User blog:Party Vanderbilt/1. Eyes of the Goshawk

Your eyes open to stare into the flames burning in the fireplace in front of you. You're naked, and sitting cross-legged on a threadbare rug sitting in the middle of a small room formed by four walls; two of stone block, two of pale, tan, silken fabric.

The wall directly in front of you contains a small fireplace with mantle, and next to the fireplace, on the right, stands an armor rack made of a few pieces of wood nailed together in the rough shape of a cross, with beams as the bottom of the base. On the rack your armor hangs; a dull, scorched, battered, metallic armor that's obviously seen many battles. That same wall also contains your weapons rack, which carries numerous brutal looking weapons of various shapes and sizes.

The wall adjoining, on the left, plays home to a small dresser with mirror. It also contains a decently sizable shelf with a number of well-worn books describing strange lands, people, customs and creatures. From the upper left-hand corner of the mirror hangs a pendant made with a gold chain and mounting, and a pale-blue Devil Gem carved in the shape of a heart.

You stand, moving to the dresser. Within a few moments you're clad in a light tunic and breeches of doe hide, cloth shoes, and you've started to put on your armor. As you slide your arms through sleeves of chain mail, flashes of memory come to you.

''The clearing is filled with song and laughter. Men and harpy women sit in the sun enjoying meals, and little harpy chicks run about with wings spread, hoping beyond hope that the wind will come in just right to lift them into their first flight.''

''You sigh a sigh of contentment, as a cheerful voice says from beside you, "Penny for your thoughts, Big Guy?" You turn to look down to your right...''

"Oi, you 'ear me, Big Guy? I said it's just about time for yerz match." The voice comes from the other side of the far fabric wall, beside the door. Dirk's smart enough not to just tromp into your room without permission. After the last poor sod, well... Everyone is.

You grunt in assent, and finish letting the heavy iron hauberk slide down over your massive frame. Seizing your helm with your gauntlet-clad hands, you give a quick double check to make sure it's in serviceable condition. No cracks at the corners of the cross-shaped eye-and-face slit. The thin, black fabric that allows you to see out but keeps opponents from seeing in to read your eyes is holding in place properly. No gouges anywhere, and there's no dents on the flat top that impair the fit in any sort of dangerous manner.

You slide the helm over your head, and reach for the last touch, hanging off the corner of the armor rack. It's a dingy, greying tabard that had likely once been white. It's frayed, torn, and unraveling in places, and at the bottom the front has one large corner ripped off, the casualty of a battle long forgotten. But in the middle of the tabard, still proud and defiant, lies your heraldry; a brown raptor of some sort that seems to be swooping down from the upper left with wings stretched out behind and talons reaching for some unidentified prey.

You quickly toss the tabard on, before eying yourself in the mirror. Less man than mountain made of iron plate and mail, you stand at least two heads over the tallest man you know. Your body is half-again as wide, and your arms and legs would look more in place in the bows of an oak tree. The grey armor gleams dully in the firelight, and even you can't see your face through the slit in your helm, thanks again to that fabric. Good. Everything's in order.

You reach up to touch the pendant briefly, then grab a massive Demon Realm Silver warhammer from the rack that looks like it would be heavy enough to require two men to carry. Your baby, your pride and joy, Earthshaker. All the weapons are Demon Realm Silver, actually. It's Arena rules. You can beat the ever loving Hell out of your opponent, but you can't kill him.

You rest the hammer on your shoulder and walk out of your private quarters into the main part of the waiting chamber for this side of the Old Weissland Arena. Dirk's quick to start chattering information about the warrior you'll be facing today, but you mostly ignore him. The squat, ugly, one-eyed man's always trying to keep a leg up on the competition, no matter how firmly you've instructed him to leave it alone. It's just his nature, you suppose.

The two of you pass through a heavy, wooden double door and walk down a long, wide corridor. The further you go, the more noise you can hear. There's cheering and jeering, chanting and ranting, and the slam of the kettle drums. The crowd's getting restless, so you send Dirk on ahead to announce you.

As you slowly stride down the corridor, Dirk sprints down the hall and out into the arena beyond. As he starts warming up the crowd with the simple stuff, you nod appreciatively. He's gotten good at this.

"Ladies 'n gents! Boys 'n girls! Are! You! Ready?!" The crowd's natural response is an almost deafening roar of almost bloodthirsty enthusiasm. Dirk waits for things to die down before he continues.

"Over on this side, " he says, as he gestures to the far doorway of the Arena, "we got us a far-flung traveler from the mystic lands to the Far West! A wanderin' swordsman without peer, I give ya Yuuji the Raven! Give 'im a big Weissland round o' appreciation!"

As the crowd roars, you see a small, dark haired man with a pony-tail in strange, flowing clothes give a wave and oddly formal bow to the crowd. From here, in your own corridor, you can see what appears to be two sheathed blades attached to his left-hand hip somehow, though little else beyond what you've already observed.

As the crowd's roar starts to fall silent, you can hear an almost palpable tension and eagerness in the air. Dirk gestures to your corridor, and speaks in a more subdued, almost reverent tone, gradually ramping up the energy by steps. "And now, mates, we've come ta the crux o' the matter. You know who you came to see. I know who you came to see. You came to see the Wargod o' Weissland. You came to see the Horror o' Hickman. You came to see the Terror o' the Twin Ports, the Shark o' the Southern Jewels,  and the Monster o' the Tremblin' Wastes! You! Came! To! See! The GOSHAWK!!!!"

Monster of the Trembling Wastes? You've never even heard of the Trembling Wastes. Dirk's getting carried away again. But it worked. The crowd's in an uproar. They're going wild, and as you stoop step out of your corridor with your warhammer held high overhead, they really start to scream. One man in the stands goes so far as to start foaming at the mouth before fainting.

As you stride into the Arena, you take a good look around. Built by walling off various dilapidated buildings in Weissland's Old District, it's not a fancy Circus, like those the rich ponces fight in, but it's good enough. It's dirty. It's dingy. The crowd doesn't sit on fancy stadium seats; they walk, sit and occasionally drunkenly fall off of floors exposed by long-crumbled walls, the latter of which always garners a few chuckles. After all, none of the buildings are all that high.

You look at your opponent, across the way. Your first impression was correct. He's a Zipangu man, wearing Zipangu clothes and carrying Zipangu curved swords at his waist; one short and one long. Having taken his measure, you turn your eyes to the roaring crowd. They're the standard common rabble of Weissland's slums; the poor, the destitute, the disenfranchised.

All but one. You nearly missed her until she shifted just so, allowing you to see a brief flash of feathers in her sleeves. Black feathers under heavy Zipangu type robes. You can't help but tip your head slightly in curiosity. Somehow, a Crow Tengu managed to sneak into the city. That's an impressive feat, in an Order-held city. Zipangu man and Zipangu Crow Tengu. Logic suggests they must be a mated pair. That tells you that he's the supposed heroic type. The Tengu are picky like that. You've met a few heroic types in your life, and they've all been the same kind of self-righteous pricks.

At least it's someone you can cut loose on. Because the people? They're here not here for a show. They're here for a slaughter. They're here to watch some rich, uppity, Heroic bastard get his skull crushed. They're here in your Arena, your Castle, your Temple. Those aren't cheers they're shouting. They're prayers. Prayers to their King and God. Prayers to the Goshawk. Of course for every king, there are pretenders. Would-be usurpers. Like the Heroic twit standing across from you.

You lower your hammer back to your shoulder, and the crowd goes silent. The Zipangu man quickly bows to you in what you assume to be a mockery of respect, and draws his blades. In the right hand, he holds the longer, called a katana. In the left, the shorter blade, a wakizashi. You just stretch your neck side-to-side, popping and loosening your vertebrae.

You both proceed to the center of the Arena and assume your respective stances as the kettle drummers start pounding out a driving rhythm to keep the audience's blood pumping. The Zipangu man assumes an exotic sideways stance with one foot planted directly in front of the other, left side towards you. He holds the wakizashi in front of himself in an underhanded grip, ready to parry as the katana curves up over his head like the sting of a scorpion.

You, on the other hand, take a more practical stance with your warhammer. You have one foot in front of the other, yes, but it's at more of an offset, with more of your body facing your opponent. It makes you a larger target, but it gives you better stability and allows you to pivot on one foot if need be. Your hammer, meanwhile, is held low and to the side, with the hammer's head to your right, allowing you to maximize leverage and bring a more powerful swing. If there's one thing you're good at, it's powerful swings.

The Zipangu man dashes in, blades flashing in a flurry of strikes, the worst of which you manage to deflect by using the shaft of your hammer like a polearm. The weight of the head makes it slow going, but it's good enough.

You thrust outward with the shaft of your hammer, knocking your opponent away and down with brute force, but he quickly flips back up onto his feet. He's an agile one. He's also eying you a little more warily now.

He takes to hit-and-run tactics, dashing in for quick, short strikes with the tanto then dashing out before you can react. His smaller, lighter frame seems to give him the advantage, and you'd agree with that assessment, if he were to stick to those tactics.

In and out, in and out. He strikes again and again, repeatedly shearing through the mail covering your arms and legs. The Demon Realm Silver in his blade won't allow it to actually injure you, but it does wear on your stamina.

He dives in, trying to stab his shorter blade into your right armpit and receives a plated boot to the face for his troubles. You follow the kick up with a powerful downward swing from your hammer, but he manages to roll to the side just in time. The hammer actually cracks pavement where it connects, and you have to assume the Zipangu man's glad he got his head out of the way in time.

It goes on like this for some time. He repeatedly hits you with small injuries, trying to wear you down, but every time he makes the mistake of trying something bigger you're quick to educate him on the error of his ways with a boot to the face or a heavy upswing with your hammer. Gradually, as he gets more nicks and cuts in, you start to slow down. Your movements get sluggish, your body sags, and your weapon starts to droop low to the ground.

The two of you wind up squaring off on opposite sides of the Arena, when it finally happens. He does what Heroes always do. He assumes the slowing of your movements means he has the upper hand. That he's worn you down well enough for some sort of idiotic Ultimate Attack. He starts running at you bird-style, blades held out at his sides, and about three quarters of the way across the Arena floor, he leaps into the sky.

This is exactly what you were waiting for, and what you were baiting him into. It's the big, decisive, ridiculously telegraphed attack that he naturally assumes you'll stand still for. He's evidently got some freakishly powerful legs, because his leap has put him about three times your height above the ground at the apex, and as he starts to drop he screams out (naturally at the top of his lungs), "Flying Tengu Zephyr Drop!" Some sort of blue energy rushes into his blades and he comes down, mouth wide open.

Of course, it's at that point that his eyes open wide. Because he suddenly realizes you aren't doing what's expected. You aren't standing still and letting him finish you off. Oh no, no, no. You're swinging your warhammer in a mighty uppercut that doesn't just catch him in the back and send him flying. What actually happens is that the head of your hammer connects squarely with the center of his spine, at which point the sheer force of the swing forces him over, around, then down.

The hammer smashes him into the ground with enough force to send out a shockwave that spiderwebs cracks out around the two off you, and the impact is strong enough that it sends his blades flying off to the sides and kicks up a cloud of dust that engulfs the two of you. The drums stop and the crowd goes so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Finally, the dust starts to clear and you lift the warhammer off his back and inspect your handiwork. He's breathing, but he won't be walking out of here on his own.

You reach down, grabbing the Zipangu man by the back of his neck with your left hand, then drag him to the center of the Arena. Right there, where every single person arrayed on the assorted floors can see, you lift him over your head. You shake him a couple of times. The drums stop and the crowd goes absolutely insane. The roar is deafening, and within seconds, everyone in the Arena is chanting the same thing, over and over again.

"Gos-hawk! Gos-hawk! Gos-hawk! Gos-hawk!"

Then, there's the girl. The Tengu's looking on with something akin to a mix of sorrow and horror in her eyes. Her man's down, and he's being paraded around like some sort of morbid trophy. Careful as she is to keep her more inhuman features hidden, she moves as quickly as she can to get out of the crowd. You don't really see where she's going, and it doesn't seem to much matter.

You let the man drop from your hand, and he collapses to the ground like a sack of potatos. Turning back towards your entrance corridor, you set the hammer back on your shoulder and start walking. There's the sound of feet running across dirt, then they suddenly stop. You assume it's the Crow Tengu, run down to help her beau.

As you enter the corridor and start walking back to the ready chamber, you hear a feminine voice yelling out from behind.

"You MONSTER!!!"

Evidently she wasn't a falconer, so could be excused her ignorance. Goshawks eat ravens.

Author's Note: As of present, there's a discussion about requiring all fan-fic to be created as a blog post rather than a standard wiki page. As such, this story is being converted over. The original wiki page is being removed.

Original note: So this's the first full-length fan-fic I've written for the MGE, and it's intended as a sort of prologue to a possible collection of short stories I've got percolating in my head that might eventually get written. Any feedback, especially constructive criticism, is appreciated.