Lords of Shadow

Partner From Hell

Everyone loves a good sparring partner, whether for chess games or a race, but not when the partner was from hell.

'Why wouldn't it die already?!' Loki thought as he pulled harder.

Its mouth was already wide enough to fit two cucumbers vertically, but it still wouldn't give out. Due to its anatomy, it couldn't attack Loki in this position, as long as he kept his hands away from its teeth.

Just then, he heard another splash in the water, and something else neighed. Loki could tell from the pitch that it wasn't a horse, but some evolutionary relative that wouldn't hesitate to have them both for breakfast.

Sharp screeches against the metal of the trench told of terror, and claws, which the mere sight of would be enough to send him into therapy.

He could handle another beast, probably, but not as he was, so improvisation was needed. He shifted his elbow and placed it on the horse's tongue, like setting cheese in a mousetrap, grimaced from thought, and then let go.

The enraged beast clamped down on his flesh, wanting to snap it off. Before his muscles were cut through, Loki dragged back on the beast, pulling it apart a bit more, fuelled by the influx of pain.

Using the superior knowledge that he was vested with...he simply did it again, and again, creating space for an extra cucumber, as he prayed the second beast would not arrive soon.

Just like the unlucky engineer that was probably rotting away somewhere, he jinxed it with his thoughts this time.

As if on cue, the new addition revealed itself, tearing air as it barrelled for them. Loki noticed it before the almost blanked-out horse, and using the pain energy still flowing in his muscles, he rolled out and tossed the horse into the path of the charge.

It was swatted away like a fly, crashing into a tree and remaining still. It wasn't dead yet, but it just chose not to move; it was probably as scared as the thing before them as Loki was.

And the thing before them was what was gotten when war mythologies were crossbred with a rhino.

Loki looked down at its feet, and it didn't have a shadow– annoying. He was perfectly fine with one shadowless creature, but two would dry up his resolve before he even got to his target audience.

The rhino snorted and prepared for a charge, and just before it did, it got split cleanly down the middle. No resistance, no struggle, no cinematics, just brutality and lawlessness.

Loki shuddered.

Behind the dead beast, and almost the size of a hut, stood a spider.

And luckily, and unfortunately as well, it had what Loki was looking for.

A shadow.

His serious face turned grim. All shadow wielders were never to be underestimated, but this was different. If life had taught him anything– apart from how to tuck bread into his clothes unnoticed– it was that the bigger the thing, the stronger it was, and the greater the likelihood that his ribs wouldn't survive the first blow.

He picked up his shiv and waited, taking a stance to counter.

The spider didn't dash; it kicked with one of its legs, which seemed to elongate the rest of the distance, and thunder into Loki's perimeter.

As he flew back, he heard the harsh crack of something, but it wasn't from his insides. The shiv had caught the kick, and was honourably no more. Its splinters sprayed as Loki skipped along the forest floor.

The bee buzzed with anxiety, vacuuming the pain away as quickly as it could. If it slacked, a moment of panging sensation could very well kill Loki.

Loki stood and leapt sideways, narrowly dodging the shooting leg that blitzed by. As it retracted for the next attack, Loki pulled on the familiarity between him and the bee.

Crossing the Rubicon between the impossibly flat world and the one of solid things was difficult, and something to be done with a few seconds to spare.

Without the extra sand in the hourglass, Loki rushed forward, trying to catch the spider from its inside flank where he was sure its monstrous size would hinder defense.

As soon as his legs started pumping forward, they stopped, being swept off the ground and side-first into the nearest tree stump.

The spider didn't fight like a siege engine, but like a spaghetti with will. Loki identified that problem, but the solution only seemed in reach with proper equipment, and he was skin-bare out here.

The bee broke free of the limits with more prodding, floating around Loki with glitchy movements.

The spider swung out its leg again, sweeping up mud and dirt into the air. The bee moved forward, and Loki stepped on it, stretching out as it pushed him into the air, grabbing onto a branch and climbing on. The plan had started to make sense.

The spider swung at him, but he leapt onto the next branch before the leg reached, and with the bee there for error correction, he didn't have to be too monkey-like with his jumps.

The branch snapped like a poorly made toothpick, telling Loki that the structure he was upon couldn't host him through the next five strikes.

He pushed on familiarity, moving the bee in between him and the next tree as he attempted to jump. The spider shot out, chipping a third of the way through the tree off.

Loki could tell what it was doing. He jumped onto the bee, careful not to fall off the shadow with no upper surface. It coasted him onto the next tree, narrowly avoiding the whip of an attack the spider had lashed out.

He frowned.

Running wasn't going to have him claw his way through all this, especially when he wasn't damaging the spider will it, and was only saved due to luck and not skill.

The bee jumped back into the surroundings, seemingly unable to stay in his higher dimensional plane any longer.

El sin nombrē was on his own again. Loki jumped off the tree, trying to grab onto another, but missing. He had expected so, twisting midair and managing to land on his knees instead of his face.

The spider had shot for his previous location, getting one of its legs tangled in crooked branches. It yanked out, sending a few heavy branches smashing down the path Loki was racing on towards it.

He stumbled and yelped as he avoided them, thanking his stars that he didn't have his hand made in the image of the dead driver.

For a moment, he found himself closer than ever to the mountainous beast. But alas, in the next, he was flying backwards, spasming from bursts of pain lasting milliseconds, but occurring more frequently than his rasp breaths.

Suddenly, strength rushed through him, empowering him to rise to his feet. If he played his cards right, this tsunami of vigor would be enough to level the playing fields, even if for a second.

He waited and watched for the next move of the spider, but quickly noticed his pain energy draining.

"Damn! Make haste!"

He couldn't store the energy, the same way he couldn't bottle up pain. It was a 'use now or never' kind of power. And he had just wasted a chunk of it.

The spider's leg thrust forward; something fired from a cannon– whatever a cannon was– grazing Loki's shadow as it missed. The force of wind that followed was enough to bite open his clothes. But that may have been because of the bad tailor who had made it and not the spider's strength.

Before it retracted, Loki grabbed onto it firmly, playing tug of war mid-fight. If he hadn't lost some pain energy, maybe he could have won, but with less than half in his arsenal, he was dragged along with the retracting leg.

He let go just at the right time, close enough to slide below the spider and into its blind spot. But more importantly, into its shadow!

He expected it to rush into his body as the first one had, but it seemed to resist, with its will. That set the stakes:

To absorb this shadow, he would have to make the wielder despair enough to lose will. Simple to the ear, but to the body, it was easier to turn feminine.

The spider's back leg stomped on his, forcing a guttural roar out of his lips and his hand to topple it over. He had learnt he needed to be in close quarters.

He had also learnt something else, or noticed rather, that apart from the first pain he felt when he was inflicted, subsequent pangs from that spot didn't provide pain energy.

He rolled to the side as the spider attempted to stomp again, dodging, but being slightly pushed up by the wind speed rushing below him from impact.

He joined the incidental momentum and stood straight before the spider, spear diving into its belly to hit it again. It didn't work as he planned, but it sure seemed hurt.

Just then, something important weighed on his mind.

'How had that rhino neighed?'

Thinking about it now was comical and confusing. But that was to be tabled with nature somewhere else. He didn't know whether the bee could shut off from too much pain, so as much as it was a boon, he tried to avoid getting hurt too much.

The spider stood upright enough to witness Loki dropping the heavy rock on one of its legs. This leg, along with its counterpart on the left side, had spikes protruding from the hairs around it for stability, but it was probably how it had managed to split the rhino clean.

The spike under the rock cracked, and seeing the chance, he used his elbow to break it off completely. Strengthened by the pain of his own act, he leapt into the air and brought the spike down on its head, grimacing as a poignant liquid splashed out.

From here, physics prevented the spider from harming Loki, but its violent sways would soon throw him off, so he made haste with his work.

He got a few piercings in before friction lost the fight to violence, and it let him fall off. Luckily, he still had the spike in hand.

Noticing the change in stance of the other spiked leg, pre-telling that it was going to attempt to cleave him, he cut himself along his thigh and rushed forward, planted one leg in front, and with the momentum gathered, launched the spear forward into the spider.

It had so much hair that he couldn't tell where the spike was, but he could tell it hurt, and hurt them both.

At this point, the spider abandoned regularity and rushed forward, but this was what Loki had been waiting for. With the remnants of pain energy, he dashed back and tightened his fists, intentionally slowing to allow the spider to catch up, although not by too much.

Once it had reached his desired location, Loki turned and punched the tree that the spider had earlier chipped off. The first blow didn't do much, but the second did.

He moved and pushed from the other side, felling the tree with much force. It crashed into the spider with a heavy thud, forcing it to leak out a good part of its inside fluids.

As it struggled to push it off, Loki ran for it and took out the spike embedded in it, then began to poke around, weakening its strength before it had gathered enough to free itself.

He was able to keep it going for long enough, until he couldn't anymore, and not because the spider got out, but because of two things:

He stepped into its shadow as he struck, and it suddenly rushed into him, killing the beast and rendering him almost immobile.

And secondly...the militants had arrived!