[https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/512595944613740556/1202027211528622100/SOLITAIRE.png?ex=65d53093&is=65c2bb93&hm=e2cd4b5a45972f8ffdff079cb79141019a4638abf121a36458f3f4fb27932247&=&format=webp&quality=lossless&width=499&height=499]
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Xangô POV: Day 41
Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper
Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper
Solitaire was already lunging for the big guy while Beam groaned at our feet, and I was following after him, only hesitating for an instant. A giant fist came around for my friend’s head, and he caught it with his brow. I expected to see the knuckles break, they didn’t. Solitaire stumbled back, shocked, while another blow came in for his guts. This one was barely blocked, tossing him flat against the floor.
For a moment the enemy’s focus was entirely on Solitaire, and I took that opportunity to throw a punch of my own. Swinging my whole body around, using it to lever my arm, keeping the thumb out of my fist. Everything I’d been taught. It bounced off the man’s cheek like he was some giant boulder, and the sight of his eyes coming to rest on me had me just about shitting myself.
Then a heel caught him between the legs, and he folded over, stumbling back amid a string of curses as Solitaire rolled and stood, staggering back into the fight and chasing the enemy further back with a haymaker. For one wonderful, precious moment the man just kept out of arms’ reach and carried on reeling. Then his pain subsided, and he was back at us.
Solitaire seemed to be the focus, backstepping while the big man chased, and I followed. My punches thudded into his back one after the other, but it felt more like a wall of stone than flesh, and I suspected my knuckles were hurting more than his body. Solitaire was faring little better, covered up to weather the bombardment of punches smashing into his guard from every side there was, balance shaking by the step, face twisted up in effort and pain. His back was soon at the wall, retreat forcibly stopped, and I felt a stab of panic as I saw the giant rear up for his widest strike yet.
It never landed, because Beam was on him first. Slamming into his ribs shoulder-first with all the speed of a sprinter, driving him back with all the pneumatic force of a wrestler, circling around the moment his momentum was stopped and lancing the man’s lower back with elbows that wouldn’t have been entirely out of place in some professional MMA ring. Solitaire was big, and he’d hit hard, but Beam actually smashed the man down onto his knees.
He wasn’t that low for so long as a second before Solitaire moved in, swinging a hip-height kick around that cracked perfectly against the giant’s vulnerable temple. He dropped like a sack of rocks.
I realised, then, that I was just staring while my friends fought and bled. The anger that filled me with had me by their side a single instant later, all three of us stomping away at the bastard while he tried to rise.
We were stronger than we’d been on arrival, now. Including Beam thanks to his Skillpoint. And there were three of us to his one, all of our focus on the beating, all of our minds locked in, calling on our days training together, hunting together and surviving together. So it was incredible how little it did.
My heel clipped his chin, and he barely flinched. Solitaire’s knee found an eye socket, and he only growled. Beam landed some bloody overhead kick right into the back of his neck, and all it did was send him forwards a step. A step, I saw, that he now took with both feet flat on the ground, having managed to fully stand up.
A fist came, Solitaire dodged, and I went low for the guy’s groin. He must’ve seen it coming because a knee hit my chest, and next thing I knew the sky was looking down at me, laughing. Eyes watery, vision fuzzy, head ringing like someone was smashing away at a bell inside.
Why was it grey? Snow was white, wasn’t it? And it’d been snowing, all the snow that hadn’t fallen yet- that would fall, probably, in the night- was still up there. So why was it grey instead of white?
I pondered the matter for about as long as it took my brain to finish getting the high score in cranial pinball, then my consciousness stabilised, my thoughts stopped being runny around the edges, and I remembered that my friends were still fighting Kratos. I sat bolt upright, cursing as I saw the display ahead.
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Beam was down again, rising slowly, and Solitaire was clinging to the giant’s back like some feral beast, snarling and spitting, fingers digging into all the painful spots. His face was pressed against the side of the man’s head, and a scream was cutting the air. I took a moment to realise it was coming from the giant, and then I saw why.
Solitaire yanked his face back, and a spray of blood jumped after it. Clinging to his hair, cheeks, scalp, raining down to stain the dirt. In the side of the man’s head, where he’d just been pressing his mouth, I saw a mess of mangled flesh and oozing veins. It looked like fucking hamburger meat, not least of all the ear- which seemed to have been fully chewed off.
Just before I could wonder where it was, Solitaire spat the mangled organ out at the giant’s feet, then shifted his place on the man’s back to start biting at the other. Fucking hell.
Almost fortunately, he never managed to complete it. The giant slammed himself back-first into an alley wall, with Solitaire pinned between the bricks and his shoulder blades. Coughing something agonzizing, my friend dropped from him just in time to catch another punch across the face, which just about flattened him. I was on the giant now, kicking at a knee this time and actually connecting quite well. The man cursed, turned with a slight limp and swore after me as I turned to sprint away before he even rounded. He was pursuing fast when Beam came flying at him.
He ducked, wove, punched and elbowed, lasting all of a few more seconds, then falling back down. I came in with another kick, this time to the ribs, and almost fell over with the force of it. The giant, though, barely took a step back. Then he was coming back for me.
This wasn’t like fighting the troll, this was an opponent that could think and there was something fiercely terrifying about that.
I punched him in the nose, and to my surprise he actually blinked. After that, he punched me.
When I woke up, Solitaire was being strangled, suspended fully off the air in a two-handed grip, legs kicking out feebly beneath him. Beam was groaning, lying face-down and not moving nearly enough for my liking, and everyone else was still gone.
I groaned, stood, shuddered and charged. Punching back, belly, ribs. All to no avail. Panic started building when Solitaire turned red , and I jumped up to start chewing at the giant’s other ear.
Either my friend had the bite force of a pitbull, or there was some technique to dismemberment via jaw that I’d not learned, because I found the remaining side of the man’s head putting up a lot more resistance than I’d expected. I abandoned the effort after Solitaire went from red to purple, and cursed.
Time for my last hail mary.
I dug a thumb into what was left of his missing ear, pressing the digit into yielding flesh, watching with disgust as more blood welled from the mess. A scream told me the giant was feeling it, his head turning to deny me access, arms folding on instinct to make his body more compact.
Arms folding, with Solitaire still held in them. Bringing him closer to the bastard’s face. It didn’t even take an instant before two more thumbs were stuck in him, this time each one pressing down on an eye. He screamed, let go instantly and reached up to pry Solitaire off. Solitaire didn’t let him, letting go before he could, dropping down and swinging an uppercut up directly into the giant’s groin.
The kick that followed sent Solitaire almost as far back as the troll had, and he wasn’t moving much when he landed. I actually blocked the backhand the giant threw next, but I might as well have blocked a sledgehammer swing. I still ended up groaning in a heap.
And that was it, I was fucked. I tried to move, but my body had other ideas. It was all I could do to crane my neck and see the giant approaching me, face tattooed, bald head scarred, neck and shoulder completely red where the unending ear-blood had soaked through. It looked like I was going to die.
That was…Fine. A curious thought, but I could hardly deny it. I'd already been planning to off myself a few weeks ago, at least now I’d go out having fought with a bit of hope first. I closed my eyes, waiting for the stomp that would surely snap something important enough to kill me.
And it never came. I looked up, surprised to find a dense light spewing out across the alley, eyes watering at its intensity. Skin itching with the touch of something else, that I recognised only from Corvan’s healing magics.
We hadn’t asked about why Beam picked his name to be what it was, but he’d told us. Beam, like a streak of light. Beam like a sunray. Beam because that’s what he always got told his smile was like. Beam, to remind him not to let that smile slip while we were here.
Yeah, a bit of a drama queen, our friend, but one tends to be when one competes on a global scale. Anyway, he was getting the last laugh now, because fuck me was that light bright. Bright, grey, somehow, and coming from between his hands.
I just about made a shape out, long, sort of cylindrical, humming and ephemeral in its form. It looked almost like some energy sword from Halo, like light given mass, and I had about a half second to admire the fact before he lunged with it. The air screamed as he moved, as if even it was scared of his new weapon.
And I could feel the magic off of it from across the alley.