Instinctively, she launched off her tail forward, shoved her hands against the back of his head, and pushed all her weight into the drop. With her hands firmly twisted in his matted hair, the two plummeted into the ground, his face breaking the fall. She slammed his head into the brick again and again and again, her thick serpentine body crushing his back.
Satisfied with the bloodstain on the flat slate floor, she searched his body, confirming her suspicions; he had nothing on him but leather pants. The Atrok guards relied entirely on their strength to defend themselves, and that normally worked. Osa, fortunately, was smarter and more patient than he gave her credit for.
She cursed into the empty hallway as she took a quick look around. The hallway stretched for four more cells before opening up into a courtyard behind closed wooden doors. Behind her stretched about ten more before hitting a staircase. Sighing, she flipped the guard she had almost been friends with, bit into his skin, clamped down to the best of her ability, and ripped out a chunk of flesh. Quickly, she spat out the fur-coated skin chunk and held back her gag reflex. Fuckin’ hair. Her hands set upon his chest, clawing at his open wound, ripping it further open.
Upon getting to the man’s ribs, she flipped him over again, and dropped her elbow with full force into his back, hoping to snap off two of them. After a good few attempts, two came splintering off.
She flipped him once more, grabbed the ribs, and rose up, staring down at her body. The dead lion-man laid on his back looking rather horrified through his bludgeoned, broken face. As she looked upon her work, she sighed and began her small project.
Within five minutes, she was smiling at the fruits her labors produced. His arms were splayed out in an X while his legs split less extremely, forming a star of limbs. The corpse laid in the center of the hallway and a streak of blood reached perpendicularly across it, masking the initial impact mark if not for the cracks in the stone. The stripe of blood went under his head, where his face was covered by his bloody, matted hair. She broke his jaw and left it askew, leaving him looking aghast to anyone who would part his hair. His ribs splayed out of a torn chest cavity, leaving his organs on full display open to the air, surrounded by a cage of ribs.
Osa smiled at her craft and dashed to the stairs, each hand equipped with a rib. She slid them across each other in a mostly vain attempt to sharpen them on the go.
Torches flickered above her as she peeked over the top stair into the floor above. A rune sat in the middle of a circular walkway as three paths veered off down stairs forward and to each side and four more paths went straight out rather than down to each diagonal. She quietly slithered up the remaining stairs into the anteroom and opted to take a quick look down the right stairs, carefully avoiding the massive arcane circle.
Down the stairs, she saw what seemed to be an identical hallway to hers, though the cells were currently closed and prisoners sat inside. A thought crossed her mind regarding her Atrok guard, and just how many hallways he was guarding, or whether there remained seven more.
Holding back a shudder, she quickly slithered back up the stairs, keeping careful to not make a sound. The many tens of turns of assassin training never went away, even after five turns in a three by three cell; having no feet also helped.
Each other stairway led to a similar hallway, and each diagonal went five meters before turning pitch black. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. A rib in each hand, she leaned forward towards a diagonal and carefully made her way down it. After the five-meter mark, the light ceased at a quite rigid line, possibly giving away a potential wall of darkness or disguised portal.
Go back! Run outside! There’s a tiny fence and the only guard’s dead. Liam’ll help you go, don’t just go into dark. This could be barracks!
She shook her head wildly and poked her face just past the shadow only to find herself in an office. A Northman sat at his desk covered in papers, ink pen in hand, quite absorbed into whatever he was writing. Osa leaned back out from the artificial darkness, breathed deep, and stared dead ahead.
Five.
Fuck, should I do this? I should go back and play dumb. They won’t know it’s me. I’ll just run outside. I know the other guys.
Four.
No, they won’t lie for me. Liam might, but the other ones? No.
Three.
No, I have to. Just run. Put the bone on his throat, and make him get me out. I got friends, contacts, I can get out.
Two.
Do you really think you’ll get out alive?
One.
No. But if I did, I’d be real sad if I couldn’t.
Go.
She fell into the closest thing she had to a sprint and dashed through the darkness, into the office, slammed her hands into the desk intending to vault over, but instead crushing it under her weight. She fell through the splinters, crashed through it, bowled the man over, and pushed each of her pointed ribs to either side of his trachea. “You. How do I get out?”
“Tze almighty! What the- How the fuck?”
“Get me out of this fucking prison you piece of shit.” She pushed the bone a bit further in, eliciting a gulp from her hostage.
“I- I’m just a scribe! Only the engineers and the warden know the layout.”
She stared dead into his eyes. “What?”
“They blindfolded you coming in, right? Well, they just port us in, or blindfold us if we don’t consent to the teleport. I don’t know how to get in or out. Only the warden has the blueprints, and the engineers know ‘cause, well, they-”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know how to get out?”
“No! I told-”
She pushed the bone in hard enough to cut off his air for a few seconds, then opened his windpipe back up. “You sure?”
“Gods, yes. I’m fucking sure, you psycho bitch!”
She raised her right rib and slammed it down into his throat, jamming it, splintering it, and generally making a mess of things. Before getting up, she cranked his head around in a full circle, then continued cranking until the head eventually tore from the body. She propped his body up, sitting on the ground against the wall casually, put his hands in his lap, and rested the head in the cupped hands. She then began to scour the desk for anything of use. The gods proved to be in her favor as she found a recently sharpened letter opener, more than sufficient for getting the job done.
Osa scowled at the body once more before moving out back through the artificial darkness. Waiting for her on the other side, five meters away leaning in the archway was another Atrok guard, casually glancing her way.
She flipped into a battle-ready stance and prepared for a bull rush, but no such thing came. Instead, he simply leaned and continued to stare. He wants you to attack first. No, Osa. You know better. You know better.
Her many ribs moved in tandem with each other, launching her into a full-bore sprint at him. Gods damn it, Osa. As she flew at him, he ducked out of the way, leaving her plowing into the middle of the anteroom surrounded by at least 20 crossbowmen, as well as placing her in the direct center of the deep blue rune.
“Well... Fuck.” The rune flashed and tendrils enveloped her before anyone could shoot or attack otherwise.
She now sat coiled in a plain room, rather sterile and clean all save for the table. The metal table before her stood out in the obsessively-cleaned room by being coated in dents, dings, and bloodstains. The one thing she noticed before anything else, though it took a bit to process, was that this room had clean air. The metallic smell of blood still hung in the air slightly, but the smell she truly detested was finally gone. The wretched anise smell that lingered and bit at her nose for all her turns there was finally gone.
Across the room was a mirror, no doubt a one-way. In it, she saw herself, a mighty, muscular Rilarian lady, pitch black of scales and coated in spines. Her h
ead was covered in spikes which turned to a line of them down her back. Her eyes were a brilliant red and blood still hung from her mouth, as well as spattered about her. The prison’s clothes didn’t suit her anatomy, so she sat naked. Due to her lack of normally “offensive” anatomical bits, no one cared that she was.
Rather swiftly, a suited Northman appeared before her with slicked black hair and a fine suit that seemed worn. She rarely noticed her own size, but as he stepped before the mirror, she noticed just how much she towered above him. His measly height of under two meters, her impressive length of five meters. Even coiled up, her body rose above his and loomed over him. Regardless, he looked up at her like he would anyone else.
“Osadoguhn Viaxy.”
“Well shit, how’m I supposed to spit back your name poshy-like if I don’t know it?”
“Firstly, we have a letter for you. It would have been waiting for you when you got back from the yard if you hadn’t killed our guard and one of our prime scribes.”
“Your guard was weak, get a better one. Your writer was just in my way, for all I know he was good at the paper pen.”
“Now what was that, Miss Viaxy?”
“Oh, I’m Miss Viaxy now? Gods, I have to be the only Slagskin you talk to with proper titles.”
“You assume I’m discriminatory?”
“Everyone else here is, I can’t think why my interrogator wouldn’t be.”
“Interrogator?”
“That’s the questioner guy, right? I heard some guys use it before, I just kinda figured.”
“No, no, that’s what it means. I’m not interrogating you, Miss Viaxy. I just need to figure out what happened.”
“Oh. Well, after turns of making your guard like me, I used his friendyness to kill him, stole some of his ribs, found your writer’s office, I guess, and killed him with ribs ‘cause he wouldn’t tell me how to get out.”
“We don’t give our scribes access to that information.”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. That’s why I killed him.”
“Because he wouldn’t tell you something he didn’t know?”
“Because he was useless.”
“Miss Viaxy—”
“Would you stop with that? Call me Osa, call me Osadoguhn, call me Viaxy, call me Slagskin. Don’t call me Miss. I’m not a fucking Lady.”
“It’s a sign of respect.”
“You don’t honor me, Northie. You think I’m not equal to the shit on your boots. Don’t treat me like a child, I see your poshyness.”
“Miss—”
“What did I just say?”
“Gods, Shut the fuck up, you stupid Gorenyan whore!” The man leaned over the table as he bellowed his staccato words.
“There he is...”
“I know you’ve been doing this a long time. I know you’ve killed many, many people.”
“Hundreds.”
“You admit it?”
“Would that be smart? Do I need a... whatchacallit... lawyer?”
“You’re in Arghan’Sul, toots. This is the Queen’s law. You do what we say or we fuckin’ kill you.”
“But then what’s the point of a lawyer? Antra’s the only place that’s got ‘em, what with Octavian’s ‘due process’ shit. I don’t think she’d be too happy about this—”
“I don’t think she’s here, and I don’t think she gives a shit what happens to a sorry piece of Gorenyan shit who makes her living slitting throats.”
“Hey now, I slit the throat of the secundy Abernathy Rhabadah or whatever. No one else.”
“Secundus Alasdair Torbanson.”
“That guy.”
“You also bashed in my guard’s head, ripped open his chest cavity, and repeatedly stabbed the man’s ribs into a scribe’s head.”
“Neck, and only once or twice. And gods, you pretend you didn’t notice my arts.”
“Answer the damn questions.”
“What questions? Oh, and if I do what you say or you kill me, that means you can kill me now. Why aren’t I dead yet if I’ve killed three guys?”
“We kill you when we want, how we want, on our terms.”
“This seems like your terms, this room.”
“Do you want to die, Slagskin?”
“There it is... No, not particularly, I just wanna know why I’m not dead when you wanna kill me so very much.”
He glared at her deeply, boring into her eyes, sending waves of intimidation into her, not knowing they were bouncing off entirely. “Answer my question.”
“What question?”
“How many people have you killed?”
“Three, about.”
“About?”
“Well yeah. Three or more. Not less than three, I know that.”
“What do you want?”
“To get out. I don’t like this place. It’s tiny.”
“Well tough shit. You killed our secundus, you got caught. I only got one question for you.”
“You asked so many, if you only had one—”
“Why’d you get caught? We know you’re a professional, you could have gotten out, not gotten caught, what got into you?”
“I’m tired, and you put me in a tiny cell. I couldn’t stretch before trying to get out. It’s also been long since—”
“No no no. With Torbanson. Why’d you get caught?
She stared at him this time, calculating his motives, his moves, what he was up to. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Listen, tell you what.” The man reached into his coat, took out a rock with a light blue rune embedded in it, and spoke into it, making the rune stop glowing. He casually threw it into the corner of the room. “There. No one can hear you but me. I’m just curious. Come on.”
“I’m serious. I don’t know. I’m normally better. I’ve done hundreds of jobs, I’m known lots for my style and stuff, I just... something got to me. I got unlucky. Cocky.”
“You’re well known?”
“Well yeah. Got my own name and everything. I’m the Guild’s own Bloodletter.”
“Lights above, you’re the Bloodletter?”
“Oh, thought you knew that. I figured most assassins wouldn’t get the shit stick like this.”
“I thought you were exaggerating. You really have killed hundreds of men.”
“Damn right. I dunno why I’m here, but my old partner seems to think my master set me up, wanted me gone.”
“Old master?”
“I don’t give names.”
“You think the guy you ran jobs for just stabbed you in the back and threw you in prison? Dulled your senses and sent guards after you?”
“Yeah, I think. It’s my guess.”
“Damn. That must really get your goat, huh?”
“Get my goat? I have no—”
“Annoy you. It must annoy you.”
She shrugged. “I’d rather be out, truthly. And honestly, right now, I could kill you, break that glass, and probably take anyone around with broken pieces. I bet I could escape right now, especially since they can’t hear you.”
The man made a motion and guards flew in, grabbing her by the arms.
“Jumpy, ain’t you?”
“Get this bitch back in her cell. I’m done with her.”
“You’ll come find me, right? Send me a letter? This isn’t a one-night stand?” She smiled broadly, popping up her bloodstained needle-like teeth in a sinister, sick grin as four guards simultaneously carried her out.
Somehow, by virtue of obscenely large and muscled 4-armed guards, she was actually thrown into her cell and locked in as she righted herself on her bed. Thanks to that unnecessary show of power and the wall opposite the cell door, her head
hurt, and the supper whoosh wasn’t ‘til... Thanks to the capture, she was entirely unaware of how much time had transpired.
“You missed supper, love.” Well there’s that.
“Lovely.”
“So... where in the seven hells were you?”
She paused without meaning to. Her mind was lost. That horrid, wretched smell once again invaded every pore, every orifice, every surface of her. Anise was completely inescapable. That bitterly sweet smell she once loved now was her bane. She’d adapted to it, forgotten about it, but once she tasted air without it, her cell atmosphere was tainted. Wretched. Almost painful. Suddenly, she remembered the question lingering in the air. “Around.”
“Well I gathered that much, you smarmy bitch. You don’t just not go out for exercise.”
“Well, I did.”
He stared at her blankly. “You did what?”
“I did... not. I did not go to exercise. Yes.”
“And how the fuck d’ye manage that?”
“Oh, just a couple of bodies and some... how do you say... cobbled weapons?”
“Holy fucking shit, you’re shitting me, Osa.”
“It was easy! I got the guard to trust me, and when I could touch him, I dropped him, ripped out his ribs, and used them as... cobbled weapons.”
“You mean improvised.”
“Yes. Cobbled together, no?”
Again, he paused, staring blankly at the woman that, knowing their shared past, he shouldn’t have been surprised at the actions of. “No. So wait, you... You fucking killed a guard?”
“Yes. I killed him, used his ribs, and found a... writer. He was writing. I stabbed him. No, wait. I offered to stab him, and—”
“Threatened. For gods’ sakes, Osa, you’re an assassin and you don’t know the word threatened? You don’t offer to stab someone.”
“I don’t?”
“No! You... Well... Well fuck, I guess you do offer— That’s beside the point. So you found one of the scribes?”
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