Jack Primus versus Vile Darken

Jack hugged Tynilia’s unconscious body as they both plunged to the ground. The trees rushed up to meet them and Jack attempted something he had never done before. Becoming a snake might save him, but he would never do anything to allow Tynilia to be harmed, so instead of becoming a snake, he transformed his right arm into a long serpent tail. He hadn’t done this before, but Yig loves heroes and fools and his arm grew into a twenty foot tail and as they started to crash through the branches, he used his prehensile limb to entwine a tree.

The trick worked and he stopped their decent, but at the cost of almost dislocating his shoulder. He bit back a cry while lowering them both to the jungle floor. But their problems were all but over for a ball of fire four yards wide connected with the forest. Some luck found them for it passed eight feet over his head before exploding into a mass of liquid flame.

 

The jungle above his head was ablaze as well and dark embers fell around him like snowflakes of death.

 

“Primus I come for you! I know a slippery Yigling like you won’t be dead yet. But soon you will wish you were. Perhaps I’ll start by making you watch me rape your mate to death.”

Jack growled through clenched teeth as he saw the black and purple form of Vile float into the burning jungle. He shot up his hands and the trees came alive grasping and clawing at the Overlord.

 

“Please don’t waste your child’s tricks on me,” he laughed and with the move of his arms the trees blasted into splinters like they had been caught between twin hurricanes.

 

A moment later the point of Jack’s throwing knife took him in the forehead, but bounced away. It hadn’t hurt Vile, but it sure seemed to throw him into a greater rage. “You devolved bastard! You think you are so mighty.” Vile drew his smoking cutlass and lowered himself through the flaming canopy until his feet rested on the ground twenty feet before Jack.

Vile Darken marched toward him. The air dissolved at the touch of his saber and foul burning black drops spilled from the curved blade. “I will dispatch you myself. I will need no Bestows for the likes of you.”

 

Jack set his jaw while swinging his giant axe up into a two handed grip. “I’ve waited for a chance to do this for a long time.”

 

With an insulting casualness, Vile back handed toward Primus with his cutlass.

 

Jack blocked the blow, but at the price of the tips of one of his axe’s crescents of sharpened steel being cut away.  “I’ve had this axe a long time,” he said, but he had a hard time not imagining what the blade would do to simple flesh.

When the blow moved past him, Jack held the axe vertical and smashed Vile in the back. Vile tried to laugh, but Jack hit him again and pushed him head first into a tree. He came around with the lower handle of the axe and sent it into his cheekbone. Vile tried to take a step back but was pinned against a tree.

 

The axe blade came up and hit Vile in the center of his chest. For any normal man it would have been a killing blow, but Vile Darken has not been a normal man for a long time.

 

With his dark bearded face only inches from Jack’s, Vile roared as his eyes burned red. “Idiot! Why do you bother?” Disregarding his earlier boast, he used some type of telekinetic Bestow to fling Jack back against a tree of his own.

 

Jack grasped through broken ribs and then fell forward onto his hands and knees.

Vile kicked the axe away.

 

How could he have moved so fast? Jack wondered as he drew forth his blade of Yig.

 

“I tire of this. Snakes don’t need limbs do they, so let’s lose a few of yours.”

 

Jack had started to roll away, but the cutlass swung down and removed Jack’s left arm just below the elbow.

 

Jack screamed in both pain and terror as he gazed down at his severed limb.

 

Vile leaned over and said, “Now for the other one.” Jack threw his knife, but Vile just batted it away.

 

Without warning, Jack felt himself being flung away from Vile. At first he thought it was an attack, but then he heard Vile curse. Jack tumbled to a stop near Tynilia’s unconscious form.

 

Despite his grievous wounds, he detected a strange buzzing. He looked down at his remaining hand and it appeared to be vibrating. Moving, but then fading only to return and start wavering again.

 

Then he heard his own voice crying out to him. “Heal Ty, my brother. Escape, it will be up to you to finish this!”

 

He looked back and saw himself, this world’s incarnation of his soul, his body, his essence, his power. The other Jack dressed like a Mayan warrior. Green feathers clung to his buckskin pants and jerkin. He smiled his way as he fought Darken with a mace headed spear.

 

“Heal her awake and flee. You’re this world’s only chance.”

 

“I am this world’s only chance, only chance to do anything other than just die!” As he spoke Vile’s cutlass broke the Mayan Jack’s weapon in half.

 

“No wait. Don’t do this.”

“My world, my sacrifice, now save my girl!”

 

Fighting against unconsciousness and knowing he needed some healing himself, Jack placed his hand on Tynilia and focused his remaining Ki into healing her. When her eyes fluttered open he used the last ebb of his mystic strength to heal his arm enough that the bleeding caused.

“Tynilia, we have to go.” His voice sounded worse than he felt.

 

“What’s happening.” Her eyes took in the battle. “Oh no, my Jack.”

 

He words hurt him even through the fog of pain. Was she really his? How had he allowed himself to get so close to another man’s woman, even if the other man was him?

 

She flung her spirit knife and if struck Vile in the back of the head and then reappeared in her hand. The other Jack fought Vile with everything he had. Weapons flew all around the pair. He’d drawn blood from several wounds he given to the Overlord. Tynilia flung her dagger again. Jack wanted to aid his incarnation, but it was already too late.

Mayan Jack smashed his mace into the side of Vile’s head, but Vile growled and swung his weapon cutting that Jack in half at the waist.

 

Tynilia Screamed as Jack struggled to his feet.

 

She threw her spirit weapon again.

“It is too late. We have to go. Take us back to the dragons.” She hesitated. “Come on Ty, let’s burn this fucker to the ground!”

 

A second later only a mist of inky smoke remained was witness to Vile’s cursing.

 

Come back next Monday to see if Jack and Tynilia can somehow survive.

 

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