Everything happened all at once, but panic spurred Cas’s mind to multitask. The result of these two competing forces was a reality that seemed to stutter forward with flashing detail.
Already the figure had floated up into a crouch, sandaled foot slipping into place beside a planted hand. Kari was pushed aside by the rising motion, as well as a prelude of panic that was beginning to play out across her face. The rising figure was a mystery, dressed in an undecorated shawl, with a hood wrapped tightly so that only glaring eyes were evident.
What caught her attention most, however, was the knife, a glossy, ceramic blade, polished smooth that it glinted in the moonlight. It was obviously not a specialty weapon. It was a thickly bolstered, utilitarian thing Cas had seen in every kitchen and dinner mat since she’d arrived in the village. Running in parallel lines across its flat were the characteristic red bands that marked all the pottery produced in the villager. Though, this consumer grade hardly encumbered the figure, as they pointed the blade forward like it was a rapier, rear foot braced against the back wall in preparation for a lunge.
Cas was the obvious target of this attack.
She understood, of course, that she had nothing to fear from any blade, but instincts of self preservation ran through her like hives. Trained reactions took over, and she called upon her aura. The first three steps were completed in record time, and as she came to the final preparations to mold her aura a sudden, steely resolve overcame her as she centered herself and realized – with certainty – that she was too late.
She might have considered screaming, but the attacker was too quick for her merely human reactions, and seemed – after a subtle tensing of their back foot – to blur through the intervening space as they fell upon her.
Cas had dissolved her wings to make space for vocal chords, dodging was hardly a viable option against the super-human, even if she weren’t rooted to the windowsill. Funny, in the end her speech didn’t even end up mattering, the hunter had moved before she could get a word out.
Kari, however, had preempted the attacker.
Cas only registered this fortunate fact after the blade had been knocked aside, a painful image of the attacker’s outstretched arm over-flexing was burned into her memory after the fact. Kari… yes, it had been Kari that rammed herself into the elbow.
A scuffle ensued on the dirt as the surprisingly strong girl wrestled with the hooded figure. Cas’s crystal flicked up to follow the arcing path of the blade which was currently flipping through the air. Kari had the upper hand for only a second, but was quickly over matched. A strong shove pushed the earth out from underneath her, and the girl barely managed to convert the energy of that fall into a teetering stand, uncoordinated hands windmilling outwards.
The blade began to fall as the attacker leapt up into a rise.
“Behind you!” Cas could hear herself yelling, though she hardly remembered trying to speak.
Kari, still falling into her stand, arms outstretched, bounced her hand against the handle of the blade, catching it on the second glance.
The attacker’s eyes were more visible now through their mussed showl. Fear was in those eyes. They struck their hand out to bite Kari’s wrist, the blade nearly falling from Kari’s twisted hand, pointing dangerously back at Kari’s throat.
Kari screamed.
“Stop!” Cas felt that person less voice speak from her mouth again.
And then, the strangest thing.
The hang grasping Kari’s wrist let go. It reached for the blade, grasping a bleeding palm onto the edge, trying to pull it away with some desperate frenzy. Her other hand took it’s place on Kari’s chest, an attack riddled with unusual hesitancy.
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Kari saw the blood on the blade, and panic burst out from the girl.
Kari’s body moved in uncoordinated instinct. Fear filled her eyes and turned her limbs to jello, and every instinct conspired to simply move the knife in one direction: away. Her legs planted, and her arms pushed forward, doing anything possible to drive the blade away from her frozen body. The knife slid easily past the attacker’s fingers and into the base of their throat.
…
The sound of was something deflationary and gurgling, like the noise of someone drowning in their own blood.
Cas, still rooted to her place on the windowsill, forced herself to look down. A sudden rawness fell over her whole being, like every nerve had become suddenly exposed to the open air. The world felt suddenly too quiet, the desert winds not loud enough to cover over the intensity of the feeling that Cas just couldn’t describe.
Why?
It was bad enough to kill, but why did it have to be her? Why did it have to be-
“Yessina?” Kari’s voice was soft and disbelieving. A soft thud as the knife slipped from her fingers.
“Yessina!” A fearful, screeching voice tore itself from the girl’s throat as she collapsed beside the fallen figure, scrunching bloodstained fabric between her fingers and looking down at the blank, wide-eyed expression of her sister.
Yessina’s white face was ringed by red fabric, a slowly expanding, red stain pouring out from beneath her chin.
Cas quickly dissolved her vocal chords, spreading herself out into a creature with multiple limbs before climbing down the wall towards the fallen sister. Once there, she reached out four stalks, running them onto the girls face, and under the girl’s clothes and plastering over her wound and pressing against the artery that ran up the side of her neck.
Once there, she sat and observed. The stalk probing her wound quickly turned transparent, quickly clearing itself of all blood and non-sterile materials before detaching its tip, plastering a sticky piece of itself over the wound like a pressure bandage.
The others limbs simply waited in silent tension, waiting and watching as Kari let out a sudden and wordless scream, pressing her face into the bloodied bust and hugging her arms softly around the torso that was no longer breathing as heavily.
Cas had to sacrifice her vocal chords to grow the extra limbs. Turning mute seemed a worthwhile trade for the extra ability. However, the truth of the matter was that Cas was glad for the inability because she didn’t know what to say.
She didn’t know how she could tell Kari that her sister had died.
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The glow-light attached to Kari’s hood mixed ominously with the moonlight, and it reflected hazily off the stiffening pools of blood that had yet to soak into cloth or dirt. It cast sharp, upward bound shadows off her sister’s frozen face. It was never how she remembered it. She buried her face in the bloodstained clothes, trying to get close to the warmth of her body, almost losing herself when a sudden noise drew her attention away.
Korivenna was the culprit, and she stood at the door way, looking at the sight with a shock that was only surpassed by the fearful expression of the woman standing next to her. Both of their faces were strange somehow…
No, the expressions were natural, but their point of their attention was wrong. Her sister was down here, why were they looking up…
Kari followed their gaze.
Cas’s strange blood red, gangly form towered still over the scene below her, a bloody one with a dead girl and the other crying.
At first, Kari was glad for the intruders. She was glad for anyone who she could ask to explain all of this, she was glad for only a second, as a gleaming smirk ran itself across Korivenna’s features and a horrified one on her companion’s face. The woman screamed, and Korivenna turned back, yelling: “Here! I’ve found the monster! Hurry, please!”
“It’s killed her! Goddess it’s killed her!” The woman fell almost to her knees, body shaking in place as her instincts to run warred with her duty to stay.
Kari didn’t hear the rest. She’d already run out into the maze of tents, breath heavy as she dodged the sounds of the crowd that had gathered, turning right whenever she heard a group of searching villagers to the left, and soon finding herself at the edge of the compound.
Here, Kari stood with a confused expression, hot breaths mixing with the cold winds that felt frozen against the patch of blood staining the front of her shawl. She looked around her. Behind was a mass of villagers… she could hear their outraged cries already, the left the village of buildings where she’d never been welcome stood uninviting, and all around her was an endless expanse of empty desert.