15 Outclassed

The sun was getting stronger. Her hair had already dried. Bedona braided and tied them into a bun and pinned it with her jade birds, and replaced her bronze studs with rubies. She looked at herself into a pocket mirror, turned her head left and right, not too gaudy like before but she still was dressed enough for a ball. She looked at the pile of clothes by her feet; there were few dresses, shirts, trousers, shoes all of her wardrobe and finery sprawled on the ground. She had tried them all. Wore and re-wore them. She looked at the man who hadn't budged an inch, and couldn't help but swallow the rising bitterness. The man might as well be a statue at that point. She imagined him laughing by himself as she felt more and more miserable with the passing time.

Bedona didn't want to wait more. It was near dusk, and the charade was getting stupid. She needed to leave and get away from him as soon as possible. She collected her stuff, one by one packing them in their proper places. Putting the big pile into that small carrier, no less than magic it was. This, the little game she had made up in her mind was no more. She didn't rush but she was always a fast person. She decided to wear the simple shirt and the trousers, long boots and fingerless leather gloves that were casual enough for the road and also viable enough had she found herself in a fight.

She had one last look at his misshaped behind before she left; he was too rude to stand there motionless, ignoring her for half the day that Bedona thought better than to go up and greet him. 'Yes! Still like a statue.'

Bedona jogged along the beach, strategically away from him so that she was out of his earshot. With every step she kept track of where he stood; a heavy solid weight on the ground that radiated power like nothing she had seen before. Earth was her domain. As long as he stood on the ground she would know where he was as if she was staring right at him. Suddenly she felt the weight gone, like a torch was doused in the corner of her vision. She turned only to find nothing where the weight was to be. She looked left and right, he was nowhere to be seen. She didn't feel him move, he disappeared into thin air just like he had first appeared.

Then the next second, the weight was in front of her, so close she could touch it with her hand. She paused and slowly lifted her foot and slammed it onto the dusty ground with all her power.

She jumped back, swinging her leather bag in her hand in front and pushing onto her feet and springing behind as far as possible. A six feet tall and two feet wide pillar of white sand was starting to crumble down in front of where she just was. She looked above it and saw nothing but clear blue sky, she heard the sound of the fall behind the pillar, and leaned to look. The man was getting up from the ground, no sign of injury or pain. He was heavy as he looked. Bedona doubted she had managed to fling him high enough. His sudden closeness was too much for her and she reacted by instinct, using as much power as she could muster in an instinct. It barely seemed to do anything, and on top of that he fell on the snuggly sand of all places.

Bedona eyed him warily and readied herself for his reaction. Something told her that he too was a user of spells like her. Though what she did was an accident, she didn't feel any worse about it. Actually, she was glad that their ignoring of each other had come to an end. She just wished his magic was as strong as his size suggested. The books said the bigger the man, the weaker are his reserves. Bedona had an advantage being a lean, muscular woman, although not a professional yet.

When the man stood up, Bedona saw his face for the first time close enough to establish her initial thought of an ape to be appropriate. His face was flat, a tiny, odd pimple poking out of dark layered wrapping of clothes on his massive shoulders. His dark tousled hair covered his entire forehead to his eyes; a normal sized pale face that looked like it was being stretched from both sides. He had a thick growth of beard that circled his face leaving the middle completely hairless. 'Again, a near image of an ape.'

He blinked as if surprised and looked at the mound she had created, and then at her. His eyes shifted between the two places few more times before settling onto her and he frowned. Not in anger like she'd expected, just curiosity. Bedona had killed; she had killed a person using much less than what she'd just showcased. And she definitely was hoping to get more than just a mild curiosity out of him.

He took a step forward and she prepared herself for an attack. 'What will he do? from where will it come?' She crouched down and rested her weight on the balls of her feet, ready to spring in any direction needed. She was never the one for a weapon; she had learned to use one, like everyone in her position, but that was where she left it. She possessed one that was more of a memento than anything. She had left it with her pile. But right now it definitely felt better to have in her hand than anywhere else.

The man was waiting too, scanning her for her next move. When nothing followed, he sprang forward and ran toward her. Just an average run one would expect from a random person on the road, but with his long legs his steps covered twice more space than normal. Bedona caught herself straight after the momentary panic she'd had from his swift movements. In all honesty, the sight of that giant running for her was quite terrifying. Wasting no more time she clicked her feet on the ground and a wall of sand about then feet wide and one foot thick sprang up, to trip him. But the giant was prepared this time; he rolled forward, barely managing to keep the wall from touching him and landed on his feet in a crouch. A superb display of agility a man of his size had no right to show.

She huffed, already feeling the strain in her gut of heavy use of her power. There was a blink as she caught her breath and the man was gone. Her eyes flickered searching him and then suddenly she felt the weight on the ground behind her. Wasting no time she squatted down to slap both her hands on the sand.

There was no pillar this time but an explosion of dirt at her back threw her plummeting forward. She rolled and got to her feet with practiced movements and turned. The man bent, with his fist pointing down towards what looked like an explosion of sand. For a second she saw faint markings of light in the air around his fist that disappeared like they were never there in the first place.

Bedona was running out of options now. She should have run the moment her first attack didn't work. Just a moment of negligence and he was already onto her. A giant palm slapped under her breasts lifting her off the ground while simultaneously pushing all the air out of her lungs. She never saw it coming; 'the giant really had no right to be this fast'. The world swam around her and her eyes filled with tears, and before she could make the heads and tails of the situation, her wet eyes stared into the gloom.

She woke to the smell of smoke, not the one from fire but the one that comes from clothes after being near a fire for too long. She opened her eyes and blinked, everything was too bright. Things settled after a while. The brightness turned to blurs and the blur turned to a beach she remembered being in at what appeared to be noon. She was sitting on the sand with her back against something solid, her legs lay straight and her hands stuck to her sides. A fly had come to sit on her nose from somewhere and she crinkled the tip to shoo it away. It didn't leave so she tried to slap it away with her hand, only to find numbness in them. She tried her other hand, still the same. Her breath was starting to shorten and she opened her mouth to scream in panic. No sound came.

"Stop!"