Giant rune

She rushed me, and I met her in kind, rushing towards her across the open ground. The moment I got close, I leapt up and over her head, coming close enough that our eyes met for a single instant. Before my feet even touched the gravel again, she was spinning around, grotesque limbs lashing out and trying to capture me, to draw me into her.

But I leapt out of the way, towards the side, then up again and over her head. She growled, shouted at me to stand still, but Aífe was too nimble, too fast. I was always gone, always moving again before any of her monstrous parts could grab hold of me.

And each time I landed, I dropped down to one knee and dragged my fingers through the gravel.

It took no less than eighteen such jumps, adding to my pattern with every single one, to finish the design I needed. I taunted her each time, subtly, making sure to be just barely out of reach, to keep her from retreating or moving on.

And when at last it was ready, I backed away out of range of her grasp and knelt down to activate the array I’d just drawn around her.

“Suidigidir.”

When it came to raw proficiency, Aífe could be said to be of the same level as her sister. Both had received the same instruction, after all, and both had remarkable talent. Rather than the difference being what Aífe could do compared to Scáthach, it was a matter of how quickly, how efficiently, and how creatively she could do it. Quality, rather than capacity.

What Scáthach could do swiftly and easily mid-battle, Aífe required time, effort, and concentration to accomplish.

That was why she preferred her sword, her spear, her own fists to magic. Swinging her sword, throwing her spear, punching her enemies in the face — none of those required her to stop, to interrupt the flow of her fighting and change the direction of her thoughts and her focus. All she needed was her brutal strength and her sublime martial skill. All she needed was to be stronger, faster, better than her enemy.

But simply because she preferred one way didn’t mean she couldn’t do the other.

“Gleipnir!”

Ribbons of pale pink light shot up from the ground. They soared, they lashed, and they wrapped tightly around the body of the monster. Snagging, squeezing, they latched onto whatever part they could reach — her arms, her torso, the bulging mass of meat, the myriad of grotesque limbs that jutted from it at random. They latched and they wound and they pulled taut from all angles, yanking her from all directions until she could no longer move.

Gleipnir: Six Fetters of Fenrir. A seal of bondage that did not do such things as grow stronger the more divine its target was or increase its strength the harder the target tried to escape, but rather, one which sealed a portion of its target’s power, preventing them from escaping. In the Norse myths, it was used, as the name suggested, to bind the great beast, Fenrir, until the end of the world, Ragnarök.

This was not those chains. This was simply a spell that borrowed the concept of Gleipnir, a spell which was built upon the idea of it. It would not be as powerful or as complete as the original, but it should do the job just fine.

Noelle struggled, screaming, shouting. “You bitch!” she yelled at me. The myriad of mutated limbs lashed at her bonds, trying to sever them. They pulled, flexed, trying to tear them. The glowing ribbons strained.

But they didn’t break.

How long would they hold? I didn’t know. I hadn’t been concerned about the spell’s longevity when I cast it. I didn’t need it to last a thousand years, I just needed it to last long enough.