Mattiew stared Harpax down as Adriana and the elemental attacked each other. From the start, Adriana managed to knock the elemental off balance and hit them so hard, they flew off into their bedroom, leaving Mattiew alone with Harpax.

“I must say I’m disappointed in my cousin’s lack of faith. Pitting me against you?” Harpax scoffed as the two circled one another.

“I think you’ll find me to be more than formidable enough to suit your standards.” Mattiew matched Harpax’s pace and maintained his distance. The common room was a wide, open space. But furniture complicated the layout, forming a ring around them. The kitchen counter would serve as a decent shield.

Calliones worked with curses, invariably. Whatever the exact nature of Harpax’s sorcery, curses had to be transferred into an object or person via an obvious mana trail.

Mattiew wished he had a Bog Brew to help him actually see those mana trails. As a man of common birth, he was blind to them.

His best weapon seemed to be good old trial and error.

Mattiew went on the offensive. He kicked his common room table up to cover his advance, to get within his sword’s range.

The table halted in the air for an eyeblink, before it flew back at him with more force than it originally had. Mattiew kicked the table’s center. It splintered in two halves that zipped past him.

But Harpax used it to cover his own advance.

The weight of Callione’s body slammed into Mattiew. Though his ribs told him he was getting hit by a large brick, not tackled by another man.

Harpax’s wild grin was accompanied by a force rippling through Mattiew as his body began to move faster than the Cursemaker’s.

His body locked up. His back flattened against the wall and his weapon flew from his grip. The wind left his lungs like sailors abandoning a flaming ship before he was allowed to drop.

Mattiew got to his feet as he bit his tongue through the aching on his backside.

Despite how much that hurt, Mattiew’s injuries were but a small setback compared to how much information Harpax just gave away.

Mattiew had still felt gravity’s effects on him. The curse made him fall down a hill, not fly.

And the curse was transmitted by touch, unlike Adriana’s probability curse, which spread through willful direction.

Harpax began to approach. Mattiew, refusing to give the sorcerer distance control, grabbed the spear he kept in the kitchen. He launched it at Harpax with a practised throw.

Harpax sidestepped the projectile and merely grazed his fingers along the shaft. The spear reversed its direction.

Mattiew charged at the spear, head on. He sidestepped and slapped the underside of the weapon, throwing it into a spin as it went on a return trip to Harpax.

The Cursemakers eyes widened as he scrambled to throw himself from its path. But where the spear wasn’t awaiting him, Mattiew’s knee was.

Mattiew swung his knee with a jump, slamming it into Harpax’s jaw with a sickening crack. A tooth flew out from his lips as he cried out and stumbled. Mattiew refused the bastard any reprieve. He followed with an arrow-quick heel kick and a flurry of palm and elbow strikes.

Harpax interrupted Mattiew’s onslaught, using his curse to throw the Witch Hunter off him.

Mattiew made a wedge with his feet, skidding to a halt on the floorboards next to the stove.

The sorcerer fell to one knee, but glared up at Mattiew with a bloody and broken face, as though he’d had somehow been betrayed.

“You should really be more conservative with the use of your sorcery.” Mattiew said. “Two uses and you’ve spilled all your weaknesses.”

Harpax almost choked on his next wheezing breath.

“You can double, maybe triple the inertia in any object or person you touch. I’m thinking you can only do one object at a time, since you’ve yet to throw any more than that at me. All I have to do is put a spin on anything you throw at me and it returns to the sender.” Mattiew grinned. “I suggest you give up.”

“You…” Bloodied spittle accompanied Harpax’s words. “You mutt! You think you’re better than me? I’ll shatter every bone in your body!”

Harpax shot his arm out and grabbed a clay jug from the floor. Mattiew stopped himself from advancing. He couldn’t assume Harpax would just throw it at him.

Mattiew grabbed a pan off his stove as Harpax slammed the jug against the ground. Mattiew put his arms up as the shards from the shattered pottery flew at him like an arrow volley. Several bits deflected off the pan in front of his face, but Mattiew staggered as small bits of sharp pottery cut up his arms and legs.

Mattiew took a moment to gather himself after the volley ended, blood running down his body.

He imbued the jug with inertia first. When it shattered, every individual piece still had the curse on it. Shoulda thought of that.

Harpax cackled as he grabbed another jug and shattered it.

Mattiew flattened himself against the floor, since the destroyed pottery had an upward angle.

He quickly rolled behind the kitchen counter before another volley could be let loose.

I can’t do anything from this range! But if I get in close, he’ll just send me away again with a touch...dammit.

There seemed to be no valid avenue of attack for Mattiew. Harpax had begun conserving his ceramic ammunition, so there was no waiting this out.

Anything big enough to block his body was too malleable. The shards would cut through it and him soon after. Everything hard enough was no bigger than a pot or pan.

“What happened, alley mutt?” Harpax asked. “Didn’t you promise me a fight?”

Mattiew didn’t respond to the sorcerer’s provocations. Calm and clear-headedness would get him out of this alive.

At least until a shadow passed overhead. Mattiew glanced up to find another pot, on a collision course with the wall not three feet away from him.

The clay jar impacted and shattered.

Mattiew closed his eyes and covered his face, but that was all he had time to do before the shards descended on him.

Pain erupted on every inch of his body. The ceramic embedded itself in his flesh, holding much more force at this range.

Mattiew gritted his teeth as the shards impaled him. His clothing did little work in shielding him from the shards, but they did enough to keep his wounds shallow.

He was leaking buckets of blood from multiple wounds. If he suffered too many more injuries, he’d lose consciousness and probably bleed out. What a shit way to go.

His mind was still clear. Relatively. He’d gone through worse at the hands of more powerful sorcerers. Though, he was definitely going to need a healer after this.

Mattiew waited a few more seconds to confirm a suspicion.

Harpax was smart enough to know that throwing the whole jug would only work once. After that, he was asking to have it be thrown back. Same went for any other object larger than a bone pen.

There was no deflecting or fully blocking those shards either.

But there was a way to open the path of attack.

Mattiew untied his bronze plated belt and started unwrapping the fabric cushioning beneath it. As thick as a few sheets of linen, it would do what he needed it for. Assuming he was precise enough.

Mattiew staggered to his feet and rushed out from behind the counter, corners of the fabric clutched in both hands.

Harpax didn’t hesitate to smash a pot against the floor.

The shards wouldn’t be deflected, but their direction of movement was open to suggestion.

Mattiew fell to his knees and swung his arms above his head, catching the shards in the fabric. He whipped his arms over. The shards ripped through the fabric with a new trajectory aimed at Harpax.

Mattiew’s enemy didn’t have time to vocalize his panic before the shards hailed down upon the sorcerer.

Harpax screamed in pain. Blood erupted from multiple gashes as though the wind around him carried razor blades.

Mattiew didn’t give the sorcerer a moment’s reprieve before grabbing Harpax’s face, sweeping his leg and smashing the cursemaker’s head against the floorboards.

The thick impact was more than enough to knock Harpax out cold.

Mattiew dusted himself off just as the low vibration of raw mana exploded through the doorway of his bedroom. A bluish black beam of light shoved Adriana off her feet and into the furthest wall.

Adriana fell to the ground, but when Mattiew moved to help her, she held up her hand, signaling him to keep away.

“I’ve still got bad fortune from a lucky dodge.” Adriana muttered, tearing off her burned and charred mantle.

Mattiew then noticed Adriana’s hand on a small wooden stand he’d built. He frowned as his efforts to cut down that giant oak went to waste. Though, it wasn’t like everything else in the house was exactly intact.

The stand collapsed as the fastenings failed and the contents of the cupboards below spilled out.

As the elemental practically dragged themselves through the charred doorway, Adriana picked up a small metal sphere engraved with indecipherable markings. It was a common tool to deal with small Nightdwellers. She rolled it across the floor until it bumped against the elemental’s leg.

The engravings flashed, rendering the entire room slightly blind. The ball started to siphon the very makeup of the elemental’s cloud-like body. Their balance wavered before they collapsed on the ground.

The sphere stopped its leeching effect.

“Couldn’t you have done that earlier?” Mattiew asked.

“The siphon’s pretty small. I needed to whittle their mana down before it was enough to knock them out.” Adriana got to her feet. Mattiew steadied her as she stumbled. She looked around the ruined state of the common room and kitchen. “Couldn’t you have been a little more careful during your fight?”

“I don’t wanna hear that from someone whose sorcery is most effective at disassembling furniture.” Mattiew helped her over to their chaise lounge, the one piece of furniture still mildly intact. “I would’ve been able to do something sooner if I knew what his sorcery did.”

“I don’t exactly have the sorcerous abilities of all my extended family memorized.” She opened a slightly damaged cupboard to grab a roll of bandages as the both of them sat. “What was it?”

“Curse of inertia. Or momentum. Whichever.” Mattiew said as she started wrapping his small, but numerous wounds.

“Right! I remember now.”

“Ain’t that awfully convenient.” Mattiew scoffed. “What do you wanna do with the bodies?”

“Hm...I was thinking it’d be entertaining to simply stuff them back in their chariot and give the horses’ hindquarters a slap.”

“And the guards outside? I’m not really feeling up to brawling again. Sorcerer or not.”

“Well, we could always-” Adriana was cut short by a rough coughing fit.

“You alright?” Mattiew tensed as he grabbed hold of her.

Adriana nodded through her hacks and deep-rooted coughs. “Just...ack! Just give me a second…”

She threw up one painful and especially loud cough that caused red spittle to splatter all over her hand. The coughs receded as she and Mattiew looked at the blood, then each other.

“You need a physician.” Mattiew said.

“No. No physicians. I can visit a-” Adriana collapsed on her backside after an attempt to stand up.

Mattiew stood to help her. He noticed a trickle of yet more blood coming from the corner of her lips. He wiped it away and showed her the crimson stain left on his finger.

She looked away from the evident sign of deterioration.

Mattiew swept her up into his arms, bridal style. “You’re seeing a physician. End of story.”