sensation that elicited the neurons and pain receptors in her flesh. She sighed and went back to work.

She threw out a punch, one that was sent to the side, careening off the wood with forceful momentum. Blood started to seep out from an injury she had just created on her knuckles, but she neglected to check it over to see the damage that had been made. She was too heated to stop and observe her scrapes and bruises now. She was too heated to even care.

She sent more fists into the bark just as the man had done to her face. She envisioned his face in the tree and continued to strike it until she could no longer feel her fingers. This is when she stopped and fell to the ground in a heap of quiet sobs and quivering shoulders.

How pathetic, huh?

[Lenz]

21st of Summer, 514 AV
The Blood Pits

She felt slaughtered, her abrasive side having been excoriated off. The skirmish retaliating to the onslaught of battle inside her was becoming too much for her to bear. The simple thought of defeat caused her stomach to double over and twist and turn in fright.

Strap yourself down and deal with the pain.

“It isn’t that simple cretin!”

It isn’t real; it’s merely mental perspective and something you can easily get rid of with time. You’re weak as I have seen before, but I never knew you were this pathetic. This is an all-time low for you.

“I cannot get rid of you that way.”

Is that all that you comprehended from my words?

“No,” she said softly, blinking away the tears that had begun to stain her cheeks.

“That was not what I got from what you said. It’s simply what I wish I could remember. I wish I could remember how we met so that I can go back and reverse the process. I despise you- the very existence of you in my mind. You’re worse than those putrid scoundrels around me. You may a savant, but you are the very savant of satanic beings sent down here to torture me until my demise.”

Very good, it said vexingly.

“Stop doing that!” she shouted before jumping to her feet.

With her fists already in pain, she only caused more severity to her current injuries by blasting her knuckles back into the tree. She hit it repeatedly before adding in new techniques.

She spun on her heel and pivoted with her arm until the side of her foot came crashing into the trunk of the tree. The side of her open hand collided in the same area, creating a sort of ‘ridged hand technique’.

The kick she had sent wailing toward the tree represented a sort of ‘swinging front kick’ which she valued with high quality. Her foot and hand hurt intensively, but her mind had quieted for the time being.

She wasn’t done, however. She still had pent up energy that was raging inside of her body; a vessel that simply held her heart and brain and nothing else. Even her heart was withering away at an unexpected yet exceptional rate.

She continued to punch the tree straight on, remembering to keep her thumb from being crunched up under her clenched knuckles. Someone could break their thumb if they kept it contained like that, but she knew better; that brain inside her skull wasn’t just their for displaying purposes.

She exposed her foot yet again from out of the long and waving grasses. She turned on her heel once again and cocked her neck so that she could see over her shoulder now that her back was facing the tree. She completed her turn before raising her foot and ‘back kicking’ the tree from a position set without truly seeing her target.

Her aim was off, but she barely managed to skim the tree before splinters of wood came careening off the tree.

“Petch you!” she bellowed to no one in particular.

Peculiar, came the voice yet again.

“Leave me alone you beast of a being,” Lenz retaliated, recoiling from her most recent attack on her inanimate unarmed combat buddy.

You are much crazier than I had fist anticipated. My assumption was most incredulously off.

A thick scream attempted to shudder ever leaf from off of their designated branches. Before Lenz had time to realise it was her scream that was causing the eqarth to trembled underneath her, she had already began sprinting into the forest.

Her legs ached and her lungs started to burn, but she just continued to plant one foot in front of the other ad she sped through the continuously descending night.

She didn’t stop when she caught sight of her tent, for she wasn’t tired. Her entire body throbbed with both physical and emotional pain and her head was drumming with mental strain. She would not quit until her life was put back into place.

But that would never happen, would it?

So the woman with enticingly vivid scarlet hair continued to run through the night until she would tire. Then, she would slow down to a gentle jog before falling unconscious beneath an evergreen tree.

I'm still here.