Shayla needed a long moment to recover for multiple reasons. The water was filthy, the water was unbelievably cold, she didn't know what to do about the handsome young man's unbelievably nasty wound, and trying to dry up his whole body revealed he had concealed carry of the biggest weapon her innocent, icy-blue maiden eyes had ever seen.
Silly innocent girl things aside, the most urgent matter was the wound at his back. Not only did the cut look "spread out," seeming as if he was gored by a bull's horn instead of slashed by a sword, but he also wasn't bleeding, yet he was still alive, his beating heart proved it.
She thought he was a noble as he certainly dressed and looked the part. The multiple tears at the front of his clothes were explained by the fact he broke through glass, so she didn't even suspect of his true upbringing. But while saving a noble would be like striking a Jacques in cards, if you didn't do your utmost best to save them, they'd find a reason to cut down on your deserved rewards, so Shayla couldn't help but agonize about what to do regarding that wound.
Worse than rescind rewards, he could even take take a fancy for Shayla's beauty, as it happened once, so this was quite the risky endeavor for her, but curiosity killed the cat, both of them, actually, for Shayla was also an impure cat human. Still, she was ready to slip around this handsome man's clawed clutches if she had to. She didn't spend her whole life hiding her beauty just through pure luck.
But right now, Shayla was frozen in indecision. Her medical knowledge wasn't enough to tell her what to do next, so she continued to inspect the wound. She poked and moved it around, but no blood came out and neither did it seem to want to scab. Just to make sure, she nicked his arm, and he did have enough blood to bleed, so this open wound at the back was clearly something nastily magical.
Then she realized she could see the bone, and after a bit of brave poking, she realized his spine was severed. Now that was… horrifying, to understate.
She turned him belly up on her bed and simply sat down beside him, too shocked to do anything else. Lacking clear direction, her delicate hand decided to act on its own, and it targeted Alistar's fluffy cat ears. Shayla had a pair of her own and also a tail of the same color as the catman's, so she felt a sort of compassion for her non-human brethren. The pair could even be mistaken for siblings without context, though Alistar was tall and slender while Shayla was shorter and curvier.
The cautious catwoman eventually caught herself and regained control of her rebellious hand. It seemed to her that handsome men were dangerous even while asleep.
But sitting still was not something she did often, and soon the sun might rise (dragging and cleaning then drying an unconscious man on her own was a considerably slow task), so it was about time to do something about his wound. Shayla knew the local witch had some medical knowledge, so she decided to wake up the grumpy hag and risk a hex to save, again, the life of her new pet cat. He was simply too handsome to let die.
She silently opened the door to her little shack and stepped outside, then silently closed it again. No reason to wake up the neighbors and make them wonder if she was up to no good.
In this part of The Slums, everyone took "personal privacy" to an unusual degree, so even if anyone saw or heard her drag the body to her home, nobody would dare question her and get involved. But this lack of human interaction also cut the other way as there would be few, if any, that would defend her if threatened, and when she heard distant metallic stomps followed by a man barking at someone, she immediately knew that it was trouble.
"Where the fuck is there a road to the river?!"
That sounded like an unmasked Enforcer though most of them wore leather boots instead of metal, but, regardless, with how clumped up together the rickety wooden homes were in this part of The Slums, only a few alleys would take to the polluted river, and the closest one went right past her shack. Shayla would even bet her meager savings that this angry man wanted something with the "noble" she saved, so she simply doubled back and closed the door then listened quietly.
There was no reason for him to enter her house out of the dozens around the area, so she waited patiently by the door, her tail and breathing slowing down as the heavy metallic stomps got closer.
But just as they were about to pass, she heard a "ping" sound right outside, and the stomping stopped along with her heart.
"Oh n-…!"
The door to her home was smashed open by a metallic boot, shattering against the wall, then a knight barged in while brandishing a shiny long sword. Shayla grabbed her only weapon and companion, a dagger she used to slice and eat her food, but the knight simply smacked at her hand as she was forced to jump away from his charge. There was no way her light -emphasis on that word- weight would be able to stop a man comparable to an orc.
And she realized too late what he was doing, but even if she had, she wouldn't be able to do much. The catwoman jumped onto his back and grabbed his right arm while jamming the dagger into his neck, but it was padded with a thick layer of gambeson, and he still moved as if she wasn't there, so his sword sank unopposed into the young man's chest, right into his heart.
Suddenly, she was flying, then the air was forcefully pushed out of her lungs as she smacked against the wall of her shack, her body too light to even break through the flimsy wood.
There was no time to recover, something was approaching her face, so she reacted on instinct. She slipped past the hand and grabbed onto his shoulder so that she may use it to spin around until her legs wrapped around his throat like a necklace, and then she let her weight fall. She loved this wrestling move as she didn't have much muscular strength, but this one used her weight instead, and even as light as she was, a juiced Hex Enforcer would be lose their balance and eat the dirt. Nobody was ever ready for this takedown…
But she remained hanging as the knight refused to budge.
A chill ran up her spine as she realized that getting grabbed my a man of such strength would be an instant loss to her, so she released his neck, but she didn't fall for he already had a grip of her.
Suddenly, she was swinging in the air, then her back crashed against the wall with such strength the wood broke and she got stuck in it. Now this was enough of a hit to make her dazed, and before she could recover, a cold gauntlet wrapped around her neck and pulled her out then held her in the air.
Her eyes regained focus and she saw a pale, scarred, and bald human with red eyes staring at her hungrily, a stare she had nightmares about for she knew what it meant.
"What a cute little kitten I found here. Time to give this hungry wolf a treat," he hummed with a deep growly voice, almost inhuman to her sensitive ears.
Something grabbed her shirt and then ripped it open, revealing her round breasts and pink nipples, and the sudden exposure made her start to panic.
"N-no!" she attempted to struggle and kicked him between the legs, but the tip of her boot only got into contact with metal, leaving her toe in a very sorry state. Then the gauntlet on her throat tightened up, stopping her from breathing or speaking.
She stopped the kicks and closed her eyes as she focused all her strength on loosening his grip, and she felt him fiddle with the belt of her pants, but she was losing her motivation to resist further as fast as her breath. His strength was overwhelming, so she started to prepare herself mentally for what was to come. She had a female friend who once told her how to get through this and survive.
She suddenly felt her pants fall onto the floor, the cold wind on her lower parts feeling as dreadful as a dive into one of the Fingers, but then her ears picked up an odd sound that made her open her icy pair of eyes again.
The young man had stood up, and he was slowing pulling the sword out of his chest. His amber eyes looked dead, like that of a reanimated corpse, and it stunned her enough to make her forget about her own danger for a mere second, but the knight noticed her gaze wasn't on him.
Both Alistar and Frederik turned into a blur, but as Shayla fell onto the floor, so did the knight's head a second later, then came down the rest of his massive body clad in metal armor.
Now there was no sound but that of her ragged breathing and the blood pouring out of the dead knight's stump, not even Alistar was breathing. And so this scene remained for excruciatingly long seconds as nobody dead or alive could fully understand what had just happened.
This was the turning moment of their lives that they'd never forget. The handsome but haggard fake noble holding a dripping sword, the brave beauty on the floor, exposed and frightened, and the humongous body of the knight wrapped in metal armor, its pure sheen tainted by the vivid red blood.
What broke the silence was a sudden, horrific pain in Alistar's chest that made him let out a pained scream.
"AAAAAH-…!" he shouted briefly then coughed black blood and fell on his knees, dropping the sword.
Shayla forgot her own situation and reflexively rushed to help the young man so he wouldn't collapse face first onto the floor. She didn't know why she was doing this as the young man was the source of her recent predicament, but he did save her life after she failed to save his. Not only that, but after going through all of this, she was seriously thinking he was just too handsome to let die.
But instead of saying anything, he looked into her eyes, and she went silent. Compared to her icy cold pair, his amber cat eyes looked like a fiery fire, as if there was a deep and wild emotion within them that made her pause and feel like prey before a predator. It was a different hunger than that of the ugly human, and his handsome looks only made her feel even more encouraged to continue behaving like a small animal in the jaws of her killer.
And so he kissed her, a bittersweet kiss in both senses as his tongue sent the black blood in his mouth into hers, and it tasted both horribly bitter and also sickeningly sweet. She simply couldn't resist him, even when she started to feel her strength, her very life, drain into him through her lips.
It was a chilling feeling balanced out by the pleasure of the kiss. It felt both amazingly wrong and terribly right at the same time, and it was the perfect opening act of this new beginning as it sealed their fate.
For now, and in the afterlife.
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