• Chapter 6 - The Truth of Rumors

    Deckard rushes quickly over to the men talking and interrupts the conversation frantically. "Did you see what the woman looked like? What color was her hair?" he starts blurting out the questions as the come out, not giving the men a chance to reply. "Woah woah there buddy, calm down a bit will you? She had long blonde hair, and her outfit looked custom made. At first I thought that she was nobility because of the regal look of her outfit. Are you looking to meet her or something?" the man shoots a question of his own at Deckard. "Something like that... it just struck me as an odd occurrence that a woman would be fighting with swords. Ah sorry, but I have to be heading off since my friend is probably waiting for me to return. Thank you for the information." Deckard bows and makes his way back to the inn that Kaneas and he were staying at.

    "What took you so long? You were supposed to be back here half an hour ago." Kaneas questions him as he walks into the room. "I lost track of time, sorry. There was a lot of interesting things in the market place so I took my time to check out everything that I could." Kaneas stares deeply at Deckard while he talks. "I heard an interesting rumor out on the streets not too long ago, sit down and I'll tell you about it." Kaneas speaks rather calmly as Deckard goes to sit down. "There is a female swordsman moving from town to town beating up bandits and turning them in to the local guard stations. Apparently, she is very beautiful, wears a custom made outfit, and wields a set of swords. She doesn't stay in the towns very long, and I've heard that she'd already left this town earlier this morning. From the rumors, she was heading off towards Thelmios to the north. That place is a death trap for the average adventurer or bounty hunter. It's also known to the locals who live there as the Bandit City. From what I've heard, combine the fact that she is a female and add in the outfit that makes her stand out like a pile of gold in the middle of a group of peasants, and you've got a person who is easily found especially among bandits." Kaneas closes his eyes after speaking, waiting for a response from Deckard.

    "Are we heading there then?" Deckard asks quickly. "I'm not leading this parade, so it is entirely up to you what we do then. Thelmios is a pretty bad place to go though, and that is speaking from my own experience." Deckard looks at Kaneas as he speaks, watching the expression on his face to try to discern what he meant. "I'm turning for the night then. We will head out tomorrow." he replies as he heads into his room to sleep. He lies down on the bed after shutting the door and stares at the ceiling for a while before speaking his thoughts aloud. "Are you really heading to such a dangerous place Estelle? Or is this just an illusion that I'm imagining in my head? I don't even know if the girl in the rumors is you, so why do I want it to be so badly?" he sighs and closes his eyes, quickly drifting asleep from over-working his mind so much. Several hours later, morning comes around and the sunlight begins to brightly illuminate the room, waking Deckard up shortly after it hits his eyes.

    He slowly sits up and looks outside, preparing his mind for the possibility that Estelle wasn't the girl that the rumors were referring to. After cleaning up for the day, he gets dressed and goes outside of the inn where Kaneas was already waiting. "It will take about a day to travel there, so, are you ready to head out?" Kaneas asks him as he comes out. Deckard slowly nods to him and the two of them begin walking towards the edge of town. Once they reached the end of the road, they immediately began running towards the direction of Thelmios. After several hours had gone by, the two of them finally arrived at their destination shortly after night had fallen. The city of Thelmios was nothing great to look at, as it seemed run down with poorly made buildings of which many were burnt partially or had sections missing. It was almost better to describe Thelmios as a "city of bums" rather than the "city of bandits" because of all the filth, stench, and dark places inside its walls.

    "Watch what you do here, and always watch your back. Anything goes in Thelmios, because there are no laws to govern anything. Theft is rampant, murder is common, and crime is abundant in this place." Kaneas looks at Deckard for a brief second before stepping through the archway leading into the city. "Kaneas, I think I'll search the city on my own so you can do whatever you want to do." Deckard walks through the archway and heads off around a corner quickly, not even giving Kaneas a chance to react. Kaneas shakes his head slightly before continuing down the road further into the city. "This should be an interesting night, I wonder how many will try to take my head in order to claim my bounty." Kaneas begins to chuckle lightly to himself as he disappears into a shadowed alleyway.

    Deckard climbs up onto the rooftop of a building and begins his searching from up high, hoping that it would allow him to see things a bit easier. Not even a moment after he begins looking around, he notices a battle going on a few rooftops away. There were twelve bandits attacking what looked to be a woman, but she was somehow fending them off. Deckard begins to jump from rooftop to rooftop in order to get closer, trying to stay out of sight in the process. After making it to the closest rooftop, where he could watch without fear of being spotted, the woman had already taken down three bandits and the others were still encircling her and attacking relentlessly. At his current position, he was now able to clearly see the woman who was being attacked.

    The woman was wearing a long, purple scarf around her neck that was flowing with the wind. She had on a white long sleeved shirt, with a purple vest over it which looked like it had armor woven into it. Around her lower arms, there were strange metal wrist guards that had short blades coming out past her hands about a foot. Around her waist there were two belts, one placed diagonally downwards to the left and the other placed diagonally downwards to the right. She also carried two very thin rapiers, one on each side of her waist. Her pants were white like her shirt, with purple down the sides and the bottom of the pants were tucked into a pair of white boots. The laces of the boots were golden, and they had a small golden patch of metal on the toe. Her long brown hair wasn't tied up at all and it fell down to her waist. In the front of her head, there were purple ribbons tied in her hair that made two long thick sets of strands fall down around her face on each side. Her face was soft and very pleasant to look at, and her green eyes were focused only on the bandits around her and nothing else.

    The remaining nine bandits all charge her at once, but it was to no avail as their opponent's skill was much greater than theirs. The woman quickly moves at an amazing speed and knocks out each remaining bandit before changing her view to where Deckard was watching. She holds one of her hands forward and creates a circular shield of rock and granite. Not even a second after it is created, the shield is shattered into hundreds of sharp spikes that suddenly focus on where Deckard is at. Realizing he was about to be attacked, he stands up and begins jumping from rooftop to rooftop, trying to avoid the spikes as best as he could. The woman follows him, and it was clear that her intent was to injure or wound him, or even worse. Finally, he reaches the edge of the city and he leads her out into the open where he could fight without worrying about the city. "Estelle, it's me Deckard!" he shouts, hoping to avoid the fight before it began. Completely ignoring him, she creates another set of spikes to launch at him. When the spikes are let loose, Deckard releases a series of small, yet powerful gusts of wind that cut right through the spikes and knock them to the ground.

    Using his air magic to bolster his speed, he rushes forward in an attempt to knock her out quickly to prevent hurting her any more than he had to. "Sorry about this!" he says as he tries to backhand her. Instead of hitting her head like he wanted to, his hand hits a thin sheet of earth that rose up instantly when he swung. "You're too slow!" she says as several other sheets of earth rise up around him to try and trap him. He jumps up into the air just in time to escape the Earthern cage, only to be hit by the woman's leg. Deckard is sent flying through the air towards the ground and crashes into it hard. With a bit of difficulty he manages to stand back up, encircling himself in his cloak in order to shield himself from the spikes the she had sent at him while he was standing up. The cloak barely deflects the spikes and when it returns to its original state, Deckard is holding two balls of lightning in his hands. He quickly leaps into the air, and throws the two balls towards her, forcing them to explode once they come within reach. The lightning spreads out and encircles the around where she was standing, creating a cloud of dust in the process. When the dust clears, there is a dome of solid rock in place of where the woman was at. As Deckard lands, he sends a large gust of wind towards the rock that easily cuts through it completely. Quickly realizing that it was only a ruse, he jumps forward just in time to avoid the woman's slash from her wrist blades. It was now clear to Deckard that in order to win, he was going to have to go all out on her.

    The woman flips her wrist quickly and retracts her wrist blades. “It would appear that your skill with magic is pretty good too. I’m at a disadvantage since you are using Air magic so I think I will end this fight right now, Deckard.” It became fully clear to Deckard when the woman spoke again that she was, and is, Estellise. “W-what do you mean?” his eyes open widely as he begins to notice her chanting. He immediately begins his own chanting, trying to prepare for her inevitable attack. With the same exact timing, the two of them create orbs of light energy that surround their bodies. The two of them stare straight at the other, unable to believe that they both had just cast the same magic. Estelle holds her arm bent outwards in front of herself and the orbs begin circling around her arm. They suddenly break apart into smaller orbs, and their speed of circling increases enough to where it looks like there is now a pointed spear around her entire left arm and a large tower shield on her right arm. Deckard looks at her for a moment before holding his arm up into the air and the orbs follow his arm upwards into the air. The orbs he commands also break apart into smaller orbs, but they form into the shape of arrows.

    Estellise dashes forward quickly with the shield out in front and her lance ready to lunge out and strike. As she runs towards him, Deckard releases his barrage of light arrows towards her, but most of them are deflected by her shield. The barrage of arrows ends quickly, and Estellise closes the distance between them and lunges forward with her spear of light and makes contact. At first, she thought that she had managed to hit Deckard, but it was soon apparent that the strong force of resistance was a barrier of light. “W-what!? You cast a barrier instantly?!” she jumps back quickly in surprise. The barrier slowly fades away as several more orbs surround Deckard, followed by orbs of lightning appearing in his hands. Estellise’s eyes open even wider as she watches Deckard. “I see now. You are using delayed spells, aren’t you?” she closes her eyes for a moment as her shield and spear disappears. She bends her lower arms forward with her palms pointing up at the sky as two large orbs of light appear in her hands. At the same time, twelve swords made of light pointing towards the sky appear in a circle around her and begin rotating in a circular motion around her. “I thought for sure that no one else did things like this.” She starts laughing for a brief moment and looks at Deckard, who also laughs with a smile.

    With a grin on their faces, they unleash their attacks onto each other. The orbs of light surrounding Deckard, and the swords surrounding Estellise were the first part of the clashing spells. As the spells collided into one another, they made small explosions of light, and made the dust on the ground fly up. The orbs they held in their hands clashed next and when they collided it made a far bigger explosion. There was now so much dust in the air that it was impossible to see anything. The explosions had begun to cause a large commotion in Thelmios and there were now many people who were staring at the large cloud of dust, wondering if it was an oncoming dust storm. Many of them fled to their homes, while others continued to stare for a bit longer before doing the same. After the dust had finally calmed down and settled, both Deckard and Estellise were laying side by side. Their eyes were closed, their clothes were tattered slightly, and they were also bleeding as well. Neither of them showed signs of movement, or life. Kaneas, who had been hiding within the shadows inside Thelmios, slowly walks out onto their battlefield to get a closer look. He closely examines the both of them before shaking his head and closing his eyes. “Now why did you have to go an do something like this you idiot. Well, I guess it is too late now.” Kaneas sighs loudly as he looks up at the night sky.