His blade stabbed and sawed into my flesh, scraping across bones and it was all I could do to keep him from cutting into my throat. If the ghost fire hadn't somewhat mitigated the knifes magic, I would of been dead or dying already.
His blade sliced deeper and deeper into my flesh as each second stretched longer than it should, adrenaline playing with my sense of time.
While this went on I had a flash of insight. An instant of understanding.
I was in trouble.
With my hands turned towards me, my Force Spike was useless. I didn’t have time to work out how to cast it through the back of my hands. Or from anywhere else for that matter. Bounce had the same problem and if I did cast it in an attempt to throw his blade back at him, I would do more damage to myself than to him.
If I tried blocking with one hand and attacking with the other it would give him the opening he needed to bury the knife in my neck. I didn’t have the leverage to shift his weight and the blades shock enchantment, even weakened, made coordination difficult.
I gathered a burst of strength and roared, turning my hands so that the palms faced him and shoved him back with all my strength.
Then I cast my Bounce spell and it … wobbled... fizzled… rebounded.
It felt like hitting your funny bone, except in your soul. I gasped from the sensation and for an instant I lost all strength.
I would of died right then and there if the magic that sputtered out of my hands hadn't surprised the Elf.
He failed to take advantage of my temporary weakness, which apparently made him angry.
"DIE!"
His mind blasted me again and I lost another inch as he redoubled his efforts. Didn’t have a plan. I couldn’t think. My strength was waning and I was losing the fight to physics, a magic taser and Elf rage.
I started laughing, an unrecognizable rhythmic hissing at first, then, full on uncontrollable laughter.
I laughed, because I had been thinking, "I wish I was smarter." when another thought occured to me.
I bowed my head and jerked it forward, feeling something impact one of my horns. The Elf screamed, one of his hands going instinctively to his eye.
I pushed the hand still holding the knife up and sank my teeth into his wrist, making him scream all the louder.
Partially blinded and with his lizard brain telling him that something with killing teeth was way, way too close, instinct made him scramble to his feet so fast he pulled me up with him.
I did some damage with my claws but he was too close and we were moving too quickly for my strikes to do more than superficial damage.
I ripped my teeth out of his arm and hit him with a sidekick. He stumbled away, flailing his knife around in an attempt to keep me at bay.
I let him go and crouched low, laughing with the taste of his blood smoke misting out of my mouth.
That turned out to be a mistake. It gave him the opportunity to pull out a red vial and knockback its contents.
I rushed him, trying to get to him before he healed. He threw the empty vial at my head before running to the back of the alley. I backhanded it out of the air without pausing and it shattered on the ground.
I chased him and going for the back of his neck but in my eagerness I got too close. He turned, slashing at me with a series of frenzied attacks and I backed off.
When he paused, his breath was ragged but he had healed most of his injuries.
I laughed quietly through bared teeth as I moved to flank him. But he just moved when I did and we ended up circling each other.
"I can smell your fear." I whispered.
He flinched then gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the knife.
"I can smell it, like I smell your blood in the air. Run away. Now. I give you this last chance. You will run or you will die."
I stopped circling and he stopped circling.
For an instant I thought he might take me up on the offer. Instead he decided to bury his fear with anger and started screaming at me. Trying to psych himself up.
“I’ll kill you. I will! Kill! You!” he screamed. “I'll kill you! Then I'll kill your friends! And I'll do it over and over...”
I growled at him, an utterly inhuman sound that rumbled out me. The feeling of it rolling out my throat felt good, it felt real. It made my grin stretch so wide it hurt.
Survival instinct, surprise and anger warred in his widening eyes and in that moment I lunged forward. I ignored the sting of his blade and the sudden ache of the shock enchantment.
Trusting momentum to carry me forward, I dropped my Ghost Fire and cast a double Bounce spell from my hands.
It hit him in the chest from less than a foot away, but I had used too much energy. Switching from Ghost Fire to casting a Bounce spell forced me to rush.
That, combined with the shock enchantment made the casting sloppy, and too much magic spilled out into an inefficient mess. He slammed into the wall behind him and I was shoved back as well, deeper into the trash.
I knew I had damaged him with that hit because I was hurt as well. Even with trash cushioning me, I was still giggling and grinning through my own pain. I struggled to stand, slipping and sliding in the trash.
“What! Is! So! Funny!?” he screamed at me as he got to his feet.
I cast Ghost Fire again and said, “Like I said, when I'm in pain… “
He ran forward, his knife slicing for my face. I ducked under it and rushed forward, trying to tear his belly open but missed as he turned sideways.
“Or… angry… or hungry… or bored… or sleepy… but not horny for some reason. Which is weird because I'm technically always horny because of, you know, horns. Also, male, but what I mean is that - “
“DIIIIIEEEE!”
“Ew, say it don't spray it.”
"DIIIIIEEEE!"
“Ow! Not what I meant!”
We went back and forth like that for a while. Him doing his best to taser stab me to death and periodically blasting me with a mental attack.
I kept trying to get close enough to rip into him, all the while talking. Which had the side benefit of keeping him distracted.
He was decent, not super good, but decent with a knife but if I got a single scratch my muscles locked up for a few seconds.
I was faster and had a lot more agility but all he needed was for me to freeze up. Just for a second too long and he could slice and dice me.
I wasn't sure how long we fought, twenty seconds, maybe thirty, an hour. The alley was rapidly filling with the smell of blood smoke as we cut each other to pieces.
I couldn't disengage, couldn't run. The alley was a dead end and if I tried climbing the walls he would backstab me in an instant.
The two Elves blocking the entrance were charmed but whenever I got too close they started shaking their heads and blinking rapidly. I was lucky it didn't occur to my attacker to try waking them and using them against me.
If it was just him with his enchanted knife I would of been fine. But there was also his mind blast, or whatever it was called. It didn't just hit me with sharp disorienting pain, it was was his hate.
Everytime he blasted me I felt it.
Soul poisoning hate denies the greatest aspects of sentiance. All the kindness, compassion, empathy, logic and reasoning that lets us rise above other animals. All of that is washed away by the tide of hate.
I was steadily burning through my magic, relying on my Bounce spell more and more to stay one step ahead. He in turn, was getting better and better at hitting me with his mind blast as well as his knife.
“A little help here Two!” I called through our mental link.
“Can't. Singing. Can't disrupt. Or others… attack. Others will...”
Then David was running down the alley on silent wolf paws. He executed a running jump and slammed each of the charmed Elves to the ground, a paw on each of them.
"Alright! Let's flip the board on this game of life… and… death!" I yelled, paused, then said, "Okay, I'm sorry. That
was lame. To be fair it sounded better in my head."
"It would of had to," Cherish said as she walked up behind David. "I mean, that was pretty terrible. Look out!"
I barely dodged another attack and decided that I had, had enough.
I let go of the ghost fire on my left hand and unleashed a Bounce spell. Timing it so that I knocked the approaching blade wide.
I jumped, each Bounce spell on my heels rocketing me forward. My right hand still burned with ghost fire as it went for his throat.
At least that was the plan.
"NO!"
The mind blast hit me and while my claws did rip shallow furrows in his neck. I was too slow to do much damage before he yanked himself out of my reach.
I got a sharp slice across the chest as he back peddled. The shock only lasted a second but I was off balance and in a bad position.
The Elf, seeing this, abruptly reversed direction and drove his blade towards my face with a triumphant scream.
With no time to dodge, all I could do was try to duck while whipping my head to the right. Hoping all the while that I was fast enough to take the blow on the skull and maybe deflect it.
However, in an act of pure luck that I will forever claim I had done, totally on purpose. The blade not only missed my head but slide between my horns.
I didn't know that at the time. I just knew that I had dodged his attack and some instinct had me twisting back in the other direction.
I felt the oddest sensation of something pressing between my horns, as the knife was knocked out of the Elfs hand.
I saw the knife fall to the ground and took full advantage, driving my right claw into the side of the Elfs neck.
I gritted my teeth as his mental scream drilled into my mind and, after summoning Ghost Fire, I shoved my left claw into the other side of his neck.
I decided overkill was in order and grabbed a double hand full of flesh, braced both of my feet against his chest and ripped his throat out.
I made an unintentional back flip, landing in a crouch with ghost fire still flickering between my fingers and blood smoke seeping into my skin.
I waited for him to continue fighting.
He didn’t. Instead he pressed his hands to his throat and dropped to his knees. His eyes seethed with pain and hate as blood smoke gushed from between his fingers.
"Ruin!”
Cherish ran past the two prone Elves and grabbed me in a painful bear hug. She apologized over and over for not being able to help more.
"I don't have any combat abilities so David wouldn't let me go and blocked the alley so I charmed them but you almost died! All because I don't have offensive abilities!"
"You… should… rectify… that… so much pain..."
"Oh, Suffering Gods. He really hurt you."
"No… you're hugging… too tight…"
"Oh!" She abruptly let me go and I sat down heavily with a grunt.
I glared over at David and said, “Took you long enough.”
He was using his superior weight, size and multiple limbs to handcuff the two struggling Elves rather effectively.
"There is very little room to maneuver in here and my weapon isn't made for tight spaces. Besides you said you wanted to handle this yourself."
"Well that was obviously a stupid idea," I said, "and you should never of listened to me."
I felt fluttering sensation through my mind, a far cry from the mental attack but I could still hear the words.
“I will spit on your grave…”
“Oh ya? Big deal.” I grinned over at the Elf as he bled out. "I will break dance on your grave. And if you'd ever seen me break dance, you would be horrified. So there." Then a thought occurred to me. “But do we actually have graves? I mean we respawn. I mean we're supposed to respawn. Oh, sorry. Uh, I'm, like, totally sure we do and you're not going to permanently cease to exist and - “
“Oh Gods, just kill me already…" he said weakly.
“Hey. Rude. Maybe I'll just tell my friend to heal you then. If you're going to be… oh wait. You're dead now.”
Then, just like with the Nilum, it was like a dam broke and a concentrated mass of his essence, red rather than black, spilled from him and flowed toward me.
“First kill." Cherish sounded like she was trying to be… supportive? I guess?
“Yeah, I'm not especially happy about it either." I summoned my Soul Tome to see if there was any experience gained from PKing.
“Even if people do respawn, it's still murder. They still feel pain, they still suffer. It's wrong to… Holy mama mia's stuffed crust pizza!” I stared at the amount of experience I'd gained from just one person.
“Hey! Davd! Hey! Hey!" He looked up from searching the Elves. "Let them go. I want to let them try to kill me again.”
He frowned. "Why?”
“So I can kill them and eat their souls!”
Cherish rolled her eyes. “Really?” She sighed and looked at the book. "That doesn't look like English to me.”
I hesitated, then asked, “Do you think it works the same way as it did in Midian?”
“Only one way to find out,” she said and put her hand on the books black pages.
I'm not sure how it is in other game worlds. But in Midian, letting another person read your stats is an act of deep and abiding trust. Because it shows them the most efficient way to hurt you.
Did you earn an achievement title that gave you physical resistance at the ten percent health mark but increases your weakness to fire? What kind of poisons damage you the most? What spells or abilities have you learned?
That's why only the people closest to you, the ones you trust, are given access.
Never. Ever. Give another person access unless you are absolutely positive they are trustworthy. Because if the wrong person sees what makes you vulnerable, then that information can be sold at a high price.
“Okey dokey." I said.
I spoke the words, “I grant To Be Cherished permission” and the moonlight glow of the words pulsed twice in quick succession, almost, or maybe exactly, like a heartbeat.
Cherish smiled, then her eyes widened. "Wow. That's a lot of experience! How much came from the guy?”
“All of it. All sixty nine points of it.”
Cherish snickered and said, “Sixty nine…”
“Oh grow up,” I said.
She looked back at me, her eyes wide. “Wow. That sounds incredibly weird when you say it. Gives me a shiver.”
I closed the book but don't put it away, “Grow up.”
“Oooh…” she shivered, paused and said, “Do it again.”
“Grow up.”
“Oooooh!”
“Grow up!”
“Ah! Ahhh…”
“Act your age.”
“Ah!”
“Straighten up and fly straight!”
“Eeek! It… it… tingles…” she said between bouts of giggling.
This was when Aeria and Taren walked in, apparently tired of waiting.
They looked on with the same confusion as everyone else. Confusion that only increased as I said “Grow up” over and over as fast as I could while Cherish sank to the ground, clutching her stomach and wiggling on her back as she laughed uncontrollably.
“Stop!” she said breathlessly. “Stop! No more! Please…”
“Ruin?” David said, interrupting our fun. “Lady Cherish? We should really be going.”
I helped Cherish back to her feet and reopened my book as I asked, “Why is she ‘Lady’ and I'm just me?”
“Fine. We should really be going, Lady Ruin.”
“Thank you… heeey...”
“Ruin, I can’t read your book anymore. Can you give me permission again?”
I did and examined my stats.
Name: Ruin The Heartless
Race: Savage Kin (Midian Wood Elf)
Class: Force Mage (Rank: Basic. Level 7)
Level: 1
Body:
Strength - 3.1
Agility - 4.2
Dexterity - 3.8
Endurance - 3.4
Vitality:
Resistance - 2.2
Regeneration - 2.1
Spirit:
Spark - 2.1
Regeneration - 4.0
“Hey! How did you get your agility so high?”
"Practice, practice, practice and almost being stabbed to death.”
“Oh."
“Also, almost being eaten to death." I added.
“I think I'll pass.”
“Good call,” I told her. “Not as interesting but there is less agonizing pain to deal with. Speaking of which…”
I trailed off and unsummoned my book before giving Aeria my I'm-so-ugly-I'm-cute puppy dog eyes.
She had been grimacing at the quickly disintegrating body of the unnamed Elf but when she looked at me she sighed and came forward to heal me.
“Ahhhh yeeeehhhaaa…” I groaned as the healing warmth flooded me, “that's the stuff…”
“If you keep making noises like that and I'm gonna stop." She glared at me.
“Sorry.”
After I was mostly healed and the two Elves were handcuffed, frisked and read their rights David went over to the dead Elf and searched the body.
“Hey, that's my loot!” I protested.
“Its evidence,” he replied. “We've received reports of people being waylaid and killed. These three are potential culprits.”
The said surviving potential culprits voiced their innocence. Which we ignored.
When David was done being a less than sneaky loot ninja he lifted a hand and talked to bracelet that rested on his wrist. He spoke a bit of jargon into it with various code phrases, paused and said a few more phrases.
When saw us looking he explained, “Communication crystal in the cuff. I told headquarters about what happened and where we were. They'll send whoever is closest to pick them up. ”
"Wait." I frowned. "Why didn't you use one of those to call did help?"
He frowned back. "I just did."
"I mean earlier, outside the city."
He shook his head. "They don't work outside the city. They have field com crystals with longer ranges but they're bigger and more expensive."
"How expensive?"
He grimaced. "As much as I get paid in a year."
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