Silver Blades: Dread Handed

Part 3, Section 4 - Outbreak

Pertuli.

Balina's mouth opened wide and she arched to strike. With no time to make words of the surprise and fear that had seized her, Ivy shrieked wordless defiance.

Rip caught his sword with the hiss of charring flesh. Clenching his teeth, he dove toward the monster masquerading as his former lover, but his flat-footed leap fell short as Balina's head started forward. In mid-air he judged the distance, and as gravity took hold of his body he extended his arm and let the sword's handle slide along his fingers to catch on the very ball of the pommel. The silver there burned his thumb and forefinger but, grasped tightly, forced the blade into a whistling arc that nicked through the velvet of Balina's sleeve at the shoulder.

"Ahh!" She gasped as the unexpected pain of the silver's essence burned through her. Surprise turned her head to the side just enough to spoil her attack, so the women's heads knocked together painfully.

"Sparking snake!" Ivy roared at her attacker. "Getoff me!" With her arms pinned by the distracted noblewoman, Ivy bashed her bloody forehead into the monster's temple. Twice.

Clearly that was the entirety of her plan. If Ivy meant to harm her opponent, it was an ill-conceived strike that did her more harm than good. If she meant to distract Balina though...

Balina turned downward again, her glowing red eyes immobilizing the helpless and reeling tilwenna to the ground as her mouth opened once more. Curse-bearing saliva coated snake-like fangs and dripped sickeningly onto Ivy's slack face and trailed down the sides of her cheeks.

"Fight her off!" I cried, collapsing to my side in an attempt to pull a dagger from my boot. Nothing was working right. "Do not let her bite you!" Even if we won the day, one bite would change everything for Ivy and all the people she would inevitably infect.

Rip, who had landed roughly on the floor near Balina, never stopped moving. He kicked into a forward roll as soon as he could get his feet under him, and executed a desperate, if not completely textbook, lunge.

Balina froze in shock, her eyes going wide as the silver blade slid through her heart and pinned her right hand to the wall on the other side.

"Koray?" she whispered, finding his eyes with hers in one last pleading glance before all life left them. Rip released his breath in one rapid, shuddering exhalation as he let go of the sword and collapsed backward.

Ivy, released from the trance, snarled in alarm and scrambled from under Balina's body. Smoke was already beginning to sputter from the entry and exit wounds, and seep slowly from her mouth as it reverted to its normal size. Her teeth, though, remained elongated into dangerous points.

My dagger landed with a dull thunk, impaling a fragment of carpet next to Riposte's left hand. He looked up at me and arched an eyebrow. I looked down at my hand and gasped in shock that it was still frozen in the act of throwing.

"Well that took a bit of a turn," I cringed. If blurry vision made the throw ineffective, the specially commissioned silver blade would not have been, so it was fortunate I missed Riposte.

"Fashionably late?" Riposte growled.

"Better late than never," I returned weakly, and received an eye roll in reply. A smirk from Ivy, too.

My friends could be so unappreciative.

A while later we stumbled from the remains of Orluz Manor, Ivy and I nursing bleeding heads and Rip struggling with his curse and the severely wounded heart.

"You will let me know, will you not?" I asked him, holding the remains of my ottoman friend to my crown to staunch the bleeding. The footstool owed me that much after our rough introduction. I had torn my sleeves to bandage Ivy's head and dragons take me if I was going to ruin any more silks on my own blood.