30th of Glade, 4621
Arkash laid broken on the floor, body battered to pieces with a few different fractures and breakages to his bones.
The cold of the dirt floor drank the abundant heat in his scales while he breathed shallowly through his broken ribs, chest rising and falling with an irregular tempo.
The light of the moon narrowly reached the darkness of that dank alley, which had been obliterated in the Knight’s onslaught.
Pieces of brick and clumps of dirt laid scattered around the Cardinal’s broken form, some of which had impacted him in the attack and disabled parts of his body through the damage caused.
It went without saying that Arkash was worse for wear, and the knight was more than capable of killing him while he laid disabled like that, but no finishing blow came. Instead, the knight began his approach, and Arkash listened to the fall of Sabatons as his body gradually healed. His breathing was still limited, painful. It was possible a lung had collapsed when his ribs broke, but it was as of yet uncertain.
The shining stars served as a foreground to the knight’s visage as the man came to stand above him. Arkash’s eyes were half shut while he watched his attacker, broken breathing abundant in his exhaustion. He played himself as weaker than he was; it was obvious that the knight didn’t intend to kill him in the initial attack, so what did he want? The Rath intended to find out
The knight flipped his hammer around to aim the head directly at Arkash’s vulnerable form while he clutched it with both hands. A spike at the top of the weapon made itself apparent with a sinister glint in the light of the moon; a spike Arkash recognized.
Earlier that month, Arkash had met a woman in the Badlands. She spoke of how she used a small dagger-like implement to steal the power of mages and create powerful arms and armor through Strickening in a craft called Sundering. The head of the knight’s hammer almost perfectly resembled that same dagger-like implement. It was a Sunderstrike; the knight intended to Sunder him.
Arkash remained where he was for as long as he could while his heart ran rampant in his chest and his veins flooded with adrenaline. Then the moment the Knight drove the head of his hammer for Arkash’s chest, both his hands shot up and wrapped around the latter half of the weapon's handle to stay the advance. All the muscles in his upper body tensed up and braced against the weight of the intended blow.
The strength of the man above him was immense, Arkash shook while he clutched the pole of the weapon and held his breath to push up. Arkash’s supernatural strength was neutered by his broken bones, and the knight had gravity and his own weight on his side. Head to head, they were even. Arkash couldn’t lift the hammer off of himself, and the Knight couldn’t break the resistance of his arms with brute force.
They were locked in a stalemate for the better part of five seconds before the knight lifted a boot and tried to stomp on the Rathor’s head. At that precise moment, Arkash took advantage of the disturbance to the knight’s weight and tried for a forward roll while he pulled on the hammer. His timing was enough to see the Knight stumble for balance and release his hammer to catch himself. Arkash pointed the spike away from his body as he rolled to his feet, took the weapon with both hands, and in a fit of rage, lunged at the knight with murderous intent.
Instantly, the weapon dematerialized from his grip and appeared in the Knight’s gauntlet. He swung for Arkash as the Rath closed the distance, but Arkash dove under the strike and snatched a rock from the ground as he rolled a second time behind the man, and launched the heavy stone at the bulky figure of the Knight’s body.
The knight lifted his shield to block the strike, which Arkash took advantage of with a mad dash toward him. The moment the brick impacted the shield, it was deflected with tremendous force and hurtled with the speed of a cannonball at the Cardinal, who ducked beneath it with a hair’s breadth of leeway.
The hammer duplicated rapidly, copies of the weapon aimed to fling directly at the Rathor, who leaped to the side and rolled across the dirt to land behind the knight yet again.
Again, the rush of hammers flew in his direction, and Arkash bared his burning teeth as he dove for the Knight from behind and weaved under the onslaught of weapons. The knight spun with a low sweep of his weapon as Arkash leaped over the strike in such a way that he propelled himself at the Knight. Arkash flew those few feet toward him, a mere inch from connecting his claws to the Knight’s head when the soldier’s shield slammed his body from the side and threw him at the wall of the alley with enough force to shake the entire building on impact. Some of the brickwork loosened and caved in at the slam of his body, and Arkash fell to his feet. His legs partially buckled when he caught his own weight, but a press of his claws on the jagged brickwork saw him stabilize briefly.
He couldn’t breathe, his ears rang at the force of his concussion. The world around him span, muffled, and doubled as his body tried desperately to undo the damage to his head. He drew breath again as a muffled voice called above the ambient ringing, low and familiar in its pitch. As the world regained its clarity, Arkash coughed into his black claws. And retched some clump of coagulated, dark mass as he trembled.
The pain began to set in, a herald to the damage he’d sustained, and a farewell to the rush of adrenaline that carried him through the encounter.
“…The ultimate price, Vandikar,” said the knight as his voice came into focus. Lazily, Arkash looked up from the arm that clung to the wall and caught the gaze of the Knight as he drove his hammer’s spike toward him. At the last possible instant, Arkash threw his weight aside and evaded the impact of the hammer’s head, and in turn, the wall was blasted apart in an explosion of force that too knocked Arkash to the floor.
The wall caved in and a cloud of dust and debris burst from the site of the impact before Arkash could even hit the ground. The moment he did, he scurried and scrambled with his claws to the earth and pulled himself to his feet. Frantic, he used his forward momentum to run and kick off the wall ahead of him. He propelled himself around the knight while he saw with perfect clarity in the dust cloud, and threw himself through the hole in the wall. He landed in more dust with the stirrings of thumping feet on the higher floors of the building. Through the cloud, he saw the layout of a kitchen with stone-based cookware and scattered bags of burst flour.
The dust, he realized, was a baker’s livelihood.
He didn’t pause as he rushed from the kitchen to the storefront, threw his body over the counter, and kicked through the front door's lock with a hard turn of his body and a pained grunt.
He coughed and huffed as he met the open air of the next street, and looked down to find the flour that coated his claws. He’d make tracks with the flour; it wasn’t feasible to escape on foot, not through the roads. He took a glance up at the building he’d ripped through and resolved to hide on the rooftops until the coast was clear to make his escape. While he was at it, he could take the opportunity to mend himself when he retrieved his tools.
With his teeth bared and an anguished grunt, he began to climb the wall and clung to the various decorative juts and overhangs as he ascended. Along the way, the flow of adrenaline gradually receded, and the full extent of the damage he’d sustained became abundantly apparent by the time he’d made it to the lip of the rooftop.
His arms shook and trembled as he eased himself onto the space of the landing, and a tremored sigh poured from his lips as he eased his broken body to the flat roof and dropped to his side. Painfully, he rolled onto his back and splayed his arms while he stared into the night sky. Below him, on the streets, the stirrings of panicked, soft civilians rang through the air from the streets below. As more commotion stirred, more panicked, garbled voices gathered below him. He breathed deeply, then began to crawl toward his Necromancy kit on the adjacent roof.
The fractures in his bones ached deeply and shot searing pain through his nerves with every application of pressure. His cardinal features withdrew, and he began to assume his humanoid form through his crawl. It was there that the swelling in his thigh and forearm became apparent, and he resolved to put less of his weight on those limbs before he made it to his bag.
Once he dropped to sit, he looked at his injured forearm and found that it did not rotate all the way. In addition, he was unable to close a full fist. The damage to his leg ached deeply with a vicious, turbulent pain that almost felt as though it was exploding with every beat of his heart.
His jaw pressed tight and his skin turned pale as he continued to endure the rampant agony as it built with his receding adrenaline, then took the box knife from his bag and painstakingly straightened his leg.
His body could fix the damage itself if he aligned the bone for it, he resolved as he pressed the edge of the short blade to his swollen thigh.
