The silence that followed the sound of the leader's jaw shattering was thick enough to choke on. For a heartbeat, everyone stopped moving. The area became totally silenced.
The thugs stared at the iron-banded door, where their boss was slumped like a discarded sack of flour, his face had distorted a little and his consciousness had long gone. They all looked at Eon, whose hand was still smoking slightly from the friction of the mana-reinforced strike.
Then, the explosion happened. They all boiled in fury.
"Kill them! Kill them all!" the woman screamed first, her bored expression replaced by a mask of feral rage.
She didn't wait for her men. She moved like a shadow detached from the ground. Her daggers, long, curved blades designed for gutting maybe, flashed in the little moonlight as she lunged at Eon.
"Elora! Take the perimeter! Valen, Hans, suppot Eon!" Elsa's voice boomed over the sudden roar of the thugs.
The street turned into a chaotic whirlpool of violence. Valen, moved with his practiced brutality of a career soldier. He didn't use his sword; he carried a heavy mace that he swung with bone-crunching force. Beside him, Hans, moved with a surprising, fluid grace, using a short wand that have a steel core to deflect blows and strike at pressure points.
Elsa stood on top of the carriage, her bow was singing a deadly tune. Every time a thug tried to flank Eon behind, an arrow sprouted from their shoulder or thigh, sending them screaming to the dirt.
Elora on the other hand danced through the crowd with her practice sword, which she failed to swap for a real blade from the carriage's armory. She was struggling a little, given she was already exhausted from her training all day.
But Eon had no time to watch his team. His entire focus remained on the girl in front of him.
Clang!
He didn't have a weapon, so he used the reinforced leather bracers on his forearms to catch the woman's first strike. The force behind her small frame was incredible. She wasn't just using muscle; she was using momentum and, Eon realized with a start, some form of wind-based mana to accelerate her movements.
"You're fast, Elf," the woman hissed at him, her face was inches from his. She smelled of cheap ale and expensive perfume Eon guessed. "But you wont survive tonight, because I've killed faster things than you in the pits of the South!"
She retracted one dagger and spun around, a low kick aiming for Eon's knee while the other blade sought his throat.
Eon pushed off the ground, trying to land a kick on her hand that barely cleared her blades. As he landed, a stinging pain flared in his chest. A thin red line appeared on his right knee, and then blood began to seep through. She had caught him a little. Even with his heightened senses and the Strength Potion coursing through his veins, she was pushing him to his limit.
'She's at least white knight or higher,' Eon thought, his eyes narrowing. 'Her Agility must be insane.'
He didn't back down. He breathed deep, feeling the mana in the air. He couldn't use a sword, but he had something better. He had his potions.
He took another strength potion in the midst of the battle.
Instantly his muscles felt like they were being braided with steel cables. He stepped into her guard, ignoring the flurry of stabs she sent his way.
Rip. Slash. Sting.
More cuts appeared on Eon's arms and shoulders. He was bleeding from a dozen shallow wounds, his hair now become from his own blood. But he didn't flinch. He was now a tank, a mountain of meat and mana moving through a storm of needles.
"Why... won't you... go down?!" the woman yelled as she continued slashing after slashing, her calm attitude was starting to crack. She swung both daggers in a cross-cut meant to decapitate him.
But Eon was a little faster than her. He ducked. It was a move so low that his chest almost touched the cobblestones. He saw a opening. He drove his fist upward, aiming for her solar plexus.
The woman's eyes went wide seeing the attack. She twisted in the mid-air, using her wind magic to propel herself backward. Eon's fist missed her almost by an inch, the sheer air pressure of the punch ruffling her hair. She landed ten feet away, panting, her daggers trembling on her hands.
On the other side of the battlefield, Valen was roaring all on his own. He had pinned three thugs against the warehouse wall, his mace was a rhythmic drum of destruction. Elsa's quiver was half-empty, but the ground around the carriage was littered with men clutching their limbs. Verra, who had been quiet until now, stood in the center of the chaos. She wasn't attacking; she was weaving a shield of light around Alen, who was hiding under the wagon, and providing small bursts of healing mana to Elsa and Elora whenever they took a scratch.
"We're winning!" Alen shouted from his hiding spot.
"Don't jinx it, kid!" Valen barked as he headbutted a thug into unconsciousness.
Just then, the heavy double doors of the warehouse creaked open. It wasn't a sudden burst, but a slow, ominous movement.
A man stepped out. He looked different from the others. He wore a long, tattered robe that might have once been blue, but now lost its original color. And he was scratching his neck lazily, looking like a man who had just been woken from a nap.
"What is all this noise?" the man asked, his voice high-pitched and grating. "I was right in the middle of a very good dream, Assholes."
He looked around. He saw the people unconscious on the ground, some thugs were groaning in the dirt, and the woman was covered in sweat and dust. His sleepy eyes sharpened instantly. His entire aura shifted from lazy to lethal in a heartbeat.
"Hmm, what's this?!," the mage said. He raised a hand, and the air around him began to hum. "An Elf? Are you the one who made them like this?"
Eon replied while hesitating a little, "And what if I am?"
"Then you are in trouble boy. I am already angry that you woke me up from my dream, and on top of that, you made a mess out of my men, i see."
"They deserved it." Elora yelled at him.
"Hmm. they deserved it you say. Say elf boy, are you the one who beat the Kalen's gang, and broke his thumb?" The man asked Eon.
Eon said nothing, just staring at him from down. He was having a bad feeling about this guy for some reason.
"I get it now. So you are reason I got yelled at earlier. Now it all makes sense. Nobody in this county is brave enough to mess with our Hyra merchant guild's members. But there I heard somebody beaten then so hard, they all had a bruises all over their body. You really have a gut, i will say. Coming here just after doing that." he was babbling away on his own while Eon was feeling on his heart that this man was no ordinary man unlike the ones they were fighting with just now. Every fibre of his body was screaming at him to run away.
But before Eon could do something, the man began to chant in a language that sounded like grinding stones.
"Interrupt him!" Eon yelled, sensing the massive build-up of mana.
Elsa let three arrows lose at him in rapidly. The man didn't even look at them. He just flicked his fingers, and a wall of shimmering green force appeared in front of him. The arrows hit the barrier and disintegrated into sawdust instantly.
"My turn," the mage grinned. " [Gale Lance]! "
A bolt of pressurized air, sharp as a spear and moving at the speed of sound, shot from his palm. It was aimed directly at Elora, who was busy fighting with the last of the street thugs.
"Elora, move!" Eon screamed.
But while he screamed, He also knew she wouldn't be fast enough. So He threw himself across the street, his body became a blur. He didn't have time to shield her with magic, so he used the only thing he had.
He collided with Elora, knocking her out of the way just as the Gale Lance arrived.
BOOM!
The air spear hit Eon squarely in the side. It didn't pierce him, but the impact was like being hit by a running car. He was thrown twenty feet across the docks, slamming into a pile of rotten fishing nets and crates.
"Eon!" Elora and Elsa cried out in unison.
The mage laughed, his hands already glowing with a second spell. "One down. Who wants to be next now? Perhaps the little archer girl?"
The woman with the daggers, seeing the opening, rushed toward the pile of crates where Eon had fallen. She wanted to finish the job while he was still dazed from the empact.
But the crates didn't stay still. They exploded outward as if a bomb had gone off inside them.
Eon rose from the wreckage. His robe was in tatters now. His side had a mass of dark purple bruising, and blood was trickling from his mouth. But his eyes... his eyes were no longer calm. They were glowing with a fierce, burning blue light that seemed to swallow the darkness around him.
"You... could...have hurt…Elora," Eon growled. Every word was punctuated by a pulse of mana that made the cobblestones vibrate.
While everyone's attention was at Eon, Verra one the other hand had a murderous look on her face.
All of sudden she vanished. She didn't run this time. She just vanished.
The woman with daggers blinked. One second the Elf was twenty feet away; the next, she was a ghost in her peripheral vision. She slashed wildly at the air, but her blades found nothing but shadows.
Thud.
A heavy fist caught her in the ribs from the side. She gasped as her breath was driven out of her with the heavy strike.
Thud.
Another strike hit her shoulder, the sound of the joint popping echoing through the dock.
She screamed and tried to use her wind magic to blast the elf away, but Verra materialised and she grabbed her wrist. She didn't twist it; she simply held it. Her grip was like an iron vise.
"Your speed is a gimmick," Verra said, her voice was cold and emotionless. "You are nothing when i get my hands on you."
She pulled her toward her and delivered a short, brutal hook to her jaw. The woman's head snapped back, her daggers falling from her limp fingers. She collapsed into a heap at her feet, her 'terrifying' speed silenced by the overwhelming weight of Verra's raw fist.
The mage's eyes widened. "Oh my. We have a invisible mage among us I see. And here I though you were the weakest among all of them."
"You cannot possibly still using the old fashioned way of using mana detection spell for reading your opponent's mana strength, are you?" Verra asked the man with a mocking tone.
"Oh, what can I say, old is good. You know. I prefer using basic magic more than the advanced complicated spells. They are too hard to remember, hehe." The man laughed a little while saying that.
But Verra wasn't amused by his half-assed joke. She glanced at Eon, who was standing slowly.
"Woah. you are standing I see. No one has ever stood up right after taking a direct blow from my 'Vale Lance'."
Eon scoffed at him by saying," And here I am. Not only standing but also about to kill you now."
"You sure talk big elf. You are not even wearing any armor. Do you think my next attack won't pierce through you?"
"I have something better than armor," Eon said, turning his gaze toward the mage. "I have a reason to stay standing."
The mage snarled, his laziness completely gone now. He chanted a short spell this time."
" [Tornado Pillar]! "
A massive funnel of wind erupted from the ground between Eon and the warehouse. It picked up crates, loose stones, and even one of the unconscious thugs, spinning them around in a lethal vortex. It was not suitable for small area spells, it was something meant for battlefield destruction.
"Valen! Get everyone back! And Eon…" Before Verra could say something to Eon, he disappeared.
Eon charged at the tornado. He didn't go around the tornado. He went through the edge of it. The wind tore at his skin, small pebbles were acting like buckshot against his face. He felt the cuts on his body reopening, the salt air stinging his wounds. But he pushed forward, his feet digging into the ground with every step.
He reached the other side of the vortex, appearing like a blood-soaked demon in front of the mage.
The mage was shocked to see Eon managed to push through the tornado. He tried to cast a quick-fire spell, a simple air blast to push Eon back, but Eon was faster than his chant. He reached out and grabbed the mage's throat with one hand, lifting the man off the ground.
The chanting stopped. The tornado flickered and died, the debris falling back to the earth with a series of crashes.
"Your magic is impressive," Eon whispered, his face was inches from the mage's. "But it takes time to chant. It takes time to think. But I don't need time. I just need to hit you before you can chant your spells."
Author note: How did you like this fighting scene? I think I am getting better at it as I write. Share your opinion. Also there is Maps and character arts available on my patreon for free tier, go check it out.