When we are about fifty yards apart, and the Facilitator gestures for us to stop. the Ogre stops, and resting the butt of it axe on the ground, rests his crossed arms on the top of the blade like it is a railing or chair back. The head of that axe is more than twice the size of my own and has a pale greenish-blue glow.
The Ogre's face is not handsome, but he is honestly better looking than I am. Even with the fangs sticking up from his lower jaw, the strong hard lines of his face project a powerful air of nobility. In his cold grey eyes, a mixture of iron resolution, hate, chagrin, and contempt are mixed together. This is a lord among monsters that has been trapped and imprisoned by what he considers to be lesser creatures.
With his entire body wrapped in chainmail, with armor plates strapped on top, the only part of the Ogre's skin that is visible is his face. Having a pebbly texture like sharkskin, his skin is a greenish-blue color, similar to the glow from his axe, and his hair is midnight black. The two horns rising from his forehead, curved and striated like a ram's horns, are milky white.
“Damn my eyes, you are one ugly fucking human.” The quiet bass voice has even deeper tone than a Dvergar's and is clearly audible over the cacophony from the stands.
“Fuck me sideways, either the dumb animal can speak, or I've gone insane.”
Irritation mixes in with the other emotions on the Ogre's face. “Small dogs should not start yapping in front of their masters. Your death will be slow and painful, human.”
“Then, why did you open your mouth?”
The Ogre tilts his head back and opens its mouth wide, as huge guffaws of laughter ring out over the noise of the spectators. The laughter brings down a curious silence on the crows, as their attention fully focuses on the spectacle taking place in the center of the arena.
“It is too bad for you that we are meeting here. If we were elsewhere, I would makes you a slave, instead of kill you, and let you be my jester.”
Letting the head of my axe rest on the black sand, I reach up and remove the collar on my neck. Closing it, with a soft click, I start to spin it around my finger.
“Who is a slave? I see a collar locked on your faggot-ass neck, but I've only been wearing mine as camouflage, so the DokkAlfar would generally ignore me. I'm the disciple of The Smith. I can leave anytime I want.”
Finally! The Ogre's face twists in rage, and he growls angrily. His own hand grabs the collar that is still firmly locked on his neck.
“You should feel honored. You're enough of a badass that I'm going to use you as the next stepping stone to increase my Power.”
I do need to look to verify that Aluras'bektsh'tar has risen to her feet in a cold rage. The force of her outrage is beating against my mind.
I have no clue how to project my thoughts, but if I make them clear enough, I am sure Aluras'bektsh'tar will be able to read them. Sorry, cunt. I have no reason to worry about any implications this might have for you. You went back on our deal, and payback is a fucking bitch, just like you. Elan'fer'sha is under Thrall's protection, so she should be safe, but this a slap to your face isn't it?
*Your pathetic little shields will not save you, when I come for you, human!* Canth's hatred is like a sword thrusting against my mind. I could understand him being angry, but there is no anger, only raw unmitigated hatred. Other than being Thrall's disciple, I have no idea why he has such a personal hatred for me. What kind of history does he have with Thrall?
From dead silent, the crowd abruptly burst into pandemonium. Arguments, fights, and celebrations spread through the stands.
Looking around the arena, I feel strangely at peace. The nervousness is gone. I have an urge to laugh, but I do not. My gaze settles on Elan'fer'sha, and we stare at one another. Using my ki, I sharpen my vision, so I can clearly see those eyes.
Surprisingly, there is no anger visible in those honey-amber eyes. There is regret and a soul-deep emptiness that I have seen more than just a few times. She smiles faintly, sadly, and says some words I cannot hear, but I do not need to hear them to know what she says.
Kill them all!
I turn back to the Ogre. “Today, you die.”
The Ogre sneers at me. “You don't have the strength to kill me.”
Steel is cruelty. Steel is pain.
My left eye glows with silvery radiance for a moment, as the pattern sight spell alters my vision.
My heart is steel. Steel is the blood and bone of the Smith. While the flame of my soul burns, the steel of my sword will never break and never dull.
A silver aura surrounds my axe.
The hammer falls, shaping the steel. The steel remembers the force. The steel releases the force.
A second dark grey aura mixes with the silver one.
“You really are The Smith's disciple.” The Facilitator glances from the Ogre to me, and starts backing away.
“Begin!”
A heavier blue-green aura surrounds the Ogre's own axe, and he charges toward me. I cross thirty yards in three flickering steps, and the Ogre's eyes widen in surprise. His axe streaks towards my shoulder from high overhead, at an oblique angle. As I slip to the side, frost enshrouded particles of black sand explode outward from the axe's impact.
With a low strike, my own axe streaks towards the Ogre's knee, like a pendulum. A curtain of frozen sand flies at me, as the Ogre's axe sweeps up to intercept my own.
BOOM!
The thunder of the colliding weapons echoes in the arena, and battered by the concussive force, both of us stagger backward. My hands are numbed from the impact, and I can barely feel my axe's haft within my grip. The Ogre holds up one hand clenching and releasing a fist a few times, as he stares at me.
Despite the odd angle, I had nearly my full strength behind my blow, but the Ogre's counter was thrown in a way that would never have allowed it to use all its strength. Neither of us was using our Power to enhance our strength. Even though we would appear to be more or less evenly matched to the crowds, the Ogre has the implicit advantage in strength. With ki I might equal it, but that depends on whether or not he can use his own Power to enhance his own strength further.
In terms of speed and reaction times, we are probably so close that the difference is immaterial. My only real advantage is absolute movement speed. There should be nothing that the Ogre can do to compensate for my ability to move in the Shadow of the Od.
Moving to the Ogre's right side, I launch a short chop toward his waist. Ki floods through my body, enhancing my strength and speed. the Ogre hammers his own into mine, stopping the chop cold. Expecting the force of the impact, we both hold our ground and begin launching short fast attacks at one another.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
The deafening thunder of axe head against axe head and axe haft fills the air around us. Seconds stretch into long minutes, with neither of us giving ground. Neither of us moves more than a step or two in any direction, just enough to launch our attacks and defend. the Ogre's advantage in strength allows him stop my attacks cold, while I am forced to deflect his attacks. Even using the maximum amount of ki I can force through my body, the Ogre still must be more than twice my strength.
This is how I want to fight. Instead of sneak attacks on someones back, I want to face off against enemies strong enough to make use everything I have. My mouth stretches into a death's-head grin, just like it did in my most intense battles during the Great Fuck Over.
Maybe it should not be surprising, but I know the Ogre's fighting style. I used parts of the martial style he is using, when I hybridized Shadow Fist. Four Ogres on a Mountain Top is not a common style, and I only encountered one of its practitioners by chance. The style is designed for great weapon user, and I always tended toward dual-wielding, so most of it was useless to me. But I was still fascinated by the style.
The Ogre suddenly steps backward, and caught off-guard, I am half a beat behind. He raises his axe into a high posting position that I never understood, and I have a chill run down my spine. With th
e butt of his axe held in two hands just over his shoulder, the axe stands straight upright over his head, like a flag or sashimono, and a cloud of greenish-blue energy swirls around it.
The Ogre's axe drops, and a wave of cold grey water rushes toward me.. It takes the shape of a wave, as it crashes down on me. Releasing the haft of my axe with my left hand, I drop into a deep horse stance and launch a palm strike toward the wave.
BOOM!
In a roughly circular shape, my ki smashes into the center of the wave. As the center of the wave turns into a mist, the rest of the wave passes around me, drenching the black sands of the arena.
“Ki! You're a shit eating Binary!?” Surprise and anger fill the Ogre's roar.
“Ain't it a bitch, dick breath?”
I move next to the Ogre, and my axe streaks toward his left shoulder, in a powerful overhand blow. Twisting and sliding to his right, he barely gets the haft of his axe in position to intercept mine, and the force of the impact staggers him backward.
Not giving him time to recover, I move to the Ogre's left side, striking at his hip with a lateral swing. While still off balance, he manages to hammer his axe into the flat of my own, burying both our axe heads in the sand.
“Aaargh!” The Ogre roars in pain, as the my toe drills into his thigh.
Dropping to one knee, the Ogre hammers the haft of his axe into the ground.
Boom!
Blue-green light flares from the axe head, and shards of ice explode outward from the Ogre in all directions. Even though I pulse my ki outward, it is too little, too late. I avoid being shredded alive, but the razor-like edges of the ice splinters leave me with dozens, maybe hundreds, of cuts, all over my body. A cloud of blood mist surrounds me.
The Ogre staggers as it rises to its feet again. The armor plate on its right thigh is completely deformed, with a two inch deep dent in the center. If he had not been wearing cuisses, my kick would have probably shattered its femur. I feel like I have been flayed alive, and probably, I look about that way.
Not daring to give the Ogre time to recover, I slip around to its back and hammer a strike at it from behind. The Ogre's axe is spinning in a circle over his head, but there is no way he will be able to hit me or intercept my strike.
BOOM!
My axe jars to a halt, as it hits a dome of ice that appears out of thin air. Is the Ogre using a martial style, or is he a fucking aberrant caster?
The Ogre rips the cuisse from his thigh and hurls it to the sand. Except for where my axe has left a spiderweb of cracks on its surface, the ice dome is transparent, and the Ogre glares at me through it.
“Your way of moving annoys me, human. Everything about you annoys me. Before I let you die, you will beg and whimper for your pain to end.”
I tap on the dome with my index finger. “You won't kill shit, hiding behind this ice like a faggot.”
CRACK! BOOM!
The dome of ice explodes outward. I move backward two steps, putting over thirty yards between us. From my palm strike, a hand-shaped wall of ki hammers, pulverizing the ice fragments flying toward me.
The Ogre charges, his axe held in the same high position he used to launch the wave attack. I move to the side, as the Ogre's axe hammers into the sand where I was standing.
I drive a short heavy chop at the Ogre's head, but he drags his axe's haft into position to catch mine haft to haft. With a rippling of his muscles, starting at his feet, he hurls me backward. My feet slide through the sand for five or six yards, leaving furrows behind.
No two ways about it, I am outmatched in both strength and mass. The Ogre is not an enemy I can batter my way past with brute force. Combined with his water magic, his brute physical power and marital skills make him the most dangerous enemy I have faced since returning to the Battleground of the Damned.
The forge heats the steel. The steel remembers the forge. The heat of molten iron burns the foe and lights the dark.
The head of my axe begins to glow and waves of heat cause a heat shimmer in the air. Unlike when I burned up Perzey's swords, this heat is controlled and is doing no damage to my axe.
I move next to the Ogre and chop at his head. As expected, he blocks it, and the glowing edge of my axe leave a nick in his.
“Goblin-fucking Smiths!” Hate and venom fill the Ogre's voice.
Back and forth, we chop at one another and block the other's attacks. The Ogre's attacks are weaker than before. He is worried about my kicks and is trying to not leave me any openings. As fast as I move, my movement is not beyond the Ogre's ability to perceive, and he blocks or dodges everything I throw at him.
When I move to attack from his rear flank, the Ogre leaps forward. Spinning his axe over his head again, he keeps distance between. Thin white mist billows down and outward from his axe. As it thickens, it begins rapidly filling the center of the arena.
I do not close with the Ogre again. Until I ascertain what the purpose of the mist is, I do not want to get too close to him. The mist continues to spread, covering more and more of the arena and obscuring my view of the Ogre. An odd haze of mana carrying a hint of psi fills the mist. Like his other attacks, there is no real spell pattern in the mist. If he is a caster, he is definitely an aberrant caster. Just what is this mist's purpose?
As I stand watching, the Ogre continues to swing his axe and the mist spreads farther with each revolution, until most of the central area of the arena is filled with it. Is it just a camouflage?
I move toward the Ogre, and he jumps to the side, disappearing in a particularly thick billow of the mist. The mist begins to swirl in the same clockwise direction that the Ogre was swinging his axe, and a loud moaning sound fills the arena.
I was too cautious. I should have just attacked. Even though I can neither see nor hear the Ogre, I can still tell exactly where he is. He moved backward after jumping into the billow of mist. He must think I cannot see or hear him. I will use that misconception against him.
Moving to where the Ogre initially jumped, I swing my axe in a huge slashing arc. After not hitting anything, I stop and turn slowly in a circle as though trying to ascertain the Ogre's position, while holding my axe ready over my head.
A nasty smile on his face, the Ogre moves around to my back, but does not close the distance between us. After raising his axe, while holding it out behind himself, he executes a huge swing, parallel to the ground, in the empty air between us. Six icicle-like shards of ice, each one over an inch thick at its base, hurtle through the air at my back.
With my ki condensed in my back as a layer of force, I do not even try to dodge. Blood spatters in all directions, turning the cyclonic white mist pink, as the ice shards penetrate about a quarter of an inch into my body.
“Aaargh!” I drop to my knees, pretending to be far more seriously injured than I am. The actual damage is minor, and I can easily ignore this little bit of pain.
The Ogre takes two steps toward me, before stopping. He seems to be displeased, his face scrunched up in a frown.
Using my body control, I increase the small amount of blood flowing from my wounds. The swirling mists scour it from my body, increasing the volume of the pink tint.
Using my axe like a crutch, I pretend to force myself back to my feet, and turn around. Cocking my head to the side, I act like I am trying to search for the Ogre by sound. Walking in his general direction but not directly toward him, I keep making short probing slashes.
The Ogre moves away from my line of advancement but does not attack. His face and stance give off a definite air of his being perturbed. He begins to swing that axe around his head again, and a single icicle begins to rapidly form. It quickly becomes as long as I am tall.
After another dozen steps, I pause and pretend to try looking and listening for the Ogre. One of the holes dug in the sand by out battle is right in front of me, and as the Ogre launches the icicle spear, I stumble in the hole. The sound of its passage is audible over the howling of the cyclonic mist, and I turn in the Ogre'
s direction.
Rage and irritation twisting its face into an vicious mask, the Ogre moves to close in from my left side. His massive axe sweeps toward the middle of my chest, in a chop that will bisect me if it lands. When I hammer my axe into the flat of his in an upward strike and duck under the blade, the Ogre lets out a bellow of pure rage.
The Ogre's armor plates include a massive code piece, and uncoiling from my crouch, I drive a side kick into it. My ki explodes into his body from the point of impact, wreaking havoc on his internal organs.
Pop! Pop!
“AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!”
The sound of the Ogre's balls rupturing is audible, and his scream is loud enough to be painful.
As my foot touches the ground again, my axe cleaves into the back of the Ogre's knees. The incredibly hard and keen blade cleaves through his armor like tissue paper, severing the joint. With the flat of the blade, as he topples toward me, I smash him in the face, flipping him into the air. Before his body hits the ground, my downward slash carves through the armor, flesh, and bone of his arm, removing the hand still holding onto his axe.
As the cyclonic motion of the mist wanes, the water in the air settles to the ground, tinges the black sand with a faint pinkish highlight. The eyes of the spectators slowly turn from the images displayed on the spell formation based viewing system, to the center of the arena, where I am standing over the Ogre.
“You were aware of what I what I was doing the entire time. You're a Trinary, aren't you?” Despite his obvious pain, the calm resignation on the Ogre's face carries an air of nobility.
I nod. “I had the feeling you thought something was off, with the way you kept your distance.”
“You are not a very good actor, but when you didn't come after me, I ignored my instincts. You're nothing but a goblin-shit human.”
“Go fuck yourself.” My axe splits the Ogre's skull open, splattering his brain matter all over the sand.
It takes a few moments for the crowds to process events and react.
“Brand! Brand! Brand! Brand! BRAND! BRAND! BRAND! BRAND!” Starting with just few voices, the chant quickly spreads to more than half the spectators.
Slave Pits of the Tyrannical God (Path of Transcendence Book 2) Page 21
