Chapter 9–Be Quick or be Dead
Gondar awoke from his sleep, his eyes momentarily blinded by the brilliant sun which shone into the cave as the dawn came up. He hadn't gotten enough sleep, but it was better than none, and he did not want to stay here too long lest the phantom assassin fetch reinforcements, though with the reputation of that guild he guessed that she would be too proud to do so to catch him.
Leaving the cave, he lead Lyralei and Yumero back into the forest and after Slithice, who was still hours, possibly days away.
The trail grew clearer, and Gondar, sighting a sparser section of the forest ahead, decided now was the time. He turned to Lyralei, stared into her eyes for a moment, then said "I'll go scout ahead, see what I can find," wondering if he was making the right decision or if he was now going to his death. Lyralei gave a small nod, her eyes betraying a sense of doom, and Gondar turned away.
Well, Gondar, the die is cast now.
She probably knows she'll have to strike now, while I'm isolated
From everything I've heard of the phantom assassins, she's likely twice the fighter I am, and likely stronger to boot.
I'll have to be quick or be dead.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Trekking into the sparse area of the forest, Gondar kept his ears pricked for the tiniest auditory cue of a magically-generated dagger and his eyes peeled for the flash of black feather-like particles which preceded a blink-strike.
He advanced, his breath practically still, until he saw it: out of the corner of his eye, a tiny flash of black. He wheeled, put up his hook, and was sent sprawling by a strike he could barely see, so fast it was and so blurred was the outline of the one who delivered it. "Gaah!" he cried out, barely stopping her next slash and leaping back to his feet. He then struck out with his hook, keeping his dagger at the ready and exploiting his superior reach to try and fend her off, but he missed her completely, barely even registering she'd sidestepped him before he was again parrying, this time taking a cut on his sternum as the only-partly stopped blade scratched against it.
Damn it Gondar, get back! You've got to be quicker than that Gondar! Or you're dead!
Then something happened within Gondar. He stopped thinking about anything save survival. If that meant killing the woman in front of him, that meant killing her. but right now that meant running. As she swung again, he leapt back, then practically vaulted up a nearby tree, using his hook to grab a branch and hoist himself up. He took a breath, then looked down at her and immediately felt a sharp pain in his shoulder, where a dagger had embedded itself. Recoiling back from the wound, he felt himself falling, falling, and only barely managed to avoid landing on his head or back. Then she was upon him again and he was backing up, engaged in a desperate fight for his life as she cut and thrust and he parried and dodged, never once able to strike back under her relentless onslaught. Cuts, shallow but stinging, showed up on his arms.
He was tiring. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tree behind him, and knew that it was now or never. Do or die. Be quick or be dead. The phantom assassin turned her back on him, and he blasted in, shouting "Jinada!" and slashed alond her knee. However, it was too late. No sooner had his blade found it's mark than it fell from his hand –the wound a pale shadow of the dismembering blow it could have been– as he fell, cut down by an impossibly fast, divine strike. He'd been opened, ribcage to ribcage, and his guts were on the verge of spilling onto the ground as his lifeblood was, collecting in an oozing, bubbling pool. He looked up, saw the blade of the phantom raised above him, and allowed his mind to float, feeling himself slowly slide from this world to the next.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Mortred looked down at the dying bounty hunter before her. He'd be dead soon, but Mortred needed to finish the job. No sense leaving him to bleed out. She raised her blade up, aiming the point at his heart. No, she thought, You're not Mortred! You're the phantom– and in that half-second hesitation, the first arrow hit her.
Then the second, then the third. She stumbled back, seeing others missing her, and barely ducked under the next. She saw where they were coming from now: Windrunner was firing at her at an impossible rate: the arrows were being lifted by the wind itself out of her quiver as, tears streaming from her eyes, she sent feathered death streaming from her bow. Mortred ducked and weaved and avoided most of the shots, but nonetheless arrow after arrow sunk into her flesh. The Juggernaut too was advancing on her, and she knew if she didn't escape now she was done for. She ducked behind a small tree, took two deep breaths, and determine her strategy: She'd blink over to Windrunner, kill her, then run like hell and hope she could outrun Juggernaut. Blood was weeping from her wounds and she looked somewhat like a hedgehog with all her quills, but the wounds were not deep and she had to try.
As she popped out, an arrow was there to meet her, it's power far greater than the rest. It ripped through her chest cavity, and as she flew backward, her last thoughts were of why she had been chosen to walk the path of the assassin, and who Mortred really was under the veil.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Windrunner had broken down, weeping uncontrollably at the sight of Gondar's mangled body right after the danger had passed, but Yumero's work was hardly done. Gondar remained among the living, though his life was guttering, and it was Yumero's job to make sure he stayed among them. Reaching into his scroll case, he drew out a scroll with a single character on it: Healing. He muttered a prayer to the goddess of protection, the god of life and the god of medicine, and the scroll floated in the air, became the ornate healing ward. Yumero then got to work patching up Gondar's smaller wounds, for though only the ward could save him from the main wound, Yumero could staunch some of the blood loss from his smaller ones.
With the ward, Yumero's ministrations, and the grace of the gods, he would live.