Feral Fists

JP with White_Caribou and Omni

For a moment it seemed like the dark haired witch was going to respond to Voah’s plea, but sadly ended with inevitable impossibility and the continuation of spear versus sword and an arrow grazing neck muscle. She wanted to grab at the wound in pain but growled instead and sloppily blocked the witch’s attack resulting in a nearly devastating wound to the chest above Voah’s heart. Luckily, she was fast enough and at a good distance away from the weapon to redirect at the last second prevent a hit to her vital organ, leaving only a bloody, yet superficial gash.

The last two spear strikes weren’t so dangerous as the ex-Arbiter’s growing experience and focused retaliation wrenched the witch’s weapon from the angry woman’s grip.

It was not just skill, but luck, that she had managed to disarm the witch, for she was highly skilled with the spear. Voah pointed her sword at Shalia, about to speak, when another arrow tore its way through the skin and muscle along her forearm causing her to drop her own weapon.

Voah let out a short howl of pain and grabbed at the injury. She was bruised and bleeding from several places now, but the fight had not yet left her.

Tension hung thickly between them as Shalia watched the sword fall, but she did not stop to consider her options. She knew there was no progress made with their weapons and that blade of hers had potential to be what was protecting her. The holy woman was hit with her magik right before she had grabbed the sword. If not that, then what? The woman was not exactly equipped with much else but what hung at her belt.

The air around them became incredibly frigid the more upset Shalia had become, hands crackling with ice.

While Voah grappled with the new wound, Shalia took on a suddenly animalistic quality, growling and taking a low lunge forward at the holy woman's hips. They were both sent to the ground with a thud. The moment they hit the sandy street, the witch straddled her and brought down her hands in heavy punches on the pretty face beneath.

Fortunate for her the arrow hadn’t impaled and gotten stuck in her arm, but the utter shock of wound had Voah reeling and the next moment there was a dull numbness followed immediately by a white flash of new, intense pain and cold tingling on her face. A brief space of time was missing and now Voah was on her back. The witch was letting loose on her with feral, icy fists and she could already feel the burn of freezing cheeks and blood running from her nose.

Suddenly her senses came back as the witch paused for a second after taking a punch and follow through with an elbow to the eye socket. With her good eye Voah could see a sense of confusion as the witch’s magik seemed to sputter around her hands, the glow of them pulsating and the ice shifting itself around strangely.

Then a natural reaction for survival kicked in and Voah’s pushed herself to fight back. She grabbed a dagger from her bandolier and slammed the backend into the side of the witch's head, wrestling their bodies sideways with the momentum and reversed the pin so that she was on top. She clutched the witch’s porcelain throat with one hand and gave a series of her own punches with the other still holding the dagger backwards. Her face became beaten and bleeding with each strike.

Voah’s muscles flexed and blood flooded down her mouth, teeth bared in desperate rage as she choked and pummeled Shalia Nix. The metallic taste of blood permeated her mouth.

Memories of different varieties came calling back to the ex-Arbiter, all of them tainted. She saw the face of her mother and the face of the V’roni clan whose coven she had single-handedly hunted. The rage gave way too many different and complex emotions. Half-blinded by tears, she loosed her grip on the neck and held her fist back for a vulnerable moment, looking the witch directly in her green eyes with an expression that told a painful history of love, grief, vengeance, and doubt.

Each blow came heavier and harder than the last and the thumping had drowned out the ache of the lost tooth and the stinging cut. The hand clasped around Shalia's throat grew tighter and tighter she feared something might have been crushed if it went much further.
She was filled with an unpleasant swirl of dizziness as she had the woman pinned, a feeling of confusion at the way she could no longer fully control the behavior of her casting. Like it had a mind of its own or was trying to flee from the contact completely. Trying to fight back. She had lost control before, but this? It was a simple thing...so why did she feel so strange out of nowhere?

There was a pause and Shalia had her eyes closed as if to block the view before her. Black out the punches as the hilt slammed into her skin. But her hands lifted and generated an icy gust of wind smaller than she had wanted and it sent Voah flying back and off of her.
She gasped and clung to the air that felt like it pierced her throat as she rolled onto her knees. Her lungs screamed and the witch clambered weekly--almost blindly--into a standing position. She could not focus on any of her sense but what the eyes told her.

That was it. This ended now.

Her breathing was strained as she looked to the holy woman on the ground one last time before holding her hands out at her side. The cold cloud of air around her now crystallized and dissipated back and forth wildly as her hands seemed to charge with a flickering glow--untamed and unpredictable. All she knew is that the force would kill its target. It had to. Her busted and bloodied lips began to move in a hoarse incantation...