by J. J. Pavlov
"Alright, I'll go first." Kamii walks forward and clicks her crab pincer demonstratively. That sight causes the laughter to stop as the gathered ajura stare at the little dark elf for a moment. The humans expect an even louder wave of laughter, but to their surprise, no such thing happens.
"I like ya." Chandra looks down at Kamii, pumping her muscles and cracking her neck. Her eyes suggest that she's going to take this as seriously as she would a spar with one of her clan members. "But I think it's best ya come at me together, all of ya. I'll even let ya use weapons."
She turns away and gestures with all arms on one side toward the platform in the center of the horseshoe-shaped longhouse where she beat Mukasura earlier. Her expression is neutral, but she naturally exudes unshakable confidence as if knowing that she can't lose. Rolan doesn't doubt it, as only champions of the gods have ever been able to slay ajura warriors on the battlefield before.
"I choose not to fight." Sigurd suddenly states while closing his eyes in a gesture of surrender and raising his arms. In doing so, he lifts his cloak and reveals the loaded crossbow that was hidden underneath all this time. "Shooting an unarmed and unprotected opponent is something I cannot abide."
Even when so much is at stake, he maintains a spirit of chivalry - one he certainly doesn't seem to employ when he wantonly flirts with girls everywhere. At least he didn't base his choice on the fact that his opponent is a woman, as he unexpectedly subscribes to gender equality.
Rolan, Gram, and Leif seem to agree with the bard, but Hreidunn and Kamii frown at him. If they lose because he doesn't support them with his crossbow, they're going to be imprisoned by the Ajura clan. Regardless of whether they are then forced to work here or are executed, they'll never leave again.
"Ya won't hit me anyway." Chandra states with a sneer and points at the crossbow with a pitiful gaze. "I hope that's not all ya can do."
Sigurd isn't the only one who can see that she's taunting him on purpose so that he would join the fight, but the person who did it doesn't seem to be aware of just how transparent she is. Shugra breathes an exasperated sigh but doesn't say a word, letting the situation play out naturally.
"If ya lack incentive, I can give ya one: I'll snack on the big one when ya lose." The fact that she says 'when' rather than 'if' implies that she's entirely confident in her victory. She looks at Gram with the eyes of a predator, eyeing him like a piece of meat ready for the taking. "And not for food."
The previous part was terrifying, but the follow-up to her statement holds an entirely different kind of terror. The big man's eyes grow round at the thought that rather than being forced to bed Chandra, he'll most likely be the one to be forcefully bedded.
"We have to win." Vigdis announces in a firm voice, and the others nod in grim agreement. The water mage then clutches her staff and whispers self-encouraging words to gather her determination. She's not-so-secretly infatuated with Gram ever since he saved her against the lich king in the Lost Tombs, so she won't stand by when he's going to be snatched away.
"That got ya motivated, huh?" Laughing with all six hands on her hips, Chandra regards Vigdis with a meaningful look. She then turns around and walks toward the platform, followed by the group of humans who mentally prepare themselves for battle.
"A question before we start. What happens if we kill you?" Rolan asks carefully, his grip on Roshanee tightening. His enemies so far have been slow undead and nightmares not intent on attacking. He can't gauge whether or not it maintains its effects against a skilled opponent - in this case, the chief of the Ajura no less.
"Ya better come at me with the intent to kill." Climbing onto the platform, Chandra turns around to announce with a grand gesture, looking down at the humans fearlessly. "Or ya won't even touch me."
Her confidence is infuriating, but not even Kamii has any illusions about their chances. She may have been grandstanding earlier, but she can tell that Chandra is a person around whom legends would be written if she ever announced her name on the battlefield. Since demons don't turn traitors and collaborate with the Alliance, the human invasions have always operated blindly. It's common for them to not even know the names of the enemy generals until they meet them in battle and hear them speak it.
"But if I die, ya won't have to fear retribution. I told ya to use weapons, after all." When the Ajura chief gets into position on the opposite side of the platform, she finally answers Rolan's question. Judging by the fact that the ajura surrounding them don't object means that they must naturally agree to that. If that's true, they have a strange sense of honor.
If a human leader falls, their direct subordinates and especially the guards will seek revenge even if it may cost them their lives. In that regard, demons are quite different, it would appear.
"Now, let's fight." With these words, Chandra spreads her six arms and pumps up her muscles, staring at them with a battle-ready grin.
Chapter 82 - Smackdown
The human side gets into formation on the platform, with Sigurd, Hreidunn, Leif, and Vigdis in the back. Now that they're standing on top of it, they realize that it's rather small for so many people and that Chandra will be able to cross the distance in no time. Once she gets into their backline, the ranged members and the mages will be quickly taken out.
For that reason, Gram is poised to face the Ajura clan leader head-on, while Rolan and Kamii are to his sides. He has decided not to use Roshanee, the Sword of Light, unless absolutely necessary. After all, the only guarantee they'll be free to go after killing Chandra in battle is a verbal one. Although the demons may not be the bloodthirsty monsters that imperial propaganda has made them out to be, they still can't trust their words alone.
A gong announces the sparring match, upon which the six-armed woman charges forward unhesitatingly. In the same moment, the mages begin chanting spells, while Sigurd and Hreidunn fan out to the sides.
The bard is the first to release a crossbow bolt at Chandra, quickly followed by the ranger's arrow coming from nearly the exact opposite side. With a widening grin, the Ajura boss glances in both directions with incredibly quick movements of her eyes before she raises one arm on each side. Two blindingly fast motions later, she catches both projectiles one after the other, then spins them on her palm and throws them at Rolan and Kamii.
Raising his sword to deflect the bolt coming at him, the leader is delayed ever so slightly. Kamii ducks under it and lunges at Chandra fearlessly, who swings an arm to swat her aside. The little dark elf twists her body to avoid it, but goes off-course and ends up at an unfavorable angle to strike with her cursed arm.
That's when the muscle-packed woman clashes with Gram. The big man braced himself properly but is still pushed back half a step. Chandra's eyebrows jump in surprise when she finds that he was able to remain standing against her, but then she laughs in joy at having found such a sturdy man.
Her earlier announcement that she would devour Gram in the sexual sense echoes in Vigdis's mind before she finishes her incantation. The terrifying thought causes her spell to go awry. A barrel-sized sphere of water forms above her brother, who's standing a step in front of her. It pours straight down onto him, completely drenching his clothes and causing him to swallow a bit of water during his own incantation. From a single slip-up, both mages are forced to restart chanting, but Leif instead turns around to rant at his clumsy little sister.
"Focus!" Hreidunn shouts in the direction of her nephew and niece, who flinch under their aunt's voice. But it serves to stop the boy from complaining and resume casting. A moment later, she looses another arrow.
This time, Chandra merely swats it out of the air with one of her free hands. At that time, Rolan reaches her and swings his regular sword, though he's only using the flat side since he hesitates to cut her. She grabs onto the edges of Gram's shield before yanking him around, putting him between the leader and herself. The sword hits the big man's back but is repelled by the latter's chainmail.
The Ajura boss separates from him and
swings one arm to keep Kamii at bay before charging toward the backline. Not letting herself get taken out of the picture this easily, the dark elf catches the wrist in her crab pincer. But as if she had planned that, Chandra draws her arm back and pulls Kamii toward her before swinging a fist at the petite girl's midsection.
Letting go instantly, the little dark elf jumps back while bringing up a knee to meet the - in comparison to her small body - huge fist. The impact shakes her to the bone and flings her backward, but she breathes a sigh of relief when she can tell that nothing was broken from that. If it had hit her in the stomach or the ribs, she wouldn't have gotten away with only an unsteady leg.
All of that took as much time as Sigurd needed to draw his crossbow again. He aims at Chandra's legs, where it'll be harder for her to catch the bolt. However, instead of trying to grab or avoid it, she kicks it out of the air with her other foot, causing it to veer off right at Hreidunn. The ranger barely avoids it by ducking away, which gives the ajura warrior the time to charge straight at Leif.
But before she reaches him, Vigdis finishes a spell.
"Galeos Submersos!" At these words, a new sphere of water gathers right around Chandra's head. The latter instantly ducks away before it's completed, apparently knowing the effect of the spell. If she had given it time to surround her head, it would have stuck to her no matter how she moved until it's released. The spell is quite powerful for a two-word incantation, but its application is limited by the fact that it requires the caster to concentrate on the target and works only on one person at a time.
"Ardentis Hasto, Inveniro Scopo!" That distraction has given her brother time to finish his first spell. If not for that, he would have been interrupted again.
A ball of fire forms a few inches above his staff and then becomes elongated; it's a spear of flames, controlled by the movements of the mage that cast it. Tipping his staff, Leif shoots it at Chandra, who narrowly avoids it by twisting her body. However, stopping in midair a few steps behind her, the spell reverses its motion and goes straight for her back.
Occupied thus, she misses Hreidunn shooting at her. But even then, she's still able to react when she hears the sound of the bowstring and quickly spins around herself to catch the arrow out of the air. In the same movement, she throws it at Leif, but Vigdis chants the simplest of water spells and creates a floating sphere in the projectile's trajectory, which catches it in midair.
It allows her brother to focus on his spell, which forces the Ajura boss to keep avoiding it so that the others can gather themselves again. Rolan, Gram, and Kamii surround her from three sides, inching closer while awaiting the perfect opening. But nobody could have expected what she does next.
Meeting the flaming spear head-on, Chandra punches right through it. The fire clings to her arm, but she charges on and plunges it through the sphere of water that Vigdis hasn't released yet. It results in an explosion of steam, as the fire is put out in an instant. Then the arrow that had been stuck in the water shoots out of the mist and pierces Leif's thigh.
"Leif!" His little sister yells when the boy stumbles and falls from the pain. She covers the two steps that separate them and looks at the wound. It didn't go all the way through and most likely stopped at the bone, so she will still have to heal him as quickly as possible.
Hreidunn comes over as well and checks on her nephew, sighing in relief when she realizes it hasn't hit an artery. Exchanging a glance with Vigdis, she puts a hand on the arrow and yanks it out in a single motion that leaves the boy flapping his mouth in a silent scream. His sister gets to work chanting a water-based healing spell right away.
The ranger immediately nocks the bloody arrow but thinks twice about shooting blindly into the steam that's still spreading after the fire magic reacted with the water magic. Aside from potentially hitting one of the others, she may give Chandra another projectile to throw from within cover.
Gram sees the silhouette of the ajura, so he discards his shield and lunges at it in an attempt to put her into a grappling lock. However, she turns on the spot after hearing his steps and uses two of her hands to catch his. The steam clears enough for them to make out each other's faces. She grins at him and gestures with her four free hands, implying that if she wanted to, she could pummel him with them while his only two limbs are occupied.
But from within the spreading steam cloud, Rolan and Kamii charge at Chandra from both sides. The leader swings the broad of his sword at her waist. At the same time, the dark elf's cursed arm, which has unexpectedly high reach, already impacts her knee as if in revenge for the hit she took earlier.
However, the force is so little that she barely feels it, causing her to stare at the crab pincer in a mixture of bewilderment and pity. The moment of surprise lets Rolan's attack connect with her unhindered. Of course, since he used the flat side, it doesn't have any effect on her steel-like muscles.
Not discouraged, Kamii swings her cursed arm once again, aiming at Chandra's thigh this time. She's doing it out of pure calculation, as the doubled strength behind her attack will feel much weaker against a flexible part of the body as opposed to a bone. Letting it happen without worrying about it, the Ajura boss instead pushes back Gram with all her arms.
On the other side, Rolan decides that it's time to use the edge of his sword, or he'll just be ignored for the rest of the fight. Seeing this, Chandra reacts immediately and brings the big man between herself and the leader once more.
This opens up her back to Kamii, who hits the towering ajura's thigh in the same spot once more to numb her feeling to the increasing impact. With three stacks, she then lowers her stance and goes all-out while her target is preoccupied with Rolan and Gram on the other side. The fourth hit finds its way where a human's liver would be, causing Chandra's entire body to shake under the impact.
She spins her head around to look over her shoulder upon realizing that she may have underestimated the little dark elf. But the big man takes this opportunity to pull on their interlocked hands. In the same motion, the leader gets in close and stabs his sword at her stomach.
With her middle pair of arms locked by Gram and her free top pair unable to defend against attacks from below, Chandra makes the split-second decision to prioritize the dangerous blade tip over a blunt hit she doesn't fully grasp the power of. She uses the bottom pair of her hands to catch the sword between her palms.
Then the fifth impact hits her on the other side and causes her feet to leave the ground, upon which she lets go of both Rolan's weapon and Gram's hands.
It would appear that this is a first for both Kamii and Chandra, as they stare at each other in surprise. When she started to explore her curse combo counter in the Lost Tombs, the little dark elf's physical strength was still quite lacking. But she felt that whenever she reached a high enough number, her natural strength would increase as a result as well. At one point, five hits were enough to bend armor or shatter bones in a human body.
On the other hand, the Ajura boss is utterly surprised that somebody could throw a punch hard enough to lift her entire body off the ground. She touches the place the crab pincer hit her in with a look of wonder, then she stares at Kamii with a blank expression before breaking out into a beaming grin.
"That's an interestin' arm ya got there, little one!" The glitter in her wide-open eyes as she says this resembles the look of a child who has found a new toy. It only causes a shudder to run down the back of the person on the other end of the gaze.
"Mico Ignis!" Leif takes this opportunity to cast this spell. A spark appears in midair right in front of the ajura, whose eyes widen in surprise. Then the explosion of fire hits her in the face, causing everybody to look at the young fire mage in bewilderment. He seems surprised that it worked, but is reluctant to cheer; a human would have sustained heavy burns from this.
"Oops." Chandra emerges from the smoke cloud with a soot-covered face but looks otherwise unscathed. Not even her eyebrows or hair have been singed from the heat that would have bur
ned away a human's skin.
"Ya blew it, boss!" Rambha jeers with a grin, and some of the other ajura join in with mischievous laughter.
"Huh?" Leif looks around, wondering what they're referring to. After all, the spell was utterly ineffective, and it definitely didn't make Chandra tap out.
"Time to get serious then." Shrugging with all six of her arms at once, the Ajura clan leader seems to take the situation as lightly as ever. That's when the realization dawns on Rolan that she was most likely giving herself a handicap by fighting as somebody of lesser physical abilities would. So much for thinking that she would go all-out to honor the opponent.
"Take formation!" He tries to warn his group, but with Chandra between Gram and the backline that he should be protecting, it's too late to do so now. Still, it's a testament to the big man for his quick wits, as he grabs the six-armed woman from behind and puts her top pair of arms into a grappling lock before she can get to work.
It's a position even a human of his physique couldn't break out from, but with a simple flex of her muscles, the Ajura boss shakes off his grip. Half-spinning her body around, she delivers three elbows into Gram's torso at different heights. Since he's wearing chainmail rather than a breastplate - unlike Rolan does - the impacts travel through to his body.
The big man remains standing but appears shaken to the core as his face twists in pain. But the leader has no time to worry about him since Chandra ducks down and lifts Gram's giant shield. She then proceeds to lob it at Leif, who's still being healed by Vigdis. It would seem they missed the leader's warning, or hoped that there would be enough time to finish when the big man grabbed the opponent.
Seeing the slab of steel flying at them, he quickly pushes his sister aside. Luckily, one corner hits the ground first, causing it to land on its edge, right next to the boy. But gravity does its trick, and the shield drops straight onto him and knocks the air out of him anyway. Stuck under the immense weight of the slab of steel, he's unable to get out on his own, taking him out of the fight.