He needed no answer to spur him into a roll. Her spike-encrusted boot came smashing down where he had just lain. He sprang to his feet in time to see her pull her foot out, chunks of wood still clinging petulantly to its twisted spikes.
‘That’s fine,’ she said calmly. ‘We’ll take our time with each other, get to know one another.’ She smiled with something that was obviously intended to be warmth. ‘When one of us kills the other, I want it to mean something.’
She leapt at him, just as the knife leapt to his hand. With surgical precision, he slashed it up and against her brow. Like a shattered dam of purple flesh, the blood came weeping out in great rivulets, pouring into her eyes and rendering her blind. She shrieked, swung a fist, seeking him. He sprang backwards and continued to do so as she flailed too wildly.
His retreat came to a sudden halt as he felt his back meet the pillar his companion was tied to.
‘Not a lot of room to move here,’ he muttered.
‘You talk like it’s
‘I’m not getting near those hands of hers.’
‘Then what are you going to do?’
‘Run, maybe? Probably die. I’m not sure yet.’
‘You didn’t think of a backup?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘
‘Oh, come on! What were the odds that strangulation wouldn’t work?’
Anything she might have replied was lost in a howl of metal and a wail of cloven air. He looked and leapt just in time to avoid the massive wedge of metal that served as her sword from taking off his head. It bit deeply into the pillar instead as he scurried around it and the shict bound to it. He grabbed Kataria about her midsection, glancing around her and avoiding her offended scowl, much more concerned with the white eyes painted red narrowed at him.
‘I’m assuming she won’t kill you,’ he said, darting behind the shict as Xhai shot out a fist at his left, ‘or she would have already.’
‘You can’t know that!’ Kataria shouted to be heard over the sword being wrenched free.
‘It’s an educated gamble,’ Denaos said, twisting back behind her as Xhai lashed her blade out to catch him on his right. ‘If she can’t kill you, then you make a very good shield.’
‘I can hear you, you know,’ the longface said.
She swung again. He leapt again. The blade did not so much strike the pillar as shatter it completely. The ropes were slashed, sending Kataria falling to the ground. Splinters sprayed in all directions, a haze of dust and shards assaulting Xhai’s already stinging eyes and sending her into a blind, howling fury.
When he looked down, Kataria was staring at him with vast and empty eyes.
‘I could have died,’ she whispered. ‘And if I had, there would be no one left to help you.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t let you die.’
‘Then help me find my knife.’
‘Asper isn’t well,’ Kataria said, rising to her feet and slipping her rent bonds. ‘You have your people. I have mine.’
Before he could protest, she sprang to her feet and darted past the flailing longface, shoving the cabin door open and disappearing. Though he knew he ought to feel it, the urge to curse her as a coward was decidedly faint.
The pang of regret at not having fled first: decidedly not.
A snarl seized his attention. Xhai kicked the last remnants of the shattered pillar out of her way, advancing toward Denaos, her eyes shining through a face painted with blood and adorned with splinters. Her smile was one of contentment, unconcerned with the red dripping over her lips to stain her teeth. His face was one of fervent panic as he backed away and searched for any way past her that didn’t end in disembowelment.
‘No,’ she answered his wild gaze. ‘No more chases, no more interruptions. This is where one of us dies.’ Even reflected in the blade she levelled at him, her smile was possessed of macabre affection. ‘I’m glad it ended this way, Denaos.’
The rogue did not cry out as he was backed up against the wall, did not think to beg or plead or make deals. There was no room in her face for that. What else he saw in there — the tinges of joy, of desire, of lust — he was determined not to take as the last thing he saw before being gutted.
Thus, when he saw the slender form of Asper stalking towards the woman on shaking feet, her body trembling, her arms still bound behind her, he focused on her immediately.
‘I fought for so long,’ the priestess whispered, though to who was unclear. ‘I wanted so badly to believe there was a reason I should.’ There was a sizzling sound; a wisp of smoke rose from behind her. ‘I wanted to believe that the Gods wanted me for something other than this.’
Xhai glanced over her shoulder at the woman and snorted before returning her attentions back to the rogue.
‘There are no gods,’ the longface said.
‘There are,’ Asper whispered.
An arm extended from her shoulder: a black, skeletal limb bound in a red glow that pulsated like a decaying heart.
‘They just don’t care.’
The sword fell from Xhai’s grasp the moment Asper laid that red-and-ebon hand that belonged to something that was not her upon the longface’s neck. It was a gentle grasp, no more force behind it than that a wife would use to rub her husband’s shoulders. Five fingers rested lightly upon the netherling’s neck.
And Xhai screamed.
The longface fell to her knees, every muscle visible bunching up and tearing beneath her flesh. Her jaw threatened to snap off with the force of her wail, her eyes threatening to boil out of her skull and dribble in thick yolks into her mouth.
‘
‘I told myself that, too,’ Asper replied, shaking her head as tears poured down her cheeks. ‘I tried. But there’s nothing to be done.’ She choked on a sob. ‘They abandoned me. I did everything for the Gods and They just let that … let
‘I … won’t …’
Xhai’s arm rose up as if to stop her. There was a loud snapping sound as an invisible force very visibly shattered her hand, causing her fingers to seize up in agonised curls. Asper’s arm reacted immediately, fed on her suffering. The flesh of her shoulder seemed to dissipate into sizzling wisps as the crimson spread farther up her arm.
‘This hasn’t happened before,’ she said, ‘but why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t everything be taken from me, flesh and soul?’
‘S-stop …’ Xhai whimpered.
‘I can’t … I told them to take it,’ Asper whispered. The crimson light spread like a stain of paint. The fur wrapped about her chest sizzled and fell off, her left breast bathed in translucent crimson, exposing blackened ribs below. ‘To take it
‘And … I … said …’
Xhai howled, lashing out her uninjured fist that struck Asper against the jaw like a purple sledge.
‘
She continued to howl, to hammer, flailing wildly behind her and screaming even as her forearm trembled and shattered like her hand had.
