SABIS the SURVIVOR

Chapter 9: Slash and Kick

Chapter 9: Slash and Kick

"All ready?" Elder Bullis asked as he stood several feet away from the two combatants and prepared to blow the ram's horn. Dreyis bit her lip to conceal her excitement. She wanted to yelp and holler but that might give her opponent Regis something to natter on about. The only obvious evidence of her mounting arousal peaked out from under her armpits─a moist sweat collection staining her mossy tunic.

Conversely and perhaps perversely, Regis wanted this hand-to-hand combat to be not a mano-a-mano but rather a mouth-to-mouth competition. He sought a way to distract Dreyis from her plans for physical domination, so he let out a yelp of glee.

"Glory to the Gods! I'm going to destroy my competition. I can feel it in my bones."

Then the ram's horn sounded a staccato-like blare.

Regis cranked up his rhetoric volume.

"Reveal yourself to me, oh holy of holies. I yearn to taste your mouth on mine. You are the only one that can heal me, cure me, and save me. Let it be."

Dreyis blinked once, trying to not lose sight of her opponent's blade that danced in front of her field of vision as if it had been given an expert lesson in the colar-turris, the name of the ritual wedding dance performed by bride and groom after stating their wedding vows to each other. She started to shake her left leg and slash her right-handed blade in a diagonal direction from low to high. While continuing to disregard Regis' verbal charades and mesmerizing blade dance, she now gripped her leather blade handle with two hands and slashed from high to low as if she wanted to alternately cut first into his left and then into his right thigh.

Regis continued speaking gibberish while dodging her slashes.

"Ten rituals of fire, then ten more makes twenty. Too bad you won't live to see that age, honey. I'm going to cut, then I'm going to slash, for with you in my sights, this contest will be over in a flash."

Then he ran around to the back of Dreyis while kicking up dust in her face. She did a cartwheel to her left, throwing her blade into the air like a baton. As her blade twirled in the air, she then back-flipped behind Regis, caught her falling blade by its handle, slashed across his back from his left to the right side. As her blade slashed into the leather sack, her blade ran into and noisily glided along the back of his gold-plated vest, then continued to slice into the sack on his right arm, spilling the stones from both of his arms.

"All stop!" Elder Bullis cried out in his stentorian voice.

Regis stuttered his final words of this competition.

"H-h-h-h-h-ip hip h-hh-h-oorah. Dreyis is the winnah!"

Dreyis bowed to the Elder then to her competitor, then Elder Burris removed the two stone-filled arms sacks. She let her arms fall down wearily, spun in place while looking down to the ground, then stopped her spin on the heel of her right foot. She looked over to Uris and Ravis, smiled an ear-to-ear grin, and then mouthed two words to them.

"You're next."

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Uris wanted to rip the Griffin crest from Ravis' helmet and show him what he thought of his family emblem. In keeping with his own family name, Oris, Uris' helmet was gold-plated as was his chest protector. His family crest resembled the sun in its full glory as it would have been seen in the before time─according to the ancient texts: A circular gold ball with gold rays shooting out of its fiery center in all directions.

Uris stood impatiently next to Elder Ferris as his opponent was being fitted with the two arm sacks full of stones. Uris tapped his feet, tamped the ground with his wartis, and chewed on his lower lip.

Too bad I can not impale him in the neck with the sharp bottom of my wartis, he thought.

As for Ravis, he knew that his opponent wanted, or more to the point, needed to exact revenge on him for the way Ravis had man-handled him earlier in front of the competitors.

Life's a bitch, you bitch, he thought─better get used to it.

As if Uris possessed mental telepathic powers and had heard Ravis' inner voice from afar, he sneered at Ravis, waved his arms now clad with stone sacks, and shouted.

"Come and get it, you Mother Stoner!"

"Oh, you'll get what's coming to you. A warrior like you, this tribe does not need. Why don't you apologize for your disrespectful words about Dreyis?"

"Oooh, you got girlfriend problems, Rave? Or should I call you C-Rave? I know that you crave my knife in your back, so I'm happy to give it to you. Then, I'll fix your girlfriend just the way she needs it."

Ravis then reached down to feel the ground and rubbed some earth between his palms, then licked his fingers.

"Yeah, that's it Rave. You want some dirt? I am going to make you eat some!"

Uris stuck his tongue out and roared.

Ravis glared back and clenched his teeth while he growled.

As they bowed to each other, you could hear remarks from the crowd urging the contestants on to glory:

"Give it to him, Rave."

"Send him back to his home cave with his tail between his legs, Uris."

"It's Oris time! Oris, Oris, Oris!"

Ravis thought to himself: Uris Oris, my ass! This guy is going down.

Again, Uris seemed to have received Ravis' transmitted thoughts so he remarked:

"I've got freedom to please myself, freedom to live. I've got freedom and reason for all to see, what a beating I'll give ... to you!"

The combatants took two steps back as the ram's horn sounded loud and long.

"All ready!"

As soon as the next puff of air had exited the horn, Ravis rushed at Uris with a stabbing motion as if he wanted to gouge the slightly shorter boy's eyes out. Uris deftly deflected the knife thrust and pulled Ravis into him as if to hug him. He then reached behind Ravis and quickly thrust his blade into one of the stone sacks and ripped open a large hole.

Ravis pushed Uris away so hard that Uris fell backward and rolled into a reverse somersault. Ravis paused to shake the rest of the stones out of his open left arm sack. Then he smiled with his teeth showing, bent his head low and rushed like a wild bull at Uris' midsection. As he was about to slam into Uris' gold-plated vest, he slid into the loose earth with his left foot first and his right foot trailing closely behind.

As Ravis slid through his opponent's legs, Uris desperately slashed at Ravis' remaining sack but missed by inches. Ravis could hear the whooshing of the near miss of Uris' blade. Now behind Uris, Ravis stopped his slide abruptly with his left heel, stood up quickly and simultaneously spun his body to wrap his legs and left arm around Uris and just like before, dragged him down to the ground in a choke hold. With his right hand, he stabbed at Uris' blade-wielding right hand and impaled it into the ground.

Uris howled like a wounded prey. His eyes fixated on the long obsidian blade and leather handle sticking out of his right hand, blood covering his knuckles and wrist. Ravis squeezed his legs tighter to restrict Uris' breath to silence his foe. If he could, he would have bitten Uris's ear off and chewed on it but instead he protruded his tongue then pushed out of his mouth a small but sharp diamond fragment. Gripping the fragment between his teeth, he quickly moved his head side to side and sliced across the back of Uris' two arm sacks spilling the stones.

"All stop!"