The clock was moving, it's celestial arms beckoning the start of a new beginning, the numbers were plated in gold and silver jewellery while its arms stayed stringent to their dark wooden colour.
Leo stabbed the back of the knights leg, puncturing the crumbling plate at its legs, any onlooker would say the battle between the two was over, all he had to worry about now was the ranger and keep track of the spearman.
There was a slight problem though. As Leo lodged his sword deeper in the monstrosity something he did not expect happened. It didn't catch fire!
Leo took a good luck at the broken plates on the floor, he was sure it went right through. The pitch darkness inside its leg hardly let him see what was happening or why his sword didn't work. Only a tiny glimpse of a silver comb of chains showed itself from around the tip of his sword.
'Whats this?'
What Leo failed to realise about armour, and their bearers, was the protective chainmail hidden beneath. There were at least two more layers of protection beneath their armour, of course it wouldn't catch fire.
All Leo ever saw was the armour plates on knights passing by, never the chains protecting them from behind.
The swords tip was stopped dead in its tracks as Leo processed his mistake.
It was lodged in there far too deep for him to retrieve it in time.
Click.
Nine, Six.
Five lights went up on his hand, screaming out with intense heat and luminosity.
A ghostly colour pasted on his cheeks:
"Shit!"
Amidst the chaos the spearman just watched, patiently waiting his turn – enduring the urge to jump in as the brutes hand swung backwards, throwing Leo in the tall standing rubble from before.
He was the shortest of them all, and the fattest. He hardly wore any armour, still more than the ranger, but neither of them had any real protection against Leo's wrathful sword, unlike the heavy knight.
His spear vibrated in its menacing aura, Leo could feel it raring for some action, it was seriously creeping him out.
Keeping track of two challengers was hard enough, but knowing a third could come in at any moment was even harder on his mind. He didn't even want to entertain the idea of the hoard jumping in as well, but for now, it was only them two.
The ranger was getting his attack lined up as well while the brute remained at a standstill. With his barrel now loaded, he took hold of the bottom of his weapon.
Taking a closer look at the weapon, there were several quirks it boasted, to start with the weapon was incredibly narrow. It held a plain axe head at its top. The barrel itself had three long, concave lines going down the middle with some bearings and gears stuck to a weird black material at the opening.
In the middle, there stood the trigger of which he pulled earlier to fire out a pellet, and around the lever a hand shaped engraving seemingly made for gripping. The design was quite ingenious, for someone like Leo it was anyway.
Going further down the structure, at the bottom, a small compartment carved out in the steel that looked like it could fit some sort of box shaped device.
The ranger dug his hand into his side, from this angle he could not see, but what it went in for was a pouch hoisted on it's hip. Sowly it raised a small yellow box from the leathers depth and with an expertly movement placed it in the empty hole at the bottom.
'That doesn't look good...'
It took aim, looking down some small iron sightings pinned straight to Leo's head. What could be so different from the first one, that tiny pellet hardly did anything the first time, so what could it do now?
He would soon find out, the tiny box inserted was there for more than just decoration. It took its finger and placed it on the latch, the trigger creaked as it pressed down turning the mechanisms inside.
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A heavy pellet ran down the tube, triggering the mechanism on the side to turn the gears and bearings into a heavy spark. The exiting ball shot through an ocean of grease released by the box and out into the sparking air.
It caught fire.
'No way!'
Leo got off his butt immediately and crawled forward as the ball of fire hurled at him through incredible speeds. He landed straight in his elbows and knees, grazing them both in the process, better than getting hit head-on by that.
With no protection from fire there was no other way to fight it, his cloth was all made of poor material that would certainly trap him down should it catch fire – unlike the brute whose armour covered every inch of its body.
The grease on the ball spilled everywhere, leaving sparkles of flame behind in its trail that would continue burning. Leo was no exception, his evasion wasn't far enough to leave its range.
The chasing fire hardly missed him, a huge torrent of fire stuck to his clothes as it flew by. Luckily, the projectile itself missed. But the fire was just as bad, if not worse, he was now covered in droplets of fired up ember grease.
Click.
Four, Twelve.
Rolling on the ground as he was trying to quel the fire running wild on the surface of his skin. The brute slammed his sword into the floor again, and he charged, wrecking a jagged line through the marble heading straight for the rolling human and the towering debris.
Similarly, the musketeer reloaded his weapon, while the spearman grew impatient by the second – despite not moving an inch since the start of the battle.
The fire was hardly out, but it wasn't too harsh either from the lack of oxygen in the room, Leo didn't know that of course, the dust was just as detrimental to him as it was helpful.
Leo tried wiping off the grease with his sword. Some of it went off and extinguished, some of it he couldn't reach all the way on his back. And now he had to deal with a charging brute for a second time.
'If I don't move now I'll be sliced by his sword, but if I don't put this fire out soon, I'll be done for too...'
Leo rolled into a jump as he got back on his feet. He looked at his sword and the runes sitting comfortably atop it and cursed:
"Fuck, damn it all!"
He stood his ground with ambition in anticipation of its next move. The brute approached faster and faster with its movements growing sharper with each step and at the final moment it swung.
Another uppercut with its sword, rocks splashed everywhere hitting every bystander with little to no damage.
'So that's it, the clock tells them what move to make, the thick line must be the knight and the medium line must be the axe man. So the skinny line is the spear!'
A keen observation from Leo, but it would do him no good if he couldn't use it to his advantage.
Click.
Leo side stepped from his position barely avoiding the sword in a clumsy fashion and climbed on the brutes back.
With what little time he had left before it started moving again Leo took the opportunity, since its head was missing it only made sense for the chainmail to be missing.
And just as he'd hoped, through the crevice at the armours neck he plunged the argentine beauty right in.
A white flame ignited from within, surging out of the wound and into the surrounding skin, the fire grew stronger and stronger engulfing everything in the helmet and spilling out through its barred off visor.
He did it.
"I did it!"
He actually landed a hit for once. His foe was indifferent to it, obeying only the tick of the clock.
Twelve, Four, One.
The brute shook him off its back and retreated as far away as possible, far enough to reach the ranger and hide. It's head was a tornado of white flame, it did not move or flinch as the flames invaded the rest of its body.
"Looks painful!"
Leo taunted the lot, having defeated the biggest of them all restored some of his hope and fueled his ambitious arrogance. The battle was nowhere near over, the third and final arm of the clock moved, the thinnest and longest of the lot. He still had two of them to face off against, not including the fourteen lesser soliders surrounding them.
The dial creased in his hand moved again, this time only three nodes lit up before his knuckles.
'Let's go!'
He was fired up, both literally and figuratively, holding onto his sword with one hand and continuing his taunts with the other while also being prickled by the tiny flame storm on his back – though it didn't do much, air was so scarce and dust so prevalent the only room left anymore was for breathing.
"..."
Unmoved by his remarks the two began their attack, ranger took the box out of its seat, from a distance Leo could observe some grease flowing over the wood of the ruptured box.
Quickly it discarded the spent fuel and after fiddling with his fingers for a while it inserted in a completely different node, this time the wooden box was blue.
Spearman stepped forward, perhaps the most intimidating of the three, he walked slowly, menacingly. His spear just as weird as the axe, though it was far simpler. It looked like it was being held inside of a seathe, the upper half - hosting the blade - was encapsulated by a thicker blanket just like it, and at the crease between the two halves stood a similar bearing–gear system as he'd seen on the axe.
This one didn't do anything as crazy as lighting it on fire though, the spearman was glad to show him what it did. That's because in the next moment he used it, he took hold of a latch at the bottom of his spear and twisted it, in the next second a loud mechanical sound reverberated as the upper half sprung out and extended the spear, nearly puncturing the roof.
It was already quite long, perhaps too long which is why it confused Leo.
"How much longer do you need it to be?"
He retorted with sarcasm as he rolled his eyes, if the spear was five times its size at the start, then now it was ten times its size, how he could still move that thing around was beyond Leo's understanding.
Ranger took aim, spearman took hold of his spear with two hands, they both took a step forward.
It was go time.