"Let go of me you vagrant!" Jonathan demanded as he squirmed to break free of Fólórunsó's grasp.
"Can you stop squirming?" Fólórunsó asked. "You're making it tempting to want to drop your ass,"
The two were a good few miles away from where Sola and the Ancient were fighting. He felt bad for having to leave his partner to have to fight that thing with Francine, but he knew there was nothing he could have done to help had he stayed. That fact alone weighed heavily on him, almost as much as the boy underneath his arm.
"That would be excellent! As if in such an instance where I would want to make my escape, it would be with you!"
Before Fólórunsó could respond, he felt a sharp pain in his foot that caused him to fall over. Jonathan was flung forward and sent rolling across the ground and into a tree. He groaned as he pulled himself up.
"Great, now you covered my clothes in the dirt, you pleb!" He cried.
"That should be the least of your worries child,"
From the darkness of a stand of trees emerged a man covered in a dark hooded cloak. From what Jonathan could make out, the man approaching him had skin as dark as midnight and a voice as thick as darkness. He turned to Fólórunsó and saw the reason he had fallen over was because of a small knife-like instrument protruding from his foot.
"But if you'd like, I can return your clothes back to a shade of blood," The cloaked man said, now brandishing two knives in his hand.
"W-w-who are you?!" Jonathan stuttered as he tried to scurry away. The knives flew from the man's hands and pierced through Jonathan's shoulders, pinning him to the tree he was leaning on. The young boy let out a blood-curdling scream.
"Dead men have no use for names," He replied.
"You'd be surprised about that,"
Fólórunsó was back on his feet, the knife in his hand. The wound on his foot oozed blood but the amount began to slowly wean. The cloaked man looked at this with a small smile of intrigue, while Fólórunsó returned the look with a glare. The man pulled on a string the length of a hair and dragged the knife out of Fólórunsó's hand and into his.
"I'm not really in the mood right now so I'll let you leave right now, and we can forget we ever saw each other," Fólórunsó said.
"What makes you think your bluff will work?" The man scoffed. He pulled out a blue crystal and pointed it at Fólórunsó. The crystal glowed dimly. "You barely have enough Revel to be a threat,"
Fólórunsó pulled off his bow and knocked back an arrow.
"I'll barely need any to beat your ass,"
"Alright then!" The man laughed. "I'll humour you with my name. I am the assassin named Iku; Death in the old tongue,"
"I don't care if your name means god in any language," The archer said. "Leave now or you're going to die,"
Iku smiled before throwing down a small explosive on the ground. With a small boom, the forest was suddenly filled with a thick black smoke. Fólórunsó braced himself for an attack from all sides. He was familiar with who Iku was. A notorious killer blacklisted and wanted all over Pedtro; though never seemed to run out of clients or victims. He was known for this affinity for stealth, even when fighting, though no one ever lived long enough to tell the tale and account for how exactly he fought. Then again, none of them were Fólórunsó.
A flurry of knives flew at Fólórunsó from the right. He tried to dodge them, but they cut him all the same. An arrow flew from his bow in retaliation meeting nothing but a tree. Five more arrows soared in from behind in and stabbed him in the back. The young man winced in pain and then turned to fire another arrow but that too hit a tree. Iku laughed, his voice echoing in the smoke like a voiceless spectre.
"What's the matter?" It asked. "I thought you were going to kill me,"
Another knife whizzed past Fólórunsó's ear cutting it.
"It is always the same with you Revel users," It continued. "You all are always so cocky, regardless of whether you can use a Revel Art or just barely muster enough to stop your wounds."
Two more knives found their place in his thigh.
"Being able to use some hocus pocus to make fire or some other Esper-esque bullshit doesn't make you better than us who can't use Revel. I've fought Revel users before you, several with their own Revel Arts. All of them died the same; pitifully."
One knife flew at Fólórunsó's head. In one swift movement, he caught the blade with his teeth and instantly fired a few inches off of the direction it came. Iku's pain sounded throughout the smoke as he yelped in pain. The black smoke was starting to pull back, giving Sola the visibility needed to see where the assassin was. Iku hung from the top of a tree, attached to it by his strings and knives. He clenched his shoulder tightly as he glared at Fólórunsó with a look of anger and pain.
"Not so tough now, huh?" He smirked.
Suddenly, a huge explosion cracked through the forest. The three could see a large plume of blue light tower over the trees as a sudden burst of wind came pushing through. In an instant, most of the black smoke was now gone, making Iku an easier target. The assassin tried to reach for another smoke bomb but before he could grab it, the arrow in his shoulder exploded. The explosion wasn't strong enough to blow his hand off, though it did leave it in an unusable state. Shock filled Iku's face as he tried to figure out what happened. When the arrow pierced his skin, he felt no abnormalities in its shape.
"You have a Revel Art?" He concluded aloud. "With the amount of Revel, you have that should be impossible!"
"That's where you're wrong, Mr. Death-is-my-name-in-the-old-tongue," Fólórunsó said. "I just blew up the tip of my arrow by expanding my Revel, and that particular one happened to have the least,"
Iku's heart sank as he noticed all the arrows that he had 'dodged'. In reality, even despite the smoke obscuring his view, Fólórunsó had been deliberate with their placement. The archer had either been able to see to a better degree than he had anticipated or memorised where every tree was and left the rest to luck. The assassin had no time to contemplate this he noticed the two arrows above and below him. Fólórunsó gave a thumbs up and brought down his thumb as if he were pushing down on a detonator.
"Boom."
On cue, the two arrows exploded. Iku tried to escape but he only managed to escape the full blast, his back still getting heavily damaged. The force of the explosion caused him to manoeuvre, leading him to fly into another arrow that blew up as soon as he got close. His body got flung like a yoyo smacking him into another tree and yet another exploding arrow. By the fifth one, Iku's cloak was in ruins and his body was bruised and burnt. He was kept dangling to a tree from a tree by his strings that were barely hanging on as he faded in and out of consciousness.
Fólórunsó let out a sigh of relief. Had the fight not gone the way it did, he knew he would have been killed from the very start. But fortunately, it did, so he need not to dwell on that possibility. He quickly rushed over to Jonathan who was still pinned to a tree. It seemed as though he had passed out from the pain.
"Sorry it took so long," Fólórunsó said as he pulled a knife out of the boy's shoulder. "Now, let's get out of her-"
His words were cut short by a hand going through his chest. Fólórunsó's eyes widened in confusion as blood slowly poured out his mouth. In a single motion and with a disgusting rip, the archer's heart was ripped out of his chest. The man fell back lifeless, his eyes still wide and glassy, a pool of his blood quickly circling around his corpse.
Jonathan looked at the body in disgust. He threw the heart aside as if it were a piece of trash and pulled the second knife out of his shoulder. The red-haired boy wiped the blood off his hand on the corpse's clothes and straightened himself up.
"Fucking pleb."