Alexa was always more comfortable in the thick of the action, rather than being the one sending others to get their hands dirty.
For months she had been experiencing a lot of stress, piling inside her head much like the piles of unfinished paperwork littering her office.
She tried to do some patrolling to fight off the funk she was wading through, knee deep in worries and half written parchment, but it wasn’t enough.
She was built for battle, not merely violence, but high adrenaline situations, asking her to be sitting in one place was like asking the ocean to cease crashing against a cliffside.
Every member of the Parma family shared this peculiar trait, this thirst for tense situations that made their blood pump. Some might say that their shared physical traits, their hulking bodies, needed that shot of adrenaline to keep their blood flowing.
Maybe that’s why her mother, instead of retiring from the City Guard and living in peaceful retirement, took the job at the Castle’s kitchen, needing to be in the midst of chaos to feel alive.
-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!- With a boisterous roar, the chains of bureaucratic routine were shattered by Alexa, who surprisingly began to move faster than Callis.
This was quite the feat, considering the Beast Blade could outrun a carriage if given enough room to sprint.
The Captain of the Guard was like a siege weapon, brought to full tension over months of stress, with this booming battlecry she released the load she was carrying with tremendous force.
She locked on the closest one of the goons hired by the Serico Sisters, a tall bald man with pale freckled skin and a big bushy crimson beard, spotted with some silver, mostly focused around his mustache.
Novus couldn’t avoid but shudder upon witnessing her charge, as each step she took created an imprint of her armored boots into the stones, surrounded by smaller cracks and fissures.
Alexa was strong enough to do this without any kind of Arcane enhancements, which frankly seemed impossible to the Young Arcanist, as he had to study the Viani body while learning medical spell formulas.
The Captain of the Guard’s charge was instantly noticed by the red bearded goon, who turned around, after striking one of the workers with a large reinforced club shaped like an oar.
This peculiar weapon, the “Haves”, is traditionally associated with the Paho people, a group of formerly nomadic seafearing people that currently lived in the Entem coast of Centris, on the other side of the continent.
The bandit had many traits associated with the Paho, with his fiery hair, pale skin and green eyes. He readied his weapon and prepared to block the incoming attack from Alexa.
She wielded her halberd with one hand, swinging it in a huge arc coming from the side, with a manic grin in her face and burning thirst for battle radiating from her.
The red bearded goon seemed to have experience in battle, as he didn’t even flinch at the sight of the approaching Alexa, who surpassed him in height, weight and armor.
He was confident of his weapon, which much like the oar pierced through the waves and redirected the flow of the water, could do the same with what seemed to be a savage and haphazard attack by Alexa, who seemed to be unbound not just from her desk but also from any semblance of discipline.
But much like with their height and equipment Alexa also had the edge when it came to skill, as her whole charge was merely a ruse, because he wasn’t his target, he was merely a means to an end.
When she began training as a guard, the former Captain, which she jokingly referred to as the “old man”, saw the potential in her. Not just because of her strength and endurance, but also for an important advantage she had that couldn’t be taught to anybody else.
“Look around, you can’t just lower your head and rush headlong into danger, take a moment and really see the situation around you.”
He used the same advice for Callis and Alexa, but with different meanings.
For the Beast Blade, he meant that Callis tended to let his instinct control him and he rushed like an arrow shot from a bow into battle, guided more by the emotions he struggled to contain.
For Alexa the problem was her eagerness to rush into combat, rather than taking a moment and thinking about if combat was the best idea, also not just thinking about her first move, but thinking ahead.
That’s why Callis and Alexa took a moment to study the situation before rushing in, as Novus requested, since both of them, for different reasons, tended to be impulsive.
The Captain of the Guard had spotted two other goons further away, moving into one of the piers and being hidden behind a large pile of crates. So, when the red bearded goon placed himself right in front of said crates and an idea reached her in a moment of violent inspiration.
As the clash of their weapons seemed to be imminent, Alexa, displaying much more fine motor skills than somebody her size should, pulled her halberd towards the center of her body, grabbing it with her other hand, placing the shaft horizontally dead center in front of her.
The moment was so swift her target barely managed to react, sluggishly attempting to shift his guard, but lacking the reflexes to reach his intended stance in time.
-LET’S GO FOR A RIDE!- She bellowed with almost childish glee as she bent her knee for a moment, leaning her whole body down before pulling her shaft of her weapon up, without breaking her mad sprint.
The iron bar of her weapon crashed into the goon’s solar plexus, making him go limp, which was perfect for Alexa. She lifted him off the floor and carried him on the bar of her weapon, much like a horned beast charging against a prey and taking it with them.
-Wha…- The red bearded goon attempted to express his confusion, but before he could finish talking, he, alongside Alexa, crashed through the wooden crates filled with products.
This didn’t seem to stop the Captain of the Guard, who trampled through the debris like a rampaging monster, surprising the other two criminals as she blasted out the other side of the boxes.
Her mad dash stopped as she collided against them, red bearded goon first, making the trio of criminals collapse into a pile of interlocking limbs, just before they attacked two other workers.
-Get to safety! NOW!- She barked orders to them, who stood up and rushed out from the pier.
As they left, Alexa looked around, trying to find the others, and as she did, one of the criminals that she just hit against each other began to move, still conscious, unlike his comrades.
The Captain of the Guard didn’t play coy, as she turned around and kicked the miscreant in the face, knocking him out.
A smile appeared on her face as she passed her fingers through her sweaty hair, removing it from her forehead as she scanned the surroundings for her next targets.
Moments after Alexa rushed into action, it was Callis’ turn, who instead of planning ahead about how to deal with many opponents had all his focus on one, Rixa Serico, infamous bandit, smuggler and mercenary for hire.
Callis had encountered Rixa and her sister Lis multiple times during his time in the guard. These siblings were a blight to the Mudhole, creating chaos wherever they went, only motivated by material gain and unbound from any kind of morality when it came to their criminal activities.
During the Year of Terror they left Rigel, rumor had it they went to the desolate Ater Arva, the sandy tundra Septen of Via, to hide out during the worst of the Necromancer’s attacks on the city.
The Beast Blade didn’t both with asking himself why they returned or what was their plan. Right now his sole focus was incapacitating Rixa, most likely the brains of this operation, to cut any plan she could have short.
-SERICO!- Callis roared as he rushed forward, unsheathing his remaining Baltas cleaver out from the sheath behind his waist.
He regretted not taking Conatus’ offer to obtain a new set of weapons, as engaging in battle against the Serico sisters with only one blade was dangerous; he had a scar just below his ribs on the right side that was evidence of that.
Rixa smiled upon seeing Callis. She worried when she saw Alexa and him enter the location she was targeting, but in the end she just did a small modification to her plan and bet that the Beast Blade and the Captain of the Guard would act as she expected of them.
It’s always better to deal with the devils you know after all.
-Did you miss me? How lovely!- She asked with intentional flirtiness. In their previous encounters she had noticed this seemed to annoy Callis, so she did it on purpose as blatantly as possible.
She followed her taunt with a volley of two crossbow bolts, trying to test the waters. Her weapon, one she obtained after killing a Urbani merchant, was made by Kiniras artisans, in the scorching deserts of the Meridio extreme of the Continent.
The amazing design seemed to use a complex yet sturdy mechanism that forced the sling back into place with the same rebound after shooting and a prepared pulley, allowing rapid fire unlike the more primitive versions of this weapon you could encounter in Via.
This wasn’t a problem for Callis, who much like her opponent, was familiar with his enemy’s skills. The first time she shot two bolts, the second one managed to get Callis, giving him a nick on his old guard armor’s pauldron, this time around he was prepared.
As the first bolt reached him, the Beast Blade used his free hand to wield his sturdy Ensis mantle, basically turning it into a makeshift whip that he used to parry the first projectile as he spun around on the heel of his boots and used his blade to hit the second one.
He did all this without breaking his sprint, but Rixa didn’t seem to be worried, as she had a trump card ready.
She continued pelting Callis with bolts, which the Beast Blade easily avoided by changing course, but what she was looking for wasn’t hitting him, but to stall him, while her trump card worked.
Novus, the last to act, began to move right after Callis blasted in Rixa’s direction, after looking around and noticing somebody that could use his help.
Alexa had moved across the lot, Callis went towards the gates, so Novus’ only real option was approaching the river, something that unnerved him to his very core, but his own fear was overwritten by the pleas of help from one of the laborers, who was trying to defend himself using a large metallic rod he managed to pry out from one of the railings around the river.
The Young Arcanist gritted his teeth and charged towards one of the Serico Sister’s henchmen, a short and stout man, with short dark auburn hair, a grotesque scar that crossed over the right side of his lips and exposed his brown teeth to the elements.
He wielded a short single edged sword with a peculiar bifurcated tip, known as a Fabermuc, a combined tool and weapon used by seafarers among the Urbani.
This weapon originally was meant to cut thick ropes, akin to the ones used in marine vessels, with the bifurcated tip serving as a way to pin a rope against a surface if needed. In combat, skilled warriors could use that same cavity to block attacks and disarm foes.
This would be quite the useless piece of trivia, if it wasn’t for the criminal actually being skilled with this weapon and upon being attacked by the worker, who blindly swung his improvised weapon, managed to perform the previously mentioned maneuver.
-Help! HELP!- The worker screamed as his last line of defense crumbled, taken by a much more proficient fighter, and raised both arms trying to at least block an incoming slash from hitting one of his vitals.
The exotic weapon wielder prepared a vicious attack with an equally vicious grin on his face. His muscles tightened as he raised his weapon, spinning it as he did, grabbing it with a reverse grip, ready to stab in-between the arms of the frightened worker.
But before he could finish his grim action against his target, Novus spoke.
>Zephyranima
The Young Arcanist drew the Vis around him into his body, channeling towards his staff.
>Facies Impetus
Energy crackled around the Cibus Crystal atop his wooden staff, this was his replacement crystal, which lacked a lot of spell formulas he preferred and had more complex and experimental ones, but at least he was smart enough to leave the one he was the most proficient with.
>Locusprod
He aimed at the enemy who already realized what was happening and turned from his previous prey, his eyes identifying Novus as a more dangerous and important quarry.
>Mutatio Telum
The Fabermuc wielding criminal attempted to rush Novus before he could finish the Spell Formula, but he was too slow.
He had experience dealing with Arcanists and thought, with some reason based on his previous encounters, that if he attempted to rush Novus mid-chant, he would flinch or lose his focus.
Unluckily for him the Young Arcanist had recently faced death head on and after having to dodge acid bullets and almost getting skewered by a Carnifex Ensis spear, the criminal’s rush looked almost harmless.
The radiance inside the Cibus Crystal reached a Crescendo and the raw energy was expelled out as a Wind Core.
The Spell Formula Novus used gave it nature, function, direction and finally form, as the gust of wind compressed into a tempestuous spear hitting the charging criminal right in the chest and launched him backwards.
Novus had intended merely knocking the criminal off his feet, but in the midst of battle he couldn’t appropriately measure the quantity of Vis he channeled and to avoid falling short he overshot what he needed.
The criminal was sent flying like a stone thrown from a slingshot, drawing a graceful arc through the air before crashing against the side of one of the barges docked in one of the piers.
The wood of the vessel cracked upon the crash of the criminal against it, but it didn’t sink inward enough for him to remain embedded to the side of the boat, so he slid down the wet wood falling into the river.
The sound of somebody falling into the water resonated inside Novus’ head like a massive bell, as memories flooded his mind almost as fast as the wind arrow he shot against the criminal.
The Young Arcanist was frozen in place, not knowing what to do.
That wasn’t Lis Serico’s predicament, as she knew exactly what to do, overlooking Novus from the roof of the pier administrative building, ready to pounce, serving as her sister’s Trump Card.
The Aureum Aurora Merchant Pier during the battle.
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