Chapter 206: Chapter 205: Catch Me If You Can

Jadis’ health had dropped by close to six hundred health points and she was still standing, a testament to the power of being a walking slab of beef in terms of vitality. A fighter like Bridget or even a higher-level mercenary like Kerr would have died three times over by then. Not Jadis. She could take the hits like few others could. That didn’t mean she felt any less pain, though.

“Mother fucker!” Syd cursed as she whipped around and stabbed at the hazy air.

Her lance hit nothing but dust and shadows. However, as she watched through teary, irritated eyes, a movement on her right caught her attention and she thrust at the source with as much speed as she could muster.

“Gods be damned you’re a fast one,” the voice of a man responded as she once again missed her mark. “If I weren’t trying to kill you, I’d be making marriage proposals. I love a woman who can keep up with me, and I can’t say the height scares me off neither!”

“Why are you trying to kill me?” Syd growled out as she searched the dust cloud for signs of her assailant. Despite being a talker, the man was hard to pin down, the source of his voice constantly changing direction. “I don’t even know who you people are!”

“It ain’t nothing personal, sweetheart,” the man replied, his accent unlike most other humans she’d met on Oros. He sounded more Irish than German, reminding her of the gnomes like Nora. “It’s just business.”

At the tail end of his sentence a shadow moved nearby on Syd’s left side. Another burning stab wound blossomed from her ribs as the man once again bypassed her armor in a location it had no right to. This time, though, Jadis was ready.

Ignoring the pain in her ribs, Syd released her grip on her lance and lashed out blindly with her left hand. Her fingers met resistance as they closed around the wrist that held the dagger that was withdrawing from her ribcage. Pulling the man around, she grabbed hold of him with one hand firmly on his left arm and the other wrapped around his neck.

“Got you,” Syd snarled as she effortlessly lifted the struggling man even with her helmeted head.

It was hard to make out the man’s features with the tears still screwing with her vision, plus the dust and the partial invisibility spell that was still affecting him, but from what she could see the guy was definitely human. Brown hair, hazel eyes, and a serious case of bad skin. He was pock marked to a degree that Jadis could see the splotchy marks despite his features being obscured. He also had a terrible set of jagged teeth that needed serious dental work. As she brought his face close to hers, he attempted to smile with those awful teeth in an almost embarrassed, conciliatory expression.

“Oh, well, so you have,” he squeaked out around her right fist squeezing his neck. “With positions changed, as they are, how about we not get too hasty here, alright lass?”

“Shut it, shark face,” Syd growled menacingly. The irritation in her throat from all the coughing helped make her sound rougher than normal. “If you don’t want me to twist your balls off in the next three seconds, drop the knife and surrender.”

The knife, still held firmly in the man’s left hand, was obviously enchanted. A long, wicked-looking blade with serrated edges, the metal glowed with an ominous orange light despite being translucent. Jadis honestly wasn’t sure how she could have missed the glow, even with the poor visibility combined with the partial invisibility spell. Maybe the man had some way of masking the dagger?

“Oi, it’s my prized possession,” the man pleaded in a surprisingly pitiful tone. “You wouldn’t make me part with it, would you?”

“Yes,” Syd growled, this time giving the man’s neck a shake that made his eyes bounce in his head. “I’m not asking again. Drop it.”

As she made her ultimatum, Syd saw that her companions were approaching through the dust cloud. Thea and Bridget were leading the way, the orc’s lantern glowing brightly and catching attention as they marched cautiously forward. The dust was starting to clear, and the sight of her figure standing there while holding the man had clearly caught their attention.

Jay and Dys were also approaching by that point. She wasn’t sure if there were any more of the invisible assassins stalking the shadows, but since she wasn’t hearing any more sounds of combat, she was feeling fairly safe in assuming that the battle was over. Taking her eyes off of the man for a half second, Syd called out towards her approaching teammates.

“Over here, I’ve caught one!”

As she shouted, the man in her grasp mumbled under his breath, his words not registering with her before he acted.

“Always do what the ladies ask, me mum used to say.”

Almost casually the jagged-toothed man let go of his knife. The blade tumbled out of his left hand and, with a speed that Jadis could barely keep up with, his free right hand swept up and caught the blade before it had even dropped a foot. With a deft slice, the blade passed through Syd’s right-hand wrist, sending a painful shock through her.

Instinctively Syd’s right hand released the man’s neck as a burning jolt went through her. It was like the blade was made of nothing as it went through her armor and wrist like they were made of air, doing no visible damage and yet causing a tremendous amount of pain.

“Fuck!” Syd cried out as she swung the man outward, letting his body whip around harshly.

“Bloody fuck!” the man echoed her shout as he let out one of his own. However, his cry of pain was followed up by one of triumph as his wrist somehow slipped out of Syd’s tight grasp with an odd, crackling pop.

“How did you—” Syd shouted as she whirled on the man, reaching out to grab hold of him again, but her words were cut off as he rolled away with lightning speed.

“Sorry, an artist never reveals the secrets to his trade!” the man shouted out as he rolled to his feet some twenty feet away from Syd. “Maybe if we meet again—”

This time it was the man’s turn to be cut off abruptly as both Jay and Dys appeared behind him, each one swinging their weapons in a joint attack that Jadis wasn’t sure was survivable. Not that she was in a mood to care at that point.

“Oop!” the man made a surprised noise as he leapt forward and away from Jadis’ attacks, Dys’ axe scraping against the heels of his mismatched boots.

Now rolling forward, the snaggle-toothed assassin ran straight into a dozen more people that had by then caught up. The full company of Fortune’s Favored had arrived, along with the soldiers under Captain Willa.

“Surrender!” Willa shouted at the man as he stumbled to a halt in front of the closing circle of angry faces. “Or face destruction!”

“No thanks!” the man shouted back before turning to his left and sprinting away like a madman.

A ghostly rune circle appeared before his feet as he ran, but his steps were so wide he bounced over Aila’s trap without triggering it. An arrow fired from Kerr’s bow passed by his shoulder, just barely missing him as he bent forward in his dash. A bolt of thunderous lightning brightened the area as a spell from Nora nearly blinded everyone, yet as Jadis blinked the stars from her eyes she saw the man had avoided that attack too and was already running out the east gate of the fort.

“Not another one,” Jadis grunted as all three of her bodies gave chase.

Activating Knight’s Daring Charge, the three of her selves closed the distance between her and the fleeing assassin. In seconds they were all out of the gate and racing across the darkening outer clearing. Tossing a frightened look over his shoulder, the man shouted at her as he sprinted for the cover of the tree line.

“I was just joking about the marriage thing, lady! I’m not actually that interested in you or your giant friends!”

“Drop dead!” all three of Jadis shouted back as they drew closer.

The man reached the trees and, with an unexpected pivot, dove into the underbrush. Somehow, the man was able to keep up his insane speed despite going off the road. Putting everything she had into it, Jadis charged after him, not willing to let the piece of shit get away.

As he dodged and weaved around trees both small and gigantic, Jadis’ three selves chased after in different ways. Syd stayed directly on his heels, following the same track as he did. While that part of her mirrored the man’s path, Jay took different turns, making sure he couldn’t double back or dodge too much without risking running into her. Dys, for her part, ran wide, anticipating the direction the man was going as they all veered generally north. She had no need to see him since Jay and Syd were on his heels, so Dys swung out in the direction she thought he was headed in an attempt to cut him off.

“Don’t you ever run out of stamina!?” The man shouted without turning to look back at her, the panting effort evident in his voice.

“No!” Syd shouted back, her own voice growing rough with the strain of keeping up with the speedy jackass.

Jay’s hammer was slowing her down. The thing was too heavy to run with for so long at top speed and she was starting to flag. As she slowed down, the gap between her and the fleeing assassin increasing, Syd lunged forward in an attempt to grab hold of the man. As she did so, hand outstretched, the man’s knife sliced outward to his left, cutting a vine that Jadis had paid no mind to before that moment. Moving too fast to do anything but brace herself, a large log with wooden spikes tied across it swung directly into her path.

Syd and the spiked log crashed into each other like a train hitting a bus. Wood splinters flew everywhere as Syd ploughed through the trap, her armored bulk destroying the contraption but not without sending her tumbling across the forest floor in massive clatter of steel on wood, dirt, and stone.

“Learn to watch where you’re going if you’re going to try and run like me!” the man laughed breathlessly, right up until he saw Dys’ axe swinging for his neck.

With an echoing thwack, Dys’ axe split a moderately sized young pine tree in two, the trunk cut through in one clean motion. While the devastating attack didn’t hit the running man, it did force him to skid and roll across the ground in his efforts to avoid getting chopped in half like the pine tree.

As the man rolled awkwardly to a stop, disoriented and stunned by the stumbling dodge he’d made, Dys drew up above him, axe held overhead threateningly.

“No more running,” Dys said as she moved to chop one of the man’s legs off. She wasn’t sure if Eir could reattach a severed limb, but it looked like this man was going to test that possibility.

An immense clenching pain froze Dys in place before she could bring the axe down on the man. Her whole body froze up and, as Jadis panicked in her muted, unmoving state, she realized that her other selves had frozen as well.

“Gods save us, why’d you bring the colossal brutes towards us!?” a scared voice cried out.

Dys’ eyes followed a shadowy figure that popped out of the underbrush. The tiny green woman with large eyes was standing there, her glowing yellow wand in hand. Behind her was the injured woman she’d saved from Jay’s grasp earlier, along with a blond man with strange orange eyes and a manic grin.

“Where the fuck else am I going to go!?” the jackass shouted, his voice cracking as he stumbled to his feet and put as much distance between himself and Dys as possible.

“Not towards us!” the tiny woman answered shrilly. “You’re the fast one, Legs! You run away! Away from us, you great big stupid bone sack!”

“Enough,” the blond man cut in before Legs could respond. “Legs, kill that one while we have the chance and let’s go. We need to catch up with Jockel and then Stavros.”

“Fine,” Legs grumbled, then stalked back up towards a completely frozen Dys, that glowing knife drawn once again. “Sorry, lass, but like I said, this isn’t personal. You’re just too big a threat to have running around while we’re out here.”

As he drew near, Jadis struggled wildly against the spell that was binding her muscles. She flexed and twisted and willed herself to move with all of her might. But there was no use. She simply couldn't get her body to respond. All she could do was watch as Legs stood before her, knife poised to stab into her undefended chest.

A searing pain nearly blinded Jadis as Legs stabbed his enchanted dagger into her, passing through her chest armor to slice directly into her flesh. The burning blade was dragged down as the grimacing man pulled the dagger from as high as he could reach on her chest down to her stomach, amplifying the pain Jadis was feeling to the point where if she wasn’t paralyzed, she would have been either screaming or throwing up. Possibly both.

“How is she still not dead?” the unnamed blond man said with a wondering, almost gleeful tone.

Jadis herself could hardly believe it and she could see her health dropping directly.

As she watched, her health lowered even further, dipping down to the low one hundreds, then double digits as Legs twisted the knife into her, the crossguard on the blade scraping against her armor.

“Fuck, she’s still standing,” Legs said as sweat dropped down his brow. “Where are the other two? If this goes on any longer, they’re going to catch up.”

“I don’t see them,” the injured woman said as she leaned against the small spellcaster. “Wait, what’s that?”

“I don’t—shit, time’s up,” the blond said as his manic smile turned to a frown. “Let’s go, the cavalry just arrived.”

The cavalry had, in fact, arrived. Jadis would have sagged in relief if she could have as she watched her health slowly start to tick up. The numbers increased massively as Legs pulled the blade from Dys’ torso, his attack no longer countering Eir’s healing spell.

Eir and the others had caught up to Jay’s paralyzed body. She and several of the others were gathered around her as more charged forward, heading in Syd and Dys’ direction. As every second passed, Dys could hear them growing closer.

“Next time,” the blond man said with a scowl that morphed into another unsettling grin. “I’ll have some more traps built for people of your size! Exciting! Make sure you come and test them for me!”

“No!” the tiny green woman shouted as she jogged after group of fleeing assailants. Her words carried as they disappeared into the brush. “We do NOT want those monsters to follow us! Do you have any survival sense in your empty skull? How much damage did that one just eat from Legs’ attack alone? Why are you such an insane bastard—”

Her voice trailed off a few moments after Dys lost sight of them. A few seconds after that, the paralysis that was holding onto Jadis released its grasp as she fell forward.

“Are you alright?” Eir asked, her voice full of concern as Jay slumped down before her.

“Syd, are you okay?” Aila asked as she put an arm around her shoulders while she knelt amongst the wreckage of her fall.

“Hey, big stuff, you alive?” Kerr asked as she drew up next to Dys, her bow drawn and at the ready. “Which way did they go? I’ll see if I can catch up.”

Before Kerr could chase after the escaped ambushers, Dys reached out and grabbed hold of her wrist, preventing her from leaving.

“No, I’m not really feeling well,” Jadis said from her three selves, answering the questions she’d been asked all at once.

“Let’s call this one a draw, okay?” Dys said with a croak.

Agdistis

I have updated the story synopsis. A big thank you to everyone who contributed. Hopefully this new version does a better job of conveying what the story is all about.

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