A fight

A Story by Rhetro Chips

An unfinished duel between a Knight and a minotaur. Wrote it yesterday in a single sitting and then proofed a little this morning. Please feedback!!!!

Gallio slid over the stone wall and fell into the wet mud.

The ‘thud’ of his armour bounced off the stone walls of the courtyard. His body sank into the mud for a moment, motionless.

At once, his upper body sprang up and he sat upright. Both hands rose to his helmet and adjusted it. He scanned the area while moving to his knees taking stock of his supplies.

He checked his belt; all there

His sword; still sheathed

His armour; still fastened and ready to go

He slowly rose. The dark grey sky blanketed the area in a monotone pallet. The moonlight bounced off the grey granite cladding the courtyard. Faster than he could react he heard heavy steps advancing on him. Gallio was tackled powerfully from his right side just outside his field of view and the two beings crashed to the ground. Gallio turned to fall forward and the being that struck him continued to fall on top. As they hit the ground, the attacker continued to roll past Gallio and the two sprang up, a couple meters apart, facing one another.

Gallio stood over six and a half feet tall and commanded every ounce of his nearly three hundred pound mass, a mountain of man. He stared up at his opponent, Robinio the minotaur. The bull-man must have stood at least seven feet tall and the shear size of the creature was incredible. The horrifying beast, eyes filled with rage, took a long, deep breath. Hot air shot out either side of Robinio’s snout and both warriors stood locked in one another’s presence.

“Have you come to kill me today?”

Robinio’s booming voice rang out of his throat and bounced off the dull grey granite walls as thunder echoed around them in the distance.

“My name is Gallio. I am a defender of all citizens that serve under King Distra. It is my duty to stand in defiance of anything that would threaten their safety”

Gallio’s posture tightened, his boots closed together, and his arms dropped to his sides in attention before his right gauntlet rose to meet his brow in salute as he introduced himself with duty and poise.

The proud warrior’s plate and leather armour glistened in the moonlight.

“On behalf of Lord Holl…”

Gallio was now tumbling backward across the cobblestone until meeting the wall behind him. The two slabs of granite that made up the portion of wall that he struck buckled and gave in a few inches before fully stopping his massive body.

Dust, dirt, and fine bits of rock hung in the air.

Silence took over the courtyard for a moment.

After a few moments, a dented chest plate fell from the cloud of dust to the ground..

Robinio’s foot was off the ground, still in position from the kick he just unleashed on his adversary. He returned his leg to his side and readied himself as a smile slowly crept over his massive bovine face. The minotaur wore plain cotton pants and had no shirt revealing a grotesque form of muscle and twisted flesh.

Gallio stepped out from the rubble and over the plate that once adorned his chest. A similar smile already across his round farm-boy face. He unbuttoned his cuffs and pulled his sleeves up as he stepped forward.

The huge knight’s weight dropped down and his legs split into an athletic stance ready to strike. He pounced forward toward his attacker with a shoulder dropped, ready to impact Robinio.

The minotaur’s hands quickly rose above its head and came together to create a large fist that he brought down on top of the advancing man.

Centimeters before impact, Gallio’s foot struck the ground and shot the knight sideways out of the path of the gargantuan minotaur’s countering fists. Robinio stumbled forward, off-balance from the missed attack.

At the same moment, Gallio pushed off from beside Robinio and threw a punch in full force toward the recovering beast and drove his fist into its ribs with all the might he could muster. The blow sounded like a brick impacting a wall.

Robinio barely reacted and quickly turned to respond to the attack. Gallio still had the initiative as he quickly passed across the minotaur’s front side just below striking level. Repositioning his weight, he drove a knee into the ribs of the massive minotaur on the other side before springing back and resetting his stance.

Robinio buckled for a moment before jumping back to his feet. He took a deep breath and cried out with horrific intent. The chilling roar rang deep into Gallio’s bones and he could feel the skin on the back of his neck beginning to crawl.

At the same instant the chill entered Gallio’s mind, Robinio jumped toward the man, his massive four fingered hand outstretched. He closed his hand around Gallio’s face plate and the minotaur drove the knight’s head back into the wall behind and pushed hard. When the angry beast heard the clang of metal off the stone wall he pulled the helmet back, reset, and pushed again. Another loud clang and he reset and pushed again. Clang, again, and again. He smashed the knight’s head into the stone wall again and again, pushing in with as much force as possible while the dust cloud grew around him and he could no longer see the moon’s light. He pulled again and pushed with utter hatred and he felt the helmet become weightless in his hand before collapsing against the wall. The metal helmet formed a ball of steel in his fist, twisting in his huge hand to form sharp ridges that sliced into the beast’s flesh.

Robinio cried out as blood sprang from the wound.

He felt a pull on his left horn and then a hard force drove into his ribs in the same spot the knight had previously struck. He could hear the loud *crunch* of his ribs collapsing under the impact.

The force of the pull on his horn coupled with the blow sent his body sideways. Robinio felt his horizontal body lift off the ground as he was at once sent through the air toward the wall on the other side of the courtyard. For only a moment Robinio could make out the site of Gallio before impacting the wall, going through it, and continuing to somersault along the ground for some distance afterwards. Robinio finally came to a stop when his body struck a large boulder ten or fifteen meters from the now destroyed temple courtyard wall.

The dry desert air howled as it swept across the landscape between the two warriors. Gallio slowly advanced, walking from the temple courtyard, stepping through the hole created by the impact of Robinio’s body.