The young man decided to do a few core exercises, push-ups, and air squats to keep himself warmed up. That combination of exercises hit most of the muscles he primarily used for his strikes; triceps and chest for punches and core for extra power while turning, squats for his glutes and quadriceps, and a few other core exercises to keep himself stable and balanced.
There was no noise anywhere in the room except for him and the nearly synchronized breathing of Colm and Nikita on the bed. The young man looked over with a hint of jealousy; he thought that they had potential. Maybe. Dort of. He was terrible at guessing these things. His own dating life had been less than pleasant for the most part, so he had sort of given up on finding love. He knew he was young, but between his desired career and the reasons given for his rejections, he felt like his chances had been grinded to dust.
He looked away to avoid going down that path in his mind and focused on what he was doing. He had finished his last set, so now he was looking to figure out what in the room could be used as a weapon. The books weren’t bad, and they could certainly act as shields. It isn’t exactly easy to stab through a thick book.
The sun was starting to peek over the horizon and the intense rays of light were shining through the windows and bathing the room in orange light. The windows had patterns, so the young man couldn’t see through them, but light travelled through easily enough.
He decided to try to look at the windows, but it was so bright he had trouble. The guards patrolling outside occasionally provided some shadow, giving the young man just enough of a chance to see the pattern. While he was looking toward the window, though, one of the guards seemed to very rapidly move to the right, and the young man heard a clang of armor against stone in the other room. He was probably just landing for a break, as that metal armor was seriously heavy.
The other guard was doing his usual patrol, but at one point, he stopped and floated for a moment. He was probably criticizing the other guard for taking a moment. At least, that’s what the young man thought. In a rapid series of movements, the remaining guard in the air started moving and flailing frantically, then slammed into the window.
The young man felt his heart jump as alarm bells rang in his head. On the other side of the window, the young man could just see the shadow of another griffon acting on the guard. The guard jerked and stopped moving, then the shadow pulled the guard away.
The young man rushed to the other room and had his worst fear acknowledged; the first guard was in a heap on the floor, blood coming from his beak and a knife in his back. A moment later, the other guard flew through the open wall and on top of the other guard.
The young man immediately fell back into the main room and waited next to the wall to take out the intruder. Colm and the princess were stirring from the noise, but they hadn’t yet woken up. The young man couldn’t call out to them because it ran the risk of him being found by the intruder and losing the element of surprise.
The young man waited until he saw the enemy griffon just start to walk through the door and struck. The griffon took a knee to the chest and fell back several steps, catching his breath, but the young man paused when he stepped out to face his opponent in the open.
“Yafid?” the young man said.
Yafid wore an alarmed expression. “You’re awake,” he said.
“Yeah, we have different shifts,” the young man said. He let his stance soften; he felt pretty confident that he could take the grizzled griffon again. “How’d you heal up so fast?”
“Unicorn magic,” Yafid said through a hiss.
“You seem angry,” the young man said.
Yafid charged the young man, but instead of taking the fight immediately, the young man fell back and used the edge of the wall to spin himself around and evade the attack. Yafid rushed past him and spun around quickly, expecting a counter, but nothing came. He looked at the young man with a confused expression.
“Why so serious?” the young man said in a mocking voice. Yafid appeared to grow angrier.
“You killed my team,” he said, seething with rage. “They were my friends.”
“What?” the young man said. “Well, I did you a favor; those weren’t the right kinds of friends.”
Yafid rushed forward again and went for a slash with his talons, which the young man blocked by shoving his hand between the toes and moving sideways. Yafid tried to counter with a spinning kick, but he wasn’t fast enough, as his body wasn’t built for such an attack. The young man blocked it and pushed Yafid back.
“Your arrogance will be your downfall,” Yafid said.
“On the contrary,” the young man said. Behind Yafid, the clang of metal on stone echoed, and Colm stood next to the bed. “It gave me the time to have a partner in this fight.”
“You somehow managed to stall me,” Yafid said. “I’ll just have to kill you both at once now before the princess wakes up.”
“Colm, wake her up,” the young man said. Colm nodded and moved to the princess’s side.
“Oh no you don’t!” Yafid said as the princess began to stir into the world of the living.
The young man rushed forward to grab Yafid and throw him to the side. Yafid had planned this out, though, and when the young man was close enough and had too much momentum to stop, Yafid spun around and went for a swinging stab with his talons to the young man’s side. The young man tried to react quickly, but his block was only barely fast enough to prevent the talons from burying into his side completely.
The talons punched through the side of the gi and cut into the young man’s flesh, earning a pained grunt from the young man and drawing blood onto his clean white gi. The young man responded by hopping up and kicking Yafid with both legs into the wall behind him, knocking over a bookshelf in the process.
By the time he slammed into the wall, the princess was awake, and his plan had failed spectacularly. Thankfully, he had accounted for this possibility; he just had to kill the princess too. He had pined for her at one time, but that time was not today, and he had more important things going on.
Namely, killing the young man and his friend.
Yafid rushed forward, but then turned off and lunged at the princess. Colm jumped in between and tackled Yafid, sending him to the side and toward the young man, where Yafid recovered quickly and went for a spin attack at the young man, slashing incessantly until he connected. The young man had to fall and roll back to avoid getting his throat slashed.
When the young man stood back up, Yafid was on top of him and had grabbed him by the shoulders, then picked him up and used his powerful back legs to kick him back into the other room. Colm rushed in for another tackle, which Yafid easily dodged, and his momentum carried him into the same room.
Yafid turned around to go after the princess, but she was gone, and the door to the room was open. From the hall, an alarm bell started to ring, and mobilizing heavy guards could be heard from a mile away going toward the princess’s room.
With both Colm and the young man in the escape route, he would be forced to go through the halls until he found a new way out. He froze in thought for a minute, trying to figure out a way out of this. He hadn’t accounted for everything he needed to, and he was paying for it now.
“Colm, stay here and guard the exit!” Yafid heard the young man shout. The young man came back into the room. “I’ll fry this chicken for good, this time.”
“I’d love to stay and have dinner, but I gotta fly,” Yafid said. “I’ll see you again!”
“Hey!” the young man shouted as Yafid took off. He bolted after him into the hallway and began his pursuit.
Yafid wasn’t a great runner, but he was good enough to give the young man a hard time. He was evading every castle worker he came across, usually by flying over them, while the young man had to shove them aside. As the young man rounded a corner, he nearly tripped on the body of a guard whose throat had just been cut. He didn’t have the time or skills to save the guard, and so kept on running.
They ran up an angled passageway, a very tight one, forcing the young man to partially crawl his way up and slowing him down immensely. When they made it to the top, they were in another hallway, and Yafid was shoving more servants out of the way to make his escape.
The young man ran, but as he passed, he ordered the servants to make sure all exits in the castle were closed off so the intruder couldn’t escape. He hoped Nikita was okay and that she had made it to her father, so he would already have it done. The windows, at the very least, were all closed, so all they needed were more guards at each exit.
Yafid bounded another corner and ran up another angled passageway, and the young man pushed everything he had into the pursuit. He was growing exhausted from the constant uphill climbs, but he had to pursue, or Yafid would get away. He had to admit to himself that he hadn’t expected Yafid to be this fit, but their last encounter wasn’t really a great indicator of his personal prowess.
More crashes up ahead in the hallway, forcing the young man to dodge broken glass and ceramic scattered across the floor as he sped by. The floor was hard and unforgiving, and he was going to have to sit and lay down for a while after taking Yafid down.
The young man spotted Yafid just as he rounded another corner and seemed to go up. When he caught up to the corner, he saw that it was a stairway that led to the very top of the mountain, outside, where Yafid could fly away. Yafid was catching his breath on the stairs, looking down ward toward the young man.
They locked eyes for a moment. Yafid saw the urgent, primal instinct to fight in the young man’s eyes, and he leapt forward up the stairs to follow his natural directive. Yafid moved to escape, but the young man was just fast enough to catch him.
“Get off!” Yafid shouted, kicking the young man into the wall and propelling himself upward with his opposite momentum. The young man quickly recovered and chased after the griffon, and they nearly exited through the opening at the top of the stairs together.
Thankfully, it led to a flat top and not to a straight drop to the ground. Yafid tried to take off, but the young man grabbed him as he tried to jump and threw him to the ground. He went down with the griffon in a heap of feathers and skin, scraping himself on the rough stone as they landed.
The young man rolled away and stood up while Yafid hopped to his feet. The young man braced himself to move quickly if the mercenary tried to escape, but Yafid made no move to leave. He just stood there and smiled at the young man.
“What’re you so happy about?” the young man asked.
“I have you all to myself now,” Yafid said.
“Hardly sounds like something to smile about,” the young man said.
“Oh, certainly not for YOU,” Yafid said. He flexed his talons out. “No one to save you, now.”
“I don’t think that was how it worked last time,” the young man said. “Nor will it work that way this time.”
“We’ll see,” Yafid said. No more words were to be exchanged.
Yafid charged at the young man ferociously, talons out and closing in, and the young man took a light Chinto stance, as if he were about to dance. When Yafid closed in on him, the young man put his arms out to block the incoming talons from the sides, then followed up with a straight kick up toward Yafid’s chest. Yafid applied more pressure inward with his arms and stopped himself enough so the kick wouldn’t transfer much force, and the kick just pushed him back enough to end their physical contact.
The young man chased after Yafid with a spinning hook kick, which Yafid blocked easily, but then followed again with a jumping roundhouse kick, tagging Yafid in the neck. As the young man landed, Yafid rolled forward and let the swing of his leg strike the young man in the gut as he passed, knocking the young man back and to the ground, where he rolled backwards and returned to his feet.
Yafid tried to recover quickly from his roll and charged the young man in a low stance, ready to attack his legs. The young man responded with a low backwards sweep kick, which Yafid leapt over in order to dodge, and landed on the young man’s other side. He tried to spin around and slash at the young man with his talons, but the young man had simply continued his motion and swung his sweep kick into a spinning hook kick, catching Yafid in the side.
Yafid caught the kick, though, even if it hurt, and spun around, dragging the young man along, throwing him toward the door, where he hit his upper back into the wall with a loud thud. Yafid pursued, going for a stab with his talons, which the young man stopped by stuffing his hand in between Yafid’s toes. He then moved his hand in a circle, twisting Yafid’s arm, and rolled sideways with it, getting Yafid on the ground with him.
The young man moved on top of Yafid and went for a powerful roundhouse punch across the griffon’s face, but Yafid thrust himself up with his legs, throwing the young man off balance, and then brought his arm around for a clothesline attack on the young man’s side, knocking him to the side. The young man fell off and rolled away.
Both fighters stood up at the same time, angry expressions on their faces and a steaming desire for blood. The young man leapt forward, a move that Yafid mimicked instantly, and went for a spinning back kick. The kick was fast, just fast enough that it caught Yafid in the side when he tried to dodge, but Yafid used the torque to spin himself and throw a slash at the young man, catching him across his side and tearing into the gi, drawing a pained grunt from the human fighter.
Yafid staggered, though, when he tried to avoid falling, and the young man took advantage of this. He rolled forward with his existing momentum and spun as he stood for a spinning backfist to the side of Yafid’s head. The assault hit home, catching him right in what would be considered a jaw if not for his beak, and the griffon mercenary fell back in a daze, giving the young man a moment to recover.
But Yafid had another trick up his sleeve. Realizing that the guards were probably almost there, he pulled two throwing knives from a bag on his side. He focused hard to clear his vision and targeted the young man’s neck as he stood in recovery.
He went to throw, but the young man just saw as he went for it, and moved. Yafid tried to correct, but overdid it and threw a knife past him and into the stairwell. Someone inside screamed, but that didn’t stop the fight.
Yafid threw the second knife as the young man closed, and this time, the young man couldn’t dodge it completely. The knife pierced into his chest, not enough to get to the lung, but about an inch in, stopping the young man in his tracks. With the young man stopped, Yafid went for the kill.
Yafid ran up and kicked the young man in the gut, sending him to the ground, and followed him there and sat on him. Yafid quickly grabbed the knife from the young man’s chest and pulled it out, drawing the young man’s eyes up. The young man could see Yafid’s intention to stab the knife down into his chest and put his hands up to brace.
Yafid brought his arms down and sent the knife right towards the young man’s heart, but the young man managed to stop it just before it hit the skin. He grunted and panted as Yafid continued to press his body weight into the knife, slowly lowering it more and more toward his chest. He could feel it as it poked into the skin and started to draw blood as it buried deeper and deeper toward his heart.
“I guess this time, you’re mine,” Yafid said.
“Go to Hell,” the young man replied spitefully.
Just as Yafid was about to throw his full weight onto the knife, the young man heard the loud clangs of metal on stone from the stairwell, and in a heartbeat, a silver flash or two had tackled Yafid off him and into the ground a few feet away. Another pair of steel-clad griffons joined the first two guards who had tackled him, and they held the mercenary in place as others came to the young man’s aid.
“Human!” one, an officer, said. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” the young man said. “Thanks for the save.”
“You’re welcome,” the officer said. “If I had to guess, I’d say he had a trick or two up his sleeve to get you into that position. You are quite the fighter, after all.”
“Yeah,” the young man said, looking at Yafid as the guards smacked him around. “What’s the plan for him?”
“He murdered two guards, a servant, and tried to go after the princess,” the officer said. “He’ll go to prison, then likely death.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me,” the young man said. “Send him my way, I’ve had a hankering for some fried chicken.” The officer swallowed a lump in the back of his throat as he saluted the young man, who simply walked back down the stairs and into the castle.