Andaeros Dawnflare

Fights, Pt. I

The walls were thin here, out in the middle of Durotar, and they smelled like rust and sweat. I wasn’t sure if the metal I was smelling was from the thin sheet-metal that they used for the walls of the temporary warehouse-arena, or from the blood that had probably wafted from the ring.

The crowd outside the small room I was in was like a dull thunder, something that reverberated hard off the walls. It was something I could feel in my bones. It was something primal, I think, something that played to the animal inside everyone. All of the chanting, all of the roaring, all of the percussion of stomping feet. There was something written inside us that responded to the violence of fanfare.

I tried to tune it out.

Artennis’s father had tried his best to train it out of us when we were younger, just two brash boys newly-recruited into the army, with me the lesser of the two. It was a hard lesson to get across to us. Arron had always told us both that you shouldn’t ever listen to the crowd, that they’ll convince you you’re going to win when you’ve only thrown a few good punches. You should only focus on your opponent. They’re the only one who can tell you if you’re winning. Artennis never listened, but I took that to heart.

The crowd roared, again, like a lightning strike that struck a little closer, louder and more thunderous than before. I had a feeling some poor bastard hit the mat hard. “Mat” was a generous term. “Mat” is something that conjures an image of softness. Nothing was soft in this place.

I was sat down in the medical room, on a stool made of uncomfortable wrought iron, slapdashedly painted black like everything was slapdashedly done in this place and by these people. The table in front of me had an oblong metal basin of water, sporadically littered with ice cubes. I clenched my fist and flexed my fingers, still wet from dipping them in the water, watching the magic in my tattoos shimmer with silver-blue mana.

A lot of folks seem to think that boxing gloves are meant to protect the other fighter. To be fair, that’s true to a point, but those gloves protect a fighter’s hands. They keep your knuckles from breaking, to help you keep throwing punches at a person’s cheekbones and jaw and skull. A man with a broken nose can keep fighting, a man with a broken hand can’t.

Bare-knuckle brawling gets bloodier, it’s more of a spectacle, but I think more damage gets done with the gloves on.

“Doc Stitch” sat behind a flimsy wooden desk that had to have been made from scrap-wood. It was generous to call it a desk, as it was just a plank of wood bolted into twin oil drums with a chair more comfortable than a stool behind it. He’d been sipping tea from porcelain too clean and too expensive to be in a place like this, humming to himself. His attention shifted to me, with that unsettling glee in his eyes when the din of the crowd became a victory-roar, “It would appear our first bout of the night has produced a loser. I believe it is, some would say, showtime.”

He tittered to himself, setting down his tea with a gentle clinking, gliding a little too ghostly across the floor in his pristine, too-white robes to busy himself with the rearranging of small glass vials and sharp, metal tools, “I do hope you’ll send me back something fun to patch up, Mister Dawnflare.” His eyes lit up with something too mirthful, a little too keen for bloodshed. When I’d first met him, he seemed something out of place, too clean, too pressed, too refined, but he was just as bloodthirsty and brutish as the others, he just held his pinky out when he held the knife to another man’s throat.

He was a poor bastard, the beaten elf that Peon and another orc dragged into the ramshackle clinic, and he could barely muster the breath to grunt as he was thrown onto the cot beside the doctor. He was a mess, with a broken nose and a split brow that both streamed blood down his face, already starting to dry and flake where it had been smudged. The green of his eyes was half-gone to the stark red blotch of a broken blood vessel, with a singular, rich purple bruise covering both eyes and nose. His body had been pummeled, bruises covering broken ribs.

I take back what I said. Orcish hands are just fine without wraps, apparently.

I grimaced, hoping what empathy I felt for him could be seen through my eyes, if he was present enough to see me, or anything, at all.

I dunked my hands in the water, again, and splashed my chest, raking my hair out of my face and exhaling with the cold.

“Doc” hummed to himself, pouring some amount of red potion into a strip of absorbent gauze, soaking it in the alchemical concoction before grabbing a roll of bandages,  to wrap it around the man’s eyes. Without looking, and breaking the classical piece he’d been singing to himself, he spoke, casually, as if he’d known my attention was still on him and his patient, “Off you go, Mister Dawnflare. You’re next, best be in the ring when you’re announced. Tardiness is so… uncouth.”

Peon snarled at me as I walked past him, “Hope you get the poop beat outta you, Elf.”

I gave him a dismissive pat on a shoulder, chuckling, “Learn to live with disappointment, Brother.”

I heard him huff with disapproval as I walked by, into a small “lobby” where two goblin bruisers were playing Hearthstone on a wooden crate. I say “lobby”, it was a checkpoint. They both glanced up at me and sneered with casual, dismissive disdain, one of them jerking his head to the side to send me on my way.

The door from the checkpoint led out to a small path behind one of the bleachers, dimly lit and only accessible to members of the cartel or the business. The crowd was restless waiting for the next fight, and so were the bruisers, from the looks of things as I rounded the corner out of the dimness and into the house-lights, where the sounds of the crowd became crystal clear and impossible to tune out.

The place was filled with smoke and the floor was littered with the occasional peanut shell, ripped betting slip, and puddle of spilled beer. The bleachers sat five rows high and were on two sides of the ring, leaving the cheap wooden poker tables in the pit a good view of the action and the green velvet poker tables in the elevated VIP section a better one, where the high-rollers sat. Where Blazzil sat, drinking cheap hooch in an expensive glass, gnawing away at a cigar and laughing loud enough that it could cut through thunder in the Maelstrom, his arm uncomfortably and aggressively around Artennis as he pointed me out to him. There was chaos in front of the bar along one wall, and chaos in front of the betting booths near the front door as people put in last-minute bets on if I’d hit the floor or if my opponent would.

Speaking of, he was already in the ring.

The ring had everything a proper boxing ring had, though, I doubted its craftsmanship. It had four corners, with three lines of thick, hempen rope parallel to each other as they ran around it, turn-buckled at each of the corners. It had three steps up to the ropes, which I stepped through and took my place in my corner, shuffling, shadow-boxing and stretching to loosen myself up.

It was Fawaka, Blazzil said. Dressed in a simple turquoise loin-cloth and harness that wrapped straps of dyed leather around his muscles. The blue-furred troll had me beat on height and reach, easily. Even hunched over, he was taller than me. That would be a problem: a tall fighter with a long reach, even with a bit of training, could outmaneuver and keep a smaller, well-trained fighter at bay. He swayed and lunged, back and forth, alternating his weight on his feet, a grin on his face, sharp canines a little too eager to be shown off, a little too arrogant. He casually raked his electric-cyan dread locks back behind his head, only for them to spill over his phosphorescent face-paint, a savage skull glowing in the dimness of the unlit ring.

Maybe I could use that.

The ring lights flashed on, the spotlights doing a lap around the building before they all converged on the announcer: a goblin with greasy, slicked-back hair and a purple, three-piece velvet tux striped, hemmed, and fringed, with gold filigree. The microphone was a metal box, suspended by a long wire that ran up to the ceiling, and it crackled and whined with feedback as he brought it up to his mouth, “LLLLLLADS AN’ GENTLE-LADIES, MAY I HAVE YOUSE GUYS’S ATTENTION HERE IN DA RING FAH DA FINAL BOUT O’ THE NIGHT!”

He licked his lips and slicked back his hair, “WE GOT A FAN FAVORITE AN’ A NEWCOMER HOPIN’ TA BE YA NEW FAVORITE, TOO!”

The crowd roared. I heard Fawaka’s name from some of the crowd. Apparently, they wanted him to beat my ass.

“IN THE RED CORNAH, HUNCHED OVAH AT SEVEN AN’ A HALF FEETS TALL, WEIGHIN’ IN AT A TWO-HUNDRED AN’ FIFTY-THREE POUNDS OF PURE DARKSPEAR SWAGGAH, WE GOT THE WHIRLWIND! THE DANCIN’ DERVISH O’ DUROTAR! FFFFAAAAAAA-WAKAAAAAAAAAA!”

The announcer bared his teeth in a bloodthirsty grin, a checkerboard of silver and gold-plated teeth, letting the name ring-out in the warehouse to the wild cheers of the crowd as the spotlights moved to the troll. Fawaka shuffled, his feet walking forward as he slid back to his corner in a flourish of dance. He hopped up onto the turnbuckles and lifted his hands up above his head, leaning to either side with a hand cupped behind each ear, before springing off the top rope in a twisting backflip, landing to face me.

The announcer glanced down at his card as the spotlight returned to him, “AND IN THE RED CORNAH! THE CHALLENGAH! STANDIN’ AT SIX-FOOT-THREE AN’ WEIGHIN’ IN AT TWO-HUNDRED-AN’-FIFTEEN POUNDS! A SPELLBREAKAH STRAIGHT FROM SILVAHMOON, BUT SPELLS AIN’T ALL HE’S GONNA BE BREAKIN’ TANIGHT! THE NOSE-BREAKAH! THE BONE-BREAKAH! THE FACE-BREAKAH! ANDAAAAEROOOOS DAAAAAWNFLAAAAARE!”

I received equal parts cheers and jeers, and I didn’t play to either side. I kept my eyes focused on my opponent, I tuned the crowd out, until it was just me, him, and the ring.

“YOU BOT’ KNOW DA RULES! THERE ARE NO ROUNDS, THERE ARE NO RESTRICTIONS, THERE ARE NO POINTS! THE HOUSE LIGHTS STAY ON UNTIL ONE O’ YOUSE LIGHTS GO OUT! NOW, GET IN YA CORNAHS, YA ANIMALS! WHEN THE BELL RINGS, GIVE THE CROWD A SHOW!” He shoved the microphone away, letting it be winched up into the rafters and took a few steps back, both white-gloved hands up and beckoning to encourage the crowd to roar.

They did. And then the bell rang.

Fawaka shuffled forward, hunched over low to the ground, his weight and his stance shifting, orthodox to south-paw, closing the distance between us as I shuffled forward, keeping my guard lower, expecting shots to the body, rather than the head.

He lunged forward, suddenly, and shifted his momentum during the lunge, lowering himself down onto his hands shooting his leg out in a sweep at my feet, his body contorting and tensing like a spring, flexing and springing back with surprising amounts of torque. When my foot lifted to avoid the sweep, his other foot came rushing up to my chin as he back-flipped away from me, back into to that low swaying.

I leaned back and lifted my jaw with the hit, trying to ride the momentum of it as best as I could. I was unprepared for it, and I fell back onto the mat with my hands slapping down to try and break my fall, grunting with pain, working my jaw back and forth to make sure it was still there.

It was.

Not a good start.

The crowd disagreed. They loved it, apparently.

When my eyes opened, they were on Fawaka in mid-air, his legs tucked, flipping sideways over me.

His feet both came down like a jackhammer on the mat, the springs underneath us bouncing as he landed and I rolled away to my feet and put my guard up, again.

He cackled and spun in a jump, round-housing the air in an arrogant flourish and landing in a spin, to sweep the mat where I just was, whooping and taunting me. His eyes were wide and his teeth were sharp, and he jumped at me, his entire body twisting a full revolution before the blade of his foot sliced through the air above me. I bobbed low and tried to weave in, trying to level a straight punch at him, catching his jaw as he spun on the ball of his foot, the momentum of the spin bringing his jaw to me.

He stumbled backwards, off one foot and onto the other, cartwheeling into that swaying stance, his hand rubbing his jaw with a grin.

I kept my eyes on him. I wasn’t here to have fun. I was here to win, at least, when I was told to.

I took the fight to him, this time, shuffling into a lunge forward, only to be held back by a spinning kick, and then another, Fawaka leaning himself back onto his hand with each spin, his foot whipping past my face as I leant back to dodge the first and took the second to my nose with a hard slap from the flat of his foot.

The crowd cheered, and my nose broke, blood dripping down to the mat as I scrambled (gracefully, and not at all desperately) to keep myself up and get some distance, again. I sniffed and snorted and wiped my nose with the back of my hand, grunting through gritted teeth from the pain, there. Fuzz started to creep into my senses, but I gave it a hard blink and a head shake.

His reach was staggeringly larger than mine with his kicks, and he delivered them fast, one after the other, and I needed to get in to land some hits.

He took a step forward and spun, again, leading a kick to my temple with his heel. I raised my arm to block it. The kick sent a shuddering pain through my arm, spreading along it as a dull, lingering pain, and I stumbled to one side. His foot followed through, and he spun around again, a bit lower, enough to catch his foot against my side with a hard smack and maybe a broken rib, grunting as I locked his foot tight to my side.

I wasn’t letting go. And he knew I wasn’t. He grunted and wrenched his body, jumping up from one foot and spinning around to send it across my face.

I moved forward to try and hammer home a few punches to his jaw, to his face, anywhere I could do some damage and start ending this fight, hoping I would be able to duck enough to miss the brunt of the kick.

I felt his shin hit the side of my head, his foot missing its mark by a few inches, my punch finding his jaw

I stumbled sideways and fell to the mat with a grunt, and he fell as I let go of his legs, holding his bruised jaw.

I shook my head to try and clear that haze of pain, again, always trying to creep in while I was idle. The force hadn’t been behind his shin, but a kick to the head is still a kick to the head and bones are hard. If I had moved back instead of forward, I probably would’ve been down for the cou--

I stared at the droplets of sweat and the blood under me on the mat as I got to my knees.

That was it.

In boxing, fighters fell into archetypes. I was a boxer-puncher. Quickness, hard, precise strikes, and technique were how I fought. Boxing was tactical to me. I stayed on the outside and assessed when to go in, when to stay in.

Fawaka stood up and gnashed his sharp teeth in a carnivorous grin, leaning down into that back-and-forth shuffle. It was slow and deliberate the way he fell into it, like a panther ready to pounce, all the sinuous muscles of his body taut with exertion.

I needed to be a swarmer. Swarmers got in, and stayed in. They never let the other fighter forget what a punch feels like, and they never give them time to recover, never give them space or momentum. The only defense is constant, unyielding offense.

I didn’t give myself time to second guess myself, I didn’t give him time to savor the kill. I shuffled across the ring, guard up.

Those long legs needed space to spin. They needed space to uncoil, to reach their terminus. Like a flail, all that power and momentum was focused on a point, and if I could get in past that point, I could deprive him of that stopping power.

He took a step forward and launched his heel at my chest in hard forward kick. It hit my sternum like a battering ram, and my guard lowered to grab at his ankle. I yanked him towards me, causing him to skid and stumble, and then shoved him back towards the ropes.

I moved in on him as his back touched the ropes. They strained and creaked with his weight as he fell back on them, arms up to block my punches.

I brought my punches down, battering his ribs on one side, then the other. He brought one arm down in time to stop a punch, and then I hammered the other side, again. He brought both arms down and I hooked his cheekbone.

His arm hooked around me and we clinched. He punched at the side of my head, and the back of my head. He brought his knee up into my thigh, the hard bone digging a bruise into my thigh with repeated strikes. I shoved at him hard, to break free, trying to swipe a parting hook at his face. My knuckle caught his tusk and the better bone won, leaving me wincing and shaking my hand to soothe it as I had to pull back.

Fawaka stumbled forward off the ropes, dizzy from the headshots, breathless from the rib shots.

I ignored the pain in my hand and closed my fingers into a fist against all better judgement, and I moved forward, switching to my worse side. I had to be relentless, I had to be invasive.

He brought a foot up and in to try to push me away, to keep me at bay with the flat of it, but I shoved it away, I lunged in with a sharp twist with my hip, hooking him across the cheek.

Avoid the tusks, Andy.

Fawaka threw up his arms, he threw his hand, and I bobbed under it and punished him for it. I hit his cheek again. He tried to shove me, but I insisted myself at him, punch after punch, taking whatever headshots I could as he was hunched by the ropes.

The crowd cheered with each punch, they cheered with each drop of blood. From my knuckles, from his cheek, from his mouth. He spit a tooth and fell to both knees, fell to his palms, and fell unconscious.

I stood there, awash in the fanfare.

My heart pounded, my fist stung, my ribs ached, my face throbbed, and when I looked up at the crowd, at Artennis, my stomach turned.

Blazzil had an arm around his neck, pulled in close with that abrasive, unearned chumminess that he forced on his victims. He jostled the elven man and pointed down at the ring, laughing, slapping his cheek just a little too hard to be the friendly affection the goblin was attempting to inflict. Artennis and I met each other’s gazes, and there was no rush of a fight well fought, none of the wily arrogance and smiling I’d known him for. There was only grim acknowledgement that the first part of a long job was over.

The goblin, in his expensive cheap velvet suit came back into the ring, careful not to get his polished gold-dusted shoes tarnished by blood, full gold-and-silver checkerboard on display in a wild grin, motioning down for the microphone, which swung wildly down as the winch was let loose and almost whipped down into his face.

He cursed the operators up in the rafters, lifting a middle finger and raising his voice to the rafters, even as the microphone whined and buzzed itself to life, snatching the microphone as it swung back, “—UCKERS, I’M GONNA BEATS DA—” He puttered, like a goblin engine, “BUH—UH, WHAT A FAN-FUCKIN’-TASTIC DISPLAY OF FIST-FLINGIN’, LET’S GIVE SOME MORE FAN-FUCKIN’-FARE, DUDES AN’ GENTLEBABES! GIVE IT UP FAH THE WINNER… ANNNNNNNNDAEROS… DAAAAAAWNFLAAAAAARE!”

The crowd, in its bloodthirsty entirety, roared with newfound approval of me, as if I’d forgotten how many of them jeered and hissed and hoped I’d hit the mat. It was deafening, and I could feel the sound as something physical resonating in me, but it felt far off and distant, even beyond what pain was dulling my senses.

I watched them pull Fawaka from the mat, muttering in semi-consciousness, dragged off dutifully to the medical bay with little reverence by an orc that I didn’t recognize.

I lifted my fist up to the warehouse lights, bloody knuckles cut by teeth and bone, mottled by dark bruises, to acknowledge the crowd. I turned my back to them and winced my way into the darkness of the backrooms, doing my best to ignore bruisers and bouncers, criminals, that thought they were my friend because they’d seen me win a fight. Patting my back and saying my name like they hadn’t just heard it for the first time from the announcer. Thanking me for winning, like I’d done them a solid and paid them myself.

I was too bruised to recoil, too tired to care.

I’d get a healing potion from Doc later.

The only bottle I wanted, now, was filled with whiskey.