The Way Ahead

Chapter 42: Hitting the Bars

Edwin rapidly backed up, trying to get out of reach of Minsix, and mostly failing.

What was that for, huh? he demanded, If ya wanted ta fight ya coulda jus asked.

Edwin stayed quiet, not wanting to give the actual answer and potentially provoke the minion, but not able to come up with a clever lie either. His brain may have been doing better, but it still wasnt great. Lingering effects of inhaling the potions smoke, perhaps? Well, he could still fight, at least. Edwin grabbed his iron bar and tried to quickly jab the mans chin with it, but the bandit blocked the attack, disarmed him, and grabbed his hand before he could properly react.

Edwin gritted his teeth in frustration. The outlaw started to say something, but Edwin wasnt listening. Instead, he twisted and dropped down, trying to leverage his miserable bodyweight to knock Minsix off his balance. It didnt entirely fail, but it didnt do much beyond send Edwin solidly impacting the stone balcony. He did land close to his anchor bar, though, which he snatched back up again. Yes, it was perhaps more lethal than he would have normally liked, but better than nothing, especially given how close he would need to get in order to use his knockout potion, to say nothing of whether or not it would actually work.

With a quick yank on the rope attached to the bandits ankle, he was able to unbalance Minsix as he raised a foot to try and pin Edwin to the ground. Instead, the bandit nearly toppled over himself, grabbing onto part of the balcony railing to prevent falling on top of Edwin. Edwin, for his part, scrambled to his feet and tried to swing his bar at Minsixs head, but the man raised his forearm to protect his vulnerable neck. Edwin recognized a Skill of some sort being activated as the arm snapped in place slightly. The iron rod struck and harmlessly rebounded off of the activation, and while it didnt quite leave a stinging vibration in the metal, it was close. As Edwin struggled to maintain his grip on the bar, he took a punch straight to the face, cracking his nose and sending blood cascading into his slightly open mouth.

Edwins neck snapped back painfully, and he spit out the blood accumulated in his mouth. He set his mouth into a tight line to prevent any more of his blood from running in. Taking a step back, he started blinking to try and clear his vision before a second blow could land. He partially succeeded, though another punch hit his upper chest, sending him reeling back directly into the doorframe, where his head cracked painfully into the stone wall.

Fighting through the pain and the stars filling his vision, Edwin lamely raised his iron bar into a guard stance, holding it like a quarterstaff. His grip was hampered slightly by trying to keep a grip on his rag, but he was not about to let that fall. He may not have too much training with the stick, but he figured it would be enough to buy him a bit of time, enough for his hopefully-superior Alchemy skills to come into play. Now was the time to prove that to himself.

When his vision cleared, he saw Minsix trying to break the rope connecting him to Edwins bar, but a quick thwack with his iron stick put a stop to that before he could make much headway. That, in turn, prompted a retaliatory wild punch, but just poking the bandit in the chest with his iron bar, keeping the man at bay, was enough to get him to switch to defense. Okay, now it was just a waiting game until he got the right opening, then he could strike.

Minsix took a couple of steps back, until he ran against the railing and could no longer retreat.

Perfect.

Edwin made sure he wasnt able to regain his stance, keeping the bandit out of reach with the additional length provided by his iron club, occupying the bandit with the need to constantly fend off strikes with his defensive Skill. When Minsix started trying to block the blows instead of evading them, Edwin knew hed have to switch things up.

Edwin jabbed the center of Minsixs torso with the end of his bar, twisting it enough to actually connect. That attack bought him just enough time to slip the bar over the railing and between two of the supports. From there, it was just a matter of firmly yanking on the rope to break the minions footing. While less successful than the previous attempt, in part because the bandit was ready for it, it was still enough to get a bit of room to maneuver, and as Minsix cast his attention to trying to regain his footing with a sudden stomp- some Skill was being activated, according to Identify and Almanac- Edwins off hand finally closed in enough to hold the rag open over the bandits nose and mouth, exposing him full-force to alchemically potent alcohol vapors.

There was a moment where Edwin wasnt sure if his creation actually did anything, and the horrifying thought that he might have practically killed himself, trusting in his alchemy. Then, as he watched the outlaw stagger back, he breathed a sigh of relief otherwise. Before Minsix could recover his bearings against the railing, Edwin pulled out his final weapon- the iron ball, strung around his shoulder by a length of rope- and threw it as hard as his Skill-assisted attack would allow. It struck the bandit at the dead center of his chest, overbalancing the somewhat drunk, partially conscious, and very loopy man, sending him slowly toppling over the railing.

Edwin stared at the sight through blurry vision, until a jolt ripped his melee weapon from his hand, the rope going taut in an instant as the manacle it was tied to, and the bandit it was attached to, fell down the side of the tower. The bar did its job perfectly as it clanged to the ground and raced to the edge, halting the fall of the bandit. Looking over the edge (and a bit of effort clearing his vision) showed Minsix exactly where Edwin had wanted him- dangling from a single leg (ooh, that looked like it hurt) like a pinata. The rope didnt appear as though it was about to give way, and the bandit probably had enough of a supernatural physique that hanging upside down for a while probably wouldnt kill him. He was limp (and quiet) enough that Edwin probably wouldnt have to deal with him for the moment, at least. Nevermind that he had no clue how long he would be out, how effective the knockout potion was, nor how hard it would be to do the same against the other bandits. Not to mention whether or not Minsix would survive hanging upside down for however long hed be (people could survive like that for a few hours, right? Edwin vaguely recalled some roller coaster or something that got stuck on the top of a loop, right?) Anyway, not thinking about that. He would deal with Minsix later, hopefully he was still alive by then.

Edwin didnt have too much time- the longer he took, the more likely it was that the other minions would come and investigate. Hm, actually, if they werent already here, he might have time. In any case, his first order of business was fixing himself up.

Digging out what was left of his tub of healing salve, Edwin applied a few dabs of the substance to his broken nose, flinching as the affected area heated suddenly and a few quiet cracks reverberated through his skull. Before he could properly process what had happened, however, the process was finished and more ginger touching of the base of his nose yielded no additional pain. A couple additional dabs were applied to the back of his head and to his ribs, where a bruise was already starting to form. As he watched, the bruise quickly faded, not even going through its typical cycle of turning purple, just vanishing.

Huh. So then the salve wasnt just creating blood? He hadnt really thought about it when applying it onto his broken nose, but Edwin had vaguely theorized that the salve functioned akin to a pluripotent stem cell- it created replicants of whatever it was exposed to. It would explain the rapid healing of cuts and to a lesser extent the healing of burns, as well as why a non-primed salve might do nothing or kill the patient- if it targeted bacteria, that could absolutely have no or detrimental effects, but making blood appear locally wouldnt make a bruise vanish like that.

Further testing required, it had been a while since Edwin had found something hed need to look into later, but he made a note with Almanac on the salve to investigate its properties later on as he stashed it back in its pouch.

A quick peek over the side- Minsix was still hanging limply, though not motionlessly- reassured Edwin his contraption was functioning as intended, and, after a brief trip upstairs to grab a few coils of rope, a new iron bar, as well as recovering his iron ball from where it had rolled off to, strode down the stairs.

Mintwo and Minseven were in the living room, throwing dice on the table and playing some kind of game. Meanwhile, Minfour slept on a pad off in the corner. The two minions barely even glanced at Edwin as he started to descend the stairs, not noticing his iron bar, potion-soaked rag, iron ball, open manacles, or even the lengths of rope loosely coiled around his arms. They must have been really engrossed in their game. With a deep breath, Edwin finished going down the stairs and threw his iron ball as hard as he could.

Mintwo had no time to react as Edwins thrown attack collided firmly with his shoulder, sending him sprawling and letting the ball roll to some far corner of the room. Edwin felt like he had a decent grasp of the minions combat capabilities at this point. They seemed to have a fair number of active powers- like Block or Knockback Blow, as he thought of them- but other than some kind of generic toughness Skill (or was it the Health attribute?), they didnt have much to help against surprise attacks.

Before Mintwo could recover, Edwin pounced on him, pushing the bandit towards his sleeping compatriot and pulling out a manacle. With his other hand, he tried holding his rag against the mans face, but found he couldnt hold it steady enough as the bandit started trying to shake Edwin off. He still managed to quickly snap one side of his manacles shut on Mintwos wrist, fortunately, but before he could close the other end on Minfour, Minseven grabbed Edwins ankle and yanked him off his compatriot, flinging Edwin across the room.

Edwin was exceedingly thankful he had taken the time to heal himself before engaging these bandits, as he landed in a heap next to the stairs, his own club painfully jabbing himself in the ribs. He quickly, if unsteadily, got to his feet, just in time to fend off a swinging manacle, still attached to the wrist of Mintwo. Edwin managed to block the swinging chain before it struck his head, but the other shackle clicked closed. Great. That would be way more annoying to attach now

Fortunately, positioned as he was beneath the stairs, Minseven wasnt able to effectively approach Edwin. Unfortunately, he ran down the stairs leading to the ground floor instead. Edwin didnt know why exactly, but the options basically amounted to him getting Minfive or retrieving his weapons. Maybe both No time to worry about that, though, as Minfour was also rousing himself from his nap on the floor, meaning hed soon have to deal with three, possibly four minions simultaneously.

Great. Why did he think this was a good idea, again? Oh yeah. Because he wanted to take care of all of the bandits without going to the appropriate authorities because he wanted to be cool, and he wasnt sure how long the cavalry would really take to arrive. He was an idiot. Still, he could probably still manage this, hed just hmm. Hed need to immobilize the minions for a second or two, that was all.

Edwin pulled a coil of rope from his forearm and held it in his off hand, trying to use it as something of a makeshift cloak or shield of some form. Between that and his staff, Edwin felt decently confident facing the unarmed minion, though not too optimistic about his chances if Minfour finished blinking the sleep from his eyes, or if Minfive or Minseven showed up. Until then, though, he had range, which was everything in a brawl. Mintwo couldnt get too close without inviting a rod to the face. He chanced it, though, and Edwin retaliated with a wallop as hard as he could manage, the end of his bar solidly colliding with the bandits jaw.

It barely did anything. A bit of blood trickled from the corner of the minions mouth, perhaps a bit of broken skin on the chin where Edwin had struck, but nothing else. Shoot. So much for no passive enhancements, Edwin was convinced that blow should have at the minimum broken a normal humans jaw, if not worse.

As Mintwo tried to pull Edwin into a grapple, Edwin used his bar as a forced spacer, bracing it against the stairs to give him the leverage required, but as the bandit tried to lunge at Edwin, saying something Edwin tuned out, he slipped off to the side altogether, removing all resistance. The unexpected loss of resistance sent the minion stumbled forward, which in turn gave Edwin the chance to release the coil of rope from his grip and toss it over Mintwos head. A yank on the cord drew the loops tight, pulling the bandit off his attack and holding him still, hopefully long enough.

While he had to contend with the flailing attacks of Mintwo, Edwin dropped his stick and pulled his rag open. In his position hanging solidly onto the mans back, keeping what was almost a noose tight across his throat, he was able to hold the rag in place... come on, it was almost there just a second now.

He breathed a sigh of relief as Mintwo stopped struggling, slumping instead into unconsciousness.

He didnt have any time to celebrate, though, as Minfour was on Edwin, and he barely had time to kick his stick away before his new opponent could grab it himself. He ducked and rolled, getting away before the minion could grab him. He cast a wary gaze at his foe. Hed need to keep Minfour occupied, so he couldnt untie Mintwo, and hopefully even take out the bandit before Minseven could return.

Edwin sighed as he recovered his bar, massaging his potion rag (was it getting drier?) to reassure himself that he could still manage this.

It wasn't going to get any easier fron here.