Snippet #2416225

The battlefield was chaos, plain and simple. Kain would have secured himself the role of the leader of this colorful group, but the gods' sudden arrival threw a wrench in that. More importantly, he hadn't had the time to establish some sort of order among his 'comrades', so everyone was off doing their own thing. While all of them were skilled in their own way, no doubt, they hadn't yet learned to work together at all. In fact, they were probably getting in each other's way more than anything.

The dwarf - whose sudden change in appearance was a different matter - jumped in front of him when he was ready to face the 'fire god', while the assassin chose to assault the female 'god' from the front even though he would certainly interfere with the archer's aim by doing so. Valeria had done even better: she ran and hid behind the knight, who was incidentally the only one of the group to actually threaten her so far. That girl had more than a few screws loose, but more importantly, she had no place in a fight. He could have guessed as much with a single glance at her - this was not the case of a misleading appearance. She didn't turn out to be the kind to pull through in a tight spot, either.

While Kain's initial idea to get the male god's attention didn't exactly work out, partly because of the group's uncoordinated actions, the same result was achieved thanks to the assassin and another person, the one who kept herself hidden earlier. The white-haired girl screamed, and the red-haired man came to her rescue. He fended off her two assailants and surrounded her with a wall of flame, probably for protection. The elf watched this rather closely; what may have looked like minor details or coincidences to others were all clear signs for him. He managed to deduce several things from his observation. Some of them could seem obvious, but he knew assumptions were a bad idea when dealing with the unknown.

For one, the 'gods' appeared inclined to help each other in trouble, even when it was likely more rational not to. They appeared not only to possess different abilities, but sharply different skill sets. No normal person could have dodged the assassin's strike, but the girl's response was retreat, not a counter-attack, where the man chose assault. More specifically, the girl had done nothing but use unusual spells with the medium of her flute, while her companion only used manipulation of fire and his twin swords. Both of them had already been harmed - if only lightly - and Kain didn't think either of them was faking their emotions, especially the man with his rage. That raised a question: why had these two, who called themselves gods, not used any different or greater powers against the group yet?

He couldn't be completely certain, but it seemed like they couldn't do anything else. They had certain powers and that was it. This simple fact could significantly tip the scales of this clash, and the whole affair with the gods for that matter. Once you knew the limits of your opponent, defeating them was only a matter of devising a way to exploit said limits. There were times when the difference in power was too great for any strategy to offset, of course, but their situation wasn't like that. The fact they weren't all dead - in fact, none of them were even seriously hurt yet - was proof enough. There was another thing he noticed, but it wasn't going to make a big difference at this point.

The course of action was clear: take out the weak link. What he needed now was a way to bypass the wall of flame. Going through himself was likely a bad idea, considering what happened to Bergstadt. Try to get her with a spell? The gods were arrogant, but he wasn't going to assume they were stupid; the barrier was meant to protect her well, and Kain had displayed use of magic before. He could hardly imagine a wall of fire doing that, but a lot of things about these beings defied what he knew to be true. It guarded her against direct assault and likely magic, but what about something different?

Kain broke into a run toward the two gods and two people. He grabbed a good boulder, about the size of his head, as he moved along. What he was about to do was going to betray his abnormal, especially for his 'wispy' - as the good knight described him - build, strength, but there were more important things at stake than keeping that hidden. Going around the three engaged in combat, he cast his 'weapon' at the white-haired female, aiming for her head. The stone didn't follow the 'lazy' path that one might expect, going up only to fall down later. Instead, it whizzed right towards its target, no slower than a throwing knife.