Chapter fourteen

My third opponent was a bit of a surprise.

The doors opened and just like last time I stepped into the arena but unlike the last two times it wasn't a massive door that opened to to release my next foe ,instead a door identical to mine opened and a person completely covered in black clothes stepped out.

The person was tightly wrapped in black bandages that were covering his entire body leaving only a tiny slit for his eyes which were large violet orbs that looked very familiar for some reason. Looking closely at the bandages, I saw that there were multiple black knives that were secreted in between the bandages making them almost invisible if you didn't know where to look but this wasn't the first time I was seeing someone dressed in this fashion, in fact I think that I might know this particular person. I carefully inspected this person's body and sure enough although the bandages were doing an admirable job of trying to compress flesh I could just make out two bumps near the chest area and the flaring at the hip, the person who I thought was a guy was actually a woman.

"Allisandra , is that you under those bandages?"

"Hello Tony, fancy meeting you here. What are you doing in Svatalfheim?"

I couldn't help but smile when I heard her deceptively sweet voice, "The same thing you are doing I reckon, trying to win this tournament. "

"I was afraid you were going to say that. Is there no chance of you backing away and letting me win?"

"I'm afraid not, and you know that you can't kill me. I can't die, trust me I've tried. And even if you had the ability to kill me you know that you don't have the skill, you remember what happened the last time you tried to kill me don't you?"

"Yeah, I couldn't walk straight for a week but I've already taken the contract and that means that I have to try to kill you, I mean trying couldn't hurt can it?"

"On the contrary Allisandra, trying can hurt very much."

Allisandra then melted into the shadows. Allisandra was one of the Doortha'ag , an elite group of assassins famed throughout the nine realms for their almost spotless record. They would take any contract as long as the price was right and more impressively they would complete almost all their contracts. But the Doortha'ag were more than just a league of assassins , it was more like a cult. The members all sell their souls to the darkness and are irreversibly merged to the shadows, whatever creature Allisandra might have been in her past life , she was now a shadow walker with the ability to enter and exit any shadow big enough to fit her.

As Allisandra disappeared into the shadow behind her, I moved forward to the center of the arena where there were no shadows and raised my sword in preparation of what was to come. Suddenly she reappeared in a shadow to my right and threw a knife at my neck but I was prepared and deflected it with my sword. She disappeared and reappeared , this time to my left but I was able to deflect this knife too.

We continued our little game for a while, I knew that she wouldn't run out of knives because she had an enchanted sheaths and the knives would reappear inside of them a few minutes after they were used, I also knew she was a tenacious bitch that would never give up so I needed to end this.

As the minutes dragged on I studied her movements until I could almost predict which shadow she was going to come out of next. After several failed attempts I was finally able to guess right and used my shiny well polished sword to reflect the dim Svatalfheim sunlight onto the shadow she was coming out from.

When she made it out of the shadow that had been bisected by the light reflected off of my sword Allisandra was also bisected into two, her top half fell backwards and her bottom half fell forward. It was a strangely clean cut because shadow walkers didn't bleed although some smoke was coming out of her exposed innards.

She managed to use her hands to turn towards me and said, "Are you going to finish me off this time?"

I laughed and replied, "I told you that trying would hurt, but no I am not going to kill you. You are just too much fun to kill off plus I'm not done fucking you."

I went to both pieces of her body and picked them up while she continued to speak to me, "You know I tried to fuck other men? Just wasn't the same. You ruined me Tony, not only did you ruin my career by refusing to die but you also made me unable to enjoy sex with anybody else."

I held her up so that I could look straight into her eyes,"After you get yourself back in one piece and you ever feel the itch , come find me, I will be happy to scratch it for you anytime. Goodbye Allisandra."

I threw both parts of her body into a shadow where they vanished into it like smoke.