A very large red blur smashed unceremoniously into the building Alyssa had been watching for the telltale haziness that seemed to follow Litchfield’s top assassin. As the red blur came to a rest she quickly recognized it as Lord Shubin, who was soon followed by a large black mech of a type she’d never seen before. She momentarily was concerned for her friend and mentor’s leader until he stood up, shifted his jaw back into place, then bellowed out a hearty gurgling laugh. She didn’t pay him anymore attention as the blur she was searching for finally moved several buildings further away from her current position.

She shifted on the balls of her feet, watching the haze that seemed to slide to the edge of her vision ever so carefully. It was like a sunspot in your vision, you know it’s there but your conscious mind is always trying to look past it or clear it. For the last several minutes since their initial exchange they’d been playing a game of cat and mouse using their respective versions of stealth bestowed unto them by the System.

Alyssa was confident her version of stealth was superior to the arrogant woman she faced now, though she’d found herself at her mercy more times than she’d care for only to be narrowly saved by superior reflexes, and in some cases, Lulu and Choox’il who were edging around the battlefield. Frustration was beginning to cloud her decision making, so she mentally perused her toolkit, her Skills and Abilities. Toolkit was the term the Valkyr brothers had coined as they repeatedly drilled lessons in sword techniques, battlefield tactics, and overall strategy for the last month.

So it was with the acquisition of her latest Skill, [The Challenger’s Living Shadow], that she turned the tempo of the battle. She hadn’t given it much thought when she’d unlocked it after the battle in Dilkon against Tracey and his Raiders, it kind of creeped her out to state a fact. Now, it might be the thing that turns this fight from one of hide and seek, to one of bait and switch. She read the description for the hundredth time.

Your shadow now takes on a life of its own. As this skill increases, your shadow will gain limited autonomy and share in your abilities. While it can be defeated through magical means, it is generally incorporeal and is immune to physical damage. It is immune to dark type magics and particularly weak to light type magics.

Since it wasn’t an ability, it didn’t have any activation cost, it just was. She hadn’t noticed it right away, but occasionally she would see her shadow looking around, even while she watched. It would reach for low hanging fruit on a passing tree, or run its shadowy fingers through a water puddle, as if it were experiencing the world for the first time. It was a toddler in a violent land of wonder and magic.

Now that the skill was almost leveled through Intermediate, it seemed to level just by being, her shadow was constantly trying to wander further from her. Though when something startled it or scared it, it would come running back to hide behind her, regardless of the positioning of the various light sources. So it was now that she found herself straining to direct it away from her so that she might set a trap for the infuriating assassin.

The problem was, just like a child, it didn’t want to listen. She chided, argued, and demanded it follow her instruction, all of which resulted in her shadow crossing its arms and turning its incorporeal head up in defiance. She shifted her sight to follow the blurry haze that was edging closer to her building, then looked over to find her Shadow had disappeared. A quick look around found it standing plainly in the street, attempting to pick up a shiny piece of glass and failing miserably as its shadowy hands passed through the object without disturbing it in the least.

When the blurry haze noticed her shadow’s antics in the street it paused, then streaked directly towards her Shadow. The woman appeared a moment later attempting to drive a pair of daggers through Shadow’s back only to burst straight through her, stumbling forward to faceplant against the cement.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?!?” She blurted out while quickly rolling to her back and staring up at Shadow. Who was currently giving her what Alyssa had determined to be her trademarked featureless stare of curiosity.

Not wanting to let the opportunity go to waste she quickly activated [Get Over Here!], a part of her inner monologue chuckled at the video game reference. A chain of shadow snapped out from the window she stood in and snagged Smith’s ankle, then jerked her up with a surprised yelp. Alyssa prepared to skewer her on the ends of both of her falcatas, but was surprised herself when the woman managed to twist in the air to bring her own weapons up in defense.

Rather than meet her directly as intended, she spun to the side in a whirlwind of steel sparking on steel. Smith rolled into the room, ending in a slide that saw her springing off the wall in Alyssa’s direction once again, not wanting to ease up the pressure. Alyssa bent over backwards as a pair of gleaming silver blades passed inches over her head and countered with a wild swipe of her own.

The pair squared off inside the non-descript room, eyeing each other for an opening they could exploit.

“Got some new tricks I see. Don’t matter, I’m still gonna take your heart, girl. Hope you understand it’s nothing personal.” Smith flung a trio of blackened knives at Alyssa who dodged the attack only to find the woman gone. Pressure in her armor along her spine alerted her to where the woman had gone.

Alyssa quickly dissolved into shadow as the wall behind her exploded with the bulk of Lulu coming through it, jaws snapping and snarling, slobber spraying the ground where the woman formerly stood.

Smith rolled away from the yipping, barking, oversized coyote while snickering, “Almost forgot about your bitch. What’s the matter, ain’t got the balls to face me one on one?” She made a lewd gesture as she taunted Alyssa.

“No, I do, but I really just want to kill you and return to helping my friends.” Alyssa smiled sweetly, and for a moment Shantel Smith thought she saw just a hint of slightly elongated incisors in the girls mouth, then she launched into an attack led by an ability, “[Challenger’s Assault]!”

Alyssa pressed forward in a series of rapid, precise sword thrusts that Smith fought to beat back. She caught several shallow cuts across her arms, even one across her cheek that stung something fierce, but managed to beat back the worst of it. The creaking of support beams around her indicated the room had not fared as well. She was just about to launch a counter when the floor shifted under her feet, then seemingly slid away. She tumbled backwards into the street while Alyssa and Lulu simply leapt out of the building to land several meters away.

Smith tossed a [Smoke Bomb] and activated her stealth. Alyssa, along with Lulu, simply melted into the shadows. Smith began to wonder if she should take the opportunity to retreat. The pair were just too well matched, and if she was being honest with herself, she never liked a fair fight. In the same instant, her mind went back to the murderous look in King’s eyes the last time she spoke with the lunatic directly. If they somehow managed to defeat the Warlord’s forces, there would be nowhere for her to go. Failing the King again was not an option.

The choice was taken from her when the Challenger’s damnable coyote somehow managed to find her through her stealth, a fact that was accompanied by great pain, whiplash, a moment of weightlessness, then the further pain of smashing through a convenient store window to collapse the displays within. She once again found herself rolling into a crouch, glancing down at her bloody calf in concern before the girl announced her presence with a hiss.

“[Shadow Cleave]!”

Dark shadow energy lashed against her back, streaking the white walls of the store with her blood. She somehow managed to push away and avoid losing her head in the next attack. She tumbled painfully across the street once more, staring back at the girl who casually sauntered forward through the debris and destruction.

The smell of wet fur warned her of Lulu’s presence, she spun a kick out with her good leg that connected with the dog's nose just as she emerged from the shadows. The animal yelped once, then retreated. Smith gave up all pretense of hiding in stealth now, with blood dripping from several wounds she knew she’d never lose the mutated coyote. She reached into her spatial inventory, quickly uncorking a health potion and drinking it.

Wiping her mouth she savored the feeling of her wounds knitting themselves back together and her rapidly dwindling health pool returning to manageable levels. “You know, girl. I was just thinking about running when your dog bit my ass.”

Alyssa stopped, “You can. I’ll let ya’. Go and don’t ever look back.”

Smith considered the girl for a long, tense, quiet moment, “Nah, if the King wins this, well, I’ll have nowhere to go that he won’t hunt me. If I’m lucky, he’ll kill me outright. But, I’ve seen what he does with those who betray him. And me being a woman, well. I’d rather die on my feet.”

Alyssa watched Smith tighten her grip on her weapons. “Karl is going to kill this, King, you speak of. That’s a foregone conclusion, and you know it, too.”

Smith responded by shifting her feet into a fighting stance and setting her jaw firmly, her resolve on display to all who would witness it, “Fine. I gave you a chance.”

Alyssa levelled her sword in Smith’s direction, the black woman did the same in return. In the next moment the two were streaks of black, dulled leather accented by the flying sparks of weapon clashes that echoed across the empty street like the rhythmic pounding of a blacksmith's hammer.

While the woman’s fighting style was wild, and often brutal, Alyssa couldn’t deny her skill. She’d received a number of minor cuts and bruises while trying to force the woman to make a final fatal mistake. Her stamina ran low with repeated activations of [Cripple], [Sweeping Shadow Strikes], [Shadow Cleave], and even [Challenger’s Call to Battle].

Eventually the two fighters slowed, neither with the stamina to go all out. Around them the street and everything that used to be on it had been reduced to rubble. It was as if a bomb had went off. The street lights had collapsed at some point in the fight, then sliced into pieces, chunks of concrete were torn free from the ground, tossed haphazardly about. No more abandoned car wrecks rested in their own little arena of urban decay.

Alyssa’s shadow peaked over her shoulder in apparent awe. Smith cocked an eyebrow in question while gasping for breath. “That thing have a mind of its own?”

“Seems to. I had been trying to get it to distract you for like fifteen minutes earlier.” She struggled to contain her own exhaustion when she responded.

Smith strained to let out a slight laugh, “Heh, it worked.”

Alyssa’s laugh was much less forced, “Not really, she refused until she saw something shiny on the street. I was going to have her draw you down the alley. Let Lulu corner you so I could come in for the kill.”

Smith looked down for a minute, then readied herself, “That might have worked. Ready to finish this?”

Alyssa responded by taking up a fighting stance she’d been practicing with the brothers. One blade held in front of her, blade turned down, the other held high with the blade up. A still wind rose out of nowhere, causing her cloak to billow out before settling gently across her shoulders. Similarly, everything within a hundred meters of the duo seemed to still, as if the world itself held its breath in anticipation. The sounds of distant battle faded to silence, the only thing in the Verse that mattered right now was happening here.

To Smith, everything was moving in slow motion as she lunged forward, daggers held low to her sides like the ninjas in the cartoons she watched with her brother as a kid. She reached the formidable native girl after what seemed like seconds, though she knew to a normal person her movement would have been completed in the blink of an eye. Strangely the girl didn’t seem to move, though when she looked up she saw gleaming red eyes looking down at her.

Smith almost hesitated at that look, instead she thrust her right dagger forward, aiming for the Challenger’s lightly protected midsection. The muted ring of steel on steel was expected, as the Challenger deflected the obvious strike, which was meant to be a feint. True surprise colored her face when her left dagger sank into the girl's stomach, just to the left of where she’d been aiming. It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was sure to cause significant damage.

Before she could turn to follow up, the shadow of the blade the girl had held high began to descend. She never felt the dreaded blade fall on her neck as she assumed would happen, instead a sharp pain stabbed through her lungs. For a moment her momentum stalled, only to return as she clumsily tumbled away. She coughed up a thick wad of blood before looking up to where the Challenger stood, blade still raised in the air, dagger protruding from her side, and a six inch black metal spike extending from her elbow dripping with blood. She ate my attack so she could deliver one of her own!?

Alyssa watched the woman struggle to her feet while she wrenched the dagger painfully from her gut with a tight gasp. Then she retracted the elbow spike in her arm and resumed her fighting stance, not for a second believing the woman was done. The woman tried to take a step forward, but only managed to collapse to the rough ground. Guess she really is done.

She walked cautiously towards the crouched form of the woman who was frantically attempting to reach behind her and stem the flow of blood from her body. She looked up as she reached her, blood flowing freely from her lips in a manic grin. Before she could say anything Smith spat a fat spray of blood in her face and lunged forward with her dagger aimed for Alyssa’s neck.

Lulu appeared from the shadows, clamping down on the woman’s midsection. Alyssa cleared the offal from her face in time to see Lulu shake the woman once, then twice, then bite clean through her body, tossing the upper and lower halves aside. The legs flopped to the ground, kicking and twitching randomly for a brief moment.

Her upper body landed a few feet away, coating the ground with blood and large intestines. From the angle she landed one could see inside her ribcage where her lungs had been savaged, and her heart somehow still beat. Her hands grabbed randomly at the ground, clearly attempting to sit up, though lacking the prerequisite body parts to achieve that feat.

Alyssa moved to stand over the woman, her shadow peered out curiously as well. When their eyes locked, Shantel Smith acknowledged that the fight was well and truly over. A tear rolled down her face cutting a path through the blood and dirt that had caked it during their battle. To her surprise she received a message request from the woman.

“Yes?”

“You won, now end it. My VPA says with my attributes I can live like this for several more minutes.”

“Before I do that, why didn’t you run when you had the chance?”

A macabre smile formed on Shantel’s face, “Stubborn children, that’s why.”

Alyssa thought for a moment, looked at her shadow, then nodded in understanding. With the simple flick of her wrist she removed the woman’s head from what remained of her body. In some grim comedy, the System informed her the connection to Smith had been severed.