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Midus Sonners sat himself down upon his northern throne at his special booth, looking down upon the matches that were about to occur before his eyes. The tournament had started with sixty-four and was now down to merely four: two were competing for the title of the best while the others were about to fight to see who will grasp third place. The golden-haired host gave his most humble smile as he prepared for the match that will bring this tournament to a close.

"Deitric has fought well to get here. He really seems to have come back for that title with a vengeance. However, this newcomer, Iden, has put on quite a show himself. To think that the surprise competitor Robyn almost made it here, yet was defeated by this bandaged man. This is going to be an interesting fight, indeed."

And then the crowd began to riot because Iden was not showing up.

Signs were being thrown beside punches, and bottles rained down on the arena, shattering glass everywhere.

Deitric seemed nonplussed by the crowd's reaction, and even less so by his opponent's eventual appearance. The only change was the fade of his pupils into the suffused glow of power that lit up in his sockets, bleaching away the color of his irises to a clean, unbroken white. Now that the other finalist was present, he had no qualms about beginning to draw his power out.

He remained stationary for a moment while his opponent went through his own ritual of removing his jacket and mask, but when Iden beckoned for Deitric to come forward, the tribesman's response was simple and unmistakable.



He was laughing, hand pressed to his forehead, though the sound was lost in the crowd. Laughing at Iden's gesture. The response was Achillean to the core, spawned from pride and prowess; his laughter said I don't come to you, you come to me. The brave came from a warrior-centered meritocracy, and it provided a simple logic that someone from a more civilized culture wouldn't perceive or understand: he was the king of the hill, and he wasn't the one who needed to climb.

To those not born and bred into war and the pursuit of personal prowess, the leather-garbed tribesman and his actions would have seemed arrogant. To a warrior, a real warrior, whose goal was glory and the revel of combat, it was less about arrogance in his abilities, or a lack of respect for his opponent's own, and more about status, perceived or otherwise. As far as he was concerned, he was not the challenger here, and thus Iden's gesture was the one that was arrogant.

When his hand moved away to return to his side, his lips were pulled back into what looked like a fierce sort of grin, and there was just an imperceptible shake of his head. No one would see it, except Iden, and only then because of the fact that one glowing eye would dim as the head turned a certain way, and then the other would dim.

Blue arcs of electricity traveled along the metal that decorated his jacket and between his fingers as he held his hands up just away from his sides, as if he were going embracing the crowd and its roar, like a triumphant general standing before his cheering soldiers. The air around him warped, and any metallic refuse nearby tumbled away from him. The grin was less so a grin, and more of a snarl, now.

He wasn't going to come forward - upbringing aside, playing the waiting game was beneficial to the Khasmin man. The more time that passed, the more he power he could amass. And the way the environment began to react around him suggested he was doing just that at a much faster rate; indeed, he had completely forgone any reservations about how much power he intended to use. He'd unbound his power in the face of the very real danger that it bodily posed to him. He could - would, now - sacrifice his well-being in return for more power.

The time for impeding caution with his abilities were over; now it was time for him to see just how far he could push before one of them finally broke: Iden, or Deitric. As soon as the Cainite stepped onto the stage, the brave had been ready to fight and hadn't taken his eyes off of the man, but if his opponent wanted to have a stare-down to see who moved first, then he would oblige.

The metallic tang of burnt ozone surrounded Deitric as his opponent began to approach, a flicker of heat-mirage distorting him from those far away in the nosebleed level seats. It was impossible to tell where his vision was focused - the luminous haze completely obscured anything in his sockets, the glow half-obscured by the dark shades that rested neatly on the bridge of his nose.

The warrior made no move to match Iden's approach, standing his ground like a stalwart statue of a forgotten hero. Electricity coruscated down the spikes and studs on his sleeves, scintillating outward into the air around him. The closer the unmasked vampire came, the worse the tribesman looked. The veins and corded muscles in his neck bulged, and veins snaked visibly up his face and in his forehead and temple, his jaw clenched with titanic effort, as if he were lifting a great weight.

But through the strain and the blank, glowing eyes, his face still maintained a manic half-grin, half-snarl. When his opponent's forward momentum abruptly leaped from a mere jog to the fleet-footed flight of supernatural speed, Deitric's eyes squinted imperceptibly behind his shades. His grin was tarnished, blood staining the whites of his teeth to a ruddy pink.



KRAKK--

Just as Iden came a foot or so short of hand to hand range, a bright flash of light erupted in the air around the two fighters. A tongue of incandescent lightning shot out from the brave, surging like a flash across the scant few feet between the two finalists. The vampire's gauntlets - metal of some sort - made excellent lightning rods.

Not that Deitric needed to aim at that distance.

--THOOM

The lightning clap of rapidly expanding air boomed through the stadium, the heat from the lightning scorching the very atmosphere around them. If Iden had been struck, it would have been like he had ran into an oncoming freight train, almost in a comical in a way - going forward one second, and then abruptly being flung backwards. The sort of force that came with the energy transference of lightning was nothing to scoff at, even if Deitric's were only distant cousins of those Mother Nature liked to throw.

Iden might have become very, very fast, but Deitric's gambit was simple; he was willing to bet that his lightning was faster, even if it was slower than the natural phenomena. And unlike the real deal, his had one advantage - it bent to his will first, and the stringent laws of electromagnetism second.

The sudden exertion seemed to send the black-haired warrior moving back like the recoil from a gun - if his opponent had gotten through, or around the lightning blast, his claws would slice through the air, rending over the black leather Deitric wore, scattering shards of broken ablative armor through the air - the secret beneath his suit that protected him in the past, and would protect him from Iden's attack if the childe of Caine managed to slough through the blast of lightning and make his attack. He wouldn't get a second chance - if he went to make a second attack, he'd find a guard of leather-clad arms in his way.

If his opponent had been hurled back like a besieger from the wall, Deitric would be left standing, leaning back as if physically struck for a moment, something dark and wet dripping from his lips to the ground beneath his feet.

plip -- plip -- plip



Slowly, he began to raise himself up to his full height again. The edges of his sight had whitened and blotted out into a sort of tunnel-vision, the colors of the world bled away and the only thing he could hear over the pounding of blood in his ringing ears was the tumultuous roar of the crowd, and even then, only barely. His gaze stayed resolutely on his opponent, despite the throbbing pain in his head and the ache in his body. The fade in his vision came and went, but his world had gone permanently from technicolor to monochrome for the time being.

Iden hath asked, and so Iden would receive.

Deitric's weight swayed as he stood straight again. Crimson colored his bottom lip where blood dribbled freely from the inside of his mouth. He watched his opponent carefully, his vision sharpening and then dulling in turn, as if someone was placing and then removing glasses to test his sight.

The DeSeer vampire would find himself face to face with an armed opponent, this time, and his advance was had a new impediment - twinned missiles, flying through the air towards him. Deitric had launched two tomahawks - one aimed for his opponent's upper chest, the other just around his pelvis and thighs. The weapons howled when they tore through the air - as if each one was emitting an ear piercing scream. By no means a brick wall to assail, but it wasn't easy to just walk through flying steel without armor.

Meanwhile, the tribesman was moving back steadily - back, and around, circling to his left. Almost like a matador, he seemed to be leading the Cainite on. If Iden was the bull, then his clawed gauntlets were the horn. The black-haired tribesman was just trying to find the right way to take the bull by its horns.

It was not unlike Deitric to avoid direct engagement, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous in its end result - he only needed the right opportunity, and he just seemed to be waiting to drag his opponent into it, bounding backwards even as he threw the two axes.

More..

[Apologies for shitty post, effects of writing post-party.]

Luckily for the Cainite, there was no follow up attack - Deitric was still on the move, moving away and around to keep from getting backed up against the edge of the fighting platform, dancing lightning leaping and twisting in his wake.

The brave took note of what he was seeing - in most circumstances, having a tomahawk bite into the muscle around the hip was enough to seriously stop a fighter. But Iden was up and hurling one of the weapons back at his opponent with only a momentary slow down with what should have been a momentarily crippling injury.

Something wasn't quite right - but the warrior would be careful to find out what it was, or to find a way to make sure whatever sort of advantage Iden had simply never came into the fight again. The Cainite whipped one of the tomahawks back to Deitric, who's open hand activated the latent magic in the weapon.

With a swish of air, it righted itself so that the haft struck Deitric's right palm soundly with a slap of wood on flesh. The tomahawks were magically imbued to recall on mental command - throwing them back at the dark-skinned brave was as useful as jolting him with a taser.

He gave his tomahawk a quick flourish; a momentary, flashing glint of steel in the air before he began to jog towards Iden, who would have had enough time to get his bearings and his footing. Deitric loped towards the vampire like a predator, his movements loose and relaxed as he closed the distance, quickly enough to be taken seriously, but slowly enough that he was closer to jogging than he was to running. Each time his boots clacked against the flooring, small sparks shot out from the metal capped heels, lighting up his shadow beneath him.

Aside from the bloodied mouth, the brave was far too calm - his blank, glowing eyes focused on Iden with the same predatory sense of sizing the vampire up. His body language and facial features revealed nothing of the force of will he was putting forth to try and draw out as much power as he could so try and put the Cainite out of commission for the rest of the fight.