A Strange Meeting
Night had fallen. Not that it made a difference to Icekommander. Eyes shifted side to side, piercing through the gloom as if it wasn’t there. For him perhaps it wasn’t. The last living contestant he saw was Germanicus, but he had passed several other bodies. He was hardly the only hunter out tonight, but he was the king of them.
Suddenly a shape fell out of the mist. A small girl, obviously already aware of him, peered up at him smiling. Despite her looks she had to be cunning to have survived even this single day. With a wave of his hand his two minions stepped out of the air. He then felt her mind begin to move against his. An unusual occurrence, since he had never mastered the art of attacking mind to mind. But two thousand year old defences slid into place to block this invasion.
It was a good attempt, save for two things. First, this person had obviously never encountered any sort of stiff resistance to her mind’s attacks. Second as her mind brushed his, he pulled information out of it. She was Anesthesia, and this invasion was not an attack, but rather an attempt to block one of those peculiar human feelings from reaching his brain. An interesting tactic, but hardly a battle winning one, quite obviously she had several more tricks up her sleeve.
She giggled and then frowned, but more from confusion than anger or frustration. Icekommander gathered the water in the air and froze it in the shape of a sword, and took a step forward. Another giggle, and she bolted backwards, far faster than she should have been able to go.
“Interesting tricks” Icekommander boomed “ But perhaps you should put a little more research into your foes to make sure you haven’t pulled out more than you can handle”. His sword melted, and then reformed into a sharp spear. With a quick wind up he hurled the ice spear at the spot where Anesthesia’s head was. She dodged the spear, right, and then around him, but as the spear whistled through the air just moments after she started moving, she felt an icy windblast against the side of her face.
Anesthesia smiled, despite the confusion this was causing her. This man could block her attempts to keep him from feeling pain, and bring forth cold out of the heat their surroundings? No matter, he would die as the rest of them had. Jiefin had surprised her, but that was a one of a kind occurrence. She was confident of that. It appeared so did someone else. She pulled out her knife.
At once she hurtled under her target, this Iceman. She encountered no resistance, his limbs might as well have been trapped in molasses however fast he was. With three quick strokes she attempted to ham string her opponent. Her first two bounced off of ice that wasn’t there when she started the swing. Her third swing didn’t encounter the same icy shield, and cut into the mans leg, but rather than biting into his leg, it merely shaved off a small bit of ice. Then she was away from him, and behind her she heard the ice that had blocked her first two attacks hit the shatter on the ground, and two more whistles in the air, as icicles from the air whizzed in the air behind her. They seemed to come from the two blobs of ice that had appeared shortly after the man had noticed her.
Icekommander was more amused than hurt. “I see you do have more tricks. Hamstringing eh? It would have worked too, had you not faced as serious a foe. Well I’d say good-bye now.” He made a different gesture, and suddenly ice shot from the ground into her right foot. A single spear had gone up through her foot. A brief instant of pain hit her, and then it was gone, transferred into a fly that was buzzing around, waiting for a new carcass. It gave a spasm before crashing to the ground, as it became pain. She wrenched her foot off the icicle, and ran. Icekommander had formed a new sword and had begun to advance on her, when she was running again. This time one of the minions was her target. She ran up, jumped, smashed it with both her knives, rolled in the air and hit the ground running. As her knives moved through the target, the ice than held it together lost all semblances of internal integrity and it shattered. She felt several shards of ice hit her; one was stuck in her upper back. It was no matter. The fly gave another spasm.
Information ran through Icekommander brain, as his centuries old mind computed what he had learned. Of course. When she invaded his mind, she attempted to block it from pain. Thus she should be able to block her own pain as well. This made her different from most humans, who would crumble under the force of the pain on their minds. She was like another golem, fighting until her body could no longer move. He briefly wondered if she would bleed to death, but that was something that didn’t matter. He would fight her until she dropped dead, one way or another. Anesthesia knew his capacities and if she had something to effectively combat him she would have used it already. Well he ha said he was going to finish the fight, so it was time to get on with it. With three flicks of his wrist he sent as many ice shard hurtling towards her position.
The first was sent just over her head. She realized this slightly too late, as she began to duck, the second went towards her left arm. She threw herself out of the way, only to realize her mistake. The final shard was now going straight towards her. It slammed into her upper right torso. The force threw her back, and it stayed quivering where it had struck her. She ripped it out and snapped it, now laughing. The fly was now paralysed with pain, no longer moving. She formulated her own plan, and promptly and executed it.
Much like when she had taken out his first minion, she ran towards her opponent and jumped and spun in the air. She rotated just out of reach of his sword, and began to swing at his exposed back. She noticed his head was a whitish blue and she swung, once, twice, three times, as she moved in the air, so slowly to her own mind and so fast to everyone else. Those first three swings all encountered the ice shield, the fourth bounced off the back of his head. Now fully facing Icekommander’s back, Anesthesia smashed one knife into his shoulder, and the second into his head.
Behind her she heard the sound she hoped for, shattering. She hit the ground after spinning a full 360 degrees. Icekommander’s arm was now a thousand pieces, but the knife to the head lacked the desired effect. With a grimace, Icekommander pulled out the knife, froze it and smashed it into the ground, shattering the blade with the largest part burying its self in the ground. Another gesture and his arm slowly began reappearing
“A good final effort. But you have made a fatal mistake; my essence is in my chest, not in the head. And it is protected my ice so cold lava won’t melt it, trust me, it was once tried. Maybe one of your knives could have pierced it’s shell and let it low out, but I very much doubt it. And the question is now academic. Enjoy your time in whatever afterlife you humans have come up with now”
He took two steps forward, and a hail of ice shot towards her. She put up her arms, and so much ice stuck in them, that her very arm froze, and ice began deflecting off and going elsewhere. Unable to take the constant pounding, Anesthesia began to back up, faster than most men could run. Then an innocuous splinter of ice began speeding towards her. It hit her arm just below the wrist. It shattered, and a small jagged piece shaped like a pin bounced off at a thirty-seven degree angle, and moved down.
The fly continued to writhe, trapped by pain immeasurable. Its very existence was torment. If it went to hell it would feel like heaven. Then it ended. That single pin like sliver of ice pierced the fly’s brain, ending its life no longer held by pain, as it could no longer feel pain. That enormous build up of pain raced back along the line to its owner. Anesthesia turned to run as it caught up with her. Before she could find another outlet, that instant of total pain ended her life, as her brain was unable to take it. Her heart failed and she fell. The pain still having to go somewhere ravaged every living thing within one hundred meters of her.
Icekommander watched that second go by, when suddenly Anesthesia fell over, longer resisting. He felt a wave of pain flow over him, but his essence, protected as it was could no more feel it than a rock. He walked over to her, and looked her over. Strange how her ability could suddenly fail on her like that, but the mysteries of man could be contemplated somewhere else. He walked back over to where her knife that was buried in his shoulder lay on the ground. He picked it up and flicked it towards her. It flipped end over end before burying it’s self in Anesthesia’a forehead. Her smile seemed to freeze. She stopped bleeding, her blood turned to Ice. Icekommander passed by her, and continued walking. There were others, and he was a hunter.
I like this one a bit more than my round one entry. Probably because I liked Fuschia's first story quite a bit, so I knew I had to write better this time.