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These are also the creatures who jump like nervous cats and swing around only to find themselves facing the wrath of Avel.
What happens next is an absolute blur of the most simple, physical, animal violence. I have heard the phrase ‘tear limb from limb’ before, but I have never seen it enacted so brutally. Avel is a creature designed to sweep down from the sky on his prey. He has talons which extend from his fingers when he enters his battle mode, a fact I learn as he begins to physically scythe through the outlaw with the misfortune to be the closest to him.
My stomach, heavy with cake, lurches at the sight of scales peeling asunder, flesh being carved open immediately thereafter, blood following in great gluts. It all happens so quickly and so brutally. Avel is not merely protecting me. He is taking vicious vengeance on those who hurt me and wanted to hurt me more.
They shout for help, but Avel has barred the door with a thick piece of wood, and there is no way out for them. They are trapped in here with him, and he is going absolutely feral on them. His wings extend, not to do any damage, but to give him additional height advantage and maneuverability, even in a small space like this one. He is like a whirlwind of vengeance.
The outlaws are not going down without a fight. This is a battle to the death, and they are not lying down and dying for our convenience.
I throw myself to the side, feeling the unpleasant sensation of my ribs grinding against one another, making my breath catch painfully. Every instinct tells me to hide. I can’t help in this battle of leviathans. I am already injured, and one backhand could obliterate me. I have never backed down from a fight before, and doing it now makes me feel deeply ashamed. I end up crawling under the bed, keeping myself out of the way so Avel doesn’t have to worry about me.
But those he is attacking are also designed to do terrible things and they outnumber him by a factor of many. Even with all his ferocity, there’s a point at which numbers are simply overwhelming.
Suddenly, Avel hits the ground in front of me. I feel the ground shake as they bring him down, like a pack of feral dogs on a noble eagle. I can see them clawing at him, biting him. I can see wound after wound being inflicted on his beautiful, scaled body. Our eyes meet, and I see pain in his. Physical pain from the vicious attacks being inflicted on him by those who have come to ravage and kill me, and mental pain at the idea he might not be able to save me.
I want to help him. I have never felt so completely helpless before. At the very moment I have to be strong, I am weak, and that is just so brutal. Avel came to rescue me, and now he is sharing my fate.
“Get the weapons. We’re going to take him apart and string the pieces up at the Hall of Bones. We’ll play with him like a puppet, make him dance the way he’s made so many of us dance.”
A round of laughter goes up at that idea. These creatures are not content to kill. They want to torture and humiliate as well.
“Cowards!”
Just as all seems lost, perhaps the most unexpected creature enters the fray. It is Torin who shouts the insult as he enters the fray, beating back his criminal ilk with a sword pulled from one of the many ornamental racks on the wall. He offers Avel a hand, pulling him up from the ground, but not before I see an expression of shocked admiration on my saurian master’s face.
“Hell yeah, Torin!” I yell encouragement, which is stupid, but I am overcome with the need to express my approval of all he is becoming. I have seen him as a terrified young saurian being confronted by unwanted consequences. I have seen him as a young criminal prince lounging in comfort as he hides from those consequences. Now I see him as a lithe, opportunistic, and absolutely vicious combatant. I crawl up to the edge of the bed to see what is happening, just in time to see Torin leap on the largest of his so-called allies and bite his neck, ripping out a large chunk of flesh. Blood arcs across the room, covering the canvas image of the primal skeleton.
It is now two against five, then four, then three, then two. Then there is only one of the wicked criminal saurians left, absolutely covered in the blood of his fallen friends. There is a brief beat in time in which mercy might be shown.
“Please…” he manages to utter the word between bloodied lips, but it is too late for mercy.
Avel cuts him down where he stands, severing his head in a single agile swing of Torin’s sword. It is not an act of battle. It is an execution.
There is a moment afterward in which there is silence. Nothing but the sound of heavy breathing of two victorious saurians.
“Well,” Torin says, breaking the silence as I crawl out from under the bed, unavoidably covering myself in blood and bits of saurian. “I guess that’s that then.”
“That’s not it,” Avel says. He turns to me and reaches for me, stopping only when I flinch as his hand makes the lightest contact with me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I got hurt.”
“You should be sorry,” he says — a frightening comment, given the state of him. “But you do not need to fear me, and I will ensure that your wounds are tended to. You are safe now, Raine. Safe as you should have been all along.”
Our reunion is interrupted by a pounding at the door. Evidently, murdering multiple saurians in a row in the most brutal of ways is not something that goes entirely unnoticed even in this subterranean warren of a place.
“LET US IN!”
Someone shouts on the other side. I suppose that’s worth a shot as an approach, though obviously Avel and Torin have no intention of letting anybody else in. They are both injured, but not so badly they cannot move. The door is blocked with a heavy plank of wood which can be fitted across two iron bands that keep it closed. It’s not an entirely impassible barrier, but it does mean we have a little time on our side.
All three of us look at the barred door, then at the pile of bodies on the floor, and silently register the fact that the entirety of the saurian underworld has been alerted and we are all wounded and have no backup.
“Is there another way out of here?” Avel asks Torin the question.
“Oh. Uh. Yeah. Under one of the tapestries or rugs. I forget where.”
Torin is back to his somewhat lackadaisical, somewhat high, overly casual demeanor, albeit now covered in the blood of what used to be his allies. He starts fussing around the tapestries, peering behind one and then another, until Avel loses patience and starts simply yanking them off the walls.
“Hey! I got that at the market! Don’t get blood on it!”
