Asher roared in pain as he was dragged into the sky, the unexpected sensation of having been impaled from behind causing him to drop his daggers and actually stunning him for a moment until it was too late. By the time he’d gotten over the shock of the surprise attack and having two new, fist-size holes punched through him, he and Talon were already far enough up in the sky that a drop from this height would almost assuredly kill him. He was capable of quite a lot, but he still didn’t have any method of surviving a drop from such a height.

  Granted, he wasn’t in quite as much danger as Talon probably suspected. Unlike most people, Asher could always just activate Recall to one of his many marks and teleport back down to the ground again. Despite having more than a firm grasp on him, Talon wasn’t like the greater demons. She didn’t have that unmovable sense of weight that they did, capable of locking down his Recall and preventing him from going anywhere.

  The knowledge that he could escape at any time helped calm him down a little, even with his legs dangling over what was rapidly becoming a larger and larger drop as Talon flew them up and away from the Guild building. Asher decided he’d keep Recall as a last resort, as he’d much prefer figuring out a way to take the Finger down now that he’d finally found her.

  Although, that was a bit easier said than done.

  The fresh stabs of pain he received for trying to reach up and stab Talon from his current position beneath her told him everything he needed to know. His arms dangled uselessly from his frame due to the massive talons shoved through the muscles of his shoulders, preventing him from doing much more than twitching a finger. He'd need some serious regeneration to recover from having two giant holes punched through the flesh of his upper back, and the dual injuries were going to make fighting a tad difficult.

  He was going to have to get creative.

  “How did you manage to hide your presence back in your room?” he called out, looking up at Talon as they flapped across the sky. Unlike the pegasi and their incredible speed, Talon seemed to be taking her time, enjoying the sensation of having him dangling at her mercy. He’d been told she enjoyed tormenting her marks before killing them, and he supposed that was almost certainly the sole reason why she hadn’t just killed him outright when he popped into her room.

  “Caw!” Talon said back to him, the giant raven screeching like any ordinary bird as she went back to flying.

  Ah, she probably can’t speak in her bird form. I suppose Eight’s giant mutated rat body he took on with the aid of his potions was pretty unique in that regard. The man was a genius, after all.

  “What’s even the point of dragging out your kills if you can’t lord your superiority over them, or taunt them before finishing them off?” he asked, watching the city fly by underneath them as Talon brought them further and further away. “Just seems a bit strange, if you ask me!”

  “Caw!” Talon screeched back yet again, shaking him a little bit in her talons and sending fresh waves of pain through his shoulders.

  “Alright, no need to be a jerk about it!” he shouted, hissing in pain at the sudden movement. Despite Complete Resilience, being strung up like a piece of meat and shaken about was still incredibly painful. In fact, Asher figured it was solely because of Complete Resilience that he hadn’t already passed out from the near-constant pain.

  Seeing as Talon both couldn’t and wouldn’t engage him in conversation, Asher stopped trying, deciding instead to watch the change in scenery from up above as they left the city’s airspace and continued onward. The two of them probably flew for somewhere around ten or so minutes before he felt Talon angle downward and finally start to descend. Despite Donvath mentioning how Talon preferred to bring her targets out of the city and torment them for a bit, a part of Asher had really expected her to just drop him from up high and let gravity do all the work.

  Talon quickly revealed she was going to meet in the middle, however, as once they were about forty feet off a large, empty clearing far enough from the city he couldn’t even see the walls, her talons retracted and Asher found himself in freefall.

  Guess it’s easier to torment your targets when they’ve shattered both their legs, he thought, gritting his teeth as he prepared for a rough landing. A quick use of Distortion compressed his forty-foot drop into a twenty-foot one, but that was still a significant distance. He felt something twist in his right ankle upon landing, and he grunted in pain as he did his best to roll with the momentum.

  A sprained ankle is better than twin broken legs, he thought, testing out his arms and finding he could still barely lift them. At the very least, he could operate his hands to a limited degree, but with large holes in each of his shoulders, he wouldn’t be raising his arms to stab anything anytime soon. Sensing more than seeing the bird coming down after him, Asher remained splayed out on the ground, trying his best to act like his legs were broken as she’d no doubt intended.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  With a near-silent flap of her wings, Talon landed on the ground at the other edge of the clearing, the giant raven looking like something out of a nightmare with his blood coating each of her talons in bright crimson. Cocking her head to the side, Talon let out one last caw that sounded a bit too much like a bark of laughter for his liking, before the raven began to change. The feathers withdrew into her body, morphing into dark clothing as limbs bent and her size began to shrink. Within seconds, the giant bird had been replaced with an average-sized woman, complete with a too-big cloak that covered all her features. Her aura was like two jet-black wings surrounding her body, each feather representing another life she’d snuffed out with extreme pleasure. The ethereal feathers that only existed in his own vision thanks to Judgment appeared to be dripping with what he somehow knew was agony and suffering, as if telling him that Talon all but bathed in the pain of her foes.

  [Assassin] - 3/3 elements

  Judgement - Lvl 17

  “My, if it isn’t The Reaper,” Talon said, her voice high-pitched and scratchy, not at all unlike the cawing of her raven form. Peering at him from within the shadows of her hooded cloak, she chuckled. “I never would have expected you to make such a foolhardy assault on my section of the Guild. Eight may have been foolish enough to underestimate you, but I’m far more cautious than he ever was. The moment you began your attack, I knew what had to be happening. You never stood a chance.”

  “You knew since the moment we started our attack?” Asher asked, raising an eyebrow at the bold declaration. “…And you still let us kill what’s probably half of your entire Guild by now?”

  “Scale is more than capable of taking down your two associates, and while the loss of Scab is regrettable, there are always more Blood element holders to be found clawing around the bowels of society.”

  “You really know how to paint a picture, don’t you?” Asher asked, going over his options in his head. He’d dropped his mithral dagger back in Talon’s penthouse when she’d first jumped him, and without the use of his arms, he really didn’t have any chance of fighting her the usual way regardless. He wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to take her down here and now, but he wasn’t going to give up just yet.

  “I’d heard you had a mouth on you, but I didn’t realize just how much you loved to hear yourself talk,” Talon said, slowly beginning to pace around him and forcing Asher to twist his body to keep her in his sight. He almost forgot to keep up the act that his legs were broken, only remembering at the last second to feign pain as he moved.

  “You’re one to talk,” he shot back, waiting for her to make her move. As it was, she was out of his reach, even with Distortion. All he needed was for her to come a little bit closer. “You could have killed me back in your penthouse with ease. Or any of the targets you were seen dragging out of the city. The only reason you drag out your kills is to hear the sound of your own voice. Or am I wrong?”

  “It’s not my voice I enjoy hearing so much,” Talon said, finally stopping her pacing as the subtle glint of the rising sun reflected off her grin. “It’s hearing their screams!”

  Asher started as Talon flared out her cloak behind her like a pair of wings, revealing what she’d been hiding within the oversized fabric all this time.

  Bones. Dozens and dozens of bones, strapped all along her body like some sort of primitive armor. With a flick of her hand, the many bones moved on their own, falling to the ground before her and snapping together like magnetic puzzle pieces, quickly forming a skeleton of some sort of creature that looked like a cross between a rhinoceros and a wolf. It was larger than she was and had a mouth filled with oversized teeth, and the thick horn on its skull put the tusks of the heavy boars he was so familiar with to shame.

  “I’d heard you liked fighting in close range,” she said as the last of the bones snapped into place and her skeletal pet reared up on its hind legs like a horse before slamming down onto all fours again. “Why don’t you try this enemy on for size?”

  With another flick of her hand, the skeletal beast sprinted forward, its silence almost more unnerving than the jagged teeth and sharp horn which were rapidly coming his way.

  Crap. Figures she wouldn’t make this easy. Cursing his bad luck, Asher decided the time for pretending was over. Scrambling to his feet as quickly as he could, he ignored the throbbing pain of his sprained ankle as he used Distortion to compress the space to his side and step twenty feet to the right. The skeletal monster’s jaws snapped right through where he’d been moments ago, before the beast’s head jerked toward his new location and it turned to follow. Remembering Moxy’s old lessons, rather than continue to react to Talon and her attack, he went on the offensive.

  His next tunnel of compressed space brought him closer to Talon, which resulted in the woman leaping back and vanishing from sight. That caught him off guard, as from what Moxy had told him, her elements were Bone, Steel, and Raven. None of those sounded like they would have provided her with any sort of advanced stealth skill, which meant either their intel was incorrect, her Raven element was more versatile than he'd originally expected, or she had an artifact on her. He did his best to try and find her location while dodging another lunge of the skeletal monster hot on his heels, but not even Secret Seeker was any help in finding her.

  Damn it… I’m going to have to get risky, aren’t I?

  As it was, Asher really only saw one possible option available to himself. Something he’d been saving for a rainy day that might just get him out of this mess. Seeing as he didn’t have any sort of area-of-effect skill, he had absolutely no way of finding Talon so long as she kept her stealth skill active. He could either throw in the towel and Recall back to his team with the intention of finishing Talon off some other day…

  Or he could do something far more reckless.

  Patreon

  Discord