The sniper exhaled slowly, the kind of breath that follows certainty. "One."
Vance swirled his flask, watching the alcohol chase itself in lazy circles. He didn't look up immediately. There was something meditative about the motion.
The sniper screamed.
"Auch!!"
He looked up.
Dongmei stood with her forehead freshly bandaged, her rapier buried in the sniper's shoulder with the casual precision of someone returning a book to a shelf. The sniper's shoulder was pierced by Dongmei's rapier.
Vance scratched the back of his blue hair. "What do you want?"
It wasn't really a question.
"My master will answer that," Dongmei said, not looking at him, "in a few moments."
****
Anat had stopped breathing without realizing it.
The woman in front of her wore a black kimono, layered beneath a red belly warmer embroidered with dark floral patterns in gold and deep crimson, the whole thing held together by a black belt.
Zhifeng Dang.
The name arrived in Anat's chest before her mind fully processed it. She pulled Nanna behind her and planted herself on the first step of the carriage, which was either a defensive position or the only thing keeping her upright.
"Hello there, little witch." Miss Zhifeng's eyes moved past Anat with the unhurried patience of someone who had already calculated every variable in the room. They settled on Andreas with a hole in his temple, irregular rise and fall of his chest, and slight tremor moving through him "I am happy to see you are well."
Anat opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
She held Nanna's clothes tighter.
Miss Zhifeng continued as though the silence was simply was the responseshe wanted. "It is unfortunate I don't have any healing techniques." She paused with genuine regretfulness at the unconviniance.
"Might you be able to do something? We can't afford to have Aldric die on us." Her gaze returned to Anat, pleasant and absolute. "Right? Miss Witch."
The infuriating feeling that Anat couldn't swallow down, rose as she realizesthat she had no way of ascape in front of a god killer.
Her reserves were nearly empty and what was being asked of her was impossible in the state she was in.
Anat stood on the step of the carriage and said nothing and felt the particular defeat of someone who has run the numbers and doesn't like any of them.
Andreas felt the taste of something electric and alkaline that overwhelmed the back of his tongue.
He inhaled deeply like a man surfacing from water he hadn't known he was drowning in.
He scratched his chest then coughed.
What came out landed in his palm as small pieces of grey-pink, dense flesh, He stared at it for a moment with the expression of disgust.
"Arrrrrgggg"
He covered his face with both hands as he felt overwhelmed by the sensory stimuli.
Miss Zhifeng watched with the focused stillness of someone taking very careful notes.
Anat watched with her hand still fisted in Nanna's clothes, unable to look away, unable to fully process what she was looking at.
At Andreas's temple the skin was moving. The hole at his temple closed.
His breathing remained strange and the convulsing continued.
Miss Zhifeng, Anat and Nanna watched as Andreas misery slowly decreased.
The convulsing. The irregular rhythm. Both stopped.
What replaced it was worse somehow. Hoarse breathing. Andreas lay flat on his stomach, arms at his sides, cheek pressed against whatever surface was beneath him.
A long moment passed.
"Ahhh." He squeeled as he began to cry.
He moaned and cried for a few more minutes till Miss Zhifeng rolled him over with her high heel stiletto.
Andreas opened one of his squinted eyes to look at the beauty above him and turned to look away and twist his face even harder and smiled slightly.
"Aldric why are you back here?"
Andreas's expression softened into a slight frown and he turned to look at Zhifeng ant slowly stood up while groaning.
He patted out the dust out of his clothes without a drop of blood.
Anat looked at where andreas once laid and saw no evidence that he was ever shot and that he was coughing up brains.
Miss Zhifeng clasped her hands behind her back. "Oh. This is even more shocking."
She looked at Andreas the way someone looks at an answer that doesn't fit the equation. "It seems you have become quite the unusual individual, Aldric."
"I must ask, is this how you have been able to survive for the past week?"
Andreas looked at the beautiful and elegant lady.
He didn't bow.
"Probably," Andreas said. "But I think it's mostly just luck."
Shock by his casual tone Miss Zhifeng thought tho herself.
Technique, she thought. Relatively new. He has become arrogant. This untrained fool doesn't even realize it costs energy to heal.
She kept her expression pleasant and indifferent.
Anat and Nanna had shifted their attention to the cat sitting at Andreas's feet. It sat with the cooperative stillness of something fully domesticated, its tail curled neatly, completely unbothered. Anat watched it with poorly concealed desperation.
It did nothing.
She looked away with disdain.
"How blunt of you, Aldric." Miss Zhifeng took a step forward. Then another, till she entered his personal. "Is that the right tone to take in front of me?" Still pleasant. Still absolute. "Surely you don't think you can defeat me?"
Andreas registered that she had gotten shorter with each step closer.
He found his thought funny and he also found himself embarrassed to be standing this close to someone this beautiful. The result was an expression that was mostly just an awkward smile.
"Why would I want to beat you?"
Miss Zhifeng stepped back. Her hand moved and a katana appeared from somewhere that didn't entirely account for itself, its scabbard held in both hands as she faced him. Calm. Considered.
"I wonder why."
"Wow." Andreas raised both hands. "I do not want to fight anyone. Please." He rubbed the back of his head. Then quieter, more to himself than anyone: "And why would I fight a beautifull woman."
His vision dropped and rotated.
Till he saw his own thighs and knees. The ground came up very quickly and his head hit the pavement and rolled a full meter before stopping against a small rock, cheek to the ground, one eye facing upward at the sky.
Miss Zhifeng looked at the head. Then at the Fallen body. She pressed her lips together.
"Hm. Perhaps I let myself loose far too much just now."
She crouched slightly, studying him with composed curiosity. "Are you dead. Ah. I don't even know what source you use. I can't replenish you."
She straightened up and looked at the blue cat.