Valerie tried to fight against the man who sat on her back or push off the two holding her arms down. The three bandits left behind by their leader jumped the huntress while she was dumbfounded from the sudden disappearance of Samantha. They knocked her to the ground and kicked her knife out from her grip. She tried fighting back but was ruthlessly beaten every time eventually ending up in her current position. The monster power she used was gone and she couldn’t summon the rest with Tiger’s Will sitting a few feet away. She raged and cursed trying to claw or bite at her captors who sneered and laughed at her as she tried desperately to escape. From somewhere distant she could hear loud booms and crashes from an ongoing clash which served to bolster the huntress further yet no matter what she did she couldn’t break free. One of the bandits gripped her head and slammed it into the ground, rubbing her face into the dirt while the others laughed. She couldn’t see them but could hear their continuous jeers at her expense.
“I’ll kill them.”
She said in a whisper promising unparalleled revenge on these neanderthals should anything happen to Samantha.
“I’ll kill them all.”
It didn’t matter who or what it was, she would kill everyone if they took her best friend and confidant from her. Hot tears streamed down her face as she fought again and again making no headway. She had to get to Samantha, there was no one else who could protect her friend but her. She HAD to be there.
Meanwhile, Samantha ran full sprint at Harry before pivoting to the left while tossing out black chain after chain towards the big man. The spear like chains surged towards the bandit leader but were effortlessly batted away with a lazy free hand or completely destroyed by his hammer. Even if she had improved over time, her shadows were still pitifully weak and were no better than being struck by a tennis ball which the bandit leader had no problem shrugging off. His only real problem was hitting the infuriatingly quick and dexterous girl as she zigged and zagged, bobbed and weaved, dodged, ducked, dipped, dived and dodged again. Harry was spry for his age and his massive weapon could tear the foundations from a castle if he could just hit the blasted thing.
“Stay still!”
He commanded in a frustrated voice as he swept his hammer around in a large arc. Samantha decided not to heed the order and used chains from her own person to wrap around the weapon in an attempt to halt the bandit leaders’ movements. What actually ended up happening was the far lighter shadow user being dragged off her feet and through the air. Fortunately, it was not the first time she had been in such a position and quickly adapted retracting the chains and pulling her towards Harry using both her own and his momentum.
“Single style: Hammer Toss!”
One impromptu move name later and Samantha was rocketing towards the bandit leader with her knees bent and feet poised to meet the thief’s nose. No such gathering of smelly appendages occurred however as Harry raised a hand to grab onto the shadow user and most likely smash her into pulp. At the last second however, Samantha conjured another set of chains that pulled her away from the guaranteed death although the sudden shift in forces nearly made her lose her lunch. Being the sole target for her opponent was troublesome, to say the least, and meant that a lot of her hit and run tactics were useless but it did have another advantage.
“Bang, bang, bang!”
Without pause she blasted Harry with concentrated waves of her eery aura to try and disorientate the bandit. The mental attack appeared to land as the boss man put up his guard and froze for a moment giving Samantha the time to heroically run for it. She wasn’t too prideful to admit she was in a bad spot and had very little chance of actually beating this guy alone. With Valerie however he was toast, she believed unequivocally that together they would make mincemeat of Mr ‘The Hammer’. Although she also believed that no one was immune to her eery aura bar herself which was accurate to an extent, but everyone had their tolerances. Before Samantha had made it more than a few metres from the terrifyingly tough leader, she heard then immediately felt a titanic crash as the ground beneath her feet shook and crumbled. The hair on the back of her neck rose and she desperately threw herself to the side just in time to dodge the impact of Harry’s own armoured boots as they alongside the rest of the man slammed into the spot she had been standing a second prior.
“Tut, tut, lass. Running away?”
He taunted as he raised his hammer up high and swung down once again narrowly missing his target as Samantha was pulled from her prone position by a series of shadow chains. Performing another overhead swing, Harry slammed his weapon into the ground creating a mini shockwave that rattled the shadow users’ bones and disrupted her mystical chains. Her momentum remained however and Samantha skid along the ground until kicking back onto her feet to summon yet more chains. The onslaught peppered the bandit leader with poorly aimed strike after poorly aimed strike although even if they could hit any vital spots, they would accomplish the sum total of zero to the power of zero. While her shadows “occupied” Harry, Samantha attempted another tactical retreat only to be stopped as the massive hammer came whizzing by with the air alone pushing her back from safety. The hunk of metals owner capitalized on the momentary lull and shoulder charged directly into Samantha, the first attack he had landed upon her that stuck as evidenced by the disgusting crack that erupted out from the shadow user. The combatants became entangled with Harry using Samantha like a human shield as he ran straight for his weapon intent to impale her on the handle. Before he could land another blow however, the shadow user clapped both hands around his skull and stared directly into Harry’s eyes. The concentrated waves of fear earlier had tickled at his senses but peering deep into the abyss that was her irises was something else that completely shattered the bandit leaders focus allowing Samantha an opportunity to free herself from the man and back away. She tried to make another run for it but, with her punctured and now freshly broken leg, couldn’t muster up the energy to make it more than a few paces away. Harry himself gave her some leeway as he stepped further back to pick up his tossed weapon and assess the shadow user. With the precious few seconds Samantha had been granted she conjured a fresh pair of chains wrapping them around the leg that was bent at a weird angle and used all the force she could muster to force the bone near enough back in place.
“AAAAAAGH!”
She screamed unashamedly from the pain and almost blacked out as a result. A distant huntress also heard the scream and felt fury like never before push her to fight harder, unfortunately many more bandits were encircling her and keeping the warrior pinned down. Back at the clash of all clashes, Samantha was breathing heavily and could barely stay up on her feet as she blearily looked at her opponent. Harry The Hammer, or so he claimed to be the jury was still out on that one, stood casually with his weapon hefted upon his shoulder once again. Both knew this “war of attrition” wouldn’t last as she couldn’t land enough hits to count and he only needed at most one more to finish things off. If Samantha was any smarter, she might have tried bargaining or pleading with the man to let her go but in her mind she didn’t need to. She wouldn’t die here so there was nothing left to do but fight and either win or have some third party come in to save the day and Samantha hated last minute Deus Ex Machina’s unless they were sufficiently foreshadowed or funny.
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The stalemate between the two combatants dragged on for another precious few seconds that gave both a chance to recuperate, one physically and the other mentally. Harry was not the brightest tool in the shed either and so was back to fighting shape in no time which he showcased by slamming his weapon into the ground yet again. Samantha barely dodged the sudden shockwave, by falling to the side and quickly retaliated by conjuring a chain to coil around her attacker’s legs but Harry smashed the tether before they could grow taut. She also tried summoning one to wrap around the hammer itself, but Harry was able to yank his weapon through the links breaking them easily. She was beginning to regret not taking Smitty up on his offer for an additional weapon, she couldn’t exactly be an unstoppable wrecking ball if she was trying to knock down an immovable object. No point not to try though and Samantha painfully forced herself pack to her feet to run for the bandit leader. Using all the focus she had left; she pictured the small areas between Harry’s armour as well as the crook of his elbows and the back of his knees. The problem with people’s shadows was they moved far too much for a solid chain to be formed, Harry however was like a mountain, huge and most importantly unmoving. It wasn’t going to be easy to summon her power through the man’s shadow, but nothing was impossible for Samantha N/A Trapper.
As the boss man reared back for another violent swing, she struck conjuring chains that erupted from all angles of Harry firing into the ground and his own shadow forcing the man to stop in place. It would only hold for a second, but it had to be enough as Samantha ran forward, pushing herself faster than she had ever gone. As she approached the bandit leader, she summoned a chain from the shadow of her feet using the erupting links as a springboard that shot her high into the air. With barely any effort, Harry broke through his bindings and looked up to catch sight of the expanded cloak Samantha wore floating freely overhead. He failed to find the girl however as she had unclipped her favourite memento using it as a distraction while she rose higher above. Thanks to her light gear and borderline underweight physique, she was able to rise quite high which gave her a good view of the surrounding forest and the village that could have been her home. She didn’t focus on the scenario for long as gravity finally regained its grasp on the shadow user dragging her back into the fight. As she fell, she tucked herself into a ball twisting and falling through the air at a rapid pace. The human cannon ball that was Samantha rocketed towards the ground and before Harry could react, she outstretched her less damaged leg striking the bandit leader in a brutal overhead kick. For the briefest of moments Samantha thought that she had won, that she had landed a deafening blow to the boss man and would have the opportunity she desperately needed to abscond. When a rugged hand reached up and grasped onto her however, she knew the game was over.
Harry wrenched at the exposed leg pulling it and its owner around in a wide arc before he slammed them against the ground. Samantha was thrown into the earth with so much force she bounced, teeing her up for Harry to knock the shadow user away with his hammer. She was launched with explosive force skipping across the earth several times before skidding to a stop ten of metres away. Her body was riddled with cuts and bruises as well as a few more broken bones, yet she tried to pick herself up regardless. The pain coursing through her body was like nothing she had ever felt before and was most definitely going in the top five most painful encounters of her life. Harry meanwhile was unfazed by the strike to his noggin, casually walking up to the broken shadow user.
“You’ve got a couple aspects I see. Lucky, lucky you. Here’s the rub though. Monsters, anyone can take those down if you have the will to do it. Us aspects users, however? Only we can take out our own kind.”
He finished his statement as he reached Samantha, raising his hammer up with one hand he didn’t hesitate to swing down one last time. The blow was caught however as several shadow chains intercepted the strike creating an interlocking web of black links with the summoner herself at the certain and physically pushing back to no avail. Harry respected how hard his opponent fought on, in another life he may have liked to grab drinks with the lass, if she was older that is. Bandit he may be no one would dare call Harry the Hammer a creep.
“You’ve probably guessed by now; I’ve got the aspect of the hammer. What you didn’t know…”
Harry set another hand on his weapon and felt his mana course through the metal.
“…Was back in the day, I was called Harry the Smasher!”
Suddenly the head of his hammer grew to three metres in length and breadth completely encompassing Samantha. She pushed back and forced her shadows to hold with all her might but one after the other they snapped and cracked under the pressure. Death was coming, about to crash down upon her but Samantha couldn’t accept it. This wasn’t how she would die; she knew it, she was destined to die somewhere else, somewhen else. She had so much to do, so much to see, so many people she had yet to meet. Her mind raced with ways out of this and came up blank. All that she could see was the dark shadow that came crashing down upon her. In the last moments before her chains gave out, she felt something tingle at the back of her head and was able to get off one last sentence, the last words of Samantha Trapper.
“Ruh Roh”
With one monumental crash, Harry’s hammer sunk deep into the ground causing a small earthquake in the process. The reverberations shook the surrounding area and even caused the perpetrator to shake violently. After a minute the tremors stopped, the nearby pit that was once a mine growing silent once again. Satisfied, Harry shrunk his weapon back to its normal enormous size while ignoring the strain against his pitiful mana reserves. He was getting too old for this, but the looted money was good, and he didn’t have to follow any orders out here bar his own. Hefting his weapon back up he was confused to find the crater empty, no blood stain or pancakes to be seen. Were Harry a scholar he may wonder if he had atomized the girl, but the unbothered man just shrugged his shoulders, called it a fluke and set off back to the village without a second thought to the life he had just taken.
He arrived back to the town square soon after to find a crowd of his men taunting the other adventurer who was tied up against a post. They cheered as one drew closer before backing away as the dishevelled girl tried to attack him with her teeth. Harry was disappointed, he tried so hard to instil the right kind of morals into his men and set a good example. He completely ignored the fact he had just killed a teenage girl, but it had been done so respectfully. Walking up to the crowd, his presence alone was enough to halt the unruly lot who scattered bar the three he set to watch the girl earlier. Valerie stared up at Harry, her eyes red and full of unrestrained fury. The bandit leader casually tossed a ragged cloak at the huntress’s feet.
“Apologies miss. This is all that’s left.”
Valerie stared down at Samantha’s cloak her rage and fury replaced with complete bewilderment. Samantha was gone? That can’t be right, Valerie was supposed to protect her, she promised she would protect her. Without warning, her legs gave out from under her and she slid down the pole, her mouth open and gaze fixated on the cloak. She barely noticed when Harry crouched down to examine her face again. He scratched at his chin and finally remembered exactly who she reminded him of.
“I got it! Jimmy right?”
Valerie’s absent eyes met the bandit leader, she couldn’t follow his words or focus on anything else anymore.
“Now that takes me back, old Jimmy, what a hoot. Me and him used to do contracts all the time when we were young. You know he used to stiff me on the reward? Said we were getting fifty/fifty, but he was taking a decent sixty percent! Oh the argument we had over that little “slip up”. Ah those were the days.”
It had been a long time since Harry thought about his adventuring days and the many hijinks he and his best mate Jimmy used to get up to. He wondered if that old bag of bones Margaretta was still hanging around the guild hall, she hated him and Jimmy something fierce but then again who didn’t she hate? He then remembered how he and Jimmy had parted ways, the ungrateful so and so going off with that elven bitch. It was a long time ago though and what was the use in holding onto old grudges. Harry looked the catatonic girl up and down, a pang of guilt tugging at his heart for the way he and his men treated his old friend’s kin. He patted Valerie on the shoulder and gave a half-hearted apology before standing back up he addressed his men.
“Boys, you are to treat miss adventurer hear kindly ya hear? Tie her to a tree and help the others get packed up. I want out of here today. Got it?”
He received a series of ‘right boss’, to which he nodded at his loyal men’s dedication. Scooping the left-over cloak up, Harry made to walk off and perform last rites. The least he could do was bury it as a show of respect from one aspect user to another. He was stopped however by the sudden vitriolic words of his captive.
“I’ll kill you…”
Valerie hissed out rising back to her feet.
“I’ll KILL YOU!”
She screamed, tearing though her bindings and rushing at the boss man. His men made to intervene but weren’t fast enough as Harry himself smacked Valerie aside with a mighty back hand. The huntress landed roughly against the earth some distance away, her crumpled and battered body unable to get back up as she sobbed into the dirt. Harry frowned, he knew he should just deal with her here and now lest she come back later with a vendetta or a platoon of veteran adventurers at her back. Looking over the pitiful girl and remembering his old friend, he just couldn’t do it. She was entitled to her anger and had every right to try to take it out on him. When the day finally came that she was ready he would face her fairly and give her the peace she was so desperate for. He also hoped that whatever afterlife she ended up in she could meet up with Samantha again, wherever that was.