In Over His Head Ch. 11: FIGHT!

PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here

She turned to face Mountains now and directed her next words like spear points directly at her.

"This is not no holds barred. You aren't trying to murder each other. There will be many times in your missions for this guild that you will prefer that your opponent remain in one piece and possibly be able to answer some questions afterward. It may even be an ORDER. So I want you to treat each other as if this is the case. Are both of you CLEAR on that point?" she finished, looking between them. This challenge, it seemed, would be a lesson to them both.

Mountains looked up for the first time since the Commander arrived, and stared directly at Edovan, blue flames dancing in her eyes as she gave the barest of nods. Edovan returned the same, trying to look as confident and tough as he could, but not sure if he was succeeding.

The Commander smiled. "Well let's get this started then! Take your places!"

Edovan turned and strode again, as confidently as he could, to his edge of the circle. Combatants could start from anywhere on their side, and even though it was risky starting this close to the edge, given the ring out condition... since he was most dangerous at range, he wanted as much space between them as possible. When he turned around he saw that Mountains had, of course, elected to take her start just the other side of the invisible line that divided them. And judging from the crouched sprinting stance she was taking, she planned to close the distance between them as quickly as possible.

The commander had stepped to the side, to Mountains' left, directly on the halfway line. The rest of the crowd had now formed a tight circle around them, just outside of the outer ring. Edovan could sense the women crowding directly behind him and he could hear them whispering things like . "Rip her tits off!" "Fry her face!" and "Kill her ass!" Though he noticed these were all whispered directly to him and never loud enough for Mountains herself to overhear them.

The Commander held in her hand a marker, a simple wooden dowel with a red pennant in the guild's colors attached to it. When it was time to start the match this marker would be tossed high in the air. The rules were that no one could cross the center line or strike any ranged blows before the marker touched the ground. This meant you could do whatever else you wanted to prepare; drawback, cock, notch, or otherwise ready an attack... it just couldn't strike until the marker hit ground.

"Begin!" The commander shouted, and tossed the marker high into the clear blue summer sky.

It arced through the air in a second, Edovan's hands suddenly moved in a blur of motion almost too fast to see, and something dark and crackling with energy shot out from him in the split second before the marker hit the ground. Mountains had just started to charge and as the marker touched down, she launched herself forward, straight into the sizzling ball of dark energy. She tried to raise her shield, but he had purposely aimed low to make it harder for her to parry. It collided with her knee with surprising force, and the energy seemed to transfer to her entire body, encasing her in the same sizzling dark energy and propelling her backwards through the air to land flat on her back.

"Round one, Edovan!" the commander shouted, much to everyone's shock and surprise. There were a few seconds of stunned silence and then the entire crowd erupted in cheering and screaming, loudest of all being Staan who had pushed through the women to meet Edovan and quickly swept him up into the air in a big bear hug.

"Eddo... that was amazing!" he shouted, patting him so forcefully on his back that he knocked the wind from him and forced him to gasp for air.

"Whoops, sorry," he said sheepishly, lowering him to the ground to catch his breath again.

"I... think... that's... my... only trick... though." Edovan gasped haltingly.

He looked over at Mountains, who sure enough was back up on her feet and looking even more murderous than she was before. She rolled her neck first one way, and then the other, grabbing her head in her hands and popping it so loudly he could hear it from all the way over where he was. She followed suit with her knuckles and resumed her crouching stance. This time with the strange battered shield held firmly in front of her. There was no way she would fall for that again.

"Round two!" the Commander called, not waiting for Edovan to fully regain his breath. He spun to face his opponent and readied his next spell. Mountains had staged herself on the far end of the circle, and had placed as much space between them as possible. Edovan was alert, wondering what she was planning.

The Commander held the marker in her outstretched hands, ready to let it fall it without any hint of warning. The second it left her hands, Mountains rushed towards him from her position, covering ground quickly as she charged. Ah, so that was her game: achieve maximum acceleration to cross the line the moment the marker touched down, and to continue toward him at full speed. Edovan spoke a word of power and raised his right hand to the sky before bringing it down clenched, as if he was grabbing something and tearing it down. Both his hands crackled with electricity, the strong smell of ozone filling the air all around him.

Mountains grimaced as she slowed her headlong charge, seeing the thin bolt of lightning arcing downward to her from the clear cloudless sky. Her instincts to watch him closer paying off as she muttered under her breath, "Damn mages..." She raised the shield over her head just in time to intercept it, and the magic impacted.

Everyone but Edovan and those who had fought mages (who knew the spell was flashy but had nowhere near the destructive potential of a real bolt of lightning) gave a collective gasp as they expected her to be fried to a crisp on the spot. But instead, the split second the bolt touched the shield, it just simply vanished-without a sound. It simply evaporated into nothingness.

Everyone was stunned by this turn of events, most of all Edovan, who had almost no time to react as Mountains' bare foot came arcing through the air as she whirled, taking advantage of his shock, and caught him square across his chest. His reaction time was quite good, but her speed was astonishing. He was able to see her foot hurtling toward him in perfect detail, but also completely unable to get out of its way. All he could do was take a moment to brace before all the air was knocked from his lungs. Pain burned in him, and he swore he felt a rib crack as the force lifted him up off his feet, hurtling him through the air and into the surprised crowd behind him.

He'd never been so thankful for the throng of women that had gathered on his side of the ring. Honed combat reflexes kicked in as he sailed their direction and he was caught by a large, well-endowed blonde. He stared as she brought him down, her full lips and very pretty face taking him in its moment, this beauty who snatched him out of the sky like a prize thrown to a crowd at a festival. She clutched him to her bosom, giggling like a schoolgirl and grinning from ear to ear as several other women stared at her with daggers in their eyes. "I'm Holgret," she said, and she buried him in her cleavage till his lungs burned for air. His small arms were pinned to his sides, making it completely impossible for him to struggle and much less free himself. Just as he was about to pass out she released him and let him fall unceremoniously to the ground.

Every part of him was in pain. He lay there, unmoving, until he felt something hard pressing into the side of his head. When he blearily opened his eyes he saw the Commander towering over him, her long shapely mail clad leg and booted foot nudging carelessly and somewhat painfully against his prominent cheek bone.

"Ow," was his only response.

"Mouse... can you still fight?" she asked him. "Otherwise, I have to call it."

Edovan answered by clutching her foot in his hands and struggling to his knees, hauling himself up her leg till he was shakily upright. But, still beneath her as she stood, straddling his small tousled head. She looked down at him with an amused grin as his hands clutched her mailed thighs, reaching perilously higher and higher placements. She kept her mirthful smirk, and made no move to disentangle him or move away from him. Edovan could feel the waves of jealousy rolling off the other women, but none of them dared say so much as a peep to the woman known as the Dragon. Edovan steadied himself and then let go of her.

"I can fight," he said and then winced as he felt the broken bone in his rib pang.

"As you wish," said the Commander as she returned to her place, overseeing the match.

"Eddo... you don't look so good," Staan observed as he knelt down in front of his little friend.

That was an understatement. The little mage looked like he had been hit by a four-horse carriage and then drug behind it. Edovan pointed at his staff and motioned for the large man to hand it to him. Gripping its familiar wooden heft, he recalled his healing school training. He spoke a few words and a pearlescent light emanated from the staff. It bathed him in its silvery glow, warm and comforting. It was more of a regeneration than a "clutch" heal, as his old healing instructor used to call it, but with each pulse of the silvery light he felt his strength returning. More a blessing as well, the pain in his side lessening. With his injuries on the mend he was able to finally focus on the most important thing about that last match, her shield.

He handed the staff back to Staan before turning to face his opponent. He stared as hard as he could at that shield but still couldn't see any runes or magic on it. Still, it somehow had not only negated but dissipated his lightning bolt? Was there anything else it hid from him? Anything that stood out? He had to think fast. If she really did have a shield that had anti-magic properties then he was definitely at a severe disadvantage, especially since that was all he had at his disposal.

As the commander retook her position, she held out her hand once more with the marker, ready to begin the final match. He tried one last time to discern anything he could about that strange shield. It was rough, almost thrown together and handmade, much the same as goblin arms and armor from his humanoids class. He remembered they had said in school that this was because goblins weren't great smiths. They lacked the ability to work with hardened steel like the artisans of man and mer. They would literally bang on things they scavenged, forcing the metal into unnatural shapes by sheer force. Her shield was similar in appearance, though he doubted very much it was goblin in origin. It had to be very exotic indeed if the Orcish smith in the upper yard couldn't work with it. Orcs were some of the finest smiths there were in all of Tamriel, and no self respecting orc would have let anything out of his shop looking like that! But they also wouldn't work with certain metals, like the strange burnished bronze metal that almost everything dwemer was made of. It's melting temperature was higher than any normal forge could reach, and the dwemer method of forging it had been lost along with their entire race when they all vanished thousands of years ago.

His eyes suddenly focused in on her shield as the Commander's hand dipped down in preparation for the upward toss. If it had been a burnished bronze color he would have easily recognized it as dwemer. But, because it was a dark lustrous silver, he had dismissed that possibility. Was it possible that this was some hybrid dwemer alloy? Something that negated magic like it did? Perhaps like whatever that room was made of that the Commander had commandeered as an office? He had assumed it had been done through powerful enchantments, but what if it was something done by the properties of the metal itself.

Perhaps Utha had somehow gotten her hands on piece of it and beat it into shield shape herself? Just for this occasion, no doubt. She was a crafty one, in addition to her considerable physical ability. Edovan took it as a little point of pride that she would go to such trouble to counter his considerable magical ability. It wasn't that she didn't see him as a threat. It was that she saw him as such a powerful threat that she had gone to great lengths to engineer a plan against him. But plans could be countered. And with that, the Commander launched the marker skyward.

* * * * *

The crowd was insane at this point. Some were cheering Edovan, some... even women, were cheering Utha. But everyone was watching intently, almost afraid to blink as the marker plummeted to earth. The last two rounds had happened so fast, they had been over in seconds and nobody wanted to miss what would happen next. It had not been a slaughter as many first suspected it to be. The little mage had taken the first round and then been sent flying in the second. This was the crowning moment. Though few doubted at this point that the little Bosmer had enough courage, guts and skill to join the guild. Now they were wondering if he was powerful enough to actually win this thing!

The marker landed and Mountains did not immediately charge this time. She was hanging back and biding her time, as if to let the mage go first. His hands blazed once more through a series of learned movements and several words of power passed from his lips. But nothing appeared, there was no response. Had she canceled his magic somehow? He did not seem disturbed by the lack of any visible magic on his part, and had moved to casting a second spell. Mountains looked as confused as the crowd. She had raised her shield instinctively to ward against his first cast, only to lower it when nothing had happened. But now something was happening. He spoke a word of power and a small swirl of smoke emerged from the ground in front of him. It got bigger as it swirled, opening to reveal a dark portal of a sort, sizzling with the same shadowy energy from the attack he had used to first bring her down.

Something was rising from the portal within the growing column of swirling smoke. Several in the crowd took a step back as a large bipedal reptilian creature emerged and lifted its head. It opened its huge slavering jaws and emitting a low clicking, guttural sound. It was big, easily twice as tall as the mage who had summoned it, and almost a head taller than Mountains herself! She had a very perturbed look on her face as she watched it stand to its full height, fixing its black soulless eyes on her. She seemed to be looking to the Commander for some kind of guidance as to whether summoning such a beast was even legal, but the only thing the Commander was doing was looking at the little mage with her pupils dilated and her mouth half open. Mountains turned back toward the beast, who seemed to be waiting on some sort of command from its owner. Edovan, to whom the beast was waiting, had his own look of extreme confusion painted over his face.

The mage finally closed his open mouth and made a motion toward Mountains. The beast reared its leathery triple horned head and gave a blood curdling shriek before charging straight at her. She deftly moved away from its first two lunges, its claws and snapping jaws, and tried to sidestep it. The beast appeared to be purposefully staying between her and the mage as she tried to dodge and keep it away. Suddenly, she seemed to take a page from Baryk's playbook against her as she dove between its legs: tucked, rolled, and came up behind it in a crouching position to take a step toward the little mage.

Edovan could clearly see that she was aiming to incapacitate him directly rather than deal with his summons, practically ignoring the sinister-looking creature. But, the second she crossed the invisible line between them the ground exploded underneath her foot with a loud roar as the air crackled. The blast released crystal fragments suffused with tendrils of a dark energy that flew outward in all directions. The crowd covered their faces to hide from this display of magical shrapnel, but the blast was contained to a small radius.

Mountains staggered for a second, nearly caught in the center of the blast, and then resumed her path. Another explosion impacted her and knocked her backward, just as the beast rounded on her from behind. Quickly she dropped to one knee and hurled her shield directly at the mage's head. He saw the spinning disc sailing toward him in just the right moment and barely managed to dodge to the side. It was not a clean dodge. Everyone winced at the odd metallic sound of it glancing off the side of his skull. The shield deflected into the crowd, felling some onlooker with an audible "oof" noise as they caught it in the chest. The little wood elf reeled, clearly stunned as blood welled from a long cut on the side of his head.

The beast took the edge and leapt high into the air behind her in the attempt to land its large and formidable rear talons on the amazon's back. She wasn't so easily beaten, and with a snarl she rolled to the side at the last second. Just like Edovan though, she also didn't make a clean escape. One taloned foot struck, landing squarely on the single long tassel of cloth that hung down the front of her bottom garment and pinned it to the ground. As she rolled to the side the cloth caught and pulled free of its knot and the entire bottom garment unraveling in a flash. Before she realized what had happened, Mountains rolled to her feet-completely bottomless.

At first the crowd let out a collective gasp, but quickly began to titter. It wasn't her nudity that caused them to giggle collectively before many began to outright laugh. It was her meticulously sculpted thatch of immaculately trimmed blonde pubic hair that had been carefully shaped into a perfect heart... and more importantly the letters shaved out of it. Clearly marked for everyone to see.

Mountains either didn't appear to know what had happened or didn't care, at least until she turned around and saw the beast snatching a long red piece of cloth off the ground in its maw, a piece of cloth that looked exactly like the one she had been wearing... around her waist... that was hers!!

* * * *

Edovan was fighting at least THREE amazons, with three ridiculously giant clanfears, or... at least that's what he was hazily witnessing. His eyes strained to take in the fuzzy details, both mentally and visually stunned. His pained head still couldn't be sure what was up with his magic. Clanfears were minor summons, moderately-sized reptiles meant to harrass. They were supposed to be barely as tall as him. The best he had hoped for was a momentary distraction while he came up with a better plan, and instead he got a creature that could eat a horse! He winced, his head still throbbing and his ears were ringing. All three shaking, hazy Uthas were trying to wrestle several pieces of red cloth out of the mouth of all three clanfears while the crowd erupted in laughter around him. What was so funny? He couldn't tell. He watched as all the Uthas quickly cartwheeled and pivoted around the clanfears while still holding onto the red cloths. In just a few seconds the cloths had bound the beast's mouths shut and been wrapped around its mostly useless arms before they were slammed to the ground. He was a bit more concerned when the Uthas, as one, bent down and picked up the tangled clanfears and hurled them into the terrified crowd simultaneously. It was then that he remembered that there was only one Utha, and only one clanfear. And the one Utha was moving toward him now at a terrifying speed. It was also then that the he realized the one Utha wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing below her waist.

Trying desperately to ignore her nakedness, (which was difficult when it was mostly his eye level) he quickly moved to the side as placing the location of his last remaining invisible daedric mine between them with the hope it might slow her down, or catch her off guard somehow. Just maybe he could buy himself enough time for the last trick up his sleeve. As Mountains came toward him, he watched her eyes. He saw she noticed him dodge, tracking him as he no doubt appeared to move for what seemed to be no reason