R. Salvatore - The Bear

Bransen started forward but stopped short, for Affwin Wi dismissed her shock and pain in an instant, throwing it all out in a primal keen of outrage. She was glowing, too, in a serpentine shield, reversing her footing and charging ahead once more.

Bransen understood her intent and ran away. With the malachite, the Highwayman leaped from the ridge, landing lightly on the nearest branch of a large tree. He caught his balance and turned to see Affwin Wi charging, blazing with the flames of a ruby gemstone! She seemed a living fireball, and elemental creature of searing flames. There could be no escape… certainly none in the flammable branches of a summer tree!

Bransen used his soul stone to stab at her consciousness, to try to distract her in her concentration. At the same time he sent forth a burst, a pulse, like a magical dart, from the antimagic sunstone. But Affwin Wi was still a living fireball, still leaping high in the throes of the malachite, and still screaming. All Bransen could do was drop from the branch in desperation.

Even as he collided with the next lowest branch, not so gracefully twisting about to avoid any serious injury, he came to understand that the pitch of her scream had changed. Only after he negotiated the branch to fall clear of the others and land on his feet beneath the tree did he come to recognize the true source of her new yell.

Agony.

The fiery woman sailed past where Bransen had been standing, collided with the tangle of the tree farther on, and thrashed about insanely as she crashed through that tangle to land at last hard on her back on the ground below.

Bransen's desperate strike with the sunstone had stolen only one bit of magic, the serpentine shield, and now the fires of the brooch's ruby chewed at her furiously. She rolled about on the ground, screaming in agony.

Horrified, Bransen ran to her, desperately patting at the last stubborn flames. He fell into his soul stone and tried to impart waves of healing magic, but when he placed his hands upon the shivering woman, her skin just slipped away.

Bransen fell back in horror and disgust.

A scream so outrageous, so primal, so feral, shocked Bransen back to his sensibilities just in time to see Merwal Yahna charging at him, nun'chu'ku lifted high above his head, its deadly strike bar spinning furiously.

There was no reason to be found on the man's face, no pause and no sanity. In the split second he looked up at Merwal Yahna, Bransen knew that the man, overcome with rage and anguish, meant only to kill him, to smash him dead where he knelt beside the shivering and dying Affwin Wi.

Bransen spotted his brooch and snatched it up from her bubbling skin even as he fell into his own malachite and launched himself away, leaping backward and up into the air, spinning a somersault and landing on a branch some fifteen feet from the ground.

Merwal Yahna ran right to the base of the tree, sputtering curses with every step. Like a crazed animal, he began lashing at the large trunk with his exotic weapon, back and forth, chipping bark with every strike.

"Come down! I kill you! Come down! You die!" he roared.

"Enough!" Bransen shouted back at him after a few moments, during which he placed the brooch against his forehead and felt its magic connecting with him once more. Hardly shifting his hand, he pinned it in place, and he felt its magic coursing through him, energizing him. "This is ended, Merwal Yahna. It is time for us to place our differences behind us and work for the good of our respective lairds and for the good of Honce-"

"Come down!" the bald man shouted, and he rapped the tree repeatedly, his ire showing no sign of relenting. "I kill you!" He kept shouting and swinging. Bransen tried to reason with him, but to no avail.

Finally Merwal Yahna started to climb, and Bransen knew that he would have to fight the man. He shook his head and watched Merwal Yahna's progress. As soon as the warrior reached the base of the branch upon which Bransen stood, Bransen sprinted the other way along it, lifting himself with malachite as he went so that the branch did not bend. Nearing the ridge upon which he had first joined in battle, the Highwayman leaped with all his strength. If he could only get over that ridge, he thought, and back to his sword…

He didn't make it. Despite his great leap, despite his concentration in the gemstone, the distance was too far. Bransen collided with the side of the cliff facing, held on and tried to climb, but the jolt had him dazed a bit; he slid down near to the ground before he finally caught himself.

Too late, he knew, when he heard Merwal Yahna's roar close behind him.

Bransen's focus went to the brooch set on his forehead, focusing on the backing that held the six gems in place. As he turned, Merwal Yahna barely two strides away, the moment of his death surely upon him, Bransen lashed out with all of his magical energy, a complete orgasm of magical release.

The lightning bolt blinded and shocked him as surely as it must have shocked Merwal Yahna. The screams of rage disappeared in the blink of an astonished eye and in the thunderous explosion of power that reverberated for what seemed like seconds. As his vision returned, Bransen saw that the man was no longer before him.

Other than his silken shoes, which lay upon the ground exactly where they had been when Bransen brought forth the stroke. Bransen's eyes scanned back, and there lay Merwal Yahna to the side of the tree trunk, some thirty feet away, smoking and twitching wildly.

Overwhelmed, Bransen staggered to the man's side, and knelt over him, determined not to let this one die. Merwal Yahna would go with him to Laird Ethelbert's Court, Bransen decided, as a witness to the attacks on Cormack and Milkeila, as the murderer of Jameston Sequin.

Yes, he nodded, but even as he did, Merwal Yahna snapped his left hand up and across, cracking Bransen's jaw and throwing him back to the ground. The Highwayman struggled to catch himself and get back to his feet, knowing Merwal Yahna was surely coming on. His right hand grabbed something solid and smooth… a wooden pole, Merwal Yahna's fallen weapon. He rose to a sitting position and jumped to his feet as Merwal Yahna stood on unsteady, trembling legs… but legs steady enough for the raging man to launch himself at Bransen.

Bransen leaped, too, higher and somersaulting and twisting as he went. As he lifted from the ground, he flicked his wrist and sent the nun'chu'ku spinning. He caught the free pole in his left hand, both hands down low as he spun over the stumbling Merwal Yahna. Passing over the man, Bransen crossed his hands violently and powerfully and threw his right shoulder under as he came around, speeding his spin as he fell straight to the ground, taking Merwal Yahna over backward behind him.

For a moment, Bransen thought that a thick branch had broken nearby. Only when Merwal Yahna's heavy, lifeless body fell atop him did he realize that cracking sound was the man's neck breaking under the momentum of Bransen's descent and in the twist of the exotic weapon.

Bransen wearily pulled himself out from under the man and climbed to his feet. He surveyed the two fallen warriors for a long while, deep regret washing over him. How much good might these two have accomplished? Such grace in battle, such skill. He thought that perhaps he should bury them side by side.

Bransen's expression went cold a moment later, though, when he thought of Jameston Sequin. Merwal Yahna had killed his friend and in a most dishonorable way. Not in a duel, and not even face-to-face. Merwal Yahna had punched his nun'chu'ku through a wall and through the back of Jameston Sequin.

Bransen looked down at that exotic weapon now, swinging at the end of his right arm. He slipped one side under his rope belt and put his hands on his hips, again looking from Merwal Yahna to the charred corpse of Affwin Wi.