The day was long and the sun had soon set in the horizon signaling the final hours of daylight. All had been calm besides the light breeze that would occasionally rush up along the hillsides. Sitting in silence his crimson orbs drifted up to the sun to catch a glimpse of its fading light. It had been one of the few times he ever really took the time to even look at it for he always had to be on the move. There were a lot of reasons he kept moving, but one of them involved being hunted. How he hated fleeing, but he couldn’t handle a straight up fight against these things that had been chasing him, at least since he lost his powers. If he had his powers there would be nothing that could match him at least besides the gods that is. That was his view though and it had gotten him into trouble, but if he had his old powers he wouldn’t be fleeing.
Languidly, his left arm raised in front of him, turning slightly as it had to draw his sword up to a parallel position. Grasping the hilt of his sword in his right hand he withdrew the blade from its sheathe with one swift movement. The noise of sliding metal echoed off into the mountains, which would soon prove to be a bad omen for him. As he pushed forward, a figure caught his attention high up on the cliffs that jutted out from the mountain, causing him to come to a dead halt, “What the…” was all that strayed from his lips as the figure flipped off from the edge of the cliff and descended downward. As the black figure rotated, its hand moved up to the sword behind his head and withdrew it from its sheathe. The figure grasped the sword with both hands, drew it before its face, and then lifted it above his head. Marius’s right arm lifted high above his head and drew the blade of his sword to a parallel base as his left hand lifted to join his right to add extra support and feign off the approaching blow.
As soon as the figure descended upon him, it snapped both of its arms downwards in a forceful manner as it came to a vertical position in the air. With a loud echoing clang, the figures blow knocked Marius off balance and now found its upper hand against the man. Without missing a beat the figure drew the blade down and then brought it up in one forceful manner hoping to strike Marius across the chest or anywhere above that. Stumbling back, Marius caught the man’s intentions and instinctively brought the blade out in futile hope of blocking the oncoming blow. With another loud clang, Marius’s blade flipped high above him and slammed against the rock that jutted out off the rock face. As it deflected off the rock, it flipped a few times and stuck deep into the earth’s surface quite the distance away from them. Marius soon caught his balance and glanced over to his sword, but had no time to react as the figure continued its assault against him. His hands instinctively lifted up to the oncoming blade and caught it between his hands. He did his best to hold the blade at bay, but knew he couldn’t hold it forever so with one simple movement he dropped his left hand and shoved the blade aside with his right.
As the figure’s blade dropped downward, his right hand snapped out to the jawline of the figure where it made a solid contact and sent it to its back. Taking a couple steps back Marius waited for the thing to make a movement, unsure of whether he had this fight wrapped up with that or not, “Come on, get up. I know you’re playing with me.”Sure enough, as soon as Marius finished speaking the creature arose and drew its blade to a slant before itself. Within a split instant, the creature threw itself forward in a all-out dash towards Marius, drawing its sword slightly over its head, prepared to snap it down. Marius read the approach and backed himself back towards the rock face, having concocted some sort of idea that will rid him of this nuisance once and for all, but he knew where one of them came from, that there would always be more. Though, there was nothing he could do besides buy himself some time to build up his power again so he wouldn’t have to worry so much. As the figure approached, Marius crouched down to pick up a loose rock, but doing so gave him a hard position to defend himself, but this was the only time he could buy himself to throw the plan into action, and probably the only chance he would get. The sword careened down to him at a slight angle, causing a heavy whistling sound to emit as the blade sliced through the air and barred down upon him. Through reaction Marius shifted his body slightly off to the left and felt the blade enter the flesh of his right arm, right near the shoulder, but it had only been a glancing blow which only created a gash in his arm instead of slicing it off. Ignoring the pain he arose and whipped the rock high into the air and up to the rock that his sword hit earlier. With a smack the stone came into contact with the rock and glanced off.
The figure watched and observed for a moment, before cackling at the futile attempt of Marius, “Give up and face your fate you fool, there’s nothing you can do to save yourself from---“ The figure’s speech was cut short as Marius tripped him, causing the wind to be knocked from him. Marius scrambled to his feet and in the process grabbed another rock, threw it up at the rock one last time. This time with more success as a loud crumbling sound emitted forth from the rock face. The rock broke free from the rock face and descended to the ground with incredible speed, its aim was perfect with the fallen figure. Marius made his distance from the rock and began his ascent up the hillside with as much speed as he could muster, his left hand holding the wound on his right arm to stop or slow the blood flow, but droplets of blood would mark his path up the hillside. With a loud bang the rock came into contact with the earth’s surface and pooled a small crater around it, but as Marius looked back to see, the figure was no where to be found. A sigh of relief escaped his parted lips, he was alive for another day, but with the wound how long would that be…?
He wasn’t willing to find that out for sure, so instead of standing there he continued his way up the hillside again, this time not rushing as he had been before. As he ascended upward, he occasionally glanced back to make sure the figure had not been stalking him should it have escaped the deadly experience. Lifting his hand from the wound he studied it for a couple moments and then reapplied pressure to it again, “I can’t die yet…” His attention lifted from the bleeding wound and up to the top of the rock formation that he was heading toward, which paled in comparison with the mountains around it, but would still give him a good outlook of the land. As he reached the top, his gaze shifted out over the land trying to pick out where the best place to go would be, but he had known very little about the lands so he picked out a place that seemed the most worthwhile and that was the city of Taras. He thought if he went there, he could at least find a place where he could rest up apposed to out here in the orc infested mountains.