The Hunter's Song II: Lost Blood

Thorngate (Mourning Crow)

"Sever the spine!" I shouted from the bell tower.

Bold Step leapt into action, slicing his claymore up along the giant feline's back before plunging it deep into the base of the minion's skull.

I sprang off the crumbling adobe tower and flung the tip of my chain sickle into one of the creature's glowing eyes.

"Slayer incoming!" Bold Step called out from below.

I raised my ears and chirped out a whistle to get an expanded visual of the surrounding area.

The beige flagstone streets were dark. It was long past midnight, and the moon was veiled behind a thick layer of churning clouds.

Three more big cats led by a Corrupted Slayer bounded over the eastern rampart of the old craftsman's district.

"I'm on it!" I ripped my sickle free, leaving a wide weeping gash in the feline's face, then charged full speed into the Slayer's path.

"Kneel cretin!" The Corrupted Slayer bellowed as she swung a long glaive dripping in noxious poison. Pulsing green vines stippled in little serrated thorns were infused into the razkur's skin. The green veins webbed up her arms, extended to and intertwined with her polearm's steel.

It's attached!

I cackled and sprinted in close.

The Slayer was fully grown and over six foot tall but height and strength only served my opponents by making them arrogant and careless. She never saw the weighted end of my chain loop twice around her weapon.

"Like this?" I slid on my knees under her legs and yanked my chain hard as I skidded out on the other side.

The Slayer's glaive tore loose, along with half her arm.

She screamed and spun on her heel, then shot out six razored vines from the weeping stump.

"I will taste your innards and serenade the Graven with a ballad of your failed insolence before the night is done!" The Slayer pounced at me on all threes.

"Really?" I flipped backward beyond the grasp of her claws and whipping vines. "Is that verse one? So clunky and long-winded! I can't get the rhythm at all."

The Slayer snarled, then dug her vines into the dirt, driving the barbed tendrils beneath the grey stone street and then up, narrowly missing my feet.

"Here, let me give it a go," I tossed her severed arm and glaive over a twisted metal fence. "C'mon, vine lady, say goodbye! C'mon vine lady, time ta die!"

The Slayer shilled into the night and charged at me, but she was too slow. I dove over her, hooking my sickle under her shoulder blade while snagging a meaty patch of flesh on my blade.

"Vine lady prayed and prayed, fed the lie," I kept my pace sharp and jaunty as I zipped beyond the Slayer's grasp.

Another cat minion vaulted for my head, but Bold Step threw it down with a single swipe of claymore.

"Damned fiend gonna feel some pain. She's outta time!" I smirk at the green and white Slayer, stalking at her and flicking my ears rudely forward. "Vine lady claimed to sing, but all she heard was how to die!"

Before she could snare me in her vines, I cleaved off her other arm, then rolled up over her shoulder before clamping my sickle around her neck. One swift spin later, the headless Corrupted Slayer flopped with a thump hard on the ground.

Opposite the sandy flagstone street, Bold Step finalized his own tidy kill.

He bisected the last surviving feline minion, wiped the black blood off his blade, then holstered his weapon on his back and swept away the sweat from his sleek, freshly shorn white hair.