Every bandit either ran or jumped out of the way of the fire ball resulting in one of the tents being ignited and slowly spreading to more, the only bandit that did not react was the wounded young bandit who still writhed in pain on the ground.
The remaining nine bandits began fanning out to look for the person responsible for the fire ball. The bandits with swords and clubs slowly crept towards the direction the fire ball came from while the archers followed from behind.
For several minutes everything was quiet past the tree line, the only thing each bandit could hear was their own breath, until a sound came from behind and one of the three archers fell to the ground. The first to notice were the other two archers who were quick to shout out. “Shit! There is someone behind us!”
The archer looked at the corpse of his ally to determine what killed him, what he found was a large spike of earth through the back of his throat. “It's another mage! This one uses earth magic!”
Each of the bandits started to panic at that sentence and several considered making a run for it. ‘Another mage attacking us, why? What did we do to piss off two mages?’ The de facto leader bald bandit thought as he watched the trees around him for any sign of movement.
The bandit bandit thought back to all the things they stole, but nothing that only a mage would be interested in. Everything they stole was something almost everyone could buy from basic clothes to preserved food.
‘The only reason they would be here involving the cargo we stole is… the people transporting it. Oh shit, they're here for revenge for someone we stole from.’ One of the important things regarding the procession of banditry is that often you will need to kill the people after you rob them, or else they could report you to the nearest city or town guard. If they were competent or not corrupt they would send people to deal with the bandits because when there is a risk of people stealing everything you own most won't exactly be interested in doing business.
The bald bandit immediately tried to think of any possible ways to get away safely from the mages, even if it meant that he would leave his men behind. They knew the risks with engaging in banditry, so they shouldn’t have any reason to be surprised, they would likely do the same after all in position.
With the attack from behind the bandits started staying closer forming a small encirclement with the two remaining archers at the center. Everyone was on edge, they were fighting an enemy they could not see that most definitely was watching them.
Several minutes passed with nothing happening, but this did nothing to ease the tension of the bandits, the bald bandit was cursing his subordinates' idiocy by clumping us leaving him no way to slip away unnoticed. Eventually one of the younger bandits, just a few years older than the wounded one still at the camp, spoke up. “Do you think they left?”
At the mention of those words several darts of earth and fireballs came from the north and like a volley of arrows they all appeared at once and decimated several bandits, leaving them either dead or on the ground writhing in pain with burns and chunks of earth pierced into them.
Only three including the bald bandit managed to survive untouched by the barrage and immediately took off running in the opposite direction leaving his dying subordinate. The three bandits did not stop running until they could no longer hear the sounds of their dying allies, and immediately fell to the ground to catch their breath.
“Did we lose them?” A brave bandit spoke up after a minute of heavy breathing. With the surrounding wilderness completely silent the bald bandit was quite tempted to say yes, but something in the back of his mind told him he needed to keep moving. “Maybe, but until we are certain we shouldn’t stop. We aren't all that far from our camp after all.”
With an audible sigh both of the other bandits slowly stood up and began to follow their leader deeper into the forest towards a camp of another better supplied bandit crew. For ten minutes the trio walked south finding nothing but more and larger trees as they walked deeper.
They did not pass a single animal, predator or otherwise. With what little dim light from the moon mostly blocked by the trees they could barely see ten meters ahead. But suddenly just as they walked for ten minutes a small russel of a bush could be heard behind them.
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Like a deer in headlights all three bandits stopped in their tracks and slowly turned around to see what made the sound. There they saw someone, a dark silhouette of a human standing next to a tree and slowly walked towards them. As the human got closer they could see in his hand a long weapon, not thick like a club or mace but like a sword. The silhouette also wore thick plated armor based on the sound of metal moving as they walked.
The human stopped just four meters away from the trio and simply stared at them waiting for them to make a move.
“A- are you with the mages?” The bald bandit asked the stranger, with the shadows cast by the tall trees their face was kept shadowed and hidden, only furthering the feelings of fear.
The silhouette did not say anything, instead they simply raised their blade with their right hand and ran their left hand over the blade. At first the bandits were confused, until they saw the sword ignite slowly as the hand passed over.
Subconsciously the trio took a step back out of fear, the flames of the sword partly illuminated the face of the person wielding the sword revealing it to be a man about the same age as the one they abandoned in their camp.
“Y- you're the fire mage!?” The bald bandit was terrified by the idea that just two people managed to take out his whole group just with a bit of magic, he wanted nothing more than to run away, far away where no one could find him. But he couldn’t and if he wanted to live he would need to first fight and kill the fire mage in front of him and hope the earth mage wasn’t watching them waiting to intervene.
With shaking hands the bald bandit raised his club with both his hands while his two remaining subordinates did the same. The fire mage before him just chuckled and with a wave of his hands two clumps of earth raised from the ground and floated by his side. The two clumps slowly began to form into an arrow-like shape.
The bald bandit understood what that meant, the young man before him was both the fire and earth mage, and if he wanted to survive he needed to kill him without sustaining any serious injuries, his two remaining men were expendable, but he wasn’t.
The young mage gripped his sword with both his hands and left forward while delivering an overhead slash towards the bald bandit. The blade was too close to dodge so he was forced to block it with his club. As he did the sword left a large gash and the flames left dark burns.
The other two bandits tried to take the opportunity to attack while the mage was distracted by their boss and land a hit or two. But just as they readied their weapons the two clumps of earth had already finished forming into spikes that flew right towards them. They did not even notice until it was too late.
The archer received a spike through the eye into his brain killing instantly, the other wasn’t quite so lucky. He took the other spike through the chest and into his lungs, the pain left him on the ground gasping for breath as his punctured lung could not hold any.
The bald bandit, though not seeing what happened, could easily hear the spikes piercing through the flesh of his subordinates, the sound of one subordinate hitting the ground, and the cry of the other.
The bald bandit wanted to look and see what happened, but he knew that if he did the mage would without hesitation kill him like he did the others. The only way through was through the mage, and he needed to give his all.
With a loud cry the bald bandit kicked at the mages legs to get some breathing room and immediately went for an overhead strike with the intent to do what he did with the young bandit back at the camp earlier. He couldn’t help but smile a bit recalling how the young bandit looked writhing in pain on the ground.
But his smile disappeared when the mage blocked his club with his sword with little difficulty, and with a swift twist of the wrist pushed the club to the side out of the way. Everything appeared to be happening in slow motion as the bald bandit saw the sword point towards him and with a single thrust stab into his stomach.
The bald bandit dropped his club and fell to his knees from the pain of the burning blade cooking his flesh, it was so painful that he could not even process the pain. When the mage retracted the blade the bald bandit fell to the ground like a puppet cut from his strings and couldn’t even move a mussel as the mage brought the blade down once more ending his life.
The last bandit with his lung punctured did not even see the final fight between the mage and the bald bandit, nor did he see the spike of earth go through his skull and kill him. The mage finished up taking the weapons of all the bandits and placing them within his dimensional bag.
‘Dam, I have a lot of weapons in here. I wonder how much more space this thing has. Anyways I should probably try and sell them or something, someone else might find a better use for them, like a blacksmith for the metal weapons. The wood ones might just be good for fire wood though, the bows and arrows I could probably sell to a fletcher though.’
He returned to the bandit camp and found the young bandit who had lost consciousness from the pain, most of the tents had already burned down or were in the process of burning so there was unlikely to be anything left of value.
The mage picked the young bandit up and carried him back to the southern gate, a process that took several hours due to the terrain and distance.