warforged | At Least It Isn't a Resto Druid Duel

Who: The Vindicator and the Blood Knight (Mar and Vas)
What: A spar turns into a question and answer period.
Where: The Ruby Sanctum
When: Backdated to prior to the kidnappings
Warnings: Mild language. Mar.

The first part of the spar between the two paladins was, depending on your viewpoint, either an elegant battle of clashing Light, in which both of them used both weapon and shield to great effect, blocking holy-infused blows with skill and the blessings of the naaru, in which minor injuries vanished swiftly in a swath of healing magic, in which the two seemed to be practically dancing amongst each others blows in a testament to skill and tenacity... or it was a boring snoozefest no one could win, with the only briefly interesting moment being when Mar whipped a giant hammer of Light out of nowhere and lobbed it as Vas's hooves, then kept trying to chase her back into the energy crackling out from it.

When they both had enough sense of each other's skill, though, things turned for the more interesting. Mar holstered his mace and shield, and in their place drew the massive sword Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds. With the sword flipped in his hand so that he struck with the back of the blade, he lunged back into battle, and now their spar transformed. Less like an elegant dance of tactics and skill, now it resembled waves crashing onto a rock, trying to overwhelm it while the rock stood tall against it. The Blood Knight held back -- no need to Exorcize Vas's face off if they both knew an Exorcism would have come in the moment he lifted one hand from his blade to point an open palm at her, for example -- but no one could deny that either he or she lacked skill.

When at last his furious onslaught faded with one final spin of Zin'rokh around his back and into his right hand again, Maridian stepped back and spun the weapon to face downwards, the better to breathe a moment with his hand on the hilt. "Care to," he said, and since he had to pause to breathe, rotated a finger in midair to demonstrate. "Shield for me, sword for you?"

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She has no longsword - least of all one as ridiculously long as his - so she sheathes her short sword and leans over, hand on her knee, as she catches her breath. She'd known that the Blood Elves had a history of producing swordsmen, but something about Mar and his general... Mar-ness led her to underestimate him. Sure, he had hefted a sword and shield well enough before their spar, but his eccentricities far overshadowed his apparent combat ability.

When she can finally manage to put two words together, she shakes her head. "No, no longsword. Just shields and small arms."

Ridiculous nothing, Mar had seen a Tauren wielding Armageddon. (Actually, Mar had seen a Tauren dual-wielding Armageddon, but he tried not to think about that, because he was uncomfortable with an allied racing being capable of wielding a weapon both longer and heavier than his own body.)

His breath came back faster, thanks to long, long experience. The elf's resting heart rate was so low that it had occasionally been classified as a medical emergency. "Never learned?" he said, surprised. True, he hadn't really settled into practice until about midway through the Northrend deployment, but back then a huge push for versatility had rippled back through the Horde as its allied races pushed through on multiple fronts, and the Argent Crusade had challenged everyone to do their best by constructing the Coliseum. He'd assumed that same shift had gone through the Alliance as well.

She tries to push down the dread that's beginning to well up. "No, I learned how to use them," she says, still leaning on one knee. Thoiir would have had her tail tied to a training dummy and a broadsword bolted to her gauntlet if she admitted anything less. "I'm just not very good with them."

That would have been one hell of a sight.

"Oh, well. I could make it a training session instead," he said with a cheerful smile. "Help you brush up on them." The offer was entirely charitable, since he hadn't seen any dread or negativity hit her face yet.

As long as Mar is being his usual strange self, it's easier for her to push away the creeping anxiety. It's difficult to not latch on to his weird turns of phrase, ones that are strange even in spite of Common being her second language. "Training mission...?" she begins to ask, but quickly moves on to the more relevant part of his offer.

"I, ah, I am really not that good with them. It's a balance... thing," she says lamely, eyes wandering along the ground as she tries to avoid looking at him.

Now he was picking up those subtle signals -- subtle like a supposedly-friendly imp who wants the seemingly tiniest of favors and proclaims you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.

He held up an open hand, to put a halt to that line. "I'm not going to pry," he said, as gently as he could -- not unlike wrapping a blade in a thick blanket, it remains weighty and metal inside even as it bumped its victim gently instead of slicing them apart. "But the excuses... don't become you."

She still doesn't look at him, but after a long moment, she nods in agreement. A paladin, regardless of color or shape, did not get through life by blaming something else for their own faults. Another thing that the elf seems to be better at than she is, and it still stings.

"The last time I took up a longsword," she starts, finally settling her eyes on a blade of grass near her hoof. "It went... badly."

"Badly enough that you won't pick one up again, or you can't?" He stood by not prying, but that was a vital distinction that could very well matter some day down the road, if at some point a desperate plan might need to rely on her taking up a weapon like that. Mar felt justified in asking it, and kept his voice carefully neutral. Who was he to judge what had happened to her in the past, and what it had made her into today, after all?

Vas tries to straighten herself without looking at him. "I think," she says slowly, touching her free hand to the back of her neck, "that it is both."

If he was Aldori - if he was Draenei - perhaps she could trust him with more. He may be an ally, but he is still far from being her friend.

Hey, he didn't grind out all this Aldor rep for nothing, Vas.

Still, he wasn't going to push or protest her choices. If she didn't choose to share, demanding would accomplish nothing. But...

He exhaled, putting one hand to his head to rub at it, which shouldn't be a comfortable gesture given his armor. "I'd like to say something on that point, but I want to be clear that I'm saying it out of concern and respect. All right? It might sound like I'm criticizing or picking on you, but that isn't how I mean it, I'm just bad at saying things that aren't rallying cries to noble action at loud volume. As you probably have noticed by now."

She stops, standing almost perfectly still for a moment. The sharp feeling of dread from before is replaced by something duller - she knows that Maridian is trying to soften the edge of his criticism, but that doesn't make it any less difficult to take. Especially not after the Dragonqueen herself admonished her earlier.

She flicks her eyes to him, then to the ground and back. Delaying him won't stop him from talking, but oh, if only it would...

"I'm listening."

And if he didn't feel it needed to be said, he would have let it go. But he knew he had more experience than she did in the darkest moments... and both of them seemed headed for more.

"The worst enemies you'll face will be the ones who delight in that weakness. The sort that'd put you in a pit with a monster about to eat your best friend and only a weapon that you can't bear to pick up to save them. The really nasty ones, it's all up here." He tapped his temple with his finger.

"I also know that..." He paused, help up a hand for a moment to think -- and at the end of that moment, shook his head. "Well, I'm probably not the one who can give you encouraging words or something, I don't know the details and I'd probably just put my foot in my mouth as usual. But if I can ever help you, you only need to ask."

At Least It Isn't a Resto Druid Duel

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