As the demon slowly drove Ana back, its physical power and relentless aggression only barely overmatching her speed, instincts, and reflexes, Ana kept repeating seven words. First silently, then aloud, like a mantra. On one exhalation: “Don’t have to win.” On the next, “Just don’t lose.” She had to, because after months of almost constant victories, no matter how hard fought, her frustration at only ever falling back was growing almost intolerable. She longed to go on the offensive, to really attack beyond a few opportunistic swings that went nowhere. She wanted to get in there, in a grapple, where she was most comfortable. To disarm the damn thing, then knock out every one of its horrid teeth and wipe that sadistic, expectant leer from its face permanently.
Repeating those seven words quickly became unconscious as Ana focused on two things: defending herself, and not letting the demon set a rhythm again.
And it tried. It would fall into patterns of attack and manoeuvre, lulling Ana into a sequence of block, “Don’t have to win,” block, “Just don’t lose,” step, “Don’t have to win,” strike, “Just don’t lose,” only to suddenly thrust its blade at her face when she expected it to move toward her, or leap to the side, changing its angle of attack mid swing when she expected it to leave her an opening. Rill had fought smart during training sessions, too, she remembered, but months of experience had taught her to expect only furious assault from demons, whether possessed or revenant. This one was too damn intelligent by half, and Ana became more and more convinced that victory wasn’t on the table.
So. “Don’t have to win. Just don’t lose. Don’t have to win. Just don’t lose.”
“Don’t have to win,” Ana panted as she used her weapon to parry a surprise thrust to her left shoulder, trying to trap the blade between the rising top of the axe bit and the rest of the head. “Just don’t—”
The demon didn’t disengage from the parry. Instead it stepped in with its left foot and its left hand flashed out, backhanding Ana across the cheek hard enough to spin her around and make her vision flash. Then she got her grapple.
Ana’s wings had dissipated minutes ago, and only Perfect Balance kept her on her feet as she staggered, the force of the blow turning her a full ninety degrees. The demon didn’t waste the opening. It was on her the moment her eyes left it, and while she couldn’t see what it was doing she felt the fingers clamping down on her throat well enough. Instinctively she flexed her throat hard, preventing the demon from closing her windpipe as her neckguard kept its fingertips from digging into her flesh. As it squeezed she sensed as much as she heard it move, and in the blink of an eye it was pressing itself against her back, its collarbones digging into the back of her head as it tried to use its own body to increase the force it could put on her throat with its fingers.
Ana had just discarded her arms and was getting her hands into position to throw the demon over her shoulder when it laid its sword against her throat, right above the neckguard of her armor, and the hand trying to crush her throat became a minor problem in comparison.
Her right arm was bent up and back, grabbing the back of Rill’s thick leather jacket, while her left hand was clamped down around the base of the thumb pressing against her windpipe. When she felt the faint pressure of sharp steel just under her jaw, Ana reacted instantly. Her Strength was high enough to keep her breathing for another few seconds, but she had no idea what all her defenses could do against the demon putting all the considerable force it could muster into drawing a blade over her throat, and she had no intention of finding out. Instead of the throw she’d been about to attempt, she slammed her right elbow down, trapping the blade under her arm. On the left she pushed up and out with the back of her hand, forcing the edge away from her throat entirely. Now she had to—
“Stupid,” the demon hissed, in a raspy parody of Rill’s voice, and cut.
Ana knew what had happened before the pain hit. She had no idea if what she’d done had been the best option available to her, but she paid the price. Instead of laying her throat open, the sword cut through the muscle and sinew under her right armpit, blood instantly gushing down her side. Mercifully her left hand was spared, having lain against the flat of the blade as the demon drew it back and into her. Then the pain hit, and Ana was pitifully glad for Fight Through. With how much that Enhancement had done for her, she couldn’t imagine anyone had ever had a better one.
“Stupid!” the demon cackled. “Stu—”
Then it was flying.
Ana purposefully forgot everything she knew about a proper throw, reaching back with her good arm to renew her grip on Rill’s jacket. Then, with a scream and simple, brute force, she stepped back, curled forward, and hurled the damn thing over her shoulder. It may be strong, but it wasn’t any heavier than Rill had been. Its grip on her throat came loose and its blade slid free, cutting deeper along the back of her shoulder in the process.
And then, as soon as she was free, Ana ran. She ran as fast as she ever had. Faster. She’d never gone into an all-out sprint with over 100 Effective Strength before, but now she did, racing not so much toward anything as away from the demon—away from Rill, a young man she’d once respected. Who she hoped was dead rather than trapped in a body that wasn’t his anymore, forced to watch what the spirit possessing that body made it do. She ran, and she ran, and she ran, and she had no idea what to do.
She couldn’t beat it. Even when she was at her best, well rested and unharmed, she hadn’t been able to take the initiative. She hadn’t done any real harm to it. Now she’d been fighting for… she had no idea. She’d left her weapons behind, and her right arm was practically useless. She could raise it, but that was it, and doing so only caused a dizzying amount of blood to pour down her side. So she used her good left arm to press the right one as tightly to her body as she could, and she ran.
To her dismay she realized that while she hadn’t consciously chosen a direction, she had done so instinctively. In her pain and fear, she’d run toward comfort and safety. She’d run toward home. She’d run toward Messy. And now the demon was behind her. She could hear it back there, running as hard as she was, a long distance yet only seconds behind at the speed they were going. And she couldn’t tell if it was gaining on her or not as they weaved between the trees, leaping fallen, mosscovered trunks and streams and ducking under low boughs, but it wouldn’t surprise her. Not with how strong the damn thing was. Not with her losing blood.
Ana might actually die here. Run down like a goddamn gazelle being chased by a lion.
She pushed the useless thought aside, and focused on running. She couldn’t lead the thing to her Party or the outpost. Giving them a chance was the whole point of her fighting the demon in the first place. She’d have to turn, and lead it away from them. She knew that doing so would mean sacrificing some distance—the demon was smart enough to cut the angle, and would have a shorter distance to cover than she did. So she kept running, eyes peeled for a place where her disadvantage would be minimized.
She found it by a wide stream. The stream ran south along the base of a hill, and erosion had cut away at the hill until it had created an embankment many feet high, and to the north, a bluff too high for the demon to simply leap up. Ana ran hard, veering slightly to aim for the highest point she was confident that she could clear, and at the edge of the water she pushed off, legs wheeling in the air. The jump was good. Her feet touched the ground on the other side of the stream, and she turned sharply north, running up the hill.
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She risked throwing a look back the way she’d come. The demon was closer than she’d thought, frighteningly close, and to her dismay it started turning immediately, trying to cut her off. It reached the edge of the stream, pushed off, and—
Ana’s heart leapt as the demon failed to clear the edge of the embankment. Its legs struck the side, letting Ana pull away as the demon lost precious moments, forced to scrabble up to continue its pursuit.
For a moment, Ana indulged in the luxury of hope. She’d gained some distance. She was leading the demon away from everyone important to her. Things were still shit, but they were less shit than they’d been a few moments ago.
Now what?
That one glance had shown Ana that the demon had been catching up to her. Not quickly, but given a few more minutes it might have had her. On top of that, she was bleeding, and even with her Vitality she wasn’t likely to stop bleeding anytime soon if she kept running. She needed to rest. Even better would be if she could get back to her pack, where she had bandages and a full healing potion. But to get those she needed to be able to stop, and gods only knew what would happen when she did, and the exhaustion caught up with her. That meant that she needed a serious lead over the demon to even dare to attempt grabbing her pack, which she’d never get while she was bleeding and it was unharmed. She needed to even the odds somehow, but it was as strong as she was, and it had a sword, while she was unarmed.
Or… unarmed wasn’t quite right. She still had her daggers—belt, boot, and thigh—and a brace of hurlbats on her belt, merrily jangling away as she ran. She was pretty shit at throwing, and her right arm was useless, but she was equally shit with both hands and she did have five of the things. And her Dexterity was somewhere up near 70 with her bonuses active.
She couldn’t keep running forever. The demon was going to catch her sooner or later if nothing changed. She had to try. If she aimed low and hit it in one of its legs, she might be able to slow it enough to make a difference.
Blood ran freely from Ana’s wounded armpit as she released her arm to free one of the hurlbats from her belt. A quick glance showed her that the demon was somewhere between a hundred and a hundred and fifty feet behind her; too close for comfort, but it gave her something resembling a chance of hitting. Bracing herself mentally for the insanity of what she was about to attempt, Ana quickly went through each stage, and then she just did it.
The next time her left foot came down, Ana pushed herself into the air, pulling the hurlbat back over her shoulder and twisting at the waist so that she spun around her axis. When she was facing straight behind her she snapped her arm forward, unleashing the throwing weapon more or less at the demon. Less, as it turned out, as Ana could see it flying off course even before she finished her turn.
Fine. One of five. She had four more attempts.
The next one flew high. The one after that, the demon dodged. The fourth went wide, only to the left instead of the right, vanishing into the stream below. And every time Ana tried she lost speed, and the demon gained on her.
When Ana readied her fifth and last hurlbat, the demon was less than twenty feet behind her. If she failed now, it would probably catch her in the next minute.
Ana skipped and twisted. She was close enough to clearly see the sadistic joy in the icy-blue eyes the demon had stolen from Rill, along with everything else he’d been. She threw her weapon.
As though in slow-motion, Ana saw her hurlbat fly straight and true for the demon’s knee. Then the demon skipped, and the missile passed under it, never to be seen again. The last thing Ana saw before finishing her rotation was the glee on the thing’s face. It was, in a word, demonic.
Then Ana caught the tiniest of breaks. She heard as the demon landed: the extra noise, the uneven steps. It had stumbled. And Ana, with nothing else to try, did the only thing she could think of.
She turned around, dug in her heels, and met the demon with a dagger in hand. It was still stumbling forward, but slashed at her anyway. She dodged under the sword, and with furious desperation she tackled the thing, driving her dagger into its right hip, wrenching the blade side to side and twisting it viciously.
Then, as the demon slid its blade along the armor covering her waist and grabbed for her with its free hand, she threw herself from the ridge.
Ana and the demon had been climbing slowly but steadily as they ran. The drop now was a good sixty feet, perhaps as much as seventy, into water of uncertain depth; certainly not enough to absorb Ana’s momentum. Still, she only saw two options: risk it, or die. And Ana had never been one to give up.
When Ana leapt, she didn’t aim for the water. She shoved off as hard as she could, arms and legs wheeling for the two long seconds it took her to reach the ground on the other side of the stream. She’d done her best to aim for an open patch, and through a combination of that and blind luck she hit neither any large rocks nor any trees as she rolled, tearing over shrubs and through bushes.
And then, once she’d come to a stop, she took her time getting up. Despite her every instinct screaming at her to Run, run as fast as you can! she made a show of getting to her feet laboriously and staggering as she took her first steps away from the stream, using all of her skill in Acting to appear desperate and afraid.
If she were to be honest with herself, both the acting and the fear were far less of an act than she would have liked. But the demon took the bait. Instead of turning away and trying to run down the rest of her party, or going straight for the outpost, the thing dropped from the ridge after her. It landed in the stream, knees bending deep as it threw up a great splash of water, and then it started for her, quickly picking up speed.
Ana ran. The demon followed, and the chase was back on. But now, despite all the blood that Ana had lost, and despite all the cuts and bruises that she’d picked up as she rolled through the undergrowth, Ana had the speed advantage. The demon was still far faster than anyone who’d had their hip-joint opened up had any right to be, but with its limping gait it wasn’t anywhere near as fast as it had been.
Ana actually had to pace herself to make sure it wouldn’t fall too far behind. And not only because she couldn’t afford to let it take off after her Party. The reason she couldn’t allow herself to put so much distance between them that combat ended was much more immediate: the resistance to blood-loss from Fight Through, and to a lesser degree her Vitality bonus from being in combat, were most likely the only things keeping her from passing out and likely dying on the forest floor. By all rights she should be staggering around half out of it already. If she let combat end before she got a healing potion in her, she was done for. And so instead of doing what fear and common sense told her to and running as fast as she could from the thing pursuing her, she made sure that the demon never lost sight of her for more than a few seconds. She staggered, and limped, and stumbled to keep it believable.
She gave the damned thing hope. And while doing so she got back on the path they’d been on until the stream, and she followed it back to where she’d discarded her pack. At first she wasn’t sure she’d be able to find it; she hadn’t exactly been looking over her shoulder as she fled, having relied entirely on her Keen Hearing to keep track of how close the demon was getting. It was the blood that let her know that she was on the right track. Her greatly enhanced Perception let her pick out streaks and spatters of crimson on the bushes and ferns lining the faint path, and that along with a few distinct landmarks—a split boulder in the middle of nowhere, the charred stump of a tree that had been struck by lightning—brought her where she needed to go. Even then she almost missed the pack where it lay among the shrubs, half concealed by tiny round purple-green leaves and tinier snow-white five-petaled flowers.
Ana barely broke stride when she bent down and grabbed the pack by one of its straps. Nor did she stumble too badly at the way her load suddenly became badly unbalanced while running at something like thirty miles per hour. It was a close thing, though. She couldn’t say if her axillary vein had been nicked or cut entirely, but it had been something, and there was only so much Fight Through could do. She may be resistant to the effects of blood loss, but she still needed blood to live. By the heaviness of her limbs and the lightness of her head, she had precious little left.
She kept her eyes on the path ahead and her hearing focused on the demon behind her. She found the padded side pocket by touch, opening it and getting out her last healing potion. When she tore the cork out with her teeth and drank about three quarters of the potion down, it tasted like hope.
Now she just had to find a way to apply the rest of the potion to her wound to promote clotting and healing, and then…
Shit. And then what?
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