Swings continued from the wreathed boy, practically chasing Gem as she moved to place her back at a wall. The dakaran didn’t attack at all until she’d circled around once more, halting the repositioning and forcing Gem back out into the street. Keeping her pinched in the scorpion’s claw.

Gem fought tooth and nail, might and magic. Every weapon at her disposal finding use against the enemy.

She kept them at bay with bolts of power, robbed their sight with arcane light, even threw herself into the air when they began to close in from all sides. Move and countermove, action and reaction.

A thrill took her at the conflict, stronger than any Gem had felt before. Boiling her blood and burning her heart so greatly that she barely noticed the fourth slash against her body, barely worried that a single more would mean her defeat.

Even, when at last she’d struck both Balogun and the wreathed boy four times each, found herself wishing the enemy would take just a few more.

Victory grew nearer by the instant, Gem knew. She only yearned to demonstrate her power for longer before claiming it. Only regretted ever panicking to begin with, as if there were any doubt of her success from the beginning.

The dakaran closed in from behind, blade batted aside by Gem’s and body folded as a fist buried itself deep in her gut. Gem gasped at a sharp pain in her leg, stared as blood rained down and found a sanguine smile meeting her where the girl had fallen, teeth stained red as they emerged from her flesh.

Then she moved again, slashing at the monster and driving her back again.

Her thigh bled as she moved, ichor drifting oddly in her wake rather than fall. The pain was hot, but easily ignored. A shallow wound born from a desperate attack.

It only hardened her confidence. Showing beyond doubt the lengths to which her enemies had been driven.

The trio rushed in once more, meeting Gem’s readied guard with an admirable steel behind their eyes.

Knives danced, magic flew, muscles coiled and contorted in time with the supernatural power giving them strength. For some time, perhaps as long as minutes, Gem knew nothing but the exertions of battle.

Then she caught the dakaran once more across the belly, watching as she went rigid before lashing out a kick into Balogun’s chest when the girl pounced on an imagined opening.

Only the wreathed boy remained standing and unseized by pain. He realised it just as Gem did, diving too slowly to avoid the impact of her arcane blast. A cry tore the air around him as he hurtled backwards, bouncing and tumbling across the ground before stopping fifty yards back.

A sudden weight seized Gem, dragging at every ounce of her flesh and numbing the muscles holding it up. Her knee hit the ground first, joined a moment later by her palms.

Laughter touched her ears like a blade against skin, chilling her to the core and drawing her eyes up to rest upon the dakaran.

Red irises seemed aglow as they met the cyan of Gem’s, beautiful and terrible as a sculpture of bone.

Movement caught in Gem’s vision. Blood, shifting through the air in beads with an agonising slowness. Drawn, she realised, from the place in her leg where fangs had punctured flesh.

“I can only thank you.” The dakaran said, still smiling. Standing as the crimson flecks came to touch her skin, deforming and disappearing as if soaked through its pores. “For fighting us all off so well.”

The wreathed boy began to stand, odd haste animating his limbs, but the dakaran’s speed seemed undiminished. Greater, even, than it had ever been. She crossed the space between them in barely a second, arm disappearing in a blurred motion before Gem’s very eyes.

The boy had already begun to fade from the stage when she recognised the knife slash for what it was.

Before the wreathed boy had even left Gem’s sight, the dakara was moving again. Balogun rose to a kneel just in time to make herself the blade’s next target, gasping for a split second before vanishing along with her temporary ally.

Leaving Gem alone with the grinning girl.

“Have you figured out what’s happened yet?” She asked, still smiling. The sight struck a deeper fear in Gem than any scowl or hateful glare. There was something feline about it. Cruel and twisted, yet somehow restrained. A cognizant animal.

“You’ve poisoned me.” She said, finding even her lips and tongue heavy.

Gem’s words drew a laugh no less carnivorous than the smiling face that formed it, yet infinitely more peculiar. Too fast, as though the sound were rushed.

“A good guess, I suppose. But mistaken. No. Try again, Gemini.”

She could barely keep her eyelids open, let alone think. Something about the girl’s voice still stuck out to her, making itself distinct through the sudden fog of exhaustion while all other sensations were blunted and numbed.

Gem realised what it was just when the dakaran closed to under a dozen feet from her, discovering the secret as she raised her hand to cast the girl back. Finding no magic to answer her call.

She thought her heart might stop at the realisation, a sudden tremble seizing her. It delighted the dakaran.

“Ah, good.” The girl said, smiling as always. “You’ve finally noticed. I must say, it took you a while.”

Her voice was as quick as before, and Gem nearly wept to know why.

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It wasn’t faster. Her own thoughts and perception had been slowed as the magic infusing them dispersed. She was viewing a mystic’s actions through an inept’s eyes.

Magic deprivation had taken away all her power and speed, while her enemy wanted none.

Fear pushed the feebleness from Gem, allowing her to force herself upward from the ground and take a single step back. But determination was to magic as water was to wine, and a single step was all she got before the dakaran was upon her. Grin twice as wide in its proximity, eyes thrice as terrible.

Fingers closed around her shoulder, tightening like a vice and squeezing a cry from her as pain lapped around their grip. With barely a gesture the mystic dragged Gem back, flipping her head over heels and leaving her to fall back-first into the ash.

Stars danced before Gem’s eyes, fall replacing the air in her lungs with fire. Then the girl was upon her, a knee pressing down on either side of Gem’s waist. Eyes fixed on hers.

“You know, I’ve been looking forward to this.” The dakara said, still smiling. Still absent of even a superficial warmth in spite of it. “Just you and me. Nice and intimate.”

Gem squirmed under her, thrashing with every weakened muscle she had. It was of no use. Magic didn’t give mass to its user, but it brought immovability. She’d have just as easily toppled an ox as broken the dakaran’s balance.

“Oh come now.” The girl beamed. “Stop that, if you keep struggling then I won’t be able to control myself much longer.”

Her words had barely registered when she moved, reaching down to touch her fingers against Gem’s side, then slowly pressing down and shifting them from side to side. As though feeling for something.

A dark light in her eyes was the only warning Gem received of her finding it. Then a thumb pressed down hard on a rib.

The bone gave instantly. Snapping so suddenly and completely that Gem felt it shift beneath her skin, driving the air from her again in a horrified gasp. She sat paralysed, helplessly awaiting the pain.

It came soon, blinding her with its intensity and seizing her every muscle into maddened spasms. Gem thrashed like an animal, heedless of the jarring at her side, wanting only to be freed from the predator’s grasp.

But terror gave no more power than she’d had before, only serving to burn whatever strength remained in her.

Tears flooded her vision, blurring the world and leaving a distorted mess of the dakaran’s face. Somehow Gem still saw her smile, saw it even while her eyes were pinched half closed.

“That’s one down.” The girl grinned, voice tormenting Gem as nothing had before. “You only have a few dozen left.”

Gem’s hand snaked out for her dropped dagger, fingers grazing its hilt but finding no purchase by which to snag it. She stared up into the dakaran’s face, fear filling her so completely as to leave no room for any other thought in her head.

“Please don’t.” She said, helplessly. Pathetically.

“Yes, that’s perfect.” Answered the creature staring down on her. “Just like that. This would be dreadfully boring without the begging.”

Mind echoing back, if only to place itself somewhere but the present, Gem recalled all the tales she’d heard of the dakara. The monstrous cruelty that ran through their species as hunger and thirst did all others.

I’m at the mercy of a monster. Gem realised, feeling yet more tears threaten to flood her. A thing with no mercy at all.

Once more the dakaran’s hand began to move along Gem’s side, almost seeming to caress it. In her daze of agony and horror, it took her moments to realise what was about to happen.

“NO!” She cried, voice a roar in spite of her wound’s protests. The dakaran was no more heedful of it than the last.

Her thumb pressed again, snapping the second rib like a second twig.

Gem must have been fortunate before, for the wave of torment that washed over her at the break was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Even imagined.

It started at the point of the snap; a sharp pain, stabbing more than crushing. Urging her entire body to curl itself around the wound and protect it, then turning the thought to aimless panic when the dakaran’s weight prevented it.

The torture crept further. Turning her guts to water as it passed them through, setting every muscle its snaking tendrils touched into a contorting wreck and leaving Gem’s body paralysed by its own rigidity.

Then, finally, it found her lungs.

Gem emptied herself of air by screaming, and the pain kept her from drawing more in. Suffocating. Immobilising.

A voracious sensation, intent to eat everything it touched and leave nothing left.

“That was a good one, eh?” The dakara remarked, seeming only passively interested. “I was worried by how little you reacted to the first, truth be told.”

For the third, terrible time, she began to move her fingers across Gem’s side.

Gem moved, fear shifting her body without thought. Straining her every muscle, stretching her every joint. Growing millimetres closer to the fallen dagger less than a yard from where she lay, yet still unable to reach it.

She felt her nihil tucked away inside, untouched even while her magic lay depleted. Cursed herself for forgetting it, then cursed herself more when her clumsy grasps failed to move the unearthly power residing in her core.

Magic always was easier to control, and hard enough already while I panicked.

The thought induced terror, the terror haste, the haste a greater clumsiness than before. And still the energy lay unused no matter her efforts.

She was still trying when another rib gave, bringing a new wave of misery to halt her attempt and leaving her mewling.

Gem wasn’t sure how long she lay still. Pain was her only indicator, and there was enough of it to speak of dying stars.

The strength left her before long, will following after. Soon she was unable to do anything but lie still and whimper. Too exhausted even to scream as her body was ruined ever more.

She drifted from the waking world more than once, drawn back each time with a slap across her face and a chirpy, twisted taunt from her tormentor. Lips and tongue too heavy to answer back.

Or beg, as she’d have surely used them to do.

Eventually the dakaran seemed to grow restless. Shifting where she knelt, leaning ever so slightly.

Restricting Gem’s arm just a fraction less.

She moved without thinking, hating her hope for the poison it brought, even as she acted on it. Lunging and leaning, stretching her strained joints to their limit and forcing her hand as close to the blade’s handle as she could manage.

It nearly made her weep to feel the grip fill her fist.

The dakara noticed Gem’s relief, or else simply the newfound freedom about her arm. For she’d begun to move when the knife was only halfway toward her. Terror took root in Gem, born from familiarity with a mystic’s speed.

She felt it evaporate as flesh met the edge. Then felt nothing at all, for in moving so fast and so far Gem had jarred her broken ribs. Calling on a new flood of mind-blanking pain strong enough to banish all else from her.

The last thing she registered before the world turned black and empty was her fingers numbly parting to fall from the dagger..