Emily watched from the floor as Alex was lifted into the air on probably one of the worst amusement park rides of his life.
One of Alex's blades clanged to the ground, slipping from his grip and spinning off into the snow.
The creature was screaming in victory and Emily realized it was beginning to swing Alex toward the gorge. If it cast him off the edge there was zero chance the guy would survive.
Standing she called up another bolt of blood and sent it towards the creature's eyes once more. This time the bolt hit its target evoking a high-pitched roar from the creature and buying Alex time.
With what could only be described as superhuman determination, Alex drew another dagger and brought it directly down on the thinnest part of the cragmother’s tail. The blade struggled for a moment but did manage to go through the thin strip of flesh.
Still being whipped about in the air though, Alex hurtled backward into a tree, a loud crunch of bark and bone resounding through the area.
Emily lowered her stance as the creature rounded on her, it's one eye destroyed, but the other was all too happy to focus on her. Emily couldn’t help cursing now that she had what she wanted.
Strangely enough, she could now see that the beast had a deep cut running diagonally across its whole body as though someone had tried to cut the thing in half but had been unable to. Neither she nor Alex had yet to use a blade, so the thing must have been injured in its earlier fight, she could work with that.
When looking around for a branch of her own Emily spotted one of the long-dead cragwings nearby. It was a gamble but she didn't have much choice at this stage, her dagger was probably ineffective, so she did the only thing she could, she made a mad dash for the corpse.
Seeing this, the cragmother released a hiss and charged toward her.
Emily was not far from the body, three to four steps at most, but the speed of the creature could not be understated. It was so fast that it closed a couple of meters in the same amount of time it took her to take two steps.
Seeing the fanged maw coming, Emily aborted the dive and changed direction at the last second.
In this case, the creature's speed and damaged wings worked against it, overshooting her by a good margin. This meant however that it now obstructed the corpse she had been going for, casting her eyes about Emily looked for another and spotted the next nearest one was right near the cliff face.
Emily grunted, having no time to even think, and dove at the body.
She moved the vitality in her chest to her outstretched hand. Blood pooled at her pores and coated her palm. The dead creature in front of her had the barest of nicks on its neck and Emily plunged her hand into the wound, sending her blood in. The gamble here was two-fold, one that the creature's blood could have long since clotted at this stage and two, if it hadn’t, was there enough to be of help.
The cragmother shook itself off and renewed its charge at Emily as though insulted she would touch its dead broodling, but it was too late.
These creatures were born of the cold, and while coagulation had set in around the extremities, the core of the creature remained usable.
The sound of a body bursting, bones breaking, and organs drained of all their blood took some getting used to, but when the creature arrived with blinding speed, it ran chest first into a spear of blood.
Emily had tried to ground it in the rock but the cragmother’s mass and momentum were too much. Unable to stop it or dodge it, both Emily and the creature were sent hurtling toward the cliff edge.
The creature fell atop Emily, grinding her back against the stone, yet at the same time it was this very position that protected her.
Unable to twist its neck to reach down and rip Emily's head from her shoulders, the thing tried to get up but seemed unable to get strength into its limbs. Probably on account of the baseball-sized hole through its chest.
This movement caused the top half of Emily’s back to slide off the edge, the feeling of nothing below her except open space sent a tingling sensation to the soles of her feet. Her only saving grace was that the creature on top of her pinned her to the ground.
Placing her hand on its leathery stomach, Emily fired a bolt point-blank into the creature.
Its wail was strained but there was only time to react, craning her neck she bit into the open wound. By now the creature was quietening, but Emily could not waste a good thing. She began to drain the creature.
As a general rule, larger creatures always had more vitality to give than smaller ones, the downside was they took longer to die.
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When Emily began to drain something, it could feel it, knew it was dying, and the cragmother was no different. It seemed to get one last desperate bout of strength.
It thrashed forward, trying to dive off the cliff; Emily clung onto her kill with the stubbornness of a bulldog.
Emily’s lower back continued, ground against the sharp cliff edge as she slid further down, their center mass reaching the point of not returning, they were falling.
Then all at once, they halted.
The creature continued to desperately crawl forward but even as they teetered on the brink they could get no further.
A new scream joined with the cragmother’s woes.
Emily couldn’t see much from here, but she could make out Alex’s leg braced in the snow, poking out from behind the cragmother.
He was pulling them back from the edge or at least preventing the creature from taking her over it, with that injury it could not be pleasant.
Emily refocused and continued to drain everything the winged creature had, it could not have been more than a minute later that one final shudder came from the thing. It's heart trying for another beat and then going still.
The weight on Emily had significantly lessened, but with free hands now she braced herself against the stone.
Spitting the blood she shouted.
“Alex! Let go of it!”
A grunt, and the weight teetered off her falling into the gorge. Emily tried to backpedal as she felt herself falling too, when a hand grabbed her ankle.
Looking up she saw Alex lying there, panting as sweat dripped down his face. Emily froze, aware his grip could give out at any moment. Climbing up a sheer cliff is hard, climbing up a sheer cliff face backward was impossible.
Emily was about to reach for her power again when she heard one more grunt and yell from Alex and she was ripped upwards, landing on solid ground beside him.
Clutching her lower back Emily blinked, still panting from the exertion and euphoria of battle.
Glancing over she wanted to thank Alex but when she saw him she froze.
The man was terrifyingly pale and blood was flowing from the barb still lodged in his leg. The ground nearby was coated in the stuff and he was shaking profusely.
Emily sat up, her back and lung protesting, and crawled over to the guy. Flicked her fingers in front of his unfocused eyes.
“Hey! Look at me! Focus!”
Emily didn’t know what she’d expected. Alex had been stabbed in the leg and yet he somehow managed to make his way to them and stop them going over the edge, no doubt causing himself immense pain all the while.
This was a life-threatening wound and she doubted there were any hospitals around. Her healing worked incredibly well for her own body but she had nowhere near the vitality needed to close another's wound.
“Fuck, okay. The old-fashioned way it is,” she said more to herself than him.
The barb had lodged itself about midway through his thigh and was poking out about two centimeters on either side.
The first thing she needed to do was stop the bleeding, and while she was usually trying to do the opposite, that didn’t mean she couldn’t stem the flow.
Moving a small amount of power to her hands Emily pressed them on either side of his leg.
Alex grunted in pain and his eyes refocused on Emily.
“Okay, good job Alex. Now listen to me, don’t fight me, no matter how uncomfortable it feels, I'm trying to help.”
Emily didn’t wait for his answer, she just began manipulating his blood.
One of the most important limitations of her gift was the fact that she could not manipulate blood while it was still inside another living body. The moment it was out in the open though it was free game.
Emily had done a lot of testing in her earlier years
Asking questions like, at the point did her power become effective? After many tries she’d narrowed it down to the threshold of a wound.
The blood near the entrance and exit wounds suddenly slowed to a halt, as it got to the opening and found itself unable to advance.
The outside blood held in place by Emily’s gift acted as the perfect blockage.
But she didn’t stop there, the pool of Alex's lifeblood lay scattered on the floor beneath them, but this too began to lift off the stone at Emily’s call.
His blood was covering the area but all of it began to separate from the stone and float through the air toward them, only for it the lazily coil back toward his wound.
Ever so slowly she began to force the blood back into the wound, normally she would avoid doing this to allies as it caused intense discomfort but she had to do this for the next part.
Alex began thrashing about, feebly trying to pull at her hand but she brushed him away.
“Enough, it's almost done.”
Having gathered all the blood she could Emily slung her bundle off her back with one hand and pulled out the blanket.
Alex was more lucid now and he stared at the wound in confusion. Handing him a knife and the blanket she said.
“Make strips I can’t take both hands away from the wound.”
It took him a second to register what she was asking but soon enough he accepted it and began cutting the piece of cloth into thick strips.
When he was just about done but still distracted, Emily placed her thumb on the base of the barb where it entered the thigh.
Without giving him any warning she pushed barbe through his leg, plunging her thumb through the wound, grabbing onto the rest of the barb, and pulling it through.
Alex grunted and thrashed in agony while Emily tried to keep hold of him. He eventually calmed down but his breathing was irregular.
Taking the discarded strips of cloth she began to bind the wound tightly, all the while holding the blood at bay.
When the makeshift bandage was finally in place, she released her hold on the blood, panting from exertion.
That simple manipulation had used a large amount of power and required delicate control, if she’d still been new to her gift she would never have been able to pull that off. But she’d managed and she had still netted a decent amount of life force from the beast.
“Okay Alex listen to me, we’re going to find a safe place, I need to cauterize this, the technique I used earlier may increase your chances of an infection but it was that or bleeding out.”
Alex nodded weakly as he struggled to remain focused.
“The waypoint is… around six hours from here. If we can get there… we may be able to buy a tonic from someone there. We just need to follow this road.”
Emily followed his gaze and noticed that the same red brick road continued from this side of the overpass. Winding its way through the trees and disappearing into the distance. Glancing up at the sky, the sun was still hanging overhead.
They had to make it there before nightfall or things would get a hell of a lot more complicated. Grunting Emily grabbed Alex by the arm and pulled him up off the floor, setting them in the direction of the road.