Septifiria; The Becoming

Chapter 5

   Septi lunged, her dagger in hand, and stabbed him, driving her dagger into the back of his neck. Blood soaked her hand and arm, and he fell to the ground, his plating vanishing. He gurgled and choked, his eyes rolling back into his head.

   “You’ve killed enough of my friends, and used others. You injured me, and imprisoned me. You replaced my position as your deputy, making me nothing. Your wrongs will end today, by my hand.” She turned and ran down the hall, away from the corpse.

   “Septi!” Oracle cried, running up to her, a gash in his brow bleeding profusely. He stopped dead when he saw her blood soaked sleeve and the corpse lying at the far end of the hall. “What happened? Why are you-?”

   “I killed Steppe,” she said, her voice devoid of emotion. “But you are not my commander.” A sudden vehemence filled her voice, and anger blazed in her eyes. Oracle blinked and stepped back a half step.

   “Now’s not the time,” he said coldly. “We’ll talk about this later, but right now, there’s a battle going on downstairs. We need to go.” Septi glared, and then pushed past him, heading to the battle.

   When she got there, she entered the fray, making quick work of two mutants who tried to take her down. Bloodlust was in her eyes, and she was fighting with the ferocity of a wild animal that’s been caged and abused. Spotting a mutant about to strike a wounded Raram she let out a bloodcurdling shriek and attacked him. A quick dagger down his back finished him.

   “Take care of yourself,” she said to Raram. Carefully, she knelt beside Raram, and bared the wounds. “Raram! Where’s Dr. H? These need serious attention.”

   “I don’t know,” Raram said weakly. She licked her dry lips and gripped Septi’s hand. “I-”

   “I’m here,” someone said from behind Septi. Septi, startled and suspicious, spun, drawing her daggers. Then, with a sigh of relief, she sheathed them.

   “She’s not looking very well, Dr. H,” Septi said needlessly as she stepped back so that he could take a look. He nodded at her, and carefully examined the wounds. Closing his eyes, he released a steady flow of healing energy. Septi was trying to watch when someone snuck up on her and brought a rope around her neck. Septi shifted smaller, slipping free of the rope. Then she spun, the daggers back out, attempting to behead whoever had just tried to strangle her.

   She gasped as a semi-familiar face gaped back at her. Then the person, her old comrade Patrick Evens, fell to the floor, dead. A woman’s shriek filled the hall.

   “Pat!” The woman came vaulting up, looking somewhat disheveled.

   “He’s dead,” Septi said, keeping her face and voice void of the emotions underneath.

   “You little witch!” The woman exclaimed, drawing a dagger from the sheath on her belt. “You killed my brother!” That made Septi pause to think, trying to place the woman.    This isn’t the woman who was a teacher’s assistant at the school for a semester, is it? What’s her name… Guinavere? Surely she’s not that idiotic, to attack us!

   “I’m a witch no more than you are, Guinavere,” she responded, her daggers still in her hands. “Perhaps less so than you, as a matter of fact.”

   “What do you mean by that?” Guinavere hissed, parrying Septi’s one blow with a dagger and countering the attack with surprising viciousness. Septi dodged the blow and tried to stab Guinavere in the back with her other dagger but missed, her dagger meeting naught but air.

   Septi barely blocked as Guin slashed at her head and fought fiercely to drive her blade back to it’s mistress’s neck. Guin, however, was using a strength that comes from a sorrowful pain, and was fighting with a ferocity that wasn’t her own. Septi grunted slightly as the blades trembled, locked in mid-air.