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Thor, bare-chested and wearing a knee-length battlekilt, grins at Kelda and swings the long polearm across his shoulders, wrists draping from it. The training pitch has a few dozen warriors scattered over it, either fighting magical animated pells, each other, or exercising themselves by lifting weights of significant magnitude. He and Kelda stand speaking, while Karnilla, the visitor from a foreign realm, makes her away towards them after having been hailed in greeting.
"You're fair enough with a polearm, friend Kelda," he booms at her in his usual over-loud voice. "Perhaps we should brawl in the grass soon ourselves; I find warriors of magic to be tricky and swift," he compliments her.
He turns to look at Karnilla. "So, my Lady; what think you of the training so far?" he inquires, turning blue eyes out onto the training field. "The warriors of Asgard emulate our brothers among the Eijenhar; my brethren regard this life as training for the next, and all ultimately preparation for the great Ragnarok when it comes upon us."
*
The Lady Stormrider shifts her apparent interest in the Norn Queen's chin back to the eldest Prince, pecs and polearm and all, and smiles enigmatically.
"Thank you, my liege. I would spar with you if you would wish to do so. I'd offer up my best for your benefit, of course. It does neither of us any good to withold the blows. I do not apologize for any frostbite that may occur," she continues with that same mild curve of her lip. In her robes, their skirting slitted at the sides for functionality, Kelda leans again nonchalantly against her own polearm planted firmly in the turf, the ranseur named Boreal's Tear by the Quartermaster of the Golden City. The sunlight catches within the gemstone inset into the staff's balance-point at center and along the metal itself, shifting from silvery-white highlight to cobalt shadowing.
*
"What think I of any training?" The Norn Queen shakes her head a little, her plum-bright hair capturing shadows and netting the dawn's light to simmer away at the darkest bruise of colour. "Essential, my lord, to mastery of a task. You commit yourself to excellence through practice and you shall achieve it." Any of Karnilla's apprentices know her absolute love for mundane, often mindless tasks conducted to teach the virtues of patience and memory.
A place to the side of the practice field serves her best, rather than interrupting shield-maiden and crown prince in their martial routines. Rather she takes her place sitting on absolutely nothing at all, a hardened spire of air fashioned for the comfort and pleasure of sitting in conversational proximity but absent the threat of Thor bashing her accidentally with Mjolnir. Precautions can't be overlooked in this day and age.
"Do you not find her reach disadvantageous to your preferred tactics?" Her gaze follows the reach of that ranseur, as much the woman wielding it. Kelda earns the brief, passing favour of those uncanny eyes that few men dare to read for long. "How do you compensate when he comes inside your guard?"
*
Thor glances at Karnilla, his lifted brow settling at her unspoken remonstration of Kelda's capability. The big brawny warrior turns his expression to his ally; silently discoursing with her.
He steps back a pace and sets his polearm aside, reaching for a blunted steel practice sword. "Aye, how /do/ you manage one such as myself in close guard?" Thor asks Kelda, as if baiting her— but he flicks his sword in a quick blur, settling the weapon low and ready. Walking forward with a false lead, he shifts his shoulders to mask his footwork and slips towards Kelda, inviting her to retreat or 'manage' his sudden close proximity.
*
The battle-mage is spared an immediate response to Karnilla's query by the sudden blurring of steel. The slim, streamlined martial stance she takes brings the multi-forked bladed end towards the Prince and she begins to draw little circles towards him.
"You never get within my guard, my liege," Kelda replies quietly, her eyes suddenly catching the light as she begins to draw on what elemental magic sings in her veins. Her soundless steps are backwards first and then to one side, allowing them the possiblity to circle one another.
*
Karnilla meets the lowered brow without a change to her expression, her questions fair and measured. She remains floating in place, the lightest flutter to her garments indicating where the aerial kiss oscillates within its prison. The moments are growing interesting now, and she leans forward slightly to witness this display with all the measured grace of a hunting cat.
No one is presumably getting pounced. They might just worry about it.
*
Thor is not nimble as Loki or some of the other fine warriors of Asgard, but anyone who mistakes his bulk for slowness would be sorely remiss.
He shifts his lead twice, following Kelda's circular rereat by attempting to cut lines towards her. He lunges with his sword, but it's a wide swinging effort to distract her attention from an attempt to skitter ever closer, near enough to foil the arc of that crystalline polearm clutched in her rough, slender fingers.
*
Kelda jumps back lightly, incising a tight circle in the air with the bladed end of the ranseur in case of contact with the steel practice sword. If so, a beat-parry — a sharp swat to send a ring of contact back into Thor's fingers and the kiss of cold in the vibrations.
Otherwise, she inhales and suddenly blows out a huge breath. The polearm is swirled about her in a sharp blurring flurry of whistling moves and the freezing fog rapidly spreads out around her, blanketing her and anything within the immediate dozen feet of her. The particulates of floating enchanted frost twinkle beautifully in the bright sunlight shining down on the sparring field. Within it, she moves soundlessly, circling off to one side and rotating the angle of the ranseur's finned blades in order to attempt to catch the blade flat-side between them. LUNGE — she comes out of the fog, leading with the polearm, and aims for the base of the blade, above the tang.
*
The Norn Queen watches the battle. Or rather, she watches the empty spaces and the collision points. So many possibilities unfolding before her make this far more interesting than a casual spar between two well-matched combatants. She steeples her fingers over her knee and pays much closer attention to those things like footing and weapons sweeping past one another by a hair's breadth.
"Oh, that had to hurt!" Not that she should sound like it's quite so exciting. But it is!
*
Thor shivers and shakes off the frost as fast as he can; it chills and slows him, and hoary frost clings to his brows. He turns quickly, but he's distracted by the cold- it's not until the polearm slips to grip the haft of his weapon that Thor realizes what Kelda's attempting to do. He stiffens his wrist with all his considerable strength, at least stalling long enough to try and shift his feet sideways to gain more leverage. At least he doesn't lash a hand out to seize the haft of the icy weapon, instead reinforcing his grip on his sword and bulling the weapon sideways with a lot of raw strength to maneuver her at the end of it, instead.
*
Bracing herself against the other half of the ranseur closest to her body, Kelda is still lighter of weight and frame than the Asgardian Prince. She may have made the unbelievably-lucky strike of trapping the haft of the blade between the branching tines of Boreal's Tear, but now she's equally as trapped. It's easy for Thor to skid her dragging heels along the frost-kissed turf below, leaving skid marks in the wake of it.
Instead, it's an icy pulse down the polearm and into the steel blade, attempting to chill it to an unbearably low temperature and force her fellow sparring partner to drop the weapon entirely.
*
No one has yet informed the Norn Queen of figure skating, a sport of finesse, tears, and sequined outfits. She witnesses the nearest equivalent in the Asgardian court with pure fascination. One long finger taps the beat of the clash of weapons and the scrape of feet upon the ground, measuring the inconsistent meter when they scramble for purchase and purpose.
*
Thor grunts in shock as the temperature of the blade plummets, painfully so. He lunges /towards/ Kelda, instead of away from her, keeping the blade and tines of the weapon intertwined; and he grabs the flat of the blade with his palm and falls towards the ground, as if performing a pushup. Kelda's strong, but Thor weighs most of four hundred pounds; at the end of her polearm, her leverage is a fraction of her strength. He tucks, rolls forward, and whips his blade around in a singing, glittering arc; frost shines off the metal as it sings towards her midsection, the God of Thunder coming up from a low crouch even as he leaps forward.
*
With the chilled blade untangled from the tines of the ranseur, it falls upon Kelda to summarily retreat again from the offensive strike aimed her way. It takes a critical moment for her body to react, for adrenaline to kick into motion those warrior legs beneath the multiple thin layers composing her robe, and the speed of the sword's tip enables it to tear into the outmost silky panel. Shreds of gossamer weave flutter in the chilly breeze surrounding the battle-mage.
She whips the polearm about as she attempts to dance out of reach and it sings as the last few inches of shaft before the spear-graced opposite end flies towards the back of Thor's head!
*
Thor is swift, but chilled by the cold; it slows his muscles and his reactions, so he's unable to parry. Instead he dodges sideways, in the direction of the blow and guards his head with his arm. The polearm *thunks* against flesh heavily, but he at least mitigates a firm blow to his thick skull and maintains his balance, trying to stay close enough to Kelda to at least take the extreme power from the end of her mighty, swinging blows.
*
Drat — blow taken on the forearm rather than that thick skull. Kelda grimaces, panting as she attempts to escape from his nearness again. Well and truly, the weakness to a long-arm wielder is relative distance and too close is always too close.
Ducking and darting about behind him, she then plants the bladed end of the ranseur into the frosted earth, not too unlike a vertical pole. Utilizing an unfairly good footing on the slippery grass (for her chosen element is friend when tamed), she runs and then swings about on the shaft. The booted kick is aimed again for the Prince's head, shoulders — general torso — and it's clear that she intends to cause him to slide, face-first, through the churned-up sparring field. Nothing like eating some mud.
*
The presence of chill winter has less effect on someone outside its immediate effect than someone within. She maintains her appropriately supportive vigil. Interlaced fingers displaying a number of martially insensitive rings around her knee. None would ever find that many pieces of jewelry for a warrior practical. But then, she is no mean soldier tramping about on a battlefield.
"Throwing mud at a man who rides behind goats? Ah!" She calls out. Hard to be sure if Karnilla is laughing or not.
*
Thor follows too swiftly, and is rewarded for his efforts by a high, clotheslining kick to his chest. He's all momentum though, heavy and swift, so instead of flying backwards he /flips/ onto his back with a grunt of surprise, flying past Kelda's feet and kicking her pole out from under her before landing flat on his back with an explosive grunt of surprise and a massive deluge of frosty mud and grass.
*
Gravity and momentum play no more nicely with the battle-mage than with the eldest Prince of Asgard. With her circular motion still inacted, the sudden instability of the pole is more than enough to abruptly end it.
With a high-pitched whoop of sound, Kelda also is sent tumbling to the sparring field ground. Well…not quite. She lands across his body, bisecting it at the lower ribs and nearly having the wind taken from her by the impact. Boreal's Tear lands with a muted clatter nearby even as she lies there, gasping for air — and then realizes just where she's landed! With as much grace as she can manage, she pushes herself up and away from Thor, only to land on her butt in frosty mud. A palm to her cheek to instinctively cover the faint blush on her cheeks leaves a smearing of the stuff on her skin and this really can only get better by the fact that the impact has torn the earlier rip in her robes wider still.
Even as she rises to her feet, clearing her throat and muttering something to herself, her hip bone can clearly be seen as well as some of the lean musculature of her lower torso.
"Pardons, my liege, I did not intend to trespass upon your person," she finally says, in a clear tone. Does she remember that Karnilla is there? Hell yes, she's aware of it. Yay, muddy robes!
*
A slip of motion smudges along the outer periphery of the balcony. Naturally it warrants a shift of night-starred eyes. Karnilla slides forth from her plinth that evaporates into a breeze that whispers off into the night sky. She flashes one of those rare, mindful frowns and says, "Artfully played. Mind the mutton; it will not agree with you." What more would be there to be said is unclear, for there are two very hopeful Nornjar looking down upon her most hopefully for direction.
One may escape from duty, but the queen's crown is never really gone.
*
Rogue goes home.
*
Thor grunts again as the leggy blonde land flat on his stomach, eyes bulging and rolling. Still, he doesn't cry out in pain; that'd be ungodly.
The flailing palms to other parts of his body don't help, and Thor rolls sideways, taking a few moments to comport himself as Kelda rolls away. He looks up— /all/ the way up, eventually— and slowly rises to his feet, clearing his throat as well. "Er, yes," he says, shaking his head. "I mean, no! Think nothing of it," he tells her. "In the field there is no personage to protect, and I should think were we wrestling you would not think twice of such a thing. Holding back one's body— one's SELF," he hastily amends. EYES FORWARD. "Self, would be uh, a slip. Of procedure!"
*
"Yes, your highness," replies Lady Stormrider quietly, her eyes all for the departing Norn Queen's chin and not for what lies within that unearthly gaze.
She then looks to the Prince as he rises and the corners of her mouth quirk despite the misgivings she has of the whole situation. Truthfully, there was no intent to nearly suplex the poor Asgardian. Gravity takes no prisoners.
"No personage to protect, my liege? I insist otherwise, as your Shield-Maiden. If a woman in a…robe," and she frowns down at the tear before fingering the loosely-hanging rip of fabric, " — can put you on your back in the sparring field, I fear for your safety should we ever come to blows with the Amazons." What a wicked look she flashes him from beneath her lashes before she bends over to collect the ranseur. A quick fluid twirling of the weapon frees it of frosted mud and she then plants it again, adopting a relaxed and yet somehow formal stance. "A good bout, my liege," and the pale-blonde battle-mage inclines her head to him.
*
Thor follows the line of that rip and immediately makes himself look away, clearing his throat; Kelda effortlessly manages to unbalance him, and the big Prince doesn't know how to handle the leggy blonde in such a fashion that he doesn't offend her clearly antiqued sensibilities about such things.
Wait, did she wink at him just now? Thor gives her a quick, shifting look, but then she's all composed and nodding at him, and he turns and nods back with a warrior's mutual respect. Not staring! Nods. Sloooow nod. "You are no mere mortal or woman of the mortal persuasion, my friend. You are a warrior of great repute and a master of your weapons. Should you put me on my back, I would welcome it."
"In the sparring field!" he adds, a hasty beat later.
*
The Lady Stormrider tucks her chin and tilts her head ever so slightly, as if seeing the Prince from an entirely new angle.
"Thank you, my liege. Your prowess with the sword is great. I look forwards to seeing your handiwork again, though…perhaps next time you'll remain on your feet. You could use another weapon entirely, with more depth of reach. The broadsword, perhaps. It has a thrusting ability that I'd be loathe to parry." She glances over at the ranseur and idly adjusts her grip on it. "I could apparently use the practice, given I wasn't able to escape." With a resigned sigh, she tears the loose length of fabric entirely from the robe. Now it's just a clear, skin-baring rip in her robe. She lets the breeze take the gossamer silk from her fingertips. It flutters away to wrap around one of the pommels of the practice swords hanging nearby on a rack.
*
Thor goggles just a little at Kelda's casual disregard for propriety and clears his throat repeatedly. He reaches for the castle; seconds later, Mjolnir whistles towards him with all the velocity of a dead heart of a dwarf star and the handle smacks firmly into his palm.
"The sword is not my preferred weapon for that reason, friend Kelda; the hammer is shorter and swifter in close quarters, and can be flung effortlessly," he tells her, spinning the weapon on his fingertips as if needing the reassurance of the weapon in his hands.
*
"Ah, the Hammer of the Thunder God," murmurs the battle-mage softly. Pulling her polearm from its shallow mooring in the sparring field ground, she walks up to the Prince and stays beyond reach of the weapon's circular motions. "I can see why you would prefer it over the blades. It sings for you, my liege."
There's almost a winsome note in her words as her eyes rise from Mjolnir and to his face. "It is like a brother to you, no?"
*
"Nay, 'tis more a hand," Thor says, shaking his head. "It sings and speaks, but has no will its own; Mjolnir goes where directed if my hand guides it. It is more than mere tool, but the enchantment is perhaps so much a part of me that I am part of it as well. Would that I could explain it better, but I am a warrior, not a poet; 'tis an experience that can only be experienced, not shared, and Mjolnir alone determines the worthy," he says, grinning. He flicks the hammer towards the ground— it hits with an unnaturally loud *thud* and buries in the grass, grip sticking upwards in front of her as if challenging her to try.
*
Now is when Kelda laughs, after the Hammer imprints itself in the earth and seems to entice her to grab its handle. It's a bell-like sound, akin to the twinkle of light on freshly-fallen snow.
"I have heard tales, my liege, of the weapon's partial nature. Even if it asked me to test its weight, I would not try. It is not for me. Mine are hands meant to bring to bear the might of the ranseur and its sisters." She smiles at him, friendly and winsome all at once. "As we agree: you make it sing."
*
Thor almost looks disappointed, and extends a hand to fetch the weapon back— it quivers and leaps to his grip once more. "Aye, as you wish," he tells her politely, brushing dust from his bare chest as the mud dries. "I think I must away to the showers for a time, at least; the mud soothes heated skin but it grows weary to carry a layer of dust around!" he laughs. "And I think you must to the showers as well, aye?" he says.
No mention is made of the tailors.
*
"Yes, my liege. While the mud may be good for stings and sores, it does nothing for the hair."
And the battle-mage still wears that smear of mostly-dried mud on her cheek as it is.
"I expect there to be another festive evening in light of the Norn Queen's presence, and as such, I should…speak with the palace tailor of another set of robes. Nay, a dress." Kelda gives the rent in the silky fabric one last considering look before clicking her tongue. "By your leave, my liege, I will speak you with again ere the sun falls." Her glacial-blue eyes, resting on Thor, still hold that echo of laughter, but it might just be the play of the light.
*
Thor nods his head slightly in response to her question. "Aye, go with grace," Thor tells the woman, approvingly. "I'll see you tonight at the feast, and I look forward to seeing what the tailors concoct for my Shield-Maiden. Taffeta and lace, surely," he says, tossing over his shoulder as he saunters away from her— but he laughs easily, bidding her farewell with an easier wave of one hand and whistling merrily as he walks towards the palace a few paces, then leaps into the air in flight.
*