How do Antediluvians fight (author: Omicron)

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Omicron     Saturday, January 14, 2012 9:21:58 PM #1
...like this.

They fight like this.

Okay perhaps not but I don't care. This is ridiculous from the beginning to the end, but I had to take it out, and so there you are, suffering for my own madness.

There it is. I know you want it. 





The painting was made without canva, without brush, without anything beyond paint itself, which had been thrown in the air and now remained there, its time-frame slowed to a crawl so that it dripped to the floor at perhaps one inch per day. It made a fantastical, three-dimensional creation, slowly evolving, thrusts and drops and stripes floating above the ground.
In one corner of the room, a lion and a deer had been stopped at the very moment of the kill, perfectly capturing the fear and desperation in the slender animal as it vainly tried to jump out of the way, as well as the mindless frenzy of hunger and bloodlust in the predator's eyes as it leaped.   A perfect representation of our relationship with Kine,   had said its creator when he had showed it to his childer, smiling grimly.
In another corner, a hundred of mice had been thrown in a pit and accelerated so that generations passed in an instant, infants being born and growing old and dying in the space of seconds.   A magnificent picture of how mankind's pointless struggle appear to us, who have seen more of them die than they know existed,   he had said his daughter.
This might have been the reason why people were getting afraid of him. 

From his throne, which he had carved from a block of obsidian with his bare hands after digging it from the cooling magma of an erupting volcano, Troile, Grandchilde of Caine, looked upon his works. 
Outside, there were screams and fire and sounds of battles. He did not care. No civil war could be as important as the flow of paint through the airs. 
After all, who would dare lay a hand on him? 

Suddenly, there was a loud sound   like a fist banging at his brazen doors. He did not pay it any attention, for in the paint he was beginning to see a greater truth.
There was another bang. Then another. And finally, Troile was forced out of his contemplation as the two heavy doors were disloged and sent flying across his meditation room.
A strange, bitter taste roused in his heart, too weak for him to wake up, but unpleasent still; he distinctly remembered having felt it once.
Was it anger?
His head rose; his eyes left the painting to focus on the door.

There stood a young woman, short hair the color of old wood, a tunic braided with gilded clothe, silver bracelets at her left wrist. 
She held a long spear in one hand, and from her waist hung a quiver full of bronze javelins.
Troile frowned, and his lips moved slowly, as if trying to remember how to form words.
  ...why?   he simply muttered. 
Ilyes stepped slowly across the rooms, eyes gazing through the vast corridors of marble.
  You really have to ask? She answered, voice smoldering with contained rage.  
Troile followed her gaze to the walls, and came across one of his old works, which he had forgot about. Men in arms were fighting for their deaths, trapped in a loop that sent them to the beginning of their fight each time it seemed to end. Through it, he had tried to study desparation and fear and death, to understand how a mortal could not whimper and beg on his knees when confronted to the promise of his own end. Where did they find the strength to fight on?
  ...I don't understand.   It had been fine work, a meditation upon humanity and death. Where was the problem?
  My point precisely, said his childe.
He would have asked more, demanded an explanation, but at this point Ilyes' hands became a blurr and the javelines went out of the quiver, thrown with inhuman force toward his throne of stone. Troile sneered contemptuously and waved his hand, freezing the weapons in mid-air.
And then he saw her move.
Beautiful as she had been on the first day they had met. Savage and fierce in her lust for battle and righteous struggle. As always, she had read him like a book, and her time-frozen weapons now paved the air between them like so many stepping stone on which she was dancing, using them as a support to jump, and she was now above him, her grey spear thrust to his heart.
For the first time in ages, he had to focus his strength, to alter his own time flow so that he could reach for his sword in time and parry the blow with his right hand, his left pushing on the throne so he could rise faster and meet her with his full strength.

Troile's sword and Ilyes' spear were sister weapons. On the second night after her Embrace, full of blood and having danced atop the mountains of Africa, they had seen a star fall, and followed its course. Together, they had broken the shell of burnt rock and digged thunderbolt iron from its core; then, with their powerful fists and swift fingers, they had forged the metal perfectly as it was still warm. They were the most beautiful and perfect weapons in the world, bare none; they could shatter stones and slice through armors of bronze, and every time one was wielded it sang with the perfect harmony of Arikel's harps.
Yet when both met, swung with the unholy speed and strength of their respective masters, they shattered like crystal.
Molten metal flew in droplets between the two Cainites, the backlash from their respective moves absorbed by their stone-like skin, arms pushed back by a wave of air.
But Troile's left hand was still on the arm of his throne, while Ilyes had hers free of any charged. She gritted her teeth, and hit with the power of every stampeding beast this planet has ever borne. The throne disintegrated in a thousand obsidian shards. None of which belonged to Troile. 

The Antediluvian stepped out of his time pocket behind his childe, his face still one of disdain. He did not bother to rise a hand on Ilyes, such was the pathetic vanity of her treachery. 
The woman turned to him, eyes cold as steel.
A drop fell to the floor, Troile looked surprised. He rose one hand to his cheek, and 
there
he felt
blood.
Blood. He had been hurt. By his own childe. Whom he had thought to be of as much consequence as a rebelious kid to a human father. But she had succeeded. In a hundred years, it had been the first time vitae had flowed out of his body rather than into it.
The Beast awoke at this moment, screaming bloody murder at this outrage, an overwhelming anger with which he agreed completely. 
Still, his will rose as a wall against the animalistic instinct. It was a matter of pride. He would crush his Childe for this offense, not the animal in him.
He hissed like a serpent, Ilyes growled like a lion, and suddenly they burst at each other. Time slew down as Troile's will forced itself on it, and he dodged Ilyes's attack easily, before rising a fist   the strength of which was so great, that by pressing coal in it he had once formed a diamond. He hit...
...and Ilyes's shape blurred and twisted out of the way, then darted like a snake; he pushed his time-slowing discipline further, dodged again, struck with all his might... And again she went faster, hit stronger, and he had to put even more effort, in vain, as she twisted and bent around his blows and overwhelmed him. And then she was on him, fist at one inch of his face...
  Stop, he said.
Everything went silent. 
Troile stepped out of the way of the blow, and watched his childe, amazed. Her face showed a concentration he had rarely seen in anyone except him. Her moves were perfect, even more than they had been last time he had sparred with her. A life-time ago or three, quite literaly. 
It had to end now. He moved to one of the walls, put his hand on it and, concentrating so as to not render the stone into dust, broke the stones in fragments, each the size of an egg. Tapping into his strength and mastery of time, he threw each one in Ilyes's direction as hard as he could; they froze with the rest of the room as soon as they left his hand, but after circling his childe, he ended up with a dozen of stones launched at her from very direction, up and down, ready to take their course as soon as he would stop give Time its dues back. He then stepped back, in the entrance of the room, far enough to avoid the consequences of this assault. 
He felt as if something should have stopped him, or at least slowed his decision to unleash such deadly might on the girl, but he could not put a word on it. 
He shrugged, then waved his hand, dismissing the power. 
As soon as he did, the stones flew with so much speed they could have been fallen stars themselves; and as soon as they reached the floor or the walls they exploded, thrown with so much power that they produced fire and wind and shockwaves and vaporized the other stones...
And as soon as they took their course, Ilyes moved herself, with perfect grace and absolute certainty.
And she dodged
every
single 
one 
of them. 

She set foot on the stone corridor in front of Troile just as the dozen stones turned the meditation room into a broken remains flying in the air. She smiled. Her features faded and her arms suddenly moved so fast that there seemed to be four, eight, sixteen of them, drawing signs until nothing remained but a beautiful flower of moving flesh. 
Stone melted and wind rose, and the impact of her blow reached Troile squarely in the chest before he had time to do anything, and as the corridor was divided in the middle as if by some gigantic cannonball, he was thrown out of his own palace, out in the streets, where he crashed in a deflagration of dust. 

Ilyes went down the stairs of his palace in a strange mix of deliberately slow walking and brief stutters ahead, disappearing and reappering ten steps later in the same second. Around them, Kindred and men had stopped fighting, and under the fires of the city burning, they watched in awe the duel of their god-like masters.
She reached the end of the stairs as Troile rose, blood on his chest and face, but already perfectly healed   if not for the wound his pride had taken. Unbelievable anger burnt in his eyes.
  You have... Weaponized... My meditation stance, he bluttered, outraged. Ilyes did not answer, contempt in her eyes. 
  I designed Temporis to catch the beauty of the world... To preserve its perfect moment for eternity... To have all the time I would need to contemplate God's Truth... And you made it into a way to kill better?
  What have you done with your   meditation stance,   father? What have you brought to this world? What have you created beyond these grotesque fresques of human death? I may have turned into a weapon... But this same weapon is now freeing us from a tyrant.  
  I am the rightful son of Caine! My rule is legitimate! I have mastered the arcanes of Time and bent reality to my whim, I have been honored as a king and worshipped as a god! Along my brothers, I have killed the demented rulers of Enoch, and seize the right to govern! I have brought peace and wisdom to this lands! I have watched god's creation as its deepest creations unfolded for my eyes alone!  
  Yeah, fuck that, Ilyes said. Then she ran at him. 

The impact blew out a house or three as if they were candles, but at this point neither of them cared anymore. Troile focused, using his mastery of time to accelerate his own relative time so that the rest of the world appeared as slow as the withering of a tree in autumn. Ilyes answered by pushing her Celerity to the limits, and they clashed fists with strength and speed unseen before. 
There was no clever tactic this time, no weapons, no use of the environment. Only perfect combinations of blows pouring down like rain. Their clothes had long disintegrated under the friction of their own movements, and they were both naked, flesh of marble glistening under the stars. Everytime a blow hit its target, bones were broken, flesh torn apart, but just as soon the blood clotted the wound and the body was restored to its pristine state of eternal perfection. 
They fought in absolute silence, moving faster than the sound of their own attacks. The rest of the world was trapped in perfect stillness; the skies and earth were their arena, and in this instant nothing mattered in the world but this fight. 
Ilyes was swift and precise; she bobbed and weaved through the attacks, darting her hand like so many snakes biting their prey, and she tore her Sire's flesh piece by piece. Troile was strong and focused, and he absorbed the blows to get a better shot, withstanding the pain of many cuts to deliver one crushing attack. In the end, none of it mattered, Troile thought as they were still dealing just as much damage as the other. Their reserves of blood were depleting at the same rate to fuel their healing powers...
And then it struck him.
Ilyes had certainly fed right before coming to him.
Whereas his meditations had taken all his mind and he hadn't fed in weeks.
This realization brought a wave of horror that made him lose the edge for just a fraction of a second; but it was largely enough for Ilyes to plunge into a weak point, hit him once, twice, pushing his arms wide open to break his guard, and then her arms drew the same flower as before... Tearing his ripcage wide open. 
Troile screamed, and for a moment time went back to its normal course; as it did, the combined shockwaves of their blows rippled through the city like an earthquake, bringing down houses and temples. Ilyes, savage smile on her face, seized his heart in her hand...

Time stopped, again.
Then it went back.
With tremendous willpower, his head on the verge of exploding, Troile rewinded the fight until right before when Ilyes had noticed the weakness; he immediately corrected it, parried a blow that would have set up her deadly combination, and struck back with all his might, breaking her skull and sending her flying into the ruins of a house, a hundred paces from there.
He immediately felt to one knee, head throbbing with pain, throat burning with first. Around him, all were fleeing, but he just had to grab one to sate his thirst...
Then the ground shook and stones flew in the air, and he heard a roar that defied all of creation. And from the ruins of the house, Ilyes emerged, fangs bared, eyes shot with blood and madness, inarticulate and savage and yet so beautiful.
The Beast had waken. 
She did not perform any fancy move. She ran straight at him, and each of her steps broke the stone floor beneath, leaving a crater. Understanding that he could neither dodge nor parry her frenzied furry, Troile poured even more of his will into the world, bending her own time so that it would slow down to a crawl and perhaps even stop her...
He had done all he could. He had used all his power.
And still she ran. 
Her speed was only a fraction of what it had been when she had emerged from the ruins, but he had to concentrate on his power, and he had not even imagined that her celerity would be so great; and so she hit him in full, and his concentration broke, and time went back to normal, and they both went through the whole city like a knife through melted butter, at the speed of lightning. The river barely slowed her, and they ended their course in a marble quarry, as the Antediluvian's back hit the face of a mountain.

He screamed, and found enough force to use the wall as a support and push back against her, throwing her away.

Tonight, Troile had known frustration. He had known disappointment. He had known anger. 
Now he knew fear.
Ilyes rose, seemingly unaware of her wounds, her limbs mending themselves back together without her paying any attention. She threw her head back and roared again, and the skies answered with thunder and lighting and rain.
Standing alone as water poured over him, Troile looked upon the skies, and for a moment, he thought,   Why?  
And then he remembered what he had forgot when he had thought himself a king: he was a cursed wretched whom God had forsaken. There was no hope, no salvation, and he was to end in blood and impotent rage after seeing all his works crumble by the hand of the only one he had trusted. Just as it had happened to Caine, and Enoch, and now him, it would happen to Arikel and Ennoia and Absimiliard and all the others and their childer and the childer of their childer. 
For a brief second, he took comfort in knowing that he would not be alone to suffer this fate.
Then wrath came back, and he forgot all about it, and threw himself at his childe and lover with all the power that came from true desperation.

And he fought. He fought long, and he fought well. He gave every blow he could, he took all that Ilyes threw at him without flinching. He moved mountains, lifted giant rocks to crush her under, he leaped to the skies. 
But the Beast was too strong.
And in the end, empty of blood and will, he was on his feet, moving back step by step, with his fists as sole weapons, barely able to hurt her   not that she would have felt it. He gave everything he had, but he had been a majestic thinker, with the power to peer into the naked structure of time itself; not a rebellious warrior, with freedom as her sole motivation and fighting as her main goal.
And so Troile fell. His last hit, driven by despair, broke through Ilyes' ribcage, and he came this close to pierce her heart... But as he did, she tore his arm right from his elbow, and drove him into the ground with sheer strength.
Then he saw her wide open mouth and her fangs gleaming in the moonlight, and he knew what was to come. 
Then, darkness.

So did Troile die.
Quote:
Ah, you say, but the theater of the absurd focused mostly on the desperation that comes from being forced to inhabit an incomprehensible world! To that I say, congrats on knowing how Google works! 


*giggle murder zoom zoom*
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17 users thanked Omicron for this useful post.
Mr Gone on 1/14/2012, solomon birch on 1/15/2012, cantrip on 1/15/2012, that guy on 1/23/2012, Jossiah Blessed on 1/26/2012, Bloodspeaker on 1/31/2012, ChewyGranola on 1/31/2012, valismedsen on 2/1/2012, Thorbes on 2/2/2012, Scuttlest on 2/5/2012, Dado on 2/5/2012, Eldritch on 2/18/2012, jburgos on 2/23/2012, Digitalredneck on 2/23/2012, Evo_Shandor on 3/7/2012, JohnDoe#244 on 3/10/2012, -Saga- on 4/14/2012


Bloodspeaker     Tuesday, January 31, 2012 7:30:00 PM #2
More please.
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Mr Gone on 2/4/2012
ChewyGranola     Tuesday, January 31, 2012 7:46:23 PM #3


/like
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BloodArmor     Wednesday, February 01, 2012 3:40:49 PM #4
Very, very nice.
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Omicron     Wednesday, February 01, 2012 3:50:51 PM #5
Thanks a bunch  

I could do another one but nothing has yet struck me with as much of a "this needs to be fully written down" feel as Troile vs Ilyes.

I'll probably come across something that inspires me in the future - feel free to direct me towards stuff like that.
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Ah, you say, but the theater of the absurd focused mostly on the desperation that comes from being forced to inhabit an incomprehensible world! To that I say, congrats on knowing how Google works! 


*giggle murder zoom zoom*
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2 users thanked Omicron for this useful post.
Mr Gone on 2/4/2012, Eldritch on 2/20/2012
Scuttlest     Sunday, February 05, 2012 8:10:52 PM #6


Lasombra versus Gratiano next? ;)
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Eldritch     Tuesday, February 07, 2012 3:50:51 AM #7
WoW , that was superb  though i wished him to fool Ilyes into believing him dead, or withdraw after getting the upper hand , still its the point of the whole story to be dramatic i guess xD

Gratiano vs Lasombra can never be as good as Torile vs Ilyes cause the fights was not 1vs1 and there was no potential romantic interest involved like that, maybe one of the Haqim's Conquest with flashbacks of the past (Lasmobra, Malkav) or Samiel vs Tzimisce 
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jburgos     Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:52:10 PM #8


Excellently done. Any chance of having some storyboard pictures to go along??
Storyteller for: 

Be Bloody, Bold & Resolute, a WtF chronicle of Shakespearean revenge 

Scions of Anarchy , a VtR Nomad chronicle for Dead Gamers Society 

Elder backer for V20 Companion Kickstarter Project
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akashicmonk     Sunday, February 26, 2012 3:11:03 AM #9


Almost tempted to dig out the old joke...

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Eldritch     Friday, March 09, 2012 9:23:38 AM #10
... and whats that ? 
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-Saga-     Saturday, April 14, 2012 10:29:43 PM #11


Great story, thanks. Do you have more of them?

-Saga