Chapter 8

Chapter 8
    Rosa had never been so scared in her life.  That she could remember, anyway.  Not even her memory of Kain compared to the fear and adrenaline of her first battle.  She was right to be wary from the moment she saw him.  And as soon as he touched her arm she should’ve planted a swift kick to his jaw and ran.  But no, she’d stayed, and now he was attacking her.

    Her heart pounded as she ran straight for cover behind a pillar, putting her back to it.

    Her first battle.  Did she even remember how to fight?  She remembered how to shoot, but she hadn’t used her skills in a real battle yet.

    “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she warned herself, notching an arrow to the string of her bow.

    “Oh, no, girl, you’ll not escape me now!”

    So now she was ‘girl?’  Two seconds ago he’d have ridden an antlion bareback for her if she’d asked him.  But she saw the underlying look of hunger in his eyes when he laid eyes on her.  She saw the gears in his head turn the moments he saw her.  And now that his prize is lost, she is nothing to him once more.

    She took a deep breath to calm her nerves.  She went to step out from behind the pillar, only to come face to face with the Emperor.  She let out an involuntary shriek and loosed her arrow straight for his face.  He turned at the last second, and her arrow just grazed his cheek before clattering loudly to the floor.

    He touched a finger to the cut, recoiling at the sight of blood on the claw of his gauntlet.  With a small growl he rushed at Rosa, swinging his staff for her head.  She ducked beneath the blow, and he slammed the end of his staff into the ground, throwing bombs in her direction.  She barely rolled to the side, but the shock of the blasts threw her backwards.  With a back flip she landed on her feet, pausing to assess her situation.

    He was directly in front of her, blocking her exit.  From what she could see, there were no other escape routes.  He was not a close range fighter, while she had her knife.  Another advantage: his ego.  He was cocky, overconfident.  Easily flustered.

    Her sense of battle startled even her, her mind moving at an impossible rate, fueled by adrenaline and instinct.

    Until the memory came.

    Like a portal she was whisked away to another dimension as the flashback played out.

    “Oh, you cherish this one, do you?” a thick, deep voice asked.  His dark tones reverberated off the glass all over, making it seem louder than it was.  The owner of the voice stepped closer to Rosa.  “Then let me take her along as well . . . to hold in trust until we are graced with the chance to meet again.”

    He wrapped his massive arms around her, pinning her arms in place.  She struggled and kicked, but he held her too tightly.  He began to drag her from the room as she screamed and fought.  But Cecil was defeated, lying on the cold floor of the glass room, and Kain was nowhere near her to help.
With a sweep of his cape, he teleported, cackling as the world spun away from her eyes.

    She was snapped out of the memory by a mild blow to her middle.  Staggering back, she focused once more on the Emperor as he drew another crest of purple light.  Five orbs of magic shot out of the sigil towards her.

    She dodged one after another, spinning and jumping this way and that.  The Emperor chuckled.

    “A vision of your HUSBAND, perhaps?  You’d best be careful lest he get in the way!”

    With that he planted a trap right beneath where she intended to land.  She threw her arms up and blocked as best she could as the spikes rose up around her, looming over her and blocking her in.  The orbs of the Dreary Cell charged up, throwing sparks all around from their power.  Then they detonated around her.

    An orb exploded near her side.  She careened right into another, which blew her shoulder back, shooting red hot pain and blood down her arm as it burnt her skin.  She was thrown back around towards another, but she slid the metal staff off of her back and over her shoulder, barely throwing up a quick Protect barrier before the rest of the mines went off.

    She held the Protect until the smoke cleared, but when she lowered her staff, the Emperor was nowhere to be found.  Rosa circled, looking all around her for the Emperor’s next attack while she switched back to her bow, pulling the string to mid-draw.  She bit her lip against the sharp throbbing in her shoulder, but her strong, tense muscles pulled against the string and held it taut.

    His laugh resonated through the world as though he could sense her pain, his voice bouncing off the columns.  She jumped, spinning around, but it was impossible to pinpoint where the voice came from.  She pulled the string to full draw, faltering for an instant as her shoulder pulled and tore with it.  The wet, warm blood that dripped to her fingers made the string slippery, and she had to take an extra second to get a firm hand on the string to full draw.

    “Does your HUSBAND have powers like this?” he asked, his voice circling around her.  “Hmph!  And here I thought we could make use of our strengths.  But now I see that YOU’VE no real strength at all.  Just another pretty face, doomed to fade just as those before you.”

    “Where are you?” she cried, circling again.  His laugh came again, from right behind her.  His warm breath trickled down her neck and she dropped her bow to reach for her knife.  She sliced at air behind her.

    Rosa closed her eyes, taking deeper breaths to calm herself.  She blocked out her other senses one by one until only his chuckles reached her ears.

    “Calm down.  Focus, Rosa, you can do this.  Use your instinct.  You can find him,” she told herself as she followed his laugh around the room.  Her senses became attuned to her surroundings.  She could feel his power in the room, sense his very essence while he moved in the space.  Finally, she pinpointed his location.  Her eyes snapped open and she spun over her left shoulder, hurling her knife towards the Emperor.  He appeared right in its path, and it embedded to the hilt into his collarbone.

    The blow threw his shoulder back, and she rushed him once more.  She picked up her bow as she went by and parried a swing from his staff.  With a sweep she ripped the rod from his hands, throwing it to the side.  Her second swing back collided with the Emperor’s jaw, and she went for a third, but he grabbed the bow, halting it.  Rosa reached behind her back, grabbing a gold plumed arrow and the string, and leaned back on her heels as far as she could go, pulling the string with her weight.  She snapped the arrow into place and let go.  It pierced his shoulder, and she let her momentum carry her through a back hand-spring.  She then slid forward, ripping her knife from his shoulder to jam it into his exposed ribs.

    Forcing him to a knee, she jumped and pushed off his leg over to the wall.  Using the wall as a floor, she ran along shooting arrow after arrow until five fresh shafts protruded from the Emperor’s chest.

    With one final leap from the wall she drew one last arrow and landed before the Emperor.  She channeled Holy magic from her body straight through to the arrow.  A snarl of rage escaped her lips as she put the tip to his throat.  He lifted his chin and stared up the shaft at her.

    Rosa blinked once, twice, and looked around as though just realizing what she was about to do.  The pain of her shoulder returned and she winced, her fingers clenching the string of her bow too tightly.  She slightly lowered the tip away from his neck, never taking her eyes from his, even as she leaned down and tugged her knife from his side.  He sucked in a breath through his teeth and put a hand to his side.  She slowly backed away from the Emperor before finally turning around and running from the battleground.