It took Grimaulkin about a half a minute to realize this wasn’t no little mage he was dealing with.
Grim dodged a fireball and readied his shortcut of a spell, the one that would cut through his body and soul. He normally didn’t use this one, but now he was pissed off, and this was a strong, easy spell to utter.
“Dumpa!” Grim yelled, and tossed the ball of nether at him. Although it was a focused fire, it could easily spread.
The little mage dodged it. That son of a bitch.
“You dare to attack me in my own home!” the mage wailed, for the second time. “You come to MY PLACE and attack me? Fool!” He lobbed another fireball for emphasis. This one landed close, and sucked the air out from in front of Grim.
He wondered again if it was worth it to take this guy out. What if he really didn’t have the Codex of Tezcatlipoca? What if the mage he had beat up before just uttered that to stop the beating? Confessions were like that.
“Shhhhhhhfa!” Grim said, uttering the first sound just long enough and loud enough to build up another ball, and he tossed it not at the mage himself, but at the ground at his feet.
The very ground lurched, just enough to throw him off balance, and he fell on his silk-robed derrier. Always there to kick a man when he was down, Grim poured on the attack, using the deft knife spells to carve out bits of his body and soul and feed it to his own energy.
“Stop!” cried the mage.
“I wasn’t planning on it,” said Grim, knowing that he couldn’t kill him, but he could make him wish he was dead.
“What do you want?”
“Your magic.”
“NEVER!”
Oh well, thought Grim, as he cut the man to ribbons just enough to make him pass out from his wounds. The damage he had done to the man’s soul was just as bad, and he’d be out for a while.
His mind screamed at him to leave no witnesses; once he raided the man’s bookshelves, he’d know who did it and would not die until Grim was drawn, quartered, and dead, dead, dead. Yet another enemy to add to the list.
“Just this once…” he whispered, but he couldn’t succumb to that temptation. Two men’s lives and souls depended on it. Two men who he loved.
“Fuck,” he spat, and headed deeper into the mage”s lair, looking for the bookcase.