A sliver of reflected light from the gas giant Tanloff signalled the end of the night. Dan briefly took off his helmet and ran his hand through his matted hair. He really needed a shower and access to a laundromat of some sort. The helmet was a godsend; without the translation runes, he would have been completely lost, but the thing really didn’t breathe. Any time he ended up sweating, the foam lining the helmet would trap the liquid in a dark, warm environment against his skin. Given the amount of exercise he had gotten across various sword fights, let alone his experiments playing with fire, the helmet charitably smelled like something between a public gymnasium and a dumpster.
He slipped the helmet back over his head and wrinkled his nose. He suspected Nora’s advanced senses were getting all they could from him. It was a blessing she was polite enough to not say anything. Yet. Knowing her, she was probably biding her time to spring some sort of critical comment on him.
Above him, Tanloff became more and more visible in the sky. It would only be a matter of minutes before their sanctuary runes expired, then they would have a choice. They could either try to hurry back to Morganville and outrun Ishlar and his team, or they could wait for their runes to run out. Running might avoid the conflict, but at the same time, they wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to avoid Ishlar and scout ahead. There was a very real possibility they would run into some sort of monster in the wilds that could delay them long enough to land them in a three-way battle between the monster and Ishlar. Maybe it was the last year or so of Doctor Weathers giving Dan crap for always playing it safe, but he was sick of running. Still, it wasn’t entirely his decision.
“So,” he said, checking the straps on his armor to ensure that nothing would slip off at the last minute. “I would prefer to not let Ishlar chase us back into town like some sort of beaten dog, but I might be missing something. What’s everyone else’s vote?”
Nora snorted. “He’s an idiot with a lot of money and he is positively handing us self defense as an excuse. Even if he wasn’t coming for us, given my history with that ass, I’d probably be willing to go bandit to bring him down, so long as I didn’t think that there were going to be any witnesses. If you think that the haul from the silver mine is a lot, wait until we take his patron’s sovereigns from him.”
“I’m pretty sure our contract doesn’t give us a vote,” Emily glanced at Andrea before shrugging. “Even without your magic, I’m pretty sure that we could take him. Everyone knows that running across the wastes is an awful idea. That’s why teams hire rangers. I’m not about to discard the first rule of adventuring and run headlong into some sort of cosmic horror just because some pissant wants a fight. If he wants to take what’s ours, he can earn it.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Dan nodded, cracking his neck. “Plus, I wouldn’t mind having a second set of sanctuary runes, just in case we run into an issue. After having experienced a night out here, I believe I can firmly say I’d prefer to not be exposed to whatever the hell was prowling out there, if at all possible.”
The party checked their equipment and packed their camp gear. Then, one-by-one, they stood, waiting in pensive silence for the runes to run out of energy. There was no real room for strategy. Both sides were equally balanced, and there weren’t really any features to the landscape to exploit.
No, this fight wasn’t going to be a tactical masterpiece. Dan wasn’t going to wrack his brain out-thinking and out-positioning. As soon as both sets of runes ran out of power, a scrum was going to break out, and Dan was going to use his increased magical aptitude to replicate his performance in the arena. Simple as that.
The second the runes stopped powering the shield, Nora quickly gathered them from the circle around the campsite and together they walked over to Ishlar’s site. As they approached, Ishlar and his companions stood from where they had been lounging on a series of primitive sleeping bags around their campfire. Ishlar walked to the edge of the runes and grinned at them, his face taking on a sickly hue from the purple light of the barrier.
“Back for a rematch, Bird?” The giant man spat on the ground. “At least you’re not a coward, I suppose. There won’t be any practice weapons or arena rules to save you this time. This time I’m gonna kill you.”
Daniel frowned slightly. “Okay, I know we’re doing melodramatic speeches and everything, but are we both remembering the same fight? I took you down in under ten seconds. If it wasn’t for the arena rules, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because scavengers would be picking over your bones, and I would already have your mana. I’m only here because you made it obvious that you were going to make trouble for me, and I’d rather face any trouble head on rather than wait for you to come after me with a knife when I’m trying to take a nap. If you don’t want to fight, I’m happy to walk away.”
“I had you before they called that match on a technicality!” Ishlar picked up a large, dull grey club that looked worryingly like tungsten. “If the referee hadn’t stepped in, you would have been finished. Instead, Nora all but stole my sovereigns, and I aim to have them back along with a little mana from you as interest.”
The club worried Dan slightly. Tungsten was incredibly mana-conductive and referred to as mythril by the citizens of the Tellask Empire. In addition to being heavy and durable, skilled runescripters could put powerful enchantments into objects made of Tungsten. Gold and, to a lesser extent, silver filled the same role, but both were much cheaper and easier to work. The fact that Ishlar had a tungsten club, let alone the fact that he was able to heft and brandish it so easily, weren’t good signs. It was possible that a good portion of the man’s combat prowess relied upon the heavily-enchanted club. In that case, the fight in the arena with training weapons really wasn’t a good measure of the man’s ability. Still, that didn’t mean that he had to let the senseless bragging stand without comment.
“Is the technicality that I knocked you out cold?” Dan asked, drawing his blade and inspecting the edge. “I’m not really sure you can call that a technicality. I will say, though, if you could weaponize your ego, I don’t think I’ve met a warrior who could stand against you. Unfortunately for you, we’re stuck fighting in the real world where you will have to actually rely upon your own strength and skill, rather than your inflated opinion of yourself.”
Ishlar opened his mouth to respond but no sound came out. His eyes blazed with fury while a vein pulsed visibly on his forehead. Well, Dan thought to himself. You’ve successfully baited the musclebound psychopath. If he wasn’t going to attack you before, he certainly will now. Now the real question is how to avoid being smashed into paste by that enchanted club long enough to finish him off.
With a flicker of purple light, the humming of the sanctuary runes stopped. Immediately, Ishlar was surrounded by a shell of mana as he activated a spell shield. The enraged man held his club up in the air, golden runes igniting up and down its sides. Pressure settled on Dan’s shoulders as his feet sank into the rocky soil.
In his forearm, the gravity attunement stone began vibrating slightly under the influence of his opponent’s ability. With some difficulty, Dan shifted his feet into a defensive stance, his sword heavy as he raised it into a textbook guard position. His smile faded as he transferred weight from foot to foot, struggling under the extra pull of gravity weighing him down. That was new.
“Let’s see how you fare, now that I get to use all of my toys,” Ishlar snarled at him, experimentally swinging the club. “You seemed really keen on dancing back and forth the last time we fought. Let’s see how that works now that I’ve used a gravity blanket on you.”
Without responding verbally, Dan shot a Flame Jet at Ishlar’s face. It was too much to hope that the lance of burning gases would penetrate the spell shield, but in the dim light that came after night broke, it was more than enough to surprise the larger man into taking a step back. Dan took that opportunity to charge him and bounce a sword off of Ishlar’s spell shield. It barely rippled as it dispersed the kinetic force from his slash.
He frowned. That wasn’t supposed to happen. His peripheral vision caught sight of the rest of the party dueling Ishlar’s companions. Both sides had even numbers, and it looked like they were fighting careful, defensive battles. No help was coming, for either of them, until someone slipped up.
Ishlar responded with a horizontal double-handed swing of his club. Whatever magic was flowing through it made Ishlar fast, inhumanly so. Dan swung his sword up, trying to deflect it over his head with the help of a spatial shield. He connected, but it felt like striking a brick wall. With a little magical help and a whole lot of ducking, the blow sailed over his head, but Dan’s hands were already a little numb. Just one exchange, and he had almost lost his grip on the sword. Mentally, he made a note to avoid any further direct clashes with the club. When the brute swung that thing, it had enough momentum to end him. He was either going to dodge it or be turned into strawberry jam.
As the club swung past him, Dan noticed a brief fluctuation of mana and gravity just as Ishlar began recovering from the swing. Luckily, he was too shaken from the previous exchange to attack the larger man while he was overbalanced, because Ishlar managed to pull the club back into a guard position with surprising speed.
“Well, you’ve lasted one swing longer than I expected,” Ishlar boomed, a cruel grin on his face. “Spinebreaker here is a gift from my patron. Apparently, I have a rare affinity in gravity. It’s a waste of time for me to use magic directly. I don’t have years to waste losing my eyesight pouring over old grimoires when there’s money to be earned and women to be bedded, but once he gave me a proper focus, my power skyrocketed. Everyone looks down on clubs. Says they’re only good for hitting people, but they’re too awkward to block with. But I can almost double Spinebreaker’s weight when I swing and halve it when I need to move quickly. It took some getting used to, but I’ve been able to crush my share of assholes like you that have underestimated me.”
Dan kept his eyes on the club. Even without the shield, it would be a problem. It was fast, hit like a train, and Ishlar could use it for both offense and defense. With the shield, he was having a hard time seeing a path forward in the fight.
As humanity had learned from the aborted invasion, depending upon the quality of a spell shield, they could usually absorb ten to fifty shots from a rifle. If he was going to have to replicate that level of kinetic force while dodging a supersonic bar of tungsten, he wasn’t likely to have all that good of a day.
Ishlar swung again, this time one-handed. Dan fired another Flame Jet at him, activating the larger man’s spell shield as he tried to sidestep the diagonal blow. The distraction allowed him to escape, but as he prepared to counter attack, Ishlar’s free hand smashed into Dan’s face like a wrecking ball. He got a small amount of satisfaction out of instinctively triggering Shocking Fist, using his nose as a medium, but the sickening crunch that followed erased any warm feelings.
Dan’s vision narrowed and swam as he staggered backward. His face was partially numb from his previous spell, but the way blood flowed freely didn’t make him hopeful for the status of his nose. From somewhere, the roar of a jet engine or a freight train drowned out his surroundings. A gust of wind blew his short-cropped, matted hair to and fro. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. In the back of his mind, a voice screamed at him that something was wrong. He glanced at his free hand, drops of blood from his nose rhythmically stained it. He shook his head again, trying to clear it. Ishlar should have used his moment of distraction to finish him off by now; something must have happened. He stared up at the larger man and cocked his head, suddenly aware that some of the background noise was a voice.
“-tennek dar gasoon!” Ishlar’s left arm hung limply at his side as he screamed nonsense at Dan, red-faced. “Stak lask dar perrote!”
Dan blinked again, the combination of the nanites and the cold post-night air mostly clearing his vision. He ran his bloody hand through his hair. Shit. His helmet, translation function now permanently deactivated from the force of Ishlar’s punch, lay bent and warped several feet to his right.
