A Knife's Edge

Bone, brass, and whetted steel. Fang and talon threaded through the sinew that wraps the hilt, capped with a leering maiden's bust and a necklace of wing bone. 
I swear the blade drinks blood. I can still taste the bastard's flesh after a kill.
==Arcadia, the Twentieth Run==
Johnathan was my first kill.
The Bastard (never think the name never) got to him. But I was the one who cut his hamstring, the one who let him fall. I don't regret it. Or I didn't. Its uncertain.
It was the twentieth release. Our own running of the bulls. The bandersnatch was the guest of honor at dinner, and dinner that run was Alice. She fell from the crags and struck the thorns, proving to me for the first time that they can kill as sure as drain. John and I made it to the border. The cliff face was tall, an I had yet to learn the knack of scaling the vertical.
John turned to me. "Alex. Boost me up. I can pull us both clear." His dark form, cloaked in Stygian and given a boy's shape, was earnest. Honest. 
I shook my head, the newborn quills rattling through stringy hair. "Boost me. I'm the stronger, and these walls are obsidian."
He knelt, letting me climb his cupped hands to ascend his shoulders. The first step was a razor of dirty glass. We made it to the seventeenth before the clattering of cloaked wings announced the Bastard's presence. John looked up at me. My arms were cut. My shirts was soaked. 
"Alex!"
I pulled, straining. Tendons in a young man's arms strained, pulled taut. Had I been home I might have taken the blade up. My off-hand dug in, wyrmling's claws cracking glass with the strength of my hold.
John clambered up, bleeding from the torso and thighs. He panted and pushed me back into the hollow space. There was one shelf left. One step to take. 
"Do we wait? Do we run?"
I dropped, panting. My chest heaved with faux sobs, clutching my ribs in pseudo-agony. 
"Alex? You alright mate?"
I swung. Obsidian flashed through flesh, the stone tearing through the back of his knee. He screamed. The cut was no deeper than any other on his young form. But I knew where a man's weak points were. They'd been exposed to me many times. 
He cursed. He screamed. Wings flapped.
He fell.
==The Skull==
My nails were dirty glass. This one was broken, the catch of a boy's femur having left a distinguishable chip. 
I licked the blade. Darkness, despair. Apathy, agony. 
Home.
Category:Fiction