FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Save Point: A Circle Of Lit Torches

Sethkill wanders over to take a look at the ring of torches that mark out the playing field. There are seven of them, as is traditional, one for each of the known directions, and one to represent the unknown, or the arrow of time if you believe in that sort of thing.

Up close, they're broader than you'd expect, approximately a foot in diameter and approximately the height of a sethura in standing stance, so the broad shallow bowls at the tops are just slightly above eye level. The scorch-blackened metal of their dishes is perforated with an intricate pattern of tiny cutaway holes, to allow air to be drawn up and though to feed the flames that dance, really to no great height, above the rims of the bowls. It's not too late as yet, so they don't cast that much light compared to the afternoon sun.

Each dish is supported on a open hollow framework pillar like a triple helix, so that although it doesn't look like it, each and every part is supported at three symmetrical points and the vagaries of wind and rain can't overbalance or topple them. The metal of which they're made is a variety of steel, precisely heat-tempered until the surface appears golden, a process he's seen before in the bits of industrial drills and other specially hardened components.

They're not so tall you couldn't scorch your muzzle by stretching up and looking over the edge, so he pushes his face perilously close to the flames to try and see how they work, enough so to scent the smell of burned air and faint traces of nitrous oxide. Sure enough, the seemingly solid bases of each stand, which look like just counterweights to keep them stable, conceal standard canisters of the propane mixture extracted from carbon sequestration, and the spiraling support arms hide in their curves a slender length of tubing that delivers it to the burner on top, where it gets sieved by a covering mesh to create the apparent flame and color of conventional combustion.

The seemingly simple design impresses him from a technical point of view. He notes a switch that will cut off the flow of gas if the column goes too far from vertical, definitely a consideration if one of the competitors should be staggered or barged back into it, and adjustable chocks surrounding the perimeter of the solid base, which can be folded up or down to bias its fall, so they will always rock away from the fighters, whether to fall or return thrillingly to their upright position again.

It's clever, in a way. Once a combat like this would have posed a genuine danger to participants who intruded outside the ring, in the form of showers of blazing sparks and burning ash, or even sprays and splashes of hot burning oil from the versions that used a wick and a floating dish. Long lengths of wire rope or chain between the lit torches create an almost circular septagon, in fact a fully circular one of you take the margins introduced by the drape of the chains into account, from which any attempt at a hasty exit could be perilous indeed.

These days, what they mainly contribute is a sense of drama. The ring has been set up in a field of wheat-like emmer, a staple crop, already harvested down to short stubble so it doesn't constitute much of a fire danger. The tradition was, indeed, once upon a time, to burn that stubble at the end of the season, but there are better methods these days. The remnant stalks are rough enough that they provide excellent traction for a combatant wearing steel-capped toe-covers, the standard for attempting something like this.

This demonstration was supposed to be held somewhere else, closer to the city, but at the last minute it didn't pan out and so they had to move to the backup location, which is more distant. It lead to a number of delays and so they're set up later than intended, but that doesn't seem to have affected the attendance, given that everyone else also had to travel slightly further. There's plenty to do in the surrounding fairground, lots of food-stalls and tents and all sorts of things linked only by the mad imaginations of the students, even artistic light and audio installations currently only a glimmer of what they will be after the sun goes down and play lingers into the night.

The one-on-one challenges for the Creative Anachronism class are planned to be the centerpiece, with a precisely worked-out schedule that will see the last fight conclude just before sunset so the effect of the torches can be best appreciated, without compromising those requirements of health and safety which remove the majority of the fun. This will bring the daytime stage of the affair to a close, after which there will be a later and more grown-up series of events with drinking, music, partying, and no doubt some couples sneaking off to make up in nearby hedgerows. The winners will celebrate and the losers will make excuses based on incompatibilities of style.

Because it is, after all, entirely about the anachronism, considerable effort has been made toward wearing authentic gear, even if the blades are blunted and the pointy things tipped, prophylactic, with slender caps of transparent plastic like the taunted fingertips of disposable gloves to prevent penetration. Keselt is wearing the genuine tribal costume of the remote, glacially-dwelling culture which originated the odd, almost stone-age martial art she's become attached to, made entirely of beautifully finished and scraped reindeer hide with patches of fur at the collar and seams, all held together by elongate bone toggles on braided cords that act like long range buttons. She manages to look absolutely amazing in it, which is remarkable, given that it utilizes nothing available after the dawn of civilization. She even bought the tribal head-dress, an elaborate construct of multiple horns designed to convolve the spirit of the reindeer down onto the spirit of the wearer.

She's bought her pair of combat antlers, which present something of a match-up issue, given that they're inevitably somewhat expendable in comparison to more robust weapons. The originals of the set are in fact at home, since the cultural tradition of the tribe is that it would be unthinkable to do anything other than make and carve your own, but for practical reasons she prints out new copies of them as required before each fight, since they tend to get a little bit destroyed against all sturdier objects. She treats this as a challenge; if she can win with these, anything is possible.

Her first match is against another sethuress attached to cross-grip suppression batons, which are the nearest thing available in terms of shape and size. If she can win that one she wins in her class by default, and anything else is purely gravy. She's the long odds favorite in this event.

It's interestingly different from the weave, Sethkill thinks, because although they have fought and practiced many times in gyms and training rooms, this is normally a scenario you would see only in simulation. Although blunted, the blades and other weapons are definitely real, and care will be needed at all times to know when to stop, or pull the hit. They could do one another serious sorts of damage, but the scene is straight out of a weave fantasy, even down to the ring of lit torches for an honor duel. And yet, it's entirely real, down to the scent of cut emmer and flames.

It's perfect for the suspension of disbelief. This will be quite a show.

~*~

"You should've seen it," exclaims Keselt, snuggling up to his upper body well away from all the dressings, bindings and stitches as currently holding him together. "Well, I mean you're lucky you didn't, because it was horrifying and I imagine would have been very painful, but still. Kilseth just stood there still holding his swordspear and making all these empty excuses, he was completely useless and seemed a little confused, like he wasn't expecting that he'd actually have been able to hit you, and couldn't decide whether or not he was annoyed that he hadn't killed you completely.

"Luckily we had the official referee, who had medical training, and an ambulance crew who were there for the event because there's always someone who does something stupid, and a bunch of medical students as well. They were all over it, and they were all like 'let's tie off this!' and 'we can cauterise the bleeding!' and 'hold it out of the way with the tongs from the food stall!' and stuff - it was amazing but utterly terrifying. There was so much blood everywhere, and well, the blade had gone sideways through your guts - it was unbelievably disgusting and oh Wolfmother the stench. I never want to have to see any of those bits of you again. But the medical students didn't flinch - I think they were all excited to get a chance to practice actual combat medicine, I mean how often does that happen anymore in this day and age?"

Sethkill, who is having a little trouble following this due to a general loss of blood, is mainly surprised that he isn't dead, a status that will continue off and on for the next several months. It's like his soul got partially loosened, cut a little bit free by misadventure, and is not yet completely decided about this whole staying around thing.

~*~

The new statue is in the style of a winged victory and has a transparent rectangular base made of diamond glass to alleviate public fears of a repeat of the convocation bombing, in which it was initially suspected that the cause might perhaps have been to be found there. It breaks the ancient tradition of black basalt for deistic works by being a white synthetic stone that reproduces even the very finest skin details and hints of texture.

To avoid issues, the female artist has sampled a range of textures scanned and extracted from an assortment of famous sethuresses, and then created her own custom mix, blending in a range of wing-styles sourced from many species to create something that is part aesthetic ideal, and part anatomical model. It doesn't look like anyone, but rather what everyone wants to be.

Sethura are already obsessed with the marvel of her gilded vulva, and skins that will make you look exactly like her were briefly a thing on the weave. The transparency of the base makes it look as though she's about to spread her wings and take flight, and an inspirational quote is engraved in subtly diffracting diagonal incisions into the diamond, so it doesn't interfere with the effect.

It's a conscious statement of bravery, according to the artist. "A fully nude, explicitly naked statue of the goddess was once the norm back in ancient times, but then they defaulted to false notions of modesty in the name of being civilized and lost that essential attribute, the worship of the glory of the female form. Well, now we've reinstated that, and by we, I mean not just me but everyone in our current time, now we're brave enough to look and enjoy instead of letting our fears guide us."

The old basalt statue was kind of jagged and abstract, out of a fear of attempting to represent the grace of Wolfmother accurately in sethura form, or that it might be a kind of hubris, and it may be this the artist is referring to. What no-one recalls is that the famous sculpture was originally fully detailed in every particular, like those at the hot-spring temples where the Shadow Cybele is now, before the city it was originally in fell briefly under the rule of the Blackside Way, during their last and final expansion phase, and it got 'corrected' with chisels to something more acceptable to the repressed belief system they represented.

Which is how it happened to end up in Srenen anyway, ensconced as a warning and a reminder of mistakes made. The power of it shone through even after the damage and kept the public focus on the defeat, and it briefly inspired an early abstract school who littered the city with geometric art, after which it was easy to lose track of its origin amongst all the cubist and triangulist civic works that had accumulated by less than a century later. Sweeping vectorial curves are everywhere.

The replacement was flown in on long lines as a sort of sexy public spectacle, giving everyone the chance for a free stare up the crotch of a gorgeous naked goddess. To cover up the anchor points where the cables were wrapped around it and some padding was required, for safety's sake, they partially dressed it with a couple of polled and crease-folded circular fabric fans, accordioned out of stiff white cloth, of the sort traditionally associated with winged victories due to their symbolic resemblance to shields, or arrow targets. Watching it being flown in, hips cocked to slipstream the pleated circles of red and blue and white like some ultra-minimalist skimpy short skirt, was quite the stirring experience, both in terms of cultural solidarity and circulation to the loins. They plan to sometimes dress her up like that again on high feast days, where extra rituals are undertaken, and a free meal in the park will take place under her watchful gaze.

Sethkill is at home in the city to view all of this since not everything has quite stitched a hundred percent yet, and walking about is still a little exciting, like having been sacked in the gut, as things still occasionally ping and then reconnect themselves in a more correct order, with some bleeding and minor bruising in the main musculature across his abdomen.

At least he has the conviction to know that, eventually, everything will be healed and fully back in its correct place, courtesy of modern medicine and enhanced regenerative healing. Even in a later era where they could have fixed it surgically, he'd never quite have been the same, but the current combination is enough that, with a few regularly scheduled visits and follow-ups, there's no risk of later complications. When you can completely fix anything that doesn't kill you outright, that's when you know you've arrived as a species.