Syd grunted as the bulky warrior slammed his knee into her leg, trying once more to throw off her footing. She held her balance this time, though, as the angle of his attack wasn’t right. She got the feeling the black-furred man wasn’t used to being the smaller person in a fight. Making her counterattack, Syd punched the bear in his face with her bare knuckles, this time managing to land the blow on his jaw.
The bear man was rocked to the side by the power of her blow, even if it hadn’t been delivered with the full force of her body weight behind it. Not letting up the attack, she continued her counterassault, punching the bear’s face and upper body multiple times while he stumbled back, crashing through a piece of wooden furniture. He couldn’t get away from her though, not with his right arm and her left arm locked together.
Wood splintered and glass shattered as they both crashed through what a small part of Jadis’ mind registered as display cases. The building that Syd had been knocked into had been some kind of shop, though there weren’t any goods on display. Many of the buildings in Far Felsen were empty since so many of its citizens had been evacuated at the start of the demon invasion. It seemed this was one of those empty buildings. A good thing, too, since Jadis wasn’t sure there was going to be much left of it after she and the bear were done.
The two violently bounced around the store, wreaking terrible damage to the interior in their quest to beat each other’s brains out. Jadis wasn’t sure if she should be shocked or not at her ability to keep up with the bear. He was clearly a much higher CLR than her, but she had massively boosted stats. She felt like she should have been able to knock him out, even with the handicap of only having one of her bodies fighting him, yet the man persisted in getting the upper hand. There were times in the fight where she felt she was clearly faster and stronger than he was, and yet every time she tried to press that advantage, he did something to counter her in a way that she didn’t expect.
Trying to take control of the rhythm of the fight, Syd twisted and shoved the bear man into a stone wall, crushing some shelves that were in the way in the process. As his back hit the wall, the bear lunged forward, jaws open, and bit her face, her whole head practically disappearing inside his ursine maw.
“What the fuck!?” Syd shouted, her voice muffled by being literally inside the man’s mouth.
She didn’t get a chance to complain about the bear’s bad breath, though. With a jerk, he yanked her head to the side, throwing her off balance yet again. Using the momentum of his unusual fighting tactic, he got his arm under Syd’s and twisted her around in what Jadis recognized too late as a sort of judo throw.
Syd was bodily thrown through a door, the wooden barrier splintering from the force. When she landed, she was outside again, rolling to a stop in a snowdrift. She didn’t pause, though. Ignoring the cold and the drool on her face, she leapt to her feet, arms already raised for the attack she knew was coming.
Her prediction had been right. The bear slammed into her a moment later, his mace just barely blocked by her left arm. The two once more engaged in a wild scrum, this time outside in the night air where the stone walls of a building didn’t contain them. Soon enough their motions had them both breaking through barriers and crashing from one street to another. Syd wasn’t even certain what part of the city she was in as the dark buildings around her were not the same ones she and her other selves had been surrounded by moments earlier. She could feel the distance between her selves growing, though, which was at least an indication of direction.
With how things were going, Jadis realized that she needed to get her bodies back together. She could hold her own with one body against the grizzly veteran, but she was starting to wonder if she could actually beat him without access to her Mirrored Strikes. As much damage as she had been dishing out on him, he wasn’t showing any signs of slowing. In fact, she was fairly certain that the places in his hide where she’d cut him had healed up mid-fight. Did he have some kind of regeneration skill? Or had a spell been cast on him ahead of time? Or maybe his somewhat plain-looking armor had enchantments that were keeping him healthy?
Maybe all three?
Dys leapt past Jay, Thea, and Tegwyn as they continued to deal with the group of armored soldiers. Dealing with them was proving more difficult than expected, but at least she had allies here. Jadis decided she needed to get Dys over to Syd so that she could jointly put the bear man down for the count.
Landing next to Aila, Dys quickly asked her arcanist lover to put down a snare trap. As soon as Aila had, she thrust the witch into the ghostly spell circle and let the spectral chains wrap her up. The purple elf clearly wasn’t a physical fighter so there was no way she would break out of those arcane chains anytime soon.
“Stay put,” Dys told Aila and Eir. “I need to go help Syd. We’ll deal with the bear man and then get back here as quick as we can.”
“Alright, be careful,” Aila said, then threw up her hand in the direction of Jay and Thea. “Watch out!”
Jay was in the middle of blocking a blow from a knight wielding a lucerne with a blunted tip when Aila shouted her warning. She dodged to the right just in time to avoid being struck in the back of the head by a spinning kick. Repositioning, she saw that her old friend, the small man with leather-bound fists, was back. He was also uninjured, his leg unbroken and looking good as new. Glancing beyond his scowling visage, Jadis saw the likely reason for his swift and healthy return. Two mages, a man and a woman, were standing a few dozen feet further down the street, their hands held up as healing magic pulsed from them in waves.
“You’re just making this worse on you!” the man shouted as he launched into a flurry of blows that Jay was hard pressed to avoid. After bouncing off her hammerhead with a mule kick, he frowned in confusion. “Wait, you aren’t the same…”
“Shut up and back off!” Jay shouted back as she swung her maul. “Vraekae is going to fry your asses!”
“What’s left of them if you keep this shit up!” Dys added as she blindly thrust the haft of her axe behind her at the brawler.
Since she hadn’t been looking in his direction, the man didn’t expect the attack coming and was knocked to the side when the axe handle hit his shoulder. The momentary stumble was enough of an opening for Jay to perform a kick of her own. Her boot connected solidly with the man’s chest and once more he was sent airborne as he flew vertically across the street for several yards. He didn’t go as far as the momentum of her attack should have taken him, though.
A shimmering net made of golden light appeared in the air, catching the small man and arresting his flight. Dropping to the ground, he didn’t hesitate to rush straight back towards Jadis’ two selves, not even slowing down for a breath.
What kind of spell had that been? Something intended to safely catch falling allies, she guessed, but how often did that situation pop up that one of their healers had used up a skill slot just to be able to catch allies who were falling through the air?
Thinking about how often in this fight she’d sent her enemies rocketing through the night sky and just how many times they’d done the same to her, Jadis came to the quick conclusion that a friend-catching spell wasn’t all that big of a waste.
In any case, it didn’t look like she was going to be able to send either of her other two bodies after Syd. She was too locked down by the dozen armored soldiers, the brawler, and their support mages, at least for the time being. What she needed to do was lead the bear back towards the main fight. The problem was, he was a lot more in control of their one-on-one battle than she would have liked.
“Hey! You two! Stop!” a guard shouted as he rushed towards Syd and the bear man.
He was the sixth or seventh guard to have chased after them and just like all the others he wasn’t anywhere near capable of keeping up. With frenetic force Syd and the bear asshole were tossing each other around the city, covering dozens of yards by the second. By this point she’d lost count of how many walls she had crashed through, some of which had led into empty rooms, others through homes that were clearly populated by the sounds of shocked shouting that came from the floors above. Jadis was just grateful that they hadn’t accidentally flattened anyone in their fight so far, though that concern was somewhat secondary. She was mostly focused on trying to win. Or at least trying not to lose before her other selves could handle the other assailants.
With another ground-shaking roar, the bear man crashed into Syd, sending her careening towards the stone wall of another building. Bouncing off of it, she rolled across the frozen ground and got her legs under her just in time to catch the bear man in both arms. Attempting a move she’d never done before in her life, she used her grip around his waist to heave him over her head as she fell backwards.
The warrior was tossed like a sack of beans, launched at least twenty feet before he slammed into the side of another stone building, the impact causing an avalanche of snow to fall from the roof above.
Ignoring the screams of surprise that came from inside of the building, Syd followed after the bear and used the cover of the snow to get in close before he could see her coming. Targeting his right arm, she took hold of the handle of the mace in her left hand before striking at his wrist with her right. The blow was enough to loosen the man’s grip and she instantly ripped the weapon from his hand. Reversing her hold on the mace, she raised her arm to slam the flanged head down onto the bear’s head.
Before she could do so, the bear punched her in the gut, knocking the air from her lungs with the precise blow that left her stunned for just a second. With another roar, he tackled her with his shoulder, driving it further into her abdomen as he carried her along, dashing down the street at breakneck speeds. His roaring tackle was interrupted as they both crashed through the front of another building, far more shouts and screams of surprise filling the air than any of the others had produced.
Syd and the bear man tumbled through the chaos, wood breaking around them as they rolled away from each other. Leaping to her feet while panting heavily from the exertion of the fight, Syd took in where she and her foe had ended up this time.
“Jadis!?”
Syd startled at the familiar voice calling out her name. Looking to her right, she saw Bridget sitting at a table, a stunned look on the orc’s face. Sitting at the table with her, she saw the warrior’s mercenary sister, Addy, as well as the blond merc from Bernd’s Blades, Volker. There were a couple of other mercenaries sitting at the table that Jadis didn’t recognize, but one that she did notice with a start was the beefy orc barbarian from the Flame Wolves. He was also frozen in shock, just like the rest, a tankard of ale halfway to his open mouth.
Looking around, Jadis saw that she and the bear had crashed a party. Literally. They were in a tavern, tables full of soldiers and mercenaries, many of whom were wearing the colors of either Bernd’s Blades, the Gilded Rose, or the Flame Wolves.
“Uh—” Syd unintelligently got out before being punched in the face by the bear.
She was launched back by the blow, his fist sending her crashing through the tavern bar, splitting the wood like tissue paper. Righting herself from the sucker punch, she saw that the attack had been all the trigger it took for the whole room to erupt in a chaotic flurry of flying fists, mugs, chairs, and people.
“My bar!” a man standing behind the counter shouted as the tavern descended into madness. “Who’s going to pay for my bar!?”
“Take it up with General Egilhard,” Syd growled through gritted teeth as she charged back into the fray.
315