"Scornas," Sethera said. We were in a local inn called 'The Sleepyhead', and we just got a contract to get two swords named Salvation and Damnation.
As you already know, my name is Scornas. I have blackish blue eyes, pale skin (though i'm in the sun. A lot), and I have long, beautiful black hair that goes to my shoulders. My weapons of choice are dual blades, though I do use a shield sometimes. I come from a long line of war priests and priestesses faithful to the gods of fire and ice, that combined my skill with dual swords made me very efficient with combat. I was kicked out of the shrine I worked in due to being framed of murder and started a career in bounty hunting, where I met Sethera.
"Scornas, wake up!" She shouted, trying to get me awake. Sethera was a mage from the mages guild from the capital in Regnum. She got kicked out due to being too destructive with the equipment and magic she uses and took up bounty hunting, like me. She has long as white hair, a luscious body, and a lot of magic. She has a rapier that she uses for certain spells, but other then that she doesn’t use it much. We both had the same contract to many things, and ended up working together a few times, until we got a contract to kill witches. Witches in this world are very powerful and deadly, but often live away from society. Apparently, an aristocrat had a grudge with a group of witches named ‘The Witches of Agony’ and had put a bounty on their heads, which grew as time passed by. By the time me and Sethera took it up, the bounty was 5,000 platinum, and that was enough to buy at least a small country.
"Five more hours," I said. To make a summery of what happened, we went to their lair, told them that they had a bounty on their heads which they took the wrong way, fought, almost died, and killed them. Afterwards, we went to the aristocrat and told him that the witches were dead and showed him proof. We got paid exactly 100 platinum, and his guards had almost killed us when we demanded more. After we escaped, we slept in the local inn.
After a few years working together, we find a contract to get two swords, Salvation and Damnation. They were the swords of a hero that he had lost during a fight, and is too injured to go adventuring anymore. (Think he said he took an arrow to the knee…) The bounty for them was 1,000 platinum, so like the greedy bounty hunters we are, we took it up. Of course, we were injured and I was in bad need of rest from the previous bounty we had.
Sethera sighed, bent down close to my ear and whispered, "Sanae is here.”
I shot up and shouted, "MY BODY IS READY!!!"
I clapped and all of my clothing flew off of me in an instant. When looked around and saw that Sanae wasn't here and frowned intensely.
"Dammit Sethera..."
"You need to wake up. It's time to get going, we need to finish this quest and get those swords."
"We'll I'm sore all over from that fight with that laser shooting donkey, so… no," I Grumbled.
"We still need to do that quest," She said.
"But there's no set time limit for completion."
"But there is competition. Now put on some cloths.”
She got my gear and clothing from the corners of the room and tossed them to me. I sighed, got my equipment and put on a black overcoat after I strapping on my sword belt and getting my two swords: Fulmen and Glaciem.
After a long, long walk down the northern road, we finally get to the Forest of Demons. Despite it’s name, the only demon ever to come here left after a year of doing absolutely nothing. I know he did nothing because I had a nice conversation with him over tea, but that's a story for another time. So we arrive at the monster-infested-but-demon-free Forest of Demons where the hero what's-his-face had lost his swords. Surprisingly, we didn’t see any monsters until we got to the place where the swords were supposed to be. I guess fate decided to make the way here easy for what's going to happen here, because as soon as we get inter the small clearing we face an ugly manticore and an equally ugly chimera.
"Manticore. Damn thats ugly" I said. The thing had the body of a lion (with an ugly face), the wings of a bat, and the tail of a scorpion.
"Damn chimera," Sethera cursed while readying a spell. The chimera being a combination of random animals being a tiger, a bee, and a snake.
"You take the chimera, I'll have to deal with the Manticore," I said as I charged at the creature. I raised Glaciem and took a swipe at him and tried to dodge his tail. I barely moved out of the way in time and cut off his tail, but my sword cracked a little. Damnit' I thought. I sheathed Glaciem and readied Fulmen, charging a bit of my power into it. I made a vertical swipe at him as he charged and a mini wave of fire came out of the blade, and I dashed behind him as he blocks the attack with his wing. I jumped onto his back and saw a strange marking on his neck.
"I didn't know I was in the Colossus Tournament..."
I plunged my blade into the mark and black blood spewed out from the wound. This elicited a screech from the manticore and caused it to shake me off, Fulmen still in it's neck.
"GAH!" I shouted as I fell. As I fell I saw a peak of Sethera’s fight with the chimera. The chimera had some earthen spikes on some places and cuts on the other, but relatively ok in terms of damage. Sethera, on the other hand, had many cuts and bruises on her arms and legs and a large gash across her chest so... She looked really bad. I got back up and readied my other sword, Glaciem, and planted it in the ground. The manticore turned around leaped at me with its claws unsheathed.
“Fuck it,” I say as the manticore flies to me. The manticore misses me by the skin of my teeth and I give a fatal slice to its under belly, its organs spilling out all over me.
“Ewwwwwwww, monster guts!” I shout out. before I look towards the other fight. The chimera was facing away from me, so getting on it was simple.
I leaped onto the beast's back and stabbed it with both swords, and it started bucking like no tomorrow.
”A little help here!” I shouted. I pulled out one of my swords and stabbed the chimera again, making it screech and buck harder. I briefly looked at Sethera, and saw that she was out cold.
“Well shi-” I said before I was bucked off the chimera. Glaciem was in my hand with the top half still in the chimera with Fulmen. I raised my broken sword in the light and laid it on the ground. I get up and threw up a large ward before the chimera got to me.
“Oh how e’er will I get out of this one I wonder” I say as I push my ward and pick up my broken sword. I run up to the chimera and stab it in the eye. As the beast screeches, I jump on it and grab onto fulmen, right before it bucks me off again, this time with me holding onto a sword that hasn't been damaged yet. We charge at each other and I shove the sword into the beast’s face. And then it's snake tail bit me before Sethera finally gets up and stabs its heart with her rapier. I barely have enough strength to say “Fucking finally,” before I black out from the poison.
“Fucking chimera, fucking poison, fucking Mana Over Use” Sethera says as she drags Scornas into an abandoned shack with a basement. She had already used some anti-venom on him so he could live and had use some Estus on him so he wouldn’t bleed to death and so she wouldn't freeze from MOU. She had found a shack nearby when she was looking for a place to hide, and luckily it had a basement that was in good condition. Who would build a shack in a place like this, she doesn’t know but it works to her advantage. She took the hide that was left from the manticore and used it as a blanket for Scornas and drank a mana potion so she wouldn’t risk freezing to death when she fights another monster. The rest of the day was mostly quiet, with her only having to kill a few more monsters for their meat and pelts, and the occasional screech of a dying rabbit-monster-thing.
After about a day and a night, Scornas finally woke up. He got up, searched the FUCK out of the basement, alerting Sethera of her companions state, and he shot up to her in excitement.
“Hey Sethera, Guess what I found!“ Scornas shouts out from the basement. He then pops out of the door and waves what looks like two swords that look like they were once one sword. One was a black blade with some pretty decor while the other one was a white one with little decor.
“Are those the swords we need?“ Sethera asks.
“Yeah, but I don't wanna give these swords back! And there unbound leveling weapons too!” Scornas exclaimed gleefully.
“Well considering how excited you look, im assuming you want me to bind them to you?” Sethera asked. Scornas flew to her as soon as she said that and presented both of the weapons to her.
“YES! YES! YES! YESYESYESYESYES!” Scornas shouted with glee.
“But think about the 1,000 platinum!” She feebly countered.
“Think about how much more money we could get if I had these swords!” he countered
“Fine, but you better get me 500 platinum after this,” she said as she examined both of the swords They clearly looked like they were meant to be one sword, but she couldn't see why or how they were separated. the sigils on both swords had obviously shown there was an extremely powerful leveling enchantment on them, but there was one more enchantment on them that was where the two swords are supposed to meet. she sighed and proceeded to go through the painful process of binding a weapon to someone.
Sethera got Scornas, cut his hand, and let the blood get absorbed by the two blades enchantments. Scornas, of course, complained about the entire process. The blood eerily ran down the blades sigils smoothly, making Sethera wonder who enchanted these two swords so masterfully. After the blood reached to the last edges of the blades, she moved to heal Scornas' wounds until the blades started to do something the didn’t think would ever happen; the blades drained Scornas's life force until he had barely enough to stay alive. The blades cut open a space of reality which sucked both them and the two bounty hunters into it, throwing them out of their dimension and into the void, and into another realm not there own.
--/]2 days later[--
Twilight woke up from a loud roar near the edge of the town. Fearing the worst, she quickly got up, put on her saddles and teleported out of her library. She galloped to the source of the roar, fearing whatever could have happened to the towns people. She found a large biped standing over a dead manticore, wearing a tattered black clothing covering it's entire body and wielding two massive swords. It had a lot of injuries, but it didn't seem to faze it. Blood didn't even leak from the wounds.
The manticore on the other hoof had its tail one one of its limbs missing, large slashes and some of its organs were out of its body. The biped saw twilight and waved at her enthusiastically, and twilight promptly emptied her stomach and fainted.
"Well that was rude. She fainted as soon as I waved at her!" I said as I took whatever was useful from the manticore. When I finished, I casted a decay spell on the dead body and carried the purple horse to the fountain that was conveniently nearby.
"How the hell did I know she was a girl?" I said before a rainbow blur passed by my head. I barely had time to put the purple horse down before I was knocked back by the new enemy. I managed to grab the thing that attacked and pinned her on the ground, and revealed the aggressor to be a cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane. A quick jab in the head made quick work for the mare and she was out cold.
"I guess she was supposed to be strong, but that was just pitiful. I don't like being over powered." I say before I toss both of them in the fountain. Both of them wake up, and I take a few steps towards the forest before I feel something hit me in the back of the head. It wasn't blunt, but t had enough force to stagger me. I quickly turn around and see the unicorn's head lowered with her horn pointing at me. She shot a laser at me, and I started to feel drowsy. I immediately used a purification spell on myself and shot her with a minor paralysis spell before a rainbow blur pounded me into the ground. The cyan pony pummeled me into the ground before I had anytime to react. 'Damn you for making me a masochist, author' Screw you to I thought as the cyan finally stopped, much to my displeasure relief.