No Place Like Yours [Myri]

[Mihai]

He already knew her to be the greatest of enemies, and he fought her with a fatalistic heart, knowing he could never win, but striving always to make it more difficult for her to do so. If he sharpened his claws on her shield, they would be sharper for the flesh of her enemies. But he tried to tune out her words now. He knew that he could learn from some of them, but much of his skill at violence came from instinct and her words always got in the way of his instincts, making him hesitate, making him lose. Paws too big for his lanky body swiped with lightning speed, keeping her mostly at bay. He swerved his body, sinuous as a serpent's, trying to get past her guard, around her, to sink his teeth into a hamstring. He wondered what her flesh tasted like, whether eating a part of her would make him stronger. Whether it would grow back. But then he pushed those thoughts away, because those thoughts would distract him, too, stand between him and his instinctive power. Ears laid back, he snarled a warning at her. She knew his fears in any case. They weren't so very difficult to suss out. He feared being alone even though he craved solitude. He feared her rejection, for he was a Kelvic. He feared that someone would come and do to her what she did to dead Ruros so long ago, time out of mind. He knew she suffered him gladly, but didn't need him the way he needed her, the way he needed something, someone. He saw an opening finally, and refused to think whether it was a ruse to trick him. She would always be faster and smarter, and he could only act when an opportunity presented itself. The blow would land in any case, and so he let the length of the spear smack him painfully, but he twined around it, grasping it in his mouth not far from her fingers, and yanked it out of her hand. Or tried to.

[Cayenne]

“Good,” Myri praised him as he swiped at her, pushing at her advances as she snatched her staff and looked to jab him with it. The best defense he could muster against her was a spirited offense and he knew it - the Goddess-Queen had not asked him to defend while she struck. She had dummies and warriors for that. That had not been the purpose of this exercise. This was for his benefit as much as hers, and they both benefited from his practicing, his learning to sharpen and to follow his instincts. Killing was a fact of life here. There was always something bigger and badder out there, and the odds were great in Falyndar that sooner or later, you would come across it. And the only thing that would stand between you and death was how prepared you were to face it. She wanted him to claw and scratch and bite, to try to spill her blood. If he didn’t want to be hit, learn to avoid the blows. To rip, tear, kill. To get closer, and closer and...

He could sense her surprise as he bit down on the spear, and he wrenched it away from her, and once again, she was unarmed but for the shield. Myri never seemed to mind, though, because the shield worked for her. She did, however, have to jump once, and then twice again to avoid taking the lengthy, heavy weapon in the backs of her legs as the tiger gripped his prize. “Very good,” she laughed, knuckling down behind the shield to push at him once again, pressing it at his side, where she actually managed to pull on his tail!

Was nothing sacred?!

[Mihai]

The spear clattered to the floor as his mouth opened to snarl and snap at her hand, his body curved to catch at her grip on his tail, but when she evaded him, he improvised without thinking, shifting in a flash of light so that his tail disappeared from between her fingers as he immediately dropped to the floor, his hands scrabbling for the spear, which he brought up in a desperate thrust. He knew little of weapons, other than how to evade them. Why lug around a sharp bit of metal when his nature gave him superior weapons and a body designed to put them to good use? But Marcus Kelvic had meddled with his blood line long ago, and now he had the dubious benefit of heightened intelligence, enough to make him better if it married felicitously with his animal nature, but also enough to make the two parts of him war if he could not integrate himself properly. There wasn't even an instant where he allowed himself to be pleased with his successful disarming of the Goddess of War. It was likely that she could make an end game and kill him between one breath and the next, but then... she was the Master, and he lived and died at her pleasure. His human roar as he attempted to gore her with her own weapon was hardly as impressive as a full grown tiger's, but it was fully connected with what he was doing, and would have brought any normal warrior up short. Even an ill-trained young warrior that in touch with his desire to kill could finish a man.

[Cayenne]

The staff struck the metal shield with surprising force, the backlash reverberating throughout his body. “Don’t drop it,” Myri warned him. “If you drop it, you’ll have nothing. I can see you tiring, youngster, shifting back and forth like that isn’t easy, I know. You have to get used to the feel of the weapon in your hands. Anything can be a weapon. Teeth, claws, a stick. Fists. We use everything and anything we can, because so will our enemies. We practice. We hone our instincts. You have what you need to kill. It’s that knowledge that it is you or them. There is no in-between.” She continued to deflect, forcing the staff up or down, whichever struck her fancy. “An enemy left undefeated will always come back to haunt you.”

She ducked under the next blow, using the shield to protect herself from it, standing up suddenly in front of him, too close to be at enough range for the staff. “The benefit and problem of weapons is that each of them has a range. Smaller ones, little daggers, claws, teeth, they allow you to get in close and personal, just like I am now,” she grabbed the staff, her grip tightening like iron. Tall as he was, she towered over him as she spoke to him. “Some, like the staff, force you to keep some distance between you and your opponent. Some are useless close range. Some are not. That is why we learn many of them. We learn to improvise. We fight with everything we have and know, everything our bodies tell us, because if we do not, they will.” She wrenched it from his grip before tossing it and the shield aside with an impossibly loud clatter, leaving both of them without anything but their hands as the Goddess-Queen threw a punch for his shoulder, leaving him room to move and work with it, to take the hit or run with it. He could even shift if he wanted, but sooner or later, that was going to get a little too tiring.

[Mihai]

Suddenly she was within his guard, and while he attempted to use the staff to pull her closer and bite her, even if his teeth were laughable now, she was too strong, disarming him and throwing it all away. Then she struck and he moved, fast but not fast enough, managing to move with the force of her blow at least, swinging around to grapple with her if she did not anticipate him coming around her striking arm and after shoulder and the side of her face. He didn't even consider how outmatched he was. Even in this pewling human form, his battlelust was stoked. She would always counter him, but he would not stop until his resources were spent. In the way of the jungle, that would be her opportunity to kill him, to leave no enemy behind as was her wisdom, but she might just as well let him live to grow stronger and more canny, a better equipped member of her tribe. His growls were a human vocal apparatus' attempts at feline yowls of rage, and likely he looked some dirty, feral boy raised in the wild, attacking without a modicum of civilization's touch. And that's what he was, in a sense. Civilization here was quite different from other lands'.

[Cayenne]

His teeth may have been laughable now, but his intent was not, and that was something Myri approved of. If you wanted something badly enough, you would find a way to overcome it. Strong jaws could still tear out chunks of flesh and muscle, connective ligaments that were necessary to move. It was all relative. If you had the drive to do damage, then you would find a way to do it or die trying.

Myri’s philosophy, with regard to her people, was simple. She wanted her people to be the best, to be strong, to be able to survive in the harsh wilderness that surrounded the city. Taloba itself was an oasis of calm, all things considered, compared to what waited and lurked outside of it. Life in the jungle wasn’t easy. It was hard. To survive here, you needed to be prepared for what waited for you beyond the walls - no one ever stayed in the city their whole lives - anyone that did was hardly a Myrian, and certainly would not have earned a mark from the Goddess-Queen at all. From a young age, that was okay. But as they aged...there was something very wrong with that picture in the eyes of their family and everyone else around them.

Myri let him grab onto her arm, only to deliver a sudden, sharp pinch at the sensitive skin along his inner arm. That would -definitely- leave a mark. So, too, would plenty of the other strikes she had landed on him, and the next one was coming for his kidneys. Still, his desire to learn, to fight, to improve was an attitude that the Goddess-Queen was careful to nurture. There was no point in just crushing him mercilessly time and time again, as they both knew she could, as anyone watching knew that she could - that was not the way to teach one’s children. Doing so crushed the spirit. You gave them the little victories, and showed them new ways, new methods. Like now.