#freydis.westreach

[witchertorsten]

@freydis-freydat location: Marinus Bay, Westreach notes: plot call for two characters who haven't interacted yet...

A witcher of ten years and a warrior for longer, Torsten stood in the training yard, his silvered sword gleaming in one hand and his mithril blade held lightly in the other. He'd pledged what he could to the defense of the Queendom with the hope of future returns, but while the refugees took to Marinus Bay, Torsten gathered what warriors were eager to learn and brought them to the training yard. Ymir's Spine was open again and Torsten often thought of the temple they'd found on the outskirts of Hrimthur's Wastelands. Fear is the mind-killer.

The guards and members of the warriors' guild encircled him, their practice weapons raised with determined grips. Torsten gave a small nod, signaling the three boldest to attack. Their hesitation lasted but a moment before they charged, their steps pounding across the dirt like an uneven drumbeat.

The first came straight on, aiming for a high slash to drive Torsten back. Torsten sidestepped fluidly, his mithril blade sweeping low to tap the man’s exposed ankle. “Overcommitted,” spinning to meet the second attacker, who lunged with a thrust aimed at his side. Torsten’s silvered sword snapped into a parry, the impact driving his opponent’s blade wide. He stepped into the guard’s personal space, his pommel striking the man’s wrist with precise force. “Grip too tight. You’ll exhaust yourself before the fight’s begun.” The man yelped, retreating as his weapon clattered to the ground.

The third warrior, bolder or perhaps foolhardier, swung in an arc meant to catch Torsten’s exposed back. Anticipating the move, Torsten pivoted, both blades flashing in unison. The silvered sword locked the attacker’s strike mid-swing, while the mithril blade darted forward, stopping just shy of his neck. “Telegraphed. Your footwork announced your attack long before your blade did.” He stepped back, lowering his weapons as all three men regrouped, faces flushed with exertion and frustration. “In battle, the one who keeps their stance steady while chaos rages has already won half the fight. ” He flicked the dust from his blades with an effortless flourish and motioned for the next group to step forward. "Adapt or die."

"Does the Jarl Icefang wish to provide a demonstration?" Torsten asked, in greeting he crossed a sword over his chest and gave her a light bow - if only to salt the wound a bit. Freydis had a reputation of her own now in Lysara: Jarl and Shieldmaiden, turned one who was taken, one who survived, and now perhaps something else entirely. He gestured around the crowd with his blade, encouraging those who'd come here to train the opportunity to step up before four, unsurprising, men came to stand within the ring. "Do you answer the challenge, Jarl?" Freydis was more than her title or reputation; he understood her preference, but the goad remained a point of interest for him.

[witchertorsten]

Torsten's movements were absent excess with nothing wasted. Steadfast precision and unyielding precision. Knees, slightly bent, and weight evenly distributed between the balls of his feet to the top of his silver-crowned head. The mithril sword in the prosthesis of his dominant hand gleamed with forged starlight, while the silvered blade in his offhand was duller but no less deadly. Where the warriors of Westreach rushed forward with either fury or desperation, Torsten choreographed his movements to work in tandem with the shieldmaiden fighting at his side. Twin Iskarans both forged from the cold stone of their separate provings.

The first warrior charged, sword raised high in an overhead cut. Predictable. Heavy-handed. Deadly to the untrained. Torsten did not step back. Instead, he pivoted a half-step to the left, the barest adjustment, his mithril blade rising with effortless economy. Not to meet the strike, but to guide it, deflect it, make it useless. As the warrior’s blade slid harmlessly past his shoulder, Torsten turned his wrist, reversing the angle of his sword and bringing its flat against the man’s ribs. Thud. A lesson, not a wound. "A poor warrior fights the opponent they see. A good warrior fights the opponent they expect. A great one fights the opponent as they are, in the moment. Adapt, or die."

His voice was steady, even as the warrior staggered back. "Your strike was committed before your feet left the ground. A death sentence. The moment you think only of attacking, you surrender control."

The next warrior lunged with a spear, its tip darting toward his midsection. A cleverer choice. Reach is an advantage. But reach is only as strong as the foundation behind it. Torsten did not retreat. He advanced. A single step inside the attack’s range, his silver sword flicked forward - not to parry, not to overpower, but to redirect. The spear veered off-course by inches, enough to make it as useless as the last who'd charged him. In a fluid motion, he twisted his wrist and turned his blade to offset the warrior's grip as he twisted the weapon sideways, pulling the warrior off-balance. A quick thrust of his silver pommel into the man’s stomach sent him crumpling to one knee as the spear clattered to his side. "Your weapon is an extension of your center," Torsten murmured as the warrior gasped for breath. "Let an opponent pull you from it, and you will fall."

Torsten did not need to look to know Freydis had things well in hand, back to back in one instance, side by side in another, Torsten caught her eye - something like affection behind the stoic's dark orbs but it was gone as the Kingsguard stayed rooted in the present. He turned his attention to another two warriors, one was the first who'd fallen and now stood to try again - but both circled him now with wary eyes. Good. They were learning.

They attacked in tandem, a flanking maneuver meant to divide his attention. Better. A plan. But the moment before they struck, Torsten saw their tells - the left warrior shifting his weight forward a fraction too soon, the right glancing toward his partner in silent coordination. Anticipation was a weakness if it became predictability and he moved before their weapons could. A half-step to the right, just outside the first warrior’s reach. His mithril sword shot up in a narrow arc, not blocking the attack, but redirecting it - gliding against the blade’s edge and guiding it off-course with no more effort than a painter brushing a canvas. The silver sword in his offhand darted forward in the same instant, stopping a hair’s breadth from the warrior’s throat.

"Dead," he intoned, voice calm.

The second warrior came from behind, his strike meant to catch Torsten while he was still dealing with the first. A good thought. But Torsten had already begun moving before the blow fell. His footwork was liquid, a turn so effortless it seemed he had anticipated the attack before it had even been conceived. He did not meet the strike. Meeting force with force was a fool’s game. Instead, his mithril blade dipped at the last moment, angling the attack off-course. The warrior overextended - and in that instant, Torsten’s silver sword pressed lightly against his exposed ribs.

"Dead." Torsten let the silence stretch. He sheathed his silver sword first, then his mithril blade, before turning his gaze toward the assembled warriors. "Never fight like you have something to prove. Proving yourself means nothing to the dead.” Torsten sheathed his blades, preaching to the battered warriors of Marinus Bay long enough as most still lay where they'd landed only moments ago - winded.

He turned to Freydis, giving her a knowing nod. "Water?" A rest was warranted - and he'd have words, expecting candidly that she'd wish for the same. It was in her nature but Torsten had grown to enjoy allowing the Jarl to fill the gaps that the witcher's silences left behind.

When Torsten responded, Freydis let out a slight huff of a laugh. The smile on her features, small as it was, was genuine. If someone meant to harm her, even in a sparring ring with pretend swords, Torsten was unquestionably capable. But for Freydis, who hated senseless fighting with the whole of her being despite how adept she had become to battlegrounds, looked upon these scrimmages and demonstrations as little games so long as she had the right opponent. Of course, she would take it seriously; her reputation dictated she did so, and she would not insult or belittle Torsten in front of the group of people by denying him a focused and intentional match. To offer him anything less would be a slap in the face, and she refused to do that to the Witcher. 

“You’ve always been very judicious in that way,” she commented, adjusting her grip on the unfamiliar handle of the wooden sparring sword. Freydis wanted a moment to get used to the weight and the feel of it in her hand. Her eyes flickered to Torsten's as she considered her first move which he had deferred to her. She was lead-footed and loud in her armor, not fast enough to get the jump on him or hope to surprise him unless she used her ability to misty step wisely. If she did charge ahead, it was primarily up to luck, up to guess work alone if she intuited which way he might dodge, and it was just as likely he guessed her exact path and striking target the same and landed a blow to her instead. Both tended to be close-range combatants, leaving her with only so many options, especially if she wished to secure some sort of advantage from the first move. 

Misty step seemed like the best option if she wanted to feel secure, to take as little risk as possible, but Freydis didn’t want to reveal that card quite so early. She would try another means first, even if it meant sacrificing a greater chance to land the first strike. Freydis advanced, her usual speed and movement pattern, the muscle memory ingrained in her after so many fights causing her to lift her swords, her eyes to train on the very spot she meant to strike: Torsten’s right flank. Freydis didn’t exactly feint her attack–when she came just to the precipice of striking range she disrupted her foot fall and kept her wooden sword ready to strike. She stepped backward instead of advancing and landing her blow at the very last moment before she felt certain Torsten might block or parry the blow. If he did, Freydis would take advantage of his momentary misalignment and to side stepped once, then forward, and swing for his left flank instead. 

[witchertorsten]

Here the witcher thought that the Jarl would've taken on the challenge herself, if for no other reason than to put on a show for the crowd her presence seemed to attract. Jarl Icefang, One Taken, General of Haven's forces, Hero of the Cove - it wasn't as if Torsten's eyes had been closed while Freydis carved out a name for herself beyond the Iskaran border. He couldn't say if his actions would carry any weight beyond his homeland, just as Torsten was certain that in a couple of decades there'd maybe only be a small handful of people who'd remember his name.

Rigorous training, unwavering discipline, steward of proud tradition and united in purpose. The creed Torsten adhered to for the sake of the Guild had scarcely any deference toward his oath and duties as a witcher. Working, training, fighting. It all served as fair focus for what mattered most to him - seeing Afshin home, and seeing that damned swordswoman dead. His prosthetic seemed to twitch at the thought as his body recalled what it was to betray itself.

Everything else- everyone else came second to that purpose.

At Freydis's comment, Torsten discarded one of his practice blades and stood instead with just the one in his dominant hand, with just the one, he turned the handle deftly in his metallic sword arm. "Then I'll only use what's necessary," he said instead, when lives were on the line Torsten had charged ahead because witchers and monsters were synonymous. Far from naive, he knew that monsters lived in the hearts of just as many men - but in this instance he deferred. "this time you lead, I'll follow."

Marinus Bay was a momentary stop on the map as Freydis intended to carve out another path for herself in her increasingly wider world during what she anticipated would be a short stretch of stability after the fall of Aventia and triumph of safeguarding Haven. There was much to see, research, and explore far and wide across Lysara. She would study whatever artifacts she could uncover regarding Nintra Siotta in the Silverlands, seek out the the man known as Zagreus who had summoned herself and others to defend the wreckage of Hestia’s Cove, revisit the comforting presence of Sakkara in Trivia’s Cove, and navigate the puzzling landscape of the Feywilds again to piece together whatever she could from the Standing Stones and the druid Deimos. She had been told once that she seemed to take upon herself the burden of solving every problem in the world; this laundry list covered only her own self-serving curiosities and objectives.

But first, to assist in training the defenseless to become something fearsome. There was hardly a better tutor for this than the witcher in the center of the current sparring match. Torsten had been a force to be reckoned with since the first time Freydis had laid eyes on him. When she first met the witcher, both of them much younger and less proven than they were now, he had frightened her. Most witchers possessed an unyielding tenacity, a trained intensity that Freydis herself felt would never take home in her. She saw him as a duty-driven man with a singular focus and tunnel vision. As time ticked onward, she had come to know him as a dedicated countryman, a faithful first guard to the hand and newly minted high king Afshin, a dedicated protector of Iskaran civilians (well, most Iskaran civilians), and both a friend and confidant. But the last time she had spoken to him at any length, she had disclosed the threat of her tether to Nintra Siotta, and Torsten was no fool. He had intuited and pieced together his knowledge of the arcane to make many connections Freydis did not disclose to him directly. Now, she felt their relationship had become something cyclical, and he felt as much a mystery to her mind as he did those first days of their acquaintance with one another. Did he think she was a devil now? Soulless and irredeemable? Was she tainted and ruined in his mind?

All of this and more cycled endlessly through the little hamster wheel of her mind as she silently observed the witcher navigate the demonstration with expert skills until she was roused by the sound of a moniker she would have much preferred to abandon. For a moment, the world warped and her fight or flight instincts fought to win over her senses, the way they had time and time again when she had been routinely called to the sparring ring in a seemingly endless string of holmgangs. She recentered herself with a deep breath and stared across the pitch at Torsten. Was he goading her? Or did he lodge the title against her with the weight and intent of a genuine insult? After a beat or two of silence, wordlessly Freydis stepped forward and made her path toward Torsten, silently pulling on and situation her gauntlets. As she approached Torsten in the center of the makeshift ring, she studied his face for any indications of amity or enmity. 

Once in the center of the ring, Freydis glanced at the faces of all four men. Casually, yet intentionally, she tossed the long, thick rope of a braid of her golden hair over her shoulder. Those who knew the legend of Icefang would know the symbolism of her flowing golden mane which served as both trophy and timeline of her victories. Turning her head to one of the young children assisting in the lesson in their own small way she gestured at them to bring her one of the wooden practice swords, which she traded the child–a young girl chosen specifically–her Sword of Dreaming Valor for the wooden practice blade. “I should hate to see any more blood spill than what’s necessary,” she commented simply, her hazel eyes shifting from each of the four men to the next. A moment later, Glaceor found home on her left forearm, his chants of violence and fevered frenzy only just audible to Torsten. “Now,” she uttered, turning her eyes toward Torsten. “How shall we begin?”