Your eyes open.
A bright light is surrounding you and it does not let you see anything for a few seconds. When you get used to it, you see you are standing in a reddish cobblestone floor. In any other direction you look, you can't see further than about a hundred feet. Beyond, there is only a blinding white light. Four creatures are standing in front of you, three of them are of normal height, but the other is almost twice as tall. All of them are covered in Hellknight armor, but the horns in their helms have apparently been cut off.
With their maces in hand, the human-sized hellknights move towards you.
The magus would cringe some where he sat as the three knights approached, reaching for his blade in hopes it was still there while also trying to scoot back. "Is there a problem here? he'd ask, trying to buy time.
The hellknights don't respond, but you realize the bigger one has been turning his back to you all along. He starts to move around and, when he is facing you, you see two fist-sized emeralds incrusted in the front of his helmet, their bright is even more powerful than the one of the white light.
Luckily for you, the hellknights don't seem to have your agility and reflexes, and you are quickly ready to fight.
Vincent would quickly rise seeing the enemy slowed by their heavy armor. He could always question one of these fools later, right now needing to play this little skirmish out. He'd cast his spell of shield, extra protection for the battle ahead while drawing from his innate eldritch blood. He'd let them come to him, crushing the small fry before collecting his prizes within the large ones head.
Since the moment you whisper the words to create a shield, you sense a weird sensation inside you, like if you aren't controlling the magic, but the magic is controlling you. The spell goes out of control, but it somehow works and you feel the shield in front of you. The mystic focus comes almost instantly, and you feel your skin thighten and an emptyness in your belly, it means it worked.
The third Hellknight, the shortest, slowly moves in diagonal towards your right, always facing you, while the first one does the same thing to your left, getting fairly close to you, tough the route he takes is more an arc than a straight line. The second Hellknight, instead, runs quickly and you only see his huge mace moving towards your head.
The Hellknight comically crashes against your invisible shield, instantly stopping the charge, but quickly getting ready to keep fighting.
Never one to pass up an oppurtunity, Vincent began to cast another spell, drawing forth the arcane power into hand. He was careful to cast its power while remaining on the defensive, sacrificing a bit of accuracy in exchange for electrical power to channel through his body, knowing full well it would balance out in its attraction towards the brutes metal armor. He couldn't afford to spellstrike the heavily armored knight, not wanting to risk the blade not penetrating his defenses and wasting the spell. He had to bring these morons down fast and find out where he was.
Also love how my final attack was a double nat 20 xD
When you electrify your hand, you can feel the strange magic again. You try to focus to control it while keeping an eye on the hellknight, but it is not easy. Still, you manage to grasp the hellknight's gauntlet, and the shock travels through his body. He takes a few steps back, and loses his balance, allowing you to attack him with your scimitar, first in the arm you are still grabbing, and then a few other times in the joints, which his armor doesn't fully cover, without allowing him to fight back. Finally, the hellknight rises his mace, but leaves his neck unprotected in the process, covered only by a few layers of black silk. You swing your scimitar at it and, for a few fractions of a second, you wonder if you have defeated him.
You have. The hellknight falls to the ground, face-down, and a black blood starts to sprout from beneath him.
The third hellknight doesn't seem to care his partner is down. He keeps surrounding you to your right and, when he is about 15 feet away from you, he throws his mace at you with a surprising force.
The mace is not very aerodynamic, and it lands at your side while the first hellknight approaches you from behind and attacks you.
You easily dodge the first swing of the mace, and the second one crashes against your invisible shield.
One down. Two to go. Vincent had always been a bit of a surgeon in terms of combat, planning ahead and striking where he needed. He was a little heated though he'd admit, his strikes feeling slightly sloppy in his attempts to finish this quickly. As far as he was concerned, someone was challenging him and he wasn't getting paid. Someone would though, they'd pay dearly for the situation he was in. Turning on the first Hellknight now, he wouldn't offer his bleeding friend or the unarmed knight a second glance, intending to take him down as well. Rather than waste another spell just yet, he'd instead call upon his Eldritch power to empower the weapon he held, using its magical essense to provide it both extra force and a sharpened edge.
You keep attacking to the first hellknight's joints and neck, and you hit him many times. Your sharp scimitar even slashes through his armor and it hurts his chest a few times. You don't manage to take him down, though.
The third hellknight surrounds you, without getting too close, and moves to the side of his companion, which sends a blow to you that distracts you as the third hellknight tries to grab your waist.
Not in any mood for their combined assault, Vincent would seing his blade at the third, hoping for it to act as a deterrent against begging grabbed at. He had ways to escape these sort of scenarios, but certainly didn't wish to deal with them as well.
The scimitar hits the hellknight in the shoulder, and then he blocks another strike with his mace, but the weapon is almost torn in two by the magically sharp scimitar.
The hellknight fails miserably at his attempt to subdue you, without even touching you.
Apparently, you have gained the upper hand, and the first hellknight retreats backwards, at your left.
Vincent was no fool, seeing hubris as just enough means to get ones self killed. One target was nearby but for the most part unharmed, but the one that had retreated was ripe for the taking. The clever mercenary wouldn't take any chances with this. Stepping away from his closest enemy, he'd turn and extend his hand towards the retreating hellknight, a slight smirk on his features as he put an end to the annoyance.
Make two other CL checks, please.
You move to your right, as you enter a mystical focus and point both palms to the first hellknight, saying the words that should make the spell work. You feel the weird magic again, but you still manage to foucs and, when you cast the spell, you know you are controlling it, and the two beams fly towards your foe and gloriously strike him, one on his leg and the other on his face, setting his helmet into a magic fire. The hellknight tries to take it off, but he falls on his knees as his hands start burning again. Suddenly, the fire extends all over his body, and he stops moving. When you look at the third hellknight again, his mace is in his right hand again. He moves closer to you and, instead of attacking with the mace, moves his forefinger and his middle finger towards your eyes.
You manage to grab the fingers before they get into your eyeballs, and you wave them back.
Only two foes truly remained and Vincent continued to feel his body flow with the arcane, unstable though it seemed to be. It was this odd sense in his body that left him careful about using it, instead letting brute force take over to finish this remaining human sized knight. Any other man would have given this knight the chance to surrender with already two of his allies dead, but not Vincent. They had prepared their graves by threatening him, and he would not allow them to leave those graves unfilled.
You slash the hellknight once, and again, and again... and other four times, practically tearing his armor in pieces with your enhanced scimitar, but he doesn't show any sign of surrender. He crouches to avoid your last attack, and grabs some pebbles from the floor, which he throws at your face.
The mercenary would growl in annoyance, blinded by the dirty trick pulled by the knight. Vincent wouldn't hold it against him, in a life or death battle everything was fair, even this tactic. That belief though didn't make him any less angry though, and Vincent refused to let this man get the best of him. Again, his focus had faded, and he was beginning to question its worth at this point with these knights. Perhaps a more reliable effect was in order. Thinking ahead for both this knight and the enemy still to come, he'd defensively cast the Mirror Image spell, giving him yet another edge before stepping after the clanging sound of armor and swinging blindly at the knight and hoping to end him now.
The spell works perfectly, but your scimitar doesn't hit anything. Where may the hellknight be?
Suddenly, you hear someone running towards you.
You are blind and don't know where to move, but, luckily, only one of your doubles is destroyed. You blink several times and you can see the hellknight in front of you.
Feeling the shift in air from the missed attempt on his person, Vincent took the moment needed to collect himself and finally see again. He glared daggers at the enemy remaining, not pleased to have been attack in the eyes, regardless if he admitted to it being a fair strategy. With his spell still active to defend him, he wouldn't bother setting up his focus, instead raising his blade up high to end his enemy. "I've had enough of this...!" he said calmly, but with a clear tone of boiling rage beneath that facade of calm.
Your eyes still hurt, and you can't focus enough to get a succesful first attack, hitting the hellknight's armor with the blunt side of the scimitar instead. You attack again, hitting your foe in the same point, but with the sharp side, your keen weapon travelling through metal, clothes, flesh and skin. When you pull it out, the hellknight falls to the ground.
You feel the gems in the large knight calling you. Like a challenge, like a need... There's still one left standing.
Vincent eye'd the gems on the large Hellknight, a calling that he could not fully explain, but reasoned off as entitlement. He earned these gems for what he was currently dealing with. With a swipe of his blade, he cleaned what blood remained on it before channeling his magic into the sword, pushing through a shocking grasp to spellstrike through his weapon and deliver to the large creature even more pain. Charging the creature to bring it down swiftly.
You start saying the words for your spell as you touch the blade of your weapon, accidentaly making yourself a tiny slash in the palm of your hand because of the magically sharp metal. The pain is minimal, but it takes your focus away from the spell for a fraction of a second. It wouldn't be a problem in a nromal place, but here, the strange magic overcomes you and you feel the electricity going from your hand to your body and then to your feet.
Suddenly, bright bolts of light come from your shoes and the floor you are standing in starts crumbling around you. And you fall...
For a couple of seconds you can see the other two hellknight you defeated with your scimitar are still falling. Then, the pain blinds you.
You realize you have fallen in a pile of gravel that has softened your fall, but there are some ugly scratchs in your limbs and body. The hellknight, instead, are definitely dead for good, if they weren't before. The pit you are in looks endless after a first look, but you calculate it's probably about 80 feet deep. You are lucky you survived this.
As you stand up, almost losing balance because of the stunning, you see you are in the bottom of a circular pit, with reddish debris and dust everywhere.
"Vincent"
The voice is throatier than normal, but you instantly recognize it.
Except it's impossible, he is dead.
"Find me"
The sound comes from upside, where you can only see, through the dust, a green glow, the emeralds on the large hellknight's helmet. But, is your father the person behind it?