The night was filled with the sound of weapons clashing. The air was electrified as maya, magic and chakra battle for supremacy. Tanisha, Tyr and Owen faced off against Fuei, the sickle wielding gnoll. Fuei’s skill and experience honed her body into a weapon. She laughed with glee as she tightened her grip on her sickles.
Tanisha had limited knowledge on material users, which are those who use either chakra, prana, life-force or ki. Material users were less common than magic casters in wendigo and druid society, as most of them have magic. Choosing to be a material user would make it impossible to learn magic. Tanisha didn’t know the reason why, since she’d never had a reason to study the material users. Now that she was in the heat of battle with a material user, she felt that was a failing on her part.
The simple runes on Fuei’s boots flashed red for a moment, and she was instantly in front of Tyr. It was Flash Step, a short range burst of speed. Tyr narrowly dodged the first sickle, and the second was deflected by Owen’s spear. The gnoll locked weapons with Owen and kneed Tyr in the chest. His injuries were getting to him, and the gnoll knew it. She was targeting him.
Owen untangled his spear and repeatedly thrust the polearm to force her focus onto him. Tyr recovered and used Flash Step to get behind the gnoll. Before he could even strike a sickle was already swinging around to decapitate him. He raised his sword just in time to save himself, but the overwhelming strength of the gnoll clotheslined him and sent him to the ground hard.
“Tyr!” Tanisha yelled.
The young mystic swordsman didn’t move.
“Focus, Tanisha!” Owen said between strikes.
Owen was hard for the gnoll to pin down. He was definitely a material user but Tanisha didn’t know which one. He moved the spear with skill, interweaving feints with thrusts and slashes. His high mobility was his deadliest attribute. Anytime Fuei started to catch on to his pattern he would add more acrobatics, switching between aggressive jabs and wide slashes aimed at joints in her armor.
Tanisha continued to harass the gnoll with the Infernal Hands as best she could. Fuei simply dodged them or would shake them off between clashes with Owen. The goblin was proving to be a foe she needed to place more of her attention on. In the blink of an eye she used her Flash Step to back out of Owen’s range. She swung her sickles in a seemingly blank space. Tanisha felt the destruction of both of the Infernal Hands as the gnoll looked at her with a smirk.
“Tanisha, run!” Owen screamed. He had his spear in a throwing position.
Tanisha became painfully aware of how far she had strayed from her vanguard. Tyr was unconscious and Owen too far away to keep the gnoll at bay. There was glint in the runes on Fuei’s boots, and in a blink of an eye she was standing over Tanisha. The warrior’s right sickle scraped the ground from a low hand slash as it swung upward. There wasn’t any time to think; Tanisha had to act. She held her combat knife to intercept the attack, one hand on the handle, the other bracing the spine.
The impact was instant, as was the pain that rattled her arms and chest. Tanisha felt weightlessness for a moment, and she realized she was in the air. She was lifted off the ground, momentum carrying her backward. She tucked her head as she hit the ground and rolled until she unceremoniously slammed into a tree.
Owen threw his spear, which whistled through the air. It passed through the location the gnoll had been a moment before. She dodged onto all fours and rushed for Owen. The goblin opened his palm, and the spear flew back with just as much speed as it had been thrown. The gnoll noticed in the last possible second and twisted her body mid-air to avoid being struck in the side. She landed with a spin and kicked Owen across the face. The goblin fell to the ground, Fuei howling over him.
Tanisha used the tree to help herself stand up. The combat knife was broken, snapped in the impact with the gnoll. She threw the weapon away and took a deep breath, the way Joha had shown her. She did so again and again until the maya started to swirl within her. She was not going to lay down, she was done with being weak and frail. Fuck that.
“I am not down yet, bitch!” Tanisha yelled.
Fuei turned around, looking at the overly confident mage girl. She smiled if she managed to keep all of her prey alive they would sell well. Losi might even promote her for a job well done and delivering high quality slaves. Well, the other two were high quality. The girl was okay but females sold well anywhere. They could find a buyer for her, but was a mage worth the trouble? She could be a problem if she knew how to use magic effectively. It would be better to remove a limb or two and reattach them later. If she died before that it wasn’t her problem.
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Tanisha got into the stance she remembered Joha getting into when he fought the druid. The same stance he’d taught her a few hours ago. She focused on her breath, on her body movements, on the tensions of her muscles as mana coursed through them. She replayed the feeling of maya interacting with mana to produce the Infernal Hands. She followed that feeling, but this time with the Mana Muscle Saturation.
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Mana Muscle Saturation
Magic cost: 1
Push mana into your muscles and bones to temporarily increase your physical attributes. (II) Armor of the Infernal, Maya Cost: 3, the power of the Infernal Planes scrapes your soul and infuses itself into your muscles and bones. Manipulate the maya in your body to either increase resistance to physical, spiritual, or mental attacks, or release gathered maya in a single devastating strike.
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Fuei activated her Flash Step and was in front of Tenisha in a single heartbeat. Her sickle aimed at the wendigo’s legs. Tanisha copied Joha’s movements when he’d shown her the power of the AgniKavach. The raw power that destroyed a tree from thirty feet away with a single punch. The complex movements of the maya she sensed around him.
Maya is breath, she thought to herself as she punched forward.
A shockwave of power left Tanisha’s form as the maya rushed from her fist. Fuei was pushed back as the ribs broke in her chest with audible snaps. She dropped her sickles as she fell to her knees, trying to inhale through the pain and blood filling her lungs. Tanisha couldn’t move a single muscle; every tendon in her body ached with a dull pain. All of her maya exhausted in one move, and the only reason she still stood was her refusal to fall.
Tyr finally snapped awake, sat up and grabbed his sword. He didn’t know what had happened and his body didn’t want to listen as he forced it to stand. The gnoll was on her knees and Tanisha stood near a tree in a low fighting stance. Owen was down, dead or unconscious he didn’t know, but he didn’t have time to find out. Gripping his sword, he gathered his chakra.
A figure rushed into the clearing; long and black as the night itself. Tyr couldn’t tell what it was as it beelined for Tanisha. It trailed black smoke which further obscured its form. A triad of echos roared and the smoke cleared somewhat, revealing the long drake-like body, spiked tail and three heads of a massive Bjorn. He had grown larger than the size of a stallion, his scales thrumming with infernal energies.
He wrapped his long body around Tanisha, protecting her with his own form as his head swiveled around looking for any threats. The middle head continued to exhale black maya, staring at the gnoll warrior who had gone stiff. It didn’t take much to see that the hydra was covered in blood; he stunk of death and the gnoll knew that meant one thing.
“What did you do?” Fuei screamed. “Why do you smell like Grohie? What did you do to him?”
Bjorn hissed as he bore his teeth, recognizing her as the most obvious threat. He uncurled himself from around Tanisha and rushed at the gnoll. The warrior reached for her sickles and screamed as she swung both weapons. They hit with only a fraction of the strength she’d had at the start of the fight, failing to penetrate the hydra’s scales as he crashed into her.
His claws and mouths ripped into the gnoll, tearing flesh from bone in a horrifying display of primal violence. The hydra didn’t stop; he just kept tearing as if driven mad with fury, spreading the gnoll's entrails across the camp. One of the creature's heads turned to look at Tyr; there was no recognition in his demeanor, only rage.
“Bjorn stop!” Tanisha screamed. “That is Tyr. You remember Tyr, right?”
Bjorn stepped off the pile of gore that used to be a gnoll. His heads all focused on the mystic swordsman.
“Bjorn, it’s me buddy,” Tyr said, sheathing his sword and putting his hands up. “See, I am not a threat, I am a friend. Remember?”
Tanisha moved at the fastest walk she could manage in her state and stood directly between Bjorn and Tyr. The heads of the hydra remained focused on Tyr. Tanisha remembered what Joha had said to her about the bond needing to grow as Bjorn gained power. Otherwise he might hurt her; he might go crazy and attack people. Bjorn was still Bjorn, he was still her baby, the only one that cared so much for her that he would risk his life over and over again just to protect her.
“Bjorn, look at me!” Tanisha demanded.
She jumped up and grabbed one of his heads, forcing him to look at her. The snarling head calmed as he met her eyes. Tanisha could feel the rage roiling inside him. The maya and the connection to the Infernal Planes within him. Something was latched on to him from the other side, something powerful.
“Tanisha, there’s an anti-magic collar on him,” Tyr said. “Can you keep him calm enough for me to cut it off?”
Tanisha saw the glowing anti-magic runes on the iron collar around his middle neck.
“Yes. But do it quickly,” Tanisha responded.
She forced Bjorn’s three heads to focus on her. Tyr gathered his chakra once again and with a Flash Step was in front of the collar. Bjorn was alerted by the motion and tried to rear back to strike, but Tanisha wouldn’t let go of his heads. Tyr’s sword sliced through the iron with ease and he used Flash Step again to escape from the enraged hydra.
As soon as the collar fell to the ground Bjorn slumped over. The black maya finally stopped coming from his middle head. In seconds he was again unconscious.