Now only if Lock could decipher what Grandfather had meant with time running out and getting pierced through the stomach. The part where he'd said that the Vídd wouldn't be the one to kill him today was fairly clear thankfully, that job fell solely on Lock's shoulders.

His heart skipped a beat as Grandfather only narrowly managed to dodge one of the crescent blades the Vídd seemed so fond of, he did this by heavily weighing down one article of his clothing, he then lashed out with a slash from his newly gained, downwards position.

The Vídd, he would just be Vídd now, dissipated in a puff of smoke as Grandfather's short sword connected with his thigh, more specifically, his femoral artery. Lock didn't even need to think, he was acting on pure instinct now, the fight was too fast paced for anything but. He threw the poisoned dagger that had previously been stuck in the stomach of the cyclops and that he'd been holding onto, where the cyclops corpse should have been, but where there was now Vídd. Lock was fairly sure he'd seen a glimmer of surprise in his foes eyes as the dagger slashed into his brow, before being deflected by the cranium and falling to the ground, the facial expression naturally turned into rage, but before Lock could even prepare to dodge a spell that would surely be coming from the direction of the pissed off mage, Vídd disappeared again. The cyclops reappearing in his place with his leg hacked off, the wound bleeding some sort of acidic substance onto the ground.

Some sort of double substitution?

Lock spun around just in time to see the noticeably angry mage emerge from the smoke cloud before Grandfather, a sword getting swung into his face courtesy of the person he'd disappeared on not even two seconds earlier. The sword cut cleanly through his neck, so cleanly even, that there was no blood or halt in the blade's momentum at all. Seemingly unaffected Vídd lashed out with a kick, one of his crescent arcs attached to it, shearing straight through the small buckler shield Grandfather barely managed to raise in defence and effectively mangling that arm. The retaliation was already underway as Grandfather pulled away his hand with a grimace on his face, a leg raised, he stomped down on the foot of his adversary, whose intangibility seemed to be over for now. Grandfather must have weighed down his steel greaves with his weight spell, somehow ignoring the cool-down, because Vídd's foot basically became one with the ground the moment the two made contact, and a shattering crack rang out as the earth itself broke.

Holy shit that weight spell seemed useful, where could he get som-, Lock's thoughts were interrupted by the mage's shout of unholy rage as he started collapsing onto the ground due to the incapacitation of his foot. But before he could fall entirely to his demise, Grandfather was already swinging down his sword, Vídd simply blurred out of existence, not substitution, and reappeared not a second later free falling down behind Grandfather after having materialized out of thin air, lashing out with his bastard sword. Thankfully he hadn't been actually capable of putting any power into the strike, and it passed fairly harmlessly above Grandfather once he ducked.

The entire strike had been fairly wide blown, was the guy losing his concentration? Vídd turned around to glare at Lock, with the one eye that wasn't completely submerged in blood.

Yeah, that looked like it could impair anyone's vision.

Lock wasn't capable of thinking clearly anymore, he hadn't been for a while now. But he was still capable of recognizing a bad situation when he saw one, namely when Vídd lashed out against Grandfather with one arm, seemingly sending the old man tumbling through sheer telekinesis. Then picked his mangled body up with gesture from the other, also with the power of sheer telekinesis, and started flying at Lock with a vengeful look on his half blood-covered face and brandishing his sword.

Not having a shield or anything to really protect himself with, and faced with a situation where he quickly had to do something without having much time to think, Lock acted on instinct again.

He hurled the golden fleece he'd been carrying around on his neck at his would be killer and ducked trying to roll away under the vengeful flyer. He saw the fleece catch itself on Vídd's bastard sword, before everything devolved into the usual blur one made the acquaintance of when rolling on the ground. It did not prevent him from feeling the harsh kick impacting his side though.

His kidney screamed out in agony, but he managed to thrust out his left hand, halting his now assisted advance, managing to pre-empt reaching the spot where a crescent arc impacted not a second later.

Lock righted himself and looked up just in time to see the pissed of mage literally falling onto him, his telekinesis seemingly having run out, an arm with a nasty looking purple spell aimed at his head. Then he suddenly found his vision filled with brown, and looking upwards, gray.

Grandfather stood before him, the mage's hand buried deeply in his chest, one of his own hands buried within Vídd's ribcage. The scene reminded Lock of a hug, a grotesque one. He rose, as if in a trance, pulled out his sword faster than he'd ever done before. Why was the clothing on Grandfather's back brown, where was his chain mail, why had he discarded it? This and several other thoughts ran through his head as he drove his sword into his Grandfather's back, through his stomach, which was too thin for it to be normal, and into Vídd's stomach. He watched deliriously as Grandfather's mangled hand, rise up along Vídd's body, onto his back, to push him into himself, tighten the embrace, and drive Lock's sword deeper into both their bowels.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Vídd didn't seem to notice, the fingers of his one free hand were busy frantically running along a bracelet hanging off that same arm. It had a fairly intricate design, couldn't have been cheap, probably enchanted if the focus the mage was laying on it in his death throes was any indication.

A wet chuckle rang out through the clearing, he felt the motion reverberate through his sword. Who was laughing? Grandfather? Lock looked back up, yeah, it was the old man, laughing. How odd, he thought as he loosened his grip on the sword by one hand, the now freed appendage going towards his waist, where he had a knife stashed. He managed to grip it with his shaky hand, and drive it up, past Grandfather's head, into where he assumed Vídd's neck was.

“Can't teleport away with someone sticking a part of their body inside you, can't ya.” Grandfather slurred out. The frantic pawing at the intricate necklace stopped, the hand slumped down in defeat more than in death.

Lock pulled out the knife, and stabbed again, and again, and again. Grandfather continued his laughing, before giving a rattling cough, and falling still. Lock’s sword had been partly held up by the fact that Grandfather himself had been standing, but now that he exhibited the usual dead weight of a corpse, Lock's sword, along with it the arm holding it, and the body attached to it, were all dragged down.

He fell to the ground and was finally able to see Vídd, who had seemingly managed to stay standing, over the corpse's shoulder, he did not make for a pretty sight. A hole straight through his lungs letting Lock see the setting sun behind the mage, a stab wound in his gut, a neck so mangled it looked like processed meat and a face so covered in blood that the liquid might as well have been a veil, one eye was visible, but it didn't have any life in it. The mage was dead.

How was he still standing then? Movement caught his attention and he looked down to see a bunch of black swirly lines start spreading out over the mage's legs, quickly reaching upwards at an increasingly accelerated pace, culminating on his stomach, where they formed a rune.

Now Lock wasn't well versed in the runic language used to help along enchantments, but this he could recognize. Explosion.

And explode it did, a small ball of light started gathering itself in the middle of rune, seemingly taking its components from the air around it. It grew bigger and bigger, until it seemed to be brighter than the sun itself. Then it started fluctuating, expanding outwards, and the world was engulfed in light.

Lock just lay there, watching through a purple filter as the ground around him was ripped apart at its seams, concussions and kinetic blasts ripping apart the very fabric of the earth he was laying on as he remained unaffected.

It was all over in less than a second, only the echo remained.

Oddly enough, only two thoughts that emerged from the recesses of Lock's mind as he lay there in a crater of destroyed earth, water starting to fill in, covered in the mulch that used to be his Grandfather.

Maw of Marmortius huh, I can't believe that counted as a stealth attack, also, why is it purple?

-/-

It would have been much more dramatic had Lock fainted and been woken up by the searing pain in his heart so that he could then wallow in his misery, but life was not such. Several minutes after the blast he was still laying there, conscious and all.

It made sense of course, he hadn't been hurt that badly. The only injury he'd received during this entire debacle was a kick to the kidney, and while he already suspected that the numbness he felt sluggishly start receding from his mind, body and heart, would make way for quite a bit of emotional pain, that wasn't really something you lost your consciousness over.

Fishing uncle wouldn't come without being beckoned, he was a civilian, he couldn't just risk his life like that without knowing what had happened. Lock righted himself up in a sitting position to look over the lake that was still being slightly illuminated by the setting sun. Yeah, the ship wasn't getting any closer. The only people who would find him if he simply dallied around here would be the city guard, if they had even noticed the cyclops, the fight, the blast. It had still been day out, and the town of Trydan was fairly far away

He managed to stand up on shaky legs, some slabs of a substance mixed with a liquid, that he would rather not think about, falling out of his lap and splatting onto the ground.

Lock looked around the clearing as he tried to steady himself, for all that an apocalyptic battle had gone down here, in the emotional sense, it truly didn't look that much worse than it had been upon their arrival here. Sure the ground was torn up quite badly a hundred or so feet around where the mage had imploded in on himself and some trees had also been blown away, or simply knocked over. The corpse of the cyclops was fairly intact even. But he’d seen worse

It was all fairly inconsequential in the greater picture wasn't it? He thought with a giggle.

A sharp pain in his heart reminded him that he needed to get out of here. He stumbled along the shore line, where he started waving madly at the ship, jumping around and hollering at the top of his lungs. Eventually the ship turned towards him and slowly started gaining speed, having gained the attention he wanted Lock collapsed back onto the ground, trying to calculate how long the Fisher would take to reach him to distract himself.

It worked fairly well, and he had almost gotten the timing completely right. It was but ten seconds later than he'd calculated it that he was holding a rope in his hand. He gripped it tightly and started pulling himself up it, thankfully fishing uncle helped on the other side. Getting dragged through the water did wonders for his feeling of bodily cleanliness, and he managed to not hit his head against anything as he ascended the ship over its railing, where he was greeted by the worried face of fishing uncle, who immediately asked what had happened in a frantic voice.

Lock answered with the claim that fishing uncle shouldn't worry about anything, he'd killed everyone already after all. The following questions he simply ignored, letting himself shimmy down on the railing, answering all questions with the statement that he'd killed em all, until he eventually drifted off to sleep while watching the sun fully set.