She did at the very least use please this time, which as far as he can tell makes for progress of some sort.
Naturally this would then be the part of their exchange where she would volunteer her own name and title, though instead of dragging her into it by demand, he simply waits, one hand resting idly across the hilt of his own longsword.
Perhaps civility lies somewhere within her. She is tall enough to have room for it to hide away in a distant limb. Possibly a thumb or forefinger.
"Jone of Denerim. 'The Monster', they call me." She dips low-- as low as her armor will let her-- into a mockery of a bow. "You ain't a Vint, right? Or a mage?"
She's looking him over with unveiled suspicion, trying to suss out what she's dealing with. It's only now occurred to her that there may be something undesirable under that armor. (If his face is fucked up, that's one thing. If he's a fucking Magister, he's not only unfuckable but a complete waste to mankind.)
Beneath the helmet his eyes drift shut for a beat, invisible to his conversational partner; he tries— hinging on sluggish supposition— to retread the lessons he’s been taught in days passed about the particulars of this world and its plight: much has become part of his vocabulary.
A great many more, however, have yet to take root.
“Do you refer to Tevinter?”
The question itself is no more than a map marker, unimportant aside from guiding him in grasping where her distaste and allegiances lie. It segues neatly into his own response in turn, something to assuage what he can only perceive as concern judging by the expression she wears while scrutinizing him once more.
“This world is not my own.”
Palm turning over— his other hand rising to cup across it and shield it from the midday sun, revealing a narrow sliver of green magic that cuts through the otherwise armored base of his glove.
"Oh, blimey, you're one of them Rifter twats." Yet there's obvious relief in his expression. He's clearly not a mage in all that sodding armor, and he's not a real magister, so everything that could be wrong with him, isn't.
And as much as she pokes fun at his potential appearance, it's more from a combative nature than genuine disgust. Potential disgust. Whatever, plenty of good folk haven't a nose.
She hefts up her poleaxe, smiling. "Well, let's see what kind of scrapping they teach in other worlds," she says, condescendingly.
There’s amusement to be had in it, the way she visibly shifts again, utterly transparent in her own emotions. He does not dwell on it for long, hands dropping instead to heft the pair of swords kept sheathed at his hips: the shorter clutched backwards against his grip, brought high to his chest as the long sword rises lower than its twin. A blanketing guard for a weapon— and a woman— with long reach.
“But if I am to remain, I might as well make it interesting.”
Again there is no masking it, the way his voice rises slightly higher in pitch with unslaked thirst. Each day spent here has been a day spent cutting his teeth on straw targets and wooden dummies: no sport, no thrill to it, as dull as going through the motions to keep from stiffening in disuse.
So he wastes no time, spares no breath. His first movement surges forward into her positioning even as he speaks, longsword scraping along the front of her poleaxe to measure the strength of force behind it (does she rely on swiftness or raw power, he wonders), while his secondary weapon remains too far from her to even so much as graze her chest. A halfway point between them, establishing blows and nothing more.
There's that grin again, all excitement, almost pure in its joy. He called her a monster. Oh, he might be perfect.
The weapons he holds have almost as long a reach as hers, which is a fun new challenge. Generally, she has to work to wind up to this, get herself a bit battered before the reaver strength kicks in. But a slow start, especially when he's clearly not interested in fucking around, sounds a lot like a death sentence.
(Not really; she knows they're sparring. But the part of her that knows is small and gently hidden behind a wall of bloodlust.)
So her first salvo is to go low, trying to knock him from his current stance. She moves quickly, but the armor doesn't let her duck much. When she's dressed like this, she's used to aiming high, going for dragons and monsters. She'll have to compensate for the disadvantage or get swatted.
But, welll... a good blow to the head would really liven her up.
Her instincts don't fail her: as a rule Gabranth gives no quarter to anyone worth fighting, and now that he is certain her armor will hold, each movement— each press and dive of his blade— is raw conviction driven home. His strikes are made true by determination alone, and he expects his opponent to yield to them accordingly.
That she does not is a credit to her name.
When she drives back against his own advance, it doesn't lead to a retreat, to a tentative circling of one another as most strategies would suggest: he tangles himself across her front with a crushing shove of his shoulder into her plate, intending fully to brute force her footing out of place.
Though of course that only works against an opponent without sufficient strength to withstand it.
She's not getting the blows she wants; he's cautious. A good fighter, perhaps a great one. Respect mingles with admiration, two things she's sure she'll never show him. People of quality, you have to push, or they'll end up yellow-bellied.
This is an old trick, from her younger days, and she's not too proud of it. She bites her tongue, and tastes blood. It's not much, but it's enough, along with the shove to the shoulder, to withstand the next blow. And that just doubles her strength.
Sure-footed, she surges forward, aiming the dull side of her blade for his throat. His armor doesn't have a bevor, so it will hurt if it lands, but it won't be deadly.
He senses it but a split-second before it connects, lifting his shoulder in vain to try and level the blunt edge of her axe across the high rise of his pauldron— but shoving himself into her left him far too open to have any real effect on its momentum— it strikes him squarely on target, knocking him aside in one smooth, clean motion, choked-off noise caught hard against the back of his own teeth.
It’s like boiling blood, like the heady rush of adrenaline in his veins, how quickly fury rises up to meet him in the aftermath. How rather than tumbling to the earth he twists his own center of balance, turning on his heel and thrusting both blades forward into the front of her breastplate— one angled high to prevent her from narrowing her defense with closed arms, as his short sword is instead chased by the brutal slam of his armored fist against the narrower plating covering her collarbone, right across the joint.
Jone is brute force, not quickness, not cleverness. The hit connects with exposed throat, and she makes a sound that could be confused with a choked laugh. Blood dribbles out of her mouth. She is at her worst, ugliest and most wild.
Once, being this creature made her insecure. Maybe it still does. What's important is how she deals with it, pinning her lack of beauty and grace in place with sharp words and hard actions.
"So, spring, then? Always loved a spring wedding, me."
Her next strike is all strength, all the pain in her focused to one point-- thrusting her poleaxe's point straight for the Gabranth's knee, trying to get at the joint, stop him bloody moving.
He should feel guilt at the sight of it, wretch that he is. Penance paid in blood and service, the promise that he would do better for the name lost to him when Archadia crushed his homeland beneath its heel.
But he is exactly who he is. The lesser of two brothers. The crueler of them. When bloodlust finds him, he knows little else, and beneath his helm is nothing but a furious scowl, baring the bitterness of his own frustration.
He snaps the hilts of his blades together the moment her eyeline drops, letting them lock with a secure click beneath his fingers: with no helmet obscuring her face, he can track exactly where her attention rests— swiftly batting aside her poleaxe with what could pass for his own, now.
“Enough—“
The edges of those conjoined blades go white-hot with sudden heat, painting the air around them with a tangle of ashen embers.
The flurry of swings that advance on her in the wake of it are quite literally searing, lightning quick and without so much as a touch of care or concern for the sparring partner he’d so diligently guarded once before.
The heat, and the shock, and the terror. He'd said he was a magister, and she hadn't listened. Those swords connect into a proper fucking staff. He's a mage and he wants to kill her.
It's daft, but she'd always planned to go out for something a bit more glorious than a spar go wrong.
So she charges him. She can feel searing burns, feel her armor heating, the straps underneath beginning to buckle under the heat. She isn't rich enough to afford the fine stuff. A pauldron falls off, and she doesn't notice. The whole of her attention is focused on a fact she noticed before. No bevor. Short gorget. If she angles this right, she's pretty sure she can hit him in the throat.
Screaming with rage, mouth bloody, she surges forward for one final thrust, intending to catch his head between the dull side of her axe and the point at the top of the pole. "C'mon!"
He can see it. He watches it land, her strike as clean and true as any made by skilled hands.
He feels the impact where it catches his throat, the side of his neck quick to warm in the shadow of his helmet where that metal point snared skin as it coursed along its intended path. His own blade, still humming with untempered heat, hovers but an inch from her gorget in turn— but the sight of it cuts through his seething fury quicker than a breath, and though his helmet remains a stony mask, his swords withdraw, their flame dying as he unceremoniously splits them apart.
"If you kill me," she says, voice harsh and throaty, "make it better than that."
She drops her weapon, fight apparently over. Snaps off her other pauldron, taking off her cuirass as well. Underneath is a worn, tired gambeson. There are burns underneath, but the worst seems to have been caught by metal and padding.
"Fuck me, I feel like a kicked ballbag. You want a drink?"
A demand, not a petition. He feels tired in that moment, in ways he is unused to; the Mist must run thin here, for his magic cuts more from him than it did in either Ivalice or the gods’ own battlegrounds. A faint tingling in his fingertips, armor sitting faintly heavier across his shoulders.
But he’ll adapt, in time.
“Yes.”
Said only after he sheathes his blades, already working to collect her fallen armor from where she’d left it settled in the dirt.
There's more than one barrel of beer on the training grounds. It's not good stuff, low proof and more for room-temperature calories than it is getting soused. Still, it's something, and Jone doesn't have to go far to procure two mugs of the stuff.
She takes her armor back, letting it sit next to her on the ground. "You can't let folk know you're a mage like that. They'll have you in fetters, Gab."
That it was unintentional is a pale excuse, and not one Gabranth is willing to lean on in the face of her sincerity. When he reaches out to take the second mug, it’s only to slide it closer towards him, not to take it up or bring it to his own lips.
He’ll drink it later, once he’s returned to his quarters.
“Is it true, then? That magic holds no place in your world?”
"Oh, it has a place," she says with a sneer, "folk love healers. But even them get round up. Took my brother when he was twelve. Things're nicer now, but if you go around with killing magic?"
She looks at him, lukewarm beer at her lips. "Well, let's say I'll never get to see that pretty mug of yours."
Not in regards to the magicite in Ivalice— not with the strength of will afforded to them by the gods themselves.
“Power is always power: those who are too weak to protect themselves will suffer, and those who suffer will surely be lost in time beneath the heels of those bearing down upon them. Why reject something that could save your world, simply because it bears risk?”
There is a bristling exhale beneath the span of his own helmet as he sets one heavy glove across his throat, ensuring the shallow flow of blood has stopped.
There’s something in him gone entirely to ice at the words ‘fuck if I know’, his hand still caught lingering across the edge of his own pauldron, helmet entirely unmoving even as she draws nearer to him.
She may as well be nothing more than air, for how his stare attempts to bore through her, breath sitting heavy in his lungs.
Her face scrunches up, a bit. "I kill folk for money, mate. Who wants to meet up with that after two fucking decades? For all I know he's one of them plant mages, in touch with nature, and I rip the heads off dragons. Fuck."
She takes a long sip of the beer, eyes squeezed closed.
He can feel it still, anger burning hot like bile in the back of his throat, rising with each passing second. Misdirected, barely bottled— he cannot help but think of Basch and all his found freedom, gleaming in his given armor, not a thought spared for the brother he’d left behind.
He cannot help but look at Jone’s expression now and see her no differently. Jaw cinched so tight that he threatens to bleed once more.
“Your armor comes with me.”
A sudden turn in conversation, he presses past her as he rises: pulling damaged plating into his arms, claiming his own drink last, a dismissal as plain as the waning sun at their backs.
"Oi! Paid good money for that, I did. You'll not have it as some trophy." She stands, following him on quick feet. She feels like a nag, and it heats her face, ugliness rising once more to the forefront. "It were a tie, anyroad."
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Some part of her hopes it doesn't end in ius. Please don't be a fucking Vint.
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She did at the very least use please this time, which as far as he can tell makes for progress of some sort.
Naturally this would then be the part of their exchange where she would volunteer her own name and title, though instead of dragging her into it by demand, he simply waits, one hand resting idly across the hilt of his own longsword.
Perhaps civility lies somewhere within her. She is tall enough to have room for it to hide away in a distant limb. Possibly a thumb or forefinger.
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She's looking him over with unveiled suspicion, trying to suss out what she's dealing with. It's only now occurred to her that there may be something undesirable under that armor. (If his face is fucked up, that's one thing. If he's a fucking Magister, he's not only unfuckable but a complete waste to mankind.)
Lbr tho if he was from Thedas he’d be Tevinter
Beneath the helmet his eyes drift shut for a beat, invisible to his conversational partner; he tries— hinging on sluggish supposition— to retread the lessons he’s been taught in days passed about the particulars of this world and its plight: much has become part of his vocabulary.
A great many more, however, have yet to take root.
“Do you refer to Tevinter?”
The question itself is no more than a map marker, unimportant aside from guiding him in grasping where her distaste and allegiances lie. It segues neatly into his own response in turn, something to assuage what he can only perceive as concern judging by the expression she wears while scrutinizing him once more.
“This world is not my own.”
Palm turning over— his other hand rising to cup across it and shield it from the midday sun, revealing a narrow sliver of green magic that cuts through the otherwise armored base of his glove.
squenix!!!
And as much as she pokes fun at his potential appearance, it's more from a combative nature than genuine disgust. Potential disgust. Whatever, plenty of good folk haven't a nose.
She hefts up her poleaxe, smiling. "Well, let's see what kind of scrapping they teach in other worlds," she says, condescendingly.
cue the FF battle music
There’s amusement to be had in it, the way she visibly shifts again, utterly transparent in her own emotions. He does not dwell on it for long, hands dropping instead to heft the pair of swords kept sheathed at his hips: the shorter clutched backwards against his grip, brought high to his chest as the long sword rises lower than its twin. A blanketing guard for a weapon— and a woman— with long reach.
“But if I am to remain, I might as well make it interesting.”
Again there is no masking it, the way his voice rises slightly higher in pitch with unslaked thirst. Each day spent here has been a day spent cutting his teeth on straw targets and wooden dummies: no sport, no thrill to it, as dull as going through the motions to keep from stiffening in disuse.
So he wastes no time, spares no breath. His first movement surges forward into her positioning even as he speaks, longsword scraping along the front of her poleaxe to measure the strength of force behind it (does she rely on swiftness or raw power, he wonders), while his secondary weapon remains too far from her to even so much as graze her chest. A halfway point between them, establishing blows and nothing more.
“Come, then, Monster!”
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The weapons he holds have almost as long a reach as hers, which is a fun new challenge. Generally, she has to work to wind up to this, get herself a bit battered before the reaver strength kicks in. But a slow start, especially when he's clearly not interested in fucking around, sounds a lot like a death sentence.
(Not really; she knows they're sparring. But the part of her that knows is small and gently hidden behind a wall of bloodlust.)
So her first salvo is to go low, trying to knock him from his current stance. She moves quickly, but the armor doesn't let her duck much. When she's dressed like this, she's used to aiming high, going for dragons and monsters. She'll have to compensate for the disadvantage or get swatted.
But, welll... a good blow to the head would really liven her up.
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That she does not is a credit to her name.
When she drives back against his own advance, it doesn't lead to a retreat, to a tentative circling of one another as most strategies would suggest: he tangles himself across her front with a crushing shove of his shoulder into her plate, intending fully to brute force her footing out of place.
Though of course that only works against an opponent without sufficient strength to withstand it.
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This is an old trick, from her younger days, and she's not too proud of it. She bites her tongue, and tastes blood. It's not much, but it's enough, along with the shove to the shoulder, to withstand the next blow. And that just doubles her strength.
Sure-footed, she surges forward, aiming the dull side of her blade for his throat. His armor doesn't have a bevor, so it will hurt if it lands, but it won't be deadly.
She hopes not, anyway.
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It’s like boiling blood, like the heady rush of adrenaline in his veins, how quickly fury rises up to meet him in the aftermath. How rather than tumbling to the earth he twists his own center of balance, turning on his heel and thrusting both blades forward into the front of her breastplate— one angled high to prevent her from narrowing her defense with closed arms, as his short sword is instead chased by the brutal slam of his armored fist against the narrower plating covering her collarbone, right across the joint.
And another, if she isn’t quick enough.
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Once, being this creature made her insecure. Maybe it still does. What's important is how she deals with it, pinning her lack of beauty and grace in place with sharp words and hard actions.
"So, spring, then? Always loved a spring wedding, me."
Her next strike is all strength, all the pain in her focused to one point-- thrusting her poleaxe's point straight for the Gabranth's knee, trying to get at the joint, stop him bloody moving.
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But he is exactly who he is. The lesser of two brothers. The crueler of them. When bloodlust finds him, he knows little else, and beneath his helm is nothing but a furious scowl, baring the bitterness of his own frustration.
He snaps the hilts of his blades together the moment her eyeline drops, letting them lock with a secure click beneath his fingers: with no helmet obscuring her face, he can track exactly where her attention rests— swiftly batting aside her poleaxe with what could pass for his own, now.
“Enough—“
The edges of those conjoined blades go white-hot with sudden heat, painting the air around them with a tangle of ashen embers.
The flurry of swings that advance on her in the wake of it are quite literally searing, lightning quick and without so much as a touch of care or concern for the sparring partner he’d so diligently guarded once before.
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The heat, and the shock, and the terror. He'd said he was a magister, and she hadn't listened. Those swords connect into a proper fucking staff. He's a mage and he wants to kill her.
It's daft, but she'd always planned to go out for something a bit more glorious than a spar go wrong.
So she charges him. She can feel searing burns, feel her armor heating, the straps underneath beginning to buckle under the heat. She isn't rich enough to afford the fine stuff. A pauldron falls off, and she doesn't notice. The whole of her attention is focused on a fact she noticed before. No bevor. Short gorget. If she angles this right, she's pretty sure she can hit him in the throat.
Screaming with rage, mouth bloody, she surges forward for one final thrust, intending to catch his head between the dull side of her axe and the point at the top of the pole. "C'mon!"
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He feels the impact where it catches his throat, the side of his neck quick to warm in the shadow of his helmet where that metal point snared skin as it coursed along its intended path. His own blade, still humming with untempered heat, hovers but an inch from her gorget in turn— but the sight of it cuts through his seething fury quicker than a breath, and though his helmet remains a stony mask, his swords withdraw, their flame dying as he unceremoniously splits them apart.
As he exhales, his throat tense with pain.
“Forgive me.”
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She drops her weapon, fight apparently over. Snaps off her other pauldron, taking off her cuirass as well. Underneath is a worn, tired gambeson. There are burns underneath, but the worst seems to have been caught by metal and padding.
"Fuck me, I feel like a kicked ballbag. You want a drink?"
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A demand, not a petition. He feels tired in that moment, in ways he is unused to; the Mist must run thin here, for his magic cuts more from him than it did in either Ivalice or the gods’ own battlegrounds. A faint tingling in his fingertips, armor sitting faintly heavier across his shoulders.
But he’ll adapt, in time.
“Yes.”
Said only after he sheathes his blades, already working to collect her fallen armor from where she’d left it settled in the dirt.
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She takes her armor back, letting it sit next to her on the ground. "You can't let folk know you're a mage like that. They'll have you in fetters, Gab."
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He’ll drink it later, once he’s returned to his quarters.
“Is it true, then? That magic holds no place in your world?”
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She looks at him, lukewarm beer at her lips. "Well, let's say I'll never get to see that pretty mug of yours."
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Not in regards to the magicite in Ivalice— not with the strength of will afforded to them by the gods themselves.
“Power is always power: those who are too weak to protect themselves will suffer, and those who suffer will surely be lost in time beneath the heels of those bearing down upon them. Why reject something that could save your world, simply because it bears risk?”
There is a bristling exhale beneath the span of his own helmet as he sets one heavy glove across his throat, ensuring the shallow flow of blood has stopped.
“...what of your brother? Where is he now?”
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Ignoring the smell of burning hair, she continues-- "Why reject something that- mate, you could've killed me if you'd tried a little harder."
Yet she leans closer to him, grinning at him. "That was bloody brilliant, by the way. Very sexy."
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She may as well be nothing more than air, for how his stare attempts to bore through her, breath sitting heavy in his lungs.
“You never searched for him?”
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She takes a long sip of the beer, eyes squeezed closed.
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He cannot help but look at Jone’s expression now and see her no differently. Jaw cinched so tight that he threatens to bleed once more.
“Your armor comes with me.”
A sudden turn in conversation, he presses past her as he rises: pulling damaged plating into his arms, claiming his own drink last, a dismissal as plain as the waning sun at their backs.
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