Finally Erin remembered that Sue had patted her left shoulder when wishing her luck, they had cheated from the beginning. Using her inner essence she found the magic tracker on the back of her shoulder close to her armpit and slowly and carefully lifted it to her creation in the tree tops and attached it.
Thinking quickly she made another set of plans hopefully this time things would work out better. Silently Erin moved to set them in place, she was 90% sure to get a kill shot this time on one of them. However this would be tricky so there was probably a 50% chance for her to get injured as well.
Marcus and Sue once again surrounded their prey having discussed where certain traps lay and her possible actions to excape or strick at their positions. Marcus took the low land while Sue the mage took the higher position so she could have a better view of the terrain in addition she stayed to the shadows and further away to prevent escape for their prey.
Both were still very mad about their losses to what they believed was a lesser being. It was bad enough that they were stuck in these low level classes because of low marks during testing. Now they were the laughing stock of the gods children even some of the teachers and students were calling them half breeds.
Marcus especially had been disgraced and so he had a friend enchant his sword so it could pierce Thoth's protective magic. With luck once in all he could get rid of this nuisance and threat to his manliness. Sue just wanted to humiliate her by showing her supiriority and blast her good so both Erin and friends would remember their place.
Finally in position they both went into attack mode, unknown to them it left them open to a return attack instantly. As soon as Sue loosed a electrical charge towards the figure on the plateform. Erin popped out of the stream by her back and shot her in the back with a frost arrow inflecting a killing blow.
Thoth magic worked instantly transporting Sue from the arena to be medically checked and was officially considered dead. Meanwhile Marcus caught sight of Erin taking down Sue and changed his target in a instance throwing a dagger at her. Erin flung herself backwards hoping to avoid injury but the dagger slicked along her right arm making her drop her bow.
Erin once again escaped into the woods and crawled into a thick berry bush to wrap her sliced arm. Why did it hurt so much usually when hit Thoth's magic would just paralyze and numb the area. This time blood flowed freely and it felt all to real, it had taken quite a while to get the bleeding to stop.
Now she had a fair chance to win this fight, with the mage gone and their trader as well it should be better. However her good arm was severely injured and her long range bow was gone. A close in fight wouldnt be easy but if her magic was full no problems but now she had used a lot up on traps. Now how to win.
Marcus followed the blood tracks to a large thicket, going very carefully he circles the area looking for where she had exited. Finally he found a faint trail and started to follow it. It lead to the clearer side of the forest. He found her looking downward into one of her traps, grabbing a poison tipped dagger he went to throw it, thats when she jumped down into it.
Marcus laughed and started forward but Sue's warning rang in his head telling him there was a large amount of traps in this area. Instantly he stopped and started poking his sword into the ground in front of him. Silently and slowly he made his way to the trap she had jumped into.
The trap was a pitfall but its spikes were broken and laying flattened to the ground as,if something large,had fallen down there. However there was no need for Marcus to notice, he only saw it was empty and had two tunnels leading away from it. Quickly jumping down he chose the right entrance because it showed recent foot prints.
Useing his arms as a shield in front, he left his real shield in back as a defense and scurried forward. His hunched over position would make it hard for him to use any wide swings and chops. When the tiger appears in front of him he let out a scream and tried to move backwards in the tunnel.
It's long arms reached inward to claw at him and his brain kicked in and made him strike with his sword. It hit the tiger's arm and the beast roared making him crawl backwards as fast as he could. Hitting the end of the tunnel he reinforced his arm and hit the cave roof making it cave in.
His sigh of relief was short lived when one of my daggers hit him on the right shoulder sadly for me it seemed to miss the main artery and Marcus didn't transport out. Marcus reply was a quick leg reinforcement to his legs that allowed him to easily jump out of the twelve foot deep pit.
His anger was insane as he came ramming into my side sending me flying backwards into the trees a good thirty feet away. When I landed luck helped a little as I landed on a pile of the rearranged earth from the traps. This cushion of earth was probably the only reason I didn't fall unconscious, but it did make me start to bleed again.
Before the stars could clear from my eyes, Marcus was there laughing like a insane person. He starred downwards and grabbed my arm slipping a noose tie on it he quickly tied it to the ground. Marcus had me disabled in a flash with all four limbs tied immobile. I conceeded loudly that it was his win. No transporting occurred, that's when I knew something was really wrong.