Logs:Napoleon Complex
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| RL Date: 3 September, 2015 |
| Who: A'rist, Lythronath, Keysi, Neianth |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: Primal bronze challenges unrelenting, if small, brown at dinner time. A'rist and Keysi have a very brief exchange. |
| Where: Feeding Grounds, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 19, Month 9, Turn 38 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: Very pleasant autumn evening, clear skies. |
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>---< Feeding Grounds, High Reaches Weyr >-----------------------------------< Wedged between the lake and the rest of the vast bowl are the dusty feeding grounds. Here, the well-trampled ground is contained by a sturdy wooden fence, cutting right through one end of the lake to section it off into a muddy watering hole for the animals. Several gates allow people in and out, while at the back, large overhangs of rock provide the herd -- a mixed bag of herdbeasts, wing-clipped wherries, and fat porcines -- shelter from storms or the hot sun. What grass survives is usually bloodstained, but feeding troughs are stationed around the edges of the pen. The herdbeast is inside out. No, really. Lythronath didn't, of course, just invert it, as if having reached in its mouth, grabbed its butt, and pulled. The reversal of the beast's, um, fortunes, came about through a shredding by strong, large talons, and then rolling and clawing. It's inside-out, and it's missing a leg - in that the leg is missing from its body. The leg itself, strewn farther away, is missing some muscle, but otherwise is fairly recognisable. The head, that's still on, though there's no movement coming out of it now. And A'rist, he's staring at the whole scene, intently, rather than through it. He's experiencing it all alongside his bronze. Far above the bowl, the shadowy underside of brown Neianth blinks into being from Between. A roar sends his greeting to the watchdragon instead of a touch of his mind. He circles only briefly, dropping from above to leave the rider on his back somewhere, and then he's back into the air for what seems like a leap and dive. The arch is an agile thing in which wings sweep in something closer to a swim to skip his lean form over the fenceline and ontop of one of the beasts that was as far away from Lythronath within the pen as physically possible. A drip into the shared mind becomes ripples which bring his words « You've returned. » Is simple, an audible chuffing included despite his tan-touched maw shreds teeths into flesh that is very shortly no longer kicking. Keysi is approaching from farther off in the bowl, removing her riding helmet as she closes the gap. « Back, » agrees Lythronath. « Home. » Short bursts, between the distraction of eating intestines, and then putting the strength of his neck and jaw into ripping a front leg off his kill. These have far less meat. These are more for purposes of throwing. Cooling blood spatters a little bit, where it lands. A'rist's attention shifts, first to the small brown as he makes his kill, and then to the leg that's just been hurled in the general vicinity of the fence. He snorts. And doesn't think to look for Neianth's accompanying biped, not yet. Keysi reaches about a foot or two from the fence as the leg is throw against it. Her brown is messy, but not nearly this messy. Pale eyes shift from where Neianth has possessively encircled his kill- wings drapped around it to shield it from any view much like a bird of prey may- to the bronze. And, despite the initial pause that gave her, the brown's rider completes her path with a hand fallen on a post of the fenceline. The brown digs his talons deeply into his kill still warmed with the life freshly taken from it. Muffled, quiet growls escape him, faceted eyes licked red as much as in hunger. His crescent-scarred face lifts to swallow a chunk, and then pauses as he tilts his attention at the prehistoric bronze. Although Neianth doesn't exactly remember that interaction of before, the familiarity remains, but eating creates more importance than talking. "And I thought Neianth made a mess." The level voice says loud enough to be Keysi's version of greeting to Lythronath's. "A lesson in anatomy." Sort of. But the extent of it gets a slight edge of her lips to show something of a grin. It's those growls that draw Lythronath's attention. That, and that his inside-out herdbeast is quickly becoming only an inside-out skeleton. It still has two legs, though. The bronze won't waste a hind leg on that brown, but a forelimb? Sure. Another is torn, and thrown. Lythronath's aim is not deadly. But it's not awful. Three clicks come from his throat, and, should Neianth look over, three bobs of his head as well. A'rist still doesn't look sideways; assumption can supply who's most likely there. Surely he's seen them. Neianth, too, was a baby once, and his dragon sees to it that all the weyrlings are known at one point or another. "There's no part of a herdbeast we don't know." Neianth's wings flare, a hiss as the forelimb makes contact with his exposed hip given his posturing over the kill. Not so zen, not so one with harmony in this state- and surely far from it still in many a situation- the effort from the bronze is awarded an escalation of the brown's protectiveness over his kill. His turn is more of a shuffle than anything, angling himself so he can better watch Lythronath, his head lowered over the still-intact chest of the hooven creature. « Ruined yours, this is mine. » Those ripples are of murky waters now, reddened with the bloodlust, the carnage. "And you don't mind watching?" The tone Keysi uses is level, as if she doesn't exactly mind either, but it's also par for the course. "I suppose I could hazard a guess that the ledge covered in blood that he was sending me images of was yours." Grey eyes watch A'rist from a sidelong view, studying him as much as waiting for a response. « If you keep, » he taunts. Lythronath tears that last limb, but this cleans it (mostly) before flinging it at the younger dragon. One side of a ribcage is picked up. The other side is stepped on. Rip. Bones fall, or are dropped, and crushed beneath the bronze's feet as he turns to face Neianth fully. Now, A'rist does look at Keysi. Look at her, and square his jaw, and say, "No." A nod as he turns his attention back to the displays on the feeding grounds with a vague nod. "I'm surprised they got all the blood out of the barracks, for that matter." Wings rise enough to become a tent over his corner of the pen; this demonstrating well how oversized for the small brown they are as if the rest of him didn't quite keep up with their growth. But clearly Neianth doesn't think himself nearly so small in comparison to the bronze. Bones crunch as one forpaw steps on that chest in order to lift the other and swat the next limb thrown through the air to send it skidding across the blood-soaked ground a couple feet away. Tail lashes, « Of course I will keep it. » The ripples become choppier, aggitated in nature though the brown's shared touch of mind is a close match between rising to a challenge, easily, and a feral touch in relation to feeding. « You could not take it. » Keysi's eyes narrow, though it's likely not because of A'rist. Her gaze remains away after that, the intensity about her tangible regardless, even if she isn't exactly tense. "With all the scrubbing and re-scrubbing, eventually-" She trails off, "But I didn't go looking for evidence of that." Head tips towards the bloody pre-battle, "He may have some signature left there, somewhere." "Pretty sure there's still a few feathers floating around there, anyway," A'rist says. He's watching as Lythronath takes more slow steps, head lowered and bobbing, tail swinging out behind him. « Silly brown, » taunts Lythronath. « Little brown. » Teeth snap at the air. And then he makes a show of breathing in the scent of the other dragon's kill. "Maybe some splinters," is long enough separated that it might seem not to follow at all. Neianth places that darkly-hewn paw down in front of the dead creature, his white talons so bloodied, they hardly seem so starkly bright any longer. His posturing continues as head stays very still despite movement, lowered like a stalking feline and tail uncurling out behind him only as he advances as if it's still in place mid-air. The offense he takes to that comment is significant enough that as his second paw releases its grip from the ribcage without unhooking his claws, ripping the flesh and bringing with it a spray of blood as he swipes the air with a deep-throated roar. Mindvoice demonstrates a heaviness, a vastness that doesn't match the small size of him. Keysi's faint grin is long gone by now, the furrows of her brow a mirrored if significantly diminished example of Neianth's anger. Her fingers tap on the wood of the post, and after a few moments, as if the interaction is expected and not-escalating, "He said you went somewhere." Big open mindvoices don't bother this bronze. He's seen worse. Recently, even. That clicking has started, slowly, menacingly, not quite rhythmic. Lythronath plants each foot carefully, churning up soil and blood and bits of animal beneath them, wherever it is he steps. "Ierne," confirms A'rist. "Back now, though," comes with the drag of the back of his hand under his nose, and a little sniff. And then, Lythronath feints to one side, a lunge without contact. Neianth lunges forwards to meet the non-contact in very close proximity, back claws digging into the carcass to shove it back behind himself, protected by whatever girth he does claim. He is, at least, bigger than a green, and the way he holds his head up seems to be an attempt to make him as equivalent as possible to Lythronath in height with all teeth on display in an open mouth snarl. He doesn't mimic the clicks, instead limited for now to breathy, throaty growls. That vast mind, within the reflection so disturbed by a pool that knows no calm, demonstrates mountains that reach, terrorized by a red-brushed, stormy, haunted sky with winds that have begun to pick up. Howling, threatening to push down the very mountains themselves. But it's still only within a reflection, within the mind hazied by the challenging bronze. "For good?" Keysi's tapping seems a hint more irritated at the face-off, not immune to the spill over. Lythronath waits, waits until Neianth's head is as tall as it can reach, and then ducks in and throws a shoulder. The clicks have stopped and no roar replaces them. The sounds that will come will only be thuds and heaves of air, if that younger dragon tries to stop him, to keep him away from that prey rather than seeing to his own safety. But there are no teeth, no claws in it. This is a simple fight for dominance. A'rist's eyes have narrowed, but it might be Keysi's words. "People keep asking that." The problem with Neianth from the day he broke shell was that he couldn't step down from a challenge, and while this is quite different than the typical hurdles he gives himself, it's treated the same way. Safety takes second place to proving that he can, because he will. All talons dig deeply into the soil, deeper still with how blood-soaked the soil has become, forced until there's enough purchase to push back, shoulder against shoulder. Wings tuck back enough to protect them, but poised in balance. Four paws remain spread so that his position in relation to his trophy remains stable. It might even be a problem that, despite all the aggitation and angry wind-reflections, there's that seeping enjoyment factor. Grey eyes turn to A'rist, studious, intense; the girl herself quiet for a longer amount of time than would be appropriate for any response. "People do that with riders that transfer away for awhile." There's the barest of shrugs that accompany it, the remainder of her expression unreadable, "Some care, others are just being nice. Or trying." Lythronath just keeps pushing, keeps nudging from beneath, keeps using his mass and size to his advantage, along with those powerful hind legs of his, here an advantagae that outweights the weaker front limbs. Physics, with still nothing sharp thrown against Neianth. A'rist has leaned a bit more heavily on the fence as his dragon pushes. He doesn't look away from the two in the pens, not now. "Are you one of those three? Or something different?" Neianth's claws give when Lythronath's strength and bulk continue to push against him, sliding back inch by frustrating inch. But he's too small, and of course much younger, to be able to keep up with that pressure. It doesn't stop him from trying. Back paws step one at a time up beneath him, forcing as much weight as he can forwards in one heave, as he stands two-legged in the force of it. It unsettles his balance even if it's his last option, bringing his forepaws up off the ground- giving up half of his base. He doesn't use those freed claws, of course. Keysi forces her tapping to stop, looking back at the dragons, the seriousness of her demeanor unchanged. "I don't know you." She starts, which apparently is supposed to answer the first. "And I don't do mingling." Parties just aren't a thing, "So you could say I'm trying, and perhaps doing about as well as he is." He, being the brown losing his leverage. Lythronath keeps pushing until it's enough; enough of an upset that he can give a might heavy and reach a foreleg in, to hook a talon in the little brown's kill. It's not to drag it away; he doesn't. It's not to eat it; he doesn't try. But there's a scar, a sign of him, and that is enough. The backwards leap is a strange and awkward thing, that may well do more damage than the pushing has done. The talon that touched flesh is prized, kept from the ground, in an awkward hop. « Ha. » Little brown. A'rist just nods. "For most people, it's probably not so complicated," says A'rist, though whom it is he's describing isn't fully apparent. Neianth is forced to backwing to catch himself as the bronze makes for his kill- and touches it. There's a rumbling, but no more growling as the brown feints to the side, recollecting all fours beneath him and taking a step or two, crouched low with belly almost brushing the red-painted ground. Crescent-marked face angles at the scratch Lythronath marred his dinner with, a heavy, displeased snort finalizing the fact that it happened at all. The winds between his mountains calm, the mists settling though maintaining a denser grey that exudes disappointment upwards to where the mirror of reflection has become less choppy, more evident for what it is. Ripples become directed to bring that discontent, though must of the disappointment is shrouded inward. « Next time. » Promised, ensured. But as he turns to wrap himself again around his meal, it's more akin to a cat who just got bathed and has some grudge to brood in. "Probably not." The only readable thing- the lines of her brow and at the corners of her eyes- ease as the discontent of the brown falls into a simmering instead of physical outlash. "But that doesn't mean it isn't." Complicated, that is. "I'm Keysi, Neianth's." Said simply, one more short glance at the bronzerider given. « Maybe. » It's a delayed challenge, to be taken up whenever that little brown is feeling ready. Lythronath only then lets his talon touch the ground, trophy no longer required, point proven. He starts to surveil the rest of the herd, thoughtful, ready for another kill, a proper kill. For eating and turning inside out and scattering about the pens. (The firelizards of High Reaches must've gotten skinny without him here.) His rider takes longer, considering Keysi a moment before he nods, and answers a known, "A'rist. Lythronath." |
Comments
Alida (23:57, 3 September 2015 (PDT)) said...
Really enjoyed the draconic interaction. :)
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