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Princess_Feylin rolled 5 4-sided dice:
1, 4, 3, 2, 1
Total: 11 (5-20)
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 Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 5:14 am
 "Hey, old man," Turisas said as he sat down next to Voldemaras on the sandy sparring ground. "I thought you were friends with that captain who got sent away."
It was something that had been bothering him for a while now. It was no secret around the pride that Voldemaras was the lion who had more or less trained Captain Ruzanski in the ways of the Stormborn after the outlander came to the pride, and trained him so well that he had been made a captain while he was practically an adolescent still. It seemed obvious that Voldemaras and Ru had some sort of bond that went beyond mentor and student, given they were rumored to be friends, despite the general crustiness and unapproachability of the older reaver.
"Why didn't you go with him when he was exiled? A friend would have done that, it seems to me."
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Princess_Feylin rolled 5 4-sided dice:
3, 3, 2, 4, 1
Total: 13 (5-20)
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Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2012 5:16 am
 Vol looked away from the bout he had been watching between two young lions. One of them was familiar to him in that he'd seen him take a pretty horrendous beating some time ago from one of the warlord's descendants, but he seemed to be doing all right against his current opponent, who was very obviously related to him. That family was not really an improvement to the pride, in Vol's opinion, and he only paid attention to them at all so that he could point out how ill-suited they were to the Stormborn way of life.
"You don't know anything about it," Vol told the more vibrantly colored reaver in his usual gravelly tones. There was a warning there, but it would probably take a smarter lion than Turisas to recognize it.
"I am not going to explain myself to you."
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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:09 am
Turisas had meant his question to be antagonistic, and had practically gone so far as to accuse the older lion of being a bad friend for not accompanying Ru into exile. It irked him that Voldemaras did not seem to be rising to the bait.
"Are you getting too old to go viking anymore? Are you afraid you'll break a hip?" he asked, trying to be even more obvious with his needling. He really wanted to see how this lion fought when he was fighting for real, and not just sparring, and he thought that meant he would have to get him angry first.
"Or is it that you're just afraid, period? I haven't seen you fight in a long time, it seems."
Okay, so Vol had come back from Ru's first viking with a pretty bad injury and he'd been doing patrols since then, but accuracy wasn't the most important factor here. Provoking Vol to a fight was. He just had to be careful he didn't actually call him ergi. That would be an automatic holmgang and Tursas wasn't in the mood for that kind of formality. He just wanted a fight.
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Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:24 am
"You're walking a dangerously thin line," Vol observed. "Are you sure you wouldn't like to apologize for sticking your nose where it isn't wanted and walk away?"
This was the only chance Vol intended to give the younger cat before dragging him by his tail into a sparring space and giving him a good hiding. His reasons for not going with Ru were his own, and they were complex. He knew that he was serving Ru better by remaining here than he would have been if he'd gone on the viking, but he was, in fact, sensitive about not accompanying his protege.
"I am so sorry you've missed out on watching me fight. Perhaps it's that you've been too long away from the sands, and just haven't been here when I am." Last chance, fool. Take it.
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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:29 pm
"Oh, I'm sorry," Tursas said with poorly feigned contrition. "I thought I was talking to a warrior. Evidently I was wrong, since you don't seem interested in defending your honor as any proper Stormborn ought to do."
Now he really was walking a fine line, but he still had not actually called Vol unmanly. He was simply calling him a coward. Which amounted to much the same thing. He couldn't believe Vol hadn't attacked him already. Maybe the scarred reaver really was getting old.
"As for that," he went on, referring to Vol's supposition that maybe he just had poor timing, "I would be more than happy to see you fight right here, right now. And if you are in want of an opponent, I volunteer, though I don't think there's much glory to be had in beating a tired, toothless lion."
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Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:34 pm
That was it.
Vol didn't growl or snarl or roar or do any of the things a lion might do to alert someone to the fact that they're about to be attacked. He just lashed out with his nearest forepaw and caught Tursas right behind his ear.
"Fine," he said once his claws were digging into Turisas' scalp and dragging down through his mane toward his face.
It took a great deal of skill and practice to find that exact spot on a lion with a full mane, but Vol had that. He didn't have the idiocy to try to hold on though. Turisas would retaliate soon enough, and Vol didn't plan to be attached to him when he did.
Smart lions around them made room.
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Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2012 11:42 am
Finally! Turisas had been seriously questioning his powers of provocation for a moment there.
He jerked backward in an attempt to evade Vol's claws, but in doing so he only gave Vol a better purchase on the thin flesh covering his skull. Naturally it split under the other reaver's sharp-clawed attack, leaving Turisas with a great deal of blood painting the left side of his face. Fortunately his bold red and black markings hid the blood almost completely.
He shook his head, sending his blood flying onto spectators who were too close and then darted in to close the distance between himself and Vol, aiming his blow at the older lion's legs before he could get all four of them steadily planted on the ground once more. The impact of a successful collision was jarring, but Tursas had tucked his chin to his chest in preparation.
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Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 11:52 am
Vol was forced backward by the force of Turisas' attack, but he was not knocked over. Instead he just skidded backward over the sand, letting himself grow heavy so that Turisas would have that much more weight to shift.
"You're never going to win fighting like that," he observed helpfully. "Instead of trying to be clever, why not use something sharp, like your teeth or your claws?"
Insulting his opponents came naturally to Vol. He was basically a lion-shaped insult, when it came right down to it. They came to him as naturally as breathing. The really fun ones were when you told someone they were acting stupidly and then they got so angry they acted even more stupidly than they had been before.
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Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:17 pm
Turisas was not quite sure what happened after that.
He remembered being angry that yet another Stormborn was insulting his intelligence, because he really wasn't stupid, he just wasn't a lawspeaker who could remember everything ever. He remembered throwing Vol off of him. And then...nothing. He had come out of a black fog swaying on his paws and bleeding along his shoulders and flanks. There was also blood matting his mane.
Around him he heard appreciative murmuring that he was fairly certain was not because of his own prowess. He saw Vol sitting a short distance away licking blood from his claws with precise, almost delicate motions that made Turisas want to giggle. Apparently he'd hit his head. Possibly several times.
"You know I was just trying to get a rise out of you, right?" he said. "No hard feelings."
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Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:23 pm
Vol could have told Turisas what happened if he'd been feeling so inclined and if Turisas had asked, but he wasn't feeling so inclined and Turisas hadn't asked, so it would just have to remain a mystery to the blue-eyed reaver. Instead Vol squinted at him in a manner that was undeniably the expression of a lion who was not impressed by what he saw, and hoped that minute observation might reveal something worth seeing that had been overlooked.
"I thought it might be something like that," he acknowledged. "But next time just challenge me. You couldn't handle it if I decided you really deserved to die."
And now Vol was done for the day. Some of those impacts had been very hard on his aging carcass. He wanted to go home have Kvinna rub some of the soreness out of his muscles, maybe with some mint to take the edge off.
"Don't die in bed," he said to Turisas as he walked past. "Seriously. See a healer before you go to sleep, just to make sure your brains aren't permanently scrambled."
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