ROUND 2
Rolling 1d5: 1
Pain bloomed in the thick skin that lay beneath her thick ruff, precise pinpricks that radiated an ache as Aurelia yanked on the grip she had on Solulfur. Feathery strands of charcoal and moonbeams fluttered in her vision, and Solulfur realized as Aurelia shoved her to the hard-packed dirt that she could feel muscles ripple beneath a pelt not her own, pressed against Solulfur for fleeting split seconds. Sol was sensitive to touch, a childhood glutted on cuddles and playfighting and simply existing in another's space completely and suddenly forgone upon her arrival in Mythris.
In the fight with Raisa, all Sol had been able to think of was the crowd roaring with cheers and shouts to encourage the fighters. In the fight with Raisa, Sol had been alight with a showman's grin and a warrior's focus. In the fight with Raisa, Sol had been able to think of her counterattacks and the crowd beyond, how she could further show off for them and what they would be watching.
The crowd could have been smited off the face of this world by the gods and Solulfur wouldn't have noticed. Whether they were still there, whether they were watching her, any of it - she had no ability to consider anything beyond her efforts to grapple with the steel sword that was Aurelia. Her attention was as pinprick precise as the fangs in her scruff, locked on to the body moving in the same space as herself.
It was exhilarating. It was terrifying.
Solulfur tried to get to her paws, her instincts in a fight centering mainly around keeping her normally unshakable footing. She kicked out, heaving in a breath drenched in spiced, woodsy vanilla and seafoam. Aurelia's fangs sunk deeper into her scruff, hot breaths huffed through thick, wooly fur.
Aurelia spun her, the world spinning out of control around Solulfur in many more ways than physical. The flip was swift, but violent, leaving Solulfur on her back, breath knocked out of her lungs. She stared up at a blue sky that framed a familiar slender face and bright green eyes.
Solulfur brought her paws up, a weak effort to brace them lightly against Aurelia's chest to keep her from lunging for Sol's throat - but the Black Sun's face split into a grin, full of fangs and fondness, glinting in the sunlight.
She was absolutely petrified - every shred of control she'd learned to wrap around herself, her body, the performance she put on every hour of every day physically shaken off of her and Solulfur didn't know how to put it back, not in front of Aurelia's expression absolutely stormy with competitive drive. In the seconds that would follow, when Solulfur would remember where she was, who was watching her, that she'd just publicly and horrifically lost, she'd feel stripped bare and terrified - frantic to clothe herself in the glacial armor she had worn since her earliest days. But her head still spun from Aurelia's relentless attack, and her ribs ached, and a force far greater than those worries had gripped her for however a fleeting second it would be.
Sol thought she might simply die, her spirit would simply fail to survive within this body that felt so many things at once. She burned with it, and her molten gaze searched Aurelia's to see if she burned with it too.
