I had spoken quite confidently, but in reality I knew that I had to put an end to our confrontation as soon as possible. I was still in relatively good condition, but I was starting to feel the fatigue accumulated the previous days weigh on me and my body felt now heavier due to the incurred non healing injuries.

My attention was drawn to the mace I was now holding in my hands. It was a flanged mace with an opaque rough metallic surface. It was a short type of mace, even shorter than the other weapons of its kind, making it suitable for close quarter combat, but it was also significantly heavier, with a thicker shaft and an enlarged head featuring a set of eight flattened but bulky centrally symmetric flanges. Two spherical bumps delimited the handle, which was covered by some kind of plastic which enabled a better grip. It had been cast in a single piece, showing no signs of welds.

I felt it with my hands and could appreciate its sturdiness. Although its design was not particularly refined, it was clearly a piece of moulded or at least etherized manufacturing. Although I hadn’t the necessary competence to estimate its true value, I knew at least that not many people in the Gamma Perimeter could request such an object to be made, due to the scarcity of experts and craftsmen.

I returned my attention to the present situation, as I thought it more important to put an end to the battle before losing myself in disparate considerations. I raised my weapon and placed part of its weight on my shoulder. My opponent had stood up, with his left arm dangling limp on his side. Aura circled around the injured aura, but the smashed collarbone and shoulder seemed to be healing slowly. As he had previously said, he had quite the refined aura control, but even he would have difficulties recovering from multiple comminuted displaced fractures.

“I’ll kill you”, Sloan spoke in a vitriolic voice.

He sprinted in my direction. I raised my weapon and prepared to swing it down on him. Just before he entered my range, he swerved to the right, suddenly changing its direction. Taken aback, I followed his motion with my eyes and saw his hand extending towards Faye. He would cover the distance in mere instants. Alarmed, I raised my leg and stretched it in his direction, trying to kick his exposed side. He immediately withdrew, putting distance between us, before launching another assault.

His face had turned red and now wore a maddened countenance. His delirious eyes were fixed on Faye. Under his gaze, she became pale and collapsed to the ground, with her legs seemingly growing numbs and incapable of supporting her weight.

Sloan resumed his assault, this time directly aiming at Faye. I interposed myself between the two and swung my mace in an horizontal arc trying to intercept him. My attacks now packed a harder punch than before, but were also slower. As a matter of fact, once again he managed to avoid the blow by ducking down and then followed his dodge with a rapid punch to my abdomen, before retreating back.

His strategy was clearly to aim at Faye in order to have me expose myself while defending her, then exploit any opening to hit me and slowly wear me down. This was certainly a smart decision on his part.

“John, I’m sorry, I didn’t think it through…”, Faye spoke in an apologetic tone while I warded off another charge. She seemed to have realised her error in approaching the fighting zone.

“Stay near me. The further you are from me, the more troublesome it is for me to protect you and the easier for him to reach you”, I replied slightly annoyed by the situation.

She followed my instructions and approached me, almost glueing herself to my back. I took a small step away from her, in order to have more space and limit the risk of hitting her in my movements.

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Sloan’s barrage continued on for a long time. With Faye near me I didn’t need to move around to reach her, losing valuable instants, and this way I could more easily divert his onslaught. Punches and kicks rained from all sides and I tried to intercept the blows with my weapon as much as possible, being mostly successful in my intent. In time, his damaged bones had put themselves back together, but I noticed he tended to attack less frequently with his left arm with respect to the right one, signalling to me he was still feeling the effects of my previous blow.

I finally managed to hit him once again, with the mace impacting violently against his stomach. This caused him to stumble back and puke out some fluids, but it didn’t seem to yield much else. A big bruise had also covered his belly, but it disappeared relatively quickly. Unfortunately it seemed that hitting soft tissues and even causing internal bleeding would prove less effective than fragmenting bones, as aura seemed to be able to make bleeding recede rather quickly.

I needed to put an end to this confrontation, as I was now reaching my limit. I raised my weapon and stood still. Sloan rapidly entered my guard and hit me with a powerful hook to the body. This hit was significantly stronger than the previous ones and I felt my ribs creak.

“Got you”, I said.

I made use of the purposefully created opening to grab his arm and keep him at arm's length. After that, I swing my mace with all my strength, driving a backhand blow to his head. He freed himself from my grasp just before the weapon made contact and tried unsuccessfully to get out of the way. The impact reverberated all around and a sinister thud resonated when his limp body fell to the ground.

I immediately fell down on all fours, gasping for air. I was exhausted and every inch of my body ached, but I was still alive. My injuries were mostly internal and could be considered quite severe, but I would eventually heal. At last, peace.

“... Is it over?”, Faye timidly spoke, breaking the silence.

“I think so…”

“Oh, you’d like it, wouldn’t you?”

Suddenly, something hit my chin and my vision flickered. I ended up lying on the ground on my back and Sloan appeared over me. His skull was heavily deformed, his face was covered in blood and his jaw was dangling. Aura oozed from every pore of his skin, and although it had grown fainter, it had assumed a reddish hue and seemed to have taken the consistency of tar.

“You did it like this, didn’t you?”, he said, before starting pummeling my face.

I tried to react, but after the first few punches I found myself completely at his mercy. I was aware of what was happening for every single moment, but I soon found myself losing strength and my senses in various parts of my body.

“John! No!”, I heard Faye cry out and with my peripheral vision I saw her throw herself at him.

“Wait your turn”, Sloan hissed, easily pushing her away with an annoyed motion of his arm, which made her fall to the ground.

After that, he resumed his aggression. I weakly raised my hand towards my face, but this didn’t prove very effective. After some time the attacks stopped. Through my blurry vision, due to my bloated eyes, I could vaguely see Sloan standing up, with a metallic object in his hand.

“I’ll kill you first”

Something hit me in the centre of my chest. I felt my sternum crack. Pain flashed through my body and I tried to squirm out of the way, but to no avail. My aura flow desperately tried to patch the damage, but another hit fell down on me, and another, and another. The pain was quickly becoming unbearable, but I still tried to hang on.

Before the eighth hit could make contact, something changed.

“NO! I SAID NO! NO! PLEASE NO!”

Faye’s almost animalistic cry filled the air. A strong wind surged. I made a huge effort on myself with my aura and my vision cleared. I could see an appalled expression covering Sloan’s face. With some difficulties, I turned my gaze towards Faye. There I could see her rocking back and forth, continuously crying out the word “No” in a muffled voice, herself surrounded by a pulsating pale halo.

I shifted my focus to the sky and saw a dense fog forming over us. The wind started to blow with even more strength and the fog started to disperse in the wind, clouding the air and sometimes recombining in indistinct mist shapes and patterns that would be too difficult to describe. I immediately understood what was going to happen.

Faye’s mind had broken down and now, due to resonance, a mana storm loomed over us.