Temujin flinched when the thunderbolt when off. It was understandable - the spell's flash and report may not have been anywhere close to what a real lightning strike would have been like at that range, but compared to the relative darkness and quiet of the twilight battlefield it was no less stunning, and the brilliance did an excellent job of disabling his night vision.
Medusa hadn't actually been using her eyes to see anyway. The ring she'd thrown settled neatly around his neck, and a quick twist of the wrist tightened it and ensured it would stay there. She looped the chain around that hand once, twice, then set both hands together and yanked as hard as she could. Without a longer pull, it was only enough to stagger him, but by the time he'd come back on balance and slashed the links away, it was too late even to brace himself.
Servants were hard to kill. Their bodies were not organisms, as such, as much as - to be poetic - mere clay, guided by the apothesized spirit of a former human being and powered by the mana of their Masters. That lack of reliance on the delicate physical balances and processes of ordinary life did not, however, mean that they likewise lacked weak points. A limb whose joints, muscles, or connective tissues had been damaged or severed was still rendered unusable, the heart had as much to do with distributing mana as blood, and the soul, out of its own perceptions as much as anything else, still lived behind the eyes.
If Temujin had been able to see clearly, it wouldn't have worked.
He couldn't.
It did. One dagger scraped along the length of his saber in a spray of sparks, leverage and the momentum of her charge forcing it down and away out of his instinctive guard, and then the other was spearing forwards in her other hand and sliding all-too-easily between his ribs.
His eyes widened. "Next...time..." he forced out, before a wracking cough sent a trickle of blood from his mouth.
"Perhaps," she answered as it began to precede the rest of his body in dissolving away into the sort-lived greenish sparks of raw mana in open air. Then she slipped her blade free of his heart and glanced around at the rest of the battlefield.
Sorry to cut down my output like this, but it's Finals Time. ^_^;
I hope I'll be able to keep up at least one story post every couple of days, but I'll be alternating between this thread and the Mai-X thread, so it might seem like less.
No promises, though.
Ja, -n
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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"