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Chapter 44: Savagery

[Perspective change from Isa to 3rd person narration]

The armored woman stares at the defiantly still-alive Frontiersman. His posture straight as if he hadn't just been stunned to the ground by a powerful electric shock. He draws from his hip a pointed object of some manner. It looks to be some sort of engraving tool. He quietly drags it across the strange runes that dot his armor. With practiced motions, he carefully modifies one of the runes on each part of his armor. The tool seemingly glows as it draws blackened channels in the leather and steel of the armor. His stare never changes from the armored woman, his stare hateful and determined.

When he appears to be done with his strange ritual he carefully replaces the engraving tool in its special pocket on his hip. The armored woman goes to say something but her words are cut off as Isa jets forward, dirt almost exploding from the force exerted against the ground. There is a distinct cracking noise as he makes this motion moving faster than any human should, and beyond what his musculature should allow. Isa comes down with a haymaker punch, the armored woman moves her arms and sword up to block what is definitely going to be a devastating punch, but it never comes. In another impossible feat of movement, Isa stops all motion forward and his head and body dip backward as his lead leg bends, lifts, and then extends rapidly straight up and into the chin of the armored woman's helmet.

There is the sound of something fleshy either tearing or cracking followed by the thunderous sound of a heavy boot sent at incredible speed, and with its impact increased through runic augmentation, the armored woman is sent into the air a few feet before landing with a heavy crash. The armored woman rolls just in time to dodge the skyward foot coming down aiming for her neck. Her helmet is dented, but it soon repairs itself with a glowing light, and apparently, this same light heals the woman from the utterly traumatic injuries she has sustained.

Before she can get off the ground Isa dives onto her and as she swings upward with a punch he grabs her wrist and falls into an armbar. His feet are firmly planted on the ground on the other side of her body. He then arches his back to the sky, his crotch firmly placed onto the elbow of the armored woman. There are a few moments where there are only the sounds of two people straining, slight metallic popping, and then a brutal snap as her arm hyperextends and the joint of the armor fails to stop the motion. She screams in agony as Isa lets go only to mount her with his knees deep under her armpits. He sits with all of his weight on her chest as the armor begins to heal its wearer. Isa then begins to rain down brutal punches, the steel-reinforced knuckles of his armor sending metal and paint shards flying in all directions with the fury of his blows. Under the crashing of metal is the distinct sound of bones breaking and muscles tearing as he lands his attacks one after the other.

After every punch he grabs the collar of the breastplate with broken fingers so that her head is off of the ground right before coming down with the other hand, bouncing her helmeted skull against the dirt below, creating a small crater where the thunderous exchange is taking place. Isa's fingers begin to bend in odd directions, forcibly brought back into place by the enhanced strength of the runes on his armor. The armored woman screams in pain in between bouts of unconsciousness, her armor forcibly keeping her awake and her skull intact. She receives no respite from the onslaught of blows, as his fingers and hands bring him too much pain Isa switches to dropping his elbow into the helmet, the reinforced plating on the elbows protecting the bone underneath for a time.

The armored woman for the first time since she came to this new world found herself being brutalized without any option or way out. In a desperate move through teeth falling out and regrowing casts a powerful spell on herself,

"Cyclone Pulse..."

A burst of wind explodes from her body with a loud bang sounding like the blast from a cannon. Isa is sent flying where her tumbles to the ground and lies flat on his face. It takes the armored woman a few seconds to stand up as her eardrums are healed from bursting. Despite her wounds being fully healed she still feels phantom pains from the injuries causing her to stagger forward, picking up her discarded sword. She trudges forward toward her down opponent who is trying to stand up as his head spins and his ears bleed. She knows she has to keep her distance, if he gets her to the ground again she doesn't know if she can handle another beating like that again.

Vomit spills out of the holes in the chain of Isa's helmet. His whole body heaves as he pukes pure bile from the concussion. As the armored woman prepares a decapitation strike he throws a fistful of dust into her face. She reels for a moment and swings wildly. Isa barely manages to dodge the attack, but the augmented strength the armor gives her allows the sword to easily shred the chain protecting his lower face and neck. His neck avoids getting cut by less than an inch as he throws a brutal haymaker into his opponent's helmet. There is a sound like a bell tolling as blood pours from his gauntleted hand, the skin splitting and tearing from the forces exerted.

The armored woman nearly falls over but she rights herself and swings upward with her offhand. The armored fist slams into Isa's helmet bending the steel of the faceplate. Isa reels back and after two steps back comes back in with more hard punches. The armored woman loses her sword in the melee, focusing on throwing her own punches back at her foe. She hadn't ever felt this way before... not even back on earth. It's odd, to face a foe who won't give in, who is supposedly weaker and incapable of truly hurting her, it's frustrating, beyond such even. She can't even voice her frustrations, all sounds coming from her mouth being terrible groans and screams as she uses all she has to fight back. While her wounds heal, her mind cannot keep up with the pain. Her eyes water and she is trying not to loudly sob from the pain and frustration. Finally, she lands a hard punch that dents the breastplate of the Frontiersman before her. There is a wet coughing noise and he vomits all the remaining contents of his stomach onto her pristine armor through the ragged chain loosely hanging from his helmet.

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The armored woman steps back in disgust and tries not to wretch herself as her armor despite its abilities cannot block the foul smell of bile and half-digested food. The armored woman looks up for a second after shaking her hands only to have a fist meet her helmet, but rather than a small dent or a hellish clang, the armor buckles and bends inward and even makes contact with her face, cutting flesh and spalling metal causing her eyes to bleed profusely. Isa's forearm breaks, both the ulna and radius breaking due to the force with a gunshot volume crack paired with the terrible shriek of metal. The armored woman falls to the ground, her face mangled, and Isa falls to his ass. There is a moment of quiet, and then they both begin screaming in abject horror and pain. Isa holds his limply hanging arm, heaving despite his gut being empty. The armored woman screams bloody murder as she claws at her face as the armor slowly heals her, only for the injuries to be reopened by the metal still in the way, the priority of the armor's enchantments failing in this situation.

The armored woman wills the helmet to disappear, leaving her face, bloody and raw, her eyes bloody messes exposed to the sky above. She heals from these wounds quickly and crawls over to her discarded sword. She feebly gets to her feet and stares down the exhausted and broken Isa. She then runs her blade through his torso. Steel and leather give away to flesh and bone. There is a terrible and wet groan that escapes Isa's lips as blood runs from the wound and out from under the chain of his helmet. He somewhat slumps forward, not dead, nor truly wounded fatally, but he has lost. He cannot move despite the strength the runic armor gave him, it cannot support a body as broken as his. The armored woman in her weakened state cannot remove the sword from the ribs of her foe, so she leaves it. She picks up the sword of one of her dead knights.

Distantly one of her airships crashes to the ground as the Alrius forces begin to rally once more, her limited knights either dead or wounded. Distantly Alrius kingdom airships approach silently through the sky, she has little time to fulfill her plans. She goes to kill her foe when suddenly a woman screams,

"NO! Please don't!!!"

A middle-aged woman with a plump build and blonde hair runs to Isa and shields his body with her own. The armored woman hesitates as the woman, clearly not a fighter of any kind defends the man like this. The woman pulls a small knife and chops her hair off giving her a buzz-cut length of hair. The armored woman stares at this display and watches the older woman use two discarded shortswords as splints for Isa's arm, tearing her clothes to tie on the metal, Isa groans in pain as the bones are forcibly put back into place by his aunt. The armored woman not knowing Frontiersman culture assumes the haircutting is a sign of surrender and turns away.As she turns to the princess something soft and silky falls over her neck and a lot of it, out of the corner of her eyes she can see the golden coloration of the strange stuff then a rough and wet voice whispers in her ear,

"I'm not done with you yet..."

Two knees press against her back as the silky fibers twist on the back of her neck and the wounded man pulls back, pushing with his knees on her armored back. The thin bands of metal protecting her vulnerable neck protect her skin from being cut by the incredible tension, but they compress inward the high tensile strength of a full head of hair overpowering the thin metal's need to remain in a certain shape. The armored woman can't even scream in shock as she makes a terrible grunt from the back of her throat as her access to air is removed. In her sheer panic, she reactivates her helmet but it doesn't offer any safety and in the same panic she removes it. She tries to get her armored fingers under the golden strands but is unable due to the bluntness and thickness of the armored gloves.

The edges of her vision become dark as she finds it hard to stand. She falls to her knees as the man on her back continues to pull tighter. Just as she is about to pass completely out there is the sound of metal snapping as the makeshift splint breaks and Isa loses his grip and nearly flies a few feet backward onto his back. The armored woman now able to breathe quickly guzzles air as she begins to sob, having faced her own mortality for the first time since her first death. Isa lies on the ground having expended most of his energy. He touches his wound and looks at the dark blood on his hand. The armored woman crawls over to him mounts him grips his vomit and blood-covered throat in her armored hands and begins to squeeze with a demented look of desperation. The man makes choking noises, raises his hand, and pushes against her face with his remaining arm. He tries to gouge at her eyes with his hand but is too weak with his broken hand and fingers. He wipes the blood all over her face as she continues to choke him when suddenly her grip loosens.

She screams in agony as one of her fingers spasms violently and bends at the wrong angle. Her arm goes limp then heals, then goes limp, then heals, over and over as the armor fights the cursed poison that has now entered her veins. Isa makes a choked laugh remembering now what kind of horror flows through his veins. His blood contains a toxin very similar in composition to a nerve gas of earth, causing violent muscular contractions that can break bones, along with melting the very veins that the poison runs through. While weaker than the toxin of the original green dragon he had acquired it from, it is still devastating. While the armor of the woman can keep her alive, it cannot purge the toxin fast enough, it also doesn't help since the poison can replicate within a foe, much like a virus or prion, but far faster.

Three remaining knights approach their hero and support her seizing body as she tries to walk to safety. She shouts to them,

"Start the teleportation ritual! Teleport the princess, we still have time to escape."

Isa looks around himself and he can see the sigils carved into the ground and recognizes the ritual spell. It's one of the two only teleportation spells in all of history. Ritual magic is the only kind powerful enough to actually teleport anyone, and a spell of this caliber requires lots of sacrifice, and a battlefield like this is more than enough. Isa looks around and spots the two sigils he knows. He drags his ragged body over to the sigil as the armored woman begins the spell, taking a small sample of Princess Godiva's blood in order to make her the target of the spell. Isa reaches the sigil and using his left hand and a piece of his broken splint he changes the sigils, slightly modifying them through his bloody vision and spinning head. He finishes his drawing and begins to drag himself toward Godiva. The sigils and ritual circle begin to glow with power as the armored woman activates the ritual magic. Isa draws close and in a final act of desperation lifts his chain and spits into the center area where Godiva's blood was collected. The armored woman realizes what Isa has just done and begins to shout in protest when there is a brilliant flash of light and a sound like thunder...

In the aftermath, all that is left are those still alive from the fighting, the only missing living being Godiva and Isa...