The Fire and The Storm - The Nexus of Kellaran #2
Chapter 66

Part 12

"You'll fight me because I insisted on it, because I enjoy this kind of thing even more than my companions." Helemia told her with a grin as she stood up and Translocated out of her armor. "And I'll fight all twenty of you at once, with no magic, and no psionic holds or attacks. You'll fight the same way. If any of you tries to cheat by using magic or psionics against me, I'll do the same to you, and I bet you won't like that a bit!

"And just to keep things fair, I'm fighting you without my armor or my shield or my good weapons, since they have a lot of permanent magical enhancements. Just this." she giggled as she held up a knife with a fifteen centimeter blade. "You can all use whatever you've got for weapons or armor."

"You must be insane." a male Sylvan said as he drew his sword.

"We'll know in a moment, won't we?" Helemia laughed. "Whenever you're ready."

The Sylvan gave a snarl and chopped down at her with his sword. Helemia merely side-stepped just enough that the sword brushed her clothing as it whistled by and struck the ground, and poked him with her knife over his heart hard enough to draw a drop of blood.

"That's it for you." she laughed as he winced and stepped back, clutching his chest to assess the damage. "I'd have stabbed you through the heart if I wanted to."

"Get her!" the Sylvan yelled as he attacked again, and the twenty converged. They largely got in each other's way, as only six of them at most could directly attack her at once without hitting each other. She danced among them, her expression grim as her concentration focused, and she set to disarming them with strikes on their hands. She had to deal out a few other blows and mild cuts as she did so to avoid injury, but most of her defense was dodging, deflecting, and blocking. She moved through them at their knee level so quickly and unpredictably that none managed an effective strike against her. When she'd disarmed them by disabling one of their hands, they picked up their weapon in their other hand and kept coming. She had to disarm most of them at least twice before the combat came to an end, with all of them standing in a circle around her with their weapons on the ground and their bleeding and broken hands held awkwardly before them. Though it had only lasted for four minutes, all of them were panting and sweating, including Helemia.

"And that's that." Helemia grimly declared as she settled into a stance in the center of the circle.

"We'll Heal you now; some of you have some bad leg wounds." Karzog declared.

"I didn't do those, they did those to each other." Helemia pointed out as her companions performed the Healings.

"You cheated!" A female Sylvan declared. "You were psionicly Reading us as we were fighting! You knew what we were going to do before we did it!"

"I was, but it wasn't cheating." Helemia responded as she suddenly grinned. "I only said I wouldn't use psionics or magic as a weapon or to hold you, and I didn't. Still, if you want to go again without me doing that, we can do that. But I'll admit that I'll need some more serious weapons for that."

Her knife disappeared, and was replaced by two light, twin-edged, tapering short swords about sixty centimeters long each. She waved them around for a moment in a very complex swirling pattern before settling into stance again. "Any of you who want to pick up your weapons and give it another try are welcome to, and I promise not to Read you."

All twenty of them did so, then gingerly advanced on her. She was faced with a closing ring of steel points and edges, and the Sylvan slowly moved forward together, their weapons held as far forward as their reach allowed, to keep Helemia as far from them as possible.

When the circle of points was two and a half meters wide, Helemia suddenly darted forward and swept a sword aside with both of hers. In a blink she was between two opponents (stabbing them both on the way by) and outside the circle of Sylvan, then attacking it. She became the aggressor, and the Sylvan found no way to effectively defend against her incredibly quick swirling blades. This was a far bloodier round; she disdained potentially lethal strikes, but that was her only limitation.

Finally the last three Sylvan panicked and tried to run, only to find themselves held fast.

"And that's it for that." Karzog declared as the wounded were Healed again. "I think we've made our point."

"That was fun!" Helemia suddenly laughed as she donned her armor again.

"You." Reggie suddenly said, and pointed out a Sylvan female of about seventeen years with his finger and a yellow light. He'd been lounging on the grass watching Helemia's fight, but now he stood and faced the girl he'd indicated. "You didn't attack us with magic when you could've, and you didn't choose to participate in the fight. Why not?"

She shrugged. "I knew those idiots were kidding themselves. There's no way you'd invite us to attack you if you thought there was the slightest chance that you'd lose, unless you were being incredibly stupid, which you probably weren't."

"That's right, but there's always some who have to see it for themselves." Reggie nodded. "Did anyone else who refrained have a different reason?

"You, state your reason."

"You've got us all psionicly." The Sylvan he'd selected responded. "There's no use fighting with magic or steel when someone has you psionicly, and all of us together don't have enough psionics to beat you, even if we could co-ordinate our attack, which we can't."

"That's clear thinking." Reggie nodded again.

"Now, the first thing we're going to do is move you all to your new location, and get you started on building some decent homes for yourselves." he continued. "Until now you've all lived like animals in tiny dens and hollows in trees and caves and such. You dared not build anything decent because it would make you easier to find, and it was too much work to give up if you were discovered and had to abandon it. You live off the land and make no effort to replenish what you take, and most of you keep yourselves half-starved so you can devote less time to hunting, gathering, and fishing, and more to trying to kill each other. Your social lives are almost non-existent, and none of you dared to have a child until you're twenty five because a newborn is a severe tactical disadvantage.

"These things will all change now. Since we will no longer allow you to kill or maim each other, you can have decent homes, you can gather around the fire at night and sing and dance and laugh, you can have children and know that you and your family are safe. We will provide the females among you with a contraception spell so that you can have recreational sex without getting pregnant, or have a child when you choose to do so, and with the male you wish to be the father of your child. Rape will no longer be tolerated. If you want to fight each other, you will do so in an arena before the eyes of all, and only after a formal challenge has been issued and accepted.

"You, you have a question?"

"Why should only females have the power to choose who has children?!" a young male asked. "If they get to choose that our sex won't make babies, we should get to do the same. I don't want some stupid doe to bear my child without my permission just because I want to have sex with her!"

"That's a fair enough point." Reggie granted, over-riding some angry yelling that started up. "Helemia, you're our best Healer."

"I could come up with something that would allow the males to choose if they were fertile." she granted. "And I think I'll modify both of the contraceptive spells so that both partners always know if the other is fertile when you're having sex. That way neither can lie about it.”

"For the next month at least, none of you will be having children." Valentia stated firmly as she stood and augmented her voice. "We have far too much work to do until then, and none of you will be having children until you have decent homes and an established community. So we'll start off with casting an unalterable contraception on all females. By the time you have a situation where you can responsibly have children, we'll have the modified spells ready for both genders.☐☐☐☐☐☐

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