Damien
the woods have remembered you
Her words bit as sharp as her blade. You’ve hardly seen anything. Damien’s grin thinned, teeth bared quick as if she’d landed the first strike already.Then she was on him, fast as quicksilver, more blur than body. Shield low, then snapping up under his with a vicious hook. His guard flared open and she slid inside, close enough that her breath mixed with his, sharp and cold. Her boot clipped his lead foot, jamming him half-stuck. Damn assassin tricks.
The shortsword flipped, mean and sudden, driving toward his gut. Instinct screamed move. He didn’t think—just dropped his weight hard into her jam, twisting into her shoulder with raw force, shield braced. The edge still kissed across him, flat but close enough that in a real fight it would’ve opened him. A graze, not a kill. He’d take that.
Momentum wrenched them sideways, shields grinding, his size leaning against her speed. Not clean, not pretty—no soldier’s drill here, just two bodies locked in the snow. He laughed rough and low, adrenaline burning through. “That all you got?”
Then he snapped his shield back down, wrenching the bind into a brutal check of weight against weight. The axe whipped sideways from low guard, haft chopping toward her shield rim. Not to break it, not to maim, but enough to stagger if it landed—the kind of punishment that came for crowding too close for too long.
And through it all, his grin lingered, rough, roguish; a man testing his own strength, finding something new in it—and liking what he found.
(Training 2/4)
ever since the first time you got lost in them
