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"Come on, now, you can't bloody well be afraid of it," Sidurgu says, from where he is decidedly further away from the chittering vilekin which bounces before Rielle than she is, and therefore, in her estimation, should not get to comment on such things.
Rielle shoots him a glare.
"I am not afraid of it," she says. She adjusts her grip on her sword, battling sweaty palms that make the leather grip feel slick in her hands for solid purchase. She should've worn the gauntlets after all, but they'd felt so cumbersome. "I am trying to find the best means of approach."
She hesitates for a second too long before she adds, "For a weak point," and his little frown makes her sweat anew with nerves. A look that reflects a resounding sense of disappointment in her, no doubt.
Rielle raises her arms an ilm or two more and spreads her feet a little bit wider. That's a better stance, isn't it? She tries to think of how Sidurgu looks when he fights like this, strong and dark and dashing, and then she has to turn her face down to hide the blush that's creeping into her cheeks. A part of her hopes that she looks dashing, although she somehow doubts it, with her ill-fitting chainmail and her awkward, too-long limbs of early Elezen adulthood.
Focus, Rielle, she tells herself. You are in a fight, foolish girl. Do you wish to die?
She grits her teeth. Why must her inner voice sound so much like hers, even now, several summers removed from her death?
The vilekin chitters and hops about in what can only be growing impatience with her stalling, its beady eyes watching warily. It's no doubt disinclined to pick a fight it knows it cannot win, but they've tracked and cornered it here, to an outcropping of rock in the Sea of Clouds where it cannot easily escape without going past either of them. For a Wamouracampa, it is alarmingly large. Rielle hadn't realized just how big this particular mark was until they had gotten close to it, and now, faced with its twitching legs and flickering antennae, she is forced to face the fact she finds it utterly repulsive.
"I can kill it for you if you cannot do it, Rielle," Sidurgu says. She hears his armor clink as he takes two steps forward, a hand lifting to his sword.
She shakes her head.
"No," she says, and again, more firmly, "no, I can do this. It's only a bloody vilekin, for Fury's sake."
Sidurgu's face pinches in distaste at her swearing, as it always does, but he stands down, and so she will forgive him his misplaced concern for her dignity. Dignity ceased to matter to her when her mother tried to murder her in the Highlands. She has no patience for nor interest in the stuffy propriety of the "noble" clergy to whom she owes her lineage.
She steels herself once more. Fray would not have hesitated so. Fray would have charged in and swung and fell the beast with a single, decisive strike. Even if he found its jittering little legs disgusting.
She can do this.
The first few steps she takes are unsteady on the rocky soil of the Sea of Clouds, and the Wamouracampa beginning to jump with increased alarm makes her skin crawl unpleasantly, but she moves, and with each step her confidence grows. A low ranking hunt mark is nothing she cannot handle. Fray and Sidurgu did not train her so diligently for her to fail now out of some girlish squeamishness.
"Focus," she says to herself. She grits her teeth.
She charges.
Alarmed by her sudden approach, the Wamouracampa screeches, antennae and legs flailing wildly about as its frantic leaping increases in pace and intensity. Fury, but this is a large specimen; she was under the impression they were quite a bit smaller than this.
There is no time for regrets or hesitation now, however, and Rielle moves like she has been trained to move, like she has seen Sidurgu and Fray move a hundred times before. She meets the vilekin with her sword, spindly legs ineffective against the blade's edge as it attempts to launch at her, which is a strong start. Block with the blade, not your body, Rielle, she echoes to herself.
It leaps backwards. She cannot believe just meeting it with her blade was not enough to immediately cut off a limb, but the scrape of chitinous armor against steel as it disengages resolves her confusion in but a moment. Natural armor, in a sense. She hadn't put much force into the sword, not offensively, so there's little chance she could've cracked it. She will have to strike it harder, she thinks, as she falls back into her neutral stance and prepares to strike again.
Vilekin are an unpredictable foe, owing largely to their erratic movements and skittish nature. Easier to slay than many other beasts in Coerthas or Dravania, to be sure, but all beasts can be deadly in the right circumstances. A cornered fiend is a dangerous one, the other voice, the kinder voice, in Rielle's head echoes, the motivations of man can be understood, but beasts follow no such logic. Treat them with care.
A practical lesson: a cornered Wamouracampa will attempt to pummel you to death with its hard shell of a body.
It bounces with a speed and strength that Rielle would never have expected possible of its spindly legs. It's panicked and knows that it is about to die and so it uses the only thing it has—its body—to rail against its fate. Struck suddenly by the tragedy of this, Rielle's arms lower just a few ilms, a frown creasing her face, and she does not move in time to block the next swipe. A vilekin arm lined with surprisingly sharp barbs drags down her face from brow to chin, not deep, but immediately bloody. In shock, she freezes, eyes wide, as it prepares to leap again.
"Rielle!" Sidurgu is unsheathing his sword without hesitation, the sound of it deafeningly loud, the horrible screech of steel on steel that marks her failure.
Rage suddenly flares through her, burning her from the torn skin of her right cheek down into her chest and through her heart. It is a rage so all encompassing that her entire body trembles with it. Her vision narrows to a sharpened pinpoint.
She whips around and bares her teeth at Sidurgu and snarls, "Stay back," in a voice that makes her throat hurt, that feels like it tears on the way out, and he stops dead in his tracks, sword frozen mid-swing, eyes wide. She turns away from him and this time she is ready, this time she meets the vilekin with her sword and then somehow finds the strength within her shaking limbs to swing it harder, up toward the sky, clean through the creature's thorax. It dies with a hiss and a spray of dark blood and slime that she cannot dodge in time to avoid soaking her.
In an instant she realizes the folly of wearing a white tunic over her chainmail. She feels suddenly foolish, both for the care over her clothes and the blinding rage that has just as quickly subsided into a dull, aching shiver and nothing more. When she breathes out through her teeth it sounds weak and unstable, but—she's done it.
She's slain her first mark with a greatsword.
Sidurgu is reaching out to her, a question half-formed on his lips, but she doesn't hear the start of it. She turns to face him and she grins, ignoring that it stings to do so because of the scrape on her face.
"I did it!" she says, and he seems stunned for a moment before he lowers his sword and shakes his head at her.
"That you did," he agrees. He steps closer, left hand already raised and poised along the curve of her face, and she lets him touch her cheek gently to appraise the wound she's sustained in her first ever hunt mark. "It is shallow, at least."
His brows are pinched again, but she suspects this look is not disappointment in her but disappointment in himself for letting her be injured in the first place. She rolls her eyes and leans her cheek just a little bit into his palm, relishing the warmth of his hand and the roughness of his calluses.
"Stop sulking and heal it, then," she teases. "Or have you forgotten your conjury lessons?"
Sidurgu's face lightens as a quiet huff of laughter leaves him. Warm healing magic begins to gather in his palm, washing over Rielle's cheek and bringing with it gentle relief and the familiar feeling of him, his aether pouring into her own to mend torn flesh. She has a weakness for this, but she thinks she does a commendable job of not letting too much of her feelings show on her face.
His palm lingers too long on her cheek, and she savors it while she can, lifting her hand just slightly to touch the scales on the back of his hand. Perhaps that was the wrong move, though, for he seems to snap out of his daze and withdraw from her at once, clearing his throat as he goes.
Ah, well. That was the closest she's come so far to enjoying his touch, and she is happy to content herself with that for the time being. The tingling sensation of his warmth against her cheek will linger for a time, and the feeling of his palm on her skin will be a nice memory for later.
"On to the next mark, then?" She asks, as she hefts her broadsword onto her back and tries to exude a confidence that she does not entirely feel, because the next mark is also a vilekin, and she is a little tired of looking at vilekin.
"Yes. Perhaps we use it as a lesson in fighting together?"
If it means not having to be so close to a vilekin on her own? She thinks she can let him have a swing this time.