Head to Head and Back to Back

Joint post with T4HJ3R1U5 and myself

Though he knew well of the dangers of the land, the stark transition of oppressive, unforgiving sun to sharp, overflowing cold had still made Horns’ trip harrowing. He was the very spirit of determination, though. He was not one to prepare for pain, he simply braced and endured, it was faster that way. However, when he spotted a small cave entrance in the distance, he did not turn down a chance at reprieve from the onslaught of chilling wind and sand. It blew hard, loud, grains of sand flying every which way, assailing him from every angle as he trudged through it to the rocky oasis before him. The border between howling wind and dank air was nearly solid as Horns broke through it into the cave. Were he more temperamental, he might curse the sorcerer for sending him here. It had only been a few days, but it felt like more, not that Horns was easily disturbed by the passage of time.

Dusting off the fabric of his clothes, Horns looked about the natural alcove here, Horns’ eyes adjusted to the room, the faeblood in his eyes making the dark of the room that much brighter. Walking with purpose, Horns began to move through the cave, his hand instinctively gravitated to his axe. He thought it may be unnecessary at first, but then the hair on the back of his head stood on end, he felt a chill go down his spine, and his teeth grinded as he felt eyes on him. He hardly had time to pull his axe free.

Just as Horns managed to about face a sword collided with the inner bend of his axe head. A tremendous force behind the blade that clashed with his own weapon pushed through. Nearly disarming the brute in his unprepared state. The momentary sparks lighting the face of a man with eyes that burned with a determined fight spirit. Before bathing the cavern in darkness again. Horns, however, could still see his foe, and capitalised on his apparent advantage quickly. He regained leverage with his weapon, swinging it in an attempt to fling the assailant away from him. The man, however, had unreal reflexes, and landed deftly, nearly ready to strike again. Horns swung the opposite way, attempting to cleave the man in half, only for his lighting reflexes to kick in once more. Horns made to sidestep, but the ronin's slash was true, ripping into the Tor's clothing and beyond. Horns recoiled, teeth bared as he felt the telltale sensation of his clothes sticking to his skin; he was bleeding. That slash would have ended lesser men, for Horns it was an inconvenience.

In the quiet of the cave came a ‘twipp’ of the man’s blade being swung his sword swiftly performing Chiburi, “Curious.” the accented voice said, “That would have killed most of you. ‘The Master’ must have wisened up and improved you. Though, it still won’t be enough.” The Ronin sucked in a lung's worth of the dank cave air, and repositioned his footing. A sudden new wave of pressure came off the man. Not something pulling at The Weave and nothing truly tangible, but it was something true warriors could feel.

The Ronin resheathed his blade taking two steps back. Those last attacks told him this one could see in the dark. Or had better senses. The Ronin launched forward with another powerful Iaijutsu, before laying down a full barrage of attacks. Each warrior connecting and blocking at the last second, in kind. Horns had to resort to elbows, parts of an old martial technique seeping in as he fought. Horns growled when the ronin got a few choice strikes in. With a gasp of air, Horns expelled a column of flame. The two eventually broke, making space between each other. “Tell me, Beast-man, can you speak? If you in fact can I mean no disrespect, but the beasts I have faced in the past were not as versed in conversation.”

Horns cocked his head at this. Noticing the warrior's style of clothes, he began to spot similarities between the man in front of him and individuals he had met before on other worlds. Their exact looks and appearances changed, but the one constant between them was a sense of honour. It was a futile endeavour, Horns knew all too well.

Still holding his axe at the ready, Horns complied, "What master do you speak of?" His voice was deep and booming in the cave; it was the voice of a monster who had lived long enough to learn how to be a man.

“A man corrupted by a foul curse. Though the thing he is now… there is nothing that remains of what my Master once was. But the fact you do not know means you are not one of them. And thus are not my enemy.”

Horns exhaled, the tension slowly leaving the room, and soon all that was left was darkness and silence. A primal, base part of him was disappointed by the lack of a fight, it had been days since he had last spilled blood after all. But his better half was relieved, one less bloodied visage he'd see when he closed his eyes, and the less of those the better.

Horns took a step back, slightly lowering his axe, but still not dropping it purely out of habit.

"If we will not do battle, then tell me, what are you called, small warrior?"

“As far as it’s concerned I’m simply called ‘The Ronin’ by my people.” the man said. “The name blessed upon me at birth is of little use.” he added, though he did not relax either.

The Ronin was unaware that the man before him could see well enough in the dark to see his movement, and as such, Horns managed to pick up on the man’s attention momentarily flickering behind him. The Ronin suddenly burst forward with a flash of nearly inhuman speed, but as Horns went to swing his axe the man had already burst past and out the entrance of the cave, back into the waiting sandstorm.

Horns' grizzled ear twitched as he clutched his axe, and he swore that he could see movement other than The Ronin's at the mouth of the cave. No, he had seen, they were no longer alone.

They were just out of view, but their massive frames cut patterns in the moving sands. Large, distorted things, hulking masses all walking at the same pace through the opaque wall. The Ronin walked out with determination, clear of the cave’s mouth. Taking a unique stance, lowering slightly. A bead of pressure forced from head to toes caused the sand under his feet to ripple. “Now is the time that if you wish to run would be most opportune.” The Ronin said over his shoulder to Horns. “It is my fight, and I would not expect a stranger to face my foes.”

He exhaled, plumes of smoke exuding from his nostrils and mouth, flame visibly welling up deep in his throat, and the air seemed to quiver at his presence as it seemed the flame within him was barely contained. He moved to the entrance with long strides, revealing his own unnatural speed.

"They should be running." Horns spoke with fiery breath, his stance wide and powerful, but similar to the warrior next to him in that it was low and focused. The lumbering beasts were something to behold, a head taller than Horns, malformed and grotesque physiques, all with paled skin that made them look like goliaths walking dead. Horns steadied himself though, not turned by the visage of any foe, and felt that The Ronin's focus had not wavered either.

"They are unintelligent and will lunge to bare all of their force upon you. You will find purchase by exploiting them in this way. Treat them as though they were a serpent."

Horns' only sign of affirmation was a furrow of his brows, not of disregard, but of absorption of combat. The Ronin's words engrained themselves in him, and he would use them to cut down these behemoths.

In a flash two the six shapes vanished, breaking from the pack. Horns and The Ronin blocked the attacks in unison, sending a plume of sand airborne. Under his breath The Ronin murmured, “Stronger” at the words Horns could feel that pressure around the swordsman radiate again, as he began to push back against the hulking beast.

They were stronger and much faster than Horns had originally anticipated, but his resolve did not give. With a growl, Horns pushed viscerally against the beast, but feeling the intense force that pushed back, his fighter's instincts kicked in, and he pulled his axe away, allowing the creature's force to send it flying. He wasted no time in raising his axe, stomping his foe into the ground, before bringing his carbon steel viciously down upon it.

Despite Horns landing what for any normal foe would have been more than fatal, when Horns pulled his axe free, oily sinew pulled the wound shut with such speed the wound steamed. The beast grabbed Horns by an ankle and pulled him to the sand, before it stood to its full height again. Horns bellowed as he hit the ground, a column of fire escaping him and burning at the monster's face, but even through the flame the seemingly undying monster swung down ferocious fists. In his disadvantageous position, Horns quickly began to become overwhelmed with attack after attack. He struggled greatly to keep his guard up, but just before his defenses were breached- There was a flash of movement as the beast's fists relented. Horns felt something wet and heavy land on his chest and rolled off. Above him stood the creature headless and swaying, arms drunkenly at it’s side before it fell limply into a heap on the ground, The Ronin all the while standing behind it performing chiburui. “You must remove their heads. It is the only way to put them down for good.” he explained, as two more of the shadows launched to attack.

"Then it will be done." Horns said, gripping his axe and lifting himself to his feet. The Ronin was swift, his trained slash parried with his honed edge allowing him to decapitate his foes in a single focused slash. Horns' combat style, however, was far more brutal. Horns nearly threw himself forward in a burst of power and force, charging a beast of his own, separate of The Ronin's two, and heaved his axe, first slamming the hilt of it into the thing, handling it the same way one would a bo staff, and then gripping with both hands and cleaving through its muscully throat. He wasn't finished, though, pulling his axe back and cleaving once more, cutting even deeper the second time around. With a big booted kick, the beast was knocked off of its feet and Horns, propelled by his own generated momentum, raised his axe to cleave, and cleave, and cleave. Blood and viscera spraying him, he was beginning to feel like his old self. With a burst of flame, he scorched whatever might have been left of the flesh and bone that connected its head to the rest of his body, and with a skidding kick, sent the head sailing.

With a twitch of his ear, Horns caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and ducked under a narrowly missed grab by another interloping monster. Repositioning faster than the beast could whirl around, Horns kicked into the back of its leg, dropping it to one knee. He cut into the base of the beast's neck with a cleave, viscous rust-colored fluid escaping the wound in a spray. Unabated by the mortal wound, the beast sprung up off of its one foot, pivoting in the air to face and subsequently snatch the Half-Tor into its clutches. Horns growled as he beasts' unexpected bout of athleticism managed to catch him off guard, and now found himself in its crushing grasp. Enraged and refusing containment, Horns reeled his head back and crashed his skull into the beast's own. It stumbled, but dully and drunkenly like a man suffering from inebriation, or a toddler not having realised that it had just hit its head. Horns butted its head again, ears ringing and the sound of rage drowning it out. With a roar, Horns released an entire column of flame into the beast's face, point blank, and even as skin cindered and melted off the bone, it only turned its face in mild annoyance as if irritated by bright light. With a seemingly preemptive crack, as if in preparation for extreme trauma, Horns body tingled with sharp pains as bones and joints began to become stressed to unnatural degrees, the beasts ever tightening vice grip taking its toll.

In equal parts rage, and now a will to survive, Horns turned his head and bowed it forth, goring the face of the beast with his metal capped horn. The pointed appendage ripped through the beasts face, and with force, he felt a point of its skull give. Piercing deep and likely doing critical nerve damage, Horns pressed his horn as far into the beast as he could, before viciously ripping it free with the intent to take as much of the beast with it as he could. Slack jawed and wide-eyed, the beast, an already wild and unintelligent glint in its eye, now looked utterly absent as its grip loosened. The beast fell, and Horns, moving immediately after having been freed pinned it down, and forgetting his dropped axe, pulled free his rarely used carving knife, cutting into his foes exposed skull and ripping into the mess until anything there was utterly unidentifiable as more than bodily substance.

Huffing, blood splattered, and milky white eyes wide with fervor, the iridescent glowing irises that floated above pools of sclera, the only identifier that Horns was anything more than a monster of his own, the Half-Tor stood, and in his anger, his very clothes seemed to catch flame in some spaces as an internal blaze began to be let free.

As the hulking Half-Tor began to burn, the final two monsters launched their assault. Mindless pawns created with one purpose. Forgoing attacking Horns at this moment, their orders etched into their minds compelled them to attack The Ronin.

They appeared to either side of The Ronin, slashing in heavy vertical swings. A gout of sand scattered to the wind as their blades crashed down. Slowly they raised their blades again, a low grumble escaped their throats and they slashed down again and again.

But as if materialising from the ether, The Ronin reappeared next to Horns. Visibly out of breath. “If you can hear me in there we need to finish this quickly,” he noted. The final two were visually different. Unlike the other four they wore helmets and armoured chests. “Their leaders.”

Horns did not speak, but spoke in a language only a warrior would understand, with an arching of the back, the tensing of the muscles, and tightening of his grip on his recovered battleaxe. His posture said, "Let's do this,"

The two braced as their opponents charged, just as violent and vicious as their predecessors, but with their brutal weapons and armour, it was obvious that they'd be a true test of resolve to defeat, a challenge that would make the average warrior cower. Nothing was average about either of them.

As the moon dipped behind a wall of clouds, the battle field was illuminated only by the spark of blade against blade. Moments trapped in time for the brief time the flashes lit the dark. Clash after clash after clash, the two unlikely allies fought tooth and nail against the monstrous enemy. And then the sparks stopped, drowning the area in total darkness. Mercifully the moon returned bathing the land in a diffused glow. The Ronin and the Half-Tor stood victorious. Breathing heavy and in far from top condition, the two stumbled back to the cave, The Ronin relighting his heat stones, before digging in his pack taking out two small round wood containers. Handing one off to Horns. “A ration.” he said, “You are a true warrior, I thank you for your help in dealing with those creatures that hunt me.”

Horns nodded, before taking the ration, taking that which had been gifted was a sign of respect where he came from.

"Where will you go now? These creatures' pursuit seems relentless."

“I will continue to wander. The creatures come more and more regularly as time goes on. I feel him getting desperate.” The Ronin answered. “In what little remains of his unclouded mind he still believes he is chosen.”

The Ronin looked at the food ration. “I will be headed east toward the next town.” he town.

The night and the storm came and went. In the early hours of the morning the two climbed from the relative cool of their cave camp and into the sweltering oven like heat of the desert. The bodies from the night before gone, only leaving discoloured sand outlines.

The Ronin looked to Horns, should we meet again. I hope it is on better terms than we started out.” Slinging his pack over his shoulder the two parted ways one to the East and one to the North.

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