Alright, let's get to it.
Preface: there is a terrible limitation when it comes to Exalted: from the outset, the protagonist is expected to win. This is true for most media, but it's especially pernicious in Exalted. You can't have your protagonist feel mortal and lose as much as they win: they gotta be super shounen anime all the time because they are defined in their relation to the setting - not a part of it, but in a certain sense above it. Those who prefer to play dragonblooded probably implicitly acknowledge this failing and work around it by purposefully limiting themselves to the 'weakest' exalt. One whose peers are numerous enough to form an actual working society.
Now, limitations are something to be worked around, but the fight here seemed - not phoned in, but stylistically at odds with the rest of the quest. It had to look/sound/feel a certain way because this is Exalted.
And because it has to look and feel a certain way we get this sentence:
This is an odd sentence in the context of the quest, and about what we know of Golden Road. She is a magistrate - and someone on the road to redemption. From what we're not entirely sure, but an assumption can be made about a limit break or limit break-like event.
However, this sentence seems like a betrayal on two fronts: one, it is not the role of the magistrate to lord themselves above others; two, if it is a small clue planted about her past indiscretion that got her crippled it seems... both petty and lacking. It's a sentence that luxuriates in the power-fantasy aspect of Exalted and really kind of comes out of nowhere. You can't imagine Marrow thinking it, though you could imagine Shay or Nashai doing so.
If it is Nashai's thought I'd get rid of it: it's confusingly placed and her subsequent flare of anger makes it all too clear what she thinks of Golden Road. It's unnecessarily heavy-handed.
A good shounen battle is ultimately a conversation where in there's an aspect of spectacle but also an aspect of progression. Things are heading to some sort of resolution and we learn more about the characters as it happens. With exalted and shounen in general we already know what the resolution is: the good guy wins, so it's absolutely necessary that at least one of those things be awesome, and if possible, both.
Now, Nashai is a starter boss. We can all see that. Her being a starter boss is not a bad thing. Like I said, you did an excellent job setting up stakes and building her up. We know what she is doing and why she is doing it and we know why Golden Road must stop her.
What we did not get was a sense of what Golden Road was capable of. And thus we come to what's probably the weakest part of the scene itself: the explanations. There's a rhythm to your writing that is unfortunately not the rhythm of combat, but rather a pause like a commentator explaining what just happened and then un-pausing as the scene continues. I'll call it the 'A happened because of B which allows for C'.
In an effort to be clear, you undercut the momentum of the fight. Like, I'm not going to tell you how to fix it because you're you and your quest/story is yours, but I will tell you that this is a pretty common pattern. The problem is, that because it's Golden Road's first fight it kind of sets the tone of all her subsequent fights which gotta get written in a somewhat similar manner.
Three things happened here: 1) Nashai joined her swords together, 2) she swung it at Golden Road, 3) the attack hit Golden Road.
Was it necessary for Golden Road to understand every single part of Nashai's attack here? Like, real-time, this would have taken a second. Two seconds if we did it slow-mo. This paragraph is 120 words. If you gotta have this particular image you have to figure out how to make it tighter. After all those words we don't even have a vague sense of how Golden Road felt about the attack, only that it happened.
Like, this should be a tense fight. But because we all know what will happen at the end, it kind of isn't and your combat prose for Golden Road doesn't let the spectacle of the fight play out in its full glory.
I think there's a lot of promise in this fight scene, but it kind of didn't have a direction other than 'it's gotta be cool' so it kind of just became that?
Yeah, well, you gotta read my two posts together to get that my main stylistic issue to the fight is: stop explaining stuff.
Like, tension is already slowly being released like a tire with a nail sticking out the side, stopping every two seconds to exposit on the fight itself is making the tension go away faster.
It's not a bad fight scene by any means, but given the really quite lovely fight scene before it, you get the sense that the main event was upstaged by the hype maker.
If I may throw in my two cents
On the matter of the overarching complaint, I'm pretty sure that it's a matter of preference for how individuals prefer their fight scenes to be written
Because I for one am quite fond of a fight scene being described in such a way that I can visualize the scene as it unfolds, from the perspective and emotions of the characters to the brief bouts of frenetic action, it paints the scene, lets me get absorbed into what I'm reading
Tension doesn't drain out, for me at least though I don't think I'm alone, if anything it better captures my imagination
And this applies to those moments in between where the emotions are described, being able to see how the characters feel, how they hold themselves, how
they perceive the situation makes it more real
I can't see the alternative where in place of detailed descriptions like this:
Your right leg hitting her allowed you to bounce back up and regain momentum. This allows your spinning motion to flow into an attack of your left foot - kicking once and twice and five times and twelve times, a single kick unfolding hundredfold down towards the shrine, wooden legs blurring into shining streaks of gold hitting Nashai's swords, her shoulders and torso, the ground beneath her, a rainfall of kicks tearing holes in her sleeveless tunic and cracking the stone below. Her back slams to the rooftop and she gasps, and you fall down with your fist raised…
You know what's coming.
You reach up to your collar, and with one sharp gesture rip the shirt off your back. Golden light cascades off your wiry shoulders, revealing the pockmarks in your brown skin, old scars where fangs tore into you. All you are left with are the white cloth which with you bind your chest - and the chain. The chain you took from the defeated Adder girl before coming to meet Nashai, tying it at your waist like a belt, hidden under your clothes.
Gathered power explodes above you, Nashai lashing out with her sword from ten feet above you. Her Essence flows into the blade and the hooked sword uncoils, stretches, darts through the air with a sinuous motion and a deadly hiss - a viper of bronze, whose tip will pierce your heart.
You thrust one arm, open your hand, and let the chain flow. It needs no Essence to stretch its shape; its motion is burned in its fabric, a weapon of reach and denial, favored by the Art-Defiling Venom school for ages - and favored by roaming judges alike, used to capture criminals from horseback. You used one position as a way of concealing the other - in which order, you are not sure anymore.
Chain and sword meet and intertwine, sliding against one another in a cold embrace, but the winner is foretold: the adder's body serves to propel its venomous bite, whereas the centipede has a hundred legs with which to seize its prey. The tip of the sword stops inches from your face, shaking slightly, letting out a crystalline hum, as the chain wraps tightly around the entire length of the blade.
Then the burst of power Nashai unleashed is exhausted, and the sword attempts to snap back to its original shape - while still within your coils. There is a squeal from above as the sword's hilt is wrenched out of Nashai's grasp with enough strength to pull her down at the same time; you flick your wrist, pulling the chain towards you, and then swings to the side, tossing the hepatizon blade far into the rice fields, beyond the light of your anima.
Nashai lands harshly and with a gasp, water splashing awkwardly as she stumbles back up, tossing her drenched braids left and right. Steam rises from her snarling mouth as her eyes meet yours, her empty hand clawing at the air - but she still has one sword. Tongues of golden lightning kiss the waters around her, the Hounds howling at her feet. Her tunics, already sleeveless, is in tatters now, revealing a pattern of bruises on her stomach and arms - but you didn't scratch the skin. How resilient is she, you wonder? The Snake school practices a striking style with nary a grappling technique, and as such it uses a combination of sinuous dodges with breathing and tensing techniques to harden the skin over the long term so as to resist incoming blows while delivering its own - she is more suited to enduring long-term punishment than you are, but if you can get her in a lock, you will have a sure advantage.
And then, as you ponder these factors, her snarl turns into sharp laughter, her back arching up the sky.
Are instead replaced with simplistic descriptions of "You kick off of her and strike her a hundred times, slamming her into back onto the rooftop, before diving after her." or "Nashai swings at you from the air, her sword elongating, and you intercept it with your chain and as the two entangle you pull her back down, disarming her in the process."
It's the same fundamental information in far less words, but it's so much less entertaining, less engaging, it turns an imaginative, fantastical fight into a checklist of motions to go through
I don't feel two supernatural martial artists locked in combat, I feel the empty framework of scene that hasn't been finished
I couldn't get invested with what's happening reading that, it'd bore me
Now I can see the opposite extreme where everything is drowning in purple prose and every single motion takes an eternity to go through like swimming through molasses being just as off putting, but I don't think that's the case here
The whole scene leans more on the side of vivid description, but there are chosen moments of when to go into more detail and when to ease off a bit to let it flow, for me at least it's done very well
But opinions and tastes vary, so the preferred ratio might differ a bit
On a related matter
When it comes to comparing it to the fight that came before I'm not sure if it's fitting to do so, or at least comparing them as if they were equivalent
Marrow and Shay's fight was more grounded, it had less magic kung fu bullshit and leaned more on their personal relationship, more personal drama with the fight as a vehicle
Road and Nashai is more high octane action with a side of ideologies clashing, which is perhaps more airy and higher in calories, the more substantial part of the course would be in Nashai's past and the aftermath of her defeat
They're different fights, and they're written accordingly
