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chapter two. charade
"Well? Are you going to answer? I haven't got all day."
His tone was cordial, flippant even, as if he weren't moments from sending her to the very same fate as the farmer. Fallon grit her teeth. It did not take a scholar to figure what the man had done. As much as fear and irritation gripped her, she could not deny his threat, she would have done the very same. Regardless, her anger bucked. Die cowering, Fallon would not.
"Get off me," she growled through teeth.
Her words were met with a dark chuckle and a shake of the head.
"Oh sure, I'll just go ahead and let you brush off. Turn tail to your friends. A little scummy, don't you think? Four against one. Let me remember, how was it the oaf described you all? A tiefling, some scrubby vagabond, a dour half-elf and a pretty little thing with mismatching eyes. Should I ask which one you might be?"
"Slit my throat and you won't make it past dusk."
"But I will, because if they let you stray so far ahead of the pack, then I'm hardly dealing with the brightest bunch. This doesn't have to end in bloodshed. Come now, sing for me."
Fallon twisted beneath him in a vain attempt to jam her knee somewhere tender but the move was predictable. Leveraging a hand against her shoulder, he stilled the joint with firm force, pressing the blade of his dagger against the flesh of her neck. Fallon gasped, a thin rivulet of blood flourishing beneath metal.
This caught his attention, eyes flickering down to glimpse his handiwork. A darkness swept him, the contortion of his brows coming to rest. A look close to serenity swept him, waters stilled. Fallon felt him relax above her, though the lean of his blade was unceasing. If she had been a wiser woman, what she would have sensed in the shift was rudimentary yet besotted yearning.
Just as quickly it was gone. He was gone. Bolts of light shot through the air, sizzling with heat and power and clipping the cloth of his expensive doublet. The man's weight was sent off kilter, sprawling to the ground beside her. Shock spread across his features, but before he could react, three more bolts of sharpened magic dove upon the fabric of his clothes and pinned arms and legs in place.
Fallon leapt to her feet just as Orikas appeared behind her, clenched eyes aglow. Fingers pressed against the skin of his temple, flush to a bulging vein that appeared only in deep concentration. His other hand was outstretched, splayed digits taut as he commanded his soul blades to dig further into the earth.
