I turned to face the fishmen and pressed my hands together. The Vigor was already prepared and ready, my anger providing a boost to my fire channels. I summoned an Untamed Torch and sent it rocketing toward the fishman who was spectating. The fireball caught him in the back, and he tumbled into the water. Steam drifted from his body, and he staggered to his feet as I moved for his companions.
They let go of the woman and turned to face the new threat while Kegohr and Vesma sprinted along beside me. Our enemies had quickly gained their composure, and the element of surprise was lost.
“Hold back,” I said as I kept my eyes on our enemies. “Don’t get too close. We don’t know what Augmentation abilities they might have.”
One fishman drew a weapon that looked like a massive curved meat hook. The other reached into the water and pulled out a bronze trident with sharpened prongs.
“Thank you!” the naked woman yelled as she snatched her robes from the edge of the river. “I really didn’t have time to deal with them.”
The fishmen turned their heads and snarled, but the woman dived into the water before they could go after her. She continued down the river until her body drifted over the waterfall.
“Is she crazy?” Kegohr asked.
“Yaaa!” the fishman I’d scorched with a fireball screamed as he pulled himself from the water. The gills on his neck flared as he grabbed his spear, its jagged barbs like the head of a harpoon.
He said something again, louder this time and clearly directed at us. Now that I was used to his weird accent, I was starting to make sense of what he was saying. He’d said something about us being intruders from a guild and that he would slaughter us.
“Try it, fish-face!” I yelled. “Let’s see how far you get.”
The blood pulsed in my veins as Vigor flowed through me. It was as if the power had a will of its own, a will to fight. There was no need to resist that impulse, not when I could turn powerful magic against common bandits.
I brought my hands together. With a deep breath, I opened up the channels of fire. The elemental power coalesced between my palms, becoming a ball of flames that burned with a bright, searing heat. Before I could summon the required energy to hurl it, a fishman’s expression became distant, and a wet haze started flowing from his skin. It became a Smothering Mist, but instead of billowing around him, this one focused in front of him. I sent an Untamed Torch toward him, and it hit the cloud. Both fire and water disappeared, vanishing in a cloud of steam.
The fishman charged at me and swung his hook. I dodged around it as I drew the Sundered Heart Sword. His next blow came whistling past me, and I parried it before twisting my wrist and catching the hook on my sword. We wrestled for dominance, straining as we pressed against each other’s blades, so close that I could feel his cold breath on my skin. Caught in a deadlock, I twisted my sword around, aiming to disarm him and give me a decisive advantage, but he turned along with me, freed his hook, and swung in with a low attack that forced me back along the riverbank.
The fishman advanced in flowing, circular steps that carried him around me, like the current in a whirlpool. I anticipated his next movement and slashed, but he twisted clear, and I hit empty air. Then, his blade whipped toward my right shoulder, and I flung myself beneath the blow. I rolled across the ground into the shallows of the pool, where I came to my feet, sword raised again.
The fishman laughed, a gurgling sound like a drain being cleared. Then, he strode into the water after me. While waist-deep in the pool, his blows came harder and faster but remained in the flowing style. The water seemed to cling to his slick flesh, and I figured it was somehow making him stronger. I attempted to move the direction of our duel back toward dry land, but he maintained his rapid succession of mighty swings. I dodged his hook by an inch and whispered a sigh of relief that he hadn’t gutted me with it.
I raised my empty hand, palm outward, and called on the power of Stinging Palm. Thorns shot through the air to hit the fishman in the face, and blood sprayed from a series of ragged gashes in his cheek. The injury only seemed to impassion him further, though, and he came at me with twice the fervor.
Despite my attempts to leave the water, our struggle took us deeper into the pool. Our blades crashed and flashed against each other, droplets of water flying with each attack and counterattack. The sun gleamed down on us while, on the bank, my friends struggled against opponents of their own.
Fencing wasn’t working, so I changed my approach. As the fishman pulled his weapon back to prepare another attack, I slammed into him shoulder first. He staggered before falling, and I went with him, the two of us tumbling into the water.
I let go of my sword and reached for a knife on my belt with one hand while I grabbed the fishman by the throat with the other hand. Going into the water had thrown him off his rhythm, but it had also given him a home-ground advantage. Using his webbed hands and feet, he turned the two of us around so that I ended up on the bottom. We hit the mud at the base of the pool, with the fishman straddling me, one hand pressed against my face, the other gripping the wrist of my knife-hand.
Perhaps the memory of the elemental plane had made
