# Half-Orcs vs Flaming Dove (The Davids vs The Daniels, personified) *long



## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

So awhile back, one of the many threads in the Writer's Cafe devolved into a standard barrage of inane comments and insults. To help be a bit more specific, it was the one labeled "the Davids" and you can view about the point where it got really bad here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,33828.50.html.

This was the Davids vs Daniels war, and we started flinging our characters at each other. This got me a little interested in trying out one of those scenarios. So! I bought Flaming Dove, read it, and then cranked out (with help from Daniel) a short story detailing such a confrontation.

The competitors:

For the Davids, we have Harruq Tun of the Half-Orc series, a brute with giant muscles, powerful swords, and a winning smile. Also in his corner (or is she?) is Tessanna Delone, a tiny girl with black hair, black eyes, and a shattered mind. No swords or guns here; she'll kill you with her mind, because she's the mad daughter of a goddess.

For Daniels, from the novel Flaming Dove, none other than Laila of the Night. She's half-angel, half-demon, and pure fighting machine. She can fight with a sword, but she's no medieval broad. She'd much rather shoot you with her Uzi and then blow up your corpse with a couple grenades.

So, for those looking for some gratuitous combat, I present to you Harruq vs Laila, coupled with Tessanna vs Laila.

I hope you guys enjoy. I had a ball writing this.

David Dalglish


----------



## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Heaven had closed its gates to her. Hell had barred its doors. She would become no godlight. She would feed no hellfire. On her soul wandered, through worlds and dreams, seeking rest, seeking form…

***

  Harruq trudged through the forest, trying to remember why he was there. Mosquitoes buzzed around his head, biting despite the constant waves of his hand. Had he been following someone? He wore his thick leather armor, and his sister swords swayed at his hip. Prepared for battle, but he felt hurried. Perhaps he was the one being followed…
  He stepped into a clearing, and for a moment he forgot his questions. A portal swirled before him, filled with black and purple ripples that swirled toward the center before vanishing into an expanse of stars. The half-orc scratched his chin, not sure what to make of it.
  “Huh.”
  The portal shuddered, and the sky darkened as wind howled. A being stepped out, pale skinned, her black leather outfit shredded and torn. Enormous bat wings curled about her body, trembling as drops of water dripped off their leathery skin. Harruq took a step back as she stretched to her full height. Blood ran from wounds across her face and neck. Her black hair was tied behind her head.
  “Um, uh, so you’re…hi?” said Harruq.
  The woman looked about the forest, ignoring him.
  “A bland place for a dream,” she said. “Trees? A stream? Really, tame doesn’t begin to describe it.”
  Harruq blinked. 
  “Yeeeah,” he said, scratching at a mosquito bite on his neck. “Perhaps you could introduce yourself. Maybe it’s a bit of a jump, but you look more like something I should be stabbing with my swords than bringing home to the wife.”
  She finally looked to him, her eyes aflame. When she smiled, her lips pulled back to reveal long fangs dripping with fresh blood.
  “Laila,” she said. “And trust me; I’m not scared of your swords.”
  Harruq grinned.
  “That so?”
  He drew Salvation and Condemnation, their black steel softly glowing red. The half-orc cut through the air twice, his stupid grin remaining. He was pretending to show off, but his eyes watched hers. Chills spiked through his blood. She was sizing him up, watching his cuts, judging his speed. He saw her own sword at her side, jagged and dangerous, its wolfhead pommel leering at him.
  “I can cut stone with these babies,” he said, trying to sound unalarmed.
  “Impressive,” Laila said. “But my skin’s harder than stone.”
  She lunged, no warning, no reason. Harruq crossed his swords as Laila’s sword slammed down. The shock of their collision jolted his arms. Pain spiked to his elbows. The demon had the strength of a giant! She twisted and swung again. Harruq wasn’t dumb enough to try another block. He flicked Condemnation underneath it, parrying the swipe as he sidestepped. Salvation stabbed for her belly, but the demoness was too quick. She spun, his edge slicing across her armor. She continued the spin, backhanding Harruq.
  The half-orc took a few steps back and rubbed his fist across his cheek. When he looked, he saw blood. Laila blew him a kiss.
  “I have more than just a sword,” she said, flexing the claws of her free hand.
  “Fascinating,” said Harruq. “Just don’t bite me, all right? I’m not into that.”
He tensed for a lunge, but instead Laila flapped her wings, rising into the air. With her sword clutched with both hands, she tucked her wings to her side and dove. Harruq felt like a rabbit staring up at a hawk.
  “Ah sh--”
  He leaped aside as the demoness tore a massive gash in the dirt. When she struck a tree, he wasn’t surprised when it was the girl, not the tree, who stayed standing.
  Harruq gave her no time to recover, knowing he had little chance of fleeing if she could chase through the air. He slashed at her wings, which swooped in to guard her as she tore her sword free of the tree’s trunk. One sword hit bone and bounced off, but the other punched through the leathery skin, and he chuckled at the shriek of pain and splash of blood he unleashed.
  “Not so tough,” he started to say before the wing snapped wide, smacking him to the other side of the clearing. A tree stopped him. The tree stayed standing.
  “That wasn’t very nice,” Harruq mumbled as he staggered to his feet. His vision was blurred, and when he blinked it clear, he saw the demoness lunging at him, her sword leading. Desperate, he flung up his swords and turned, parrying her thrust. Nothing stopped their collision, though, but he absorbed it best he could against his shoulder…which still broke under the pressure. Caught between the tree and the girl, he could only scream as her weight slammed into him.
  “GET OFF!” he roared, ramming his other fist into her face. He felt something break, and it wasn’t the cartilage of her nose. Her sword embedded into the trunk, Laila punched him back. When he landed, it was on his broken shoulder.
  “Don’t be scared,” Laila said as he screamed. Blood dripped from her nose. She tore her sword free and approached. “This is all a dream, a terrible dream.”
Harruq thought that idiotic, but he didn’t have the strength to say so. He was too busy clutching his face with his good hand. He’d lost several teeth, and his nose was certainly broken. Gagging on his own blood, he turned and spit.
  “Just make it quick,” he said, gasping.
  He felt a clawed hand wrap around his neck and lift him into the air. His vision darkened as it squeezed.
  “She said to make it hurt,” he heard her say.
  “She?” Harruq managed to ask. Then came the claws, and he screamed, and screamed, until he felt arms shaking him, a voice shouting, and then he was in bed, just in bed, with Aurelia’s arms wrapped tight about him.


----------



## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

***

Laila drifted in the dreaming, feeling sleepy and drugged with so many of her senses useless in the void. Worlds drifted along, ephemeral and closed to her. She flew through them like clouds. It took no energy to move, only the thought of movement. On and on, waiting, watching, until she saw an opening. One of the clouds had thickened, full of a dream powerful enough to give her home. She dove through, into the dreamworld of some unsuspecting sleeper.
The return of her bodily senses was jarring. She grit her teeth and endured. She was Laila of the night, now Laila of the dreams. Nothing so simple as a bit of vertigo would weaken her. A sound met her ears, and after a moment she placed it as thunder. She looked up, taking in the world she had entered.
Homes stretched to either side of her. She stood in the center of a long stone road, the bricks blood red. Clouds grumbled above. Laila looked for the dreamer. The first few times she'd tried talking with the dreamers, but always they were afraid of her, some startled so badly the dreamworld broke by her very presence. Bored of that, Laila had begun killing the dreamers. She knew she did no real harm, but anything that gave her a sense of life, a sense of purpose beyond the drifting, was something she craved.
Besides, if there was anything she was good at, it was scaring the sh** out of some hapless dreamer and then tearing out his throat.
But this world was dark. She'd never once entered a true nightmare, and she wondered if this would be her first. Rain poured against her skin, cold and heavy. Even stranger, the lightning only darkened the land, not brightened it. Voices shrieked from the windows of the homes, wails of pain and torment. Laila glanced inside one but saw only rotted floorboards and a broken chair.
"Where are you, dreamer?" she asked.
It seemed the lightning gathered further down one direction, striking repeatedly with deafening roars. Curious, Laila headed toward it, her bat wings curled above her head in meager protection against the downpour.
Sitting upon a fountain, the waters running red, was the girl. She held a disembodied head in her hands, that of an older man. Her fingers ran through its short dark hair. Her eyes were closed, and she sang a soft lullaby as all around her the lightning crashed. Laila just stood and stared, the raining thudding against her wings, the thunder booming. At last the girl looked up. Upon seeing Laila, she only shrank back a little and smiled.
"I don't know you," she said, still petting the head. "Did I make you?"
"Hell and Godfire made me, not you," Laila said, trying to sound vicious and frightening. The girl's eyes were solid black, with only a hint of whites at the edges, and her stare made the demoness feel uneasy. She didn't seem the least bit intimidated.
The girl stood, the head rolling from her lap. It landed facing Laila. Its mouth was sewed shut, its eyes wide-eyed and bloody. A small 'o' was torn open in the center of the mouth's stitching, and from it trickled a steady stream of blood and glass.
"My name is Tessanna," the girl said, smiling shyly. Her long hair fell to her waist, sticking to her back because of the rain. She wore a plain brown dress, tattered and dirty. "Who are you?"
Laila's hand fell to her Uzi.
"I am Laila of the night, daughter of Heaven, heir to Hell."
"Heaven?" said Tessanna, the whole world darkening with the narrowing of her eyes. "Hell? What are these places? Are they of fire and brimstone? Or gold and light? You are in neither, Laila. You're with me. You're in darkness."
This wasn't fun anymore. The houses cracked and splintered, the windows shattering in silent explosions of bleeding shards. All shyness drained away from Tessanna, leaving only a soft apathy staring back, uncaring, unimpressed. The sky exploded with fire, and meteors crashed into the streets. Laila aimed her Uzi for Tess's chest.
"You should thank me for ending your nightmare," she said before pulling the trigger.
The muzzle flared, its shots strangely hollow and weak, their sound mocked by the raging storm that blew about them. Tessanna's face lit up with the flash, and her hand opened as each and every bullet struck a translucent shield that shimmered in a semicircle before her.
"A strange magic," Tessanna said, her voice cold, dead. No emotion. Nothing. "Such small arrows, yet so fast."
Laila snarled, firing again. The bullets continued to ricochet off. The shield flickered and bent, but did not break. Laila grabbed a chunk of rock from the ground and flung it. When it broke against the shield, showering chalk all around, Laila lunged through, her sword Haloflame leading. 
Tessanna opened her mouth and shrieked. The wail rolled with the force of a boulder, halting Laila in midair. She felt her clothes shred as if daggers lashed her body. Her skin, however, was far too strong. She collapsed to her knees, coughing up blood.
"What are you?" Tessanna asked, kneeling down beside Laila as if she weren't afraid in the slightest.
"Mad as hell," Laila said, tossing a grenade before leaping away.
The smoke and dust clouded her vision of the girl for a moment, but the rain and wind washed it away. Tessanna stood, her arms over her chest, her fingers glowing of magic. Blood ran down her arms, gashed by shrapnel. Laila flapped her wings and rose into the air, pulling several more grenades off her belt.
Tessanna lowered her arms, ran a finger along her wrist, and then licked the blood. Her apathy drained away. She giggled.
"Fun," she said. "Is it my turn?"
Laila hurled the grenades, but Tessanna knew their danger and reacted with blinding speed. Her fingers spread wide, and to Laila's horror, the grenades halted all movement, hanging mere feet away in the air. Swearing, Laila flapped higher as the explosions rocked over her body. Her skin was far too tough to be hurt, but still she felt the pressure and disorientation.
_Higher,_ she thought._ I need to get higher._
Whoever this psychotic girl was, Laila had decided two things. One, she was incredibly powerful. Two, she was going to die, all for the sake of her honor.
Her Uzi fired away, but Tessanna shook her head.
"Silly girl," she shouted, making a fist. Laila's Uzi cracked in her hand, its parts falling to the street. She frowned. She had really liked that gun. With a great flap of her wings, she circled above Tessanna, and as her anger grew, and her halo flared with fire above her head, she rained down fire with her fingers. Tessanna laughed as it splashed across her skin like water. She was not burned.
"You fight a goddess," Tessanna said, her arms spreading wide. "Do you think I fear your fire? Your magic? Do you think you are the only one with wings?"
Smoke poured out her back, solidifying into an ethereal pair of wings. Larger and larger they grew, curling and growing until they stretched to either side of the street. Tessanna lifted into the air, laughing, laughing. The sky swirled above them, a mixture of fire and lightning. Below them the rain pooled, and faces floated up from water, their eyes wide with pain, their sewed-shut mouths muffling their pained screams.
_She's mad,_ Laila realized. _No, she's completely [expletive] insane._
She drew her pistol and fired. Tessanna laughed away the bullets, the whole world twisting and warping so that reality seemed in danger of breaking. Only one shot was on mark, slicing a gash into the girl's forearm. If she felt it, she didn't show. Still laughing, Tessanna pointed at the half-demon.
"My fire," she said. "Will you burn, demon? Can there be a fire so great that even you will burn?"
An inferno leapt from her fingers, twice the size of any buildings. Laila curled her wings about her and dropped. For a moment the fire swarmed over her. She felt her skin blacken, the pain immense. Smoke filled her lungs, and then she was in the water. When she opened her eyes, the faces were staring at her.
Kicking herself to the surface, she bolted into the air, her sword still sheathed. If the strange girl wanted to be mad, then it was time she fought back in the same way. She crashed into her, slashing away. She tore a massive gash across Tessanna's chest, and then before she could counter, she bit down hard on her shoulder. Tessanna screamed, a horrific wail that made the night tremble with thunder. Blood ran across Laila's tongue, and she'd never tasted a sweeter victory.
It didn't last long.
Tessanna's skin burst aflame, the fire burning her tongue and the smoke filling her lungs. She pushed away, her tired wings flapping to keep her steady as they hovered before one another. Laila drew Haloflame as her chest greedily sucked in clean air. Tessanna glared, clutching her wounded shoulder with a hand. Blood mixed with rain, the water running red down her chest and legs. The darkness of her eyes grew deeper, deeper, until Laila felt herself pulled within. The brief pause broke with Tessanna's laughter.
"You're beautiful and you're terrible," she said. "Why have you come to my nightmare?"
Laila shrugged.
"I thought we were having fun?"
Tessanna giggled. The storm slowly broke. The water drained from the street. Her wings dissipated like smoke as she drifted back to her feet. Still wary of a trap, Laila landed. All of Tessanna's rage appeared to be gone, and she didn't even seem worried anymore. She lifted her arms as hands danced above her. A portal of blue and black tore open beside her, widening until she could see within. He wore dark leather armor, and black blades swung at his hips.
"What's going on?" Laila asked.
"If you're to enter dreams, the enter one whom deserves your claws," Tessanna said.
"Who is he?"
"His name is Harruq," she said. Laila watched him trudge through the forest.
"What is it you want me to do to him?" she asked.
Tessanna grinned mischievously.
"Make it hurt."
"Will do," Laila said, giving her a wink. For a brief moment she thought of staying, of finishing their duel to a winner, but then dove into the portal to Harruq's dream. The sooner she left that mad world, the better.
Besides, she'd grown to like the crazy girl.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Love it!

Betsy


----------



## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Love it!


Me too. Best story ever. Flaming Dove is only a week old, and already Half-Orc is writing the fan fic.


----------



## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

AWESOME.

If there were ever a do-over, my money's on Tessanna


----------



## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> If there were ever a do-over, my money's on Tessanna


Poor Laila...


----------



## Susan in VA (Apr 3, 2009)

Love the twist at the end!


----------



## traceya (Apr 26, 2010)

Well done David - very impressive. 

Robbie [the husband] wants to know if you were at the same bar he was at last night, the fight sounded vaguely familiar?


----------



## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

If that fight is at all familiar, that sounds like a bar I sooo need to go visit.

And the twist at the end amused me greatly  .


----------



## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

I'd have Laila propose a rematch with Tess, but after seeing Tess in action... I worry.  Maybe if I armed Laila with a bazooka?


----------



## traceya (Apr 26, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> *If that fight is at all familiar, that sounds like a bar I sooo need to go visit.*
> 
> And the twist at the end amused me greatly .


We're waiting for you Down Under.... but it's a rough and dangerous place. Just ask Paul Hogan


----------



## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

traceya said:


> We're waiting for you Down Under.... but it's a rough and dangerous place. Just ask Paul Hogan


God... just had some horrible vision of a Flaming Dove sequel... "Laila Down Under", and she wrestles crocodiles and gets into bar fights. 

I think that would suit the half-orcs better.


----------



## R. M. Reed (Nov 11, 2009)

This and the big twist at the end of the Omnibus makes me think of an old idea of mine...what if a traditional fantasy world was invaded by a world with 21st century military technology?


----------



## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

R. Reed said:


> This and the big twist at the end of the Omnibus makes me think of an old idea of mine...what if a traditional fantasy world was invaded by a world with 21st century military technology?


I vaguely recall reading a similar fantasy series... I think it was called Darksword or something like that. A 20th century military invaded a fantasy world.


----------



## traceya (Apr 26, 2010)

DArenson said:


> I vaguely recall reading a similar fantasy series... I think it was called Darksword or something like that. A 20th century military invaded a fantasy world.


I'm actually reading a fantasy novel at the moment where the protag's are a group of modern role-players who get magically transported to a 'fantasy' world. It's interesting and probably ever RPGer's fantasy [pardon the pun]


----------



## R. M. Reed (Nov 11, 2009)

DArenson said:


> I vaguely recall reading a similar fantasy series... I think it was called Darksword or something like that. A 20th century military invaded a fantasy world.


Well, scratch that one off the TBW (to be written) list.


----------



## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

R. Reed said:


> Well, scratch that one off the TBW (to be written) list.


You can still write it. Almost every idea has been done before. You can give it a new twist. Go for it!


----------

