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Blaidd looked at the human in front of him with curiosity. He had met and fought plenty of Tarnished in his time, but he had always failed to judge them properly.
Never had the time. They either ignored him or fought him, never staying close enough to understand them. This one was serving Ranni though. She was to stick around. So he observed her as she was getting ready for their training session.
She was barely half his size, wearing mismatched silver and gold armour, taken off of corpses or long forgotten chests. A scar started through the side of her neck and fell below her armour. Another ran from her left cheek to the right side of her jaw, barely avoiding her lower lip. Her almost black hair was tied in a regal braid and her brown eyes shined with a somewhat unnatural gold glow.
Overall, she was just another Tarnished, scarred and battered.
Her weaponry was unique. Two daggers were strapped at both sides of her waist. One, he recognized as Melina’s silver Blade of Calling. The other was a crooked Black Knife with the fragment of the Rune of Death imbued inside. These didn’t seem to be her main weapons however.
What he had seen her wield most often, and was about to use against him, was a rough, plain and enormous greatsword. Driven to the ground, it towered over her as she checked her greaves and tightened their straps. It still towered over her as she got up and pulled it off the ground with inhuman strength. Holding it with one hand, she softly let it rest on her shoulder as she picked up a greatshield with her other.
She nodded, indicating she was ready.
Suddenly somewhat self-conscious about the size of his greatsword, he pulled it from his back and raised it towards her, ready to fight.
“Ready,” he growled back at her.
She lifted the shield to (her) eye level and began circling around him, her greatsword hiding behind. Her head was peaking over the shield and understanding that she was waiting on him to initiate, Blaidd swung for her forehead.
She quickly raised the shield to block him and the moment metal met metal, her own sword was swinging horizontally from the right at a speed that no weapons this size should be going. He jumped back, barely out of reach of the weapon and immediately rushed back in, swinging his sword as hard as he could from his left.
She blocked him with her sword, bashing the shield at his snout as she did. The blow got him on the chest instead, violently removing the air from his lungs and pushing him back.
Before he could recover, she threw the shield at him, escaping his vision for the second it took him to deflect the crude metal away. Fear, a feeling that normally came with hearing Ranni’s plans and actions, gripped him as he saw the woman holding her greatsword with two hands, flying in the air and swinging it towards him so fast that she did a full spin before demolishing the rocks Blaidd had stood only half a second ago.
Still in fear, the flat of his blade found the side of her head before she could lift her sword off the ruble, knocking her to the side, hopefully unconscious.
She wasn’t.
After rolling on the ground for a couple metres, she jumped back up, unsheathing her daggers.
“Hey, enough!” he protested, mainly because he had no intention to even get scratched by a blade imbued with the Rune of Death.
She stopped for a second, looking at the dark blade in her hand, then back at him. She held it with two fingers and gave him a questioning look.
“Yes. Get your sword back, or use just Melina’s dagger if you want to continue,” he growled.
The Tarnished let the black blade fall back in its sheath. She tossed the silver dagger in her right hand, and looked back at him, ready to continue.
Blaidd sighed and raised his sword again. He hated fighting Tarnished. They kept coming and coming, even after he had killed them a dozen times. These people never knew when to quit. Honestly, their stubbornness was a bigger characteristic than their immortality.
This time, the Tarnished in front of him initiated.
She ran close to the ground, her dagger-hand hidden behind her back, her other one reaching in front.
Blaidd swung his sword horizontally again and when she ducked below, he used his free hand to claw at her head. She tried to avoid his grasp but was too slow.
Grabbing her by the head, he drove her face to the ground and swirled his sword over her nape, stopping less than a centimetre away from her skin.
“Dead,” he announced, still holding her down.
Her body relaxed and she tapped his hand a few times, signalling her surrender. Blaidd let her free and backed up, sheathing his sword.
The Tarnished rose from the ground, spitting dirt. She reached in her mouth for a second and fished a couple pebbles. She laughed as she tossed them away and gave Blaidd a soft punch to his arm as a way to say "good job".
“You shouldn’t throw away your shield,” he reached and raised the weapon from the ground.
The Tarnished just shrugged. If she died, she would get back up. She spat more dirt.
“Wash up before you enter the tower. Ranni doesn’t like dirt inside,” Blaidd pointed at a small basin near the entrance. Ranni didn’t actually mind, but her mother did and Blaidd was always the more obedient child of the two.
Even all these years later, he still remembered Rennala’s look the time he and Ranni had returned home full of mud and their hair and fur filled with sticky weeds. Rennala hadn’t yelled or punished them, but she was silent as she put them in the bath. And as she cleaned them up, she’d only asked them to be more careful with a tired voice.
Blaidd had taken her ask to heart and always kept clean and tidy as much as he could. Ranni was more careful while they lived with Rennala, but she stopped trying as soon as they left.
He shook the memories away, before he remembered their brothers, and sat down on the stairs of the tower.
On his right, the Tarnished was unstrapping her armour. She wore the gold chest plate of the Clearrot Knights, a piece she had looted as she travelled to meet Blaidd at the Radahn Festival-
He growled at himself. No thinking of the brothers now. It never felt any better. Ignoring the Tarnished’s puzzled look, he pulled out a rag and began to furiously scrub his boots.
When he had scrubbed the memories away, he turned back at the Tarnished. She was naked from the waist up, with only a cloth covering her chest as she washed.
Curious, he looked at her arms and back. He expected more visible muscle, given how easily she carried her armaments. He could distinguish the bigger muscles under her skin, but her strength was nowhere near as visible as Radagon’s, or Hoarah Loux’s.
She raised her hands to untie her braid and as her arm tightened, he suddenly could see each individual part of her muscles tightening and relaxing as she moved her hands.
Almost instinctively, he looked up to the window in Ranni’s chambers and sure enough, he spotted her icy eye peeking down. When she finally caught him looking, he raised an eyebrow and smirked knowingly. Immediately she pulled back causing Blaidd to burst into a fit of laughter.
The Tarnished gave him another questioning look. He waved her off, still snickering. Annoyed, she turned around and lowered her head down to wash her hair.
Knowing her back was in full view from the window, Blaidd looked up again and caught Ranni looking again. Too focused to notice him this time.
“Hey,” he called to the Tarnished. “You should ask Ranni for help with your back,” he teased.
The Tarnished gave him another questioning look under her wet hair.
Blaidd simply pointed up, smiling like an idiot, then jumped off the stairs with a yelp. Ice had covered them and had even caught the soles of his boots. His smile never leaving, he looked up at Ranni. She was at the window, frowning, two hands on her hips, one pointing a finger on her lips and another ready to send more ice his way.
He burst into laughter again, stopping only to stick his tongue out and then he had to leap away from another pool of ice forming at his feet.
He was spared from more ice attacks by the Tarnished waving hello to Ranni, which prompted her to wave back and forget about Blaidd for a second. With a second wave, the Tarnished called Ranni to join them.
Ranni conceded, but not before sending a death glare at Blaidd, along with another ice pool under his boots, causing him to fall on the ground while still giggling.
As Ranni walked down, the Tarnished searched quickly for something in her armour.
“My beloved.”
These words met Ranni as she got out of the door. They’d come from one of the Prattling Pates the Tarnished kept around. Blaidd would do anything for Ranni to be back in her first body, just to see her face turn the same colour as her hair.
But alas, Ranni just paused for a bit longer than usual, then smiled.
“What doth thou want of me?” she asked.
The Tarnished turned around and pointed at her back, then Ranni, then joined her palms to a “please” gesture.
“Thou want help with thy back?”
The Tarnished nodded and raised a strand of her hair.
“And hair as well?”
Another nod.
“Sure.”
Ranni’s stiffness didn’t escape Blaidd, but he held his amusement back this time. Having the window as a barrier had stopped Ranni from doing anything more than pools of ice, but now Blaidd was in icicle casting distance. So he stayed quiet and sat next to the couple.
“You seldom ask me to help you wash. What prompted thou to doth so today?” Ranni asked as she scrubbed the Tarnished’s back.
Blaidd was already jumping out of the way as the Tarnished pointed at him. Two round balls of ice barely missed him.
“Hey!” he protested.
Ranni didn’t look at him. She was focusing on untying a knot in the Tarnished’s hair.
Ice covered his boots again, this time holding him in place. Blaidd readied himself for the blow coming from her but the new ice ball fell from above, landing on his head with a thud. Unbalanced, he stumbled backwards and the ice on his feet melted and cracked, letting him fall on the now muddy path.
“It would seem like someone else needs a bath,” Ranni pointed out, still not looking, although he could see her holding back another smile.
The Tarnished started giggling with her coarse, rough voice, soon followed by Ranni losing her composure.
And Blaidd laughed along with the unlikely new family that had formed around him.