Tale:Halfway through a Journey

The winds of Eos constantly blew inward from its cold outer reaches toward the middle. Dealing with Eos' spin, they gradually veer anti-spinward. The sun just set and would remain below the horizon for about thirty sleeps. Already the winds were dying down and shifting fully anti-spinward. A last gasp of the ever-cooling landscape's heat brought a gust of wind. Ohko shivered. Her sweat-soaked clothing once serving to battle the cold had now become its ally. She was exhausted; her breath slowly became visible. Even so, she stared ahead at the largest human she had ever seen besides her own reflection. He was similarly exhausted, his breath ragged and uneven. The light of the moons each highlighted a different part of his body, as though they were looking in approval on his form. Albedo shined its light on his face, gaunt and Vexlore like white hair. Scintilla cast its gaze on his back, the wide expanse battered and bruised, yes, [but it was still a sight to behold]. Eosphoros weakly shined, as though in agreement with its brighter siblings in the sky, upon his quivering legs, at the start of the battle they were like the trunks of aspens, pale bark similarly marked with scars much like them as well.

Hal had never been bested by anything that bleeds before, but the giantess' blood was expensive. Each drop demanded many times its volume from Hal. She was like a noble commissioned a statue of the Goddess of Passion of cast volcanic glass darker than the night sky. Unlike most depictions of that particular goddess, whose body was soft, the artist sculpting her could not coax the glass into gentle curves in favor of jagged shapes. [She was as imposing as the volcano that made the glass she was carved from], and her strikes had similar eruptive force behind them. If Hal allowed those chiseled arms take hold of him, like they nearly had when he blindly rushed into this fight, that would be the end of it. As the madness of battle left him, and right before every muscle and tendon in his body reminded him of their pain at once, he thought for the briefest of moments that perhaps the woman's arms would be a great place to be.

And so the two faced off against one another, both having their posture degrade and arms lower as the stand off grinded on. They starred at one another with such intensity that not a detail evaded them. This was the most exhilarating altercation either experienced, which meant it hurt more than anything either one had ever done (idk).

Hal staggered forward, Ohko raised her bloody hands once more. He walked off, or trudged off, rather, back to the way he came.

Ohko coughed, "Another victory for the undefeatable Ohko!"

It hurt to breath too deeply, she had been going since the sun had touched the horizon. Still she forced a laugh, wounded pride either made for good word of mouth or assurance the defeated would come back to be finished off.

Hal lazily waved off the comment, "I'm putting it on hold!"

"You can't do that. What kind of man runs away?"

"I wouldn't call this running."