Masked Intentions.

Elisrya didn’t wait for his answer once the Elves in Dornwich asked him if he would be using his new ****. The second John noticed that her legs were still tensed and ready, she took a step towards John… and he took a step away. The image of a scowl flashed across her features for only an instant, but it was more than enough to put John on edge. He spammed his Observe ability, shifting his gaze to the areas that he could see over her shoulders, around her hips, in the gaps between her arms and her sides... but he didn’t find anything. If the Elf was hiding a weapon behind her back, it was small enough that he couldn’t find an invisible edge peeking out from around her back.

He noticed the way she kept her front facing towards him, even as he continued trying to step away from her, and how her gaze remained trained on him, but the last part was something that he was quickly losing track of. For every foot that John tried to put between himself and Elisrya, the Elf’s eyes began to glow even brighter. He was quickly losing sight of her eyes because of that glow, and he couldn’t help but wonder if that would put him at a disadvantage. His Fighter’s Eyes ability seemed to work based on what he could see in the movements of another person’s gaze… and if her eyes grew too bright for him to keep track of, then it seemed like he wouldn’t be able to keep up with her. Even with Fighter’s Eyes it seemed like he might not be able to match her pace. Already, she was so fast that she had a perk effect to help keep her from getting hurt while breaking the laws of physics.

If she charged him, then Fighter’s Eyes might not have done much more than show him how she was going to hit him right before her speed let her strike him anywa-

John blinked. Fighter’s eyes wouldn’t show him what weapon she had… but activating it would let him know if she truly did intend to attack him.

“Is something the matter?” the echo in Elisrya’s voice asked, and he watched as she stepped away from the table until she had moved into a spot that gave her a straight path to John. It was like she was playing chess. Unless he somehow dived back over the table before she got to him, then she could rush towards him in any direction he could move into now, and he highly doubted that he could clear the table that quickly.

Fighter’s Eyes was his best chance. Once he turned it on, he almost felt his heart drop when he saw his Mana start to plummet, but he didn’t leave it on for long. He just had to-

-81 HP! Surprise Attack failed! Sneak Attack Damage is denied!

His breath was physically stopped in his chest. Fighter’s eyes didn’t have the chance to locate Elisrya before she appeared right in front of him. The arm she had kept poised behind her back was between the two of them now, and John blinked as they both looked down at the golden hilt sticking out of his torso. He didn’t fall, nor did he really… feel the cut once the blade had been completely buried in him… he just stopped breathing. Wherever it was the knife had cut into, it had blocked off his air supply. He blinked as Elisrya growled into his ear, but he barely paid attention to her words. She was close enough that he was able to grab onto her wrists, and she didn’t even seem to care when he did.

“How about… you come back to Dornwich, and maybe we won’t leave you here to bleed out in the dirt?” the Elf snarled, and then ripped the knife free. The second it was gone, John started gasping for air again. He nearly let her go as the instinct to clutch at his chest and try to put pressure on the wound almost overcame him. He nearly ran away. The thought that he had to get away from the situation and find treatment all but consumed him. A part of him acknowledged the fact that he probably would have to, because no other ideas or thoughts appeared in his mind except for the need to find help... if not for the fact that Gamer’s Mind saved him from turning his back to his enemy. He wasn’t a trained fighter or a soldier. He was a nerd who played video games with his spare time. Without the ability, he wasn’t the type of person to fight, he was the type to flee. He had been since Frank and Vanessa had started bullying him.

With the ability though, John found the awareness to use his grip on her arms before she stepped away. He picked her up while she was standing there growling at him like some kind of feral animal… and then threw her down on the table, making it crack and groan as she slammed against the wooden top. He saw her eyes widen as he gripped the hand that she was holding the knife with, and then he squeezed it with all his might. She may have been faster than he was… but she still let him grab her when she thought she had mortally wounded him, and now that he had a hold of her, he wasn’t letting go. The metal gauntlet in his hand creaked as he all but crushed it and Elisrya screamed. The knife was squeezed out of her hand and clattered to the ground.

-20 Damage.

Even with his hand crushing hers, she recovered quickly, but by that point, it was less about being agile and more of a wrestling match than anything. She tried to duck and pull away to go for the knife, but John’s Fighter’s Eyes saw it coming. Even though she got low enough to reach for it before he could react, he only needed to hit her once with his Infused Strike ability to send the blade flying from her hand and skittering across the room until it was out of sight. With him holding her in place, she couldn’t dodge away. She had to take the hit.

-35 Damage.

She coughed and groaned as his fist slammed into the metal covering her abdomen, and then once again recovered well before John had a chance to take advantage of her stunned state. She twisted again in his grasp, straining to reach for the nearby cups and the pitcher to bash him over the head with one of them... but he found that he only needed to kick the table to send those items scattering across the floor too. She fought him… all the way up until the point where she resorted to trying to catch his arms or his head in various grapples, and he had to bat her away again to make her stop. She did manage to catch his arm when he grabbed her by the throat to try and **** her to stop, but with his strength and his other hand, he kept her from pushing on his limb enough to break or dislocate it. He held her up in the air finally, high enough so that she couldn’t touch the ground even if she wanted to… and watched as the Elf smirked at him from above. Her long, armored thighs were still wrapped around his limb like she was just waiting for the moment when he would trip up and let her restrain him.

She was ****… but she was waiting, he realized when the sounds of roaring outside the tent drew his attention. She was waiting for the dead to come crashing into the tent and save her and she was waiting for John to bleed out. The sound of something heavy and wooden exploding in a thousand splinters against the ground outside reached his ears as John glared back at the Elf… and then he smiled as well. The hand that he hadn’t been using to **** her but instead to keep her from squeezing and twisting his arm around in unnatural ways finally stopped fighting her. She immediately started coiling around the limb to try and **** him to stop **** her… and while she did that, John reached up and pulled on the shirt that she had stabbed him through. The fabric tore away like it was made of paper in his grip, another school-decent shirt ruined, and he watched as Elisrya’s eyes slowly came to the same realization that the Orcs had reached before her.

Even though the knife had pushed into his chest deep enough to have likely pierced a lung or something else vital, he still wasn’t bleeding.

A long, horizontal, crimson red line sat high on his chest as the two of them finally stopped wrestling, and John watched as Elisrya’s eyes vanished in the cobalt light that practically beamed out of them. Her lips parted into a small gasp as John steadied his grip on her throat, and he noted that he could feel her pulse racing beneath his thumb… and then the noise outside of the tent stopped. The roaring came to an end as the dead went silent and still again… and a few dozen different, confused Orcish voices started asking questions. The occasional scream from his tribe could be heard as some of his people began pleading for help after they too were blinded, and John squeezed Elisrya’s neck tighter in response.

Eventually, she let him go. The Elf released his arm and let her body fall slack in his grip… but she didn’t pass out. She just dangled in place, her toes hanging a few inches off the ground while she exposed her neck to John’s grip. She let him **** her… to show him that she was surrendering… or at least the people in Dornwich were.

Cautiously, he lowered the Elf to the ground until she fell back on two surprisingly steady feet while her eyes continued burning into John... and then she slowly bowed her head to him. It took a while before John started to believe that she was no longer fighting back against him. His Kingdom tab showed that he was still in combat, so he couldn’t leave, but he was no longer being attacked. The Elf swallowed deeply for a moment… and then took a careful step towards him.

“Do you accept our terms of peace?” she- No. It wasn’t Elisrya who spoke. It was the citizens of Dornwich again. Elisrya’s own voice was absent. They were the ones asking him. He didn’t believe that they cared about letting him live now any more than they did before… but now at least they were no longer poised and ready to fight again. He didn’t know if it was because they were so curious that they found it better to agree to peace because he didn’t seem so hurt suddenly or if they didn’t want to risk killing him and losing the answers they wanted, but it didn’t really matter to him.

It was still peace that they were offering.

“Fine,” he grunted and then watched as something in Elisrya’s expression dimmed. Her eyes remained as bright as ever, but her head lowered even further when she heard John accept her enslavement. Her face paled while her body stepped forward and her breath hitched. Her lips trembled, but she didn’t speak. Dornwich did that for her.

“Then she is yours,” they told him, and with a deft flick from the hand that he hadn’t crushed in his grip, her pauldrons and breastplate came undone. The metal pieces fell to the ground with a couple of loud clanging noises, and both John and the Elf blushed as the heavy, moss-green doublet she was wearing beneath the armor for padding was exposed. A long line of flawless, soft, alabaster skin was left visible down the front of her torso where the top hung open slightly like a jacket that had been left undone, only her clothing was still buttoned up. The long, thin ropes that kept the flaps of her garment from completely falling away were loose and kept the valley of snow-white skin on her front exposed, though that was probably the purpose of the cloth. Such a prominent gap in her clothing made it easy to tease him with the idea of actually seeing something. It made it so that he could see the way goosebumps traveled up along her navel and her chiseled abdomen, but not her sides or the definition and precise curves of her hips. He could see a sea of fat, porcelain cleavage that spilled from the opening of her top, but he couldn’t see any more than just the sides of her breasts. Even though he felt like they might slip out of the cloth at any moment, her nipples remained hidden to him. She was so fit that her chest seemed to be the only thing he could see that jiggled when she moved until her leggings were finally pulled away as well, then her masculine trousers were revealed and John had to suppress the urge to smile when he saw how much she filled them out.

She didn’t wear a dress beneath her clothing. She didn’t wear heels or stockings. She was a warrior and certainly dressed like one, even though he never found a scar on her snow-white body as the Elves from Dornwich had her pull on the strings holding her trousers up.

“Show us your powers,” the echo told him, and then Elisrya kissed him.