Brathis charged the Death Razors silently, left shield arm held in front of her protectively, right hand poised, claw-like, to strike Zygomo. Zygomo dodged this time, side stepping the slash aimed for him. As he whirled away, he struck the Ironkin’s back with his club hard.
Underneath her cloak, which had provided virtually no protection, Brathis felt parts of her wooden lower back crack from the blow.
Can’t get hit like that again.
Despite the strong blow, Brathis did not fall flat on her face, only stumbled. It still gave an opening for the Lizardken after Zygomo to try stabbing her with a dagger through where a heart would be.
To the Death Razor’s unpleasant surprise, she only encountered metal as her dagger harmlessly bounced off with a tink. Brathis grabbed her wrist and wrenched it down, pulling the woman down with it. The bounty hunter maneuvered herself to land on top of the gangster, rolling away quickly and getting back up.
The two other Death Razors had not been idly standing by, they both went for her at the same time, the two holding two daggers each. They spread out slightly as they advanced on her, giving Brathis nowhere to go but behind as she was backed into a corner.
No matter, Brathis had been outnumbered many times back at home. But never without preparation.
As if being of one mind, the two Razors jumped into a simultaneous attack. Even if Brathis could block two attacks, they were banking on the fact that she couldn’t stop the other two attacks. After all, she did not have four-
Brathis parried all four attacks, two with her arms and two with limbs extending from her lower abdomen. The limbs were thinner, but no less sturdy than her arms. But instead of hands, the limbs ended in long, sharp spikes as if they were the pitons climbers would use for particularly steep mountains. They made for excellent piercing weapons.
And then Brathis began attacking in earnest. She fended off another strike with her shield, her left lower limb trying to strike up at the arm holding that dagger. With her other arm, she slashed at the other assailant, having the piton-arm under that deflecting any daggers.
Zygomo and the woman getting up looked at the machine in horrified fascination. All limbs were moving independently and with grace, as if there were four minds working in tandem. Then they went to join their friends. Impressive skill and tenacity or not, Brathis had to die.
Brathis could not keep this up forever. Sooner or later she would make a mistake, slip up, or one of the Razors could get a lucky hit in.
Brathis was apparently aware of that too, as she kicked one of her assailants in the groin. The male Lizardken crumpled in pain. Her attack had left her over-committed in order to take out that Lizardken, giving the other Razor the opening she needed. Using the hilt of her dagger, she brought it down on Brathis’ shoulder joint of her right arm, hoping to disable her.
A dull thud of hilt meeting metal rewarded her with immense disappointment. Brathis responded by turning to her attacker, grabbing her with her main arms before she could jump back, then stabbed her with the piton-arms multiple times. She did not hesitate to fight dirty, puncturing several key organs in the Lizardken’s body.
Brathis turned from the dying woman only to be met with a club to her face, breaking off a good chunk of her pointed face.
Pain, the first she’d felt in a while as a part of her essence that had inhabited that piece of wood was lost to the air. Before she could recover, Zygomo hit her two more times, targeting her forearms which were made of wood and not the steel that had shielded her so far.
Brathis twisted her left arm just in time to take a hit on her shield, lessening the impact but cracking the shield. Her right arm fared worse, numerous cracks appearing on it, one of them even interfering with her internal Arcanic circuits.
Tarnished steel, this is bad.
She immediately felt the loss of function in her claws, now retracting and extracting rapidly like a machine gone wrong, yet another thing drawing on her internal Arcanic energy sources.
The bounty hunter clenched her hand into a fist, heedless of the claws trying to stab into her palm, as she struggled to fend off the Drakken’s attacks. Now the remaining two Lizardken had come to join the fight too, three more vectors of attack aiming all over her.
Thus far she had been trying to avoid injuries, as repairing herself was costly, especially if she had to rely on her innate regeneration without having suitable replacement parts. But as a dagger left a mark on her wooden lower torso and a club put a dent on her left metallic shoulder, she saw she had no other choice. She had always loved a challenge, but there was a reason, or at least part of one, that she had been exiled from her community. Her dark secret was this.
She loved to fight.
Brathis surrendered herself to the thrill of the fight and completely lost it.
An earsplitting shriek came from Brathis, momentarily causing everyone to wince, then she began an onslaught of attacks, not caring if they hit her. For a moment, she was a whirlwind of fists, claws and spikes.
She swung a punch into Zygomo’s chest, sending him stumbling back with a few fractured ribs. Her hand cracked in turn. The female Lizardken Razor managed to wedge her dagger in between the seams of her left elbow, locking that joint. Brathis stabbed a bloody piton into her torso for that.
The male Lizardken moved behind the Ironkin and targeted her neck. He got one good strike in, but sparks flew from the metallic casing of the neck. He cursed as Brathis’ piton-limbs revealed that they could bend backwards, stabbing both kidneys at once.
Brathis whirled around and then, her left arm stiffly positioned, swept at the hurt man with such force that his throat was torn out by the edge of her shield. Her shield, not able to handle the strain of being used as a weapon, finally gave in and shattered into pieces.
Before the other female Death Razor could recover enough from the torso wound to attack again, Brathis shoved her to the ground. Brathis then put a foot on her chest before she stomped on a knee joint.
Snap.
The Lizardken screamed. The Ironkin turned a broken face to the remaining Drakken, Zygomo. He was backing away warily, eyes widened in fear.
Brathis, covered in blood, cracks, and dents, with a broken shield and a claw that refused to rest, held up her arms to the side invitingly. Daring Zygomo to come at her.
In that moment, Zygomo did not see a newcomer to the city, an over confident bounty hunter who was stupid and dense most times, one who had no idea how things worked around in their turf. He saw a machine. One that can shrug off a head wound, one who can’t bleed. He swore he saw her grin, but she had no mouth. He had a word for her.
Demon.
He did what any sensible man would do, what he has done time and again that allowed him to survive to the age he was today. He ran.
Brathis dropped her arms when the Drakken rounded the corner. She walked, slowly at first, then gradually becoming unsteady as she finally allowed her body to begin redirecting the energy animating her limbs to sealing the cracks in her body. She leaned against a wall for support as she tried to extricate the dagger the Death Razor, still yelling in pain, had planted in her elbow joint.
With a painful effort, she managed to get it out. Then she looked to the only remaining Death Razor that was alive. Brathis stumbled forward, then crawled, until she was next to the Lizardken.
“Tell me where your base is.” She demanded weakly, her body’s healing efforts affecting even her voice.
By now the gangster’s voice had gone hoarse, but at least her screaming had stopped. She breathed heavily as she slowly bled out into the ground. She was not long for this world. She replied.
“Go…Go back to Isles, demon.” Then her last breath came out in a sigh, and Brathis was alone.
She had to leave before the watch investigated the screaming.
Brathis wished she could drink. Never before had she wanted to, because fluids were disgusting. But now, more than ever, she wanted to drown herself in alcohol.
Fun fact. Ironkin can feel pain. It’s rare, but it happens. After all, they do infuse their essence of being, their “soul” to hear some of them call it, into their bodies. Which means when someone knocks out a chunk of her ‘snout’, she loses just a little bit of her mortal soul. It’s also how they feel things. Luckily, some Ironkin medics can alleviate such pain. Modern medicine truly is a wonder.
Unfortunately for Brathis, she was the only Ironkin around here as far as she could tell, and she had only her first aid knowledge to draw on. Arm is savaged? Easy, just fill in the gaps with anything wood-like and it’ll sort itself out. Shield runes messed up? No problem, she knows how to fix that. Treating the pain for all of that, though’? Nope. It hurt. A lot. The tip of her snout still hadn’t been replaced, the chunk too big to rebuild itself out of her energy stores. Another wonder of Ironkin biology which did not help at all.
Brathis rested her head on the counter of the inn. Wifidia stared at her. She had probably never seen Brathis this beat up before. She slightly jumped when the mercenary spoke.
“All my. mon-ey for a wo.rking mout.h. All of i-t. Drunken.ness ple-a-se.” Her voice was much more alien than her usual instrument-speech, halting and stuttering. Her plea still drew a sympathetic look from the barkeep.
“What happened to you, Puppet girl?” Wifidia asked incredulously. “You were looking at that man like he kicked your childhood pet. Did you go and get beaten up?”
Brathis looked up at Wifidia. “Yes.”
“Oh.” She paused, then hesitantly looked back at her kitchen. “The usual, then?”
Brathis nodded as the barkeep went to forage for some unneeded wood bits. Wifidia came back to Brathis chipping off pieces of her own face. Needless to say she dropped the wood.
“Do that somewhere else!” She hissed as she recollected the wood and dumped it in front of Brathis. Brathis nodded dejectedly then walked upstairs.
“Some guest. Why do you keep her around?” A nearby Drakken asked, having watched the whole interaction.
Wifidia sighed. “Only Orbellor knows why I do it, sometimes.”
A few hours later, the mercenary came back down from her room looking better, if not completely well. She had a bandage wrapped around her head keeping her replacement snout, but her eyes were still visible. She had her hood up, no need to look even more alien to inn than she already did. The wood type of the replacement did not even match her face. She sat back down at her spot, then rested her head on the counter, making an odd groaning noise.
“What are you doing now?” Wifidia asked in exasperation while serving a Drakken man sitting next to Brathis.
“I saw others do this when they were frustrated.” Brathis replied without looking up. She had fixed her voice box too, so now she only sounded like an old stringed instrument rather than an orchestra bludgeoning itself to death.
“You’re not even drunk, you have no headache to complain about.” The barkeep pointed out. “Don’t you metal folks have your own way of getting drunk?”
Brathis gloomily shook her head. The same Drakken, a bright yellow-scaled one, who had been watching earlier and sat next to her, shook his head as well. “No wonder you are in agony, you poor thing.” He said with pity. “You can’t even get drunk.”
Brathis glared at the man. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
He shrugged. “I am supremely bored.” He clearly was not affected by her face. Maybe because she could not actually glare. Why had she ever looked down on facial features?
“Why are you upset then?” He asked. Brathis finally sat up and directed her full attention to the man.
“Just that I got kicked around by a bunch of gang members. I lost my snout.”
“Ah, so it is true.” The Drakken observed. “You are that crazy Ironkin who decided to take on a gang alone.”
“What? There are rumors about me?” Brathis said with mild surprise. “What do they say?”
The man raised an eyebrow. Or the equivalent of one, Ken don’t get any hair. “That you are that crazy Ironkin who decided to take on a gang alone.”
Brathis drooped. That’s it?
“Why did you do it, anyway?” He said. “I know you’re not from around here, but I’m sure even savag- distinguished people like yourself would know better than to take on an entire organization by yourself. No precautions, even. Just walk around the streets practically begging to be ambushed.”
With each word he said, Brathis’ annoyance built. She stared at the man until he finished his speech, then replied.
“So you are an expert?”
“I suppose you could call me that, yes.” He replied. He eyed Brathis for a moment, then asked, “Would you care to tell me your name?”
Would you look at that. First person to actually ask her name.
“Brathis.”
“Brathis. So unique! What does it mean?” He said with apparent interest.
She shrugged. It’s just a name.
He seemed a bit put out by this. “Ah, I was hoping for something else, but nevermind. You may call me Zahijo The Omniscient!”
Wifidia had been coming by their end of the counter again when she heard that last bit. She snorted. “Omniscient?” She hid a hand behind her. “How many fingers am I holding behind my back?”
The Drakken, Zahijo, looked at the barkeep. “One.”
Wifidia chuckled as she revealed the hand, holding up indeed one finger. One finger, in particular. Zahijo nodded. “Still got it right.”
Brathis let out a low pitched note of laughter. Both Drakken looked to her.
“What was that?” Wifidia asked.
“Was that… laughter?” Zahijo ventured.
Brathis reluctantly nodded.
Zahijo nodded, then seemed to commit the moment to memory. “Interesting.”
Wifidia had a different reaction. “Don’t do that again. Creeps me out.”
Brathis shrugged. She thought organic laughter sounded like a drowning animal, but who cared for her opinion?
“Wifidia’s needling aside,” Zahijo The Omniscient continued. “I am a mercenary of sorts too, like yourself. Except I don’t deal in violence and scavenging.”
Brathis had to ask. “What kind of mercenary doesn’t do those things?”
“Well, my dear wooden lady-”
“Don’t call me that.”
“-I deal in information.”
Brathis sharply sat up as, suddenly, the man’s name took on a whole new light. He seemed pleased at her reaction.
“I see you realize the importance of such things. Good. That’s already better than half the muscles-for-brains in this room alone.” He said self-importantly. “Then without further delay,” Zahijo turned around in his seat so that he was now entirely facing the mercenary.
“I have a deal for you.” He began, but now speaking as someone who had a potential buyer. “My services do not come cheaply, but for a unique prospective client such as yourself, I am willing to give a little bit of a…deal, shall we say. A way of putting it would be, ah, information for information.”
“Information like…?”
“Simple things, really. What it’s like being an Ironkin for one. How your fight. Your favorite hobby. I am a collector of any and all things unknown, you see.”
Brathis sat still for a moment, not revealing any emotions or thoughts. It was important that she maintain a cool demeanor lest her reactions give the man an advantage for negotiating and bargaining. For that was what she was doing now.
Negotiating.
Here, she had an advantage. A wealth of information that this man clearly wanted. All she had to do was give it to him. Then vengeance, and the reward money, would be hers.
She finally replied after a moment of thinking. For all she could not smile, Zahijo got the distinct impression that she was. “I think we can come to a favorable arrangement.”