There were no visible effects when Shizoku’s casting finished, but Moriko felt a brief giggle fit trying to take control and a desire to fall to the ground laughing. Her training and experience had helped harden her will enough to resist the fox’s enchantment, their wills briefly contesting against each other, and she gave the white-haired kitsune a grin. “Nice try.” And she meant it. If the spell had taken hold, it would have left Moriko nearly helpless for a while, which would have bought Shizoku time for her support to arrive.
Out in the mist, the shadowy shape of the giant axolotl was beginning to stagger, and the monk decided she needed to wrap things up with Shizoku fast instead of exchanging ranged attacks. Letting herself be delayed here would give them a chance to gang up on her three-to-one. So she collapsed her staff and charged across the water directly at the witch, ignoring the girl’s yelp as Moriko snatched her up mid-stride, not stopping until she’d reached the next ice floe.
That had taken long enough for Shizoku to slap her with foxfire twice, and rather ineffectually try to sink her teeth into Moriko’s arm. The only reason she managed to reach Moriko’s skin at all was that she’d shifted her teeth into a fox’s sharp ones.
Moriko didn’t take the time to defend herself at all, instead shifting her grip to wrap her arm around the girl’s neck and drop them both to the ice so that she could wrap her legs around the girl’s waist as well before she locked her arm into a choke-hold.
It was possible to choke out someone while standing, but especially given the height difference, this was much safer, giving Moriko more precise control over her leverage as she restricted the blood flow in Shizoku’s neck. The kitsune naturally panicked at the suffocating sensation, as her air bubble only provided fresh air and did not relieve the need to breathe as some advanced spells did, and flailed wildly with her foxfire-lit tails.
It took several seconds for Shizoku’s eyes to roll back and her body to fall limp, and during that time Moriko picked up a few more burn marks. She immediately released Shizoku and reached over to slap the water twice to call up one of the bunyips. They wouldn’t have had a good view, so she wanted to make sure one of them got the girl to a healer for an immediate checkup. A three-tail kitsune should be resilient enough to not have significant risk from the experience, but it was best to be sure.
Trusting the bunyip to take care of things, Moriko rolled to her feet and broke out her healing kit to apply salves and bandages. She only had a few moments, and she needed to make sure she chose her next actions wisely. Nainvil would be the easiest to solo of the pair, while Brongrim had as much flexibility in switching between ranged and melee attacks as she did. So Brongrim had to go down first, but she didn’t want to give Nainvil the opportunity to get a clean hit with his greatsword either.
Fortunately, she had options that would not have been open to her a week ago. While she’d been training people up on the first floor, she’d found it very easy to enjoy seeing people make breakthroughs and had a small epiphany when she’d been able to distinguish between what a student was good at and what they enjoyed. For some, there was a way to show them how to enjoy what they were good at, and for others, she had to find a way to use their talent to pursue what they liked. And for a few, talent simply had to be abandoned in the pursuit of their passion.
When she’d fully understood that, Moriko had felt a strange warmth, like her soul was being hugged in a gentle fire. That was when she knew she had Lady Sakiya’s blessing, and during her next morning meditations, she discovered an intuitive understanding of how to guide a portion of that blessing into some basic spells.
While a portion of that power was dedicated to healing prayers, Moriko’s awakening was still new and their potency was low, which was why she had used her kit instead. She only had two ranked spells she expected to find a use for in this battle, and she used the first of them now, calling down a blessing that would help guide her strikes for the next minute or so.
Moriko also had a minor spell available, the same one that would have been useful to have readied when Shizoku had hit her with those darts of force. But if she’d flared it to block those darts, it wouldn’t be usable now.
There was a crash as the axolotl fell, and the two warriors started running toward where they had last heard Shizoku. Moriko was settled into her stance as they broke into the area that had been cleared of mist, her shield spell up. Brongrim was quick to spot her and fire his pistol, and Moriko had to almost immediately flare her shield to keep the bullet from reaching her. That left the cantrip unusable for several minutes, but she still had her remaining ranked spell in reserve.
She launched wind strikes at both of them as they charged, then cast her final spell of the fight just as Nainvil started to get close to her ice floe. The monk focused her thoughts on the half-orc and shouted a Command, “Flee!” Her will crashed against his, and his expression was priceless as he found himself obeying her command, his body not under his control as he ran away.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
That would only buy her a dozen seconds at best, but that should be enough. Moriko enhanced her aura briefly with a burst of chi, lending extra force to each wind strike she sent at the dwarf, who was still closing in on her.
It was a fierce exchange for a brief moment, Brongrim’s fighting technique allowing him to slice with his short sword even as he chambered another round while Moriko flowed freely between staff strikes and kicks. His technique was why he had chosen to close even after Nainvil had been forced to run away, otherwise, he simply had dead time out in the open while reloading. Both of them were still carrying injuries from their fighting, but Moriko was the stronger of them to begin with and had been able to treat the worst of her injuries. A staff strike against his head sent him down, his helmet cracking open from this final blow.
Moriko was a little more concerned about a head blow that sent someone unconscious than a simple choke out, so she held out her hand in a ‘wait’ gesture toward Nainvil, who had almost reached them again, and whispered words of prayer. She felt the compassionate warmth of her goddess flow through her and then to Brongrim, who almost immediately began to stir with a groan. Moriko smiled down at him. “You are out, my friend.”
A bunyip had surfaced next to the ice floe and was waiting patiently to take the dwarf away, and Moriko stepped away to face Nainvil. “Ready to try your luck? I’ll even give you a rundown of where I am at: I have no more spells for combat, and I don’t have enough chi reserves for any major abilities, but I can still use wind strikes and run on water.” Technically the wind strikes were part of one of her major abilities, but as long as she could maintain that part of her mental state she wouldn’t lose them. She had expended her reserves by first enabling her shadow grasping power, then switching to her wind aura, and finally in that flurry of strikes she’d spent on Brongrim a few moments ago.
Nainvil considered her for a moment; it wasn’t like either of them was in great shape, and Moriko was controlling her breathing to not show how much she currently hurt. One of Brongrim’s bullets had cracked a rib and was still lodged against the bone just to the outside of her breast, and every breath made the pain flare, but it wasn’t enough to seriously hamper her. She was fairly certain she could still take him however; he either had to engage her at short range with his sword, which would let her skirmish and make him chase her while she attacked from a distance, or he could try to switch weapons to his longbow, but then she could close and fight him up close. Neither option required her to switch weapons, so she could always slide smoothly between styles.
The half-orc apparently came to the same conclusion and sheathed his blade. “You win,” he said with a sigh, then waved off the bunyip as he approached Brongrim, who had sat up when his thoughts had cleared enough. Nainvil collected the fallen weapons to return them to their owners, then picked up the dwarf to carry in his arms.
“Oy, what are you doing you big lout!” Brongrim shouted, and Moriko was pretty certain that the dwarf was blushing somewhere beneath that beard. “I can walk myself to shore.”
“Oh shut up, you are still injured. Let me take care of this until we get you fully patched up.”
Moriko grinned as the pair continued to bicker and Nainvil walked across the water toward the lakeshore. Then she let herself fall into the embrace of the presence she felt manifesting behind her, indulging in the luxury of having her husband scoop her up into a princess carry. “Well done, my love.” he murmured before kissing her. It was a lovely distraction from the pain as his shadow reached into her wound to pluck the bullet out, and it nicely masked her slight whimper. That really, really hurt. But the pain faded as a gentle cool vitality flowed into her, neatly repairing her body and soothing away her wounds. Ozuran’s touch was quite a contrast to Sakiya’s when it came to the sensation of healing magic.
She smiled up at Mordecai as their kiss broke and he started carrying her toward the shore. “That was fun, but I think this is the best part.” There was a faint grumble in her mind from Kazue, but it wasn’t like the kitsune could have done the princess carry. Moriko was pretty certain that her wife’s assets took up most of the space in Kazue’s reach, and giggled at the image of being pushed out of her arms by said assets.
Being carried was a nice change of pace, and she settled in to enjoy the experience, though her thoughts lazily pondered how Mordecai was able to walk at this slower pace across the water. She was pretty certain he didn’t have a spell active, though maybe she had just missed it. Then again, he had lots of tricks, so maybe it was something else. It was so hard to keep track sometimes.
They were well up the slope of the shore when Mordecai suddenly stopped, and Moriko opened her eyes to see him staring into the distance, his face shocked. “What?” Was all the time she had to ask before he was swinging her down to her feet.
“ASSAULT! Protect the core!” His mental voice slammed into her mind, leaving her barely able to catch her balance as his avatar disappeared.
Moriko didn’t know what was happening, but began running as fast as she could toward the door leading past the end of the floor and to the feast hall. In addition to the concern and worry gnawing at her mind, there was a small part of her that was miffed that her husband had run off ahead of her without telling her what was going on. The rest of her was certain that the small voice was an idiot, and obviously he trusted her to figure it out on the fly.
And another thought was angry at herself for just relaxing instead of meditating while she was being carried, she hadn’t gathered back a significant amount of chi and had no idea what was happening, only picking out snippets of commands being passed to the dungeon’s inhabitants. Oh, and she had a pounding headache from the volume of Mordecai’s mental shout. She was not in a good mood now, and it was someone’s fault. Someone whom she had every reason to lay fist, foot, and staff upon. Moriko growled.