The Eternal Assassin

It only took Francis a few minutes to find what he was looking for, and the battle-scarred guard quickly returned with a burly woman in tow.

[Warrior] - 3/3 Elements

The new woman looked almost like a female version of Rulfar, standing at least half a head taller than Asher and wearing a loose assortment of furs and pelts that easily showed off her own muscles. Nodding at Rulfar, she tossed the man an orb of shards before fixing her stare on Asher.

"You're the runt that's been going around killing Loratta's dogs?" she asked, seeming more surprised than angry. "You don't look like you could fight your way out of a nursery."

"I could give you a demonstration, if that would get me to Loratta faster," Asher offered, not taking his eyes off the woman. Something about the way she carried herself screamed danger to him, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

She doesn't have any weapons on her, he realized as the woman chuckled. Waving for him to follow her, she turned and walked through the open door, showing him her back without any hesitation.

"Well don't just stand there. Come on."

Nodding goodbye to Rulfar, Asher followed the muscular woman deeper into the hideout, carefully keeping an eye on his surroundings. To his surprise, the hideout was far more than just a bunch of rooms dug into the earth.

Somehow, Loratta had transformed her underground hideout into what looked like an impressive manor. After leaving that initial room, the dirt floors and walls transformed into decorative tiles and stained wood, and glowing gemstones hung from small sconces dotting the walls. If it weren't for the complete lack of windows, Asher could have convinced himself he was walking through some sort of fancy hotel.

The hallway they walked through was long and with doors appearing every so often on either side, but the female-Rulfar ignored most of them. It wasn't until they'd been walking for nearly a minute before the woman finally opened one of the doors and stepped inside, waiting for him to follow. Asher hesitated for a moment before his curiosity got the better of him.

The room she'd led him into was akin to a high school gymnasium. Easily the size of two basketball courts, it was basically just a large stone cavern with no furnishings that he could see. Looking around, the sound of joints cracking caught his attention, and he turned to find the woman standing in the center of the room, a grin on her face as she began stretching.

"I don't know why, but Loratta asked me to give you the same test I give all her so-called 'elites.' Put you through the paces a bit and see how you do."

"You want to fight?" Asher asked, curious at the woman's calm demeanor.

"Well, it probably won't be much of a fight," the woman said, her voice straining as she bent down to touch her toes, coming up with a large grin on her face. "Like I said, I've given the same test to all of Loratta's elites. You've met a few of them. Inferno. Rock. Slicer. The Spider," her voice turned mocking when she said The Spider's name, but her smile didn't waver. "They all failed."

"Loratta let them join her crew despite failing your little test?"

"Well she kinda had to," the woman said, twisting side to side as she continued to limber up. "If Loratta only hired people who could beat me in a fight, this would be a two-woman operation."

"You sound pretty confident in yourself," Asher said, annoyed at the excitement he could already feel coursing through him. He was here to save Rosh after all, not to pick more fights with Loratta's elites.

Though if this woman is in fact Loratta's strongest fighter, taking her down would make rescuing Rosh a hell of a lot easier. Yes, that's why you're fighting her. Entirely for Rosh's sake.

The woman merely nodded, finishing up her stretching as she began bouncing on the balls of her feet, lifting her arms into a guard position as if she was about to start boxing.

"Not that you need me to tell you, but feel free to use whatever weapons or skills you have on you. This would be over too quickly otherwise.

"Oh, and I'm Moxy by the way."

Before the words were even out of her mouth, Moxy's fist shot out so fast Asher could barely track it even with Comprehend sitting at level twenty. Despite the fact that it looked like she'd just thrown a jab at nothing, his instincts screamed at him that something was wrong. He wasn't sure if it was his Secret Seeker skill drawing his eyes to the evidence of her skill or his experience seeing his own Distortion skill warping the air around him, but he quickly realized a small, fist sized patch of air was flying at him like a bullet.

Asher hadn't wanted to give away his trump card so early, but he simply didn't have time to do anything else. In that split second following Moxy's punch, he flickered through the astral, hearing the explosion of shattered stone behind him as the projectile shot through the space he'd just occupied.

Returning to the material realm, he glanced over his shoulder to see the aftermath of Moxy's attack. Expecting to see at least a small chip in the ground, his eyes widened at the fist-sized hole that had been blasted out of the solid stone a few dozen feet behind him. If that bullet of air had enough force to blast apart rock, it would make absolute mincemeat out of flesh.

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"Hmm… Interesting skill you got there," Moxy called out, her grin growing even wider. "Glad I didn't decide to pull my punches for this one." Before Asher could even think to respond, Moxy went on the attack.

To any outside observer, it would have looked like Moxy was just shadow boxing with herself as she threw out lightning fast jab after jab, slowly turning to follow Asher's frantic movements. But to Asher, it was an entirely different story. His Comprehend skill was pushed to the limit as he ran along the edge of the cavern, flicking in and out of the astral as he barely dodged lethal blow after lethal blow. Now that he'd given up one of his best skills, the only thing he could do was make her think he was only able to vanish for a split second and wait for the right time to strike.

She clearly has an Air element, but I need to know more about her skills, Asher thought, trying not to flinch at the continued explosions behind him as bits of stone pelted his back. Taking a deep breath, Asher turned and began running straight at the woman, focusing all his efforts on timing his flickers just right.

Seeing him sprinting at her only seemed to excite Moxy, and she began changing up the timing of her jabs, sometimes waiting a beat between punches or throwing two in quick succession. Asher nearly lost an arm as he finally mistimed one of his flickers, dodging the first strike but catching the tail end of the second when he left the astral.

Gritting his teeth at the sensation of the skin on his left arm being blasted away, he kept his focus on moving forward, finally closing the gap between them. Grabbing one of his steel daggers, he decided to hold his Distortion in reserve until he knew more about her defenses, choosing instead to simply lunge forward in an attempt to stab the woman in her exposed midriff.

Rather than sink his dagger into her exposed flesh however, he screamed as a fox pelt draped across her chest suddenly came alive, sinking its teeth into his wrist with shocking speed and halting his attack with ease. Asher immediately slipped into the astral to escape the living pelt, dodging a lightning fast knee to the face in the same instant that would have knocked him out cold or worse.

So much for pretending like I can only do this for a moment.

Darting straight through her body, Asher spun around and began thrusting his dagger at the woman's back, planning to return to the material realm just before the moment of impact. But Moxy must have suspected he'd try something like that as she kicked off the ground with explosive force just after he vanished, the blast of air shooting her a dozen feet straight up and hitting Asher the moment he returned to strike, sending him tumbling across the stone floor.

He'd barely gotten his bearings when he sensed more than saw the danger he was in, and he slipped back into the astral just in time to dodge three rapid air strikes, each one blasting holes through the stone he was lying on. Jumping to his feet, he stared at his opponent as she landed gracefully in a crouch, her eyes still locked on his current position, waiting for him to reappear.

Okay, she has a devastating long range attack, is a competent short range fighter, has a counter to block my own attacks, and is mobile enough to escape my attempts at slipping out of the astral right before my blades connect… How the hell do I win?

"I've fought a lot of people, and I've never seen someone with the ability to vanish like you do," she called out, her expression looking like someone had given her an unexpected present. "Though I bet you can't do it for long!"

Reappearing, Asher returned her grin, feeling the excitement coursing through his body despite the predicament he found himself in.

"And I've never seen someone with a literal cannon for an arm!" he yelled back, happy to buy time to strategize.

Even if I use Distortion to strike from a distance and catch her off guard, her weird, undead fox pelts are fast enough to block the attack on their own. My only hope is getting in close and using Distortion to compress a couple of feet into a couple of inches. If I can get the stab out fast enough, maybe I can slip it past her pelts.

"Try not to die, alright?" Moxy called out, cracking her neck before throwing out a ridiculous flurry of jabs. Asher quickly slipped back into the astral, letting the machine gun barrage of air blasts that were turning the stone floor into swiss cheese phase right through him. Running at a diagonal to get out of the line of fire while closing the distance between them, he made it almost two dozen feet before he had to return.

To his shock, rather than continue firing from range, Moxy exploded forward in a blast of air the moment he reappeared, screaming across the cavern at him like a missile. Asher barely had time to flicker through her attack as she shot through the space he'd been occupying with enough force to rip his head from his body. Realizing she'd just given him an amazing opportunity, he quickly activated Spatial Lock the moment he reappeared, summoning the large dome of hardened space around them both.

Unfortunately, rather than slam into the dome and break her neck, Moxy somehow detected its appearance, twisting her body like a professional tumbler and sending out a second blast of air to kill her momentum directly in front of the wall.

Reaching out a hand, she tapped the hardened wall of his skill, raising an eyebrow at the strange sensation. "My, you have all sorts of interesting skills. No wonder you took all those guys down so easily."

Not bothering to respond, Asher ran toward the woman, trying to take advantage of having her locked in here with him. Moxy, seeming entirely unconcerned at being trapped, turned to grin at him before raising her fists once more, clearly expecting him to vanish at any moment.

This time though, as soon as he'd gotten close enough that she could probably hit him without even needing to shoot out a blast of air, Asher struck. Her guard blocked her head and she had most of her pelts around her torso and waist, so he targeted the most debilitating spot he could think of.

Finally showing off Distortion for the first time, Asher reduced the already short space between him and his target as much as he was able, his dagger covering nearly six feet of distance in the blink of an eye as he shoved the blade straight through Moxy's exposed knee.

The warrior's eyes widened as space compacted and his blade moved faster than either of them could follow. Not even the pelts on her waist could react in time to stop the blow.

The moment his dagger sunk into her flesh, an explosion of air reminding him of the awakened panther's ice blast erupted from her body, sending him rocketing backwards and straight through his own Spatial Lock, rolling a few dozen feet along the stone floor. He felt the skill vanish as he left its confines, and he quickly pushed himself to his feet, preparing for another barrage from the crippled warrior.

But to his surprise, rather than find himself dodging more blasts of air, the only thing he could hear coming from the warrior was loud, happy laughter.

"Fantastic!" Moxy cried, leaning heavily on her one good leg as she inspected the dagger still lodged into her knee. Without so much as a wince, she yanked the blade out of her leg, tossing the bloody dagger toward him. Asher watched it bounce across the stone out of the corner of his eye, never taking his eyes off the still grinning warrior. "I can't tell you how long it's been since someone actually managed to injure me!"

"You seem rather pleased for someone that might be crippled for life," Asher ventured, beginning to grow worried at the warrior's lack of concern.

"Crippled, yes," Moxy grinned, reaching down and laying an open hand against her injured knee. Asher's breath caught as her hand suddenly began glowing a bright violet not unlike the light given off by the mysterious shards. After a few seconds, she took her hand away, revealing a perfectly undamaged knee. Hopping up and down a few times to test it out, she shot him another grin, giving him an almost apologetic shrug.

"...for life? Not so much."