Lan moved through the streets with an odd sense of calm, replaying every attack from the Troll he could remember. It wasn’t the steady heart and the clear mind that The Hunter’s Song brought on, and there was still no hint of the fire that would fill his blood when the fight was on.
This was a clarity of self. Lan noted this would be the first time he knew who his opponent was before the fight began, and that seemed to have driven any lingering doubt from the back of his mind.
As they passed through the same gates that he had come down, the new guards only gave him the briefest interest since he was leaving, which meant he wasn’t their problem.
Climbing up the hill, Tyr flew around him like an orbiting moon around a world soaring into the unknown, and although she didn’t say anything, Lan could feel that The Voice was present in his mind a little more than usual.
He felt complete, ready for what was to come next.
Cool air filled his lungs, grounding him to his homeland as Lan crested the last hill until he saw the Troll, standing in the middle of a field of tall grass.
The bastard had even gone to the trouble of placing light stones around as if to make a ring for their fight.
‘Look at you being all punctual,’ Gregor grinned as Lan walked towards him. ‘You really know how to make a guy feel special. Or maybe I was right in thinking you and I are alike, and you are just ready to shed some blood?’
Lan frowned, stopping as he closed in, removed his cloak, and dropped it. ‘Come now, just because we are going to try and kill each other doesn’t mean we need to resort to personal insult,’ he said, making the Troll laugh.
‘Oh, you are trying to say you came all this way just because you like my company?’
‘No,’ Lan shrugged, ‘I just came to give you the chance to walk away. Even us fighting out here can draw some attention and put your master in danger. Why risk those we are trying to protect and our lives for nothing?’
Gregor hummed and rolled his neck, ‘That would be a problem, but I don’t think you will live long enough for me to worry about that. And at this point, I don’t see why I can’t have my cake and eat it too,’ Gregor said as he drew a large two-handed axe that sparked with electricity from his back. Which only made Lan smile.
It looked like he wasn’t the only one thinking of a way to kill the other, and Lan had to say he was a little curious to know what lightning running through his body would do to the Silver Wind.
‘You know,’ Lan said, drawing Spellthief and falling into stance, ‘it’s odd how people who think they have already won never stop to wonder about why their opponent doesn’t look worried. Maybe they think they are going to win, too. Or maybe there is a reason you should be worried.’
With that, Lan surged forward, thinking of nothing but the next hour.
With a roar, Gregor swung his axe in a backhanded arch that Lan ducked under, the lightning of the weapon making the hair on his skin stand as the troll grabbed the axe’s haft with his other hand and tried to ram it into Lan’s face.
Only for it to sail harmlessly over his head as Lan dropped low and shot under the troll’s guard before landing a two-handed strike that cut deep into the giant’s stomach.
It was a cut that would have been the end for most, but it only seemed to hold Lan in place as Gregor aimed a fist at Lan’s face. Pushing his foreword, Lan cut his sword free, weaving under the punch before scoring a deep cut on the back of the troll’s knee to buy him enough room to jump back.
At which Gregor let out a short bark, which seemed more out of annoyance than pain.
‘Did you get even smaller since we last fought? You are harder to hit. Maybe that is your plan? Get so small that I can no longer see you?’ Gregor said, swinging his axe half-heartedly at Lan
‘Are you planning on hurting my feelings to the point that I die from a bruised ego?’ Lan asked, leaning back from the attack, ‘it will probably be more effective,’ he said as the two started to circle each other.
As they did so, Lan noted that Gregor went against everything his father had taught him. When his very life force was his guard, he didn’t need to put one up, but it still made him a nearly unapproachable opponent.
Suddenly, Lan’s thoughts vanished, filled with an alert from Tyr as he spun and slashed the snake that had shot from the tall grass at him.
The head of the snake, as black as night, continued to hiss even as Spell Thief sent it spinning in a different direction from its body, the familiar stone catching the light for a moment before Tyr sent another impression, and Lan knew the axe would bite into his back before he could turn.
The world raced away from Lan as he wisp-walked backwards through the troll, still mid-swing of the axe.
‘Damn, I thought I had you that time,’ Gregor laughed. ‘You are using that floating candle to see, aren’t you? That’s cheating,’ The Troll shouted as he charged.
Lan, empowered by the Silver Wind, kicked off the air, flipping once before righting himself to see the Troll pointing something at him. Lightning crackled from the end of the rod for a moment before a bolt sundered the air as it arched toward him.
Helplessly, Lan saw as the bolt of lightning hit him in the Chest. For a long moment, Lan watched as the Silver Wind tried to hold back the lightning, pulling the wild magic around him into long strands that wrapped around the arching destructive light before both erupted with a pop.
[Hp: 120 > 115]
Lan hit the ground; the air knocked out of him as he tried to piece together what had just happened. Although he had taken damage from hitting the ground, the lightning and his tuning-bell-weakened Silver Wind had snuffed each other out, leaving him untouched.
Trying to pull air into his lungs, Lan found Gregor standing over him with a grin painted on his face and his axe raised to part his head.
Through the pain, Lan heard the Hunter sing in his mind, his blood burning, and he rolled as the axe fell, using the momentum of his roll to twist onto his feet and slash the Troll’s neck, to which Gregor just grinned and brought his chin down to trap Spell Thief.
Tyr’s mind flashed in Lan’s, and he knew the poison dagger would bite into his flesh soon enough.
Just what he had been waiting for.
Letting go of his sword, Lan Wisp Walked just a step back, his image seeming to blur as the dagger passed harmlessly through it, while the real Lan reached into the Chest, drew his mace and took aim at Gregor’s hand.
The sound of snapping bone rang through the air as the dagger flew into the dark, but Lan wasn’t done as he Wisp walked behind the troll, kicked off the air to build speed before connecting the sheath of his sword to the pummel as he used the momentum and leverage to try and rip the troll’s head off but only managing to remove the bottom of the trolls jaw, which had already grown back by the time Lan landed.
‘You tricky little rat, you were aiming for my dagger the whole time, weren’t you?’ Gregor grinned before drawing two more with one hand. ‘Good thing I brought a few spares.’
‘Fine,’ Lan breathed, taking one of Seras’s vials and pouring some on his sword. ‘I’ll just have to do this the old way.’
Lan stepped through space, appearing to the giant’s left and cutting deep into its Chest, the wound freezing over before he vanished as Gregor swung a back fist at him, leaving his arm outstretched and open when Lan shifted back and brought his full Silver Wind empowered strength into his arm.
Spell Thief sunk deep, biting into the bone and stopping before ice grew from the blade, allowing Lan to shatter the other half of the arm. Leaving the wound encased in ice, Lan blinked out of existence as the axe almost took his head off.
Ready to capitalise, Lan slid to a stop, dug his heels in, and hesitated as he watched Gregor grinning at him, the stump of the troll’s arm literally pushing the frozen part off and starting to regrow to the beat of the troll’s heart. Starting with a jet of blood that shot out before pulsing as veins grew around the blood, another burst brought a beginning of bone, then muscle. Twelve beats later, Lan watched as the troll flexed a new arm.
‘Thanks, nothing like the feeling of a new arm, am I right?’ he smiled. ‘But damn it, I was hoping to keep that under wraps a little longer,’ he sighed. ‘Do you get it yet? As long as blood pumps through my body, I can grow anything back in twelve heartbeats. If that has crushed your hopes, then you can give up now. I’ll just go ahead and crush your head, too, and go home.’ Gregor ended with an even more profound sigh.
‘Now, why would I go and do something like that?’ Lan asked, brushing his hair out of his face with a hand. ‘One can do a lot in twelve heartbeats. But we can stop if you no longer have the heart for it. You can still walk away.’ he shrugged.
Gregor grinned, ‘Maybe you can, but I haven’t much choice in the matter. My master dying isn’t an option, and the odds of keeping it that way are a little better if I bring the little bird in.’ Gregor laughed as he charged, closing the distance in moments as he swung his axe in a mighty arch so fast Lan felt he might get pulled into its wake even after he had stepped back, which he had only done as Tyr had sent an impression to move.
Lan took another step back, the calm focus state of his mind braking, like a rock dropped into a clear lake as The Hunter’s Song faded to the back of his mind. Did the troll have a choice? And how much of a choice was it when he was tied to his master?
Following the motion of the swing, Gregor used the momentum to launch a spinning back fist that was twice as fast as the first attack, but the troll wasn’t done as it followed it with a straight kick that would have caved in Lan’s head if he hadn’t Wisp Walked after ducking the back fist.
The moment Lan reappeared, another bolt of lightning crashed into his Chest, popping his Silver Wind and sending him hurdling to the ground. Only Lan rolled with the impact, springing to his feet just as a rope wrapped around him with two stones on each end, trapping his left arm to his body.
The stones wrapped around him once and then twice before the two suddenly collided with each other, ringing like a bell. Lan felt the world flip as he was suddenly pulled to the ground, the stones having gained the weight of boulders.
Gregor moved in for the kill, and Lan fought to free himself, but whatever magic was on the stones kept pulling him down. As the troll closed in, Lan dropped his sword into the Chest, pulled out one of the jars and threw it at the troll. In a moment, a cloud of fine black powdered ink filled the air.
‘Oh, what the…’ Gregor shouted, the axe sinking into the ground a hair away from Lan’s head as he twisted his body out of the way before drawing his sword and cutting himself free.
Kicking himself for losing focus, Lan sprung to his feet and ran in a circle around the troll before he Wisp walked close, kicked off the air, and cut into Gregor’s unguarded knee before rolling from the troll’s attempt to grab him. Wisp Walking behind it and hacking the leg off.
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Gregor teetered but slammed the point of his axe into the ground as Lan Wisp Walked in, only to appear to be faced with a wall of dirt as the troll used his axe to rip the ground free and threw it at him.
Vanishing before it could hit him, Lan appeared far enough away to put some space between them as Gregor planted his newly regrown leg.
Seeing that, Lan clicked his tongue. That regrowth had been far quicker than before.
‘Man, a good fight really gets the heart pumping, doesn’t it?’ the troll grinned, and it dawned on Lan. Twelve heartbeats, no matter how fast his heart was beating.
As if waiting for a chance to reveal this, Gregor seemed to have no reason to hold anything back as he launched into an onslaught of attacks. No longer pretending that he needed to hold back, the troll moved like a wild animal locked in a blood rage, only there was nothing but cold calculation behind every slash, thrust and stab from the axe and poison daggers that seemed to appear and disappear like a trickster’s sleight of hand trick.
Pushed to the edge, Lan’s existence became one of evasion, using the Wisp Walk as little as he could get away with and relying on his speed, Tyr and the occasional jar of marking powder to keep him alive as although he had not even used up half of his mana yet, he only had so much. And Gregor had to know that and be counting on it, and yet, Lan felt good, even as his mind reeled with the new information. Maybe it was the fact that he was in a fight for his life, but his body moved almost like a separate entity. The Silver Wind seemed to answer him faster than before, his movement a little easier as he danced to the fading remnants of The Hunter’s Song.
Almost lost in thought, Lan watched as Gregor threw the axe at him before he drew and aimed the rod at him.
Lan saw the axe and Gregor waiting behind it, with lightning building around the rod, and stepped forward, activating his shield arm, catching it, and letting it glance off with some effort and bury itself into the ground as he readied to face the lightning. Instead, he found Gregor charging at him with a fist raised, ready to take his head off.
Lan Wisp Walked to the troll’s left and tried to turn as a flash of green filled his sight.
When he could see again, he looked down to find vines climbing up his legs.
‘About damn time you stepped in that.’ Gregor said as he took the moment he needed to perfect his form before taking aim at Lan’s head.
Unable to move, or Wisp Walk, Lan raised his shield arm and crossed his other arm behind it, hoping it would be enough.
‘A damn trap,’ he thought to himself as his body became like a rock, bracing for the moment of impact and wondering how much damage it would do. How he would have to change his plans and if he could still even use his sword as the last time he had taken a hit, it had only been because it was a glancing hit that he had been able to ride the blow, but he wasn’t going anywhere this time.
He managed to think that before the fist collided with his shield. The vines snapped, and Lan was launched across the field, his vision blurring as the world raced past him before he slid to a stop, somehow managing to stay on his feet. More than that, he didn’t feel any pain. Not from the punch or the fall.
Only when he looked around himself did he start to understand why. All around him were barely visible traces of Silver Wind, all streaming into a shield in front of him, a nearly destroyed construct made entirely out of Wild Magic. Unlike before, where it had just gathered around the attack, this time, it acted like glass made of light as blocks crumbled away from the impact point in a slow, ethereal way before vanishing into mist.
‘Well, that is new…’ Lan mused, but whatever he had just done, it had drained the Silver Wind entirely, he realised before looking at and seeing Gregor frowning.
‘You just never run out of tricks, do you?’ he said, sounding serious for the first time.
‘I was hoping that you would see at some point there that you really don’t stand a chance against me and just leave.’ Lan said, standing and rolling his shoulder. Before taking out the pocket watch and looking at it, half an hour until the Summoned Heroes showed.
‘And you would just let me go?’ Gregor mocked, but Lan answered him honestly.’
‘Why not? You can’t kill me. At this point, we are just wasting time when we can walk away.’ Lan said before the troll fired a lightning bolt and charged with his axe again.
‘I don’t see it that way,’ Gregor laughed as he swung at Lan, ‘all I have to do is keep this up until you run out of mana, and then I am going to crush your head!’
Ducking under the axe’s swings, Lan went back to dodging, applying more ice to his sword even as he did so before pushing the head of Gregor’s axe with this spear shaft and landing a cut that froze over the troll’s eye.
Gregor roared, attacking even faster as Lan wondered if the troll had noticed yet- that he had yet to land a hit besides its tricks and traps.
Lan side-stepped, twisted, and ducked every attack from Gregor like he was telling the troll to make them, but his mind still reeled against itself. Even if the troll was an ass, was that a reason for it to die and was there anything he could do about it? Suddenly, in the middle of Lan’s musing, Gregor stopped and dropped his hands, looking almost defeated.
Lan didn’t drop his guard, feeling in no mood to fall for another trap, even as a small part of him played with the idea of the troll giving up, but the moment Lan let his heels touch the ground, Gregor raised his foot, a golden aura covering it before he stomped the ground, causing the ground around Lan’s feet to shake.
[Quicksand effect!] the Voice said, and Lan Wispwalked behind the troll just before his feet were locked to the ground, making sure to stay low so he couldn’t hit him with lightning. Only to find the troll turning with a grin again as he threw a purple powder into the air.
[Hp 115 > 114> 112> 108> 100]
Lan breathed in before he could stop himself, his lungs squeezing tight as fire ignited in them, and he dropped to the ground, the Silver Wind leaving him as he writhed in pain the likes he had never felt before. With a booming laugh, Gregor kicked Lan to the ground before throwing more of the powder into the air, shrouding Lan’s view.
‘After all that, some powder is what does you in?’ the troll laughed, kicking Lan in the stomach.
[Lan, you must move out of the poison cloud now. Take a few more breaths, and it won’t matter if you get out of it.] the Voice warned as Gregor kicked him again, forcing him to pull more poison into his lungs that he was sure had to be melting.
[Hp 100> 99> 97> 93> 85]
[Lan!] This time, the Voice shouted in his mind, snapping Lan back to himself long enough for him to sense Tyr trying to reach him. Clearing his mind, Lan tried to Wisp Walk but couldn’t focus long enough to reach out to Tyr, so instead, he shifted his sight, the troll’s health appearing like a bonfire as he reached into the Chest for one of the jars he had made and threw it at Gregor’s head. Unlike the other, this jar was filled with marking powder and a spark stone.
Lan heard the jar shatter and a curse from the troll before the volatile spark stone ignited from the impact. In a moment, the air filled with vibrant green flames from the mix of powders staining the field in an otherworldly glow, and Lan Wisp Walked away, crashing to the ground and taking a deep breath before vomiting blood.
Even though he knew he should kick himself for not expecting something like that, Lan couldn’t help but feel pissed at not anticipating just how low the troll would go.
‘Man, that was toasty,’ Gregor called, ‘how are you holding up? I find that Hell Blaze really clears the lungs,’ he laughed. ‘So what do you think? Are you still willing to let me go?’ the troll taunted.
‘Yeah…’ Lan breathed as he worked his way back onto his feet. ‘You… are a familiar. Even if you are trying to kill me, there is a part of me that can’t let the idea of whether you are here by force or not go,’ Even if it was indeed how he felt, it was also the only thing Lan could think of to say to buy time. Although he would kill him if he needed to, there was a part of Lan, a part of his past, that would make him let the troll go if he would just leave.
Lan coughed, but Gregor’s laughter drowned out the sound. ‘Is that it? You think I am being controlled. Do you see a familiar stone in my head, dumb ass?’ he mocked. ‘I am here because I love breaking things, and the only reason I call that asshole my master is that I can do whatever I want using his name… speaking of which.’ Gregor looked down before picking up one of Luna’s blue tears that must have fallen from Lan’s pocket. Lan just stood there for a moment at the revelation before he snapped.
‘Don’t you dare touch that!’ he shouted before coughing again. Even though the troll was genuinely trying to save his master, the reason hit him like a punch.
‘Aww, don’t be like that. Here, how about a trade,’ Gregor said before throwing a small cloudy scrying stone.
Catching it, Lan felt his blood run cold at the blurry image reflected on it. Although he couldn’t make out their faces, he knew that it was Seras and Luna, surrounded by hell hounds, as Wolfram’s body lay unmoving to the side.
‘If only they stayed in the town,’ Gregor sighed. ‘Oh well! Like I was saying, I get to do whatever I want as long as my master is alive. One of those things is being the new person to look after that little bird.’
Gregor held up the blue tear, ‘you figured it out, too, right? Different emotions make different tears, and I am going to test the limits of that. That is the only reason that traitor is still alive. I’ll rip her to shreds in front of the little bird and see what stones I can make. And it’s all thanks to my master.’ He grinned with bloodlust in his eye. ‘If you are not going to fight me for real, I think I will do the same to you. I am sure that the two of them getting to watch you die first will only make their pain sweeter.’ Gregor laughed before swallowing the tear.
Lan listened to the troll’s words, his rage building to its breaking point until, like the Hunter himself was watching, Lan heard the song fill his mind, tempering his anger into a cold-focused fury. He still had a job to do, Lan told himself, as the burning in his lungs was chased away by the furnace that pumped fire into his blood.
Lan sighed, running his hand through his sweat-soaked hair as he reminded himself of what Corbin had said: he couldn’t fight every battle. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
‘Just like that, huh?’ Gregor asked as Lan drew his sword from the Chest. ‘we have been at this for almost an hour. What do you think is going to change?’
Lan poured more ice on his sword. With all the talk of heroes, it seemed that he had fooled himself into thinking he was one, but he wasn’t a hero. No, he was a hunter. ‘What has changed is the fact that now I want to kill you.’ Lan said with ice in his Voice before surging forward.
Gregor raised his axe, bringing it down only for Lan to shift into the blind spot that the ice covering his eye made and slip his sword into Gregor’s armpit, unlike when he had cut the troll’s arm off. Ice shot from both sides of the wound and locked the joint.
Gregor’s eyes widened as he realised he could not move his arm.
‘You shouldn’t have told me how your regeneration works or left that ice on your face,’ Lan said, drawing his sword from the ice as he circled the troll. ‘As long as you don’t bleed, I can freeze you and then shatter your heart. And you aren’t going to be able to stop me.’ Lan declared, knowing he had already won as fear flashed in the eyes of the troll.
Gregor batted Lan away before punching his shoulder to break the ice and allowing his blood to push the rest out.
With a roar, Gregor pulled the ice from his face, his skin growing back even as Lan lanced him through the ankle, then reversed his sword spear and stabbed the troll in the knee with the endpoint before detaching his sword and driving it up into his elbow, encasing the troll’s knee and half of his right arm.
As he danced around the troll’s attacks, Lan told himself he had been right about it being an unfair fight. Every fight and bit of training he had been through seemed to have been made to make him a nightmare for this troll.
From the moment he blocked his punch the day before, Lan knew he could beat Gregor no matter what anyone said.
So the troll was strong, but he had been training against his mother, who made Gregor look like a newborn, Lan thought, catching and deflecting a thrown fist just like he had practised with his mother.
So he was fast for his size, but Lan’s father would have left him in his dust, and this wasn’t even a fraction of the speed he used when sparring against him.
And with Tyr watching the fight, any of the troll’s tricks would only work once. As for his health and regeneration, what did that matter to Lan when almost everything he had fought and killed had refused to die?
Gregor’s roars grew as he swung his axe with his left, but Lan just turned his body and stabbed the troll in the shoulder again.
This had been the other thing he had learned from his first fight with Gregor. Having no doubt spent his whole life not fearing attacks, if not needing them to land for him to take advantage of, the troll didn’t know what to do to stop an attack when it counted. This meant that even with his skill level and spell thief, Gregor had no answer to the danger that was Lan with killing intent and the power to do so.
Knowing what was on the line, the Hunter’s Song filled Lan’s mind, so clearly Lan would have believed if the troll had said he could hear it too as he moved like a wraith. The troll’s wild flailing attacks seemed to pass right through him as he landed strikes on the troll’s joints, Wispwalking and stabbing Gregor in the back in three places, forcing him to shatter his spine to turn around.
‘You son of a…!’ was all it managed before Lan Wisp Walked in front of him for long enough to drive his sword into its jaw, shutting it up for once, then vanishing and continuing to attack the troll from all angles like an Iron Wasp bringing down a dragon through countless stings.
Gregor roared and activated an ability that made him visibly grow bigger and more muscular, shattering the ice that Lan had managed to inflict as he threw a mighty punch at Lan, who just ducked the blow and traced up the troll’s arm with three stabs at the joints.
Gregor raised his left arm to break the other off, but Lan joined his sword and sheath, giving him the range to lance the troll through the left shoulder. Wispwalking behind the troll, Lan detached his sword spear, running both halves into the troll’s knees. Leaving his scabbard, Lan walked around the troll, freezing the rest of his arm until he stood face to face with the troll, who still tried to break free until he noticed Lan and stopped.
‘Had me beat from the start, didn’t you?’ Gregor laughed, even though his eyes were large and filled with fear.
‘Yeah.’ Lan said. The Hunter’s Song mixed with his anger, making his voice cold as he raised his sword and pressed the point against the troll’s Chest.
‘Wait!’ Gregor tried, but Lan pushed the sword into the troll’s Chest, ice growing in his veins and crawling over his skin until, In moments, the same thing that had made the troll almost immortal pumped ice through his body before it stopped beating.
Drawing his sword from the troll’s Chest, Lan Wisp Walked into the air and, with a sharp, blinding kick, shattered Gregor’s body in a rain of ice that the Silver Wind carried away to join the midnight air.