Chapter 39: A Duel Among Remnants

  Dunham, having been nervous the entire morning at the sight of so much magic, gazed in awe at the junior extinct breed in front of him. Grace heard him, looked at him with questioning eyes for a few seconds, then ran towards him with a radiant smile on her face.

  Dunham froze, though didn’t reach for his rifle or gun. Grace tackled him, and Dunham fell to the ground, getting wet from the thick, coarse tongue that kept sliding across his face. Her short, thick tail wagged uproariously.

  “Aww, she likes you! She hasn’t done that before,” Jessie said, getting Grace’s attention as she spoke. The lady dinosaur howled with wide, cheerful eyes, then ran back to her bonded.

  “So, ready to take this to the next level?” Jessie asked, grinning at Erik.

  “If you’re up for it. You’re the one whose energy must be running low by now,” Erik responded, a slight worry getting through in his voice.

  “It should be fine. The regeneration from the field reduces the drain, so I could use that one for several hours or so, I guess.”

  “Alright, but let me know if you’re getting low. With these powers, we should be much safer fighting any hounds close by, but that means we have to keep some stamina in reserve,” Erik said.

  “We haven’t discussed when to start fighting them, yet,” Angela interjected.

  “I think we just did,” Erik answered. “We’re much more able now, and it’s two of us. We’re fighting.”

  “He’s right,” Jessie said.

  “I have to agree,” Emma said, surprising Erik and Jessie both. They looked at the short brunette with a smile.

  “Very well,” Angela responded, her voice begrudging.

  “So! Who’s judging this match?” Erik asked and looked at Angela and Emma. “Angela?” he smiled.

  “Actually…” Jessie said, a small grin plastered on her horrible face.

  “What now?” Erik sighed.

  “Girls?” she said, and Angela and Emma walked past Erik and up to Jessie. They positioned themselves next to the dark-haired Remnant, looking over at Erik with disgusting grins. Grace ran in front of Jessie and bounced up and down.

  “I guess the dubstep track just played in that awesome team-assembly shot?” Erik shrugged.

  “Dubstep? This is some DMX shit. Get wrecked,” Jessie countered.

  “What are we doing?” Emma whispered to Jessie. All she’d been told was to walk up to Jessie as cool as possible when prompted. She knew Angela had been asked the same thing. Erik’s twisted, disgruntled face was worth it, though.

  “We’re fighting him together, of course,” Jessie grinned.

  “Our rifles won’t work on that earth-thing he does, and they’ll harm him without it. He might be able to take a bullet or two, but these are automatic rifles,” Angela said with worried eyes above her fake grin.

  “That’s true, you know,” Erik interjected into their not-so-silent conversation.

  “The track hasn’t stopped playing yet,” Jessie grinned even wider. Erik couldn’t help but inhale in surprise at her words. “Let’s… ‘Ease The Burden’, shall we?” she winked.

  Erik recognised the name for her secret major ability and tensed in his shoulders.

  Jessie raised both her hands in front of her with closed eyes, her shit-eating grin turning to a shit-eating focused grin as her hands lit up.

  From the light in each of her hands grew shapes, growing larger for each moment that passed. Both objects grew downwards towards the ground and were made of the same yellowy light made solid. It was like looking at the sun during the evening—not too blinding, but uncomfortable, nonetheless. The objects stopped growing, one longer and wider than the other. Their shapes looked almost like…

  The lights dimmed, vanishing after a few moments. What remained were two swords, as magnificent as they were over-the-top decorative in their looks. Both were styled differently, but both were embellished with extruded metal along the side of the blade close to the handle. The hand guard was made of gold on the shorter sword, and some kind of chromed steel on the longsword.

  The longsword had an embedded ruby along its spine and the pommel, the same metal as the guard, shaped like a wolf’s head. In place of a ruby, the short sword had an emerald inserted, and its pommel was a dragon’s head, because of course it was. Both swords looked like legendary weapons for the end-game in fantasy video games, and Erik was supremely, unequivocally, unapologetically jealous.

  “Girls?” Jessie said with her regular shit-eating grin back on her face as she held the swords in her hands out to each of them by her sides.

  Emma reached past the longsword held in front of her, bending under Jessie’s outstretched arm and plucked the short sword on Angela’s side of Jessie. She pulled the sword across Jessie’s blushing face and cleared her throat as she held the sword in her hands, looking over it with great interest.

  Jessie cleared her throat, bumping into Angela with her hip before moving her outstretched arm with the longsword further towards Angela. Angela accepted the blade and gave it a look-over.

  “Fuck, I love you,” Erik said to his best and coolest friend in the world.

  “I know,” Jessie replied with warmth in her eyes, her blush fading. “Are you ready now, girls?”

  Emma—the more enthused one of the pair—changed her grip on the sword to a cooler stance, at least in Erik’s opinion. She held it like a knife she was ready to cut with, though its size dwarfed that of a normal kitchen knife.

  Angela stood in a much more withheld pose, having not held a full-size sword in her life. Erik would be impressed if she had, to be honest.

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  “Rules?” he asked, eyeing the three girls and the dino in front of him.

  “They don’t have any magic protection, so go easy on them. I’d say…” Jessie started, considering how this should be done. “If you can get them down on the ground once they’re out?” she continued, looking for acceptance in the two other women’s faces. Both nodded, though hesitant.

  “All right. And Grace?”

  “Umm… Either knock her down like the others or… get her outside of my field?”

  “Why don’t we just draw a circle? That way, you won’t cheat!” Erik said, understanding how Jessie had been thinking.

  “Fine, I guess,” she answered with disappointment clear on her face. She was the only one who could see her field’s circumference.

  “Sophie, Dunham. You want to judge the match?” Erik asked the pair standing a bit further from the group.

  “I won’t take my sister’s side, just so you know,” Sophie complained, distrusting Erik’s reasoning for asking both of them.

  “I don’t think you will, Sophie, I just think two sets of eyes will be better than one.”

  Dunham nodded to Sophie and Jessie, saying, “I’ll do my best.”

  Sophie nodded back, and the two marched to stand on separate sides of the arena Emma and Angela drew in the ground and sand with their swords.

  “Are those permanent?” Erik asked, still intrigued about the swords.

  “Semi-permanent. I can dismiss them, or they’ll disappear on their own if they get too far away from me.”

  “Teams ready?” Dunham asked when everyone had taken their places.

  Erik nodded when Dunham looked at him. Dunham turned to face Jessie’s team on his left. All of them except Grace nodded. Grace had her tongue hanging outside her mouth and panted, almost like a dog.

  “Fight!”

  Erik felt Jessie’s ‘Storm’ field activate, the slight tingle apparent without a second thought. It would take some time before it built up enough static to blast him with a lightning bolt, however.

  Emma rushed at him. He remembered her being an expert at CQC, or close quarters combat, meaning she had more training than he did. Angela wasn’t half bad herself, or so Emma had said, anyway. He hadn’t seen them spar with each other, but it turned out they had done that a few times since they met Erik.

  Erik held back on activating ‘Earthkeep’ for the moment. It reduced his mobility somewhat, as he had to move all that rock around with him. It wasn’t as heavy as it should’ve been with all that mass lugging him down, though.

  Emma cut and stabbed at Erik, pushing him back as he kept dodging her attacks. The woman was keeping up with Erik’s speed. Whenever Erik attempted to counter her, she retreated then charged again. Her trained, nimble movements proved quite difficult to deal with for the Titan’s more awkward and improvised move set.

  Erik had a way of getting her to pull back further, but he was sceptical about casting ‘Flash’ at her. It wasn’t a powerful spell, per se, but it could still do some damage against a normal human. Erik just realised that Jessie intended to use the humans as shields. He saw the other Remnant grin at his realisation.

  As Emma attempted a downward slice from overhead, Erik used the spell. From his left hand a bright beam of light shot out, reaching its target in an instant. The beam hit the hand gripping the blade, singeing it and turning it black. Emma’s wide eyes did nothing to show her surprise and pain as the blade flew out of her hand. She didn’t concede, so Erik pushed her down to the ground with a guiding hand.

  “Emma, out!” Dunham yelled, and Erik charged towards his remaining adversaries. Angela sprinted to meet him. Only about fifteen seconds had passed, Erik was surprised at how much could happen in such a short time while fighting. He had never needed to keep track of time during battle before but found it surprisingly easy.

  A bolt of lightning slammed into his side, and his shirt around the impact caught fire. His skin in the area melted and burned as well. The numbing sensation from the electricity hitting him did help keep the pain down, at least, though his entire right side felt sluggish after.

  It was too soon for him to get hit by lightning from her field, wasn’t it? The weakness of her spell should’ve been clear; she had to build up static in the area first. It shouldn’t have taken such a short amount of time.

  Erik didn’t have time to consider it for long, as Angela swung her larger blade at his torso. While Angela was the taller and stronger one between her and Emma, her speed and concise movements were nothing to scoff at. As the blade sliced past Erik’s face just an inch away from him, he felt a searing heat emanating from the sword.

  Because of the larger range combined with her innate speed, Erik found it more difficult to reach Angela. After several swings against him, he had several gashes on his body from the magical, heated edge on the blade.

  Angela was still getting used to the sword, but she had already incorporated body blows and even kicks and punches with her free limbs and the weapon’s pommel. What was most surprising in that fight was her strength, though. A gut-punch from Angela caused Erik to lose all control of his breathing as he was knocked down on the ground.

  These swords were not just magical themselves, but seemed to enhance their wielders, as well Angela was stronger than she should be, and Emma’s speed had likewise been supernatural.

  Another lightning blast crashed into his side, this time the other one. It was way too soon! It hadn’t been forty seconds yet! Over time, Erik got used to reacting to those high-speed crackles of electricity, though, and he glimpsed where it appeared from this time. Instead of it tearing another burning hole in his side, the lightning bounced away from him, heading straight towards Jessie.

  Unable to react as fast, she was lucky the bolt slammed into the ground half a metre away from her, though it did cause a minor explosion of dust, sand, and glass. To avoid breathing in the glass shards in the surrounding air, she ran towards the edge of the arena to the north, where her sister stood outside and watched.

  Sophie took her job seriously, eyeing the drawn line Jessie was standing in front of, making sure she didn’t cross it.

  Angela hesitated with her attacks as Erik was hit by the lightning bolt, and when it changed direction, she retreated a few steps. Erik grinned at her as she saw his hand and forearm, covered in… scales? Erik shrunk almost a head shorter, and she looked at his legs and other arm.

  His right arm, instead of being covered in scales, took on the form of long, sharp claws attached to the forearm. Both feet had taken on the muscular form of either a canine or feline, she couldn’t be sure. The clawed paws on his feet were nothing compared to the clear speed increase he got from having the legs of a predator.

  He leapt around her and clawed at her, and this time Angela couldn’t keep up with his ferocious, inhuman attacks. Whenever she got an attack in, he blocked the swing with his scaled arm.

  While the force of the impacts pushed him away in the sand, he didn’t feel them. Erik wasted several opportunities to knock her down, and she knew it. He was just playing with her.

  Angered by this, Angela gave it her all. Another bolt struck, but Erik knocked this one away too, also toward Jessie. This one slammed into her leg.

  She let loose a scream of pain as she tumbled to the side.

  Sophie grew flustered by this and wasn’t sure what to do. The same had happened to Erik earlier in the fight, but she had promised herself that she wouldn’t interfere. Both her sister and Erik were doing this to get stronger. She had to get stronger as well, if she wanted to stay with them. Jessie had every chance of crawling out of the improvised arena, but she didn’t. Sophie wouldn’t stop the battle if her sister was intent to keep fighting despite her wound.

  Grace ran over to her bonded and defended her by standing in front of the Remnant on the ground. Jessie grabbed hold of Grace and used the leverage to get back up, shooting two watery crescents towards Erik and Angela before healing herself.

  Erik, seeing the two scythes bursting through the air towards him and Angela, leapt into the air towards the sword-wielding blonde. She hadn’t noticed the high-pressure water projectiles in her periphery before Erik’s firm feet both pressed hard into her chest.

  Erik pushed off again, the spring-like limb shooting Angela several metres back. She landed well outside the arena’s edge, unmoving. While saving Angela, Erik had put himself straight in the projectiles’ paths. He narrowly deflected the first scythe with his scaled hand. It had been heading straight towards his face, so Erik slammed his hand upwards as hard and fast as he could, knocking the projectile upwards into the air. The second water scythe opened a wide gash on his chest an instant later.

  His blood splattered all over the sandy ground around him. He was growing increasingly numb, and Erik released a flurry of ‘Flash’ beams towards Jessie, his vision darkening and spinning. After the fourth beam of light, he couldn’t trust where he was hitting anymore, so he stopped.

  He fell backwards, his bloodied torso landing on the opposite side of the arena’s edge.