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The roar of the crowd irritated Nierro.

His wolfish ears twitched as he walked out into the arena. He wanted to grimace but he managed to maintain an aloof composure, no hesitation, no hurry in his step. He kept his piercing yellow eyes fixed forward in the area where his opponent would appear. The crowd continued to chant the siren song of bloodshed, hungry for sacrifices while they sat safely in their seats. Turgid masses of squealing meat, like prey.

The arena afforded them a rare opportunity to watch the predators tear themselves apart for nothing but the thrill of bloody entertainment. Even with the rumble of excitement resonating through the air, Nierro could smell the fear in them, and he grinned. The crowd erupted as he flashed his fangs, bristling with anticipation.

Nierro was happy to offer up his opponent as a sacrifice, but not for their sake.

Even as a relative unknown in the competitive fighting world, Nierro had a certain presence that caused a sharp schism to form in the crowd--they either loved him or hated him. He certainly had a sense of style about him, striking if a bit unoriginal. Standing at 5'9", he nevertheless carried himself with the demeanor of a stalking beast poised to pounce, tearing at the throat of his opposition. He wore a simple outfit consisting of a black leather jacket, slacks, and leather boots.

Most prominent of all, the wolfish ears on his head and his bushy tail blended perfectly with his short, silver hair, a wolf given a humanoid form. And it helped that he had a suitably youthful, attractive face, his pale skin unblemished. He clearly placed some amount of important on his appearance. The half of the crowd that hated him did so from the moment they laid eyes on him. Not only was he some kind of disgusting halfbreed, he also looked like a pretty boy who might faint at the first drop of blood--if he did not look so hungry for it.

None of it concerned Nierro. Love him or hate him, Nierro came to fight, and he came prepared. A twin set of swords, most closely resembling sabers, rested on either side of his hips on a pair of crisscrossed belts. Twin hatchets were also tucked into loops on either side, but otherwise the half-wolf did not seem to have any other kind of weapons or equipment visible on his person.

He approached the center of the arena, his fierce eyes searching for his opponent, the sacrifice.

The crowd wanted blood, but Nierro wanted it even more.

Even as the seconds passed into minutes without a sign of his foe, Nierro kept his hungry eyes fixed forward in cool anticipation.

His pointed canine ears perked straight up seconds before his opponent's extravagant procession spilled out onto the field. The corners of his pursed lips lifted into a bemused smirk and his tail swished lazily from side to side. Otherwise he remained still, the image of a patient hunter watching as his quarry ambled right into his sights.

As the slaves made their way to the center of the arena, Nierro remained completely relaxed. He even enjoyed the calm and quiet that had fallen over the crowd, so captivated by the flamboyant splendor. Eventually the woman rose from her silken cushions to grace the arena with her appearance as she spread her resplendent wings.

Nierro chuckled.

His piercing yellow eyes traced her sultry form as she discarded her robe and retrieved her weapon, and he grinned lewdly. Not because she stood before him naked and beautiful, but because she stood before him exposed and vain. He could already feel his fangs sinking into her soft skin, taste the blood seeping down his jaws. She was not a goddess, but a lamb before the slaughter.

He returned her gaze gleefully, his lips curling in a wry smile at her bold declaration.

"You're out of your territory, princess." the half-wolf spoke in a raspy voice dripping with ferocity, garnering himself an even greater abundance of admirers in the crowd. Bitches loved that voice.

He then slowly and deliberately drew his swords, one after the other, his gaze following the curve of the lustrous scimitar-like blades to draw focus to them. He felt that got the message across better than any silly banter between them. He was about to make her bleed, a lot.

As soon as the tip of the second blade slipped out of the sheath, his gaze shot back to her, his eyes wild and his grin wide.

"Start running."

Then the half-wolf surged charged with the roar of the crowd at his back, a silvery saber in each hand. It did not matter to him whether her underlings had time to vacate the arena. Hell, it didn't even seem to matter to him if they joined the fight. The thought of an 11-to-1 fight excited him. More bodies, more blood to litter the arena floor.

As he flung himself forward with apparently reckless abandon, Nierro spared a glance to the weapon in her hand. Whatever opinion he held of the glittery whore before him, Nierro respected the weapon. Trained in the use of a variety of melee weapons, Nierro came to know the simple truth that every weapon had its strengths and weaknesses, advantages and disadvantages. The whip in the right hands was no different. It demanded the same respect of the serpent it resembled, primed to lash out and strike viciously in the blink of an eye.

Nierro held the blade in his left hand at an angle over his left shoulder, with his elbow tucked into his body rather than high above his head. The other sword he held with his right hand at his side, the blade angled across his body so the tip pointed in her general direction. He hunched forward to pick up speed and present a smaller target, his blade positioned in a fluid guard. It would take scarcely three seconds for the half-wolf to cover the distance between the two, provoking a reaction. If she was smart, she would take his advice and run.

If she stood in place, she would find the edge of the blade in his right hand slice across her chest all the way from her left shoulder down to her right hip in one graceful stroke. Just enough to draw blood, just enough to make her feel burning agony. Just enough to let the fear of impending death sink in.

She had asked for the beast, and the beast was unleashed.

Where he respected the succubus' weapon before, Nierro despised it now.

Seconds before he made his charge, the crackle of flames and the smell of sulfur in the air called his attention to her whip. It only slightly altered the course of his actions because if anything it beckoned Nierro to close the distance even more aggressively. He absolutely did not want to suffer a blow from the weapon if it meant a fresh burn from the scathing flame that wreathed it. She could draw his blood and snap his bones, but fire?

Nierro hated fire.

Immediately his expression changed, grim and spiteful. He had only a split second before she launched her strike, but he simply followed the motion of her arm to estimate how she intended to attack. Her posture told him all he needed to know, and his body moved without a thought.



He dipped forward under the strike with a sudden gust of agility, rolling over his shoulder while maintaining all of his momentum with a master tumbler's expertise. The whip, the flame, passed harmlessly over and past him. Call it a b***h move. Nierro would even agree. He had every intention of taking anything she threw at him in order to land his own strike. He never played the defensive game.

That's how much he hated fire.

It changed his whole game plan, at least in that moment so he could gauge the extent of her infernal ability. Since he maintained the same rate of speed without sacrificing his balance, Nierro came out of the roll directly to her 10 o'clock, slightly in front and to her left. He sprung back to his feet in the same frame of time that the whip would retract, unless for some particular reason she let it fall limp in the arena sands.

His blades were poised at his sides, both tips pointed toward her, his left sword slightly in front to match the position of his leading left foot. He was just inside his left blade's reach, but he did not have the time to strike yet as he steadied himself to regain his footing, his knees slightly bent. He kept the motion of her whip-wielding arm in focus, the rest of her in his periphery, as he prepared a brand new offensive--and this time, he had no intention of stopping.

>Fierce Maneuver cooldown: 1/2

Blood.

Nierro's blade thirsted for it, snapping out like a vicious wolf's jaws to clutch the opportunity she presented him. He had already moved his lefthand blade just into striking range as he came out of his roll, and so it should come as little surprise it had been positioned to strike from the second she swung her arm.

The succubus would pay for her arrogance, standing her ground instead of retreating a step to gain distance, abandoning an effective tool in the process as her whip fell to the sands in disuse. She had her fire, sure, but considering she could only effectively aim for the half-wolf once he stopped in place to regain his footing, he had his blades.

For Nierro, it only required a deft flick of the wrist, nothing more. With one fluid motion he demonstrated his uncanny expertise, the sword like a feather in his hand, a quill to parchment delivering its master stroke. Child's play for a swordsman of high caliber. She did most of the work, really, her wrist flung out to meet the razor-sharp edge of his sword halfway.

Despite the minimal effort, the damage would not be trivial. Nierro's saber-like blades were designed as much for slicing, dragging across the skin and splitting the flesh down to the bone, as they were for cleaving cuts. It was likely she had some form of supernatural defense given her manner of dress, or lack thereof, in a brutal fighting tournament. She had better, at any rate, or Nierro would not be surprised to see the hand fly clean off her wrist.

Like the beast he so closely resembled, Nierro reacted on feral instinct honed with the precision of practiced technique. He saw an opportunity and seized on it, and it benefited him more than he could have imagined. Along with the potential damage to her wrist, possibly disabling her hand for the rest of the match, the contact would also serve to buffer the full extent of the blast by literally cutting her attack short. Nierro did not know his opponent would send another burst of flame in his direction with a wave of her arm, but he did know from his experiences that any foe who did not flinch at the edge of his blades and who motioned to strike without a weapon in her hands had some kind of special power at her disposal.

He did not know for sure until the blast engulfed the left side of his torso and face, the heat crawling up his neck, the flames licking at his face like gluttonous demons. He grit his teeth, biting in the pain as he swiftly pulled to his right from a rush of adrenaline. The leather jacket protected him from the worst, but his exposed neck and face found no solace. It stung worse than any pain he knew because it stung his pride more than anything. Every last little ember became a personal insult.

When Man conquered flame, Man conquered the beasts. It leveled the playing field.

Nierro refused to be conquered by the pompous succubus, but he could feel the most unsettling skip of trepidation in his heart as his pale skin sizzled. He hated, hated, hated that feeling.

So as the skin on the lower left side of his face and neck boiled black and red, burning and seeping blood, Nierro unleashed a guttural growl that erupted into a howl of rage and pain. For that brief moment he lost his focus, masterful technique giving way to pure ferocity.

Unfortunately for her, she was just in range of his swift retaliation.

In an effort to avoid exposure to the flames he had taken a step to his right, and with his furious growl he made a passing step placing his right foot forward, his boot landing with a stomp that created a shockwave of dirt. She turned to meet him, but with this step he continued to circle around just to her left, and now he would be a step closer than before. With his step came the sister blade in his right hand in a broad horizontal slash. He did not aim as much as his arm lashed out in defiance like a cornered animal, but then he did not need accuracy given their proximity.

Instead he twisted his hips, putting his whole body into the strike that would hit her left arm first with enough force to cleave it off at the elbow before sinking a few inches into her side--again barring any supernatural defenses. He wanted to make her bleed, to suffer, but not to die so easily. Not yet.

That would be her first critical mistake, and Nierro would make her pay for it dearly.

Her agility was impressive--more than a match for his--but her confidence betrayed her, pulling her into a cruel trap.

Nierro's swords certainly had an effective striking range closer to the tip, but any part of their razor sharp edges could be used to slice through flesh like a knife through better.

Considering Nierro expended minimal effort with his lefthand sword in slicing her arm, he managed to keep it close to his body. Contrary to the usual misconceptions about a dual-wielding swordsman, Nierro did not swing his blades out in wide arcs for every attack. And so she met him as he stepped in with his right foot, placing all his weight forward into his furious counterattack. His righthand sword did not strike flesh as she stepped inside the swing, but his right fist collided with her body in a fearsome hook as much by happenstance as anything.

This would easily throw off her balance enough that, along with his weight forward, she would find her efforts to topple him would be futile.

But she got close, just as she wanted, and there was the matter of the subsequent burst of flame as she raised her arm to grab hold of his silvery hair.



And Nierro saw it coming a mile away. As a swordsman who practically threw himself into battles all across Gaia, he recognized the same point-blank gunslinger's draw that Rosalyn made in practically the same moment her muscles twitched. The quick turn of the hips, the jolt of the arm transferred into a lethal blast to the head--with fire or firearm. Sometimes a flaming dagger. In principle, all the same.

And like any creature with a brain tucked into its skull, Nierro had a vested interest to keep any damage from occurring to that general vicinity. With half of his face still burning from her previous "gift," it was more a flinch than practiced technique that caused Nierro to instantly react.

His lefthand blade came up, the edge right above the guard intercepting her extending wrist, aimed to bite deep into it and push it up, away from his face. Even if it were blunted, the sword allowed him to apply pressure and make use of leverage to pull her attack off course. But it possessed a finely honed edge, so in one swift, rehearsed motion he drew the edge along the flesh in a smooth, solid slice. The slicing motion would transfer effortlessly with a twist of his wrist as he pulled his hand back over his shoulder so that he could aim the tip at a slight angle down to her throat. It would either prevent her from advancing further without impaling herself or the edge would catch her in the side of the head if she recovered from her stumble to continue advancing.

That's potentially two hands rendered useless, for those keeping track at home. Unless she pulled her hand away to suffer merely a deep gash, it would probably slide right off the wrist onto the blood-stained sands at their feet.

For all his efforts, Nierro did not beat the jet of flame, not completely, but she still paid dearly for what little damage she inflicted--more psychological than physical. Again he felt the rush of heat and the stinging lap of flames at his face, even as his head pulled back to let it roll off his cheek. He grit his teeth, stifling his enraged scream. Somewhere in the exchange his heart started beating rapidly. He felt a quiver in his nerves and his body responded automatically to the rush of adrenaline.

For as he drew his lefthand sword back he would also leap back about three steps' distance, literally recoiling from the heat. He grimaced, his face contorting in rage. He felt a strange, sickening sensation tightening his chest and twisting his stomach, something he had not felt in a long, long time.

He felt fear, but not the fear of death...