Life Goes On (Open~)

[mizujakkaru]

Torq grimaced at his sword cleaved through the mass of a Large Body and he watched with disgust at the thing dissipated into a cloud of dark smoke. He took only a moment to do so, however, before swinging around to catch a Soldier Heartless in the middle. The creature of darkness staggered back and he dove his blade home through it's helmet.

He rolled his shoulders and turned once more to face a small group of Shadows. They too had been drawn to him like their stronger brethren, but they swayed in a mass on the side lines, roughly five feet from his person. Just out of the arch of his blade's reach.

He eyed them coolly, meeting their yellow, lifeless eyes. Why did they not attack him? The little ones never seemed to and he had been here for long enough to know that this was not normal. They attacked everything.

The soldier snorted and kept a ready grip on his sword for a handful moments more. Glancing around and eying every corner of the visible area critically, he could see no more of the stronger creatures. Torq gave a second critical glance to the handful of Shadows as they edged around him in a circle. Their antenna twitched toward him inquisitively.

"Get, monsters."

He swung his blade at them, but the creatures did not move backwards, though they did draw together in a black shadow mass with ten glowing orbs. He muttered a Drasilian curse under his breath and sheathed his sword.

"That's all I want right now, more curious shadows."

He sighed and continued down the alleyway he had been fighting in. He did not have to glance behind him to know that the beasts followed him. He just hoped their presence would not draw the larger ones. He had been in the district for awhile now, and his arms had begun to ache from battle.

At least none of the monsters in this place we overly hard to dispose of. He knew from experience that the Shadows dispersed from a swing or two of his blade. It was the Second District he avoided at the moment. Rumors of a creature taller than the buildings had tempted him on the curiosity side, but his rationality said not to challenge it until he knew more. Not until he knew the extent of his... injuries.

He blinked darkly down to his left arm, wrapped in bandages as it was. He had made the connection in color rather swiftly to the same color as the Shadows following him and had discovered that healing it was not the best of ideas. It hurt like fuck.

Muttering once more he paused. The familiar sound of Heartless emerging greeted his ears and he turned to face the Shadows behind him... as well as a slew of Large Bodies and Sniperwilds.

"That never gets old."

Torq grimaced and drew his blade swiftly as the creatures made for him, the Shadows parting to admit their larger brothers through towards their target, though the little things still did not attack as the battle began.

[sumdood]

Max ran through the alleyway, sending small volleys of condensed water balls into the heartless behind him. He'd gotten surrounded, and definitely didn't feel like fighting a huge group of shadows, like the ones behind him. They weren't just worth it. Not unless they happened to wander into the first district.

He kept running, not at a full-out pace, but at a nice clip that he knew he could maintain indefinitely. It was as he turned a corner that he saw the massive gathering of heartless crammed into the alleyway, hopped and jumping practically on each others' heads. It was strange. He'd never seen anything like that before, not even during the Heartless Wars during the seige of Fort Sentra.

He turned back, now in a corner between the two groups of Heartless, and backed himself into a corner, already gathering as much water from the air as he could, even going so far as to take it out of the nearby fountain. He took it and gathered it into two groups of balls in front of him, and compressed them, turning them into aquatic cannonballs. Then, he sent the volley careening into the two groups of Heartless he was sandwiched between.

Then, he took up a stance, ready to fight through the black things. He'd be damned if they would take him down after over 2 years of fighting them off....

[mizujakkaru]

Torq charged and then planted his feet, swing his blade down and then up in an arch to cut vertical ways through one of the Sniperwilds. Shaking the remains and whips of smoke from his blade for a second, he turned and make to drive the steel through the chest of Large Body, but the chance to do so never came. The creature blasted forwards, it's middle blown away by some type of spell. A number of Shadows also perished in the blast and it also clipped a Sniperwild.

As the Large Body fell to the ground and Torq's brow furrowed in confusion, he swung to take down another one of them monkey-like Heartless. It was then, through the gap he slicing through the heartless down the alleyway, he spied another human.

The brown haired man grimaced as a Large Body slammed into him while he was taken with the distraction of another fighter and he skid back along the pavement. Bracing his feet against those very stones, Torg brought his blade across his chest and lunged back into the Large Body, driving the edge of his blade into the bulk of the critter's gut and forcing himself a path into the pocket the other human was trapped in.

He strode forward quickly and turned to face the Heartless he had broken through once more, his back to the other human. Words could come later, but of one thing Torq was certian: two was better than one.

[sumdood]

Max turned and regathered the water as it finished destroying its Heartless targets, gathering it around him in swirling rods around him, and then sent them flying out again, back into the black creatures.

Max brought his spear up, the blade slicing through a shadow that had jumped at him. It was about then that he noticed another man fighting the same heartless he was. He quickly dashed over and came back-to-back with Max. So, it seemed he'd get some help with these things afterall.

He re-gathered the water and condensed it again around the both of them, spinning it around them to protect them from a small group of shadows that lunged at them. The water balls collided with them, wiping them out and turning them to black mist in moments, and then Max sent the water balls shooting out again into the mass of Heartless surrounding them.

[mizujakkaru]

Torq blinked and paused for a moment at the water spun around him. So the other fighter was also a mage. That was not unheard of, it was the usage of water that caught him off guard. He shook his head only by a margin and then readjusted his grip on his blade.

The Shadows facing him continued to mill around, some of them slipping around to attack the other fighter. He grimaced and dispatched them with a swing of his blade and then turned to focus on the Sniperwilds and Soldiers once more.

He stepped forward, away from the other boy and swung his blade in a wide arch in front of him before flipping his grip so the black swung down and under his right arm to slide into a second Shadow that had begun to make its way towards the other man.

Torq snorted and flexed his hands around his blade and switched his grip back around to the forward form. He rolled his shoulders to ease the tightness that was setting in from battle before he turned to attack one of the last few Large Bodies.

He thanks small gifts that the smaller ones seemed to fear him. Or perhaps "study" was the better word. Whatever their reason for doing so, the little Shadows not attacking saved him a lot of effort and granted him the time to focus on the bigger baddies before he had to dispatch the little fiends.

[sumdood]

Max turned as the other man went more on the offensive. He grimaced. Now he was obligated to be more aggressive so that the other guy wouldn't take the whole load of finishing all the heartless off.

So, he jumped forward, slicing through the shadows and other heartless that had been chasing the other man. He wheeled around, his spear spinning and twirling through his fingers with a practiced ease that was second nature to him by now.

It didn't take long until, finally, all the heartless were gone. Max just planted the butt of his spear's shaft into the ground and looked around. The Heartless were all gone, for the moment. They might have enough time to get away from the third district and back into the first.

But, first, he wanted to learn a little bit more about this other guy. His whole left arm was wrapped in bandages, which was weird. Not only that, but he was also a very practiced fighter. It had Max intrigued enough that he didn't care about another heartless atttack. He could fight them off easily enough anyway.

"So....you always come out here for this kind of fun?" Max asked the other man with a small chuckle in his voice,"Or was this a one-time deal for you?"

[mizujakkaru]

Torq watched from the corner of his eye as the other man continued to take down Heartless after Heartless. Smirking ferally, Torq lunged forward to finish his own mark and then sighed, planting his feet against the cobble stone.

He glanced around, holding his sword up and red for a few moments more. Once he was assured that the fiends were indeed gone, he dropped into a stance of ease and rolled his neck to ease the tension there. Damn. His head hurt something fierce. Her rose a gloved hand to kneed at left side of his neck.

The action soothed the pain a bit and as he dropped his hand away, he made certain to pull the collar of his shirt up to conceal the bit of grayed skin visible at his collar. No need to start a riot.

"So... you always come out here for this kind of fun? Or was this a one-time deal for you?"

Torq smiled, the corner of his mouth tugging the action up a bit into a half-smirk and he sheathed his blade deftly.

"I have to keep myself battle ready somehow. Though, I have to admit, that was more than I expected to find at once."

[sumdood]

"I have to keep myself battle ready somehow. Though, I have to admit, that was more than I expected to find at once," the other man responded to Max's small query. The response made Max grin. This guy was a soldier, most definitely. He'd given a soldier's answer.

"Amen to that," Max said, a small grin spreading on his face as he lightly tapped the butt of his spear-shaft on the ground,"So, I believe introductions are in order. My name's Max. yours?"

He was curious to find out a little bit about this guy. In particular he wanted to know about that bandaged arm. From the looks of it, it was from a very bad wound. The bandages were probably to cover up scars or some other kind of possible disfigurement.

Any way it went, though, Max was curious to find out about it. War-wounds were always fun for him to talk about. Maybe they could exchange a few stories.

[mizujakkaru]

Torq allowed himself a chuckle and shook his head. "My name is Torq Hrafn." At that, he stepped forward to the other man and offered his right hand in greeting.

"Never seen someone use water like you do. It was impressive."

Torg flexed the fingers of his left hand absently at the mention of magic. He knew very few that combined magic with melee back home.

Back then, he would have given anything to be one of those that had the ability to tone the mage-forces. Nowadays he would do anything to give back what he had gained. The Thunder that seemed to be workable from his left arm was more hassle than it was worth and he had yet to find a way to make the damn stuff manageable.

Such was life.

(Eh, post. XD I didn't know what to do fer thisun.)

[sumdood]

"A pleasure to meet you, Torq," Max said, taking the prooffered hand and giving him a polite nod, and he gave a shrug as Torq complimented him on his use of water,"I could say the same about you and your sword. You fight like it's an extension of your arm. I haven't seen someone fight with a sword like that since my best friend......"

Max's words trailed off for a moment as he thought about what he'd just mentioned. How could he talk about it that casually. He'd had to kill Donovan four months ago, and he still wasn't over it. Hell, he still wasn't over all the stresses the Heartless Wars had put him through. It was getting better, but he still felt some chills go down his spine when he saw the black things, no matter how hard he fought against it.

"Uh, sorry, I mean I haven't seen anyone fight like that with a sword since my best friend died," he said, swallowing all that grief that mentioning Donovan brought back up. No sense in wallowing in grief about it. They had both been soldiers in the Drydenian Army. Life expectancy for a Drydeniann soldier was one year, and that was in a time of peace. Someone had always been attacking Dryden, since it was the central kingdom in The Kingdom of Strife.

But, him and Donovan had survived for about four years before the Heartless finally overcame them. Well, at least Max had. Donovan hadn't quite made it that far. His mind had broken, the stress driving him insane. He'd ran through the camp, attacking anyone who got in his way, trying to run from the black things. He'd even tried to kill Max when he'd tried talking to him. In the end, Max had had to either kill Donovan, or be killed himself.

[mizujakkaru]

Shaking the other warrior's hand firmly, Torq let his fingers drop back to his side when the action was done.

Torq's eyes softened to a honey colored gaze as the other man hesitated over his words and tone. Ah, he knew that expression. He might have done the same thing if Ruka had perished in the wars back home.

Ruka... had she perished with the world itself? Torq believed so, for he had not found her around Traverse, though he had looked. It had simply been too long now for her to be here, he had decided. Maybe she had found her way to another world, for if Torq had been disturbed by his Asgard journey, then maybe she had too.

He shook his head to clear those thoughts and offered a warm smile at the other warrior. "Back home, we have a saying. "Andask hitta allr." It means "death comes to all." Your friend lived a good life, proven by the fact you still feel sorrow for him."

[sumdood]

Max looked over at Torq as he mentioned the saying from his homeworld. Oh, if only Torq knew how Donovan had died, he'd understand. He'd definitely understand if he knew that Max had had to kill him himself.

"No single thought can get rid of the sting of knowing how he died," Max said, choosing to keep the details to himself,"believe me, I've tried."

Max rolled his shoulders and glanced back over at Torq's bandaged arm. It really must've gotten messed up bad if he chose to keep it covered. Probably burned in a previous fight and covered completely in horrible scars, or any number of things. He wondered what exactly was under those bandages.

"So, what's with the bandages on your arm, if you don't mind me asking?" He asked Torq, hoping he wouldn't upset the other man with the question.

[mizujakkaru]

Torq shook his head and rubbed absently at his shoulder at Max's words. He did not believe such a friend should ever be forgotten. Living through a death hurt, stung, bored holes in a person... but in the end, it made one stronger.

He pursed his lips in a neutral fashion a nodded at the younger boy. The sting of a death could not be overcome in a day. Torq was not even sure why he own sisters disappearance, and likely her own demise, had not caused him sorrow. The warrior supposed it was because he had not been present for the happening. Torq focused his gaze on the coddle stones as he mused over that.

"...So, what's with the bandages on your arm, if you don't mind me asking?"

The soldier blinked at the other warrior abruptly as his attention refocused on Max. His fingers stretched reflexively in caution and he rose his right hand to rub at the arm in question through the bandages. The cloth rubbed smooth under his calloused fingertips and he eyed Max.

The question had caught him off guard. Torq was not used to hiding and keeping secrets. The demon arm would be the death of him, and he knew it. He swallowed swiftly and wove his lies.

"An old war wound. On my world, mages invented weapon we call 'fire oil.' It's a type of water or gel, that once ignited, is incredibly hard to put out. And it clings to everything: flesh, plants, stone, cloth."

[sumdood]

Max cringed a little as Torq mentioned the 'fire oil'. It sounded almost as bad as the Fire Mages from his world, except that if the damage to Torq's arm could be judged right, it couldn't burn a man into a blackened lump in moments like the Fire Mages could.

"That sounds pretty bad," he said, eyebrows raising,"How'd it happen?"

Max was curious to know how this fire oil stuff had gotten Torq. It sounded horrible. They probably dropped it from a castle was or something, much like they did pitch, and then sent fire magic out to ignite it. Or maybe they used it in some other way?

Either way, Max was curious to know about this fire oil.

[mizujakkaru]

Torq eased comfortably into his lie as the words were accepted. He could easily weave together stories and old fire tales told around the fires he remembered from his time in the wars to fit his needs. And fire oil was in truth real, so talking about it wasn't exactly... lying.

"They took a liking to loading it into large jars in the catapults. The jar shatters on impact, and the oil is sent everywhere. I wasn't close to where the jar in question hit, but I was close enough. And one the oil hits you, you either do whatever you can to get the damn stuff onto something else, or the fire keeps burning until it has no more oil to fuel it. And usually, by the time the oil's gone, it's burning your flesh."

Torq smirked and leaned back against the wall of the alleyway as he thought wryly about the oil. Drasil had almost been put out when their enemies had created the substance. Even water had no prevailed. But when they had uncovered the recipe for disaster themselves, Drasil had turned the fire oil onto her enemies as well.

He sighed. He could almost believe himself that his arm was burned and welted. He almost wished it was. It would trade burns and scars for whatever witchcraft that mage had set upon his arm.

"Either way, the arm doesn't attract the ladies. So I bandage it."