Spoiler (Click to Show)
When it becomes apparent that he will have to look for his opponent, Masaru decides to climb a tree for a better vantage point. Grabbing his weapon, he walks up to a sturdy looking one and begins scaling the rough surface of bark. Upon reaching the top, he looks in all directions. Judging from the sun, It is about 6 pm. To the northeast, there is simply more of the same; about a mile of forest.. looking to the west, there is a cluster of small, grassy mountains. To the south is a lake. The new challenger decides to head to the mountains, seeing opportunity to find the opponent in the vast open space.
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On the other side of the mountains, Alxcen is experiencing a similar feeling- except for the fact that he has done this before. On this side, there is simply undulating hills for miles on end, stretching past the horizon. The elemental fighter knows that in most cases, there will be a large barrier between the opponents, in this case the mountains. So, he begins his hike to the top of the wall that will soon give way to battle.
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Masaru reaches the base of the mountain. It now seems that "Mountain" is just a courtesy name; It is more of a large hill. It rises about 100 feet in the air with only a small incline that makes it easy to climb. It also sounds like there is rushing water up there, but that could just be his imagination. So, The frozen warrior begins his ascent up the mountain.
A few moments later, Masaru reaches the top of the mountain. There is a flowing river to his right, and it is very peaceful. In the fresh air, he searches his side of the mountain, to no avail. There is no sign of anyone, anywhere. Even so, he knows that his opponent is nearby. The air has that a feeling of anticipation, and his gut instincts say that the enemy is within his Frost Aura. But where? Again, he scans the mountain, when he hears a steady huff of air behind him. He slowly turns around to meet eyes with his assailant.
He looks friendly enough; A young man who couldn't be older than 18. The man is wearing grey robes, perfectly matching his unusual grey eyes. His hair was a light brown color, reaching to his shoulders. He had a smile on his face, not smug, but confident. “Hello, opponent.” He says in an unusually mature voice. Bowing, Masaru replies: “Greetings. We are here because of a fight, am I not mistaken?” In answer, the mysterious man says, “Yes. Cold today, especially on this mountaintop... Well, there is no denying it. It is time we fight. The name is Alxcen. I am part of the council of magical enforcement because of my elemental control. I can use all five basic elements at a fundamental level to fight. What skills bring you to the Wrhg?” The ice warrior pauses for a second, and then says, “ I am Masaru. I have exceptional skills with a spear and can manipulate small amounts of ice.” He is busy looking for an opening, and is trying to find a way to attack, so he was not focusing on Alxcen any more already. “Well, are you ready?”, the elementalist asks. When there is no answer, he says, “Your move.” But Masaru is already dashing towards him.
Surprised, Axcen brings up a hasty earth barrier, but it is very weak and thus easy for his enemy to bring down. The Warrior then dashed again with his spear, staying suppressive, but the blows get absorbed by many blocks with his own arms. Once he sees that the other man is getting tired, he counterstrikes, pushing his foot into Masaru’s stomach. Alxcen leaps into the river water, still peaceful, to get a few of his own water attacks in, and scores a small hit on the warrior’s shin, but with the rest time that attack has given him, he is now ready for more.
The ice warrior is closing in on Alxcen now, and as he has no place to go, he dashes out and down the side of the mountain leading to forest.
After the initial battle, Masaru thinks about how Alxcen fights and about what he could do to get the advantage as he begins to walk down the hill. He realizes that he likes to let the opponent strike first and prefers going on the defensive. It comes to him that if he could force Alxcen to go on the offensive, he could make him go out of his comfort zone and therefore a less effective fighter.
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Meanwhile, on the bottom of the hill, the other man is climbing up a tree, much like Masaru did in the beginning. He could hide more easily up there, and execute a difficult move. Once he got to the top, he began to take forces of electricity from both the earth and the few clouds. Soon, just as Masaru’s frost aura was closing in on him, he collected enough for a few major attacks.
“Where is he?” Masaru is now back on the forest floor. He is looking for Alxcen, with no luck. “I know he came down this way...” The forest is a square mile, so he should be able to see him...
As he kept wandering about, he stops under a tree; he hears an odd pulsing sound from above. He looks skyward, and sees none other that Alxcen.
“Gaaaaah!” As soon as the man looks up, Alxcen sends a wave of pure electricity through his body. It activates a huge wave of pain that spreads throughout his entire body, and it stays there for a minute. He knows though, that it will take more that that to win. So, he drops down, and in his usual Counter-Strike style, he assumes a defensive stance.
But Masaru isn’t fighting back. He keeps waiting for him to strike, like before, but he wasn’t. He waited for a few more minutes; for some reason, Masaru is not attacking Alxcen. He looks like he is recovered from his last blow, but there was no sign of him trying to attack. For him, it looks like he will have to momentarily change fighting styles.
Alxcen charges. He closes the gap between them in a matter of seconds, with only a small wind shield for protection. He is not used to fighting like this, so he has to take Masaru out while going out of his comfort zone.
As soon as the two impact, Masaru blocks the shield with his spear and vaults over him. Landing on the soft earth, he scores multiple kicks on the shaman’s unprotected back. Crippling in pain as the spear impales his leg, he makes an attempt to shoot a few fireballs at him with with fuel from the oxygen, singing him a little causing him to step back and give Alxcen a few moments. While Masaru is away, he shuts his eyes and grimaces as hard as humanly possible. Its all he can do to keep from screaming in pain from the spear sliding out of his leg.
He stands up to face Masaru, but feels the same pain when he puts his leg down. So he leans against a tree and summons as much earth power as possible. But then, he realizes that the spear is still sitting there. So he gingerly tries to pick it up into his hands. He can’t. Trying again, he realizes that there is some sort of magnetic force causing the spear to resist coming to him.
As Masaru gets ready to charge again, he uses the earth he collected earlier with all of his might to lift up a pillar underneath him. Masaru easily sidesteps his blow; Alxcen is very weak right now and normally doesn’t even have half of a master mage’s power in a specific element. He slumps against the tree, defeated.
“I forfeit.”[/spoiler]
Spoiler (Click to Show)
Closing his eyes, he pictured of his next training site, with a large waterfall for waterside combat. It was only a mile or so away. The current crashing against rock and stone could be heard if one listened close enough. The river then would flow northward, which made it an oddity in the normal current flows of freshwater streams. Alxcen believed this would make the water tougher to control, and a perfect learning tool to fight others with similar abilities.
The golden orb along the distance was rising, but Alxcen was not awake, for a night journey had put him out of commission for the next few hours it seemed. He dreamed of the end of the road of violence, where he was one with the elements. For death to a shaman is simply being reborn alongside his or her ancestors.
Yet despite the smoldering autumn day, the ground creaked with that of icelandic musk. Frozen air dispersed from the soil as it flew off, leaving nothing more than a ghost's tail for a few inches. A single man was walking alone during the day, along the same road. Each breath of his chilled the earth, and every blink froze the air. Trees around him groaned in desperation as the chill of winter's prick touched their adolescent bark. Leaves stopped their waving flights of freedom, and simply fell, only to shatter against the frost coating the once grassy hillside.
Alxcen muffled by the cold, awoke suddenly. Groggy, he looked up in front of him. Most prominent was the long spear, perhaps 5 to 6 feet in length, attached to the back of the man. His body was covered in a black synthetic of sorts, for mobility and battle situations it seemed. A bandana covered his head, with few pieces of brown hair coming out from the back. His eyes opened up to a cold power, yet no hatred or evil rested within him.
"Who're you?" Alxcen asked, now fully awake, aware of the possible dangers.
No answer. The man simply stood his ground. The aura around him seemed to become even colder with his stare.
"Well.....ok, that doesn't answer my qu-" Alxcen began, cut off by dodging a spear thrust to his neck. The tree behind him broke easily, being frozen from the mysterious man's aura.
"-estion," Alxcen continued, now landed on both his feet.
Three more thrusts came straight after him, each one dodged. "Left, right, right, oh looks like he's right handed and favors that side," Alxcen thought calmly as his opponent came after him full speed.
Alxcen dodged another right thrust, but this time instead of moving back, he rushed in. Using the ridge of his hand, he rose it within a bow stance below the warrior. A rock pillar shot out from the ground to hit him in the chest, only to be blocked by the spear, but still throwing the man back a few dozen feet.
"Now that we're introduced battle-wise, what do you want?" Alxcen asked, brushing off dirt from his jacket. He liked to keep his weighted clothes from getting too dirty as they became a pain to wash.
"You use fire magic?" the man asked, lowering his center of mass, clutching the spear tightly.
"Technically, I suppose," Alxcen admitted.
"All I needed to hear," the man said. He disappeared, and his chi reappeared behind Alxcen. Turning, he was struck in the shoulder by a shuriken, but managed to dodge a second. He looked at the properties, and realized it was ice. He melted the shuriken by heating up his body, and forced out any contaminated blood.
"Poisoned ice shuriken?" Alxcen asked, raising an earth spike to throw the man off balance.
"That's not very nice." He immediately changed the air to a flammable nitrogen and shot out a jet flame right at the man's feet, forcing him to jump. Using a gust, he threw him down to the ground, heading right for an earth pillar, made to break his right arm if he blocked.
Instead the man took a deep breath, and blew out a freezing gust, landing a few feet away from the trap. He spat at the ground, which froze upon touching the ground.
"Let's dance," he responded, as a flurry of ice shards launched at Alxcen.
Open from the trap, he created a fire wall, melting them, and rendering them harmless. However through the flames, the man lunged at Alxcen. Diving forward and rolling, he avoided the thrust. However once he regained his balance, the man began jet streaming out a volley of ice spikes and shards. Once again creating a fire wall, he collected the heated water from the attack into an orb to the left of where the man was.
Once again he lunged, but Alxcen was ready. Using the water orb, he shot out a blast of heated water onto the man. He flew a couple of meters, hit a tree, then grunted.
"I'm not done yet!" he shouted, as the heated, more easily frozen water became an ice shield around him. Alxcen covered his arms in an argon coat, and sparked them for a lightning coat around his arms. Throwing a punch at the man, he blocked with his spear, but was thrown off balance again. Alxcen sweeped the earth under him, and punched straight down. The man avoided the attack, but was caught in a large storm of lighting hitting earth, creating a shock-wave and crater. Rocks flung from their dormant sleep deep in the soil. Branches of trees soared from the shock-wave, some igniting from the sparks. The crater was easily a dozen or so feet in diameter. Through the heated smoldering tree limbs, Alxcen looked the man in the eyes.
"Your real name?" He asked, now coating his entire arm in lightning for faster, elemental strikes.
"Masaru," he called out, standing up, brushing off the last attack. "The Frozen Warrior." He formed the ice coating his body in protection, now cracked, onto his back, and wielded together ice wings. Flapping them quickly once, he pointed the spear directly at Alxcen's head.
Alxcen realized too late, and still was cut at the leg. The wound was on a major artery, and would force him to bleed out if he continued to fight. Charging his hands with lightning, and rolling to the right to avoid another one of Masaru's attacked, he burnt the wound, closing it. Using the ice about him, he coated his leg to numb the pain for a time, but he would only have 20 or so minutes.
"Ow, that hurt man," Alxcen said as he stood up, refreshed.
"It's gonna hurt more when this blade touches your neck," Masaru said. Alxcen using lighting enchanted legs was already behind Masaru as he said neck.
"What blade?" Alxcen stated.
"What the-"
With a quick turn, Masaru prepared to thrust, but Alxcen once again had moved to his back and grabbed the end of the spear. Conducting it, he forced Masaru to let go, and kicked him backwards.
Alxcen lifted the staff up, over his knee, and brought it down, with an ice enchant, coating his knee in some of the ice around him, but in a much more dense fashion. The spear, vibrated to the point it hurt his hands, but it did not break. Comically he yelped in pain.
"That spear is indestructible, no way you could snap it like a stick over your knee," Masaru snapped, already beginning to gather the surrounding ice in a hardened form. "And how the hell can you lift it? Only trained spear-men from my clan can carry weapons of that density?"
"Trust me, my last weapon was just as heavy," Alxcen replied as he shoved the spear in an angle through the tundra like dirt. It had become a winter wonderland in minutes since their fight started. "But, you know what they say about force, more mass and acceleration, more punch." Alxcen sped up a normal earth pillar shot right undern