Author’s Note
Hi so here’s my worldbuilding topic. This isn’t an AO story, its part of my own thing so please check it out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
That’s where I write about the lore for this stuff. Its gone through many iterations and many regretfully bad chapters, but ideally the plan is if I keep revising stuff to make it better it will eventually be not quite as embarrassingly bad.
This chapter involves a character called Icarus, whose name has changed since November. He’s still called Icarus, just here he’s not referred to by his surname since he currently has none!!!
This is a fight scene between Icarus and a mysterious man who has travelled the world, rumours say he’s a soothsayer who can see the future. Icarus is the most wanted man in the world and the prime target of a global peacekeeping organisation called the Grand Courts, and wants to know if the rumours are true… and to, naturally, prove why he’s the most wanted man in the world.
Dellefau, 1013
Sitting on the floor, cross legged, was a man clothed in layers of silver, black, grey and light sandy browns that hung loosely on his shoulders and around the base of the large grey wings formed out of swept, ashen grey feathers mottled with small streaks of blue and green. Across his lap lay a long curved scabbard of a black polished wood, inlaid with a yellowish metal which also formed a circular guard at the handle of the blade resting within which was itself wrapped tightly in a band of rough fabric, and the guard was patterned with spiralling roses. A tseaka, a traditional sword from the furthest north-eastern reaches of the world. Behind him, light seeped into the cold, empty room he sat in, as the battered door creaked open. A rush of wind brushed through his hair, as he moved one hand to the grip of his sword and spoke a single word. “Icarus.”
“It is just by knowing that name, let alone speaking it without so much as a glance, that you reveal yourself as the one I seek.”
At the door another man, arm outstretched to hold it open, stood with a hood obscuring his face. An odd looking cloak covered his chest and waist, but on its left side dropped down to the shins, with the right side open and free, providing his figure an odd asymmetry.
Stepping forwards into the room, letting the door swing behind him, he withdrew his arm and lifted it towards his face, hand a dark amber-grey hue scarred with faintly glowing cracks that spiralled erratically across his skin. Throwing down the hood, he revealed a a similarly scarred face of the same deep tone - embers seemed to occasionally gently float off his cheek and burn up, leaving a thin cloud of ash. His face was, despite the scarring, beautiful in an eerie way, the same way a bonfire was beautiful despite its potential to harm. Two eyes of an intense, dark pine-green gently hid behind a forest of well-kept hair, brown but dark enough in the light to appear black.
“You knew I was coming, I suppose. How?” Spoke the man, softly.
“The winds hear many, many things, Icarus.” Replied the winged man on the ground, still unmoving from where he sat.
Icarus supressed a smile, “Yet in your wisdom you ran not? I came here hearing of a Soothsayer from T’veran, not an old fool thinking they could fight their fate. What is your name?”
“In the many, many years I’ve lived, and I assure you - I’m older than I appear to be - I have gone by many a name. You may call me Hal. Tell me, Icarus. Do you believe in Death?”
At that moment, Hal grasped the handle of his sword tightly with one hand and with the other picked through the strings of Serreth that permeated the air, wrapping them around his fingers before loosening the blade with his thumb, the motion slight enough that Icarus didn’t notice, as he approached slowly.
He began to reply, “I experience death daily, but alas, I cannot accept the existence of Death. Reth-”
In no more than a moment, the tseaka was drawn, scabbard cast aside, with Hal across the room having swept the long, single edged, slightly curved blade across the room with ease. However, despite the speed with which Hal moved, Icarus moved faster, drawing two thin weapons, some median between a dagger and sword, using one to push Hal’s away in a sharp parry while thrusting forwards with the other. As he did so, an unseen force rippled from between the layers of Serreth, and a gust of wind - with the force of of some kind of invisible strike - knocked the second knife from Icarus’ hand.
Hal disengaged and stepped back swiftly, attempting to stab at Icarus, who sidestepped and grinned. A new burning passion beneath his face lit up his eyes in malice and exhilaration.
The two exchanged blow after blow, moving faster than they could blink, as dust and stone crumbled around them, smothering them in a smoky haze. Hal grew calmer, more focused, as the Serreth entwined with his blade causing another invisible punch to be thrown after each swing of his sword.
Icarus grew erratic, impatient, as he attempted to break through the space controlled by Hal’s weapon, difficult due to its significant range advantage.
Hal could see the anger in his expressions as they grew grimmer and grimmer, yet Icarus avoided every hit masterfully, even taking a moment to speak to him. “You fight well, Hal.”
Hal said nothing, eyes fixed on his opponent, who as he moved caused the fabric at his neck to shift, revealing a necklace where on a deep grey chain, a small carved stone lay. It was of a vibrant green, some sort of jade. For the shortest of moments, Hal’s eyes brushed over the stone, noticing a curved pattern cut into it. Icarus spotted the movement in his eyes and laughed, a short, deep, chuckle.
Eventually Hal’s opponent began to make small mistakes, stumbling here, grazing against the unseen blades of air. Less than a mortal man untouched by the strings in the air should, however, and their fight continued to draw on, until Icarus slipped enough for Hal to take advantage. With one wide sweep of his long sword, and a sudden flash as Serreth tangled together and wind pulsed outwards, the building collapsed in a storm of timber and stone and filth. Sunlight from above rained downwards, for a moment glimmering through the dusty cloud before a breeze swept the dirt away and the bright daylight and stale warmth of Dellefau overtook their senses. Hal was marginally faster to recover from the sudden brightening, and outstretched his wings, throwing a wide shadow over Icarus. He took into the air, the Serreth weaving into an updraft to lift him up.
Taking his knife arm over his head, Icarus took a moment to aim at the empyrean cast of darkness against the surrounding pale sky, and threw his weapon, watching it up, marginally too high. Hal dove, faster than a bolt of lightning, striking Icarus across the torso with his blade cutting across fabric, through skin and through bone. The upper edges of the tseaka was now slick with dark blood. Icarus was knocked back by both the cleaving hit and the weight of Hal’s wings upon him, catching him in the nook of his wings. He struggled for a moment as the pain suddenly seared up, but pushing threw the agony grasped for another weapon.
Hal twisted himself around to try and distance himself and prepare to strike again, but across his face he was smote with the hilt of a short knife grasped by Icarus, cracking his head to the side. Icarus took the blade and drew it across the base of the neck in one violent motion.
Coughing, bloody and in excruciating agony, he took a step back and stumbled, throwing the knife aside. His cloak was torn almost in two, and blood soaked the gash in his tunic where more knives were strapped in a series of belts. Hal lay on the floor, unmoving, covered in more gore than Icarus was himself.
Although it may have been light-headedness from the blood loss, just a momentary vision of light that twinkled across his eyes, when Icarus saw the sky flash black and white, he froze. Something monumental, large beyond space, moved up there, bigger than the winds, bigger than the sky. A hand- or something like a hand- more than a hand. Beyond any idea of what a hand could be, a limb more significant than the idea of a limb, emerged. A giant wing of sorts, impossible to truly describe since it took the shape of so much yet appeared to be little more than nothing, cleaved the sky above Icarus and Hal, descending slowly. It was every colour, and more; made of an indescribable material, a flesh of beauty, of dread, of pain and meaning and war and it took a hold of Hal’s body, closing his eyelids where he lay, smothering him with an unusual sort of love. It then was gone, along with Hal, leaving Icarus alone in silent streets.