Welcome to Gaia! ::

Takhi Yvarri bunched her fists, shut her eyes, and released a breath. Curling her toes inside of her worn boots, she wished for the bare earth instead of aged leather. But no matter. The odds were already decided, after all, weren’t they? Eowyn’s dry, desert air skimmed her lips as she drew another inhale, tiny grains of earth settling there and others dancing about aimlessly.

Igvad, her ‘trainer’ — or, in truth, the man who simply monitored who she went up against most times and organized the thrown matches — had spoken to her beforehand for this one. Drawn her aside in the way she knew full well he only did when it was time for a match to go a very specific way.

‘You’re going to lose this one, Tak,’ he’d said. She wasn’t young or stupid enough to believe anymore that that was a warning or something spoken out of concern, or even a jibe or threat. It was an order. ‘This is going to be very public, Tak, and we want the audience on our side. Drevitto is a pureblood. So you’ll make it look good…but you’ll lose.’

The words burned in her gut. Tasted bitter on her tongue every time she ran through them again mentally. She was used to being entertainment, that was fair enough. She fought well aware all the while that she was a display. An event for the hungry crowd, but at least then it was her own strength she was entertaining them with. Not a puppet playing through an acting routine so that the audience could see what they wanted instead.

“And now,” Igvad’s voice boomed over the crowd, “from the windswept cliffs of Ayr, to the salty deserts of Eowyn, a hybrid wench like no other.” Tak plucked at her dusty gloves, adjusting them absently as the crowd booed, hissing and jeering over Igvad’s voice. “An earthy gutter rat we scooped up from rugged edges of society only to find — what’s this? The girl fights like a rhamidon in the body of ibi!”

Laughter.

Takhi flicked her fingers through her short-cropped hair, eyes pinned on the tent flap before her, painted red-gold by the sunlight filtering through it.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and esteemed onlookers, I present: Takhi Yvarri!”

She stepped into the sun.

“Drevitto Isitarr!”

The crowd roared, most cheering, though several with oblivionite blood looked to be booing at least as loud. Tak tuned them out, and watched her opponent flaunt. Proud, gleaming white wings stretched so they cast a shadow on over half the stage. A sword nearly as large as she was. Shoulderguards that caught the glint of Eowyn’s sun. Everything about him was a show.

In the proper ring — Veinrith’s Stadium or ‘The Pit’ as most of the fighters called it, aptly named thanks to its deep, literally subterranean location and yawning, chasm-like structure — Drevitto fought on the next tier above her. A tier of fighters where most purebloods didn’t dare go because the risks were so high, actual deaths far more frequent. A tier Tak had been struggling to win her way into because the winnings there were triple what she could earn now on a good week. But something kept holding her back.

She’d volunteered originally thinking that if she did win this, there’d be no way they could deny her entrance. They didn’t even believe she could win it, but if she did, how could they refuse her? Only after did she learn that they not only did not expect her to win — they planned on the opposite, and she knew well there would be repercussions if she did not follow through.

After finishing his grand introduction of Drevitto, Igvad called them both forward for the fighter’s solute — a customary clap of weapons, hilt to hilt, and promise to uphold a code of honor in the ring. Takhi lifted her short sword, and did not wince when Drevitto ‘accidentally’ cracked the hilt of his weapon into her knuckles before tapping hilts properly. He grinned at her, keeping contact with her eyes and winking as Igvad leaned in towards her ear, a hand still on each of their shoulders.

“Behave yourself, Tak.” Igvad’s gripped just tight enough to be a warning. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Takhi said nothing, but pushed the corners of her lips up into a thin smile. She kept her eyes locked on Drevitto as Igvad turned back to his stage voice, separating them and sending them down to the upraised earthen ring staged for their combat.

“Where does a hybrid go when it dies, when not even the gods want to bother with that kind of filth?” Drevitto asked, sure to make his voice loud enough that it carried over a good portion of even the booming crowds and successfully increasing the volume of the ruckus. “Who wants to find out?”

Takhi breathed out, letting the roar of the crowd sift into her and then build up. Anger. Indignation. Power.

‘Let their hatred fuel you,’ her Pap would say. ‘Use their own energy against them. Absorb it, make it your strength, and they won’t know how to handle you anymore. You’ll be more than they can deal with. You already are.’

“Onivus,” Igvad counted, “…twaeveh, thresten — khatt!”

Drevitto lifted off the ground. One, massive beat of his wings and he was a shadow in the air. A black cut-out of himself against the white-yellow of the sun. Takhi solidified her grip on the hilts of her twin short swords, and waited, toes curling in her leather boots. She ought to have ditched the boots — worn strips and nothing else so her toes could feel the earth. Already she missed it, and the fight hadn’t even begun.

Drevitto came down like a hurricane, purposefully stirring up as much dust with his wings as he could, Tak was sure — likely with the intent to blind her — but she could only smile as she darted away from his splitting blade. How easily the black and white races of Magesc forgot the power of the elements. Seren and Soudana’s creations saw the world in shades of light and darkness, but forgot everything in between.

The earth was her companion. Her weapon as much as her blades were. And the dust in the air was as much a part of that earth as the ground beneath their feet. With one flick of her fingers and a tug of her magic, it never touched her, ballooning around her body like a force field. For Drevitto, on the other hand…

She heard a snarl, followed by cursing as he stomped around the rink. “Show yourself, little mole! You can’t hide in the dust forever!”

Takhi shrugged, lifted her heel, and stomped, sending all the floating debris flat to the earth in a single push: a cloud of brown pancaked to the ground in an instant. “You made the mess, Drev. No need to thank me for cleaning it up.”

Drevitto snarled, whirled on her and raised his sword. It slammed down, cracking hard into her short swords as she struggled to deflect it, and Takhi felt her pulse pick up, confusion mixing with her frustration.

Was he trying to kill her?

There were certain rules to follow in the rink. The restrictions were lowered with every tier fighters won their way into, leaving the top matches with virtually no rules other than a general unwritten understanding that killing one’s opponent was ‘frowned upon’ — something which was only sometimes adhered by. This, though, was a staged match. A public show. Surely he wasn’t intending to go overboard here? He wasn’t allowed, not by the instructions they’d been given.

As they fought on, though, Takhi’s concerns only intensified. She darted and deflected, dipping in and aiming to score points against him in the traditional ways, but at every corner, Drevitto seemed to be side stepping the rules. Going for shots clearly intended to inflict as much pain as possible, not win him points, and on several occasions, she knew if she hadn’t made it out of the way in time, she would have earned broken bones by now or worse, one shot nearly having gutted her through the middle.

When Drevitto’s blade slammed again into the earth a mere finger’s breadth from her ankle, Takhi grit her teeth, breath coming fast between her lips. Her eyes flicked to Igvad. Was this all in the plan? Did he intend this? Was he even paying attention?

One look to him, though, answered her questions well enough. He didn’t intend this. His posture was rigid, brow just barely pinched, a forced look of calm on his face. This wasn’t in the plan, and he was watching — but he wasn’t about to stop it.

Tak growled beneath her breath, her fury prickling afresh beneath her skin. She hadn’t signed on to lose, and even when she’d begrudgingly consented to lose, she had not consented to die without a fight.

‘Be mindful of your enemy. Your greatest advantage in this world is that they will always underestimate you, because they assume you to be the lessor no matter how you attempt to prove yourself. Let them learn how wrong they are through experience.’

When Drevitto sliced at her again, Takhi split her short swords to either side. Gripping hold of her magic as she moved, she slammed her stance wide and low, raised her weapons, and threw up a pillar of earth as she did, catching and clamping around Drevitto’s blade in the process. Her heart pounded hard against her chest as she caught her breath.

“If I didn’t know better, Drev,” she spat, the corner of her lip twitching upwards with empty humor, “I’d think you were trying to actually kill me.”

Her opponent snarled, but made no response before sweeping in again. The match felt like it dragged on for eternity, Takhi’s energy gradually wearing down, muscles burning as they tired and lungs straining to draw in more breath faster. After several shots too close, Tak knew that she couldn’t let this go on. If she did, Drevitto was going to break or kill her. This decided, she grit her teeth, darted around Drevitto’s next swing, and gripped her magic anew. At least, she consoled herself, his attacks were getting sloppier.

Unfortunately, one such sloppy — and entirely unexpected — slice came at her just as she moved, and for an instant, Tak felt the world slow down around her. She saw the glint of the blade, catching the light of Eowyn’s sun as it moved towards her, level with her head. The sheen of Drevitto’s sweat and the twist of his sneer. The grime on his forehead in single, coarse grains as though the moment gave them special definition.

Her magic moved of its own accord.

Like a ripple from her body as she fell away from the blade, the earth swept out and twisted around the orderite’s feet. It pivoted as she collapsed onto her back, spiraling down like a waterspout of quicksand, swallowing him to just above his ankle. She rolled as his blade faltered, fingers moving almost on instinct when she made it upright again: raising out to her sides and then splaying as she drew up a cloud of dust. After surrounding her opponent in the cloud, tuning out his snarls as he thrashed, she gripped her fists, clamping the entire body of it down on his wings like a baked layer of clay armor. Crushing the earth in hard enough that she heard something crack.

As Drevitto’s cry split out over the crowd, Igvad’s voice cut in: “ENOUGH.”

Tak’s chest rose and fell to the panicked beat of desert prey only just escaping the jaws of near certain death.

“Enough, enough.” Igvad’s voice was forceful enough to carry over the resounding uproar around her, but shook with an undercurrent of uncertainty: that fear that comes with a distinct plan wholly spoiled and the realization that everything from there on out would require improvisation. “It seems we…have our winner!”

Tak barely heard the rest of Igvad’s words, his speech rolling over her like the dying winds of a passing sandstorm. She’d won. She was alive.

She’d won.

Takhi fumed, the half eaten kabob dangling between her fingers forgotten. Igvad’s words — echoed by others in charge of running the matches facilitated by the Pit — rang through her head like sand grinding over a raw, naked eyeball.

“Get out,” they’d said. “You’re done here.”

Of course they had. Of course they had, but the words still cut at her, and she could hear herself screaming back: “He tried to kill me! He was going to kill me!” But all for naught. What was one hybrid wench’s word against a wounded, favored orderite of high class and outstanding reputation in the arenas? Drevitto was a super star and she an unrecognized ruffian who may well have ruined his career interminably. Self defense? What did that matter to them.

They saw only business and pragmatism and she was an obvious set back.

She was likely lucky they hadn’t done worse. Hurt her. Hunted down her home, her father, burnt everything she knew to the ground. Takhi clenched her spare fist, and then released it with a tired sigh, sinking into one of the rickety stools set up around the vendor selling the food she’d purchased. She ought to go home. Rest. Find some other means of bringing in extra coin for her father tomorrow. But even the thought of it all weighed heavy on her shoulders.

They hadn’t paid her a single copper for the fight, thanks to it not going according to plan. She could have died, and no one but her Pap would have shed a tear. Despite her best intentions, Takhi let her posture sink, forehead falling into her palms as she squeezed her eyes shut, food forgotten.

Where could she go now?

Takhi blinked, startled by the unexpected, unfamiliar voice, and hastily jerked upright, blinking and brushing the back of her hand over her cheeks as quickly and subtly as she could manage. Her addressor was a young boy, perhaps all of thirteen years, far more obviously hybrid than herself, and enthusiastic and distracted enough by his food — she hoped — that he hadn’t noticed exactly what state she’d been in before he arrived. As his words sank in, though, her mood genuinely brightened, at least a bit, and the smile that worked its way onto her face was real.

“You think, huh?” She noted the glowing violet orb in his right socket and smiled broader. “I did my best, though, between you and me…” She lowered her voice to a teasing — only part bitter — whisper, “…purebloods don’t really take to well to being taught lessons, do they?” She ran a hand messily through her hair, and then grinned. “Gaili was the only way to go far as I’m concerned. Best way to get down and gritty. Keeps you grounded in a fight, too. Do you live around here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before, and I recognize most folk after a while. Most everyone’s gonna come ‘round through my Pap’s shop eventually.”

“Pap’s a healer,” Tak replied easily, going back to nibbling at her own previously-forgotten food. “Ysali. He runs a potion shop, mostly, does alchemy and some basic enchants, but most folk come when they need a little cure-all for their coughs and sneezes or a quick fix to their friend who thought it would be super funny to start makin’ ‘em puke slimey lizards.” She shrugged. “It’s not a whole lot, and he gets a lot of flack from some of the locals. Even though he’s the best there is, a good bunch avoid him like the plague ‘til they’re desperate since he’s hybrid. We get by, though, and I try to help out where I can. Partly what the fightin’s for, though I gotta admit I just like it too, and Pap doesn’t approve…guess he’ll be happier now.”

Pursing her lips briefly, Takhi shoved the thought away. Not something to discuss with a stranger.

“Isn’t Aisko like…forever and a half away and cold enough to freeze your piss before it hits the ground in winter? Your folks must be wicked brave or all of something else to be setting up there…though I suppose if your mom’s tuned to it and all…what are you doin' in the desert?”

Tak glanced in the direction the boy pointed, and silently relaxed a fraction. Oblivionite. She supposed she ought to have guessed — the boy certainly looked heavily oblivionite, and was probably raw obliv-dovaa — but Tak couldn’t help but worry herself. Though she looked almost pure dovaa, her dark skin seemed to set off orderites particularly easily, and she avoided them as much as possible.

“If you liked watching the fight, you should check out a real fight before you leave, down in Veinrith’s Stadium, or — as we fighters like to call it — ‘The Pit’.” She grinned playfully, though it dipped a fraction as she remembered, again, her current status. “I’d say you should come watch me fight, but…” The bridge of her nose wrinkled with a passing scowl, “that might not happen for a while longer. Still worth seeing, though, in my opinion at least. S’how I started out, y’know — just watchin’. Folk come from all kinds o’ backgrounds there, and most nobody blinks twice at you for bein’ a hybrid. They kina half expect it, since most o’ the fighters there are.”

She blinked, realizing after a brief pause that she had yet to even introduce herself. She jerked out her empty hand.

“Takhi’s my name, if you happen to come through again. Tak works too, if it please you.”

Tak smiled. Though society had taught her wariness around purebloods, this man — since he had not abandoned his son, at the very least — was showing more acceptance than some. “Takhi Yvarri, sir. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said. Glancing to Cas, her smile turned wry. “You won’t be seeing me fight ‘cause thanks to ‘kicking that orderite’s…butt’ the organization’s a bit sore with me, since it wasn’t really what they intended. They’re gonna try to keep me out, but I don’t intend to let it stay that way easy without puttin’ up a fuss. Nice speakin’ to a friendly face, though. You might be my first and only fan. May the desert treat you fair as anyone while you’re here.”