Hiding behind some cover, I listen as Father is screaming angrily, demanding that I come back out and fight him, calling me a coward, and cursing me out in Goblin. Another giant fireball tears through the remains of the city and explodes a half collapsed building a couple blocks away as I sit and rest.
“Gre’dem! Come out and fight me!!!”
No thank you…
One of the nice things about deciding that I am going to take this slow, is that it means I can take breaks. After about an hour of getting chased around the city by a pissed off Goblin King, I finally managed to find the safe range of where I can hide my presence from him. Get too close, and he will find me almost immediately, but as long as I stay a couple blocks away from him and hide my presence, he will have no idea where I am.
I, on the other hand, know exactly where he is at all times. With his Field flared out and searching for me, he is practically shining like a star in my senses.
“Haaaaaah~…”
I let out an exhausted breath as I collapse and take a seat against a wall. I found myself a building that still had four walls and a ceiling so I can have somewhere dark to rest.
Opening up my core, I let it drink in as much mana from this place as I can, draining all the mana out of the shadows until the room is no longer just dark, but seems to slowly be losing all of its color, the corners of the room especially being reduced to the point of where they look like blank hole in space where nothing can be seen. No color, no black, no white, just nothing. Sticking my hand into the corner, I can still touch and feel the wall, but it is weird because the image of my hand starts to distort and fade a bit until I pull it back.
Huh, weird. I guess this is what happens if you pull all the mana out of darkness. Spooky…
Once my core is feeling closer to being full, I finally stop it from feeding. Almost immediately, all the nothingness in the room is quickly filled back in as mana finds the darkness and fills it, the deepest shadows in the room finally returning to just being dark spots.
With my core feeling refreshed and mostly refilled, I give myself a look over. It’s not great…
My body isn’t dirty or even wounded, but my clothes are absolutely useless now. I had to use my shadow flames to protect my body and weapons from Father’s flames, so my clothes weren’t very safe and had been steadily burning away during our fight. If it wasn’t for the fact that I always keep my shadows worn on my body as faux underwear, then I would currently be in a state that can’t be shown on television…
Hells, the only part of my clothes that isn’t completely destroyed is my belt, and it is just barely holding itself together to keep my knife on my hip.
“Damn Goblins always ruining my clothes… And he melted my gun and my axes to! It took weeks to get those hand axes custom made, and now they are gone! Ahhhhhh…”
My leg is bouncing as my thoughts go to my destroyed stuff, my Sin starting to act up and make me angry. Thankfully, I am already fully resolved to kill this guy, so I’m not about to fly into a rage or anything, especially not over something like a shirt now. I have more important things to get overprotective of now.
“Damn Goblins…”
Cursing, I set my sledgehammer aside and quickly pull off my ruined clothes and then replace them with a full bodysuit of shadows to cover myself. Making a spot on my hip, I transfer my survival knife from my ruined belt and equip it on my side.
Outside, Father is screaming. “Gre’dem, stop hiding and fight me!!!”
“Haah, yeah, yeah, just give me a second…” I whisper to myself in response.
Pulling my hair up into a ponytail, I quickly tie it off, so it won’t get in the way. At Sky’s request, I have been growing my hair out longer, rather than cutting it to shoulder length like I normally would. She likes it this way, so I am willing to put up with it. Then, with my hair up and out of the way, I have my shadows move to cover the rest of my head, covering everything except for my eyes and my horns. I don’t have to worry about keeping holes for breathing, because I can make my shadows to where they don’t stop air flow.
Dressed in a full pitch-black body suit of shifting shadows, the only color from my body being the golden halos of my eyes and the white ivory of my horns, I stand up and move to leave the building in a haze of shadows. Not too far away, another building goes up in flames as Father takes out his rage on the city.
Time for ninja Lain to enter the show. Believe it!
Darting out of the building, I quickly move at top speed, jumping from cover to cover as I go back on the offensive, moving to attack Father from behind as fast as I can. Before I can reach him, he immediately senses me and spins around to attack me, lobbing a massive fireball towards me with a roar.
Dodging behind a mountain of rubble, the fire ball explodes and sends melting rock shrapnel flying in every direction. Keeping on the move, jumping around like a flee after a dog’s ass, I try to keep myself towards Father’s back, keeping him spinning as he tries to track me. Every time he gets sight of me, he blows away the spot I was occupying with another explosion, though by the time the attack lands I am already far away, never stopping to stay in anyone spot for too long. As long as I don’t force myself to move at top speed, I can easily sprint at a comfortable pace of about forty miles an hour for the entire day, and as long as I keep my distance from him, his heat shouldn’t drain my stamina too quickly. If it does become an issue, I can always back off and catch my breath, eat some dirty snow or something to hydrate since I am all out of water.
I can do this. Just have to keep him busy for the rest of the day. No biggie…
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
An opening finally shows itself, and I dart in for a strike. He quickly turns around and tries to smack me with a flaming backhand, but I just dodge low, practically sliding across the ground on my knees, before springing back up and whacking him in the ribs with my hammer, leaving a nasty looking welt behind before quickly disengaging and diving behind cover.
Doesn’t sound like I broke anything. Shit, our bones really are hard to break, huh? Ribs should be some of the easiest bones to break, and a full force hit from me with a sledgehammer wasn’t enough to do it. Doubt I will be able to crack open his skull then… If I can get through his defenses, then I might be able to delete his body with my flames, but I will seriously have to wear him down first.
“Stop running and fight me, Gre’dem!”
“No, I don’t wanna!”
To accentuate my point, and add to my current ninja theme, I make some fire balls of my own, but shape them like throwing stars, because I can and if I am going to be spending hours harassing this guy, then I might as well have some fun while doing it. Chucking them at him the next time I show myself, he curses angrily as he has to block the little flying explosives. Only, my fire balls are weird, because they don’t actually explode, but instead implode, sucking in everything around them before vanishing in a little flash of light and a pop of air. He has no trouble blocking them with his flames, but against a normal target, the little projectiles would have probably torn bloody holes about half a meter wide out anything they touched.
The big Goblin, of course, doesn’t just stand there and let me keep attack him without retaliating. He is still trying to chase me down and force this fight into a brawl, but I think he is slowly figuring out that he doesn’t have the speed necessary to keep up with me. He is definitely strong, probably stronger than my Fiends, but like them, he is lacking in the speed department. He can still move a hell of a lot fast than a human ever could, but against me, that just isn’t enough.
Between harassing him with imploding ninja themed projectiles, a hastily thrown together smoke bomb spell, and giving him the occasional smack with my sledgehammer, I am slowly pissing him off more and more as I lead him through a very destructive wild goose chase through the remains of the city. The sounds of artillery fire are now far in the distance, and I can feel that my Demons are already in combat at this very moment. They feel like they are doing alright, and I can only hope that they have learned from their last encounters with enemy mages.
Heading north, purposely trying to drag this fight away from home, we eventually reach the part of the Louisville where the Ohio river cuts through the city, acting as a natural border between Kentucky and Indiana. The river is still frozen over from the harsh winter and I don’t stop moving as I dart across the ice, Father hot on my tail.
“Stop running!!!” He screams in rage.
I look back over my shoulder and go wide eyed as I see the attack he is charging up. A massive fire ball is currently building above him, his hands both raised as if he is trying to hold it aloft. He throws both of his arms down and I have to quickly move.
Holy shit, is that a Spirit Bomb!?
I dive toward the thick ice of the river and dig my way through with black flames, quickly finding water and submerging myself. Surrounding myself in a safety bubble of shadows, laired with more shadow flame, the explosion comes half a second later. I can’t see what is happening, but I can tell that a giant explosion had just sent me flying. My safety bubble sounds like it is crashing through something for a while until I eventually come to a grinding stop.
Dispelling my safety bubble, I look around and find myself in what looks to be the destroyed remains of a men’s restroom. Sinks and urinals are destroyed in a ball shaped path and the toilet stalls are all knocked over. Water is pouring everywhere, and the floor is covered in broken porcelain and shattered shards of the mirror that used to be on the wall.
I quickly get out the room that I have no business being in and follow the path of destruction that I tore through the building, moving through offices and decimated cubicles until I finally find the exit.
“Jesus, just how far did you send me!?”
Looking outside, it looks like I tore through an entire skyscraper before hitting this one.
“Literally blasted me into another state. Welcome to Indiana, I guess…”
Spreading my wings, I take flight and clumsily gain altitude until I am hovering up above the skyline, looking down at the river with a bit of shock. The river where I had been crossing is now nothing but a molten crater, steam rising up in a billowing collum where all the water and ice had been vaporized instantly. At the edges of the crater, water is just now starting to flow back in, carrying large pieces of ice with them as the crater’s molten floor is slowly cooled and covered in a layer of dirty water that is quickly brought to a boil.
Watching closely, I manage to spot Father, his flaming body like a dot of light in the distance. He walks through the crater without a care for the flowing water or the billowing steam, all the water around him simply vaporizing before it can even touch him. As he is walking across the riverbed towards me, I can see him raise his hand and point it towards me, danger signals ringing in my head.
With a flap of my wings, I quickly move to the side just as a laser of intense heat pierces through the air where I used to be. Folding in my wings, I drop behind the first skyscraper that I had crashed through for cover, but the laser follows me down, slicing through the building like a hot knife through butter as I plummet to the streets below.
I hit the ground and move. The laser finally comes to a stop at a large angle above me, Father probably having his aim blocked by being in the riverbed still. Regardless, the now bisected tower, with a glowing line running down it, is already starting to fall apart, spitting down the middle as its midsection buckles and gives out, the large building collapsing in a rain of house sized rubble and debris.
Getting away from the collapsing building, I look up at the sky. The Sun is still high up there, shining through the smoke-filled sky, having not even reached its highest point yet.
“This is going to be a long day… Haah…”
Resolving myself to drag this out as long as I can, I follow the street and find a manhole. Diving into the sewers, I find myself underground, completely submerged in darkness and able to feed my hungry core as much mana as it desires.
“Try to blow me up, will you? Well, let’s see how much you like getting attacked by mole men!”
Running through the sewers, I move through the underground labyrinth until I am just beneath Father, who seems to have finally climbed out of the river and has entered the city.
Creating black fire in my hands, I bring them both up to my face, my lungs filled to capacity with air, and then blow with as much forces as I can give, the image of a dragon breathing fire shaping my spell for a second time. The spell comes to me much easier this time, reinforced by my previous successful attempt, further fueling my belief that magic is mostly just bullshit and imagination made real. I want to breath fire like a dragon, so then gods damn it, I am going to breath fire like a fucking dragon!
Almost instantly, the smoke-filled sky is revealed to me as the earth above my head is deleted in a single moment. The next, a column of my flames is cutting through the streets of the city and flooding through the sewers in every direction around me, black flames escaping out into the city through any exit they can find or simply making their own as they cut through several feet of concrete and asphalt, quickly bathing the city with my black flames for several blocks in every direction as a pillar of fire fills the spot where I sensed Father to be standing.
You’re not the only one that is willing to burn down a city to kill their enemy, you fucking Goblin! Just try blowing me up and destroying my stuff, I’ll burn your perfectly chiseled red ass cheeks off!