Kage had leapt from the shadows with the expertise of a well trained assassin. He’d sunk his daggers into his target’s flesh… or that’s what he’d tried to do. He could almost feel the blades sinking in before he made contact, but his knives scraped against armor.
“Damn,” he cursed. There went the element of surprise – he should have gone for the neck. The man he’d tried to kill turned on him and started fighting for his life. Perhaps he knew that fleeing was not an option… perhaps fighting was the only real way out. If Kage had more time, he would have laughed. The punches screaming towards his face didn’t give him an opportunity to do that.
He ducked under the first punch, then did a bob/weave motion to the left to dodge the second. He was going to follow through with his own punch but his opponent was a speedy little fucker and forced him to dodge yet another punch.
“Okay, so we’re doing this,” Kage said, holding up his fists. More punches came at him, but instead of dodging he blocked them, absorbing them with his forearms. He found that they hurt a lot more than he thought they would. He felt the impacts from six or so more punches which numbed his arms enough to where he started to think that he was wasting his time blocking.
“Time to go on the offensive,” he thought to himself, dropping his center of mass and trying to shove his shoulder into the man’s middle. He hit true then transitioned that into grabbing him and slamming him onto the ground. The force he put behind his attacks would be superhuman. No mere man could lift something so heavy and so effortlessly. One had to be augmented somehow, whether by genetics or by surgery to achieve that sort of strength.
Kage took a long breath before grabbing hold of the man’s armor and lifting him up off the ground. He clocked his head to the side, built up power, then slammed his fist into the man’s face repeatedly. Of course, there was always room for error, blocking, and dodging. Something told Kage that this man wasn’t ordinary in the slightest. He might need special care and attention to be knocked out.
“Had enough yet?” he asked with a malicious looking grin on his face. A voice in the back of his head told him to stop playing with his food, even if it was fun.
The armored man was watching over the place as the sun slowly set and his armor caught the last rays of light. The structure behind him was a dilapidated one, built of old stone and wood, with all its windows shut and its roof sagging. Yet within its walls lay a very different story altogether. The building held a small group of humans who dared to challenge the authority of the aelves. A pitiful resistance. Misguided, desperate and dangerous.
It was decided that the rebellion had to be ended even if it only comprised a handful of people. The first of them died at Kage’s hand. Thirty years of life snuffed out in an instant.
A figure emerged from the doorway of the damaged building into the open area. There was something about the human that seemed greater than the desperate group the man had been a part of. Their simple clothes were marked by old, faded emblems and they raised their hands with the palms facing out.
Kage’s actions came to an abrupt halt in the middle of his stride. The sorcerer’s hand moved in a gesture that suggested they were taking hold of an invisible force. At the same time the dead soldier spasmed as blood from his wounds floated toward the sorcerer.
“They only sent one of you?”
The question was rhetorical because Kage wouldn’t be able to speak. The stolen blood turned crystalline before being sent right towards Kage’s stomach.
Having your body get suddenly frozen while being unable to do anything about it was a very surreal experience. Kage tried his best to move his arms and legs but they simply would not budge. And then there was the next attack that sent some kind of projectile that he could barely see because he couldn’t move his eyes. The attack hit him in the stomach and knocked him backwards a little, though he was still held still with that stunning effect his opponent had cast on him.
Kage couldn’t even get a witty retort out because his jaw was held tight. Feeling somewhat helpless, he closed his eyes and let his body go limp. The sound of many footsteps started to sound around the building as he commanded his undead troops to come in with backup. They quickly streamed into the building in an attempt to free their master from his restraints.
One such minion, piloted directly by Kage, threw an orb made of wooden spikes that was intended to bludgeon or maybe even kill the gaesterei that was holding Kage still. The other treants kept pushing forwards into other rooms, if they were able to, and tried to maim anyone else that was hiding. Kage had had his fun, but in the end he had a job to do. He didn’t need this operation getting out of hand, especially if there were powerful mages about.
The fast arrival of treant warriors caused the humans to panic inside the building. The door was violently thrown open and the wooden warriors rushed inside, attacking with their bark-covered limbs in a very precise manner. The humans were barely able to act before the vines seized them, knocked their weapons away and wrapped around their limbs, trapping them. There were loud shouts and cries as the treants efficiently dragged the captives into the center of the room.
The mage who had made Kage immobile was thrown away like a doll. He hit the wall then fell to the floor struggling to breathe. A wound on his forehead caused blood to flow and his robes were ripped because of the impact. His fingers trembled and he struggled to raise himself, but he was losing his strength very quickly. He still was able to maintain his spell to Kage’s dismay.
Kage, unable to move, was able to watch the events through his minions’ eyes. The humans fought but the treants would not let go of their hold. A big man with a scar on his face tried to attack, but a vine suddenly wrapped around his throat and made him gasp and fall silent.
The rebel’s breaths were uneven and quick. His vision blurred, but he concentrated on what was happening inside himself by using the last bit of his magic. He held on to the wooden floorboards and the splinters went into his skin as he clenched his teeth. The air was full of power and he could feel the ground vibrating gently.
He then made a deep cry and hit the floor with his palm.
The response happened right away. The ground burst open and sharp spikes of dirt rose up, looking like spears. They quickly pierced the bodies of the closest treants as they were walking. The mage was actually trying to target Kage, not the minions.
The frozen elf was pierced by three giant spikes that sprang from the ground and stabbed right through his body. He was struck in the stomach by one arrow, in the shoulder by another and the third just grazed his ribs before going deep. Kage’s body was lifted by the spikes and blood was spilled across the wooden floor.
The mage’s magic ended and Kage was freed from his frozen state. To finish himself off, the human sent a similar spike through his own heart. He lifted his hand, feeling it tremble and used it to clutch the spike deep inside him. He pulled with a loud grunt to force it deeper until he finally died.
Kage’s body, which still wouldn’t move, suddenly surged with pain as spikes drove into his body. He let out a yell, or rather a grunt because that’s all he could really do. He’d thought these faelnir had been low hanging fruit, but they had a powerful mage among them. Good thing he’d brought backup because without his treants, he’d probably have died. They took care of the mage by bashing something into him and after that the mage seemed to realize that he was out of options because he ended his own life.
“FUCK!” he shouted when he finally regained control over his faculties. His body had already slid further onto the spikes and now he couldn’t move without making the wounds worse. He could feel blood streaming down his body. This was what he got for not having any talismans on him – rookie mistake, though a small part of him wanted to die to test out his phylactery. Dying in the same region as his home meant he would probably get to revive a little faster, and he knew that nobody in this building could capture his soul before it got back.
All of that was besides the point. He was dying and probably would if he didn’t act quickly. He commanded the treants near him to help slide him off of the spikes and lay him gently onto the ground. He was about to have them put pressure on his wounds but his head went very fuzzy very quickly.
A voice whispered in his head
“I’ll handle it.”
Hana piloted the treants and had them wrap up the wounds. There was no telling if it would be enough. If not, Kage would likely perish. She sent some treants to go fetch help from some aelves if there were any nearby.
As he lay on the ground, Kage could barely see and the pain in his body kept getting stronger and stronger. The treants were very careful as they touched his wounds, hoping to stop the bleeding with their medical knowledge. The damage was too great to be treated just by pressure. His breathing would grow short until he lost consciousness.
Then~~ there were voices.
Elven.
Hands were placed on his body and after that healing magic could be felt all around his body.
"Looks bad" Was said by one of them with anger.
Kage was unable to answer. He was so weak that his body couldn’t function while the healing took place. He would feel his body and mind slipping away and everything around him seemed to get quieter and less real.
When he woke up he was in the same building but in a different room. He would be able to see a table full of papers and two aelves who were going through them. One of the women who had silver hair and had it tied back in a loose braid looked at him when she heard him move.
"Finally awake? Good. You scared us.”
The man with dark green eyes and a scar on his face didn’t stop looking at the papers he was reviewing.
“Try not to get stabbed next time. It creates difficulties for everyone involved."
He then looked over with a smirk.
“You did well to find these people, can’t deny that. There’s a paper trail that will lead us to many faelnir who have stepped out of line.”
Kage slipped in and out of consciousness as he recovered. He felt pain but it wasn’t nearly as bad as having his organs pierced. Druidic healing was notoriously unpleasant, so that was saying a lot. When he finally came to (properly) he noticed there were aelves around him conducting their search for intel. Two of them, his apparent backup.
“Couldn’t be helped,” Kage said with a forced smile. “I’ve become a little more bold now that I’ve become a Grafviðr.”
He looked over at the body of the mage that had harmed him. His features contorted pure rage before he releasing a progressively angry and bestial growl. “Insulate faelnir, daring to strike an aelf…” Kage’s anger made the faenlir around him look at him fearfully. He felt like smashing the body’s remains to bits and then crushing the skulls of all the faelnir in the building.
There was a crunching sound that came closer and closer to Kage and source of the sound was a roguish looking purple skinned aelf that entered. He wore a heavy jacket and a hood over his head that covered his head and ears underneath. The aelf stopped and looked at the scene. He gave an annoyed sigh, it was always an annoyance to be around incompetence.
“Let’s wrap this up,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“I found this one trying to run,” he said, snapping his fingers and signaling a treant with a teenage boy to walk in. “He must have slipped past you during the commotion. Deal with him, will you, Kage?”
Kage took a deep breath then approached him. “So, you think that you can be involved in all these illegal then run away? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll explain what was going on here and what your involvement was.
“Of course I tried to flee,” he spat with an utter lack of respect, “they told me all sorts of things. They warned me that one day that you’d come and kill us all but our fight was worth fighting. And now my dad… he’s dead… I hate you all!”
