Completed Comfortably Numb

[Henk]

Henk had always been afraid of the dark when he was little. When the sun dropped out of view and the shadows grew from every corner and every wall like all-consuming curtains of nothingness, the young boy could be found cowering by the light of stolen candles, shivering and skittish. Always. He'd always been 'soft', as the Proctors called him. Weak, foolish, trusting to a fault...

He wasn't a killer. Not a natural one. And that made him lesser.

It was the power that he had within him, the strength that he'd been born with that made him anything more than a coward withering away on the streets. Because one night, his candle burned away, and when Henk was alone in the dark, the power to make his own light awakened out of that fear. Gods, that had made him even more scared. He couldn't control it, and everything he touched seemed to be hurt because of him. Now, he could control his abilities, but at what cost? Henk was a Dreadlord Initiate now; nothing but a ruthless killer in training...

What was worse, he couldn't even do that right. It was mid-afternoon, and he hadn't been able to leave his room since waking. The only thing he'd accomplished was falling to the cold floor underneath him, his entire body numb, his eyes devoid of sight. Once again, he'd over-worked himself on a mission. The previous day he'd concentrated enough light to burn an entire Orc camp to the ground in an attempt to rescue a fellow Initiate. The attempt had succeeded but had also left his body in an unfeeling, unseeing state. It happened quite often, actually. Henk usually woke up blind for several minutes to an hour, and rarely did he ever have total feeling in his extremities.

Henk had chosen not to report these things to the Proctors. They would only deem him a liability. He would hold his peers back if they did not have his help when they needed it. If Henk didn't have this place, have his friends...

Then Henk had nothing.

Eventually, Henk figured the Proctors would send somebody to check on him. No, he needed to get on his feet and at least pretend to be alright before then. He didn't want to be seen like this, so pathetic. He could move his hands but feel nothing, no indication of where they were, his strength gone. All he could do was try and hoist himself up on his arms, but even that was difficult. Eventually, he was able to sit up against his bed. That was as far as he would get by the time he heard footsteps outside his door.

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Oh joy!

It was not often that Kristen was able to speak with Evangeline--oh, Proctor D'amour, Proctor D'amour, so difficult to remember to address her properly here, habitual familiarity and all--but she had asked her to do something this afternoon. Not an assignment, just a small errand. And what a wonder, it would take up some time from attending that dreadful Alteration class, perhaps (this was so naughty to even think!) get her out of it entirely.

An errand, and a simple one at that. Proctor D'amour had merely asked of Kristen to go and knock on Initiate Henk's door. She had explained that Initiate Henk had recently come back to the Academy from a mission, and, well, in Kristen's honest opinion, she seemed a bit worried about him. What had he gone to do, to leave him so stranded by exhaustion or what have you within the confines of his dorm? Kristen had yet to go on any real missions herself--Vel Acan being more of an opportunistic accident than anything else. Missions...she both feared and relished the prospect at the same time, a queasy, giddy feeling whenever she pondered it. Henk, at his age and with his amount of training, just like every other Initiate of their class, was cleared for missions. Kristen, of course, was of the age but lacking in the training. And again a duality, wherein she wished to be as trained as her peers such that she might be allowed like them on proper missions, and also that she wished her training to continue in perpetuity such that she would be kept from whatever ghastly things might lay in store on duty.

Well, enough thinking on that. Here was Henk's door. The hall was quiet at this hour, naturally, with the other Initiates all out on the Academy grounds or within classrooms or, fittingly to her last line of pondering, on missions elsewhere.

She raised a fist to knock on his door.

And she paused. Suddenly in the throe of a silly nervousness.

What...well, what manner of knocking would be appropriate? Gosh, this was silly. But in truth, what manner? What all did she know of Henk, other than he was quiet, and she once mistakenly thought him to be the brother of Chasmine for, in retrospect, a patently absurd reason? Oh, it were times like these when she always felt acutely as the outsider! Perhaps she would have known had she been here at the Academy when all her peers had first come, as children. Alright, so Henk was quiet, reserved. He wasn't like that fretful boy Charon (thank Aionus!) who could be quiet as well, that much was for certain. So, to the point once again...what manner of knocking? Equally quiet? Gentle? Or loud, such as to convey a certain urgency and importance? Gosh, this was silly, just knock!

Kristen went with a series of soft, quiet knocks, her knuckles lightly rapping on the door.

"Henk? Hello? It is I, Kristen. I hope that I have not startled you. Are you by chance awake? Are you quite alright in there?"

Now to...um...wait and see? She wasn't sure what she should do if she received no response.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk's worries were confirmed to be reality when he heard the footsteps stop in front of his door. He supposed he should be grateful that they thought to check on him, but that depended on who stood on the other side of the door. If it was a Proctor besides D'amour, he could be in for a bit of trouble... A chance to have some private one-on-one time with a student often seen as protected by the new policies of the revolution? It wouldn't be the first time he'd been roughed up away from prying eyes.

Otherwise, with any luck, he could convince whoever entered to tell the Proctors he was fine and merely overslept. Flimsy as it may be, he did not wish them to know of this hidden weakness of his. There was no telling how they may react, what they may decide... A pause in his thoughts as silence still filled the room, his brow furrowing over his unseeing eyes; what was taking them so long to enter? Or knock even? Who put such thought behind something like that? A smile curling his lips, he mouthed her name to himself.

Henk didn't know Kristen Pirian that well. She was newer; unlike most of them, she'd not been a young child forced into the Dreadlord fold, and was far behind the rest of them in terms of experience and training. Many of the other initiates held a level of resentment towards her for that, but Henk admired the bravery and passion she showed in her attempts to integrate into such a colorful cast of characters, many of whom could easily outclass her. Pirian, Henk suspected, had a good heart. She was not the natural born killing machine that many of them were.

Perhaps for her, there was still hope. Henk would like that very much.

When at last he heard the soft rapping against the wood of his door, Henk called out just loud enough for her to hear. "Enter." Fully aware of the pathetic half-dressed and half-dead sight he'd be. At least it was somebody he could trust, somebody who wouldn't think less of him. As the creaking of the door reached his ears, he mustered a smile.

"Hello, Miss Pirian. I hope you didn't have to go out of your way for me..."

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Enter.

Oh well that was good. An answer was better than no answer. Things would have become dreadfully complicated with uncertainty if her knocking and asking had produced nothing.

She opened the door and took a step in and heard him greet her and saw--

"Oh!" She flinched and averted her gaze and smacked a hand over her eyes. "Goodness! Have I intruded? Have I entered too soon? Forgive me!"

How scandalous! What had she done? Poor Henk was on the floor and hardly dressed and--

On the floor?

She looked back, peeking through her fingers down at him. Surprise then triumphed over fluster, and her hand fell away from her face and she dropped down to her knees immediately beside him. Her hands hovered over his prone body, as if both terribly afraid that touching him might exacerbate his ailing and earnestly keen that the right touch might alleviate it.

Mild alarm in her tone. "Henk? What happened? Have you been here on the floor all day?"

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk still couldn't see, but the shock in her voice was enough to tell him of her reaction. Very much like Kristen, he thought, to still be so mindful of his modesty. Anybody else wouldn't have batted an eye to the half-naked young man. He wasn't in a particularly salacious state anyways, bare chested sure, but his intimates were covered by cloth undergarments, and unless one directed their attention to that specific area, it looked innocuous enough.

That was irrelevant, and while Henk found himself smiling at Miss Pirian's amusing reaction to his state, he knew that he would be expected to at least make some sort of attempt at explaining himself. While his body was still numb, he felt the heat of her near as she knelt beside him, dull through the fog, but present. He would be better in no time, he just needed time...

"Miss Pirian, you needn't be embarrassed. I've nothing to hide from you. But yes, I have been... incapacitated... for the majority of the day. I overexerted myself on my last assignment, it seems..." Henk had loathed the idea of being coddled like some disabled, helpless, puppy. Even so, he had to admit her presence was comforting in this frustrating time.

"I can't see right now, and my sense of touch is dull as well. I won't be able to accompany you back." His voice was full of frustration, of anger at his situation, but it was well hidden behind his always calm and soft voice. "I don't suppose I could ask you not to tell anybody you saw me like this? Who knows what they'd think..."

Shapes did begin to form in his eyes, and he could vaguely see the calming image of the lovely woman looking over him. The poor thing, why pick her for this? She was still so new, he couldn't ask her to lie to the proctors. That was too selfish. "I'll just... sit here. Until I can move."

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

"Overexerted yourself?" Kristen said with an undeniable tinge of worry. That sounded bad. It was bad, what was saying. The Proctors had pushed her to exert herself for an exercise once, making her cast so many spells that she fell limp with arcane fatigue and thus, right then and there, forcing her to know what it felt like.

But it was true that different mages experienced overexertion in different ways. Not everyone was the same, and some suffered truly horrific consequences of pushing themselves too far. For Henk, it seemed his overexertion had robbed him of two of his senses--in addition to whatever else might be ailing him. Even so, he seemed to be quite nonchalant about it! Calm and collected as he usually was. Why, Kristen might well be in a fretful panic if she found herself blinded for a duration of some days!

"I'll not tell a soul," Kristen said. Smiling, but then with a realization that made her feel silly, of course, yes, he couldn't see it.

What she could do, at least, was close the door. And she did just that, lest some errant initiate would just so happen to be walking down the hallway at this time and hazard a glance into Henk's open room and see him.

Then she came back to crouch beside him again. Said, "Oh, Henk, I can't just leave you there on the floor! I understand you must be devastated with fatigue, but surely we can at least get you situated back into your bed."

She put her hands on him. Making ready. "I do not think that I will able to lift you in a lone effort, so if you can help just a little, we ought to be able to manage. Would you like to try?"

Henk

 

[Henk]

If it were anybody else, be it Edric, Dorian, Noel... Henk wouldn't have even said as much as he had. Oh, he cared for all of his fellow initiates, but he knew that they would not be so understanding, so sympathetic to his plight. They were trained not to care, but Kristen, she hadn't been tainted with the ideals of the pre-revolution academy, she hadn't been broken and rebuilt like the rest of them had.

Maybe that was why Henk felt such a strong desire to trust her. So when she claimed that she wouldn't tell anybody of what she'd seen, he was inclined to believe him. Of course, if they were to discover her lie, then she would also be punished. "I make my light by generating heat within my body. Unfortunately, this also tends to heat my body up to dangerous levels, fevers that, while I've grown accustomed to them, still take a toll on me." Henk admitted to Kristen as he leaned back, that familiar pins and needles feeling surrounding him as his feeling slowly began to return.

"I used my power to make fire yesterday. It was the only option I had to get home safely, but it was still foolish of me." Henk recalled the sensation, the burning of his lungs, of his heart as his entire body felt as though it were melting from the inside. Summoning fire from the heat within him was ridiculously dangerous, and something he only did under the most critical of circumstances. He and Edric had made it back safely in the end, though. It had been worth it.

Henk heard the door click shut before Pirian's feet shuffled back over towards him. Vaguely he felt the sensation of her hands upon his body, and he tensed up for a moment. "I will try, though I wouldn't hold my breath for much from my end..."

Before either of them have a chance though, a loud rapping on the door Kristen had only just closed echoes through the room, followed by the demanding voice of a Proctor. "Henk! Are you in there? I heard Pirian's voice too! The hell do you two think you're doing in there? You have until the count of ten to open this door and explain yourselves before I blow it down myself."

Henk swore silently, but a soft chuckle also followed. "He thinks it's locked." He murmurs to her. "It gets stuck sometimes, he probably isn't lifting before he pulls... So, any ideas?"

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen flinched hard when the Proctor knocked on the door, losing balance and toppling over from her crouch and lightly smacking her head against the bed post on her way down to the floor. She sat up. Pressed her palm to her sore forehead.

Gosh, this was, this was not good! She felt like a child again, being caught snatching a sweet roll from the servants in the kitchen when mother had explicitly told her not to.

But. Wait. What reason did she have to be so nervous and guilty? Other than the somewhat scandalous nature of the circumstances, closed door and Henk half-dressed and such? She was supposed to be here. And, also, she was a terrible liar. A horrible liar. A ghastly liar, with fingers sticky from the icing of a sweet roll and crumbling under the mere pressure of mother's rebuking gaze--she never once was able to talk her way out of being caught.

Quickly, she whispered to Henk, "We're not doing anything wrong. We should tell the truth. I-I can't lie to him!"

As the call of "One!" went out, Kristen looked to Henk with a grimace of apologetic uncertainty. She didn't want him to get into some manner of trouble, if that's what this was inevitably coming to, but telling the truth was the best she had to offer.

If he had any objections (or a better idea) he had nine more counts to voice them.

Henk

 

[Henk]

"Two!"

Henk's grin only grew wider as he heard the unbridled panic in Kristen's voice. Really, she had nothing to be concerned about; she was here on orders, and even if they did seek to punish her for being in a male student's room, it would be a relatively minor infraction, especially when D'amour caught wind of it. "I know you can't. I'm not going to ask you to." Well technically he had just moments earlier, but who was keeping track?

"Three!"

Not much choice then, they were going to have to play this cool. "I'm going to try and push up onto my feet. I still can't see, so I need you to help me, Miss Pirian..." It wasn't proper to be so vulnerable in his position, but right now there was simply no choice. Flexing his muscles to the best of his ability in an attempt to regain proper feeling in them, Henk drew his knees to his chest and brought his hands to the floor beneath him.

"Four!"

He could only vaguely feel the resistance of the surface underneath him, but it was enough to lean forward and push himself up with Kristen's helping hands. "Okay..." He began, swaying a bit. "If you see me start to tilt, I'm counting on you to catch me, okay?" His feeling might be returning, but he could still see nothing more than vague shapes and shadows.

"Five!"

Clumsily, and with his arms reaching out ahead of him, Henk stumbled towards the door to his room, nearly tripping on a strange metal box sitting beside his bed, causing him to collapse against the wall for a moment. "Damn! Am I close?" He reached out, shimmying his way across the wall until he found the door.

"Six!"

Once he'd found the door, Henk quickly gestures for Kristen to join him, scooting aside so she could open the door. "Tell him the truth, that Proctor D'Amour sent you to check on me and you were just waking me up." This wasn't going to be pretty, but he could at least stand up and ... sort of walk.

"Seven!"

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Time. Time. Time. Kristen, endlessly mindful of time and punctuality, often made nervous by lack of the first and distraught by failure of the second, started to get the jitters when the intrusive Proctor began his countdown. The hairs on the back of her neck stood stiff with heightened anxiety. Ahhhhhh...f-focus! Focus! You have to tell the truth and when you get nervous like this even the truth sounds like you're telling a lie so focus!

I need you to help me, Miss Pirian...

Okay. Okay. She could do that.

"Of course! Yes, of course!" she whispered in a hurried rush. She adjusted, got a better footing, took hold of Henk and let Henk take hold of her. Up they went. There! That wasn't so bad, haha. And he was content with lying on the floor!

If you see me start to tilt, I'm counting on you to catch me, okay?

Another hiss of a frantic whisper. "I-I won't let you fall!" Five! Oh with the Proctor's counting already! Kristen's heart felt like a fugitive within her own chest, testing the bars of her ribs.

"We're close. We're close!" Easy. Step by step. My, the overuse of his magic had truly taken a most harmful toll on Henk. Frightening to think about. What would happen should she overuse her own magic? The crushing weight of arcane fatigue alone, or perhaps some additional ghastly, presently unknown symptom to go along with it?

Tell him the truth. Yes. Of course. Right. All right. And Kristen reminded herself to try not to sound as though she'd been caught with sticky fingers. Kristen gave Henk a nod--not even realizing that he couldn't very much see it.

Then she opened the door and snapped to attention.

"Initiate Pirian, carrying out the instructions of Proctor D'amour to assess the readiness of Initiate Henk for today's training, as ordered!"

It took all of her willpower to quell those jitters and stand, rigid and disciplined, before the Proctor.

Henk

 

[Henk]

As panicked and as frantic as Kristen was as she finally swung the door open, the few seconds of respite she offered Henk were far more precious than she could have known. The exhausted young Initiate rested his body against the cold hard wall, making the best attempt possible to catch his breath before he inevitably would need to present himself to this proctor. His lungs burned, but with every breath he took that pain lessened.

Kristen wouldn't be so lucky, the Proctor staring back at her held an expression that was a mixture of suspicion and confusion. He wasn't deaf; he'd heard her hushed, frenzied voice behind the door, the shuffling footsteps and panicked noises. What the hell were those two doing? The only reason he didn't suspect they'd been having a romp was that Kristen was in her armor, and the Proctor knew they hadn't had enough time to get all of that on in the seconds he'd given them.

"D'Amour..." the Proctor mouthed. Of course she'd sent a girl to check on a boy's dorm. It's almost like she went out of the way to do things that irked the rest of the Proctors. "Fine. Where is he then, Pirian?" He didn't see Henk anywhere, just Initiate Pirian standing around in his room. "You don't look like Initiate Henk to me." The Proctor crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow expectantly.

Break time was over, Oh well.

"I'm right here, sir. Apologize my state of dress, Miss Pirian caught me napping, much to my shame." Biting back his discomfort, Henk stepped out from beside the doorway, leaning on the frame and staring in the direction he was fairly certain the Proctor was standing. Aside from slightly pale skin and bags under his eyes, Henk looked relatively normal, and the judging gaze of the Proctor scanned over him with wary eyes. "Seems she did. Get some clothes on, you useless lump. I want both of you outside in 10 minutes, do you understand me? I think I have just the thing to make sure this doesn't happen again."

It was an ominous comment, to be sure, and the malice in the eyes of the Proctor as he turned to move back down the hallway spoke to the notion they weren't getting out of this unpunished. Of course, Henk didn't see that. All that he knew was that the Proctor was leaving, and he allowed himself to reach out and take Kristen's shoulder to balance himself.

"Close... far too close..."

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Kristen stopped herself from saying something stupid. Yes, Proctor, I do not look like Initiate Henk. Even if to her it came across merely as innocent agreeance with the statement. One thing there was to be said about the Academy, one very quickly picked up on the nuances of the spoken word, perhaps even more so than attending court. The wise initiate tightened up his or her speech. By that metric...oh dear, Kristen wasn't very wise yet, but she was making as concerted an effort as she could.

To her relief, Henk stepped out and spoke up. Spared her from standing there with her tongue tied.

But still they were caught in the Proctor's delicate attention. He'd 'just the thing' for them. Ohhh...but why? Kristen had on occasion heard from among her family accusations of the military, when some manner of foul up occurred, that "the right hand was not talking to the left." This seemed mightily to be the case here. Proctor D'amour had already charged Kristen with checking up on Henk's well-being. Why was it necessary to have a whole other Proctor come and personally do so?

She ceased her mental complaints. Mostly because the apprehension of what 'just the thing' happened to be, specifically, started to creep in.

Kristen felt Henk's hand and weight pressing upon her pauldron, and she glanced over to him. Worried. In a small whisper, she said, "How could he do this? You can barely stand! Even here at the Academy, they don't throw the initiates stuck in the infirmary out into some opportunistic misery!"

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk was of course less than enthused about the Proctor's decision, but at the same time he could not make the claim he held no blame in their situation. It was he who chose to hide his condition from the Proctors, and he who made Kristen complicit in his deception. All that Henk could do was squeeze down on Pirian's pauldron just a bit tighter, and apologize.

"I beg your forgiveness. This is my fault entirely, Miss Pirian." His apology would not change whatever awaited them outside, but he would be remiss not to express his regret to her. "You must remember that he is not aware of my condition. You know that I am in rough shape, but to him I was just poorly dressed and slightly off balance." That was assuming he didn't grossly underestimate the Proctor's intuition, in which case even more trouble than he anticipated would be afoot.

They'd been instructed to be outside in ten minutes, but the process of getting a blind and barely-feeling Henk dressed was an ordeal that took up half of that time. Sitting on his bed offered him some point of reference to put on a pair of trousers easily enough, but he'd needed Kristen's help to move his arms in a way that allowed him to put a shirt and jacket on.

Despite the difficulty, the two of them approached the outdoor training area with only a minute to spare, Henk's arm wrapped around Pirian's shoulder for support. Once they crossed through the doorway and into the evening sun, however, he quickly retracted his arm, slowing his stride with only a small sway to his step. One look at his face would betray the effort he was putting in, though.

The Proctor waited for them in a large open area often used for training exercises by the students, his hands behind his back and a smug little grin on his face.

"Well, the lovebirds made it out after all. I was about to send Mars in after the both of you, and I doubt he would be as... agreeable as I." A small chuckle left his lips and he took a step back, bringing his hands out and pointing them apart at the two ends of the field.

"Take your positions. If you two want quality time so badly, you'll spend it sparring. I expect you to pull no punches, and you'll continue until I say otherwise."

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The Proctor was waiting for them in the sparring arena...and that was not good. The cold tingle of dreadful anticipation gripped Kristen has she helped Henk along. Familiar hardpacked dirt greeted her armored boots upon stepping inside the arena.

Her fear was confirmed shortly thereafter.

Kristen couldn't hide her shock, despite a valiant effort in trying. Henk looked as if he might topple over if Kristen walked two meters away and left him to stand for a precarious moment. How could he fight like this!? Kristen would freely admit that she was no military genius, but even she knew that, unless the circumstances were dire, a soldier in Henk's condition or similar was no good in a fight. The Proctor was just being unnecessarily cruel!

And yet, that quiet reminder from the back of her mind. This was how it was. No, merely a fraction of how it was before the Revolution. Delaney had told her, Noel had told her, Edric had told her. Every Initiate whose last name was not Pirian (and was still alive) knew what it was like back then.

She looked to Henk. It wasn't right. It just wasn't right.

To the Proctor, Kristen made a mousy, meek protest, "Proctor, Initiate Henk is in such a condition as to be a p-poor opponent."

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk sighed, having suspected as much. Still, when he considered the other possible penalties for an infraction such as the one they'd inadvertently committed, he supposed that it could have been far worse. Without a word of defiance, Henk left Kristen's side, walking over to the spot across from her with only a slight wobble in his step. Not toppling over wasn't exactly a simple matter, but so long as he concentrated, and worked off of his own muscle memory, he would remain upright.

Surely Pirian didn't think him completely helpless. Henk was hindered, but he was far from harmless. There was no doubt in his mind that Kristen could easily overpower him in his condition, but if he did not at least attempt to fight then the consequences would be greater. Besides, this would look great for Pirian. Henk was no slouch in his combat grades, and beating him would certainly turn a head or two.

The young man raised his fists to fight, more than prepared to take a beating. But then he heard something that would usually make him wonder if he was in some sort of a dream; Kristen Pirian talked back to authority. If he could feel them, his eyebrows would be raised up in surprise. The fact that she would do something she abhorred for his own sake was... flattering... but he knew it wouldn't do her any good.

"I don't recall asking for your assessment of his condition, Pirian. I gave you an order!"

Henk could see the blurry movement he assumed to be Kristen in front of him, and took a few steps forward, nodding to her as if giving permission for her to attack him.

If she didn't, the faint glow beginning on his arms indicated he very much would.

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

Her one solid year of having the absolute authority of the Proctors, the discipline in executing their commands and following their command, came exploding back through Kristen's muscles. She felt herself snapping to attention, as if she were in formation and surrounded by other Initiates all doing the same.

Kristen looked over to Henk, who, thankfully, had the strength and wherewithal to assume his own position across the arena from her. Thankfully. A poor thought. What was there to be thankful for?? Even if Henk possessed this aforementioned strength, the Proctor was making it incumbent upon Kristen to beat it out of him! For what? Even when Kristen had sparred with Noel and Penelope, she had entered into both of those contests in suitable condition; a fighting chance, however dismal and slim. What she endured at the merciless hands of Penelope...well, it had come because Kristen had not been strong enough to ward off her relentless savagery, and it had been quite the impetus to improve ever since.

Now, the Proctor wanted Kristen's hands to be as Penelope's own. Merciless. Savage. Noel had stopped short of "beating her senseless" when it was clear Kristen was beaten. Yet, she had also imparted rather sound advice to her: You shouldn't hold back. What would Noel do here, she wondered. What would she do?

Troubled, Kristen hesitantly raised her hands. Made fists. Prepared for the hand-to-hand combat the Proctor demanded.

And faintly she mouthed, even though Henk likely could not see it: I am sorry.

She rushed forward, swung a right hook intent on crashing into Henk's jaw, with as much force as she could muster.

She didn't hold back.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk was beyond certain that Pirian was beating herself up over this; waging a war with moral dilemma in her head when she should be getting this over with. The thought made his lip quirk, but he wasn't shocked. Kristen was nowhere near as stone-hearted as the rest of them: She was so eager to please, always ready to prove she deserved to be here. When doing so involved something that she deemed untoward or unsavory though, she had a tendency to hesitate.

It was a weakness, but not one that Henk thought imperative to fix. Kristen could be considered more alive than any of them, that light within her not yet fully quashed. Still, she had nothing to fear. Henk doubted she would be able to do any lasting damage to him, at least within the parameters of this test. Beatings Henk could take. He'd taken them time and time again since being chosen for this cursed place.

So when Kristen finally grit her teeth and pushed beyond her wariness, the blurry shape in front of him moving forward and taking a mighty swing at his jaw, Henk knew exactly what needed to be done. The larger boy leaned in slightly, as though he were going to try dodging, but instead took the hit flush and clean on his face, sending him spinning back with a hand moving to his mouth to quickly snap his jaw back into place.

My my, Pirian did hit hard. Perhaps he hadn't been giving her enough credit.

The light on Henk's arms flickered, and after a moment the young man dropped to one knee. Pirian was doing her part, but the aching body of her opponent wasn't allowing him to put on much of a show. The proctor raised an eyebrow at a Dreadlord initiate dropping to a knee after a single punch.

Damnit. I can't fight back. I have nothing to give...

Henk turned his head towards Pirian, his eyes wide, though glassy.

Keep on me, Kristen. Make it look like I don't have the chance to counter-attack...

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The force of her own punch, how it landed completely and hadn't been deflected at all, rocked back into the bones of Kristen's hand--armor did not cover her hand in its entirety. Alarm from the bolt of pain made her give up a little yelp and spin around, holding her aching hand at the wrist and flailing it about. After a full turn and when she was facing Henk again, and with knowledge that the Proctor was watching, Kristen sucked in a sharp hiss and set her hand into a fist again.

What followed was perhaps the longest second of Kristen's life to date.

Henk, down on one knee. The light on his arms gone. He was looking up at her--she knew she was somewhere in the haze of his vision. Her thoughts. Racing. This isn't right! This isn't right at all! He's down. He hasn't lifted a finger to attack me. Even as Dreadlords, how can we be expected to strike at a foe who is in such a state? To continue...is pure malice! It's savage cruelty!

More powerful than her moral protesting, even in its relative quiet there in the back of mind, something else. Pervading up from the dark depths below conscious thought, the place of wordless desire and emotion.

It pushed her forward. Into what she had to do.

(what she wanted to do)

Kristen lifted her armored boot, and drove a front kick straight for Henk's face.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk could take quite a punch, and Kristen had given him all he could handle with that blow. A normal man would have been concussed by a blow of that caliber, and the initiate knew that even he could only handle one or two more direct hits of that nature before he himself was in danger. Despite that imminent danger, Henk could only smile at Pirian's lack of restraint.

Just as he thought. When she let go and stopped thinking before she acted, she was one hell of a warrior. Now that she had broken through her shell, Henk could practically feel the waves of aggression coming from her. Good, now they could give this Proctor the show he so desperately wanted. She likely still thought him completely helpless, but oft Henk was underestimated by his peers. He waited for that pivotal moment; when the blur that represented Kristen grew larger, and he heard her foot lift from the ground... Now.

With no small amount of effort, Henk twisted his body from his spot on the floor, sweeping his leg forward to take out the leg anchoring Kristen to the ground. The light that had faded from Henk's skin suddenly flared even brighter than it had earlier.

A one-sided affair would not do either. Henk had merely wanted her riled up so that she would not hold back. He was confident it would not matter...

When she used her full ability, Pirian was one of the strongest of them all. She need only see that herself.

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The quicker this would be done, the--

"Hwhup!" Something between a yelp of surprise and a grunt, this served as the punctuation to Kristen being caught unawares, his leg struck by Henk's sweep.

And down onto her back she went.

Brief thoughts, as the air vacated her lungs temporarily on impact. She was relieved that Henk was fighting back, of that there was no doubt. But also, a sudden and novel lightning bolt of concern: what if the Proctor knew full well of Henk's condition? What if this wasn't a test for Henk necessarily, but more so a test for Kristen?? How pathetic would it be if she lost to Henk as debilitated as he was? Mayhap the Proctor was trying to see if she was worth something, anything, by putting her up against Henk now.

If it were so, she had to...oh Blessed Guardian...she had to keep going! She couldn't relent! Profuse apologies could be uttered later.

Kristen scrambled over to Henk, trying to get on top of him. In the few hand-to-hand and grappling drills she'd endured--and while the precise name of it escaped her at present--being on top of one's opponent was a strong position. Certainly, it would allow her to rain down punches with impunity.

If she got on top.

And if she didn't shatter the bones of her hand in so doing that rain of punches.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk had felt it, that brief flash of a true killer's aura from her. The sheer excitement of it all was sparking all of his addled senses back to life; he heard the solid thump of Kristen's back against the cold hard ground as clear as day, felt the collision of his leg against hers, saw her form topple over as his eyes refocused.

It wasn't expected that a good fight with Kristen would be his cure, but it wasn't unwelcome. Maybe he was mistaken about the way his power behaved... He'd always assumed that the generation of heat to produce his light exhausted his body. But once Kristen had warmed him up, he felt quite spry...

Well, there would be time for thanks and questions later. Now they needed to give this Proctor a fight. Henk was more than confident that the two of them could.

--UNF--

Before he even had the time to stand, Kristen had repositioned and pounced him like a feral cat. He fell to his back, the weight of the girl atop him just heavy enough to restrict his movement as she rained strikes down upon him. It was all he could do to cross his arms in front of his face to shield it,

Even then strikes got through, punishing him. He could taste his blood in his mouth as his lip split. With no options left, Henk turned to the power he was here because of, the light building in his arms to a blinding brightness, releasing in a stunning flash right before Kristen's eyes.

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

She had him. She had him! All at once the scales tipped, and that fear, that reluctance, that revulsion at what she was being forced to do had been replaced near entire with elation. The rush and thrill of impending victory. This made all the sweeter by its rarity. Kristen was a pup thrown into a pit with full-grown wolves, and how could it be otherwise? Every other Initiate her age had years of practice and experience to boast in both their magical and martial prowess. Flukes of victory didn't even begin to happen until a full year had elapsed for her, and they were most certainly just that—flukes, which she could count with the fingers of one hand.

But all she needed was one solid punch through Henk's guard. One solid punch to the temple, to the jaw, something to daze him so thoroughly that he would be cracked open like an egg! Yes! She wasn't worthless! She could be reforged into something formidable and deadly! Yes! She could be—

Blinded.

A smudging afterimage of Henk was burnt into the white canvas which now smothered her vision. It felt as if her eyelids didn't exist anymore, because no matter how much she blinked them, the stark white and the smeared ghost of Henk didn't change.

"Ah!"

And it hurt! It burned! Her eyes were watering, wetness building all along the rims of them. It felt like a bladed, armored palm was crushing both of her eyes in its terrible grasp.

Kristen was indeed stunned, left reeling as she straddled Henk, fists now more concerned with rubbing her eyes than hammering blows down upon him.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Really he hated to cut Kristen's power trip short; The Pirian needed more confidence on the field, especially if she was going to fill the large shoes that had come before her. On the opposite end of things, it also wouldn't do at all for her to bloody him to a pulp in front of a Proctor who had some say in what missions he was allowed to partake in.

She let out a furious bark as she reeled back from the light, grasping at her eyes in some attempt to dispel the blind spots in her vision. Henk too had to take a moment to allow his vision to clear, his head reeling from the impact of Kristen's' blows. Her fists were... surprisingly solid.

Bringing his hands to her chest, Henk pushes her off of him and to the side, rolling away onto his hands and knees. Crimson quickly began to drip beneath him, the laceration across the bridge of his nose flowing freely, and he was pretty sure his lip was busted too. Nothing like a little war-paint to clear the sinuses, he supposed.
That little lightshow wouldn't keep her down too long though. Henk shook the cobwebs and clambered to his feet, stumbling over to Kristen and sending his boot down towards her gut.

Kristen Pirian

 

[Kristen Pirian]

The ground of the arena roughly greeted her back after she was flung off of Henk. A bit of the fighting wind was knocked out of her, but what came next—

"Oooof!"

—stole the wind in near entirety. Her stomach tightened horrifically and her hands instinctively went to hold the shadow of Henk's boot that had been pressed into it, yet her palms brought no relief. She curled up briefly, feeling terribly short of breath even as her vision was slowly crackling to life again.

Only on a primal level was she able to still operate. She was in a fight, there was a foe, and she needed to keep fighting that foe. So while the forefront of her consciousness was concerned mostly with the gripping pain in her stomach and elsewhere, there in the back a silent helmsman steered the ship and allowed her to act near unconsciously.

Kristen rolled hard to where she thought Henk might be, hoping to throw what weight she had into his shins, to bowl him over. The roll was the only move she was in fact capable of in that moment.

Henk

 

[Henk]

Henk held back some of his weight on the stomp. He shouldn't have, he knew Kristen didn't need the leeway, but he couldn't bring himself to fully commit to harming his classmate. If he had then the fight could have been over, but he'd given Kristen the opening to roll through to the side, tripping him up enough to send him stumbling over her, trying to regain his footing.

What Kristen couldn't have known was that it would send Henk staggering towards the Proctor who'd put them in this match in the first place. On instinct, Henk's arms reached out to catch himself on the man, who in response delivered a forceful, but rather cheap blow to the initiate's gut, sending him crumbling to the ground.

"I've seen enough." The proctor huffed as Henk sank to his knees in front of him. He didn't seem all too concerned about either of them, but what did they expect? "Pirian, you did well enough. You may return to your classes now." The man waved her off, glaring down at Henk with a look that could cut steel. "You held back. You always hold back. What the hell is the matter with you?" He reached down, grabbing a handful of Henk's hair and tilting his head to look him in the eyes.

"Sorry sir... really sorry."

The punishment would be worse if Henk was honest, but Kristen wasn't in any trouble. That's what he'd been most worried about. The most he had to worry about was extra work today, but he'd live. "Alright then, if you won't be straight with me then you can follow me to the armory. You'll be polishing everything today."

Henk winced. Armory duty. His favorite.

Kristen Pirian