Katherine turned and dropped to her knees, appearing like she was talking to a child from the gangster’s view as she quickly whispered instructions to Scruffy.

The gangster woman raised a hand to tap at one of the men’s shoulder with the back of her knuckles, and when he turned, she muttered something and jerked her chin towards them.

Scruffy walked to the bakery, opening the metal door and scurrying to the side to hide.

Two people were looking at them now, the other three bickering and trying to haul the girl up without getting any vomit on their hands or cloaks.

“What are you lookin’ at? Move along.” A man gruffed, despite neither of them staring at them, squaring his shoulders and puffing his chest out as he walked towards them, arms tense, his coat tight on the muscles below. Combined with the scar on his chin that raced up his cheek, he would be quite intimidating, if she hadn’t cuddled with things far worse than he.

Through the bile in her throat, she spoke.

“Why, a potential customer.” She said loudly as she turned, her voice rough and sharp without meaning to, mixing with the involuntary snarl in her throat. Those who hadn’t been looking glanced over, three considering, the seeming leader unimpressed, and the woman suspicious. The girl’s mother slammed the door shut and retreated into her derelict home.

She knew the ways of the court, how a noble spoke and emoted, how a merchant did. The mask slid into place easily, hiding the serpent coiling beneath.

“If you wish for some good meat, I’ve got my own toy with me. She’s much better than chattel trash like her.” She fake-sneered, the golem’s eye being exceedingly obvious in where its gaze was directed, straight at the girl.

Katherine froze beside her, unable to hide the widening of her eyes, confused as to her angle here. Just speaking like this made her want to bash someone’s brains out, she hated it she hated it so much.

“She’s a beauty, she’s capable, and I’ve already trained her well enough. She’s eager to please, if you catch my meaning. Been looking to get rid of her for a while now, and this is as good an opportunity as any. You fine gentlemen seem to be looking for meat, I have meat.” She explained, spreading her hand in a magnanimous manner from underneath her cloak as she squared her shoulders, the odd lisp from her trying to keep the ring in place and only being able to use half of her jaw only furthering what she was going for.

A mysterious, strange man who drew attention, and most importantly, directed it.

She moved her shoulder subtly to draw their eye to the motion, then swept her arm behind her at chest height, and tucked it into the small of her back, the motion and the accompanying swish of her cloak flaring in front of Katherine before falling not unlike the drama of pulling the cover off an item at an auction.

A sense of flair that people fell oh so easily for. She lowered her shoulders, shrinking, and opened her cloak to the nearest light source, turning the golem eye off. Darkness drew the eye, but so did the contrast of light against it. By revealing what was beneath her cloak, she made herself lighter, and without the glowing yellow eye of the golem, she faded into the background even better.

She moved a foot backwards just to add to it, making sure her footing was like her dance lessons. A sliding foot, minimal movement, a graceful backwards slide. She tilted her shoulders so that she was facing Katherine, because people paid more attention to someone who was turned straight towards them.

And her little performance worked perfectly, all five eyes landing on Katherine who looked stiffer than she’d ever seen her.

Gods, she would lick her boots clean for this later as an apology, and she’d still feel like she owed her.

The man who seemed to be their leader walked forward, his leering eyes roving up and down Katherine like she was a drug he was appraising the quality of. At his hip was a sword, and at his wrist she could see a folded dart launcher. Two darts.

The gangsters spread out, leaning to the side to catch a glimpse of Katherine, curious, all but one who was halfheartedly holding the gasping girl’s arm. It was like they’d forgotten she was there completely, despite being only a foot away.

She reached behind her head, cracking her neck as she massaged her nape. The woman’s eyes moved back to her. Four people not paying attention was still more than enough.

Her muscles felt like steel threads, stretched to their utter limit. One twitch, just a little closer. The man reached his hand forward, grasping Katherine by her chin roughly, tilting her head up. She felt spikes and needles dig into her synapses, a pure, boiling hatred finally finding an outlet.

She let her hand begin to drop. Mana gathered, her attention split into four equal parts, her mind straining and slipping. One made shapes of force, brute and not, one focused on an object, another on a Spell, another on her targets and the space between them.

This close to her mouth, the ring could reach. With a tiny pop, the dagger flashed under her lowering hand in a reverse grip, and her fingers slammed shut around the hilt. [Haste] activated, taking a healthy fistful of her mana with it.

Half of the mana stored in her body over several days went into [Telemantic Construct], coiled around the neck and chin of the woman watching her like a hawk, snapping into existence for a mere millisecond with the faint crack-whistle of air.

Her neck didn’t quite snap so much as her head twisted backwards a full one eighty degrees in an instant with a sickening, fleshy noise, the muscles and skin in her neck splitting apart and spraying blood in a wide ring as she was almost decapitated, her body trying to spin and failing as her shoulder slammed into the iron with a deafening bang and bounced off.

Her hand flashed forward as the leader tried to jerk back and away. The dagger slammed into the side of his neck, burying three inches deep before she could go no deeper, his ungodly Endurance making his flesh feel more like tightly wound layers of linen.

Kat jerked back and low, away from him, her hand flashing into her trench coat.

The leader tried to backhand her with his left hand as he launched himself away, his fist heading towards her armpit, and she managed to twist the knife a bit before pulling it out with a squirt of blood, managing to dodge by leaning her whole torso back and sideways, extending her arm up.

Her veins sang in ecstasy. Her skull filled with rabid butterflies, every flap of their wings oh so tingly, scattering her thoughts and leaving mindless adrenaline behind.

He was still in the middle of his strike. It felt like he was moving in slow motion, some separate time.

The moment his arm flew past her, she bent low and slammed the knife into the side of his knee, through the cartilage and into the joint, and didn’t bother wasting time to dig it out, insteading using the knife like a handle to launch herself forward to the next thug, who had only just begun moving his hands to his sword, and popping it into the ring right as it approached the edge of its range.

For him, this was likely all a slip’s worth of time, no doubt a blur he could barely see or even process.

For her, it was more like five seconds.

His eyes lagged behind her, as if he couldn’t keep up with her form, and he had only begun to abort grabbing his sword to try and raise his arms to shield his head. Her open hand slammed into his face, her palm over his left eye.

[Sparkburst] took a third of the mana remaining in her body.

The left half of his head exploded in a wild mixture of disintegrated blood and miniscule fragments of his head mixing into the flashing mass of sparks, and she felt his eye socket explode around her hand, allowing it to push through the missing chunk of his head.

Blood and viscera peppered her scarf, and for a moment, she lamented having it, wishing she could have felt that on her skin, on her face.

Then she realized her hasty error when she realized she couldn’t change direction. She tried to bring her left foot forward and halt her momentum, or at least redirect it, and half-managed it with a tiny step that had her knee crashing into the gangster’s.

Momentum wasn’t kind to her. Her left shoulder bashed into the corpse’s chest, unable to fully stop or redirect herself, and felt her cloak’s ties snap apart as she tried to move her arm to shield herself.

She spun one eighty degrees from the impact, hastily throwing her left leg out behind her to grind her to a halt, and cursed her weakness when said leg buckled from the sudden strain, followed by her other leg.

Her back slammed into the iron wall at stomach height, followed by the back of her head, and her attention scattered with her cloak as she felt its hood detach, the sensation of things moving through her mana turning into a vague impression that slipped through her fingers.

Something was rushing at her, fast enough to almost feel like normal speed despite [Haste]’s boost.

She curled her stomach, threw her whole torso and head down. Something slammed into the wall above her with a slow, deep boom, and she bucked off to the side, scrambling up and away, the world swaying under her feet as she tried to swivel around and face her opponent. Mass whipped towards her head from the right, another from her left, going for her ribs.

No time nor leverage to dash out of range.

She could only afford to take a strike in one of those spots, so she threw a hasty repulsion field towards what she could only think were fists, hoping to take some power out of the strikes, and moved her arm to the left, popping the dagger back into her hand mid-swing.

She did it too fast, too panicked, too disoriented.

The handle hit her thumb and her fingers didn’t quite manage to close around the guard, leaving it to uselessly tumble to the floor, out of range. She just barely managed to redirect the fist aiming for her head to the side with her palm, glancing off the side of her head as she leaned away, a bruising scrape.

The fist to her left slammed into her side, below her ribs, and she felt pure agony burst out over her insides, the impact rushing through her organs as a shockwave that had her breath knocked out of her and her body lock up like a stone, her body going utterly limp in shock with a sharp wheeze, her left leg kicking like a reflex.

Someone was roaring, the sound as slow and distorted as every other. Something was screeching in her ear, a deafening, endless whine. A high pitched voice screamed, sounding like the wail of a great bell being shredded. The scent of cooked meat and blood rushed up her nostrils straight to her brain as she inhaled the moment she was able to. She knew that the Speed Attribute inherently broke reality, to a small extent. Everything from the System did.

Still, as she was left to fall without an anchor point to speed it up, to drag herself down, she felt like she was sinking through water more than falling. It was just slow enough to give her body and mind time to restart, to regain control of her limbs.

Too little too late. Her back met the cobblestones, and something in her neck strained as it went rigid, her head only narrowly avoiding another impact with the floor. A fist covered in spiked metal rushed towards her head, two hundred pounds of mass behind it as the gangster put all of his weight behind the strike.

She jerked her waist and head, managing to narrowly dodge a right-hand punch that was sure to have taken half her teeth with it, and her hand rushed towards his head from underneath his arm.

He folded his arm, his elbow stabbing at her wrist and throwing her aim off, her [Sparkburst] doing nothing but light his coat on fire. The same arm straightened right after, his fingers clamping down around her neck, his palm slamming into her windpipe, and something heavy and sharp slammed into her lower stomach, making her jerk and wheeze in agony as her legs kicked and scrabbled at the ground, her hips trying to buck his immense weight off her to no avail, only managing to tilt her hips into the gap between his legs, the knee on her navel sliding off to hit the cobbles.

She tried to grab his elbow, hoping to blow the joint apart, and despite the difference in speed, he managed to just barely twist himself upwards and minimize the damage, making her dig a burning hole into the base of his forearm as a giant spew of sparks erupted between them, his scream feeding the hungry pit in her stomach.

His fingers went almost limp around her neck, and she gasped in a raspy breath that almost had her choke on the ring as he let go entirely, twisting his torso.

His left arm, previously busy trying to stabilize him, curled in front of his chest as he dropped on her, trying to use his forearm to crush her windpipe, and she tucked her head and neck into her shoulders, moving the ring into the space between her left cheek and gums.

Something in her jaw popped and cracked as his forearm slammed into its side, and her hand rushed to his ribs at the same time his right hand moved to deflect it.

She couldn’t get close enough in time, he wouldn’t let her. She detonated early.

She felt his coat be blasted to shreds, his flesh be blown apart and scorched to the bones of his ribcage, but it didn’t go deeper, and so she tried to detonate a second [Sparkburst], pushing forward recklessly to try and end this fight, despite his approaching hand.

His fingers clamped shut around her wrist and wrenched it away right as she felt his bones crack from the heat, the flesh be scraped off, a mere moment before she could reach his lungs and blow him apart from the inside out.

The bastard pressed down, holding her wrist to the ground, his weakened grasp still just barely enough to make escape unfeasible, snarling in her face as they found themselves in a stalemate.

She snarled back, mana gathering in her throat as her brain grew fuzzy, and prepared herself for unfamiliar pain.

Her mouth opened, her jawbone grinding agonizingly from the motion as the thin, untrained exit point in her throat strained.

She twisted her head, allowing his forearm to finally press down on her throat, and just as triumph renewed his strength, familiar runes formed in her mind, her tongue flicking in patterns she’d trained a thousand times with fingers.

She didn’t even know if this would work, but it should, in theory.

The spell’s framework finished after a tense second and a half which felt like a minute, and she opened her mouth, slamming mana into it.

Her tongue went bone dry in an instant, a searing numbness flashing through it as sparks spewed out of her mouth, the insides of her mouth burning and twisting like charred leather, her front teeth cracking from the sudden heat, a couple leaving entirely.

The moment he saw the light through the scarf, he tried to lean back, freeing up her throat, allowing her to blow air into the blast as well. The bassy, rumbling fwoom of rushing sparks combined with the sound of something like a million tiny crackles happening at once.

She couldn’t feel what it did to him as it met his face, but she could feel the way he instantly jerked his head to the side and rolled off her with choking, hacking coughs.

He tried to get up, and she rolled up after him, fingers scrabbling at the floor.

For a moment, she felt the charred slate that was his head, nose gone, eyes smushed and leaking from beneath eyelids that were blasted apart, his hair still flaming atop his head.

With how much mana she’d put into that blast, she had been expecting his head to be missing, or at least the lower half of it.

Fucking Endurance.

She recognized that the fight was done as her legs curled and snapped straight, lunging at him like a rabid panther.

But she wasn’t.

He swung blindly with his right arm, panicked, with a shout that had his voice crack like a scared little boy’s, and it didn’t even come close to hitting her as she rushed forward.

The scarf slid off, her inhibitions riding on its coattails, too damaged to cling on.

His left arm curled in front of his head, and her hand met his wrist on its way to his ear.

[Sparkburst], she snarled in her head, and found her voice rising to vocalize without her consent, the sound mangled through her half-cooked tongue.

The blast pushed him a foot backwards, his posture going from leaning forwards to being at a forty five degree angle on the opposite scale, one foot flailing in the air and the other barely on the ground. She felt his joint, torn to shreds as his hand hung on by what little remained of his inner wrist.

There was no mana left in her body, but her mana core still had plenty.

She drew a forth of it into a vague repulsive construct that flared briefly against the gangster’s chest, just enough to lighten the load.

Then she drew her arm back and tilted her right shoulder forwards, slamming it into his sternum right after the construct pushed him, feeling something in her shoulder shift with a pop.

She was halted by the impact, but he wasn’t. He flew back for a couple feet, upper back first, and with how close they were to the walls, he slammed into the bakery’s door, his head crashing through the small window at its top as the door’s body bent inwards from his weight.

Her legs curled as she lowered once more, trembling and feeling far too weak for what she was trying, but she did it anyway, reckless.

His hands tried to reach for the doorframe, fingers limp and twitching, his torso heaving as he gasped in a single breath, bringing his head forward through the broken window to shield his neck with his chin.

He screamed something, his body shrinking, curling in on itself, and the distorted sound of him screaming ‘stop, stop!’ sounded so funny when it was all slow and stretchy and distorted by the flow of time in her ears, his intonations ruined, his rough tone turned to something that sounded so absurd, as if spoken by a chubby fairy tale merchant lamenting a stolen apple by the snappy hero in one of those stuffy plays she was taken to as a child.

It sounded almost mocking and sarcastic.

As it should be.

Why would she stop? Had he?

Her dry, burned lips stretched and broke as a grin split her face in half, full of broken teeth and bleeding gums.

His fingers tried to curl on the frame, to dig himself out as his legs crumpled, almost managing to bring himself to a half-standing crouch. Despite his strange stance, his presence became more solid all of a sudden, something about him shifting. Some Skill, maybe.

It likely didn’t matter.

She slammed into him, shoulder first again, ignoring the lance of dulled pain that arose from it, and felt the door give way underneath them as they went into the shop. Her hand hit the floor, and she moved her upper body away before he could attempt to grapple her with his fumbling arms.

Stop, he pleaded, screamed, please, I yield, as fast as he could speak.

Without [Haste], she could guess it would sound pleading, wheezy, desperate, a cry more than a shout, almost one single, continuous word.

With [Haste], it felt like he moved his jaw and what came out was a mangled sound between a deflating balloon and a yawn and a word spoken by a sloth. It sounded so stupid she almost wanted to laugh, had she the breath or levity to do so.

Her hand darted down, weaving between his blocking forearms, under them.

The center of her palm came flush with his chin, and he tried to twist and buck, almost managing to throw her off, if it wasn’t for the fact one of her knees was on the floor.

A blast of sparks melted and tore through his jawbone, and he howled, swinging blindly.

The back of one of his hands, she didn’t care which, rushed towards her head, and she ducked under it, feeling it just barely clip the back of her head.

Without his hands to protect his face, she simply slammed her palm down on his face, fingers digging into melted flesh, and activated [Sparkburst].

She felt his face melt under her palm, shredded and scattering with the sparks in a million little pieces. A limp wrist punched her in the rib as he spasmed, kicking at the trail of glass and broken hinges they left behind as she coughed out a snarl. She leaned forward even more, digging her weight into him.

She managed another [Sparkburst] before having to dodge his only half-functioning arm, pushing her hand down into his crumbling skull for leverage to lean back and twist her collarbone out of collision course.

[Haste] still had time before running out. She still had time.

The moment his hand passed in front of her chest, she reared her hand back, and curled her torso down. Her palm met his face once more.

For a moment, she let herself feel it. Her fingers dug into cracking bone and charred flesh, flakes of skin and bleeding mincemeat finding refuge beneath her fingernails.

As he twisted his waist and began to shriek in agony, moving his arms for another worthless bout of flailing, she let herself feel the intoxicating sensation of victory and superiority, crawling up and down her spine.

Another blast of sparks, compressed into a mere fraction of a second.

She felt the sparks detonate against her palm and the flesh trapped under it, burning both but shredding only one, and the introduction of his shriek turned into a gargled sound like a choking frog as he jerked and convulsed.

Her hand sunk down, in, an inch further, and stopped once the last sparks petered out.

Still alive.

Another [Sparkburst], weaker. She had to save some mana. She could still feel forms shift and twist behind her in the street. Katherine needed help after she was done here.

“Die.” She snarled, feeling her hand melt and become one with his skull, a mess of charred pulp, the ring finally slipping out from between her teeth to bounce off the gangster and mix with the glass shards below.

Another [Sparkburst], and he bucked to the side, his right leg kicking and jerking, arms going limp for a second before sluggishly trying to raise again.

“JUST FUCKING DIE!”

She threw whatever mana remained in her core into the next burst.

Her hand sunk through what remained of his face, into his brain, the back of his skull, and felt the squishy bits of his skull splatter and scatter on the floor like an overripe fruit that was scorched black and crushed beneath a hydraulic press.

He went limp, completely and utterly.

She panted for a few seconds, a wheeze grasping at the edges of each breath. Her head lowered to his chest as she felt her limbs begin to shake and quiver. She couldn’t even see nor feel anything, and likely wouldn’t for a while longer. No mana left.

She won. Right?

The smell should be horrid. Blood and brains and scorched clothes and hair, a gut-wrenching stench. But it really wasn’t. She took a deep, deep breath, stuttered. She felt her shoulders shake, her fingers twitch and spasm in the charred sludge filling the man’s half-present skull.

She threw her right knee back over the corpse’s hips, straddling it, before finally leaning back, feeling a layer of burnt skin in her hand stick to the gory mess it was embedded in as she curled it to her chest. Her fingers spasmed and shook incessantly.

They had a single healing potion with them. Somewhere in Katherine’s pack.

Katherine.

She froze, straining her ears. Harsh panting, from behind her, far behind her. Twelve feet, maybe. Choked, panicking whimpers. Fifteen? And the breaths of at least four people all around her. The… bakery. She sent him into the bakery. Customers, owner, Scruffy.

It was just the person panting behind her that she had to make sure of.

“Kat?” She croaked out, barely audible even to herself. She grimaced. No way would Katherine hear that.

Her rising paranoia faded when a familiar voice rose.

“Fuck. Em?” Katherine asked, out of breath, and Emhreeil let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Pain was creeping in, the shivering aftershocks of an adrenaline overload rushing through her shivering frame.

“Yeh. Hhhi.” She murmured on autopilot, a little dazed, and winced as those words sent a stab of pain through her jaw. “Pothion?” She grit out as she stumbled upright, forcing her head to rise a little. Her tongue wasn’t working right.

The System kept prodding her to check it, and it did nothing to help with the headache she felt rapidly forming.

It hurt. A lot.

A gasp came from one of the customers somewhere to the left, and she quickly recognized that [Haste] was just about to run out.

“Of course, of course, just- one second.” Katherine said, her voice funny in that slow way, and her boots thudded on the cobbles as she rushed, presumably, to where she’d dropped their backpack.

The smell around her was making her drunk. Fresh breads and pastries, smoke and gamey iron, blood and death. She could taste it, all of it.

She was so hungry.

Plus, blood would help with… whatever injuries she got from that…the…

Fight. The fight.

She tried to raise her foot over the corpse so she could step to the side, and almost stumbled, stiffening. She felt like if she took another step she’d fall down.

“Schhruffy?” She mumbled, and a familiar questioning croak came from the girl, her shoes crunching on the glass as she approached, apparently not horrified by the show she accidentally put on.

“Wmring. Wriing. Ring.” She fumbled, and pointed vaguely to where she thought it dropped. Trying to speak with a flash-charred tongue was hard.

And as the adrenaline continued fading, increasing painful.

Scruffy moved around the corpse.

The gasp from earlier wandered into her mind, the tense silence registering.

She tilted her head vaguely to where she could hear the customers and the owner breathing, in the corner of the shop to her left.

“If you… speak. To anyone. This will… be you.” She carefully enunciated, pointing down at the corpse between her feet, staring right at them with eyeless sockets.

The young man audibly gulped before speaking, his voice more akin to a whimper than genuine words.

“Yes sir.”

She didn’t reply, and she did not have the presence of mind to feel bad about the threat, nor about being mistaken for a man for the fifth time.

A croak by her side, sounding vaguely cheery. Likely Scruffy finding the ring.

A rushed tempo of thudding boots behind her, and just as her knees began to feel like jelly, Katherine wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tilting her a little to the side.

“Dear gods, what did you even do?” Katherine gasped, and something prodded her lips. “C’mon, drink it all. I’m fine, just some scrapes and bruises.”

After a moment of standing there, she got another idea.

“No, jutht… save it. I… drink from outthide. Thhe guys.” She slurred out, and turned. “Give knife. Can’t shee. See.”

It felt like someone had stuffed her skull full of prickly hay. A burnt mouth didn't help with her speech either.

Fuck, she was concussed, wasn’t she?

“No. Drink. At least enough so you won’t deteriorate faster than you’ll heal.” Katherine ordered, and after thinking about it for a moment, she considered the slowly encroaching agony that followed every pump of her heart.

Her scorched fingers gently cradled the potion as she took a big gulp, less than a fourth of the vial most likely, and she almost moaned in relief as numbness crept over her weary frame. Her skin stretched and pulled oddly, likely growing new skin beneath the burnt remnants.

Whatever. Her fingers were already mangled sticks.

She gulped as she pulled back, some of the haze clearing.

Katherine briefly parted from her, leaving her to sway in place. Scruffy tried to help her by putting her hands on one of her legs, as if trying to stabilize a ladder, or a tilting support beam, and she couldn’t help but let out a snorting chortle at her actions.

Kat came back, announcing herself with a whispered ‘hey’. The handle of a knife was put in her hand, and no matter how much it hurt to do so, she tightened her grip on it.

Her tongue felt a little better. Her head didn’t.

“Kat, take Scruffy and… loot the… fuckers. Take all uh… useful stuff. I’ll come help in a bit. I’ll just… eat first. Take me to a corpse. Outside?” She mumbled, hoping her stop-start way of speaking was legible. She just felt so lightheaded.

“Okay.” Katherine whispered, and gently tugged her outside, their boots crunching on glass.

After a few dozen steps, Katherine paused and grabbed her forearm, raising it a little.

“Person there. Uh, dead one. We’ll loot the other ones. One got away. I’m sorry. Their leader drank a healing potion before I could finish him off, and then he started fighting me with one of his lackeys, and when I finally knocked him out, the lackey ran.” Katherine rushed out, likely just as high on adrenaline as she was.

She paused.

“Are you… okay?” She asked, remembering the giant scimitar hanging off the leader’s hip.

“Yes. Just some mild cuts and a sprained wrist. I’ll be fine. You uhm, do your thing, we’ll loot them. I’ll hold onto the ring until your hand heals. And I’ll direct the girl to the Crow’s church, she’s obviously… unwanted. But we should get going, fast. The one who ran will likely tell people about us.”

She stood in place for a moment, realizing the implications and the consequences of what they’d done here.

They’d likely made a mortal enemy of a large gang. Irythiel’s mice might hear about this. But… she’d still do it again.

She nodded.

“Okay. I’ll have… mana to see. In a minute. Go. And… sorry for how I… talked. Was just baiting them.” She mumbled, and shakily tried to squat, only to fall sideways on her legs, one fist touching… some part of a corpse, she couldn’t tell.

Katherine’s retreating steps paused momentarily.

“I know. Don’t worry. You just eat, I’ll take care of everything else.”

Her steps resumed.

She smiled as she began to prod the corpse with the knuckles, trying to figure out where its neck was.

A tug in her mind flared, lasting a mere couple seconds, pulling her above. She leaned back, head tilted towards the sky, considering.

He felt her too just now, didn’t he? She had been fighting.

“Hey buddy…” She whispered with a growing grin. Soon.

Satisfaction and the honey-sweet taste of victory slowly bled into her exhausted frame.

How would her little wolf friend see this, were he here? Would he consider this her first successful hunt?

She liked the sound of that. She liked the sound of that a lot, even if it wasn’t quite accurate.

She turned back to the corpse, and paused once more when she heard a sound like a person taking a wheezing breath, somewhere to her left. Katherine was talking to the girl behind her in muted tones.

She felt for her mana.

Enough to charge the eye for a few seconds, at least.

She did so, and as the world blinked back into focus, she quickly looked around, until she saw the leader. A beaten, bruised face, a dark purple neck, likely still internally bleeding to some extent, and an open, breathing mouth, drooling on the cobbles.

Didn’t Kat…

No, she didn’t. She didn’t say the leader was dead, she said knocked out.

The eye turned off.

“Kat? Why is he... shtill alive?” She asked, and the conversation behind her abruptly stopped.

“Oh, that… I’ve never killed someone before, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Do you-”

“Take me to... him real quick. I’ll do it.”

“Okay.” Kat said with a sharp sigh of relief. “Just one second, the girl is still freaking out a little.”

That was fine. She might have traumatized the girl but it would be a million times better than whatever the gangsters wanted her for.

And killing someone who wasn’t fighting back… She could do that much for her friend.

There was a hint of moral alarm somewhere in the back of her head as she considered what they’d done here, one that hadn’t been there the first time she took a life. It was something that told her her actions were wrong and she shouldn’t be doing them.

But it felt… comparable to being a kid and trying to steal cookies from the cookie jar. She knew she shouldn’t be doing it, but the guilt was so mild and the reward so sweet that it wasn’t worth it not to do it, so long as she wasn’t caught.

Katherine helped her up, arm around her waist, and she couldn’t help but gasp and whimper, breaths going hard and fast from the sudden pain.

She couldn’t even tell what she had hurt because her entire ribcage panged with every step, her mouth was still a ball of agony, and her right shoulder felt weird and twisty. After a few slow steps, taken with grunts and groans and hisses of pain, Katherine gently lowered her next to the leader, before immediately turning around to rush to the girl’s side.

She let her breaths steady for a moment, reaching for the nameless gangster’s body. Fresh blood just didn’t compare to preserved, nor the one stilling in the veins of the dead.

For a moment, she considered the logistics of how she was going to kill him without wasting too much blood, then with some fair amount of pain and struggle, she managed to prop his head up on her thigh.

Her pointer and middle fingers hooked around the pommel of the dagger as she aimed down, her other fingers clenching shut around its shaft, using her elbow to stabilize him. She carefully felt along his head for the earhole, before putting the tip in.

As she heaved and pushed down, she ignored the jerk of the corpse, thinking about how odd it was to feel cartilage and bone and brain tissue be torn apart through the handle of her dagger, how the resistance varied.

How it was a sensation that was both addicting and sickening.

She dug it in deeper, feeling uneasy, that sense of wrongness and distant guilt flaring. Her hand and fingers shook, and she couldn’t tell if it was from some repressed emotion or the nerve damage she’d no doubt incurred from torching her own hand.

He convulsed one final time, and went still.

She took a deep breath, and quickly reached down and started feeling for a wrist. Once the heart completely stopped beating, sucking out his blood would be a pain. And she didn’t want to waste anything.

She mentally paused for a moment.

Scruffy wouldn’t mind eating human meat, right? It wasn't... technically cannibalism. Her kind did that in the wild all the time.

A question for later, she decided, as she peeled the sleeve back, sliced his wrist open, dropped the knife, and jammed the bleeding wound against her open mouth.

She moaned in pleasure as crimson nectar filled her mouth, those niggling bad thoughts and feelings washing away as warmth and numbness and strength entered her shaking limbs.

Scruffy, having nothing else to do for the moment, rushed to her side and held the hand in place for her, and after a moment of hesitation, she let go, allowing her hand to drop.

Then she reached up to pet her, despite how tender her skin was, and was rewarded with a pleased grumble. How the hell this little goblin wasn’t terrified of her, she didn’t know, but she didn’t have the mental capacity to question it at the moment. As the blood flow slowly lessened, she idly wondered how the wolf would react to her having two companions with her. Would he consider them… how did Kat put it?

Pack members? Would they be included in that bizarre Skill that let them find each other? Or would he consider them dead weight, a threat, too much hassle?

Would she be forced to pick one or the other?

The thought soured her mood, so she banished it.

She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

-

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