The restricted space of the alley worked to Keystone’s advantage, keeping movement more or less lateral. Glith would have to get through him to retrieve his precious sword, and he had a clear exit if it was needed. Not that Keystone intended to use an exit without an incredibly pressing reason; he meant to tear the creature apart. 

The broad man knew what Glith could do with a sword. He had seen it firsthand. What he hadn’t seen was how well the undead knight could manage with his fists. Keystone had been a brawler, and later a pugilistic artist, since a very young age. It was one of two things he did very, very well. It was his intent to give a crash course in this subject just now. 

He began strong, reserving just a little to gauge his opponent. The brass around his fingers glinted coldly in the indirect light of the alleyway as he sunk into one of Shein-Fang’s recently taught attack stances, and pressed into the dark creature. 

Keystone came to realize immediately that Glith was no stranger to a fistfight. Faster than he, [i]stronger[/i] than he, with the inexhaustible stamina of one without requirements for food or rest, plus more time to practice than his whole lifespan many times over. This was not going to be an easy fight. Keystone could only hope his natural abilities and learned techniques would even out this lopsided fight. 

Glith opened, intercepting Keystone’s line of aggression with a telling strike. Unable to sidestep due to forward momentum, the fighter raised his armored forearms to absorb. Metal rang against metal, muffled by the cloth wrappings around his bracers, rattling his bones and numbing his actions; a perilous position to be in at the outset of the scuffle. This one powerful blow was quickly followed up by a series of jabs, coordinated and fluid. Keystone evaded with ease, but had a horrifying feeling that the dead man was merely feeling him out – gauging his reflexes and level of skill before moving in for a swift and undramatic end to the event.

Seizing an opening while Glith recovered from his combination, Keystone managed to slip a solid forefist strike through his defenses. The attack connected solidly, rocking his larger opponent if but for a half second. The thing seemed to smile, if such an expression were possible for the skinless creature. He was toying with the fleshy mortal, and they both knew it. 

Leaping on the opportunity, Glith pressed onward. Overconfidence got the better of him, overextending a single, powerful hit. Keystone responded to the sudden opening with a double-fisted downward swipe, striking nothing but air as Glith unbalanced himself evading the blow. Coming back from the disadvantage, the skeletal antagonist stepped into a full swing – cleanly blocked by the talented brawler, but designed to open his center defense. Glith slammed his fist into Keystone’s sternum, causing pain to flash across his chest like spiderwebs of stinging electricity. Keystone grabbed his wrist (wrist armor, at the very least), and threw a wild swing, striking his armor without much physical conviction behind the impact. The numb vibrating sensation in his arms was starting to recede, but the battle was still monstrously uphill. 

All the same, Keystone could not run. If this creature lay claim to his sword again, more people would be in danger. More people would die. And this mysterious entity known as Kaylee would again be imprisoned, whatever she really was. He searched for any advantage he could use, in his environment, in himself… and found an answer in both. 

Keystone possessed a unique connection to Elemental Earth; it was an ability he hated to use actively, thusly doing so only rarely and out of sight of others. It was no secret that the burly man had a distrust for wizards, spellcasters of any kind, really. While his powers were not true spellcraft, Keystone didn’t see much of a difference in the practical outcome. Feeling very much like a hypocrite, he drew into his connection with the Earth. The worked stone beneath his feet was not a proper conductor of this connection, but the exposed, hard-packed dirt bared beneath unrepaired cobblestone further back in the alley would do just fine. Foregoing any play at a martial art or streetfighting trick, the determined pugilist stepped into Glith’s range of attack voluntarily, and pressed his whole body into shoving the larger combatant back. 

The Undead Knight toppled like a house of cards and went rolling far back. Keystone rushed forward, planting his feet firmly onto the exposed earth. He immediately felt stronger, more steady. Reinforced by the solid ground beneath him. He just hoped it would be enough to even things up. 

As it turns out, it wasn’t quite. Apparently sensing a change in the human, Glith drew upon power of his own, raising serrated sections all about his armor; making punches (incoming or outgoing) much more hazardous for Keystone. Glith rebounded from the ground effortlessly and struck back, letting his new armament lead the way. 

With renewed vigor, Glith and Keystone both exchanged a flurry of attacks, savagely beating and cutting each other. Glith was content to open minor cuts and deeper flesh wounds into the skilled fighter, doing what we could to wear the man down. One disadvantage to the living – they had finite reserves of blood and energy, a weakness the more powerful Glith did not share. Mercilessly, the undead warrior continued his campaign of skin ripping and blood-letting, effectively waylaying Keystone’s sudden advantage of earthen stability. 

Keystone revised his tactics to attempt a strategic destruction of the knight’s armor, striking the same spot repeatedly as soon as he could create an opening. He was beginning to feel the effects of blood loss, his liquid life draining away and taking his vigor with it. He had to make a power move, and fast. 

A sly feint opened Glith’s defenses, which Keystone exploited with an explosion of pounding fists and brass against steel. His hands, now bloody and battered from repeatedly pounding the serrated armor, finally managed to break off a sizeable section of plating. Foregoing tactical defense, Keystone poured on the damage, trying to ignore the strikes and sharps of Glith’s counterattacks. To an extent, he was successful. Keystone knew that he had to finish this quickly, or he was doomed, and soon. Were he unsuccessful and very lucky, Glith would merely kill him otherwise.

Finally, the armor cracked open wide enough exploit. Keystone warded off a downward strike with a glancing upperblock and punched through; fingers wrapped around bone, his brass knuckles lodging into vertebrae. He planted his other elbow into Glith’s neck and yanked, hard and sharp, at what he gripped inside the steel plating of the formerly living juggernaut. 

Glith’s spine came out of the hole with his hand, clean and whole. So did his pelvis, many of his ribs, shoulderblades, and fractured shards of limbs. Were he a creature of flesh, it could be evenly stated that his entrails became his extrails. That which filled his armor was now laid bare upon the ground, for the most part, and the nearly hollow armor bent backwards with graceless pause, unwilling to drop, unable to stand. With grim satisfaction, Keystone sank to one knee, letting his injury and weariness wash over him. 

And then the laughter began. 

Dark, hollow laughter, birthed of superior knowledge of the situation than the mortal, bleeding man possessed. Keystone raised his eyes just in time to see Glith’s armor straighten, dents popping out one at a time like ants exploding under the scrutiny of sunlight through concave glass. 

"…they say there is more to a man than his body..." he chuckled, beginning the intonations of spellwork. 

Fear splashed across Keystone’s psyche, the terror of a man facing down an enemy he is almost certain he cannot defeat. He quickly composed himself, realizing that panic would remove the slim chance for survival completely. If he could not take the abomination down in a traditional way, he would simply have to stay alive long enough to batter the thing into scrap and bone meal. 

The brawler, coming to a temporary peace with his talents as an earthshaper, dug his hands into two bricks in the wall next to him as if they were potter’s clay, and pulled back crude gloves of raw stone. With an aggressive growl, he launched an attack of desperation at the reformed Glith. He intended to see how well the undead beast could cast spells without a functional skull or mandible. 

He either couldn’t, or didn’t, realize that Glith was not casting anything but a lure, designed to get him in closer. The instant Keystone closed the distance, the armor-that-was-Glith dropped the charade and advanced to grapple the stalwart pugilist, wrapping his bladed arms around his torso and pressing him into the sharpest bits of the animated armor’s breastplate. Keystone, arms still free, rained heavy blow after heavy blow onto the previously undamaged helm, shattering bone and staving in the worked steel, seemingly to no useful effect. 

All of this destruction of Glith’s physical form seemed useless, serving only to quicken Keystone’s blood and hasten his inevitable unconsciousness. Now he was trapped, pinned against a torturous plate of perforating steel by two more torturous plates of perforating steel. He was not long for this world as a living, breathing entity unless he broke this hold. 

Calling upon what reserves of concentration he had to him, Keystone shaped the earth beneath them, rapidly growing a spike of dirt and stone to impale the merciless bastard. His aim fell off the mark by mere inches, instead putting the spike between Glith and himself. The magically sharpened bits of the undead knight’s arms tore deeply into Keystone’s upper back as he was pulled away, spilling a slow red waterfall down his critically damaged form. 

Now free to move, the stone shaping brawler put a hand to the mortared wall beside him, and channeled his intentions into it. Stone answered, bowing to his request; bowing so completely as to collapse a part of itself onto the off-balanced animated armor that was Glith. Not the complete pile-on that Keystone had hoped, but enough to injure and buy precious time. 

That time was spent wrapping his arms around the rock pillar, enticing the earth again to enter into a partnership with him. The earth responded with due haste, covering Keystone with hard yet mobile stone. It covered and pressed his wounds closed, preventing more loss of his life’s blood, armoring him against all but the heaviest of physical harm. A golem to view, Keystone expended the rest of his waning energy bringing the fight back to Glith, while he could still stand. 

Glith began digging himself out from under the collapsed wall, clearly disturbed at the turn of events. How does a mortal, unversed in anything arcane in nature, able to access this level of elemental control? It flies in the face of common and uncommon scholarly magical thought, and yet this uneducated, slum-born brawler knocked an immortal to the ground without actually making contact. Glith did not have much time to continue his speculation as the obstinate human was upon him, hammering down his physical form the moment it tried to rise. 

Several times Keystone repeated this action, intent upon disrupting the integrity of the armor in hopes that it would “give up the ghost”, as it were. These efforts were in vain. Jumping from plan to plan, theory to theory as to what may finally end this fight and finally put down this thing like the rabid dog it was, a thought occurred, as if coached – something inside the armor must be anchoring Glith’s spirit within it. 

He stepped back, allowing Glith to rise, simultaneously elongating the stone on his hands into crude, slightly curved spikes. The moment the creature’s torso was in sight, Keystone pickaxed three gargantuan holes into it in rapid succession. Glith rose completely, working on a fully defensive strategy. Keystone’s subsequent attempt to damage was met with failure, but his undead opponent was starting to give ground to the swiftly tiring human. If Glith could only outlast him for a moment or three longer, the fight would be his. 

Unless Keystone got lucky. 

“Not so certain anymore, are we, Sunshine?” taunted Keystone through ragged breaths. That’s when he saw it: a glimpse of something red and out of place, viewed through the holes recently driven through the corpse’s armor. This was his point of attack. It had to be, or he was dead. 

Keystone threw an ineffective feint, transparent, made so by mounting fatigue. Even in his state, Glith saw through it, intercepted the set-up attack, and knocked the large man back. They both stumbled backwards; Keystone gathering himself to launch another attack, Glith readying a spell. 

Sensing another fake casting to draw him in, Keystone approached with ragged caution. He threw two more attacks, evaded by the still spell-readying Glith. This action convinced the unsteady fighter that this spell was genuine, and likely very powerful. Now or never time, he reasoned as he threw what was probably the last of himself into the next exchange. 

Keystone exhales slightly, fighting to focus his eyes on his target. He steps in, a light jab leading the way. Not serviceable enough to cause damage, it did just enough to allow another, more solid hit to land, disrupting Glith’s concentration and throwing his arms wide. 

The moment came together perfectly, at long last. An opening, showing the brief glimpse of crimson behind the armor. His attack was lined up and already in motion before he even consciously realized he was throwing it. The curved stone spike of his elemental armor’s glove penetrating the ragged hole in Glith’s steel carapace, jutting upward at a different angle than before. A feeling of subtle resistance through the living stone, followed by a sudden giving way. It was done. 

Glith watched in horror, horror that nobody could see, as Keystone found a hole in his defense and aimed for the blood seal inside of his armor. The spike drove right in and through the plate, breaking the structure of the seal. The old knight immediately felt his connection to the armor fade, falling away within the space it took the monk's armored hand to penetrate and destroy the seal. The knight jerked his head up to face Keystone one last time:

"Fool."

The creature known as Glith, sacker of cities and commander of an army of the dead, fell motionless, sliding down to the rubble and dirt beneath him. 

Keystone took a moment for himself to drag his belongings back into the alley, to the scene of his fight. His elemental stone armor falling away, he breathed deeply, and immediately regretted it. That was the feeling of injured ribs, among other things, cracked or broken was anybody’s guess. His chest filled readily without any gurgling sounds, so at least his lungs weren’t punctured if they were breaks. Several cuts covered his body at varying depths and degrees of severity, and his back burned with what promised to be a nasty set of scars, if he didn’t bleed out first. His hands were a mess. Butcher’s work, by the looks of them; he wouldn’t be able to tell more until the bleeding slowed and he was able to clean up some. 

With a sigh, Keystone sat heavily between his gear and the remains of Glith’s armor, all on the uncovered ground of the alleyway. Just a half-hour, he’d be rested enough to try to find help for himself. He leaned back on the solid wall of the building opposite the one that partially collapsed, and tried to slow his heartbeat. No small task, after his ordeal. 

Keystone kicked Glith’s armor, part of it at least, closer to himself, curious about the piece of critical red inside. He peered in, wondering what it was he had hit, in case another thing like this should happen to occur. Information is vital. He took a good look, before muttering, “Well, sod me sideways…”

A barely recognizable scribble of blood stained the inside of the collar, the remains of some kind of magic. Due to the damage inflicted by the last attack, Keystone was unable to tell what shape the blood was in or what it may have represented, but he got the feeling it was intended for magical binding, evident by Glith's recent presence.  

The moment Keystone tossed the armor back to the earth, the steel shards and bent carcass shattered, falling apart in front of him into tiny pieces. The remains of the plate that bore the blood stayed intact, leaving some larger armor shards (the size of a fist) on the ground. At that moment, Keystone felt Kaylee's presence return to the forefront of his mind, radiating anger at the sight of the ruined armor. Also in that moment, the damaged fighter got the distinct feeling that the armor didn't fall apart on its own. He collected the chunk of steel with the blood markings, and regarded it carefully before slumping back against the wall.

As if to reinforce what he had spoken before the fight began, Keystone repeated a single sentence with sad defiance:

“His name was Raa Tel’Nimras.” 

Keystone leaned his head back, grateful again for the exposed ground. Its presence beneath him would prevent him from bleeding to death, until he regained the will to stand.