Chapter 13 - Another storyteller
Splinters flying around, pain in his back as he crashed against hard stone, his ears assailed by the scream of the beast.
Disoriented, he fell on the ground, blood spraying all around, and his body took over, Shi started to flood his muscles, old reflexes pushing him into action as he raised his sword and blocked a blind strike, feeling as if a mountain just tried to crush him.
“CRACK!” The ground cracked under his feet as he absorbed, then redirected the energy towards the floor.
“Fuck, an Amalgam!” Someone screamed in the crowd, and people started to act, some to flee, others to fight, all the while he blocked another strike, then one more, enduri-
***
“Geez, you’re telling it all wrong again!” A young, bubbly woman suddenly interrupted Axel, a laugh in her voice.
He and I were now in one of the alcoves of the inn’s lobby, with a large plater of roaster pork ribs, and he had started telling his story not long ago.
“Oh, hello Nelly.” Axel greeted the woman with a nod and a smile.
“Hello to you too, Axel! I heard you talking about the breach, and couldn’t stop myself to take action at the injustice of your recounting!” She happily ranted, full of energy, before sitting down by my side.
“Every time he tells how this went on, he always downplays himself! When he talks about the fight you imagine him standing there and taking hits, but it was so much flashier! I can’t let him butcher this story again!”
Urgh, too much energy.
She was radiating energy and liveliness like a miniature sun and, much like the warm day-star, it was quite hard to bear direct contact with her.
“W-well, I’m not against it, but you should ask…” Axel started, then realised I hadn’t told him my name yet and, embarrassed by my blunder, I quickly answer.
“Lilith.”
“Yes, you should ask Lilith if she’s okay with you taking the lead.” Axel finished.
“Oh! Sure!” The young woman, Nelly, then looked at me, waiting for my decision.
I took this moment to size her up.
She was maybe 1.70m tall, slightly taller than most women, which wasn’t surprising for an adventurer, with long dark-red hair tied in a high ponytail and light green eyes full of life.
She was older than me, maybe mid-twenties, still quite young in our city, and was clearly not from here, lacking the signature look of despair or exhaustion everyone had.
But that was how normal people would have described her and, because of my training, I couldn’t stop at that.
She had a small waist, with thin arms and legs and pristine hands, as if she had never seen a day of hard work in her life, which was false, since adventuring was hard work.
Her lips were normal, I guess, but her constant smile gave her face a special, bright kind of charm. Too bad her hips and breasts were so tiny too, to my taste at least.
Overall she seemed nice, was good looking and had a point, since I too had realised Axel had a habit of downplaying his acts.
Either he’s afraid of appearing as a braggart, or he has a self-esteem problem.
“Why not?” I answered her, interested to get an external point of view on Axel.
“Cool! Let me fetch some food and I’m here!” She exclaimed joyously before bolting out of the alcove, coming back not two minutes after.
***
She was peacefully doing her thing on her side, nervously shifting her linked rings around, playing with the chains linking the rings and the bracelet.
They had been walking the strange staircase for more than twenty minutes, and she looked around for the first few minutes, intrigued by the strange architecture.
The staircase was large, and every so often it would open up on a floor with strange metal doors, looking quite heavy and with numbers written on top of them.
The floor was strange, some kind of grey composite stone, and the guardrail of the stairs was seemingly made out of pure, high-quality steel, left untouched by the adventurer's guild for a reason or another.
However, after 30 or so identical floors, she was so bored she stopped paying attention to anything, and that’s, of course, when something happened.
That something took the shape of a hulking mass of grafted bodies, skinless mountain of muscles with multiple screaming heads, called an Undead Amalgam.
The amalgam simply crashed through one of the lighter barricaded doors, like a pen tearing paper, and threw the guide flying with a nasty hit on the side.
Nobody had time to react, and the Amalgam raise its arms again to strike the nearest target available, when a boy, barely a man, jumped back on his feet.
His dull grey armour shone white as he unsheathed his sword, Shi rushing through his body and turning his hair bright, and he stopped the undead dead in its track, the monster’s attack akin to an avalanche smashing down on the youth’s sword, unable to make him move even an inch as the barely-functional brain of the undead register the effect of its attack, or lack thereof.
“Fuck, an Amalgam!” An older man screamed, grabbing his morgenstern with both hands as another person of his group rushed at the guide’s side to heal her.
They weren’t many that reacted like him, most preferring to flee the scene, but she stayed and raised her hand, light flowing around her arm, then her hand as it soaked inside her rings.
“Fight!” She said with determination, a spell blooming from her hand and wrapping itself around the young man, nodding to acknowledge the help before he kicked the massive beast on the side, the steel of his boot sinking slightly in the uncovered flesh and, surprisingly, destabilising the foul creature enough that it hit the wall behind.
“Fight!” Repeated the morgenstern fighter, rushing by the young man’s side.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, she turned around to look at the guide’s state, and the healer just waved at her to go back to the fight: the work wasn’t done yet.
She focused back on the enemy just in time to dodge the older fighter, not even able to cast a spell to ease his landing.
The youth, on his side, was moving with a grace and elegance you wouldn’t think possible in such heavy armour, stopping strikes with raw power as much as he deflected them, answering using his whole body, from feet to head.
However, his fighting style so far seemed focused on endurance and outliving his opponent, which wasn’t an option against an undead that lacked the concept of exhaustion.
Most of the wounds he inflicted to the creature would have been fatal to most anything, but for an undead they were merely glancing blows.
“Keep it occupied, I need some time!” She screamed at him, but he was so deeply engrossed in the fight he didn’t, or couldn’t, answer.
The older fighter and some others, seeing how only the youth was able to stand his ground against the creature, choose to switch to support or ranged positions, using bows or arbalest or throwing potions at and around the thing to alleviate some of the young man’s pressure.
With the gained time, she started to build power in her hands, which she put together to form a cup, light blooming inside of it and growing like a flower, tendrils of liquid light extending from the core, then wrapping themselves over each other.
She then spread her hands and extended the weaving of light until it was stretched as much as it could, so tense it changed colour in its centre, from a light yellow to a deep red.
She made it snap and, as fast as possible, reached for the tiny amber that appeared at the rupture point, grabbing it and launching it at the young man who, once hit, burst into fire.
His sword and his whole armour got covered in deep red flames, yet he didn’t seem to burn or even feel the heat. The undead, however, visibly winced and took a step back, that the youth exploited, charging and planting his sword in the Amalgam’s side.
The monster tried to strike back, but the youth pared, as usual, yet this time the creature got burned by the fiery aura surrounding him.
The battle turned from a tie into a one-sided slaughter, with the young man still as capable of blocking the undead’s strike as before, but with the added factor that he was now able to actually damage the monstrosity.
Still, it took nearly five more minutes of intense fighting, during which the ground started to crack and fire burned stone, adding new, fresh marks of battle to the old ones already there.
The creature fell, charred black and still burning, and the young put his back against a wall, fire slowly disappearing from his frame, breathing heavily.
Just as exhausted from maintaining the magic around him, she let herself fall on the ground, sitting down heavily and wiping all the sweat covering her.
They weren’t even in the dungeon proper that she already started to feel as if she took a bath, great!
***
“That’s pretty impressive.” I commented to both of them, looking at Axel for some sort of confirmation.
The fight that Nelly just described seemed already quite intense, and I couldn’t stop myself to think that she had, maybe, oversold it a little.
“Y-yes?” Axel answered pretty meekly, slightly red from Nelly’s description of his fight against the beast.
“I was really focused on the monster, so I’m not sure what happened around, but Nelly’s flames really helped me. I was grossly unprepared to fight the undead, an error I didn’t reproduce afterwards.” He added, as if understanding my silent question.
Damn. They were both quite young, at least for this city, yet they were already kicking asses like that.
I’m really lagging behind, ain't I? I knew it was a bit silly to compare myself to adventurers, but I could stop myself, I was envious of their strength and freedom.
“So, what happened after that?” I asked them, thirsty for some more action tales, and Nelly was happy to oblige, her eagerness making Axel giggle, putting another smile on his cute face.
Gods, he’s really cute. I found myself thinking, imagining kissing those nice lips of his.
“Well, you see…” Nelly started.
Nelly seems nice.
Yup, she's one of the main secondary characters ^w^ I love to write bubbly people ^-^