“Are you a fottuto idiota?”
“That sounds like an insult so I plead the fifth.”
“You do what to what?”
“Never mind.”
“No, not never mind, you’re a fucking moron! He's going to kick your ass! Call this shit off, now!”
Privately, Jadis felt like Kerr was probably right. Challenging possibly the highest-level person she’d ever met to a “spar”, which was really just a thinly veiled demand for a brawl, was a dumb move on her part. She figured her chances of winning were fifty-fifty at best. Still, she wasn’t about to back down. She’d thrown down the gauntlet and by her standards, retraction was not an option.
“Look, I’m not going to let him talk shit about the way I fight without at least trying to shove his words down his throat,” Dys grumbled to the irate archer.
Kerr stared at her for a moment, a look of complete incomprehension on her face.
“Why? Your fighting ‘style’ is literally shit. Who cares if he’s pointing it out?”
“Excuse you?” Dys tilted her head at Kerr.
“What? I figured you knew! It’s fucking obvious you’ve never had a minute of training.”
All three of Jadis stared at Kerr for a minute before turning their heads to look at where the other four women stood nearby.
“She’s right,” Aila said with a shrug and a frown. “Even if I didn’t know firsthand you three don’t have any passive weapon skills, I would have guessed it from how you fight. It’s one of many reasons why this spar is a terrible idea.”
Feeling a tad betrayed, Jadis’ several gazes turned to Eir, Thea, and even Sabina.
“I have noticed a difference between your stance and those of more… experienced soldiers,” Eir gently told her.
“I—I may have some, ah, suggestions I c—could give you to improve,” Thea offered.
“You look fine to me!” Sabina gave her two thumbs up.
A second later, she qualified the statement.
“But I don’t really know anything about how to swing a sword. Or axe. Or anything other than a smith’s hammer. So I’m not the best judge, I guess?”
Okay, Jadis wasn’t completely oblivious. She knew she wasn’t trained in any kind of martial combat. In fact, her sportiest extracurriculars had been things like softball and track-and-field. But she’d been kicking major demon ass for months at this point. That had to count for something, right?
“I’m that bad?” Dys asked, looking between her companions.
“No, you’re not bad, you’re just—”
“Wasting time!” Noll shouted from where he stood further up the hill, cutting Aila off. “Get on with it or admit defeat! The result will be the same either way.”
Jadis’ crestfallen expression morphed into a scowl as all three of her turned to face the dark-furred man. The thought of bowing out was expunged from her mind instantly. There was no way she’d back down from the furry asshole when he was making those kinds of assumptions. Bad idea or not, she wasn’t backing down from a fight.
Jay, Dys, and Syd stalked forward, dropping the visors on their helmets. With weapons ready in hand, they stopped just outside of range of the unconcerned-looking old wolf. Noll stood with arms crossed and his back to the cliff edge of the hill. Only a scant few feet were between him and a one-hundred-foot drop. The worst possible position to be in, Jadis knew without needing an ounce of training. Clearly, the man was taunting her by standing in such a tenuous spot.
“Not going to cry when we hit you with these, are you?” Syd asked, indicating her lance and the weapons her other selves were wielding.
“No,” Noll curled his lip in either a snarl or a sneer. Maybe it was both. “Don’t hold back, either. I don’t want to hear any shit about you lot not trying your hardest after I put you down.”
“Fine. You ready?” Jay asked while lifting her oversized club into an overhead stance.
“Yes,” Noll nodded, making no move to uncross his arms or unsheathe the curved sword at his hip.
“Not going to draw that?” Dys motioned to the merc’s weapon with her own.
Noll snorted, shifting slightly and finally uncrossing his arms as he rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck.
“If you manage to make me draw my sword,” he growled out through sharp teeth, “I’ll consider this your win.”
“…Fine,” Jay replied curtly, not at all pleased by the handicap he was giving her.
The four fell silent then, holding their tongues as the tension built between them. Jay stood to the left, Dys on the right, and Syd in the middle. Even with the limited room on the top of the half-carved hill, there was plenty of space for Jadis to have her bodies spread out in a semicircle around Noll and she planned to take full advantage of that fact.
There was no word passed to let them know when to start. One second, the three Nephilim stared down the grizzled therion, the next all three moved in unison. Syd’s lance shot forward, aiming to pierce Noll in the center of his chest. Jay’s great club swung down from on high, seeking out his horned skull. Dys’ iron axe aimed low, arcing towards his legs in a low blow. Each attack came at the same time, a flurry of unavoidable motion that Jadis had used countless times in the past to take down demons. To dodge one attack meant getting caught by one of the others. Jadis had no doubt that she would be drawing first blood in this spar.
With a simple fluid motion, Noll stepped forward, avoiding the tip of Syd’s lance and got in close to her. With a pull on her arm and a well-placed foot, he sent her stumbling forward, right into the paths of both Jay and Dys’ attacks.
Jadis reacted as quickly as she could but it was too late to pull the power from her blows. Dys’ axe hit Syd in the right leg and knocked her further off balance while at the same time Jay’s club slammed into her back, sending her smashing into the ground with nearly explosive force.
She could, it turned out, trigger Mirrored Strikes by hitting her own body.
Before Jay could recover from hammering her own double face first into the dirt, Noll was behind her. A clawed foot struck the back of her left knee followed by a second blow to her back which sent her sprawling on top of Syd.
“Fuck!” Dys shouted eloquently as she leapt over her mirrored bodies, axe swinging.
Noll nimbly dodged backward, avoiding one, two, then three swings while seeming to barely move. On her fourth swing, he slammed his palm into the side of her hand and sent the axe flying out of her grip, much to Jadis’ shock. The disarming blow left Dys’ right hand numb and without feeling, but she had no time to focus on the fact as Noll stepped in close to grab her arm. With a simple pivot, he pulled her much larger and heavier form over his shoulder and slammed her back into the hillside with enough force to make the ground tremble.
“Done already?” Noll growled down at Dys, his lips curled back in a wolfish grin.
“Eat shit,” Dys countered, then grabbed at Noll’s ankles with her hands.
Noll easily stepped out of the way, but Jadis expected as much from the merc. In the same moment, Jay kicked backwards from where she lay on top of Syd, aiming for where she thought Noll was likely to move.
He avoided that attack, too. Slipping around her horse-kick, Noll, turned and grabbed Jay’s ankle and with a strength that Jadis hadn’t yet experienced on anyone else but herself, he lifted Jay into the air and tossed her several feet down the hill in a crash of steel on earth and stone.
“Just you three eating shit today,” Noll practically cackled in his rough voice. “And it’s all—”
Before he could finish whatever taunting words he was going to say, Jay’s club swung through the air in the diagonal arc, forcing him to sidestep out of the way. Only instead of being held by Jay, Syd was swinging the blunt weapon, having switched with Jay before he’d tossed her down the hill.
As Noll dodged a second blow, Dys rolled over and triggered her Knight’s Daring Charge, practically hurling herself up off the ground and towards the therion with a wordless roar. Her shoulder caught Noll in the side of his hip and while he slipped out of her grasp before she could tackle him to the ground, it was the first time in the short-lived spar that she’d actually managed to land a blow of some kind on him. And it wasn’t the last.
Charging back up the hill, Jay aimed Syd’s lance at Noll in a breakneck dash towards the man. As Noll moved to dodge out of the way, Syd swung her oversized club at him and blocked his path, forcing him to step back in the opposite direction.
Jay was not surprised when the tip of her lance missed her target. Noll sidestepped the charge, the palm of his hand pushing the lance out of the way as he moved into her blind spot and kicked at her lower legs to knock her off balance. That was fine by her.
Blindly Jay lashed out with her left fist. Only, it wasn’t really a blind attack. With both Dys and Syd’s perspectives to guide her fist, Jay’s blow landed on the side of Noll’s head and sent him reeling back.
As Jay skidded to a stop at the edge of the cliff, Dys and Syd both charged in at the same time, acting in a synchronized attack against Noll as he briefly stumbled from the solid blow to his head. Dys went for his legs while Syd went for his shoulders, looking to get their arms around the therion and wrestle him to the ground.
With a sudden lurch forward, Noll leapt over Syd and pushed her down, causing her to collide with Dys in a deafening crash of armored giants. The bone jarring impact briefly stunned the two of Jadis’ selves. But for a Refracted Mind, having two bodies stunned didn’t hinder the third at all.
Before Noll had quite landed on the other side, Jay’s lance swung like a whip at the therion. He twisted his body in midair, but there was only so much even Noll could do to get out of the way when he had no footing. The tip of the lance scraped down Noll’s shoulder and arm. A second later, as Noll landed, the scent of copper floated on the wind as Jadis drew first blood.
“Well how do you like that?” Jay panted out as Noll took a few skipping steps back. “The big bad savage wolf can bleed. That’s a point for me!”
Noll wiped the small line of blood off with one hand, the red disappearing into his dark fur as though it had never been there. Looking up at Jay, he cocked his head to one side, sharp teeth exposed in an eerie grin.
“Points? This isn’t a competition. This is an ass beating. Can’t you tell the difference, or is that big head all for show?”
“The only one getting their ass beat is—” Jay cut herself off as she lunged forward, extending her reach by switching her lance to one hand.
At the same time, Dys and Syd moved as one. Dys shot forward, low to the ground while Syd still laid on top of her back. One of Syd’s legs kicked out, aiming for Noll’s side in a move that would have been impossible to coordinate on the fly for anyone but Jadis.
The move didn’t work.
Noll lunged under Jay’s attack with even greater speed than she’d seen out of the man up to that point. Completely ignoring Dys and Syd, he shoved his shoulder into Jay’s stomach in a tackling move that knocked the breath out of her despite her heavy armor. With a few quick steps, Noll carried Jay forward until, suddenly, there was nothing under Jay’s feet anymore. Flailing turned to falling as Jay struggled to catch onto anything.
Her abrupt fall was halted as the lance she was still holding caught on to something. Or rather, something caught onto it.
As Dys and Syd scrambled to their feet, Jay dangled a hundred feet in the air, one hand wrapped around the shaft of the lance. At the other end was Noll, holding her whole weight up with his left hand. He stood there on the edge of the cliff, not even straining.
“You didn’t finish your sentence. What were you saying?"
“A fall from this height isn’t going to kill me,” Jay snarled out around a lump in her throat.
Jadis wasn’t actually certain about the veracity of her statement. A straight drop off a cliff wasn’t something she’d ever tested and despite Aila having survived not once, but twice falling from great heights, that had been because Jadis had been able to leap and catch her both times. There was no one to catch Jay if she fell.
Noll heaved a big sigh.
“If I wanted to kill you, whelp, I wouldn’t have gone through all this effort.”
Jay’s eyes were briefly drawn to where Noll’s sword was still sheathed on his belt.
“Then what was the point?”
Noll scratched at the side of his face with his clawed right hand, giving Jay a vaguely confused look.
“You challenged me. Do I need any other reason to beat down an upstart pup?”
With those words, Noll pulled Jay in and tossed her onto solid ground like a sack of potatoes. As she landed, Dys and Syd scrambled forward, only to halt as Noll tossed Syd her now badly bent weapon.
“You three have good instincts,” Noll announced while taking a few steps closer. “And your coordination is something else, I’ll give you that. But your stances and attacks are all wrong. Your footwork is terrible. You aren’t even holding your weapons right half the time and you leave yourselves exposed and open to counterattacks. No, you’ve got a long way to go before you lot would even approach competent.”
“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Dys muttered as she and Syd helped Jay to her feet.
“I’m not rubbing anything in,” Noll snapped with an audible click of his teeth. “It’s a sin against Charos’ hairy ass to see potential wasted like that. Get some training under your belts or at least a gods damned weapon proficiency skill before you make even bigger fools of yourselves than you did right here. Or go get yourselves killed. Not my concern.”
Jadis felt the hackles on the backs of her necks rise at Noll’s words, but she suppressed the instinctual response. Noll was right. He’d soundly beaten her without ever even drawing his weapon. While his strength and speed had certainly been a match for her own, it hadn’t been either of those that had secured his victory. It had been his skill. And not even the magical kind: Noll had tossed her around like ragdolls just by using plain old regular skill.
And it burned in her stomach to know that he was completely right about her.
Noll stalked past the trio of Nephilim with a shake of his horned head. He pushed through the knot of women that had witnessed the humiliating defeat as they rushed towards the stone still giants, each looking to talk to her in their own way. He got halfway down the hill before a thunder of footsteps caught up to him.
Jadis pulled the helmets from her heads as all three of her came to a stop behind Noll. He halted, head half turned to look back at them over his hunchbacked shoulders.
“Noll,” Jay started, but her next words were echoed by her other two selves. “Would you please teach us.”
His yellow eyes regarded her three selves, their heads bowed in genuine respect.
“Why should I?” he asked without turning to face them.
“Because we asked,” Syd answered.
“Do you need another reason?” Dys tossed his own words back at him.
Noll stood silently for a moment longer, holding their gazes. Abruptly, he resumed his march away from them, but not before tossing a few parting words over his shoulder.
“I’ll see you pups in the morning.”
404