CHAPTER 12
"So, how we gonna do this?" Marcel asked as he cracked his knuckles. The Cyclops waded through the wreckage of the outer gate, as he proceeded to the next barrier Emma set up. The clouds overhead opened up, accentuating the mood of the attack. The monster was at least three people high, probably closer to twenty feet tall. Its club was clearly just as long as Marcel or Freya was tall.
"Kill it as quickly as possible," Freya responded with a dark gleam in her eyes. "I got a little ahead of myself back there in front of the others. We can test our heightened baseline against opponents whose baseline powers we're familiar with." She swiped wet hair out of her eyes. Since her daughter was born, she had let her hair grow out. She nearly cut it, but one remark from Rebekah about how the lovely little baby adored playing with her blonde locks and Freya couldn't bear to take that away from her daughter.
But now was not the time to make costly mistakes because of hindered vision.
"'As quickly as possible,' I suppose I can manage that," Marcel replied with a vicious smirk, surveying their opponent. "We'll have to experiment on asshole vampires and werewolves at some point though right?"
"Yep. And hostile witches," Freya replied. "Have any ideas about this fellow?"
The Cyclops had gotten through the third of the four barriers that Emma had set up.
Marcel sprinted out to meet it. The Cyclops was fast for its size. It took an upward vertical swing at the Uber vampire, just missing him, though it was close enough that Marcel was able to nimbly hang on to the club. The world tilted for him as he was carried along the arc of the club, terminating at nearly a 90º angle, with Marcel still clinging onto it.
Freya entered the fray wit a little more dignity, testing out one of her favourite torture spells. When her pale hand began forming into a soft fist, the Cyclops roared in agony, dropping the massive club. Marcel landed with the gargantuan melee weapon on top of him, driving him into the soil.
Despite herself, Freya started at that, but she needn't have worried as Marcel pushed the two metre club off of him with a distinctly offended expression.
The Cyclops let out a bellow beginning to trudge forward, club forgotten in his urgency to eliminate the pain, having recognized Freya as the root of his blinding migraine. Marcel saw this, and as casual as you like, picked the handle of the club and swung it in a swift and deadly arc, taking the feet out from under the brute.
The wet snapping sound as the Cyclops' various leg bones were broken resounded around the grounds. Marcel let out a laugh at his victorious maneuverer. Perhaps in a fit of adrenaline, the monster rose to its knees and swiftly grabbed the club back from Marcel, using it's momentum to hurl the vampire towards the school buildings.
'Oh no,' Freya thought belatedly as she watched Marcel's expression turn from a smirk to mild horror.
Marcel smashed into the boundary spell protecting the school with a deafening crackle of magic, like a bug being zapped, and fell to the ground. He did not rise again.
Now back in possession of it's club, and head clear while Freya briefly lost concentration, the monster used the club to hobble closer to her.
Now less than three meters apart, the Cyclops was well within striking distance of the witch. The rain dripped off of the club, and the blood pool from his mangled legs began to soak the ground at Freya's feet.
There was a shout from inside, but Freya ignored it. She spared a quick glance at Marcel, who was stirring now. The Cyclops' eye was a murky green, ocean green tainted with blood or mud.
Up close, his size was undeniable, even on his knees. It occurred to Freya with a uncomfortable twist of dread in her gut, that the Cyclops was big enough to nearly swallow her whole if he felt so inclined. Polyphemus of Odyssey myth was a people eater after all. Would she be able to blast out of his stomach if that happened? Or would she scream in vain as she was digested? And if he chose not to swallow her whole, then his teeth each as big as one of her hands splayed out would be more than enough to render her into bite sized portions. –––NO
Freya was donecontemplating a hypothetical and very dark end. Recovering her wits, she noticed he was less interested in eating her than he was just ridding the world of her.
Her momentary involuntary spiral of fear gave the Cyclops the chance to prepare for a final blow. His legs were useless, and he had to know deep down he wasn't walking away from this. As his hand was about to descend, Freya called out in her mother tongue while raising her left hand, blazing curse blade held horizontally, as if to shield herself from the unconquerable strike coming her way.
There was a silent flash. Time seemed to slow. The Cyclops watched in horror as a violet stroke from the heavens erased his hand, shutting down his nervous system, and shattered his club into flaming fragments. The light seemed to reach out in a deliberate flicker to ender the creature's chest, stopping his heart. But by the time the Cyclops realised what just happened, the light was already gone from its eye.
The lightning bolt found it's way to the ground via Freya, as she stood sure-footed as the wildly powerful electric charge struck the blade, entered her hand, and travelled down her body, and exited her foot, finding its home in the soil. The lightning's electric field scored its path down Freya's pale body in branches of angry red as she cut the brief silence with a chilling scream; only to be gone and driven to the ground by the thunderclap.
The windows of the Salvatore school rattled and cracked as the close-quarters thunderclap shattered the final boundary spell Emma erected.
Both Freya and Cyclops fell to the ground. The witch fell twitching, trying in vain to control her body's agonizing spasms, and the Cyclops with a hollow death rattle as the lightning had stopped his heart.
Freya desperately tried to fill her lungs as she turtled back onto her front. She did see the life leave that monster's giant eye, so at least that was one thing settled.
She could dimly make out multiple forms over where Marcel had fell, and a couple of them approaching her. 'Got stalemated like an brash rookie; by a dumb fucking Cyclops no less…Keelin's gonna be so angry with me,' Freya thought helplessly as she lost consciousness, left hand still unconsciously clutching the hilt of the cursed blade.
A/N: Please let me know what you thought of this one? Action sequences aren't my strength, and I would very much like your words to help me improve for the next violent confrontation I write in this story.