Run and Gun with no ammo (Colt)

Smoke and mirrors. Colt felt like there was only one way he was going to stay alive, and it was by pretending this was a play, and all the world was his stage.

He summoned lights, projected images to distract. Directed fleeing townsfolk with a booming voice.

He laughed, realizing how easy it all seemed. Then he got stabbed, and felt like he was going to die.

But he had an audience, and she was beautiful.

Auburn hair, a deep red he had only seen on a few wealthy women in Magnimar wearing dyed wigs. Pale, fair skin like milk, dusky pink lips. Wide green eyes. A heaving bosom. Oh, that heaving bosom.

Colt let out a breath, pressing a hand to his side around the serrated kitchen knife that the goblin had just sunk into him. He could feel his blood oozing around his fingers. The goblin was snarling, it’s beady black eyes darting this way and that, trying to find a new weapon. Colt was between it and the woman.

_Fuck, what do I say? _He wondered. At this point in the play, the hero would say something amazing. Something to stir the audience, no matter whether it was before his victory or his tragic defeat.

Nothing. He had nothing.

Colt raised his golden goblet and tipped it toward the goblin. “Today is not the day, vermin,” he said, then cast his spell. “Mea Manus.”

Huh, that wasn’t half bad I guess. It wouldn’t win any awards though.

A hand, ghostly pale in the dark of the night, apparated behind the confused goblin. It mimicked Colt’s left hand, which he slowly turned to give the goblin the middle finger, then it scooped low and drove that middle finger right into the goblin’s asshole. Or thereabouts.

The spell, commonly known in the arcane community as a ‘Mage’s Hand,’ was little more than a practice spell. A tool for learning, and a simple utility. It was barely strong enough to carry a full mug of ale, and was generally considered useless in terms of self defense. Colt had found a secondary use for it in the bedroom, and now he put it to use in a similar manner here.

It wasn’t enough to, say, poke a hole into the goblin, or even bludgeon it successfully. It was certainly enough to give it a surprise and a shock.

The goblin screeched, thrusting it’s little hips away from the offending poke as it tried to spin and see what had done it. And Colt kicked it right in it’s little twig and berries.

It hiccuped as it fell backwards onto it’s ass, and then twitched all over in a spasm. And then the Sherrif was there, standing over it, driving his sword into its gut and ending it. The rest of the guardsmen were finishing off their own.

Colt didn’t care. He didn’t even care about the knife still in his side - couldn’t even feel it at the moment, which might have been a bad sign - because he had stepped over to the red haired woman.

“Master wizard,” she said, sighing it out. “When we talked about a private display, this isn’t what I’d been thinking.”

“Neither had I,” Colt said. Then he felt a twinge as he reached for the woman, and stopped to pull the goblin knife from him. It came out red with his blood.

“Oh,” the woman said, eyes wide.

“It’s nothing,” Colt said through gritted teeth. Owowowoooooow! “Just a flesh wound, nothing more.”

Her eyes fluttered, and he stepped forward and caught her in his arms as she swooned. She came to quickly, looking up at him through hooded eyes. “Master wizard,” she whispered, lips parted slightly. Pursed. Bosom swelling with her breath,

He kissed her, and was surprised that the sweetness, the delicious drama of the moment that still didn’t overwhelm the burning pain of his stab wound.

“Ahem. Deputy,” the Sheriff said, and Colt held up a finger, asking him to wait as the kiss went on, his tongue starting to get acquainted with hers.

“Deputy! Now isn’t really the time.”

The red-headed woman put her hands on Colt’s chest, and Colt withdrew, letting her stand on her own.

“Shayliss!” another woman cried nearby, and the redhead’s eyes widened in surprise. A second one, just as pretty but slightly younger, pushed through the knot of guards and townsfolk that had gathered after the skirmish in the street near the docks. This new woman wrapped up the first in a hug.

“Katrine,” Shayliss said, looking over her shoulder at Colt. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed, then buried her face in her sister’s hair and hugged her back.

“Come on,” the younger sister said, pulling away from the hug and taking Shayliss’s hand. “If we don’t get back home, Father might tear the entire town apart looking for us.”’

Colt watched as his sweet redhead rushed down a side street, looking over her shoulder at him once, hair streaming behind her like a horse's mane.

“Careful, Caudex,” the Sheriff said. “That one is trouble, everyone knows it.”

“I happen to like trouble that looks like that,” Colt said, flashing the big, bald man a grin.

The Sheriff just shook his head. “You might not think so if you met her father. Ven is… well, Ven Vinder isn’t a man I would want to get on the bad side of.” He turned and started to address the gathered townsfolk and guards.

Colt didn’t really listen, instead looking wistfully down that sidestreet again while holding his side. “Shayliss Vinder,” he murmured, smirking. Bad tempered father or not, and Colt clearly remembered meeting the man when he’d run into the redhead earlier during the festival, Colt was going to find her again. He could feel it in his loins. And it was going to be some great sex.

“Ready, wizard?” the Sheriff asked.

“Hmm?” Colt asked, coming back to reality. The townsfolk were splitting up, as were the guards, getting escorted down a variety of streets out of the docks market.

“I’m going to take these folks into the lower east end of town,” the Sheriff said, gesturing to a trio of townsfolk. “We haven’t heard anything from anyone over there and I need to check if everything is alright. Head towards Uptown, there might be people who need you up that way.”

“I-”

The sheriff clapped Colt on the shoulder, cutting off his response. “Good man,” he said. “I know I can count on you. Keep this up, and you’ll be a local hero.”

Colt swallowed his previous suggestion. “Just doing what’s right,” he said instead, taking on his role again.

With a nod, the Sheriff turned to the townsfolk he was escorting and led them off.

“It fucking happened again,” Colt muttered to himself once he was alone. He took a step, and nearly collapsed. He jammed a hand against his side and it came up wet with blood. “Fuck.”

Uptown was in the direction of the Cathedral. He couldn’t afford it, but perhaps his status as ‘almost a local hero’ could swing him some divine healing.

So Colt picked a street that looked like it headed north, towards the looming shape of the Cathedral in the darkness, it’s stained glass windows softly glowing from within. He picked up steam as he went, figuring out how not to tweak his wound more as he kept pressure on it while he moved. Right up until he found himself staring down two goblins sprinting towards him out of the darkness from up the street.

“Oh, fuck,” Colt grimaced, stopping and looking around. The nearby buildings were all shuttered.. The closest alley was towards the goblins, and he couldn’t just turn and run. “Fuck.”

Colt held up his goblet and prepared to loose his second, and last, exciting spell for the day. He just didn’t have the practice, the ‘mental fortitude and attunement’ as his magical tutors used to say, to do anything more.

He held off on the words, waiting for the goblins to get fully into the right range, but stopped when he saw the two next figures chasing the goblins down the street. One was the huge behemoth he’d seen early during the festival, the giant who was carrying a massive great ax as he ran. The other was a stunning woman of Varisian descent in just a loose pair of pants and her upper torso bound with what looked like tight bandages, hiding her chest.

Colt took a risk and changed his mind. “Paulo Mendacium.”

A wall, made of bricks, rose from the cobbles in the middle of the street, blocking the path of the goblins - at least, that’s what they and their pursuers saw. Smoke and mirrors.

Illusions, despite his repertoire, were not his natural talent. The problem with being someone with an affinity for the Enchantment school of wizardry was that, first of all, there were few practical lessons to be learned for a beginner beyond, ‘People don’t like being enchanted.’ So, for his love of the stage, most of Colt’s time had been spent learning Illusions.

The goblins skidded to a halt, the two of them panicking with wide eyes as they believed they were cut off from escape. If they had just kept running, they would have passed directly through the Illusion and out the other side, but instead they believed their eyes, and so they died for it. The giant reached them first, his ax swing wide and low, carving one nearly in two and slamming it’s black-blood-spraying corpse into the other. The woman leaped, landing on top of the still-living one as it was on the ground, and drove her knee into its face with a sickening squelch.

Colt dismissed the wall immediately, and it dissolved into the ether of magic, as he stepped forward.

“A mighty fine trick,” the giant said. “But why not just kill them?”

Colt smiled weakly. “I’m not that kind of wizard, big guy. Though after tonight I might just need to learn how to spit fire or something.”

“He’s wounded,” the woman said, grimacing as she brushed goblin juice off of the knee of her black pants. The stains almost disappeared into the dark fabric and poor lighting. From this close Colt could see her hands and wrists, and ankles, were wrapped with bandage-like strips of cloth similar to those on her chest.

“I am,” Colt said. “Perhaps you two could get me to the Cathedral?”

“I can take care of it,” the giant said, and Colt was suddenly feeling very small as the biggest man he had ever seen leaned over him. The giant put his ax down and put a hand on Colt’s side, his other grasping a wooden holy symbol from around his neck. All at once Colt felt a rush of warmth and adrenaline, shooting up his spine and down his legs, and it was over.

“That,” Colt said, “Was amazing.” He lifted his shirt and looked at the raw, scabbed over wound in his side.

“I can only do that a few more times,” the giant said.

“A few?” Colt gawped. “I can’t do that once.”

“Do you have an erection?” the woman asked.

“What?” Colt said, and looked down, and realized that he was in fact sporting a rock hard erection in his pants. “Wait. What? That- I don’t- huh?”

“It’s not an uncommon side effect,” the giant said, rubbing his bald scalp with one hand. His skin was a light, almost limestone grey, and his beard a shaggy black mass that couldn’t hide his chagrin. “Old Deadeye is a primal god, and so his touch can spark primal urges sometimes. Hunger, fear, aggression, and arousal are all minor side effects I’ve seen.”

“That explains it,” the woman muttered.

“Explains what?” the big man asked..

The woman frowned and looked away. “Nothing. Nothing. Come on, there’s still more of them out there.”

The giant seemed to accept this, but Colt saw a flicker of something strange on her face. She was beautiful in a severe, stern sort of way, and he would have been smitten if he wasn’t currently feeling like his emotions were currently being toyed with by the God of Hunters.

“I am Shaka Shale, a servant of Erastil,” the giant introduced himself. “This is Anjella of Aroden.”

“Anjella Pallaseri,” she said. “It’s tough to be of a dead religion to a dead god.”

“Colt Caudex,” Colt said, and gave a perfectly acceptable half-bow. “Of Magnimar. Thespian and Wizard.”

“That explains a lot as well,” Anjella muttered, but turned away as shouting lit up the night, back from the way they had come.

“The Sheriff asked me to check on how things were in Uptown,” Colt said.

“We came from there not six minutes ago,” Shaka said. “But it seems we may still be needed.”

“Lead the way then, big guy,” Colt said, patting the half-giant on the arm.

The trio moved quickly, up the small escarpment and towards the Cathedral. As they arrived in the town square Colt could see several fights had already taken place here. Now, a half dozen men and women were stood on the upper steps and in the doorway of the Cathedral, shouting and shaking makeshift clubs. Across the square, a half dozen goblins were prancing around, each armed with a torch, as a seventh goblin danced in their little pagan circle, howling a tuneless song into the sky. It’s tongue was out, dyed purple from something it had been eating, and it slobbered on itself and down it’s chest, making Colt realize it had bare, leathery and wrinkled pancake tits hanging from it.

“Fuck,” Colt said.

“What’s it doing?” Shaka asked.

“I can’t say for certain,” Colt said, “But I know a magic ritual when I see one. We need to stop that little fuck before something bad happens.”

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