Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON ONE (Completed!)

Part 5.23

Gold fire shoots out of his hand. I leap into the air. The tree behind me explodes.

Another streak of gold.

And another.

And another.

I dodge, and dodge, and dodge again.

The smell of burnt wood rises from the forest floor.

The attacks keep coming, and I keep dodging, but I'm getting tired.

Up, down, to the left, backflip.

I can't keep this up forever.

I close my eyes, and the clearing starts to fill with icy mist. Amitabh's latest attack runs askew. The mist will buy me some time, but not much.

"Where are you, my little dancer?"

I draw the heat out of the patch of air in front of me. Ice-like gel wobbles in its place, then coalesces into a shining blade. I grab the hilt of my new ice sword. It runs the length of my arm, and transforms the moonlight into a glacial blaze.

The mist is thin now. I can see Amitabh hovering in the air, an orb of gold hissing in his palm.

He spots me, and the orb shoots towards me.

I bring my sword down. There's a mighty hiss as the orb fumes under its pressure. I push down harder. The sword slices right through, and the two halves of the orb flutter to the ground like butterfly wings.

Amitabh reaches for his belt. "I see you did not enjoy my fire," he muses. "Perhaps you will like my moons better."

He picks a crescent moon from his belt and pinches it between his thumb and forefinger. It explodes in a cacophony of silver, sickle-shaped magic. The sickles slice through the air towards me. I bat them away with my sword easily.

Amitabh picks two more crescent moons from his belt, and I find myself swinging at a storm of sickles. One cuts into my shoulder.

I gasp. "Heal."

A cool sensation spreads down my arm, melting the two ends of the wound together until there's not a scratch left.

Good thing Onyx finally taught me that one.

It's time to try a new tactic. I throw up a shield of ice. Still dancing out of the way of the oncoming sickles, I raise my sword high. This time I send them right back Amitabh's way.

Amitabh chuckles as he dodges his own boomeranging attacks. Gold fire snakes around his arm. It slams into my shield with the same bone-shattering force as the night before.

Just as I knew it would.

While Amitabh was charging his attack, I was loosening my particles. Now I teleport behind him in a rush of energy, rematerialize, and bring my sword down between his shoulder blades. Hard.

"Argh!"

Amitabh stumbles forward. Honey-hued blood pours out of the newly-formed wound. He falls to the ground, face contorted with pain.

I take a deep breath. The dizziness is overwhelming, even with such a short teleport.

Amitabh is motionless on the ground.

This is my chance. I have to steady my breathing.

Amitabh's body glows with a faint luminescence. There's something trickling down to him...a kind of silver sparkle-light originating above me, from the night sky. Yet there's nothing up there. I try to bat it away, but my sword goes right through. What is it?

I probe its energy and let out a small gasp. Amitabh is drawing energy from the moon and stars.

I shoot a shard of ice at him, but the star energy absorbs it as if it were nourishment. Amitabh reaches for his belt again. This time he brings out a bell in the shape of the full moon. It expands into an orb of light that encloses Amitabh's body, then buds into several smaller orbs that each grow to match its size. The orbs rise into the night air and hover there, tolling like an orchestra of bells.

Amitabh's gone.

He's hiding in one of the orbs.

I snigger.

What a cheap trick.

I hack at the closest orb with my ice sword.

"Argh!!!"

My torso explodes with pain.

I clutch at the seared, bloodied skin.

"Heal," I croak.

The orb I destroyed is nothing more than a hissing cloud of smoke.

A bomb.

The orbs that don't hold Amitabh are bombs.

I take a deep breath as my skin heals. I never want to get hit by a bomb again. Lowering my eyelids, I go into energy-sensing mode. Amitabh's energy is there, though faint, masked by that of the orb he's hiding in.

I probe each orb, one by one.

Empty...empty...empty...aha. I grin. There he is, hiding in his little moon orb, recovering. He thinks I can't see him. My sword strike really hurt him, I can tell from his energy. He'll need time to mount an attack, and he can't draw more energy from celestial objects for fear of giving away his location.

I'm not going to cut him down with my sword though.

Oh no.

I have something very different in store for him.