>>6187621Time seems poised in uncertainty.
Air squeezes your muscles into paralysis.
Then Willow dashes ahead, turning into a fuzzy shape so quick she is, and her leg hits the Asterite square in the neck.
“Hnnh—” Sandora’s eyes fall back in her orbits, she falls on her back on the hard floor. The ink splashes down, useless.
Rubida, behind you, lets out a throaty gasp.
Willow holds up her sword, the pure-white sword and smashes it against the shackles, exploding them in a burst of metal and cerarmid.
Time flows back.
“<span class="mu-i">Stop!</span>” You shout at the top of your lungs, your voice grating against your throat, echoing on the walls. You throw yourself at her, but — as you have seen time and time again, even with Master — she is far too swift for you. Even more so when she stops playing.
She slips back, giving you a kick to the back of your leg as you are extending yourself and soon enough you are stumbling against the floor.
You try to stand up, slip and you pain flares from your ankle. It throbs.
It won’t hold your weight.
Your rod rolls towards the rogue Asterite, tilting the shadows with itself.
“I’m very sorry,” she mutters, a flush of sorrow on her face as she bites her lip.
“Salicera Fors!” Rubida sets down a stunned Soralisa on the floor and walks ahead, her axe held up high. “Cease this madness right now!”
“Salicera? No! What are you doing?” Soralisa shrieks, and you see Willow wince, gritting her teeth at the hurt in Soralisa’s voice.
“My name,” she replies, unlatching her breastplate and throwing a vial of sanctified oil — there is a dark slender shape inside — “is <span class="mu-i">Willow Stark.</span>”
The vial cracks upon impact. Something comes out of it. Something dark and hungry — the Asterite lets out a shrill scream of pain as it bores inside its body, munching on the burnt flesh.
“Willow,” you mutter, trying to hold onto Carnaval’s feather to try and stand up, to make her stop, to make her <span class="mu-i">reason</span>. “Why—”
“I can’t lose you,” she sobs, right as Rubida screams at her — her axe held up high, the dull part of her blade ready to hit her, but Willow barely looks at her as she evades her swing, kicks her in the chest and sends her back, wheezing. “Sorry. You didn’t have to make me do this!”
Behind you, the munching noises grows, more and more.
More— satisfied.
[cont.]
I have wanted to use that image since I have found it, while working on the very first post... 