"Pupil, show me what you have learned." ~ Master Yi, The Wuju Bladesman
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As the first enemies came in contact with Yi, his sword flashed.
SWISH
One head fell.
A thrall swung his blade at him.
SCHWING
SWISH
Double-strike. One to block the blade and one to slice through the thrall.
As the enemies began to pile onto him, he began to settle into a rhythm. His body moving purely by technique drilled into him over decades, almost like instinct.
Until..... he, himself, became the blade.
The overwhelming number of enemies that would have decimated armies were being mowed through. Like a farmer using his scythe to harvest his produce. Heads rolled. Arms dropped. Torsos slid off their bodies. Legs continued walking a bit more before dropping.
But it did not impede the thralls.
For they could not feel. Nor think. They were puppets of the Darkin that watched the massacre from behind. And it did not care for its puppets.
Expendable as they were, they did not hold any meaning to Xolaani other than pawns to be used and discarded.
But she did recognize both the mortals attacking.
One she recognized from the memories of her host. Jun's memories were much needed entertainment. Memories of a whole life, as short as it may have been, as if she had lived it herself.
The Master.
Come to save the disciple.
It was cute... the lengths that mortals went to protect.
She couldn't believe that she too had been like that once.
Self-sacrificing.
Weak.
Her four eyes then turned toward the monkey that was sprinting around her thralls.
She recognized that monkey too. But it seemed that it did not know of its own strength, considering it being able to do nothing to its thralls.
-x-
Wukong sprinted across the battlefield, leaping across the heads of the thralls that were reaching for him.
"A staff is fucking useless!" He screamed as he used the staff to vault across the gap in between the rock structures. Landing on the other side, he spun about and watched as some of the thralls fell to the shimmering abyss below.
He didn't know how deep it was and if they could survive that.
Scratch that.
They probably would survive that.
Unless their body parts were not separated from the body, the thralls did not seem to slow. Constantly healing off the blood surrounding their outside and inside. And if that wasn't enough, they weren't averse to using the blood of their fallen comrades.
A blade could cut them apart.
But a staff?
All the heads he bashed stayed deformed but they didn't stop their onslaught.
Watching the thralls crowd the wooden bridge toward the platform he was on, a smile popped up on his face.
"Sorry." He waved at the thralls, "Bridge is under repair."
BANG
He swung his staff and watched as the bridge collapsed, sending a whole bunch of thralls tumbling into their bright glowing end.
"Why didn't he give me a sword?" Wukong muttered loudly. "Doran must have left a bunch of them. What's a staff going to do against them?" His tail wagged back and forth as he thought, a finger on his chin in an exaggerated fashion, "I could push them down there? Maybe use the bridges?"
That was a plan at least.
What else could he do? He was nowhere near proficient in the Wuju style as Master Yi was, nor did he have a bladed weapon.
There was only one option.
Knock them off the edge of the formations.
And so he began leaping across the formations, baiting the thralls into walking onto the bridges in large enough groups.
The plan worked.
Initially at least.
After dropping a few more groups of thralls, they stopped walking onto the bridges in large groups. Now it was two or three at a time.
And instead of going through only one bridge, they started to encircle him, occupying all the formations around him. That stopped him from pole vaulting to other areas and with the steady flow of two-three thralls taking the bridges from all around.... he was essentially locked in combat with no way out.
"Mindless beasts they said..... But the one controlling them isn't." Wuking lamented loudly.
He could shatter all the bridges but what would that do but completely keep him out of the fight.
Looking around frantically, for a solution his eyes caught Yi turning into a flash of light and disappearing from vision.
The entire group of thralls surrounding Yi stood still as if frozen in place.
Then Yi reappeared away from the group, his blade, armor and helmet stained with blood.
A second passed in silence.
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
The bodies of the thralls began to fall in succession, all of them slashed to pieces.
He looked around and spotted Wukong send thralls flying across the formations and toward their supposed doom.
He began to move to help him.
"DON'T!"
Wukong's shout stilled him.
"Go after the big one. I'll hold them off here."
For a split second, Yi looked conflicted. But that went away, replaced by conviction.
He turned his attention away from his disciple and toward the Darkin floating in the sky. His blade rose toward the Darkin, the metal rings on it changing against the blade.
"Come." Yi spoke calmly.
Xolaani looked at him, still high up in the sky, "Has the master come to avengers the disciple?"
Yi grit his teeth in anger. He had been informed that the Darkin would have seen all of Jun's memories but facing her..... it angered him.
"She had a good life you know." Xolaani continued, ignoring Yi's rage filled figure. "Sacrificing her life in order to prevent me from falling into the wrong hands."
Yi froze for a moment as he heard those words.
Jun hadn't picked up the weapon out of her own volition?
"Oh? Did you not know?" Xolaani chuckled, "A group of your people broke into the temple where I was sealed away. Slipping in through shadows. Jun picked my sickles up in order to prevent them from getting me." Her laughter grew stronger, "But little did she know that by touching me, she had doomed herself."
The shadows.
Yi's grip on his blade tightened.
Zed's Order.
They had been the cause of this. They had caused him more loss. All while claiming to fight for the cause of the Ionians.
ZING
He tilted his body, his helmet helping him instantly react to the incoming attack.
A chakram tore past him, slicing into the ground and disappearing.
"Affording to be distracted against me?" Xolaani's voice echoed. "Are you that confident?"
Yi pushed all his thoughts away. He would deal with that later. Now was the time to face this moster and let his disciple rest.
He raised his blade in her direction once more.
Thunder rumbled.