malise and the machine

“And why would I do that? You tried to kill me, remember? Maybe I should just strangle the life from you, or would you prefer a quick beheading? The choice is yours, unless you can give me a reason to spare your life. But I’m curious, weren’t you locked up with the other zealots when my friends at the Knight’s Sheath revealed the church’s conspiracy?”“I have nothing to say to you!”

He pushed against the seal, using his mana to separate from his clone, but it was like he was buried in concrete. He couldn’t project his mana even a centimeter beyond his skin. It was even more difficult than performing his workout, but this was precisely what he wanted. Saimallah said that he and his fellow monks used these headbands to train their projection abilities, and there was no better way than this. As he struggled and strained, the seal began to give, ever so slightly, feeling less like concrete and more like rubber.

Roc had the advantage of experience against this style, but his missing arm proved a debilitating handicap. In one regard, it made dodging easier, as he had less mass to move out of the way of Ingram’s attacks, and he couldn’t be slowed down with painful flesh wounds to the missing limb, but it also left his offense and defense on his right side almost nonexistent. Depending on who he was fighting and what type of combatant they were, the severity of such a handicap was variable, but against such a similar warrior, his disadvantage was increasingly evident with each passing second. Back and forth, over and over, they hurled attacks at each other and then pulled back, using their wings to move in and out of each other’s reach.