Deirdre was starting to realize she was in over her head as she fenced back and forth with Warren's henchman. The guy looked like he was at least part Orc, or at least that was her guess. He was tall, outweighed her by at least a hundred, maybe two hundred pounds of solid muscle, and had what looked like small tusks jutting from his mouth. She wasn't used to fighting individually strong humanoids like this, the Wyoming mountains had been much more geared towards beasts, elementals, and other more natural types of foes aside from their final battle with the Orc tribe. Even in that fight, she'd been able to lean on her companions and the Orcs weren't great individual combat champions. This guy was both huge and skilled, which was new and dangerous in an opponent.
Here, she was on the losing end of a very deadly game of tag. One where a single blunder would probably end up dealing catastrophic damage to her. She deflected another blow, the heavy sword ringing loudly as she slid out from under the blow, backpedaling rapidly. Deirdre halfheartedly tried to attack, daring a ssh towards her opponent's thigh, but quickly drew back and rolled to the side trying to dodge again. Fuck, she thought to herself. This isn't going well.
The half-orc suddenly lunged toward her, shouldering into her and knocking her sprawling to the floor as he nded on top of her. She managed a decent hit, stabbing into his arm, but he'd pinned her to the floor. Their swords went skidding across the floor and fell down the hole, cttering into the spikes at the bottom of the pit. Deirdre tried to squirm free, but the orc grabbed tight to her chest with both hands and headbutted her.
Deirdre tried to brace herself as the blow came, but was horribly overmatched by the much rger warrior. The orc's skull smashed into hers and she felt her nose break, the back of her head sm into the metal floor of the cavern as her brain rebounded inside her skull, and the lights went out.
---
Colin dodged a firebolt that zipped by his head, returning a barrage of missiles back at the enemy caster. The two had continued their eldritch dance for the st few minutes, allowing smaller hits in order to ensure they counterspelled each other's higher-damage spells. Both mages were looking worse for the wear, but Colin thought he might have the advantage. The other mage seemed to be stepping down his spell power a little before Colin each time, making Colin think that the enemy caster was less powerful. Or, Colin thought wryly, he's trying to sucker me into thinking he's less powerful in order to flip the tables. Games within games.
High-stakes mage combat was as much a battle of the minds as it was any kind of magical talent - it often boiled down to whomever could win the rock, paper, scissors battle of spell-casting by guessing how their opponent was going to react. And Colin had just the trick pnned, ying his preparations by weaving a subtle pattern of spells. He was assuming his opponent was good enough to detect that Colin was casting in a repeating pattern, but _not_ clever enough to realize that the pattern itself was a trap. Just one or two more cycles and he'd have -
Colin blinked, gncing to the side as a firebolt smmed into him and knocking him down. One of Warren's companions, a giant orc, was dragging a lifeless Deirdre by the hair across the floor, a small trail of blood behind the woman. "NO!" Colin screamed, leaping to his feet and starting to race toward the orc. A wave of cold energy raced out from the furious elf, locking both the enemy caster and the orc in pce as the floor of the missile silo suddenly turned into an arctic wastend.
Alice turned suddenly, having been distracted by the horror of Warren consuming the life of one of the sve girls, and gasped at the scene in front of her. She turned and faced the enemy caster, prociming "HOLD!" The caster, distracted by the ice, missed the incoming spell and froze in pce. Alice then cast again, summoning a giant sword near the frozen orc to try to defend Deirdre with. The sword glowed with a spectral pink color and begin swinging as the orc tried to defend himself by dodging or blocking with his arms.
Colin turned, casting one st fireball at the enemy mage as he neared the orc. The mage's eyes grew wide in horror but was otherwise unable to react as the fireball impacted him. The explosive force of the bst threw the burning mage's body into the air where it bounced off the ceiling and rag dolled into the pit, nding with a sickening and crispy thunk at the bottom of the pit. Unfortunately, Colin had gotten just a little too close to the orc while he was rushing toward Deirdre, and the orc turned suddenly and swung a fist toward the wizard.
Alice's spectral sword used the opportunity to slide forward, getting a good hit on the orc's back, fying the muscles on his left shoulder, but the orc's right fist impacted with Colin's nose with a crunch and the wizard staggered backwards, blood and tears raining down his face as he sat down hard.
The orc ughed, spittle spraying from his lips, as he stared down at Colin. "Puny elf, couldn't even help the woman. I will make her mine." Colin stared up, trying to summon a spell to destroy the orc, but his nose was just too painful to conjure. Every time he tried to cast a spell, it was like a lightning bolt was hitting his brain and shorting out any rational thought. Colin tentatively reached up, grasping his nose through the slick blood, feeling the awkward and unnatural angle it was sitting at. He tried to tug, feeling it sliding around painfully, the cartige making disgusting noises, and he felt himself going light-headed. The orc just ughed again, watching as the wizard passed out trying to set his own broken nose.
As the orc went to reach down again, Alice's spectral sword struck once more, this time smming home into the back of the orc and jutting through his chest, puncturing the giant warrior's heart. The orc stared down in shock at the pink glowing sword as his heart continued beating, blood foaming out his chest around the wound, as he staggered to one knee. "No," he said with a struggle. "No!" The orc pressed himself back to his feet, drawing a dagger and taking a step toward Colin. He raised the dagger, preparing to stab down at the unconscious wizard, and then fell sideways as his heart finally ran out of blood.
Alice gasped with relief, turning her attention back to Bridgette. Her lover continued battling with Warren, clearly the better fighter but somehow Warren was still on his feet and dealing damage to the topless barbarian woman. With horror, Alice realized that three more women along the line of chained sves were ying lifeless and the rest were screaming with terror as the two combatants battled back and forth in the underground bunker.
"Bridgette, you're killing the girls," she cried, trying to alert the other woman to the peril.
"Yea, I fucking know," Bridgette snarled, taking another hit to her shoulder, blood dripping down her arm as she grabbed Warren and flipped him over her shoulder, reaching down and hacking at his hamstring to try to cripple him. "But what else can I do?" As Warren tried to roll back to his feet, the mysterious archer reappeared, stabbing into Bridgette with a glowing dagger. Bridgette wrapped her hands around the archer before he could vanish again, holding him tight as the dagger ground into the barbarian's shoulder. She screamed with pain and rage, headbutting the archer and walking towards the pit, the two bodies pinned together. Alice shouted in warning, casting a healing spell onto Bridgette to try to undo some of the damage.
Warren regained his feet and threw one of his swords, the bded weapon spinning end over end across the twenty feet separating him from Bridgette and his archer. The sword thunked point-first into the archer's face with a sickening crunch and the body fell backwards into the pit, dragging a screaming Bridgette with it.
