Jonathan raced towards the woman, who met his charge. The other two fighters barreled in behind her, snorting in rage. Edgar started to gather his elemental power around his wrists and hands, creating concentrated accumulations of power. A moment later, twin spears of wind shot down from the air, straight towards the fighters trailing behind the woman. As Jonathan’s fist met her blade in an explosion of sparks, the spears of wind flattened the two Uthraki into the ground. They snarled, rising from the floor, and leaped over the heads of Jonathan and the female Uthraki, heading for Edgar.
The guild members headed in for the first time, drawing blades from their clothing. Most of them wielded daggers, but a few had short swords. The weapons did not seem exactly the right choice for a head on assault, but a moment later Jonathan was proven wrong. Normally, this group would have assailed the citadel from a side entrance, but there were none here. The city lord had done his due diligence in protecting his abode. Although these people were likely used to using their blades in the darkness, of which there was quite little here, they were quite adept at using them normally as well. Each of them was not an individual match for the powerful Uthraki guards, but they were able to dogpile the stronger fighters, lashing out with their blades. They weaved a storm of steel around their targets, not giving them much room to breathe.
Jonathan ignored them for now, focusing on his own fight. Edgar had peeled off to help the lower leveled guild members, leaving Jonathan to deal with his own opponent. The Guildmaster was nowhere to be found, which was a pity. His strength would have been useful here.
As a swipe of the sword came around at head level, Jonathan leaned over backwards, letting the blade pass over his head. He reached up and snatched at the sword, grabbing its edge with his gauntleted hands. The one benefit of using gauntlets as a weapon was that it allowed the wielder to grab things too dangerous to hold with bare hands. However, the sword was still quite sharp, and the woman started to pulse energy down the side of the weapon, sending uncomfortable tremors down Jonathan’s arm.
He rose, yanking at the weapon with his superior strength. The Uthraki grunted as she stumbled forwards, straight into a left hook that connected with her face. The woman spat out blood and teeth fragments as she was sent tumbling backwards, and she almost fell. Jonathan only detected the buildup of energy in her weapon at the last moment. It had been a feint the entire time.
He let go just before the weapon erupted into red light, sending a series of powerful energy slashes out into the place where his hand had just been. The slashes streaked through the air, cutting through the obsidian like butter. If that had struck his hand, it would have been severed. The woman pulled the blade back swiftly, whirling around. The blade came in like a tornado, swirling up the wind around it. Jonathan had a similar ability however, and he punched forwards, channeling the conceptual power of Fists of the Hurricane. The skill made the air around his fist compress, even more than it normally would have. The two strikes met with a bang, and Jonathan started to channel his Void energy into it.
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The sword began to crack, but the Uthraki woman sent her own elemental energy to meet it. Many of the Uthraki used a strange red power that seemed to be a blend of Earth and Fire. It was like the sub element of Lava, or something like that. It was interesting that so many of the Uthraki possessed it, but it made sense, given the world surrounding them, it would be easy enough for them to form a connection to the element that surrounded them on a daily basis.
As the fight started to heat up, Jonathan grinned. Perhaps this would be a little more of a challenge than normal. All he could think about was how these fighters compared to his own Uthraki allies. He idly wondered how Hushar and the others were doing.
In the Ash Heaps
Two brothers. Two previously incompatible fighters, now working as one. Tukar and Hushar’s burning rage had been cooled over time by their work in service of Jonathan’s city. Now they fought side by side to hunt the monsters of the wastes. The local game were too weak to prove much of a challenge to the highly leveled Uthraki, but that was not the point. The area surrounding the city was a blasted wasteland of ash and monsters, but it felt far calmer than the volcanic land of Tartarus, where both men had grown up. It was far less dangerous too, given that they both significantly outleveled most of the monsters.
After realizing that their survival and future depended on their ability to work together, as well as the natural decrease in hatred that close proximity brought, they had decided to make up for the mistakes of the past, and go into their future together. Their upbringings had not instilled them with much in the way of emotional stubbornness, and they were perfectly happy to reconcile with one another. It was fitting that they chose to do this through shared pursuit of a monstrous quarry, given that had been what had driven them apart in the first place. Still, sometimes the universe had a sense of irony.
As Tukar skewered an Alpha Ash Prowler on a spike of rock, Hushar beheaded it with his ax, grinning slightly. The monsters themselves fell like wheat before their weapons, and as they bathed in the blood of multitudes, they felt their battles bind them together as surely as if they were linked body and soul. Neither man would admit it, but they had missed one another. Family was hard to come by in the brutal world of Tartarus, but they had it now.