The entire street shuddered as spectators, aggressors, and passerby’s all ducked and trembled. Anyone within the immediate area of the circle held their heads as their ears began ringing, it was a sensation wholly alien to the civilians and workers who’d never left the city or seen combat. Those who had would only be able to relate it to experiences viewing the largest of explosions or great lighting spells up close. To the fools seeking a fight however, they saw an opening.

  “Ha! Nice party trick hunter. That might work out on the swamp against bugs and rats but you’re here with the professionals now. I’ve fought my fair share of you uptight princesses, and I know a mana sink when I see one.” The bull man said gravely, working to get his frazzled thug’s hearts back into the fight. Slowly but surely they all abandoned their cowering stances to stand back beside their massive leader.

  “Yeah! The newcomer just used his most expensive ability to scare us off, we know ball here in myreluck though! This toolbag probably doesn’t have any mana left!” The reptilian man who’d only moments before been cowering and covering his ears.

  “It’s not a mana sink!” Ozzy shouted back at the group, wishing for all the world they would just leave them be.

  “And so the lie continues.” The bull man tsked, smiling under a mock look of disappointment. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Moving like lightning the bull man practically teleported forwards, fist outstretched towards Ozzy as he announced his attack with a thunderous war cry. Trying to step to the side Ozzy felt as the world compressed around him, each movement growing exponentially more difficult than the last until he lost the ability to breathe. Even the air inside of his lungs protested, feeling like at any moment it would rip free of his lungs and chest in an explosive release of air and organs.

  Before he could feel his lungs give however the bull man reached him. A fist the size of a car battery made contact with his sternum right as the crushing force the world had been smothering him with released. It was like he’d been shot out of a cannon and with Furry Fortitudes mass reducing qualities and the massive amount of power driven into him he flew backwards. He passed Emil who looked back at him in a mix of shock and- was that laughter???

  Ozzy impacted the brutally uneven brickwork of an industrial buildings, had he been a normal human the force of the impact would probably have killed him as he was however it just rearranged his vertebrae knocking the wind out of him as he bounced back off of the wall like a stuffed animal.

  “Ow.” Ozzy gasped, coughing as his beaten lungs did their best to pull air back into themselves.

  Back in the center of the circle Emil was dancing around the bull man, for all Emil had told him he was only a passable swordsman he was practically running circles around the massive man. Whenever the bull man would go for a strike Emil would slap him on the wrist with the flat of his blade, then spinning around a followup punch cut him on the side, leaving an array of gashes and cuts all along the bull mans side.

  For all intents and purposes it looked like the hunter was enjoying himself, Ozzy had been under the impression that what they were getting themselves into was a serious fight and that he wasn’t to hold back. Emil clearly wasn’t sticking to his own rule.

  “Dude what are you doing, stop messing around?” Ozzy shouted, unsteadily getting back to his feet. Looking on at the situation with more than a little annoyance.

  “These guys are losers, I’d feel really bad actually hurting one of them!” Emil shouted, batting aside another strike from the bull man who could only shout louder in frustration.

  “You don’t need a hand then?” Ozzy shouted back, busying himself stretching his back out as he rolled his eyes.

  “Nah I’m alri—” Emil’s sentence was cut short as with a misting of red a bolt appeared in his side, stopping his movement short as the bull man struck just in time to catch him with a glancing blow sending him spinning.

  Just as quickly as he’d gone down the thugs were on him, kicking and beating until with a brilliant red glow a dome pushed his attackers away from him, growing spikes as it finished its growth.

  “Break it! Use blades, clubs won’t hurt it!” The bull man shouted at his thugs, before turning to look at Ozzy, his a painting of rage and violent promise.

  Sighing and standing to his full height Ozzy re-summoned his revolver. This was the way of things of course, he thought. Violence always escalated, and due to the poor choices of friends and foe he would have to use his weapon against a another man. While he didn’t want to say he blamed Emil it was hard not to. His friend could have ended the fight, cut the bull mans wrists, slit a tendon, or otherwise incapacitated him. Instead he’d messed around, and found out just how underhanded a band of street thugs could be. Now it was up to Ozzy to use a weapon of war, one of no finesse, or quarter, and certainly no mercy. Anything he did to this man would be messy, no easy fixes, not even for this magical place.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Just so you know! This is no weapon of half measures, it destroys and kills just as easily as you swing those fists around. Final warning.” Ozzy spoke with all of the authority he could muster, leveling the firearm at the encroaching thug. His words fell on deaf ears.

  “Words are easy newcomer, you wanna scare someone you’ll have t—”

  BANG

  An explosion the bull man didn’t think Ozzy would be capable of conjuring a second time ripped out of his strange weapon, deafening the world around them, ripping and tearing through him with a force and ferocity he could never have imagined.

  BANG

  A second explosion followed, turning shock and surprise into fearful awe. The round went tearing into the bull mans other shoulder, stealing the feeling and power he’d come to know and expect from his powerful arms.

  “I can do this all day!” Ozzy shouted, adrenaline and the rush of combat coursing through his veins as he stared the thugs down.

  BANG BANG BANG BANG, he fired from the hip into the ceiling sealing his dreadful promise with action as every person in the street stood frozen and in awe of the display of destructive might.

  Silence continued to stretch, until with a scream, the bull man shattered it. The pain and tearing pull he’d felt during the explosions making their sources known as he tried to raise his arms. Inside of his body muscle pulled on disconnected bone and contracted in on itself, disfiguring internals as systems that had forever been one were made incomplete. The two boring holes through the bull mans shoulders were to blame.

  To the onlookers it looked as though plugs of flesh and bone had been pulled from the massive man, and then the blood began to flow.

  Overcome of pain and panic the bull man turned to run, rallying his fellows who until now had all been frozen in shock and terror with sharp brutal words in a language Ozzy couldn’t understand. They all went stumbling off, following the bull mans bloody wake through the crowd to disappear into the darkness.

  Emil’s ability winked out of existence moments later, a bedraggled hunter left laying in a heap in the center of where the dome had been.

  “Sorry everyone, we’ll get out of your hair. I’ll give roqs to anyone who can show me where the healers who work with the fishing wagons are at.” Ozzy shouted, reaching down to pull Emil off of the ground and draping one of the big mans arms around his shoulders to support him.

  He began to start moving him when a sharp pain erupted from his back and through his stomach, he stumbled, dropping Emil and rolling to the side to see what had happened when the snarling face of the reptilian man from earlier came into view, already lunging for him with his long dirk poised for a life ending sash across Ozzy’s jugular.

  In a single smooth motion he re-summoned his revolver, tilted it upwards in line with the reptilian mans head, and let the hammer drop.

  Gore erupted in a fountain as blood, brain matter, and spinal fluid followed the massive bullet out of the reptile mans skull. The shower reaching an impressive fifteen feet before chunks of brain fell hitting the floor around the dead reptile man with wet slaps and splorches.

  A scream erupted from the crowd, it was shrill high pitched warble in the tone of loss. Streaking out of the crowd like a bolt of lightning a woman with a reptilian face dove on top of the corpse of the man Ozzy had just killed.

  “No no no no! You killed him! You killed my Arthur, no no no please! Gods! Please don’t let him go, please!” The woman clawed at the earth hugging the thing that had been Arthur close as she sobbed. Praying out loud as she besought divine intervention that would not come.

  Ozzy felt himself be sick, and with strength he didn’t know he had grabbed Emil and stole off into the crowd.

  ***

  Ozzy ran, dragging Emil along despite his cries moans of pain. Everywhere they went people made space for them. Avoiding them like the omens of death and danger they were. Perhaps it wasn’t all that uncommon of an occurrence down here, perhaps they were simply just a single pair in a long line of victims.

  They only stopped once Ozzy found an empty alley, in which he emptied his guts into an empty wooden box, coughing and wretching. Emil, along for the ride and ever his favorite optimist was still out for the count and unable to add any positive words. Between his beat down and what had been an unforgiving pace Ozzy was honestly just glad he was still breathing. It had looked like the thugs had done everything short of cutting him into tiny pieces, Ozzy doubted the man would be doing much of anything until he got to the healers.

  Sighing loudly Ozzy leaned back into the opposite wall, wiping the sick from his face with a sleeve as took a moment to himself.

  “Once you’re not practically halfway into the grave I’m gonna tear you a new one.” Ozzy grumbled at Emil.

  The silence that followed was nearly unbearable, and Ozzy leaned forward, willing himself to regain the energy he needed to carry Emil further. Sitting there was worse than torture, and with each moment he spent catching his breath, trying throw off the nausea, were moments he spent thinking of the woman on top of the man he’d killed.

  Had he just killed a husband? A son? Had this man had children?. It was murder. Regardless as to whether or not it had been in self defense, he had just killed a man, and he would never be whole again.

  He needed to get moving.

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