The Elemental Knight
The world is inhabited by strange monsters and stranger people. Some of these individuals, be they man or monster, become tremendously famous as they explore the world and commit great and terrible deeds. One of the most incredible tales that was relatively recent in terms of its origins was that of a deadly warrior dubbed "The Elemental Knight" who participated in a massive battle just two years ago.
The Elemental Knight is a mercenary who travels the world, sometimes engaging in fierce battles whenever they decide that the pay is worth the effort. The battle that made the Knight famous was a battle in a remote mountain nation. In this battle, the Knight was battling for and leading loyalists to the king of the nation, against a decently sized army led by a seasoned General who was attempting a rebellion. The Knight had been asked to be one of the champions of the King, and was tasked with leading the forces of the King in what was to be the decisive and final battle one way or another. The Knight gathered their forces at the entrance to the city and silently rose their blades to the sky, at which point the seemingly metallic blades began to transform. One of them began to heat up, turning red before flames would come into existence in an aura surrounding the blade. The other began to glow a bright yellow before changing into what looked like a blade of lightning. The Knight was silent as they turned and pointed the blade towards the only entrance to the King's last stronghold, waiting for the rebelling warriors to appear.
When the forces of the General began to appear, the Knight immediately attacked, their blades practically exploded, and an immense amount of energy, equally heat and lightning based, was launched at the forces of the general, massacring many of them immediately and shattering the will of the rest as they knew they'd have to overcome the source of this brutal attack in order to take the final stronghold of the King. The Knight had been told that any number of fallen soldiers was acceptable, and the Knight preferred to only have enemy soldiers perish during this battle, if it could be helped. The General, who had been in the middle of his amassed forces called out to the Knight, recognizing the power of the blades that the Knight possessed even from a distance and demanded a one on one duel so that no more warriors serving the rebellion would perish. The Knight silently walked to the enemy forces and transformed their blades back into innocuous looking swords, even though they were personally far more skilled at using the blades as blades and not ranged weapons.
The Knight was clad in strange looking metal armor, black as night, covering their entire body hiding both their gender and possibly even their species, all the while refusing to speak, communicating via body language and the usage of their blades to point to things. They were an enigmatic figure, but possessed power beyond anything the General had seen in his entire life, even beyond the mysterious and freakish looking creatures prowling underground who built massive cities using alien magic and impossible determination, occasionally venturing to the surface to terrorize and kidnap surface dwellers for slave labor and cruel experimentation. The knight pointed one of their blades at the general and then to the ground, obviously eager for a one on one fight. The general obliged.
It took a moment for the General to ride his horse out to the front of his forces and to climb down from the impressive stallion and stand before the Knight. The general descended from the armored horse he was riding, and drew the two ornate swords he had in scabbards at his sides. "It's do or die!" The general shouted as he lunged towards the Knight moving almost unbelievably fast for a warrior clad in heavy metal and holding two heavy blades.
Unbeknownst to either of them, the General and the Knight had similar philosophies in battle. They preferred to end battles quickly and with brutal, singular, strikes. The Knight thought it would be better to strike second, and guarded against the immediate lunge of the General, responding by using their two blades to catch the lunge, which had been planned to run through the Knight and slice them in two. The General was shocked that the Knight could block such a heavy lunge with just their blades, and was even more shocked when the Knight kicked the General in the chest, a simple and powerful response which combined the Knight's heavy armor with leg muscles strong enough to crack boulders, shattering the armor of the General, especially his breastplate which caused his muscular chest to be exposed to the cold mountain air. The General took a few steps back, staggering from the unbelievable force of the simple kick, knowing that he took very real damage even though he had plate metal armor that had withstood war hammer strikes from orc chiefs before. The idea that anything short of a dragon had the physical force needed to shatter his armor was a serious blow to his morale. And it provided the perfect distraction for the Knight to finish the fight.
The Knight was a physically enhanced warrior who used magic to amplify their movements. They rose one of their blades and placed the other in its scabbard, before pointing the drawn sword at the General. The fight ended when the Knight unleashed a vast explosion of magical energy and moving faster than the eye could track cut down the General, who was still distracted by the fact that his armor had been shattered by someone using brute force. In one instant the Knight had been standing between the General and the forces of the King. In the next instant the General's body had been sliced neatly in half, and the Knight was behind the General and the closest of the General's forces, with the General closer to the forces of the King than the Knight was. The Knight had in a few moments brought a rebellion that had been taking place for years to an end and even executed its mastermind. The Knight then looked at the gathered forces of the rebellion, and waited.
The Knight was clearly a powerful warrior and had by itself decimated nearly a hundred warriors and the General. It was waiting to see if the remaining warriors would attempt to strike it down, or if they would back off and retreat, returning home to see what fate awaited them for high treason. After a few tense moments the warriors closest to the Knight would back off, retreating and watching the Knight to see if it'd attempt to destroy them with its powerful and strange blades. It didn't pursue them, because it knew that the battle was won.
A/N: Image credit goes to Cal Santiago for this bad-ass artwork (it might be the concept art of the Abyss Watcher, but I found it on Tumblr) of the Abyss Watcher from Dark Souls 3. The Elemental Knight is inspired by the Abyss Watcher, and I found the poses and techniques of the Abyss Watcher to be absolutely incredible. I really liked writing this short piece, and am working on longer pieces in the future but I like to showcase these smaller pieces just to show people what I write. I hope you liked it and if you have any advice please leave it in a comment!