A Tryst with Death

Chapter 2

The bandits had not moved when they had heard about the fate of their captain. The 'fancy' woman, who had screamed moments before, did not bother them either. All they wanted was the document: if they found it, they could make love and eat food all they wanted.

"Ah... I forgot. Here is... you're..." began Nezala nonchalantly, "captain... or a part of him!"

With this statement, she threw a large hairy object towards the thugs. As it landed near their feet in a sick puddle of blood, they merely looked at it once, and then kicked it away: to them, this was merely a loss temporary and useless.

Nezala heard a sound and looked around, first on the roof and then everywhere else. She saws someone prowling the streets behind the bandit on the left. She could not see who it really was, but it was a woman, for she moved with unnatural felinity and grace. The figure noticed Nezala looking, and smiled inwardly.

Nezala moved, and so did that mysterious figure. For Nezala, it was a gamble between running and killing the bandits against the bandits murdering the now fainted Solirsi in the heart before being slain. She found out, to her surprise, that she was making that same gamble that Zarrik had made when he had saved her from certain death that night during a raid, only letting her get injured in the process.

The bandits also stepped forward; one stopped short, struck by something, the other still running with surprisingly measured and strategic depth.

Nezala moved with her sensuous body in flow with her internal energy, her speed unmatched. As she heard the bandit scream, she heard it as if from afar. She

unsheathed her other knife and struck, along with her blade, at the thin silhouette in front of her.

A clash sounded, afar and yet loud, a scream of metal against metal. Then, she felt the rain. She had been lost in that time when naught mattered but her friends.

Nezala felt blood drip onto the grey street in a steady flow.

Nezala opened her eyes. She was face to face with the bandit, but his eyes were closed, his breathing hard and ragged, as if it cost him too much to even breathe. Nezala then grunted in pain as she found herself at the receiving end of a sharp thing; luckily, the blade was only in her leg. She tried to breathe normally, but she stiffened when she tasted something salty, like lemon-water gone sour.

Painfully coughing, blood splashed onto the street. Nezala coughed again, starting to wheeze. Then, with some difficulty, she adjusted her sword, slicing it out of the bandit, who now seemed to be dead. She realized she had been stabbed by a small knife in her chest, but not on the side where her heart was; she felt rather lucky.

Before the bandit fell fully, it was picked up and then bodily thrown to the wall. A figure with brown hair and a beautiful but bored face did so, her mask broken.

Nezala looked at her, but then coughed a final time, her world becoming dizzy. She took a stepped back, and a splash told she had lost too much blood.

"D-D-Drr-aka-s-sha..." wheezed Nezala with some difficulty, her vision blurring: she realized she was falling slowly.

A warm hand supported Nezala, just in time. Nezala looked up once more into her savior's face, but then lost all consciousness.

The rain was still pouring steadily, but Solirsi and Tedak were in no real danger. Two other guardians, both with masks, were standing guard over their covered bodies, both guards having bloody swords. They had checked the two bodies for breathing and the beating of a heart, and had gladly heard them thudding way, yet one seemed to be a little weaker.

It seemed the battle had been nearly lost by the messengers; as Nezala was set down on a pile of boxes outside of the rain, the woman with the broken mask groped inside the fallen swan's bodice.