Reawakening/Part Seven
Original Link (now dead) - http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=149
Reawakening, Part Seven
"How dare you!?" Oswald slipped out of the shadow and landed with his dirk drawn. "Our contract!"
"You failed." Nuhmudira sat calmly in her chair. Three nights had left her feeling healthier and sure of herself. The voices were quieter, more manageable, all but gone. Oswald, on the other hand, was a petty thing. He had burst into her home, riding the shadow and the wind, nothing more than a whisper of smoke the scent of mandrake. "I have exacted my price."
"You underestimate me, woman. I am beyond your touch now. I could easily—"
"Brag some more? Perhaps assail my ears with these petty arguments into the night? Or would you stand there across from an old and withered woman, with your weapon drawn and be so tame as to continue with idle threats and idiocy." Nuhmudira snapped back, but remained seated and calm. "You're a simple, and sadly, inefficient tool. You could not complete your end of the bargain, and since we had an agreement I have exacted the recompense that I could…"
Oswald opened his pouch, and produced a jet black pearl, "Take it back…this was the payment that you gave me for her. If I failed at that…then take this. You cannot take the power of his soul. It is mine!"
"Yours?" she quipped, a second voice not her own layered over the top. She forced it down and continued. "I taught you the rite. Showed you the methodology and provided you the means for your transformation. I am your mother, and you have shamed me."
"You're mad." He shook his head. "Mad…you think that you command more power than I? Your magic…it can affect the things that I have created, and weaken the bond perhaps…but…you cannot take it all. I will find another way."
Nuhmudira laughed, and all the voices joined her, "You? You are a not a competent assassin. How shall you unlock the mysteries that I command?"
"You forget Nuhmudira…you showed me the way." He smiled and the light of her candle glinted off of his teeth. His dirk blazed forward and slipped between her ribs. Her breath came in one quick burst as she toppled backward out of her chair. Blood welled into her mouth and she coughed, spattering her face and the wall behind her. The second stroke caught her across the throat and sent a shower of red into the air. The third struck her arm as she caught sight of his hands in the dark. The blade slipped cleanly between the bones of her lower arm and she twisted it hard. Pain mattered little. She heard her breath as it gurgled past the welling blood and she felt light-headed.
Oswald rolled away from her, slipping into the shadow. His blade turned into a thin line of smoke and trailed away from Nuhmudira. The fourth blow struck her in two waves. The first was a kick to the back of her skull. As she flipped from the floor, into the air, she felt the sting of the blade in her lower back. The world spun and darkness threatened to swallow her, but she was not about to die. She spoke a word that halted the flow of blood from her wounds.
Oswald stayed in the shadow, waiting for the moment to strike the final blow. Two of the wounds that he had struck her should be fatal, but Nuhmudira, like Elysa, was resilient. When she landed with a hard thump on the far side of her room, he slid into the shadow and beneath her bed. He rode the darkness there and emerged on the other side, embedding the blade into Nuhmudira's skull. She twitched, kicked once and then lay still.
"I'm the best at–" His words were cut short as a bolt of energy washed over him, through him, and tore his being asunder. As he began to drift away as smoke rising on the wind, he saw the Nuhmudira that he had killed sizzle and melt into the floor.