Menzine sat on a bench under the shade of a small tree, wearing the dignified look of someone hopelessly lost in his thoughts.
A ray of light brushed past his face and brought him back to reality. A smile immediately found its way to his face as he took out a quill and scroll in readiness to write something.
At first, he wrote slowly, his pen making minor movements here and there. When the fight between Annabeth and the bandits escalated, Menzine's quill moved furiously across the face of the scroll.
Not once did Menzine avert his eyes from the fight in front of him to look at what he was writing. It was almost like he could write without looking at what he was writing...
Either that or he had another pair of eyes on his chin.
Menzine had the kind of expression one would describe as a perfect poker face throughout the entire fight. Neither a smile nor a frown formed on his face regardless of who the advantage shifted to during the fight.
By the time he had written the last word on the scroll, Annabeth's fight had come to a conclusion too, almost as if the writing had determined the fighting. He neatly rolled his scroll, put it away, and walked towards the metal bandit who had just knocked out Annabeth and was searching for something.
His steps were slow until the metal bandit picked up a sword.
Within a heartbeat, Menzine picked up a sword from the chest of a bandit and used it to prevent a death blow to his master's niece. He was not angry that Annabeth was beaten and almost killed several times during the fight, this fighting experience was meant to help her grow. She had been fighting wooden dummies for the past 9 years, dummies that neither hit back nor tried to impale her with ice spears.
"This fight will help her see her flaws," Lord Canning had told him, "Write down everything you will see and only step in to stop the fight when her death becomes inevitable."
As instructed, Menzine did his job without fail. He had written down everything he had seen in Annabeth's fight and prevented her death. His work would have been complete but his master had added one more instruction."
"When you are done, eliminate the remaining bandits in the campsite and free the slaves in the marked buildings," Lord Canning added.
Menzine walked to where Ujarak and the healer bandit stood, at a pace that was neither too quick nor too slow. Without stopping, he picked up the sword he had used earlier to stop Annabeth from getting executed.
"Swords won't do you any good when it comes to me," Ujarak advised with a sinister smile.
Menzine was not the chatty type so he simply continued walking up to him in silence. Was there really a point in refuting the words of someone knee-deep in their own arrogance? Ujarak on the other hand, felt a little offended for getting ignored.
"You and that girl have a lot in common," he said, "You are both arrogant and p*ss me off. But more importantly, you will both die by my hands!" It seemed he was more than just a little offended.
Menzine did not give him a reply still, exchanging words with his opponent was meaningless to him. Besides, he thought, when had a predator ever argued with its prey?
When Ujarak put up his sword in front of him in readiness for the battle, Menzine made his move. Menzine moved so fast that he was within Ujarak's sword range in the blink of an eye. Menzine had lowered his posture but before he could raise his sword to attack from below, he was hit by a flash spell.
The healer mage had conjured the spell but was waiting to release it until this very moment. Ujarak sliced down towards where Menzine was and blood splashed onto his face. He should have been happy with the bloody result and he would have been if the blood was not his own.
The moment Ujarak moved to slice downwards was the moment he had lost the arm that held the sword. Ujarak screamed out in pain and knelt down as though his feet had been cut off too...
They were. The screaming became louder and almost deafening until Menzine cut Ujarak's throat.
"Nice sword," Menzine commented finally.
The healer mage could not believe what his eyes were seeing. A metal mage who had enchanted himself got cut down like a piece of paper by someone who couldn't even see…
It was then that he saw it, another pair of eyes on Menzine's forehead.
Unlike the old pair, these were completely black and round like a spider's eyes. Just by staring into them, the healer mage felt a feeling of terror take over his body. He saw Menzine's hand move slightly and then his headless body falling to the ground. Even in his dying moments, his eyes argued with his brain which couldn't accept the things the eyes had seen.
Without losing a moment, Menzine began decimating every bandit within the campsite. From those that had cowered in fear and watched the fight from afar to those running around trying to get their weapons, no one was spared. They all had faces filled with panic since they knew they couldn't escape; someone had locked the gate when the object in the sky appeared.
Even those that could teleport were not so lucky as the light rays on the walls of the campsite prevented any teleportation into or out of the camp. In short, the rays that were to prevent slaves from escaping and other bandits from entering their campsite became prison bars to them, the rampaging swordsman as the warden and executioner.
Wherever Menzine went, blood, limbs, and bodies would fly into the sky as though they belonged there. Some bandits tried to run into buildings but they died far more gruesome deaths than those outside.
As long as the building didn't have a ray of light on it from the shiny object, Menzine would conjure a heavy cloud of acidic air into it. This gas spread out very slowly but it melted any flesh it came into contact with, be it inside or outside the body. Those that were lucky to see their friends get melted would rush outside, only to meet the swordsman.
A bandit that had blacked out from drinking too much had a rude awakening when he felt a lot of pain on his face. He would have been upset and probably searched for his attacker but his face and lungs were melting. The alcohol he had taken earlier couldn't numb the pain and he lost consciousness, never to wake up again.
Some bandits tried to launch an ambush on Menzine but they were all quickly struck down. Whether someone stood behind him or on the sides, they all died wondering what kind of monster he was to have black round eye-like object around his head, even at the back.
By the time Menzine had stopped running around, pools of blood could be seen everywhere. Unlike his surroundings, not a drop of blood had stained his garments.
Menzine turned his attention towards the buildings that were marked and leaped over the pools of blood to get to the buildings. It seemed he was very particular about not getting his garments stained.