Chapter 4: Rough housing
Not too long after the fight began did Boudicca regret entering into it in the first place.
She knew on an objective level that she was a superb fighter and sorcerer, and could certainly take any one of her five captive's one on one.
But the fact remained she had allowed herself to be goaded into an unwinnable fight here by trying to face them all together at the same.
Even with the assistance of Wong, this would be an uphill battle. Fortunately for her though, she had one key advantage. The five may have been united in a mutual desire to escape, but they were still complete strangers to each other with no real team work or even a plan of action.
However their first wave of attacks was surprisingly coordinated. It began with Wenwu entering into a close quarters fight with Boudicca, rightly believing he could finish her off quickly with a combination of his superior martial art skill and physical attributes.
Boudicca managed to bob and weave around his initial series of attacks but when a glancing blow finally made contact with her, and she nearly had her arm blown off by the force of the hit, she caught onto how unwise a battle of fisticuff against Wenwu would be.
She ignored the pain coming from her now dislocated left arm that had been hit, and instead focused on her immediate problem. She quickly deduced that she needed to make this a ranged fight and decided to do so by utilizing her still good arm to summon a gust of magical wind with her fan in order to blow Wenwu away back.
Not giving her time to recover though, the other five piled on her and Wong. Thor blasted the sorcerers with an unrelenting stream of lightning from his hammer.
Hyperion followed up by firing an intense beam gold energy from his eyes.
Both attacks were barely blocked by a mandala patterned energy dome Wong manifested around himself and Boudicca.
Through gritted teeth and a strained voice Wong asked Boudicca "What were you thinking releasing them?"
Boudicca didn't answer immediately instead using the brief reprieve Wong was providing to attempt to catch her brief and assess the damage done to her arm. It was bruised and appeared to be dislocated but nothing too serious.
As she painfully reset her left shoulder she explained her reasoning to Wong "I wanted to put them in their place. Violent people like these, only seem to respond to violence. They would have seen it as weakness on my part if I had let the insult slide."
"They will also see this as weakness if we stupidly allowed ourselves to die here" Wong retorted sarcastically.
"Then we better not die" Boudicca said shooting Wong a roguish smile.
Their banter was interrupted by a blue hand shooting up from the ground to grab onto Wong's leg.
Wong yelped in of surprise upon feeling the appendage and tried in vain to kick it off.
Moving quickly to help Boudicca struck the blue hand with her folded fan, causing it to let go of Wong's leg and retreat back into the earth.
"What was that?" Wong demanded as he frantically searched the ground for the arm. He noted how odd it was that the ground seemed undisturbed despite the arm that had just burst from it mere seconds ago.
"Zarda" Boudicca explained "She can swim through solid matter as easily as she does water"
As if to prove her point, a section of the ground under the dome began to ripple like it was a pool water.
And from it leaped out Zarda who landed in a crouched position effectively bypassing the Wong's protective dome.
She immediately sprang into action, moving to strike at Wong.
Wong barely managed to dodge her attack but in the process he lost concentration leading to the barrier collapsing.
With the barrier gone Hyperion's optic blasts and Thor's lightning were now unimpeded to fly into the battlefield and join the fray. The attacks barely missed their intended targets hitting the ground instead and causing a sizeable plume of dust to be kicked up.
For a few seconds everyone's view was obscured by the dust cloud.
But instead of waiting for it to be clear up and then continue the fight.
The attacking captives persisted attack.
There was a screech of electricity followed by a yelp of pain as the first inevitable case of friendly fire occurred.
"You idiot, you did that intentionally" Hyperion bellowed presumably to Thor.
He retaliated with a blast of his eye beams, but they missed and hit Zarda instead. "Ow!" she exclaimed and wildly struck who she thought hit her.
Before long a full on brawl between the captives broke out, with all manner of energy, punches and profanities being launched indiscriminately.
By the time the dust and settled most of them were bruised, singed, stabbed or all three.
"Stop this madness" Wenwu demanded now sporting a cut lip and bruised eye.
"We should be focusing on the witch, not each" he explained to his fellow captives.
The other captives couldn't help but agree with the sound logic and begrudgingly ceased fighting.
They began to search for Wong and Boudicca, quickly finding them huddled up in a corner away from most of fight.
The two of them appeared to have taken the opportunity granted by all the confusion to cast a spell.
They moved in sync as they quickly drew lines of crackling orange energy onto the air. Forming a complex flower-like sigil.
With one final swish and a snap of their fingers, they completed the spell and it activated.
The was a brief flash of light and then everything changed as the forget-me-not spell, a variant of memory wipe spell, took effect.
All the captives were back in their cells in an instance looking dazed and confused as to why they couldn't remember anything over past hour.
Their recently acquired injuries and the all damage they had done to the dungeon was all gone.
Itwas like the fight had never happened.
With the exception of the two sorcerer's who looked quite shaken and out of breathe.
"Okay, lesson learnt they are extremely dangerous individuals " Wong said quietly to Boudicca.
She wordlessly agreed and moved to leave the dungeon.
Just before Wong and the Ancient One teleported away, Boudicca decided to make some changes.
First she teleported away their weapons, something in hindsight she should have done from the get go.
Zarda lost her spear. Thor his hammer. Bashenga his panther habit. Hyperion his belt and Wenwu his rings.
They immediately began to speak out in protest which prompted Boudicca's last change.
She deactivated the Babel spell.
It was the spell which was allowing all these people from different parts of worlds to understand each other as if they all spoke one language.
Now most their words of protest became unintelligible to her and likely to each other.
Seeing how dangerous it was for these people to collude. It was best remove their ability to communicate.
Satisfied with her new changes Boudicca left the dungeon via portal with Wong following behind.
They rematerialized back on the courtyards of Kamar Taj leaving behind a room full of confused and extremely angry people.
Once the portal vanished, Boudicca turned and said to Wong "I'm entrusting you with them. There's another matter that could possibly be related to my vision I need to addresses"
Wong nodded in understanding.
Boudicca paused briefly before adding.
"I'm sorry I put you in danger like that...that was reckless".
Wong was taken aback briefly by this before eventually smiling and saying
"No need to apologize . It's taught me a valuable lesson .Under no circumstances will I ever allow those miscreants to go free regardless of whether they end the world or not now"
Boudicca nodded pleased by this before opening another portal and walking through that.
"I'll scry you if anything comes up" she said before the portal and her vanished.
Wong stood at the courtyard for a moment trying to regain his composure. So much had happened so quickly.
He really hoped things slowed down from this point onwards.
And unfortunately for him, that was not the case.
