Rise of the Omnimage

"Push harder!" Varris yelled at the group as they continued to sprint back and forth across their section of the arena. Sorin was keeping a very close eye on Cain and Linx to make sure he was near them and not standing out but doing somewhat worse than they were, but not by much that it was an issue. His body was now at the peak of Tier 2, and he could feel it. Each step was powerful, but he took so much out of the step to appear as strong as his teammates. His teammates were breathing heavily from the continuous sprinting they had been doing for the last hour. They were already exhausted. Sorin was only mentally exhausted from getting next to no sleep for as soon as he closed his eyes to sleep it seemed like the normal rude wake-up happened.

"Stop!" Varris instructed and the three doubled over breathing like bellows. "Take up weapons quickly! Battle doesn't care that you are tired and neither does your assignee." Varris had a khopesh in each hand. Its straight hilt and small guard into a curved heavier blade with a sort of point at the end for some sort of piercing. "Each of you will face off against me alone once each while the others observe the movements for the forms. While you watch see the range of the motions and look for weaknesses in the forms. Cain! You're first." Cain came over and stood in front of Varris with his kopis. The short sword with a nice hand guard was held at the ready as he waited for the fight to begin.

They lunched at one another as Varris led with one of her swords horizontally with another moving back for a low to high strike as she continued to move around Cain who blocked the first strike and was moved back and nearly clipped in the chin with the strike coming up. He tilted his head back and avoided it, but at the cost of losing momentum in the fight. With a backhand swing and a thrust Cain was put on the defensive. He blocked the heavier blade as it pushed him out of position then turned to the right slipping the thrust putting his kopis in close between his body and the blade. He was beginning to turn his blade inward for a stab across the body when the left hand deflected outward swung up and over smacking him across the cheek ending the fight.

"Sorin you're up." Sorin hefted his two short swords and moved across from Varis angling his body from left to right with the left blade forward and right blade set to strike. They stood there for a moment watching the other. It was Varris that moved first with a top to bottom windmill strike from both khopesh. Sorin didn't even block as he angled to the left bypassing her right sword that was going down and once passed slashed with his right sword attempting to continue moving round. She swirled to her left bringing the right blade up to Sorin's exposed flank. Sorin angled more forward and continued to press her with an "x" slash upward toward her throat causing her to fall back and try to swing under while his blades were apart and out of the way.

Sorin slammed them down locking their blades together in the sand. With a quick rotation Varris reversed her grip on the swords and ripped one up as the other was stabbed with a spin to her right. Sorin saw it coming and could have avoided it, but need to stay under the radar. He deflected the sword from a stab which turned into a slash that slipped off his sword as he made it look like he was trying to guide into an over extension and a back cut with his second blade and he left it smash him in the rib cage and he went with the momentum.

Varris nodded "Linx." The Fox beastman rose and reached behind his back to pull twin cinquedeas these were daggers with a wide base into a triangle blade that were carried behind the back. They began but the fight was extremely one sided. The short range of the daggers could not get into the sweeping and covering cuts of the khopeshes. After a short exchange Varris spun hitting Linx with a twin slash to his chest sending him backwards.

"Good! You now see the fighting style and the range of these weapons. For a sword type they are good at mid-range and passable at close range. Now we will do all three of you against me as I speed up and use more of my strength. Your mission is to disarm me or hit me with a kill strike. We are not using aether. Begin!"

They looked at one another then went in different directions. Cain went straight ahead directly in Sorin's way while Linx ran around the side to flank as a good dagger wielder should. Sorin had to flank to the left and come in but as he was about to get his first strike in, Varris shifted to her left as she swung her right sword horizontally into Cain's shoving him into Sorin's path again. Cain who had been in a thrust was directed into the incoming Linx and they collided. Varris jumped at the two who were exposed as Sorin jumped in and began to clash with Varris alone and she smashed blow into blow into him and even though he was not blocking, but deflecting, the power was well above his and sending him stumbling with every shot.

His team was back up and rushed in forcing Sorin to back off to keep from hitting them, but unfortunately Varris deflected a kopis swipe away from her and into Sorin who barely managed to block it as a second swipe came down on Cain's back launching him into Sorin bringing them both down. Varris turned to Linx who was immediately on the defense using both of his daggers to deflect and try to get into her guard. Sorin got back up and rushed in trying to pull some attention off of Linx so he could attack. Varris spun her blade using the hook and snagged Linx by the arm and flung him into Sorin slamming them together and then she followed it up with a slash to each of them.

"What happened?" Varris asked lowering her weapons. "The human kept getting in my way and interfering with my attacks and strategies." Cain said glaring at Sorin. "I didn't even get a chance to get in position before you started striking with a freaking shorter weapon than I have. I couldn't even bolster your attack by trying to run a distraction because you just rushed in" Sorin replied kind of annoyed. "I wasn't able to get into the guard again. I need to move faster." Linx responded. "You also need to be able to do something with your tiny toothpicks fox. You were next to useless even more so than this human." Quipped Cain. "Stop." Varris said already annoyed. "You all suck. You didn't think. Sorin has more reach and better defense than either of you. Why didn't you let him engage and tank the hits to set up your faster strikes. You two do not have the defense. We are going to do this the rest of the day so you might as well pull your heads out of your asses and begin using them or today is going to be even more painful." She lifted her swords.

"Again."