"Hey, Pixmick?"
"Yeashh, whashh ishh it, Muxilox?"
"Noisy Humies said we need to kill those three guyies for many shinies, right? Like we did to those other guyies a few dayies ago?"
"Yesshh, many, many shiny gilshh."
"Okay, everybodies charge!"
"What should we do? Should we run or fight?"
"There are too many to fight and no where to run."
The Goblin hordes continued to advance.
"We can't win against this many, lets teleport back to the Highwind. Hanaa and Nokum-Akkum are probably still onboard so they won't be in any danger. Let's go!"
Placing her mace back onto her belt, Catherine held her arms slightly bent at her sides and began to chant magical incantations. As she whispered ancient words a shimmering pool of light surrounded her feet and small trim lines of white and green light slowly rose into the air while bubbles swirled around.
From on top of the hill the black cloaked figure seemed to point angrily at them before reaching into the front of his cloak and revealing something which seemed to catch the light. He threw the crystal towards them and it shot through the air as if it had been fired from a gun.
It stabbed into the ground in front of them all and broke into a thousand pieces, releasing a strange purple haze as it crumbled. Alain felt his head swirl and dropped to one knee. Beside him, Catherine was stopped mid-cast as she too fell onto one knee grasping her head and using her other hand to help keep balance.
Rost (who was unaffected by the strange haze) turned to them both, "What happened to you?"
"Silence powder!" Alain coughed.
The powder brought about the same effects as the bracers that he had to wear while in Bastok Prison and cut off the part of his subconscious that allowed him to control and draw on his latent magical strengths. It was like a temporary amnesia, memories were magically sealed off to prevent the casting of spells. Though it had also affected him, Alain knew that the real target for the attack had been Catherine as she was now unable to teleport them away from danger until the effects of the powder wore off.
"We are left with only one other option then; we must do our best to fight our way out," Rost said. "I will decimate the twenty on the right as best I can as it is the weakest point in the line. I do not know how well this katana will fair when I unleash my most powerful technique, but it should do well enough."
"What about us?" Catherine asked.
"You should stay behind me and do not engage as without your magic you cannot fight effectively. Alain can occupy the Goblins moving in from the north until I have cleared our escape route."
He starred at the group twice the size of the one coming in from the east and asked how he was expected to hold off so many enemies alone. The initial reply was an arrogant shrug.
"You claimed that you once fought against a group of Kindred just as big and survived, did you not? It is time that you proved such boasts. Buy me enough time to clear the weaker side and we shall escape through there."
Since there was no better ideas that he could think up, Alain accepted the plan and readied his weapon to meet the oncoming enemies. If he was right about what he thought Rost was preparing to use to clear the way he would not need to keep them busy for long, which was good as without his magic he was more vulnerable as well.
They broke off and sprinted towards their targets. Catherine followed behind Rost, but far enough not to be caught up in the actual fighting. Alain held his Great Sword tightly near his chest starring at the oncoming savage Beastmen all too eager to try and cut into him.
Wait…
What was he doing? His job was to buy time not get himself killed by rushing into a flood of Goblin. He considered stopping and waiting for them to reach him but his feet refused to stop. Rost was fighting against far too many enemies and surviving so why couldn't he? He glared up at the cloaked figure and saw him point angrily again, but not at him – at Rost and Catherine.
Whoever that is…they are giving orders to the Goblin. If he gets taken out they might not be so eager to fight. What am I doing? Charging forward into so many enemies isn't brave it's stupid! I should be using my head! Cut off the brain and the limbs will die!
He skidded to a stop before turning a sharp ninety degrees right and charging in the direction of the mound on which the cloaked figure stood. Goblin leapt at him as he hit the side of the advancing line using his sword in heavy sweeps to knock them out of his path. A stray fireball struck the tip of his sword as he cleaved it through the head of a Goblin wielding a tiny dagger and almost knocked it from his hands, but he used the momentum of the blow to skid around and swipe the heads clean off two more behind him before preceding forwards.
A black armoured Goblin appeared in front of him wielding a large sword. There was no time to avoid, so Alain allowed the blade to fall towards him, knocked it to one side and hoped up onto the Goblin. As his boots met with the Beastmen's face it grunted with fright and toppled backwards with his weight bearing down on it. A sound not dissimilar to a tin can being crunched rung out as the back of the Goblin's helmet met with the ground and was bent inwards.
He ducked a kamikaze Goblin leaping at him with a rapier in hand then spun to dodge two more trying to hack at his shins. After jumping over two more he had reached the base of the hill on which the black cloaked figure stood. As he glared up the slope at the figure the sun eclipsed their form and made it impossible to see any detail.
Bending his knees, Alain pushed up off the ground and just managed to catch his feet on a ledge before almost sliding as he pulled his weight forward and ran up the slope. There was a hole in the floor so he had to jump again across to another naturally formed ledge and then found himself at the top.
As he landed on bended knee at the top, he immediately ran to engage his new enemy and leapt into the air with his Great Sword hanging above his head. Purple and white energy collected along the length of the blade as he focused his collected power preparing to decimate the figure.
"Ground Stri-
He was cut off as the figures hands moved in an elegant circle before their chest creating a blue haze of shimmering light that collected into a ball and then vanished in a tiny explosion. The ground around the figure seemed to erupt as if something underneath had exploded upturning the earth and creating a hurricane of dust around the figure completely obscuring them and growing bigger in size.
Alain's body broke through the dust hurricane easy enough, but he found himself being pelted by the upturned dirt. He had no choice but to hold one hand over his face while his Great Sword (now empty of energy) lay idle in his other.
He managed to catch a shadow appearing from the other side of the dust cloud with just enough time to raise his sword to meet the blade of another weapon. He was knocked slightly off centre and chose to dive backwards until he could determine his opponent's movement, but was shocked to find that the black cloaked figure charged straight after him relentlessly and they exchanged a few more clashes.
Now away from the upturned dust, Alain held his sword in both hands and brought it forward ready to meet the next exchanged, but saw only a small blue ball of energy gather from inside the small hurricane he had just escaped from. The black cloaked figure emerged from the dust with his weapon in his left hand at his side and in his right fist was a ball of dark blue energy with a swirling circle hovering around the wrist. Bubbles seemed to rise from it as if it was pure water.
Alain had expected the sword to be swung at him first from the left and could not adjust himself in time to block whatever strange magic that was in his opponent's right hand. The figure bent low as he reached him and pressed his right fist straight into Alain's gut.
He cried out in agony as he felt his armour rip away and his skin burn like he had been struck with fire. The ball of burning water tore into him as the circle that had been around the figures wrist multiplied and then expanded sending bubbles of water in all directions in a cylinder shape before pushing straight in him. His body was forced back against his will and he felt himself travelling through the air from the sheer force of the blow. It felt like a Galka had rammed into his stomach.
He eventually came to a stop when his back made acquaintances with a palm tree, which bent inwards and almost fell on him as his body toppled face first to the floor. His sword had landed somewhere nearby, but he could not reach for it and held both hands on the wound that had formed at the side of his lower chest. Blood dripped through his fingers onto the ground and pain shot up his side.
That was like no water magic I've ever seen before! He exclaimed inwardly. Magic that required physical contact between caster and target to activate! How is that even possible without using a weapon?
He tried to get up but toppled back down onto his knees. Not only was the wound hindering him, but the force of the knock back had winded him. He let himself fall to the side so that he could stretch one hand out far enough to pull his Great Sword closer to him and managed it, though he could not hold it.
"Pitiful," someone said succinctly.
He managed to look upwards and saw his opponent emerge through the trees. In his left hand was the weapon he had met with and, although it was a scimitar, it was different to the kind he had seen the puppet black cloaked figures use. It had a gold handle with a blue hilt and thin metal weaving on each side that connected to the base of the blade. The tip of the sword was bent inwards like most scimitar types, but to a much greater degree.
"Tell me… Are you the strongest of the Six Champions? You're the Dark Knight, right?"
The voice of the figure sounded strange to him. It was young, almost unbroken, and had an accent he could not place. Judging by his pronunciations it could only be someone of the Hume race as well. Slowly, the figure reached upwards with his free hand and brought down the hood hiding his features. Alain was shocked at the sight as the sunlight passed across the face. His opponent that he had mistaken for a young sounding male was actually a woman.
"Don't make me repeat myself," she said in a threatening tone.
"…Who are you?" he panted.
"Answer my question and maybe I will answer yours."
"I'm not…I'm not the strongest…"
She turned her back to him and made a pleased sound. He tried to get up again while she was exposing her blind side, but the pain was still to hindering. He was able to grip the hilt of his sword though. He might be able to swing it to defend against her next attack as long as he bought some time.
"Well, that's good, because quite frankly you were a let down. You're supposed to be a champion from a war? You fought like a new recruit fresh out of training. You didn't plan your attack or take your time to analyze my techniques. How did you survive a war? …Pitiful."
"Who are you?" he asked again.
She turned and bent down to meet his face. She had very short blond hair and matching coloured eye brows. Her face was straight and seemed to have a permanent blank expression. Her skin seemed strangely pale as well and her tan coloured eyes lacked something, a sparkle, a sign of real emotion.
"Me? I'm just an Empty Vessel. It seems that you and the other champions are too skilled to be taken out by Mammets, so I was called upon to take you all out. I worked with the Goblins here to lay a trap after I received word that you were all travelling here. You walked into it and, for a moment, I thought the Goblins would have all the fun ripping you to shreds. I'm glad you came for me, but I am disappointed in your lack of strength. Hopefully the Samurai will put up more of a fight."
…Mammets? Does she mean those puppet things? And if she used the Goblins… does that mean she can speak their native tongue? There's no other way she would be able to convince them to do anything even with the promise of a huge reward.
The blade of her scimitar was moved very close to his neck as she let out an exasperated sigh.
He looked up at her, "Wait…don't you know why we are doing this? The Archduke is plotting something; he might be trying to start another war. We have to stop him, that's why we are doing this! How can you value money over that?"
Her expression changed to a small smile.
"Why should I care about anyone other than myself? Money never goes wrong. Wars are good for the kind of business I am in. As for whoever this Archduke is, you've got the wrong end of the stick. I was hired by the Armathrwn Society, you know them, right? Maybe the Archduke is their boss, I don't know and I don't care. They ordered me to find the Six Champions and kill them without anyone knowing of my presence."
She moved closer once more and whispered into his ear.
"Would you like to know what I think, though? The guys with whiter skin than me are hiring me to do this because their contraptions aren't up to the job. I did some looking around and it seems they are working on a new model. They don't want their boss to know that they weren't up to it so that's why I've to keep quiet. Still, I guess telling you all that was a bit pointless, right?"
She stood straight and pulled her scimitar back.
"If what you are saying is true," Alain said through gritted teeth, "then they'll kill you in the end to keep it quiet, you know that, right?"
"If they try anything then I'll simply kill them as well," was the immediate reply.
As the scimitar swooped down Alain let go of his wounded chest and held his Great Sword in one hand. Under his breath he whispered two words that he had not spoken since the war, since the time he had faced twenty demons and survived.
Zeid had never finished his Dark Knight training, but he had learned enough from the Galka to master the technique of controlling the invisible flow of energy around the body and influencing it to turn into pure adrenaline, boosting his power and strength ten fold at the expense of his stamina and ability to withstand pain. Zeid had told him to heed the title for the technique whenever he even considered using it as it was an all or nothing skill. His body would be in no state to fight afterwards, but he had no choice.
The blade was closing in on his neck.
"Last Resort."
His gloved fist caught the scimitar blade out the air and held it tightly, much to the woman assassin's shock. She attempted to pull the blade back again but he held on tightly as a red haze surrounded his body and tiny flickers of redder energy shot around his form like lightning. He let go of her sword making her stumble back and brought his Great Sword up with one hand as quickly as if it were as light as a dagger and it tore into her chest.
She skidded backwards from the force of the slice, but did not fall over. A thin trail of spattered blood traced the path of the cut from the bottom left of her stomach up to the tip of the right shoulder. The black cloak shifted uneasily and split down the middle. The assassin tugged on the cloak, ripping it fully in half and tossing it to one side revealing strange blood strained clothing underneath.
The cloth was foreign in look and design, sporting gold sequins over white silk mixed with blue cloth. He had never seen anything like it in his entire life and could not fathom how she was able to wear them underneath the thickly layered black cloak with passing out from the heat. There was no time to analyze the wears though, his time was running out.
He charged forwards at her as her right hand began to trace out a circle shape. Just as the light blue haze began to form into a ball he reached her and was able to knock her backwards into the thick palm tree forest they had came from. He immediately gave chase while counting every second he allowed his body to bare the strain of Last Resort.
As he reached her a second time her hand had just finished tracing a circle above her head which burst into a glowing yellow horizontal beam. The beam grew thicker at either end and seemed to take the form of a staff. The assassin's hand dropped causing the staff to twirl and swing towards him, but it was easily cut through.
Knocking her to one side, he followed up with a quick stabbing motion that just caught her by the arm, slicing through the white silk and bursting the skin below. The hilt of his Great Sword then met with her chin as he tilted it upwards as a follow up attack and bashed it into her.
With her reeling from the blow to her face and her sword hanging loosely in one hand he saw the perfect chance to use the last of his gathered strength. He dug one foot into the ground and then pushed off it while swinging his blade into the air and turning three hundred and sixty degrees. There was a quick flash of blue light.
As he finished his cycle he roared, "Spinning Slash!"
White energy engulfed the assassin as it exploded on contact sending a shockwave in all directions, ripping trees from their roots and crushing rocks under the pressure. The body of his opponent was knocked sideways straight into the ground, but the force of the stunning technique forced her body still deeper into the earth opening a trench that spread across the jungle stopping only as it reached the cliff where the fight had begun and causing a small rock slide on the confused Goblin below.
Dropping to his knees, Alain's hands released his Great Sword and were almost automatically pulled over his wound as he bent double and screamed out in agony as the red aura surrounding him subsided, leaving his body weakened and unable to numb the pain.
He kneeled before the point of impact, a large circle had been burnt into the earth and the ground was uneven. A thick cut spread off in front of him far into the distance where the energy had travelled taking the assassin with it. Smoke and dirt filled the gaping trench and was billowing into the sky.
With the smoke being drawn into the air by the breeze that seemed to have appeared out of no where Alain's eyes were drawn to a strange shape that appeared inside the gaping trench he had created. It seemed to be circular in shape and had broken into the sides of the walls, which was holding it in place and stopping it from falling deeper. A large dent on the upper left side had caused cracks to spread across the rest of the circle.
It looked a dark cream colour and definitely not normal. He watched in shock, as the white circle crumbled, to see the assassin clinging onto the side of the trench. With only one hand (and the wounded one at that) she pulled herself back onto the slightly safer ground beside the hole and got up. She began walking towards him and the only wounds that he could see on her through his blurred vision was the small cut on her arm that had bled down and the cut up her chest. Spinning Slash seemed to have done nothing to her and been absorbed somehow by whatever the white sphere had been.
She stopped a few meters away from him and glared with eyes that seemed to burn into him with a stare of pure hatred. The wounded hand that still held her blue and gold scimitar hung at her side still, but her right was already tracing out a circle of haze in front of her.
The assassin's hand shot into the air as the circle was completed and the blue haze burst. Five jagged objects appeared and shot towards him. They looked like they were feathers, but he could have just been imagining it. He tried to stand but his legs refused to obey him. He closed his eyes to prepare for the attack.
A cracking sound was quickly preceded by four others as the deadly objects struck into something. Alain peered sideways again and jumped was fright as something slapped him across the side of his face.
"And just what the hell do you think you'rrre doing to my man!" a familiar voice growled.
He rolled onto his side and looked over to see Hanaa standing in front of him with her tail flapping from side-to-side. Her rapier was drawn and her other hand was out stretched, controlling a blue crystal shaped protective barrier that had bore the brunt of the attack. A quick click of her fingers cased the crystal to break and vanish along with the conjured up feather darts. Through her legs, Alain saw the assassin begin walking towards them with her scimitar poised.
"So you're the Red Mage," the assassin muttered. "Are you the strongest?"
"Prrrobably not, I'm quite lazy, you know? No, I'm definitely not. I do what's needed and that's it. Like just now all I was told to do was save Alain and distrrract you for a while."
The assassin stopped mid-step and stared at her.
"Death from above!"
The assassin turned just in time to parry Nokum-Akkum's axes as he leapt down from a tree at her, but his feet battered into the base of her neck knocking her to the ground and almost into the trench. She quickly got to her feet and began trying to dodge the Tarutaru's intense flurry of constant attacks which gave her no time to attempt to cast any of her strange magic.
After leaping back from their short friend for a third time, Hanaa timed it just right to fire off a volley of lightning that caught the assassin's blade, forcing it from her hand and straight into the ground nearby.
The assassin, now gripping her burnt black hand, retreated up a tree using incredible agility to land precisely on top of the canopy. She cursed violently at them as Nokum-Akkum attempted to climb up the palm tree, but could not manage it as his arms were too short to reach around the base. Clearly Hanaa had helped him get up the first one.
"Alain! Hanaa!" he heard someone call.
Catherine was soon next to him, holding him in her arms. Though he could barely keep his eyes open he was able to follow someone stride past as Catherine reached him. It was probably Rost, safe and sound as expected. They had escaped through the Goblins that were now probably scattered and clueless without the assassin to bark orders at them.
"Getaru down here so I can choppy-woppy you up!" Nokum-Akkum called angrily and kicked the stump of the tree.
Hanaa and Rost joined the Tarutaru.
"Come down then and fight us!" Rost demanded and pointed his weapon at her.
"Looks like I underestimated you," the assassin growled. "If you think this is over, you're wrong. I'll kill each of you. I'll come for you when you least expect it. You won't live to see the end of this!"
With that her hand traced one last blue circle that formed into the shape of a black bomb. It dropped from the tree and exploded half way down, blowing it in half and causing another dust cloud to erupt. With their vision obscured the assassin chose not to attack, but escape rather than attempt to fight five of them at once.
"Just what in the hell was she anyway?" Hanaa questioned as the dust cleared.
"Everyone listen!" Catherine called. "My magic still has not returned to me so I cannot treat Alain. We should get him into the outpost and bandage these wounds immediately."
Alain closed his eyes and felt his body being carried.
Once more I'm the one slowing everyone down…I got beat up and they all did great. That woman was far more skilled than me. No wonder Zeid turned his back on me…I'm weak.
