A blow slammed against her door. There was a loud crunch as part of the door gave way and a sword-point intruded into the room. More blows landed around the break until an amethyst glow behind the door became visible through the cracks.
Trapped in the room, disorientated from sleep, and her heart pounding in her chest. But the she-orc quickly turned that fear into action. Reaching down, she pried the table leg off the nightstand. It was impressive how much effort it took to snap it off.
Everything in the room had been created with skill and care. But, with something breaking down the door to get to her, that appreciation had more to do with how sturdy a club it would make.
Whatever was behind the door was quiet for a moment. She turned her head and saw an obsidian skeletal arm reach through the hole in the door, grasping for the chair holding it shut.
She reached out with her hand full of fire, and unleashed a firebolt through the hole, blasting the skeleton back against the wall. She released her mistake immediately, for not only did the skeleton get up, but she had set the hallway and the door itself ablaze.
Rhun had only a moment to curse her decision before the skeleton hurled itself against the blazing door. It splintered from the frame with a ‘crack’ and toppled into the room. A blackened skeleton stepped through the door, smoldering from the extinguished flames, and stared at her with a brilliant amethyst light filling its empty eye sockets.
Expressions were impossible for bone, but something about the way it tilted its head forward indicated malice. It took a step forward and the bones of its joints creaked from the friction. In its hand was a dull looking straight sword. It wasn’t like the arming swords used in Greihold. It looked much like a more ancient gladius only longer.
Rhunal backed away from it, but not quickly enough.
It rushed forwards and slashed at her with murderous intent. She took the hit high on her shoulder, rolled with the strike, and stepped back to mitigate the blow, grunting from the pain. She channeled a firebolt, lunging backwards out of range of a second strike. The skeleton pressured her, giving her no time to cast the spell. It slashed out, and the tip carved across her left hand, her favored spell hand. The spell winked out of existence as the blade cut her palm to the bone.
“Ahhh!” She backpedaled still more, squeezing her wounded hand, and trying to get a handle on her opponent’s movements. Her back heel slammed into the low table in the center of the room. She tripped and shattered the table under her weight. The skeleton raised its blade, aiming towards her head.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a broken table leg near her right hand. She rolled to the side as the skeleton stabbed downward. The she-orc parried the sword away from her neck with the side of her left arm, suffering a ragged slash across it. The rusty sword wasn't sharp, but it left rough wound.
She swung the blunt club in her right hand across the skeleton’s ankles. It was surprisingly heavy as she struck it, but she twisted into the blow, knocking it off its feet. Rhun scrambled to her feet, and the skeleton matched her with surprising quickness. She glanced at the ragged wounds on her left arm and hand, then glanced back at her opponent.
“I won’t get into the Blood Rage by exchanging blows with you, will I?” She didn’t expect a response, but it ground its teeth together and the grim, unnatural sound echoed in the small room.
She accepted the skeleton’s challenge with a large swing! It met the weighty blow with the side of its sword. Despite putting all her weight in the blow, it didn’t recoil in the slightest. She was not fighting, just a normal skeleton. A normal skeleton, weighing about twenty to thirty pounds, would have been blasted across the room by the strike.
It wasn’t made of normal bone; the dark color showed that it had been turned to stone and thickened. It was at least as heavy as she was. It had no stamina, it had no critical points to wound and would be very difficult to break.
Looking into its glowing eyes, she made a decision, and changed up her attacks to lighter ones. The skeleton was content to maintain a stalemate and just spar for a while. It had the better weapon, and its sword was cutting chunks out of her hardwood club.
By lightening her attacks and feinting often, she slipped in an attack against its sword arm. Chips flew, but not enough damage to break it. It countered with a quick stab, piercing her thigh. She angrily lashed out at the weapon with her club to knock it free from her flesh, clipping the sword low on the hilt. The blow caught half of one bony finger, smashing it off at the joint.
She grinned, it was the first time her opponent had shown damage. The she-orc stepped up her aggression with increasingly wild attacks. The skeleton blocked these with ease, masterfully knocking them aside with the sword. She reeled back once more for a massive strike. The skeleton reached its weapon forward to parry her, in an excellent position to counter her.
She swung hard, but pulled the attack short at the last moment. Instead of a strike to the head as it seemed, Rhunal struck hard across its sword hand, obliterating most of its fingers. Its hand and the sword were smashed to the side.
Stepping forward, she grasped the skeleton’s sword with her bare left hand in a reverse grip. The deep cut in her palm screamed from the abuse. Latching onto the wave of pain, she wrenched it from its ruined hand with a vicious pull, shattering the last of its fingers. The she-orc shouted a war cry at her stony opponent.
Her triumphant shout was cut off by its surviving hand as it snatched her by the throat in a tremendous grip. Its rock-like fingers drew blood and choked off her air. She dropped her club, pulled the back of its skull forward with her right hand, and stabbed it down through the eye-socket with the blade in her left. Something fragile shattered into fragments, and the grip on her neck slackened immediately. Rhun gasped, breathing deep to replenish lost air.
As she held its skull in her hands, the light in its eyes extinguished. Its limbs hung limply, and when she dropped it from her grip, it scattered across the floor into all its separate bones. Apparently, the jewel she had broken was the thing keeping it together.
As the effect of her adrenaline lessened, she felt the sharp pain of many cuts across her body, the gashes in her arm, and the hole through her leg. But an inferno blazed outside the room and more smoke was pouring in every second. She gritted her teeth to ignore the pain. There was no time now. The ruins of the house outside her room came crashing down, trapping her inside.
She pressed the sword tip of the skeleton’s sword against the top of the glass window. While it failed to penetrate through fully, it pierced into the glass a small amount. She focused her magic on the metallurgy of the blade, on its hardness and sharpness. By influencing its design to become harder and narrower at the edge, it pieced through at last. The she-orc carefully dragged the blade downward the entire length of the glass. Her carved up left hand screamed at her from the pressure, but it was ignore it or pass out from the smoke.
She dragged the sword across the base of the window. The narrower, more brittle sword flexed as it cut through; she couldn’t put too much force into it.
The flames behind her were spreading furiously in the old rotten wood. Smoke was filling the room, and it was becoming difficult to breathe, doubling her over in a fit of coughing. The beams above her swelled and cracked from the heat, threatening imminent collapse. She pushed the sword up the right side of the window quickly, too quickly, breaking the last third of the sword off at the top of the window.
It would have to be enough. The air in the room was almost gone, and there were dark edges around her vision. She was coughing violently now, but with three sides cut, the window was hanging on a hinge.
She took a long step back, charged forward, and blasted herself forward with a backward jet from her Wind Vortex. The she-orc pulled up her legs to clear the base of the window and smashed into the center of the square of glass, cut on three sides. The top side snapped off the window-frame as Rhun slammed into it.
The window and the she-orc flew out and landed hard on the gravel roadway. She looked back to see the roof of the room that she had just escaped blazing furiously. She sat on the gravel taking in great heaving breaths before gaining her feet, and retreating back towards the main road.
She looked back regretfully at the blazing, once beautiful room. It would wait for the lost daughter no more.
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