(Un)fair fight

Lucrezia Iunia Bruta; Somewhere; Certainly around the tenth month, a few days before Saturnalia; Fighting for her life

The shot had been sent by the gods, for it finally let me be freed for the second time.

Not like I had been idle during the fight, but these shadows were far sturdier than one would think.

Or one would understand that easily, seeing they used my face in a similar way a farmer would use a plow, despite me trying to move or crash them.

Now, one might say that I should have remained calm, using my energy more to break out, or finding weaknesses, and above all not using my energy wastefully in any other way but fighting.

“I will drag you down to Tartarus and use skin for drums!”

Unfortunately, I was somewhat lacking in that kind of personal control, something that older citizens would find highly scandalous, and, above all, wasteful.

I did not care overly much, and when the shot rang and made me fall to the ground, I immediately got on my legs and charged the want to be kidnapper, snow and dirt picking up while I did so, and the gods smiling down upon me, their blessings coursing strong in my veins.

It took two out of seven shadowy tentacles to sop me, the squid’s appendages made of darkness protecting the maegus like a mother would their baby, and the maegus smiling in a way I had not see in the darkest days of the civil war.

When the hearts of many men were devoured by greed and violence against other conscious beings, citizens and peregrini alike, so much that even the Tyrant could not use his silver gift of peace to cover for them.

I would put the first stone on this one, for daring to attack the medicus and me, that i swore.

“Stand still, and your end will be swift!” I shouted, while trying to hit him by throwing a chunk of rock at him, which flew as fast as an eagle going for its prey.

It was also swatted and broken by one of the tentacles, while two others protected the vir, but it was merely an opening for the huntress who I could hear, being downwind and being where the gods were at their strongest in this strange new world, had pulled back that strange contraption again.

The sonorous explosion shook again inside my ears, like a thunder writ small, and for but a moment I could almost see a small ball flying towards that dark magic, and then passing through it like a sword through an arm, dispelling it like fog in front of the sun, and leaving the mage with only four appendages, at least momentarily, smoking under the cloudy sky, snow falling over this battlefield..

That opening I tried to take, like a snake would after someone who had touched it too many times would, a closed fist going for where his heart would roughly be, knowing how I would be able to kill him with but one punch.

And, despite all odds, despite even the four more appendages he could have used, I reached my mark, my fist going through…something that was not flesh.

It was viscous, it had no bones inside, and when I looked to where my arm was connected to his torso, no blood came out, but something like the mist out of the damaged, and reforming, shadowy appendages,, and no cough or shout of pain came from the maegus.

Only that unsettling smile, only that unyielding greed, unnatural in all, spirit, mind, and body.

I could only stare at it, and the unnaturalness of it all, which was how I almost found myself constricted yet again, if not for the shot coming from the forest, which both woke me up from the dazed horror of the being, not mortal, not natural, in front of me, and made two of the three reformed tentacles fall yet again.

The smile did not fade, though, but his eyes had become pools of veins that glared into me while I retreated, hole filling.like it was not there, clothes leaving a hole into pale and wrong flesh.

“Now you see, oh holy one,” He spoke easily, his tone wrong yet corrupting at the same time, like one of those spirits the galli prayed the gods to protect them from: “Why you should just come with me. I may be gone, but your bloodline and my brother’s intelligence will make all I sacrificed worthy of the insults those old fools gave unto me.”

I was disgusted by this being in front of me, and simply let my blessings and my risen fists make the talk.

“A pity, I will just have to beat you enough for this strange magic to disappear, and after that I will kill that littl-” another shot rung out, and two tentacles fell, immediately reforming and dividing into four and then eight.

He had been playing all this time along, like a teacher would humor a student, or a parent would let himself be caught by a child.

Or how the Tyrant spoke of unity, only to make style himself as the king of the Urbe.

I would not go down without a fight, I refused that. My oaths didn’t let me do that.

I would not let me do that, not for something evil like the being in front of me.

So, with a roar, I charged, meeting eight of the twelve appendages, head on, the thought of my ancestors filling me with the heavy weight of duty in front of insurmountable odds.

Another roar joined mine, and I saw, for but a moment, a brown shadow crash against three of the remaining tentacles, and two smaller dots going towards the eyes of the evil one, now without a smile and waving its arms around, trying to swat them away..

I recognized, though, the brown, enormous, shadow.

It had broken my bones, after all.

Hopefully it would break this evil as well, letting me have the killing blow as befitting for what such a thing did, and, after that, I would give aid to the medicus for his own objectives.

I knew it was him who did that, after all I could hear, under the sound of battle, his untrained breath from over a hundred paces, running in this direction.

But now, now we had something of a chance, I hoped.