Chapter 27 - Weasel and a flag

Long ago, there was no mind. All there was and all there would be had been a world of beasts destined to mundane lives. Then, in the light of infinite grace, the beasts were given mind. From the ice of the northern worlds in curdled seas the Elves were formed, stout yet hardy. They were blessed by the elements of the physical realm. From the shadows the denizens of the scarlet realm and abzu were formed. The blessing they were given did not match the harsh realm they lived in, and the sins of the world cursed them in a tale of tragedy. Mankind was made last from the dust of the earth and given life from the breath of a fallen star, but they were the most wretched of all.

Chapter 7 of the Luminous Scripture, known as the chapter of origins.

Victor groaned. As fast as he was, getting his head slammed into the deck of his own ship and then getting stepped on hurt. His specialty was speed, not durability. He was also pretty sure he felt a couple of his ribs creak as well. For some reason, strength training just didn’t have the same results for him as it did for monsters like Silk or Selas. Picking himself up, he suddenly dashed over to help his friends. Bundo was conjuring up some sort of odd shield from the coal in their storerooms and had made some sort of crystalline barrier blocking the rest of selas’s crew from entering in. However, their weapons were causing cracks and sounds similar to fracturing glass as bundo winced in pain from each one. Levi was nowhere to be seen, for some reason.

Silk on the other hand, was doing very poorly. While she was able to somewhat keep up with selas by predicting her next movement somehow, she couldn’t counter Selas and successfully counter Acna. Every prevented stab led to an opening where the cudgel could get a glancing blow as she dodged. Desperately, Victor threw one of his newly-sharpened bronze knives at Acna’s head. Unfortunately for him, Acna twisted at the last second and got hit in the shoulder instead, falling down as she did so.

Leaping forward, Victor blurred as he went in for the kill, stopping only to give Bundo a small chunk of coal to fuel whatever he was doing to keep the rest of the crew away. Acna in response attempted to hit him in the chest with the butt of her staff, only to have it be stopped by the tip of Victor’s knife. Much to her suprise, the razor point on the bronze-like alloy dug into the end of her staff, with Victor using the knife to flip his body via the leverage and kick Acna square in the back with a beautilly executed stomp.

Unfortunately, this left quite a bit of time for acna to recollect herself and use her inhuman strength to fling the tip of her cudgel upwards and outside the boat, catapulting Victor towards the foggy abyss below. Thinking quickly, Victor cut off one of the sleeves on his shirt and carefully cut it into a spiral shape, making a fairly long rope. Just as he reached the peak of his ascent, he tied one of his knives to the end of the improvised whip and swung it towards the tip of the prow not two metres away before swinging into it face first. Falling down several feet, he landed on his back and had the wind knocked out of him, with Acna preparing to smack her stick on his head.

Just before that happened, Victor saw three sparkling figures emerge and tackle Acna. Victor grinned. “Took you enough time, Bundo! I almost died!”

The elf, in response, paused from maintaining the barrier and yelled back. “Bundo is sorry, friend Victor. These diamond golems should help, though.”

The golems in question began pummeling Acna’s limp body with remarkable force, and in an entirely inhuman matter at that. Their torsoes remained completely immobile while their arms moved back and forth straightly and robotically. Alas, Acna got her bearings fairly quickly and pushed the tip of her cudgel through it’s head. A spray of gemstone shards erupted, interrupting the battle between Silk and Seras in the process.

While silk managed to avoid the brunt of the shards, Seras got hit directly in the face by one in a rather nasty bout of friendly fire. The razor sharp edge of the shard left a vertical slash directly next to her right eye, with small rivulets of blood pouring down it. Capitalizing on the distraction, Silk immediately thrust a sword that went directly at Seras’s stomach, with Seras barely deflecting the double edged blade in time. Unfortunately, it was at that moment where Silk saw the weakness of Seras’s attack.

Seras immediately disappeared again, but silk tossed her sword in the air, and then grabbed the handle of her enemy’s sword mid-swing and spun around, impaling the pirate with her own weapon. She then caught her own sword and sheathed both of them on her back.

“How?”, seras gasped as she looked at the point of the foil.

“You stop mid-attack for a moment and can’t affect matter while you skip your action. That gets predictable if you keep spamming that one trick over and over again.”

Silk paused for a moment, her blade at her defeated enemy’s neck. “If you get your men and women to stand down, I will let you go back and tend to your wounds - and keep your sword with you. If not, however….”

Silk leaned down forward and tapped the sword lodged in Seras’s midsection, the wobbling of the metal causing winces as blood flowed from the puncture wound - albeit stopped with the sword. She then gestured with the tip of her left-hand sword towards Seras’s neck.

“You get the idea”. Chanelling Victor, she gave a cheeky wink then walked away.

While the battle between Seras and Silk was going on, Victor was struggling fighting agaisnt Acna. Acna could take hundreds of light stabs and slashes, but one good hit and hew would be done for. After backflipping and stepping on Acna’s face while he jumped off of the mast he was sliding down, he attempted to stab at her face with both of his knives. Unfortunately for him, both knives were then stuck into the wooden staff.

Much to his shock, instead of retaliating with an attack and giving a chance for Victor to get his weapons out of Acna’s, his opponent instead tossed her staff away, seeming to realize that clashing weapons was going to do nothing more than stall out the battle and tire her. She then proceeded to tackle Victor - who was still surprised from this sudden turn of events - and embrace him for behind.

“No dodging this”, she hissed in his ear.

Victor felt his ribs creak and his breathing go tight.

“Shouldn’t you buy a guy dinner before - Urk!”

Unable to finish his witty banter, Victor felt a very troubling snapping sound in his right arm. A flare of blunt pain and then numbness filled it. Just before things became too dire, his flailing stopped and he fell down on the ground, gasping for air.

“Victor. Get up. Seras just lost.”, said Levi. one of her cleavers was bent at the handle from the sheer force of impact of the stealthy strike.

Getting up, Victor winced. “I think I broke my arm.”

Levi, expecting some sort of witty banter, suddenly halted. “We’ll deal with that later. Let’s just see how negotiations end up.”

Victor limped, his right arm extending at a troubling angle, before heading to the gangplank connecting the two ships where Bundo’s barrier just started flickering out of existence.