dummy montage

Acclimation to Frostvale's frigid weather did not come easily. The human's one gift was adaptation. Put a frog in the desert and it will dehydrate. Place a bird in the water and it will drown. Put a fish on land and it will suffocate.

But the human? It spits in the face of adversity and runs. A prime example of this is the Tilandrean woman who now stands in nearly an inch of snow. A jacket lined with fur is drawn over her shoulders and a scarf nearly covers her mouth. The air around her is humid compared to the dry winter air elsewhere, and her fingertips are so hot that steam rises up from them as the warmth hits the chill of Frostvale's environment.

One hand holds Anguirel. The other arm is engulfed in the blazing, raging form of Ifrit's Claw, poised and ready to strike, not unlike the limb of the yokai it was named after.

Directly in front of her is a dummy. It is half her size but made of metal sturdier than the biggest boulder, rooted into the ground with gravity magic so intense that it was hard to combat without breaking the spell. Two eyes were glued onto it, staring Rosaline down with a mocking intensity.

With breathtaking speed, the woman flew off of her feet with a moment's notice. Gravity and time and pure mana all merged together to send her flying towards the dummy, Anguirel poised alongside Claw.

Her childhood. Her parents. The Avis. Cain's curse. Alexandra's betrayal. Her arm. Her hand. Her guild. Cain's betrayal. Her father. Rosaline persevered. She spat in the face of adversity. She would not be held back. She was unconquered. She was unstoppable.

The sound of metal shredding against metal reverberated throughout Frostvale's wilderness. Anguirel pierced the unpiercable -- time withered the force of the metal, gravity increased her momentum -- and Rosaline brought it downwards, shredding through the metal that others thought to be strong and trusty with ease.

She pulls her sword out and the Claw moves in, ripping from one side of the opening in the dummy to strip off the metal. The sound is sickening, gut-wrenching, like nails on a chalkboard, as she decimates the dummy one inch at a time.

WHUMP. Her feet touch the ground and the scrapped remains of her training toy fall to the ground. She had been so into it, she wouldn't have even noticed if someone moved in to watch...
(Rosaline)