Loki - Duel

[interdimensional]

“Hit me with everything you’ve got.”

“Everything?” You raise an eyebrow skeptically, but he just nods.

“Everything. Mindbolts too. Don’t be afraid to use force; if it gets truly dangerous I’ll teleport.”

You find yourself grinning; oh, he wants to play rough, does he? “Alright. Everything.”

He smiles, claps his gloved hands together once, and pulls the gloves off, tucking them into a pocket. “Come on, see if you can stop me,” he says, and the distance between you is about twenty feet; not too far, which is good considering you’re not all that skilled at long-distance. He closes his eyes briefly, and when he opens reopens them, that mesmerizing pattern is there, what she’s dubbed mystic eyes and the rest have adopted.

“See if you can stop me.” A glow of runelight appears around your fingers as you grin.

He smiles, and assumes a relaxed posture but you can see the slight bending of his knees. He doesn’t blink, watching you. For a moment you don’t blink either, a long moment of just watching before you smile and take a step back.

He blinks. You grin and in that instant a mindbolt flies at him head-on before it fizzles out of existence before it reaches him and he ducks, reaches behind and grabs a rope of Naudr where you had it about to wrap around him and crushes it between his fingers; by that time you’re rushing forward in a barrage of runes, combinations flung from your hands that he dodges or neutralizes but you just cast Kaen at yourself and dart forward in wildfire form, only to be stopped a foot later with a freezing drenching like buckets of Logr but you were expecting this, so one of the runes he previously tossed aside comes back at him and he sees it in the nick of time and it misses by an inch before he catches it and somehow turns it into something else with just a squeeze of his fingers and sends it flying back and you shatter it with Tyr as it passes over your head but as you step forward you’re frozen again in a pentacle of blue and he’s advancing with something forming in his hand, like a thorn or a needle, long and sharp and crackling but you don’t even stop, just cast the Ur-Hagall combination that got you out last time; but apparently he was expecting that because nothing happens, so you raise an eyebrow and instead do Ur-Hagall-Thuris-Bjarkan; the web flickers and you push with almost half your strength and it blows apart into fragments and he looks slightly surprised at that and the magic he’d been gathering vanishes and you grin and dart forward again.

There’s only a few feet between you now and you keep switching, moving your fingers from rune to rune as fast as you can, casting them down into the snow and using others to hide them and this is it now, it’s close combat and you don’t hold back. Feint, dodge, duck, parry—you can’t tell what it is in his hand but every blow you block sends a jarring pain up your arm and you let him drive you back in a shower of sparks, blue and purple and orange flying like fireworks every which way in your vision and all you catch is this blaze of light—but then he’s in place and you get out a cantrip between your teeth and vanish into flame, flitting away backwards and as he glances around for you—and spots you almost instantly—your own web flares up around him, an intricate net of runes that he can’t escape from, wrapping around his legs and slithering upward in seconds, binding his wrists together behind his back as you touch down lightly back on the snow and smirk and he hisses, slightly, which only makes you smirk wider.

“Had enough yet, Kitty?”

He tries to loosen his wrists but you merely tighten the bonds and he flinches, glaring at you juuust a bit, and you summon a new rune to your hand, just as a precaution as you approach.

“Now what, hmm?”

His lips move and something cold and sharp bats the rune out of your hand; you only have to turn your head slightly to see whatever it is and destroy it, but when you turn back you see his fingers move behind back just as you realize you should’ve immobilized them too and this snap comes and this explosion of multi-colored light blinds you momentarily but it’s all he needs and a surprisingly gentle hand pushes you squarely in the middle of your chest and that’s it, it’s all over and there’s cold, wet snow seeping into your hair and the back of your shirt and a light, light finger on your throat.

You blink rapidly to clear your eyes and he’s leaning over you and smiling angelically and the sight is more than a little strange and you’re really not quite sure what to say. Even less so when he leans in and his eyes are still absolutely entrancing.

“Give in?” he asks, and you blink.

Then you sigh good-naturedly and brush his hand away from your throat and sit up from the snow. “Yeah, yeah, you win. You win, I lose.” He blinks in slight confusion but you grin and shake snow out of your hair. “Stupid mistake, huh?”

“What, my hands?”

“Yeah, just goes to show I’m out of practice. Not that you use them as much as I do, but still. ...surprised it took ya that long to break out, though.”

“It was a potent combination; it took me a few moments to figure out what you’d done.” Finally the confusion vanishes from his face into a smile and he reaches out a hand to help you up; for a moment you stare at it before taking it and letting him pull you to your feet.