Yasiin eyed Lucinda, feeling very much like a mouse before a cat. His hand on the fore grip of the rifle lowered down to his thigh, obscured from sight to the smoke grenade strapped there. Lucinda simply stood there passively, casually twirling her spell blade, which rippled with many foreboding spells. Yasiin gave Sala a worried look, and she followed his gaze down.
“He’ll live. Possibly.” Lucinda added, looking at Sala’s prone form. A ragged wound left in his chest with angry black veins that near the injury. “He’s been void poisoned. Hard to say how badly it will hit him, but it’s only a matter of time. Very effective in the arena.” She was completely unbothered by Yasiin. She appeared to barely pay him any attention, but he knew that was deception. He could feel her aura swimming around him. Feeling his own out. Trying to gauge his reaction.
The smoke grenade was a magical alchemical mixture designed to obscure all but the most powerful magical senses. Amara’s visual magic was probably the only thing he was aware of strong enough to see through it. His hesitation came in the form of a choice. He wasn’t even sure if the grenade would be a trump card or not. But choosing to wait to use it might mean not living long enough to get to use it. Sensing that trying to play the long game wasn’t an option, he opted for a brute force alpha strike.
Lucinda stood her ground as he released the smoke grenade, ceding the first strike to him. That told him she was confident what he could do wouldn’t matter. That kind of knowledge was enough to freeze most men. But he’d been through several losing battles before. The Crasher’s mage squad had practically perfected the art of battlefield losses. The smoke from his grenade hissed, a grey cloud billowing out until Lucinda was no longer visible. She made no attempt at hiding her aura, and he wasn’t so foolish to assume she couldn’t. Her ambush on Sala proved that to the contrary.
He channeled his void magic into his feather step spell. Spending a point of AP to move without sound. He moved like a cat stalking prey. The scope on his rifle highlighting her position as she stood ready.
He placed a motion activated rune trap on the ground. A void explosive with a five meter radius. Normally fire magic was required for it, but his balance path allowed him to use his light magic affinity as a substitute. Quickly he circled around her and lined his shot up. He could only charge his shots to level two, but because of his training, it would only cost him one point per shot.
He took a knee and drew in a silent breath. Index finger drifting down off the guard to rest on the trigger. Targeted, and firing . He stroked the trigger. Then again, and again and again. Massive void bolts belched out of the rifle one after another. Smashing Lucinda in the back and forcing her forward into an off balance stumble. He threw his rifle aside into his void portal, storing the weapon.
In a burst of motion he sprinted forward launching into a flying heel kick aimed at her kidneys. He felt the impact of his armored boots crashing into her soft torso and forcing her back. Pushing off of her body, he spun in the air, using his void magic to hang in the air while he tore free his spell pistol and an obsidian void glass dagger. The pistol had a long rounded corner box at the end of the barrel with runes on it. A magic suppressor. The pistol hurled bolt after bolt, launching them as fast as Yasiin could manage.
Lucinda’s jacket evaporated under the fire as she screamed in pain. Her skin boiled away into particles as his void bolts continued blasting her. Forced back by the onslaught she finally stumbled into his mine. The eruption of magical force dispersed the smoke, heaving her into the air in a flailing spin. Lucinda bounced hard off the stone floor of the temple several times. With a grunt, the former arena champion forced herself upright, dusting off what remained of her clothes.
“Not bad. Not enough to really do lasting harm, but had I been anyone else, you might have been able to overwhelm my defenses and tear me to shreds.”
She opened her hand, summoning her spell blade. It snapped from the floor to hand swiftly. Yasiin tensed. He had to draw this out. Even if he wasn’t going to beat her, if he could waste more of her time, that was time spent dealing with him instead of whatever she’d been shackled to accomplish.
“If you’re going to swat me down, at least do me the courtesy of telling me why. We deserve that much at least.”
Lucinda frowned. “You’re stalling. That’s plainly obvious. But… I’m not disinclined to deny your request. Very well.” Her posture relaxed, but only just.
Every cell in Yasiin’s fiber told him to run. He was very much the prey in this situation. He opened his comm channel on his spell armor and set the pick up to max. If he couldn’t stop her, he could at least get what the others would need to do it.
“I can’t say who bound me. Though their allegiance should be plain to see by now. I can however tell you that this is a target of theirs. They mean to destroy this temple. My presence here is more in a distract and destroy capacity. So really, we’re both stalling each other. I’m keeping you from the real objective, and you’re wasting my time for intel.”
“I don’t get it, why tell me this?”
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Lucinda frowned. “Call it a last act of defiance. I’m still going to stop you. There’s no mistaking that. But there’s nothing in my shackling that prevents me from giving you these tiny seeds to do with as you will.”
“If you can resist that much, then why not resist your binding?”
She smiled sadly, as though she were lecturing a young child about the inevitability of death when a family elder passed on into the cycle. “Some things can be resisted, with a strong enough will perhaps. I unfortunately lack the strength of will required to resist my bindings. I can influence it in subtler ways that don’t go against my orders, but that’s as far as it goes.”
“So you can’t turn on your master. But you can drag your feet fighting someone who poses no threat to you while you spill some tactically non relevant information.”
Lucinda smiled with a nod. An odd contrast considering the shape her outfit was in. “I like you Nomad. With a few more infusions, some training, and time in the Arena, you could have been one of Eryn’s greatest champions yet.”
Yasiin offered her a modest bow of appreciation. She wasn’t mocking him, and coming from the champion of the arena, it was the highest praise he could recieve. Lucinda let out a soft sigh and glanced down at the sword she held casually. It was red and glowed menacingly. The hilt was a crimson red crystalline structure with a void glass blade. Something she conjured? That would fit for an Arena champion, he thought. She gave it a few experimental rotations, loosening up her arm. A dull golden glow began to softly pulse from her, heralding a healing spell.
Yasiin had expended half his AP and a smoke grenade to chip away at her considerable fortitude only for it to get him no where after she ultimately healed it away. He still held his pistol and void glass knife. His only hope would be to close ranks and engage her so close her sword was a liability to her.
“Ready for round two?”
Yasiin gave her a curt nod. She may as well have asked if he was ready to die. He was completely outclassed and all he could hope to do was stall her long enough for backup to arrive. This was usually something the Lt would handle. He was more often the one in the back picking off targets and thinning down the herd. Not blunting the enemy’s commander.
Lucinda bolted forward, and Yasiin matched her advance stride for stride. Her arm flicked out in a wide slide that boiled the air in her swords wake. Yasiin dropped to his knees, metal grinding on stone as he slid underneath the attack, dragging his knife across her unprotected thigh, and firing his pistol into her torso repeatedly. At the end of his slide he popped his legs and rose up like a compressed spring let loose.
That was as far as the extent of his capability to dominate the tone of the fight unfortunately. He rose directly into the heel of her boot as it crashed towards his chest with all of her tier 4 strength. The impact stole the air from his lungs and hurled him across the temple floor, bouncing in a wild tumble of limbs that slid to a halt on the once pristine white stone floor.
Lucinda lowered her outstretched leg slowly, like a prize fighter that finished a warm up routine. Yasiin traced the impact point with his fingers, noting a distinct impression the heel kick left in his armor. Given a few days the armor would self heal out. For now though, he was left looking like someone very heavy had just stepped on him. He coughed a few times, fighting against the fire in his chest that signaled a cracked rib or two. He channeled his own light magic, healing up the injury and struggling to his feet.
He’d hoped he could bait her into throwing some spells he could counter, but thus far she’d kept things pretty basic. But then, the sergeant had always said the basics were where people lived or died. That was proving self evident now as she thrashed him all around the temple. Nomad counter spell mastery wasn’t a secret however, and he suspected in this case, that common knowledge was working against him. He resolved that if he survived this fight to train that weakness out.
Miraculously he forced himself back upright. If he was going to be taken down, it would be on his feet, defending his people proudly. Lucinda rushed forward, her black and red blade humming through the air. He did his best to parry the strikes away with his knife, advancing into her guard again. He fired the spell pistol a few times into her torso and leg, but all he accomplished was ruining her clothing. Lucinda responded with a vicious elbow strike that caught him square in the nose.
Yasiin staggered back, black spots in his vision and fairly certain she’d broken his nose. He could tell by how she redirected her arm at the last minute that she was still pulling her strikes. Blood trickled free of his nose like a faucet left running. He could taste the iron in his blood, it left a tangy metallic aftertaste. Lucinda spun, and rammed her blade up to the hilt in his chest. He felt a sharp pang of pain that then went cold and numb. He glanced down to see the red crystal hilt of her blade flush against the chest plate of his armor.
Lucinda tilted the blade and allowed him to slide off of it. Yasiin fell to the ground in a heap. The arena champion then flicked her blade free of blood. She frowned looking down at his sprawled out form.
His vision swam as everything took on duplicates. It was like being drunk whenever they visited the pub. The cold numbness in his chest festered and he was fairly certain it was the same kind of void poisoning she’d inflicted on Sala. He reached down and tried to cleanse it with his light magic, but strangely it resisted. As a result, the cold shifted to white hot agony and he groaned in pain, doubling over.
Lucinda crouched down and shook her head looking down at him. “Right. Should have mentioned that. My blade inflicts a void poison. Rare stuff really. Reacts poorly with light magic too. Makes it nice when you want to slowly but surely take someone out of play. There is a cure, but I’m not sure you’ll figure it out before it takes you.”
This was about in line with how he expected things to play out. He could accept that. He’d stalled her as long as he was able to. The rest was up to the lieutenant and the others now. Unconsciousness and darkness slowly crept over him like a cool autumn dusk.