ANDRY

Jalgoz finally stopped his backwards momentum by stabbing his claws into the ground to use as anchors. He seemed none the worse for wear, Tyram and Andry's assault had done what it needed to do, gotten Jalgoz away from his brothers.

“Not bad,” he snorted. “You two are stronger than I thought. Hey, I know you! You're the one who punched me in the face and ran!”

“You punched Jalgoz in the face?” Andry ask.

“I don't even think I realized it was him,” Tyram said. “I was more focused on getting Aurina and Rimni out of there.”

“Well whatever,” Jalgoz raised his claws. “I owe you for that one.”

The lethal blades of his claws swung close but they were just able to duck beneath them and keep coming, a synchronized uppercut. Jalgoz caught it on his chest armor, grunting in pain.

“You owe us for that one?” Andry shouted, following up with another punch at Jalgoz's face. “That's not even a down payment on what you owe us!”

Jalgoz dodged the punch by leaning backwards, his spine surprisingly supple as he bent away from the blow. Once Andry's swing went wide he snapped forwards, slamming is face into Andry's head with an ugly cracking sound and dropping the villager to the ground. Tyram threw a punch of his own, but the bandit caught it in one enormous hand.

“Maybe there's something to that,” Jalgoz growled. “But none of you got what it takes to collect.”

Tyram ripped his arm free and dropped into a low sweeping kick, but Jalgo caught it on his shin. Undeterred Tyram spun in the air and landed a higher kick on Jalgoz's side, but once again the bandit tanked the hit with little more than a grunt.

“Oof!” Jalgoz laughed. “Hey, you're both pretty tough! I'm actually feeling these hits. Not much, but I'm feeling them. And what's with you? I thought knights always had jaunty quips when they were fighting.”

“Why?” Tyram asked. “Are you weak to jaunty quips? Because I'm willing to try it, if I can think of any.”

“Hah! That's what I'm talking about!” Jalgoz crouched his claws raised. “And the kitty cat is back up too! Looks like we've still got a fight on our hands! Or we would, if you two could hurt me. At all.”

“That sounds like a challenge,” Andry said. “Want to prove that we can hurt him?”

“Well we kind of have too,” Tyram said. They raced at the bandit and what happened next wasn't really Andry's fault, whatever he thought later. They both went for their most powerful attacks. Tyram reached for the sword on his back, and Andry let out a sonic blast. Jalgoz caught the blast on the inside of his claws, scooping it aside and diverting it right into Tyram's side sending the dragon knight flying.

Andry took a moment to curse. It turned out to be a moment too long. In his brief quarter second of distraction Jalgoz sent a punch at Andry's gut, and by the time he noticed the wrist blades had almost reached him. With no time to dodge or counter Andry simply caught the oncoming claws. They slicked into the skin of his fingers even through is regalia gauntlets, but he kept himself from being impaled through the gut.

“Hey pretty good!” Jalgoz said, pulling his claws out of Andry's bleeding hands. “Want to see a real trick?”

The enormous bandit wrapped his arms around his shoulders like he was hugging himself, then rapidly spread his arms wide like wings. Blades of force whirled from his claws, spiraling through the air at Andry. Andry brought up his arms to block but the spinning force caught him, carried him, lifted him up. It finally shattered against the back of his gauntlets, sending smaller pieces of itself flying everywhere and cutting into Andry's arms and shoulders. He'd kept the damage from being fatal, but he was still bleeding, and he was still flying through the air. And he kept flying through the air until he slammed into something.

Hard.

SASHA

Sasha was fighting a losing battle and she knew it.

She'd finally figured out Jayban's regalia. Whatever attractive force he used to drag opponents to him was something his armor did constantly, a field of it surrounding each and every plate. That was why she hadn't be able to hit a weak point, her tip was always dragged towards the hardest part of his armor close to her blow. It was an unsolvable riddle like the sound of a single hand clapping, or an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object. How did you hit the weak points in a suit of armor which had unhittable weak points? You couldn't.

Which wasn't to say she didn't try.

For one thing as long as she was trying he wasn't crushing Verro. His foot still rested on the Eagle Knight, but he wasn't pressing down anymore and Verro had stopped coughing up blood every time he breathed. She'd take her victories where she could get them.

Jayban reached out to try and pull her in again, but she had a countermeasure now. As soon as she felt the tug she created a duplicate. As the replica was pulled in she charged Jayban to deliver a couple of jabs with her spear, dismissing the duplicate along the way. In every exchange she did no damage to him and all he wound up with was a handful of loose auram. And he still won, because it took her a lot of energy to keep creating duplicates over and over again. Eventually she would run out of auram, pass out, and he would kill them both.

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Apparently, it wasn't happening fast enough for Jayban.

“Ugggh you're so annoying,” the bandit complained. “Will you just stop movingalready?”

“No!” Sasha said. “Who would ever stop moving when someone trying to kill them told them to?”

“A suicidal person?” Jydan suggested. “Or somebody who'd rather be dead than tired? Come on, I hear dying is just like going to sleep! I'll even make it quick, crush your head all at once you'll never feel a thing.”

“No!” Sasha said. “If that's the case why don't you kill yourself?”

“I might be wrong,” Jydan shrugged. “Look, this isn't getting us anywhere. I'm going to get rid of this guy and I guess I'll have to really focus on killing you.”

“Wait!” Sasha yelled as the bandit raised his heavily armored foot to stomp a hole in Verro's chest. She'd darted too far away from him she'd never get there in time...

Klonnnnnnnnnggggggggg!

Something hit Jayban in the back of the shell. She couldn't see what it was around the bulky armor, but it hit hard enough to make Jayban lurch forward as he stomped. Off balance the heavily armored bandit stepped over Verro, his foot burying itself in the dirt.

“Oh great,” Jydan complained. “Now I'm stuck!”

Sasha used the precious extra seconds to reach Verro and drag him clear. He was breathing heavily, and some of those breaths came with a misty spray of blood, but his eyes were clear.

“I couldn't breath!” he babbled. “I couldn't breathe under there!”

“It's okay,” she said. “I got you. And I can keep that tractor beam thing or whatever it is off us. For now.”

“How'd you make him fall forward like that?” Verro asked, climbing unsteadily to his feet.

“I didn't.” Sasha said. “Something hit him.”

They turned back towards the bandit. On the far side of him Andry was climbing to his feet, obviously dazed, his sides covered in deep, bleeding slashes.

“Fight with Jalgoz must not be going well,” Verro said.

“Andry!” she shouted. “Look out!”

Jayban pulled his foot free of the dirt in the same moment he spotted Andry. Andry was so disoriented the lethargic bandit in his Tortoise Regalia actually moved first, swinging a punch at Andry's face. Andry ducked under the blow and, catching sight of Sasha and Verro, hurried in their direction.

“Careful!” Sasha warned. “He can drag people in!”

Jydan raised his arm again and she muscled the other two aside, conjuring a duplicate in the path of his ability. She tried to follow up with another flurry of spear blows but she stumbled. She'd used too much auram, body mind and soul were getting drained, and she just didn't have the charge in her right then. Verro and Andry caught her arms as she sagged, her duplicate vanishing into a cloud of sparkling auram.

“I knew it,” Andry said. “All three of these guys are monsters.”

“You don't know that,” Verro said. “Maybe Fann and J'vann are having an easy time, and they're on their way here to back us up right now.”

“Wanna bet?” Andry asked.

“Guys,” Sasha said. “Andry. Now that you're here...I have an idea.”

“And now there's more of them!” Jydan's petulant whine was so high and sharp it was almost a screech. “Why'd you guys have to do all this? Drag me out of bed and make me come out here to fight you all and...”

Sasha had finished explaining her plan. It relied a lot on Andry, who was bleeding a lot more than she'd like to see. She wasn't sure they could pull it off, but they still had to try. Jayban was annoying and childish but he was powerful, and he was a killer. If this didn't work they had nothing.

It started with Verro. The Eagle Night peppered the bandit around the head with arrows. He couldn't pierce the Tortise Regalia, but Jayban wasn't a machine, he was human. And a human, like anything else with eyes, will blink and flinch when objects fly in their direction.

Then it was Sasha's turn. She wasn't bleeding, none of her ribs were cracked or floating. She was just tired, painfully exhausted, the kind of exhausted that drags at your limbs and fills your brain with fog. She'd been exhausted before. She charged across the field, raising her spear. She wasn't aiming for his joints this time, she was aiming for the center of his chest. If they couldn'taim for his armor's weak points, they might as well aim where it was strongest. She ducked between his arms and slammed the tip of her spear home against Jayban's armor.

And then she flagged.

She could maintain five duplicates at once. If they were destroyed she could replace each of them—last time she checked—two or three times, at best. How many had she created and sacrificed for this battle? Twenty? Thirty? She hadn't been maintaining them, but maintaining them was the easy part. That was just focus, keeping five sets of senses centered in five different places straight in her head. Summoning a duplicate was a huge investment of auram, and she'd used up too much of herself in this fight. She'd had to, just to stay alive.

So at the last moment, her arm flagged, and her spear dipped. Sasha herself almost broke. She'd wound up being the weak link in her own plan, and the only chance she'd seen of having this work was if nothing went wrong. Andry did his part, fired his blasts, but he'd changed the target to Jayban's face instead of his chest. Under the combined onslaught of arrows and sonic blasts the bandit backed away, throwing hands up to protect his face.

“Alright guys!” he complained. “That is getting really annoying!”

“Sasha!” Andry shouted. “From above!”

Sasha nodded her understanding. Was Andry sure he could do it? Probably as sure as she'd been when she charged. It would have to do. Sasha threw her leg out between Jayban's, and with his next stumbling step backwards Jaydan fell on his back, flailing wildly as he tried to stand back up in his unwieldy shell. By the time he hit the ground Sasha was in midair, leaping with her spear held high.

Three things happened in almost the exact same instant.

The point of Sasha's spear landed just where she'd meant to put it before, in the very center of Jayban's chest.

Jayban swung his fist up, planting it solidly in the middle of Sasha's face.

And Andry reached the zenith of his own flying leap, directly over the both of them. He fired two sonic blasts into the butt of Sasha's spear like a hammer striking a nail, the force of the blast and the auram-sharp tip of the spear piercing the Turtle Regalia and stabbing Jayban through the heart. He screamed, blood spraying from the faceplate of his helmet and out through the eyeholes. His arms flailed for a moment before he finally lay still, and the Tortise Regalia disintegrated, leaving only the skinny bandit nailed to the ground by Sasha's spear.

Andry landed on one knee with Sasha between him and the corpse. She'd collapsed to the ground after Jayban punched her. Her regalia had disintegrated as well, and Andry hurriedly checked her breathing and pulse.

“Is she okay?” Verro asked, hobbling up to the two of them.

“She's alive,” Andry said. “Just knocked out.”

“A hit like that shouldn't have taken her out,” Verro shook his head. “She used up so much auram protecting me...”

“Doesn't matter,” Andry said, climbing to his feet. The blood ran in rivers from his sides now, down his legs and pooling on the grass. “She's alive, and she's out of the fight. But we're not done yet. We've got to go help the others.”

“Yeah,” Verro said. “Yeah. If they're having as tough a time as we did, then...hey!”

Andry had collapsed to all fours.

“I'm okay,” He said, struggling back to his feet. “I'm coming, I'm...”

He coughed, spattering blood, and rolled back onto the grass. The Lion Regalia fading out of existence as Verro checked his pulse and breathing.

“Still alive,” Verro sighed. “But out of the fight. Guess it's up to me then...”