She is hunger.

Tastes of it have left the lioness eager for more, to taste what all men have always desired.

power

So much of those early days had been dictated by the cruelty of others. Broken down and beaten till that old life no longer existed. Sacrifice Xylia so that Sersie could be born, risen from the ashes of a dead girl, broken and bloodied on the floor. Her time in Amaryllis had done her good, aside from the obvious limb removal; it had given her a taste for what she truly wanted in life. A taste of importance, a taste of infamy, the desire to crush and bulldoze and rip and tear her way through anyone who stood in her way.

That couldn't be more evident than now, standing at the borders of a place she cared so little for. It's ruler relatively unknown, but again she didn't care. This was nothing personal. Transaction among strangers, a test of fate.

A place to birth the children in her womb and raise the hellions to be just as brutal as herself. A failsafe to the inevitable. At least this place had sand.

Awkward gait leads the woman across the border, into the Lagoon, as she bellows a raspy roar. Readied, waiting, and ever so hungry

Sersie vs. @Cirilla
For Scilla Lagoon
0 / 5

code by daanyan, Art by Rabbit

@Sersie VS. @Cirilla FOR Scilla Lagoon
— FIGHT TIMERS PAUSED—

As Shark is on absence this fight has been paused until they return. Any posts made prior to it being unpaused will be deleted.

@Sersie VS @Cirilla FOR Scilla Lagoon
— FIGHT TIMERS UNPAUSED —

This fight and its timers are unpaused as @Shark has returned from their absence and will have 72 hours as of this message to respond.

The familiar stench of the Oasis carries across the beach— a trespasser. Ceasing her patrol, she sharply diverts course, a low growl rumbling in her throat as she starts towards its source. She's unsure what it is about this place that keeps drawing unwelcome visitors like they've got a welcome sign hanging from the door, but part of her is glad of the traffic. Fighting, after all, and breaking things, is the only thing she knows how to do.

Approaching nearer, her eye is caught by the waiting form of a wheat woman. She only stands there, menace incarnate, and that puts a hitch in her step. A cold shiver runs along her spine, but it's not her worn, battered appearance that has inspired such. It's what she knows to be coming. She knows it with a sudden, stone-cold certainty. She halts, ears laid flat along her skull. Seagulls take wing in raucous uproar as the booming challenge reverberates on the paradoxically quiet breeze. "That bitch is coming for my goddamn marulas," she brings out, her eyes lit with murderous fire, fury commingling with shock at the woman's sheer audacity.

ART BY 86, CODE BY DEE, MODIFIED BY GUNNER

Thisbe approaches from behind @Uma, trailing in like moth to the flame. There had been a call over the air, a summons, a demand. Someone was trying to take the Lagoon and Thisbe heeded the unspoken request for audience. She is a medic after all, she will go where she knows that she will be needed. Red walks towards the sound of Sersie's voice, imagining this was driven by a sense of duty. Imagining that, in reality, she should have no real strong feelings over who ran things. It was beneficial to have the strongest rulers no?

As she trails up and spots the two forms already gathered, one and then the other, she is struck with a twist in her heart. It stops her in her tracks about ten feet still behind the gentry. Thisbe is angry. She's uncomfortable with the idea of someone taking over the Lagoon. She's upset that Uma is upset. But more than anything she's uncomfortable with the very fact that she's thinking that way at all. She has consciously been wrestling with thoughts of Uma that plagued her dreams (and maybe that too has stopped Thisbe in her tracks and kept her from properly joining her pridemate). But her attachment to Scilla has snuck up on her, it's not something she's fully realized until this moment that she, looking over Uma's shoulders at the challenger, must face losing it all._{CODE | ART}

Truth be told, she had been staying away from some of the recent pride challenges. They didn’t really concern her, but when the call rang out for the Lagoon of all places, Cassandra knew she had to attend this challenge at the very least. Support Cirilla in any way she could. Letting out a soft chuff for her son @Asbjørn to join her as she left the Brook, the Vermeda Queen made her way to the Lagoon’s borders to see who was challenging Cirilla for her home.

Flicking her tail, Cassandra realized the main action had not yet begun when she arrived there. She didn’t recognize the tripod lioness who had called out for the Lagoon, but the scent of the Oasis was pungent and she would know it anywhere. A lift of her lip as she stared at the lioness. "Go back to that bastard before he finds out another one of his wives has left his control." She said, her words carrying the hint of a snarl. From what she’d seen, most of the lionesses in the Oasis appeared to be tied to that bastard in some way or another. Surely he’d hate to see one of his wives Out and doing this when she was pregnant.

She didn’t know for sure if the lioness challenging was his wife or not - had just merely made the assumption based off of her own knowledge of the bastard and how he seemed to always have spawn somewhere. There was no way all this cubs came from one lioness. It was impossible given their ages. But she would stand in support of Cirilla - always had done so.

Cassandra is just on the borders, she has not passed them

actions. "speech."

Art & Table code by Zodiac

Cirilla had known that this day would come. The call had echoed throughout her home and the rest of Amaryllis, and she knew that many would flock to see such a spectacle. The High Sovereign was thankful, at the very least, that the challenge rang out after she had given birth to her children. They would witness history today, no matter what the outcome would be.

The High Sovereign rose from the idle nap she had been taking in her den. Shaking off the debris that might have been caught in her pelt, the assassin slipped from her husband's sleeping side and took her time to patrol her borders and re-scent the spots of her border that seemed particularly lacking.

The Sigrún did not care that this lion, whoever they might be, had crossed her borders. It showed ambition and determination, and the lioness could not fault that. What she could fault, however, was the audacity to challenge for her crown when the lioness had worked hard to obtain a throne for her husband and her children's safety. That was something that did not sit right with Cirilla's morals, but she knew that challenges were part of having a pride.

Deciding first, before answering the call, Cirilla decided to visit her herb supply. She had visited a variety of different neutral territories and had collected some larkspur and milky mangrove plants, eager to experiment with them on some stray insects or animals that wandered freely through her home. She had, the night before, mixed the two into a pulp, and found it appropriate that now would be a good time to experiment on her opponent. Lathering her claws on her left paw in the paste, Cirilla tucked them away and carefully made her way across the territory to where Sersie stood.

Eyes watched from behind the dense foliage, noting only a few in attendance. @Uma was one, and @Thisbe another, with @Cassandra being the third. She was thankful that it was her allies that had arrived first, and for once she wondered if luck was on her side.

Adjusting her trajectory so that Cirilla stood to Sersie's right, the assassin bolts out of the foliage that had kept her hidden. She does not speak nor attempt to defuse the situation: this was war, and this was how Cirilla was going to play it. Cirilla closes the gap between her and the three-legged lioness, and attempts to lunge toward the wheat lioness. Outstretched claws, laced with larkspur and milky mangrove paste, attempt to slash against Sersie's face (aiming particularly for her eyes), whilst her jaws open and attempt to lunge forward, attempting to find grip against Sersie's right shoulder.

Let the games begin.


Cirilla vs @Sersie
for Scilla Lagoon
Round one of five
Hits:

Rolling 7d20: 19 + 16 + 12 + 7 + 13 + 2 + 15

Dodges:

Rolling 4d20: 7 + 11 + 19 + 3

Luck:

Rolling 5d20: 20 + 3 + 13 + 18 + 7

---

Assassin Master Perk for +1 successful hit
1 is failure, 2 is success

Rolling 1d2: 1

and

Assassin Master Perk to poison and inflict a wounded roll
1 is failure, 2 is success

Rolling 1d2: 1

---

artwork • coding

Aurelia

still the curled fists gripping the yes of the world, the cadence of tragedy, the yes of night shepherding shadows closer to home. Yes, the moon, the bright unending.

The voice that called was different than any others. It was twisted, machinating. There was a tone lingering beneath that bellow that frightened Aurelia to her core, and it were only the reassuring push and pull of the constant tide that eased her frayed fur, her tensed muscles. It were far too normal a day. The sky was not swollen with storm, the sea did not bend at Vellen's wrath. Their hallowed halls were empty, silent of anything but the challenger's echo. Aurelia pulled herself from her den, anxiety wrought in the upward curve of her brows, the fervent rise and fall of her breast with every hastened breath.

@Uma is present already, with @Thisbe lingering close beside her. She hears the call of @Cassandra from a short distance, remembering their short time within the Brook and under her and Myrkvi's leadership before the former Jarl left from the peninsula. A hard lump formed in her throat near impossible to swallow, remembering well that even being here was a danger, even within the protected borders of the Lagoon. The smell that wafted from @Sersie was one of the Oasis, but it was not Scorpius' Oasis. She was all things Aurelia feared the most—unencumbered, ambitious, cunning. The scars written in her skin told more stories than Aurelia could feasibly conceived, and where she may have felt some semblance of camaraderie when she noticed the mangled stump of what once were a limb, she instead felt only dread.

If Sersie could fight with three limbs then Aurelia could with only two, but within this challenger lived something that Aurelia could never have. And as she watched @Cirilla rush past their growing group and throw herself at the challenger, it took everything within her not to plead her mother back to safety. She could not bear to lose her again.

code by cala, art by kite

DIO VALOUR

First one voice. A declaration and intent to take echoed across the land. But faint, one that initially may not have interested Dio one bit. But then another, one much closer. Cassandra calls for her son and the wheels begin to spin for Dio. They're going to the challenge. And the new advisor figures it wise she join them. She's not invited, but in interest of doing her job well she invites herself along just the same.

Dio moves to stand beside her Queen cousin, no verbal or physical greeting provided. Her teal eyes are fixated on the fight as it springs to life before them. A horn of battle sounds and all of a sudden Dio feels whisked back in time. She's been on the receiving end of those claws before and memory begins to surface. They're fueled by the feeling of sand inching it's way between her toes and made vivid by the smell of salt in the air. With each swing of claw Dio remembers. She's quiet, she's still and betrays nothing of what goes on in the veil on her mind... But play it does.

And with it all, the fear returns.

lineart by corvus

A blur of motion, the sudden separation of foliage to reveal the beast who wore the crown. Cirilla is crafty, coming at her on the side that had so little to brace against. Sersie turns her head sharply in time to see the Lagoon's Queen as nothing more than smudge of greys and brown. The darkened claws of the Sovereign rake across her visage, nearly missing her eye itself. But the Andal knows it's cut a little too close for comfort, as the blood that begins to pour from tethered tendons nearly makes her blind. Hind legs brace against the weight of Cirilla before lunging her forward enough--the teeth of the bitch pierce the lower skin behind the shoulder.

The pain is welcome, it is euphoric. Never does Sersie feel more ethereal, untouchable, alive than in the throws of such a dance.

A gurgled, roar-choked cackle dares to erupt from her throat, a wicked grin mired among the old scars and the new, open wounds. Elation at its finest, written in her bloodied gaze.

Sersie stumbles in her movement, a pivot on her front leg as her hind ones try and maneuver her towards facing the Crown she seeks to usurp. With no left arm to fully use, it's the back ones left to do most of the work. Mustering up energy, she shifts weight suddenly as she tries to lung back into the Lagoon queen, mouth open and teeth bared. Sersie attempts to clamp down on the lower neck of the fucker, lifting her only front paw when she felt it was necessary. Her right arm would swing up and seek to find purchase along the left side Cirilla's neck; raking down, and then curving back up in a swift J-like motion.

An embrace she loves, one she welcomes. It's almost too easy to forget the life her body is creating. A more caring mother would not put her children in such danger, would think before acting. Yet there is one specific rule that the tripod has learned in her life--the weak are not worthy and they do not survive. It is with this mindset that she has thrown herself into such fray, with such little care. Let the brazen, wild, chaotic strength of her pass upon them and make them nothing but iron.

And let her claws be her own making, a will to strike down every enemy she makes.

Sersie vs. @Cirilla
For Scilla Lagoon
1 / 5
Hits:

Rolling 7d20: 18 + 20 + 15 + 3 + 10 + 17 + 9

Dodges:

Rolling 5d20: 7 + 16 + 13 + 18 + 11

Luck:

Rolling 5d20: 2 + 4 + 9 + 18 + 13

code by daanyan, Art by Rabbit