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Rabbitconfusion
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Artemis Arts
THE ADORATION
Arty Fox
Phase
Fight against some wall-jumpers
Location: Within the city of Relouse
It seemed that Sakar had survived the encounter with Horik The Golden, or rather Horik The Dead now, with only minor injuries that did not impeed the horse's ability to keep carrying its rider around at a much quicker pace than the latter could have done on his own. This did not mean that anything was over in the Witchwood though as the other monster whose name Otios did not even know at this point had clearly survived and was now strolling around unseen, something that felt quite discomforting after their initial encounter. Still there was not really anything left for the Yasoi to do here, simply because he himself was not in the best of states anymore and there were no chances left to avoid brutally open encounters as this one and he clearly was not trained for these.
So it was even before the general call to retreat towards the city that Otios was already headed towards a northern gate of Relouse in order to get in before it would be locked down for anyone. He could keep assisting the Parrench' cause from the city walls just as good as in the open field as things were right now, and going all around Relouse in order to seek treatment or to try and treat others in the encampments of the Grande Armee in the east would have been a move way to costly in terms of time.
The Yasoi found it easy to dislike the place's layout once inside. He had never seen Relouse inside out truly before, but hell was this place cramped! Trees simply could not grow as close to each other as one could build houses next to each other, so any traditional Yasoi settlement probably would never become this densily populated as a big human city. Less dense was certainly also less efficient in terms of transport, but the tightly packed neighbourhoods were easy fodder for whatever kind of projectile found its way over the high walls. Once a large scale fire would break out, things would become unbearable pretty soon he thought!
Otios was quick to leave Sakar in the hopefully capable hands of a stable boy so his mount would not be in the way of marching troops or panicking inhabitants of which there clearly were many, but even before his hurry to find someone to at least make a brief inspection of his injuries, the Yasoi's fine ears picked up something very different than screams of agony and yelled orders: the unmistakable sound of an arrow whizzing through the air. In the corner of his view, Otios could see a lightly armed man making a protective move too late and collapsing with the projectile sticking out of his shirt.
Laughter and words sounding amused, but spoken in an unfamiliar language could be heard coming from one of the nearby rooftops, but by the time Otios had identified the problem and sent a thunderbolt towards its source, the Eskandr wall jumpers had already moved away by means of force.
Great! Now they were both outside and inside the city, and it seemed the defenders had either not even noticed yet or were too busy with other things to deal with the intruders! Not really knowing what he should do about it, Otios sprinted towards a nearby house and squeezed through the open door neither caring about what the building really was nor whether his owner would agree to his presence. The streets had just become a lot more dangerous. He sought the staircase and did not stop running upwards until he found himself at a dead in the attic.
Nothing to be heard from the other side of the roof tiles. At least nothing indicating the weight of an adult person walking. Otios felt safe to push out a few of the large tiles himself in order to gain access to the outside. If these Eskandr preferred staying above street level -- which admittedly was a quite preferable strategy given the city was crawling with Parrench forces and nobody had apparently expected such an intrusion to happen --, then he'd have to do the same thing in order to catch them. If only he...
What felt like an infernal gust of wind coming out of nowhere laughed at Otios' attempt to keep the collateral damage to anonymous property minimal and instantly created a hole large enough for him to just walk through standing upright and with arms stretched out. It also sent him rear first onto the wooden attic floor again. So... there was at least one force mage, right ? And he landed on the edge of the newly created hole, greeting the Yasoi with some unintelligible Eskandr gibberish that, unknown to Otios, roughly translated to "Hello there! Trying to play hero ?" The wall-jumping warrior looked at the Yasoi with a pair of piercing blue eyes fully integrated into an elaborate pattern of war paint that momentarily blurred in Otios eyes as he recovered from the impact. Then he drew his sword and jumped into the room, a quick end to the fight only being averted by Otios rolling on the floor, not laughing.
Both silver staffs were quickly in his hands, but this was an attic. Nearly everything here was wood or stone, no wet soil and no time to prepare anything else that would grant him the blessing of being conductive. Otios' view made a quick excursion towards the staircase for any other floor in this house would have been preferable to this one, but it seemed the Eskandr was aware of this fact as well and eager to prevent that from happening. Another small lightning strike was sent on its way towards the Eskandr as the latter rushed in to attack with his bare weapon, but either its wielder had anticipated that from happening or launching another blast while charging in was his standard approach. The air forced the lightning's ionized gas apart, causing it to scorch parts of the wooden beams supporting the ceiling instead of hitting the attacker.
It sometimes was a good thing to be already pretty much with one's back to the wall as the force blast did not manage to topple Otios over a second time either this way, leaving him enough situational awareness to perform a masterpiece of beginner's luck by parrying with his silfer staff. Sort of a successful parry as the Eskandr's blade scraped along the staff's smooth surface and found its way into some of Otios' fingers that weren't shielded by a crossguard just as electricity was brute forced the other way round through the wall-jumper's weapon body. Again... the wooden floor they were standing on was really not suited for this, but it was enough current to at least cause some serious pain and lack of muscle control in the warrior's armed hand.
Otios did not really know if all of the fingers on his right hand were still attached to his body, but he certainly felt the grip around the silver staff there weakening rapidly. Staying close to the walls did appear like a good strategy though as it took away all degrees of freedom necessary for him to be hurled through the room by another blast. As long as the walls themselves were sturdy enough. The Eskandr warrior, still struggling with some irregularities caused in his heartbeat, thought about the same and put it to the test. It took him quite a few moments to prepare the spell, but nothing could have prepared Otios ears for the sudden pain that absolutely outweighed the feeling of fresh bruises on his back as the latter had been slammed against the now buckled wall. He could not hear how all the items around him were sent flying as there was only the monotonous, beeping sound of an acoustic overload having occurred.
The inevitable recoil had sent the Eskandr flying backwards as well though, so now the two opponents found them a room's worth of distance away from each other and the wall-jumper seemed to suffer from a moment of exhaustion, too. That kind of violence had been strenuous, but his seven-and-a-half-foot enemy was bleeding badly from his hand and from his ears a bit, too! What chance could that kind of an untrained Yasoi still have with electricity not having done the job that well so far ? The wall-jumper grinned sadistically.
The floor now was a mess of broken tiles and items that had hung on the wall or been arranged in open crates or barrels. One thing got Otios' attention immediately: A poker! It really wasn't like the Yasoi had any confidence in him wielding that better in a melee than his staffs or a proper weapon, but it was made of solid iron and longer than anything else he had at hand, thereby giving a lot more distance! Otios used his long legs to get his foot onto the poker, dragging it closer to himself so to have an easier time picking up quickly as the Eskandr started moving in for another, non-magical attack.
Otios had to put most of poker's weight into his left hand use the right more for balancing things out on the other end. He knew that he would not be able to main proper control for long, but he also knew that such a large metal item was suitable for some amplification. As the wall-jumper approached with his sword at the ready, the atmospheric gases surrounded the poker were stripped of their electrons. A thin, but violent cloud of plasma formed around the metal as it was mercilessly propelled by Otios' mind and imprisoned in a strong magnetic field surrounded the makeshift weapon. It was like fire, just a lot hotter, denser and somewhat controllable, even if the sharp noises and the aggressive colors coming from it did suggest otherwise. The intense and unshielded light emitted from so many electrons combining with their aroms and being ripped off them again hurt in both his own and the wall-jumper's eyes, but the latter continued his attack anyway.
The poker lacked a crossguard just as much as the silver staffs from before and his enemy's capability to wield such a large weapon was severely impaired as well, so why should a proud Eskandr warrior like him stop now that he had his obviously inexperienced foe already halfway down to the knees ? The fancy whatever-it-was around the poker didn't worry him too much for he was confident in his ability to avoid it -- or to just ram his way through it. It was the latter option the Eskandr tried in his rage, but as Otios' grip around the poker started to give way under the pressure of Eskandr muscle and the blade came closer and closer to his skin, the wall-jumper realized his mistake: Eskandr steel started to melt somewhere between a thousand and two thousand degrees and he had just forced his sword into something far hotter than that! The magnetic fields kept the storm away from the poker running along its center, but not from other metallic intruders.
The Eskandr could see how his continued pressure no longer caused Otios to give way, but for his own blade to start folding inwards towards himself before the major part of it dropped to the floor along with molten slag altogether. Now the wooden floor between their feet was on fire for real, but more importantly the poker, now no longer held back by any opposing force, bounced back and burned through the wall-jumper's neck with ease.
The iron captured from the Eskandr's weapon caused the storm hovering a couple of inches away from Otios' hands to emit even more different colors than before, but as hypnotizing and fascinating as it looked, he could just feel that he had to end it soon. If not for the sake of preserving his magical energy reserves, then for the sake of not burning his eyes who had to look at it continuously. Just as he was about to finally leave the room however before the fire would start to consume it, he noticed a heavy thud behind his back that made the floor beneath his feet vibrate slightly.
"Thoralf! You're alright ?" it came out in a rough voice and a familiar tongue the Yasoi was still only barely able to hear. One of the wall-jumper's colleagues had started to worry about his comrade, yet just as he saw Thoralf decaptated and in the process of burning up, his vision was blinded by a brilliant, unidentified object coming at him. With Otios no longer caring about maintaining containment, the storm exploded and burned the other Eskandr enough for him to lose balance on the severely damaged roof. With a scorchingly hot and heavy poker right behind him, the wall-jumper crashed onto the streets below.
Otios salvaged his silver staffs rushed down the stairs the best he still could. He felt in absolutely no shape to deal with a third wall-jumper, but hopefully that had managed to scare them off -- or at least raise a big red flag towards the defenders so they could deal with the remaining intruders themselves. Also he had seriously failed at preventing any property damage in the end, had he ?