The Forgotten One

The archers were surprised and quickly tried to shoot me. Two missed completely as I closed in and one barely managed to graze my right thigh. When I reached their clustered group I began my ruthless assault on them. My main objective was to give “my” group the advantage on ranged fighters.

My fist crashed into the archer’s face who’d managed to hit me. I felt his skull crack under the weight of my blow and he went flying ten feet back sliding against the ground. I quickly struck out with my right leg to hit the next archer who’d just began to move away and redraw their bow.

I caught this one in the right arm and heard an audible crack from their arm and ribs. She screamed out in pain and fell to her knees. With her out of the picture I chased after the last one who’d started backpedaling rapidly to get some distance between us. As I was about to chase him down too I felt a sharp pain in the back of my right knee.

I looked down and saw a spear sticking straight through. My blood and some bone fragments littered the forest floor just below my knee. I heard the little girl shout something and jumped to the left rolling on the ground. I felt something wiz through the air right where my head had been and rolled awkwardly trying to get back on my feet but with the spear still lodged into my knee it made any type of movement insanely painful and almost impossible but I’d managed it.

I turned away from the archer who was twenty feet away and knocking an arrow on his bow to look at the battle behind me. The spear man with the short spear and a sword woman had come to attack me after I’d initially passed them. The spear man was drawing a dagger out of its sheath having just lost his main weapon of choice. The sword woman quickly followed after me slashing at my chest and neck.

With my movement impaired I couldn’t dodge out of the way and took the full brunt of her attacks. After five or six deep cuts into my chest she grew over confident and charged in to thrust her blade through my throat. I put my left hand up to directly intercept her stab and lashed out with a powerful right hook hitting her square in the jaw and knocking her senseless.

With her down and the spear man advancing towards me cautiously I quickly tore the spear and sword out of my body. I put the sword in my right hand and threw it at the man closing in on me trying to buy some time for my wounds to heal. He tried to dodge out of the way but wasn’t expecting me to throw it as hard as I had. The pommel of the sword struck him in the forehead.

Surprising me as I figured it’d miss without a doubt. He fell like a sack of rocks and laid still. Ok so two bows, one sword, and one spear bastard down. Eight more left. While I was distracted by the melee fighters the archer managed to get a shot off and it pierced my back but only went about six or seven inches in. I quickly spun around to face him and transferred the spear from my left hand to my right hand.

I took aim and prepared to throw it for all I was worth as the archer had moved over sixty feet away. Just as I let the four foot spear fly I heard a woman speaking in the sing song language that the other women had spoken in. I turned back to the fight and saw that the staff wielder that was behind the archers was glowing green. I didn’t see if the spear hit but I heard the man scream and hoped it was either fatal or debilitating.

As she dropped her staff the sword woman and spear man began to rise from the dirt and looked for me. They both started to yell at me in the language I’d learned. “You mother fucker I’m going to kill you. Jack get this shit head.” Screamed the woman as she grabbed the sword from beside the man named Jack. I smiled and brought both fists up and went right back towards them ready to bust some heads.

She swung with more caution than before but with my leg healed I could easily step out of the way. The spear man ran at me from the side and swung with reckless abandon but losing the reach advantage he’d had with the spear I returned every attack attempt with a successful blow to his body or head. I didn’t use as much strength as my initial charge but didn’t take it easy on him or the sword woman.

Our little fight was at a stale mate as far as they knew with them not being able to land a hit on me and me only getting a few hits in on them but without a weapon. I decided it was time to end both of them. When Jack went in to stab me with the dagger I let him drive it deep into my chest and grabbed his throat in a vice like grip. The woman thinking that Jack had delivered a fatal blow quickly closed the distance between us and stabbed me all the way through with her sword.

I spat up blood and coughed but grabbed her in my other hand. With both their necks in my hands I started to squeeze and lift them into the air. They choked and sputtered and tried to stab me again and again but it was useless. I kept squeezing until I felt their necks break under the pressure I’d been exerting. They may have died before then but I had to be sure with the staff woman who’d picked them back up.

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I dropped their corpses and drew their weapons from my body once again to survey the battlefield. Each woman was in a fight when it had started but they quickly mopped them up. Without the threat of arrows or being out numbered completely they had easily dealt with all but one of the melee combatants. It was the long spear wielder.

He kept them at bay with his tremendous reach. Even with a few arrows being shot his way he either avoided them altogether or knocked them out of the air with the shaft of the spear. I then looked over to the two who’d been in the very back. The staff wielder was crying and trying to do more things that caused her to glow but the fully covered one was now pulsating red in my regular field of view.

He pushed his hand out to me and a river of fire flew from his hand and engulfed me sticking to my body. It burned more than anything I’d ever experienced. I flailed and tried to put myself out but no matter what I did it continued to burn. Through the flames I could see that the spear user was slowly retreating towards his final companions. I started to run towards him and as he turned my way to attack I launched myself at him.

He managed to impale me on the spear but I pushed myself farther onto it and grabbed him into a hug that would put an anaconda to shame. As I continued to burn he screamed at the top of his lungs for the fully covered one “Stop it! Stop the magic!” But he didn’t. I could feel my flesh burn from my bones and I could see it was doing it much fast to this man.

As he stopped screaming and I was nothing left but bone I fell over on top of him and the fire sputtered out. I feel the women move past my now charred bones. When they’d all past me I slowly began to consume the man I grew some tendrils from my bones and sent them to consume the man I’d killed and fallen on. It took only a few minutes but after fully consuming him I could heal much faster.

My muscle and skin grew back along with the rest of my body and with it I could finally hear what they were talking about. The man was shouting at the group of women about ruining his master’s plan and how they’d all be punished accordingly even if he died. The women were stoic and silent until the noticed the woman who had healed their fighters and then they grew angry.

She had some kind of collar on her neck that gave off a slight red glow. After yelling at the man he just started to laugh. “What’s wrong? Never seen a bitch put in her place before? Ahahahaha. Under my master’s rule you’d all be treated exactly as you deserved. Nothing more than the animals to be owned, sold, and used as such.”

I turned my head to get a better look at them and saw that the woman who’d rode the elk was crying and trying to speak to the woman. When it became apparent she couldn’t speak back she looked at the man with a hatred so strong I could feel it from where I was laying. “You will release my sister now human or else I will unleash a torment so unimaginable the fiends who torment those in the pits of hell will come to me seeking tutelage.”

I was shocked by the fact she spoke in the human’s language and missed the next few things she said. I started listening again and heard the man laughing. “Oh so this bitch is your sister then huh. Good good this way you can watch her wither away to nothingness for after my death she cannot be freed from her collar. Only I know the words to unbind her. And slave should I die here you are forbidden from moving from that spot.”

The woman who’d spoken to him quickly struck him over and over again while crying. She was stopped by the wolf rider who caught her fist. I rose from where I lay and saw that the man’s face was now deformed with teeth littering the floor. He was laughing however and kept saying that he’d won.

I strode up to them and everyone did a double take when they saw me even the woman in the collar and the man whose eyes were almost swollen shut. He sputtered and pointed at me and asked in a slurred voice. “Dats nos ossibe yu ded nos ossibe” I smiled at him and moved through the group of women now staring at me in disbelief.

“Yeah I’ve got to say that fire was fucking hot. But what was that about you only knowing the words for the collar?” He was still shocked but started laughing again. “Das rght das rght an I won leh her go.” He kept on cackling and I just nodded. “So that means it up there somewhere right?” I poked his forehead which made him grimace in pain. “Then I guess I’ll just take it then.

I slammed my hand into his forehead and sent a tendril to his brain and began taking everything he had stored away. This man unlike the last two the second being the spear man. Actually had a vast amount of knowledge locked away. He knew things from the conversions of the human’s currencies to the application of magic.

He also had the language that the women spoke as well as many objectives, plans, and identities of many people behind this attack and the one on the little girl. I sucked it all up greedily and after what seemed like hours sorting through the information he had with it only being a second or two in real time I finally let his body go limp.

The woman who’d beaten him started screaming at me. “YOU WORTHLESS HUMAN. NOW HOW WILL I SAVE HER?” the last part of her sentence was emphasized by the tears streaming down her face. She and the others moved to attack me until I grabbed the neck of the collared woman. I held her up and in front of me.

The bow wielding woman scoffed at me. “Now you resort to using a human shield you disgust me.” She had an arrow knocked and aimed at me. I tried as best I could to ignore them and grabbed the woman’s collar moving it around until the clasp was on the back of her neck and in front of my face. I said a few words that made no sense to myself but then the collar sprang open and landed at her feet.

The others once again looked completely dumbfounded. The woman in front of me cried and spun around to hug me. “Thank you thank you thank you so muuuuuch.” She was still crying but I gave her a soft hug back and then pried her off of my neck and gave her a soft push towards the other women. She ran at her sister and began hugging her with all the strength she could muster.