Free The Forgotten King (Korin's Journal) by Brian Beam Page A

time to alter my punch into a forearm grab. 
    My fingers encircled Kait’s lean-muscled forearm, effectively stopping her punch.  Kait’s sleeve had dropped halfway to her elbow, meaning that my hand should’ve latched onto bare skin.  Instead, it squished against something slimy and soft on her inner forearm, making me think of slugs.  I just barely kept myself from immediately releasing her arm in shock. 
    It’s not that I was scared of slugs; I just didn’t find them very pleasant to touch . . . or see . . . or be around.  Okay, maybe I was a little scared of them.  I think my manly pride has taken enough damage in this journal already.  What’s another hit or two?
    Anyway, I controlled my shock through the same Palong mindset, lifting my left hand from Kait’s chest and giving her a solid punch to her chin.  Her head snapped to the side, her face twisting into a mixture of pain and unadulterated fury.  I wasn’t proud of punching a woman, but under the circumstances, doing so was the least of my worries.  After a follow-up punch for good measure, I jumped to my feet, taking a hold of her cloak as I did. 
    Pulling up on Kait’s cloak as I stood, I flipped her onto her stomach.  I pressed my foot against her lower back and tore the cloak off over her head; if it held any more of the metallic objects, I wasn’t about to let her have access to them. 
    With her cloak in hand, I dashed for the campfire, its flames dwindling in the absence of Kait’s men to stoke it.  The jingling chime of metal-on-metal sounded from within cloth, vindicating my actions.  Kait’s footsteps squished across the clearing behind me, but I kept moving forward, dropping her cloak onto the fire as soon as I reached it.
    Behind me, Kait’ let out a vicious scream.  I turned just in time to block her fist as it drove forward towards my face.  I hooked a punch into her left flank in reply, immediately dropping into a crouch afterwards to avoid her next swing.  Twisting, I jabbed my elbow sharply into her inner thigh, dropping her down to one knee.  Using my momentum, I spun behind her and threw my right arm around her neck, squeezing my tensed bicep against her throat while pressing her head down and forward with my left arm.
    This was more akin to the street-tough brawling type of fighting I previously mentioned, and given that Kait’ had proven to be a formidable fighter, I truthfully didn’t expect any success with my hold.  Instead of using one of at least five countering moves I could think of off the top of my head, though, she started clawing at my arm, frantically trying to pull it away from her throat in a panic. 
    I tightened my grip ever so slightly, wanting only to incapacitate her to unconsciousness without causing any permanent damage.  She continued to claw at my arm, her body flailing wildly below.  Long nails tore my skin through my shirt, but I held tight. 
    Kait’s sleeves slid down as her struggling intensified, revealing dark, undulating shapes lining both of her inner forearms.  Firelight played across their shiny skin, hitting me with a sickening realization.  They were leeches.  Blood-sucking, parasitic, slimy, gross, worse-than-slugs leeches.  Trust me, the irony of being freaked out by leeches while fighting a sorceress and being just a few weeks removed from fighting eldrhims and evil wizards hadn’t escaped me. 
    Well, at least now I knew where Kait’ had been drawing her magic energy from.  Having such a ready source, I didn’t understand why she wasn’t using magic against me as I worked to subdue her.  Then again, I wasn’t exactly an expert on magic, despite having grown up with a magic talking wizard cat. 
    Kait’ finally released my arm and thrust an open hand towards the fire.  My breath caught.  She was wearing a ring on her middle finger.  A metal ring. 
    In a flash, one of her metal spheres, glowing with red-orange heat, shot from the fire to her hand, clinking