Chapter 35

Blood Bowl

Luckily, we were a trio. It wasn’t just up to Stephen if we won this fight or not.

I typed out a message to Angelia.

[ Get him up. I don’t care how you do it, but make sure he is at least sitting up in less than a minute ]

I didn’t wait for a response, just put my faith in her to figure it out and jumped in front of the man, who was already gloating, giving fist bumps to his possy.

“Hey,” I said from the middle of the circle of onlookers.

The man readjusted his skull mask. “What’s this? The fuck do you want, noob?”

His little group died laughing. I expected the crowd to laugh too but they were actually silent. Maybe shocked at the downfall of their hero. I could still save this.

“Not a noob.” I winced. I maybe shouldn’t have said that. I reworded: “I’m Stephen’s right hand.”

The man snapped his finger. “I do know you! You’re that chick that was with this loser. You’re definitely a noob.”

Undaunted, I pressed on. “Weird, the way I remember it, I walked away alive from our first meeting. What happened to you again?”

The man’s group stopped laughing. He pushed them away and took a step toward me.

“The fuck did you say?”

On the other side of the circle, I saw Angelia kneeled down beside Stephen. Her mouth was moving, her hand glowing–a healing spell. Stephen already started to stir.

“I said: it wasn’t my head that got cut off by a twelve year old girl.”

“Oooh”s exploded from the circle. I’d roped them back in. Pretty good for a noob, huh?

But my problems were just beginning. The man stomped toward me, brandishing a huge sword. “We’ll see whose head stays on this time, bitch!”

He swung the weapon at me, acting on reflex, I ducked under it. I took a step forward and punched up, nailing him under the chin. I expected a knock out blow but his head barely lifted at all.

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Shit. My strength Stat was so much lower than Stephen’s. I may have forgotten that in the midst of everything going on.

The man died laughing and kicked me aside. I fell to the dirt but spun when my shoulder hit and managed to get back on my feet… where my foot promptly slipped on a rock and I went down to my knee again.

His whole group laughed and pointed at me. The man roared, “These are your leaders? Do you see now? If you should follow anyone it’s me!”

And then the absolute lunatic started tossing skull masks into the crowd. Most of our followers got out of the way and let the skulls rain down to the dirt where they belonged… but I saw others catch them, or pick them up. If I didn’t wrap this up quick we would lose them all.

I may not be strong enough to take the man on in hand to hand combat, but I had access to more than just my bare hands. I glanced at Stephen, making sure he was up and moving. He was, just barely, he was in a sitting postion, looking a little whoozy but sentient.

I typed up a message:

[ Hold out your hand and look like you’re concentrating. ]

He looked up at me, clearly confused. I couldn’t wait around for him to figure it out. I stood up, and focussed my energy like our teacher taught me. I built it up, and up… then sent it out, coursing through my whole body. It was extremely thin and weak like that, wouldn’t defend me against even the lightest of punches, but that wasn’t what I needed it for.

The crowd murmerd and pointed at me, intrigued by the strange glow. It caught the man’s eye, too.

“What’s this? Did I kill you already, you some kind of ghost?” He jerked his head back and let free his gruff laugh. I was so over the sound of it.

I charged, hoping to catch him unawares but he noticed, and swung his sword around, gearing up to cut me into pieces. Instead, I leapt forward with the one advantage that I had, the one thing they all looked down on me for. The fishbowl caught the sword and held it, as easily as that weird device held back the monster’s finger.

The man grimaced from the strain of pressing against the fishbowl’s iron defense. “Stupid noob bitch, you really think that will save you!?”

I didn’t even bother with a verbal respoonse. I gave him my answer with a swift punch to his arm and an upward flick of my head. The combination of moves knocked the sword out of his grasp. I snatched it greedly out of the air and swung it back around, slicing off his head for the second time.

Or, that’s what I wanted to happen. Instead, once I grabbed the hilt it became abundantly clear I did not have the strength to wield it. The speed of the hit and the weight of it yanked me to the side where it flipped around and buried itself in the dirt. I tugged on it. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Unperturbed, I held up my hand. “Wait, before you laugh, let me… save you some… time!” I gave one last physical tug, while adding in as much of a mental one as I could muster. I fell back as the sword lifted up and over my head, slicing behind me in a wide arc.

The sword hit the earth with a CLUNK! And all was silent. No one moved. No one breathed.

The man took a step forward and the spell broke. A line appeared through the middle of his body, red exploding out as the two sides of him split open, raining gore all over me. I’d never been so thankful for the fishbowl, it saving at least my face from the downpour.

The two sides of his body flopped to the ground, leaving only me. I stood up, covered from fishbowl to toe in blood.