8 There Is Only Victory

Hoglins? Come and Get It? Really? Is that the best I could come up with at the moment? I guess it had to be. I had to get Sehaela out of trouble. I had to put a stop to these Marauders. Was I able to defeat them? Doesn't matter. I must and I will kill them.

"You! You called us Hoglins? Have you lost your marbles kid?! Get him!" the leader yelled before commanding his goons to come after me.

I stood there assessing my adversaries. Two were coming in hot, both armed with a single sword, brawlers. In fact, all of them appeared to be brawlers. There were three others not including the leader. One with a single war axe, one with a sword and shield, and one with two one handed maces. I also stayed where I was in order to give Sehaela a distraction to get her staff which she had already almost made it all the way to get.

The two swordsmen came in each with a vertical strike. I rolled to the left, dodging both strikes before Swinging my main hand axe at the thigh of one of the two. He backed away in perfect timing, so I missed. However, the liquid fire that had involuntarily leaked out into my axe's splattered onto the leather of his pants and immediately began to burn through it.

He began screaming due to the pain and thusly he was too distracted when I stood up and spun with my off hand axe, poised to decapitate him. My strike went completely uninhibited. I watched as my white hot blade of my axe cut like butter through his neck and his head rolled.

His comrade was shocked at the fact that a kid just beheaded his buddy and distracted as well. That didn't really benefit him because I too was shocked by it. Still, I was the first of us two to snap back to reality and I lunged in to make a dual diagonal strike aimed at his chest. He evaded to the side, using my momentum against me and then instantly tried to strike me in the back, but... his sword was flung from his hands.

He looked up and around for a split second in confusion, but he never would know what happened as I had spun and embedded my axe deep into the side of his rib cage.

I turned to see Sehaela approaching one of the other three, but she took a moment to mouth, "You're Welcome", to me. She had used a wind gust to disarm the swordsman, which had both possibly saved my life but most definitely allowed me to win that fight.

Her target was the single war axeman who didn't know she was there until his feet were blew out from underneath him. I didn't get to see the rest of that fight because the shield and sword wielder was right at my face with a barging bash.

This is when I realized my magic was definitely chaotic. Suddenly, flames engulfed my arm and formed over them like a fiery arm. The flaming arm took control of my own arm and grabbed the shield's outer edge. My feet also lit up with flames and planted themselves as the forces of the bash attempted to push me back.

I stopped the charge some how and torqued the shield in such a way as to not only open up the assailant for an attack but also it broke his forearm with an unmistakable snap. Mind, you this was not of my own doing. This was my magic taking over.

The shield bearer cried out in agony before the flames left my arm and launched themselves into his throat. His screams turned into a gurgle and then he collapsed with smoke billowing from his mouth.

'What in the living hell was that!?' I thought for a moment before I realized what else was going on.

Sehaela was being tag teamed by the axeman and the dual mace wielder. She was holding her own, but I wasn't going to allow them to kill her.

I sprinted forward and lunged at the mace wielder with a cross slash. Apparently the mace wielder was quick because he crossed his maces as a block and there we were, locked in a temporary stalemate.

My hands then on their own accord lit aflame. The mace wielder cried in agony as the flames engulfed his arms. He dropped his maces holding his hands up, screaming, but suddenly the fire jumped and converged onto his face, just before I swung my off hand axe straight into his gut.

As soon as my victory had been won, I looked over at Sehaela who just then made a gust loaded jab with her staff straight into the mouth of the axeman, promptly blowing the back of his head out. Woah was that gruesome. I will never underestimate her fancy stick again.

We both looked at each other with smiles of victory before the ground shook beneath us like a miniature earth quake.

We gained our balance slightly before we heard the leader, "Ya brats think yas can just waltz up and take out my men without any problems, huh? Ya want all the loot for ya selves eh?"

"No you dumb idiot! This was our home! You will not leave with one item from it!" I replied confidently. Oh that confidence...

"Yeah? Ya might have been able to defeat my men with ya magic, but I got some of that too, ya see?" He laughed before making a pulling motion from the ground and dirt clods gathered up and made a dirt knight-like armor over him, making him about three meters tall.

"Uh oh..." I involuntarily proclaimed.

"Ya gonna pay for killing them." He laughed an evil laugh as he came in hard with a powerful vertical swing of his greatsword.

We just barely side stepped the swing, but what we didn't realize was the after effects of the impact of the blade with the ground.

Instantly the ground had split and levered us outwards like catapults, sending us rolling into the debris.

"Hahaha yeah, where's all that fancy flippin' and dodgin' at now?" He said

I looked at Sehaela and she launched a wind gust that made the dirt knight drop to one knee. Thinking I'd have my opportunity, I came lunging in. I was promptly sent flying as the dirt knight hit me with a pretty hard punch.

Sehaela managed to pole vault herself onto the back of the dirt knight while I was trying to come back to my senses. The dirt knight stood trying to reach her, but she was in that perfect spot where his bulky arms couldn't reach. She then commenced to throwing punches powered by the wind in an attempt to break through the earth armor.

When I finally came to, I stood up and was about to lunge into the fray when I suddenly realized I wasn't in control of my body anymore. I watched as the black and blood red flames grew over my body.

Soon enough I was that demon from my awakening and I somehow stood about two meters tall. My axes were covered in flames and suddenly looked as if they were three times as bigger.

The dirt knight stopped scrambling for the girl when he noticed this fiery demon that had materialized itself in front of him. Suddenly, the demon opened it's mouth and spewed a fountain of lava at the dirt knight who brought his arms up to protect his face. He was successful, but his dirt had melted off of his forearms. Then I saw Sehaela... She had just barely escaped the lava.

'Oh no... this thing only cares about victory... Sehaela is in danger...' I thought as the dirt knight replaced the scales of dirt that had fallen off and then picked up his sword.

The demon, seeing it as the challenge it was, swung it's right axe at the dirt knight who promptly attempted to Parry... big mistake.

The sword only passed through the flames, and the fiery axe slammed onto the dirt knight's right shoulder. The impact easily removed the entire limb from the dirt knight. Writhing in pain, the dirt knight dropped his blade and started stumbling backwards in fear with the fiery demon walking towards him keeping perfect pace.

Sehaela went sprinting away and ducked under a fallen column.

"Please! Please have mercy!" The dirt knight managed to beg

"Mercy? What is Mercy? There is only victory..." the fiery demon stated in a chilling monstrous voice which was a deeper, multi-toned dissonant version of my own.

Then, the fiery demon swung his flaming axes in a cross. The dirt knight was filleted into four jagged smoldering pieces.