TW: Physical Injuries, Blood/gore
Yam turned to face the tree again, her face a hardened mask of pure fury. She roughly unhooked a sickle from her belt, pulled it back over her shoulder, lifted a paw to aim, and threw it. The weapon spun through the air, cutting a neat beeline through the sky, disappearing into the leaves of the spruce. There came the sound of metal piercing flesh as the blade struck home and a spurt of blood dripped from one of the tree branches. The sickle clattered to the ground, its silver blade stained red. Yam raced forward to grab it, snagging the black handle in her teeth and beginning to scale the tree again, her eyes blazing. Aey ran after her, followed shortly by Rolf, and the two were barely halfway up by the time Yam vanished. When they made it to the top of the tree, they were forced to duck quickly as something large flew over their heads, completely missing all branches that may have caught it and falling to the ground with a loud crash. Yam dove after it, slipping through the broken branches and snapped twigs with ease, landing right on top of the thing with her claws in its throat. Aey and Rolf leaned over the side to watch, eyes wide. What was the thing that Yam had thrown?
Yam herself was clawing at the face of what Aey and Rolf now realised to be a young woman; at least, what little they could see of her face under all the fresh scratches looked like a young woman. Who knew? She could be sixty-five for all they knew. The Tabaxi was in a furious trance, lashing out with her flashing claws, not caring where the tips struck, only knowing that she wanted to inflict as much pain as possible on the being that had injured Bread.
“Who- the- hell- are- you- and- what- are- you- doing- here?!” Each word of Yam’s furious demand was punctuated with a blow. The young woman was holding a dagger, but whenever she tried to lift it to defend herself, Yam intercepted the blade with one of her own claws, creating, effectively, the horrible scraping sound of metal on metal. “Get- the- hell- out- of- here!”
Rolf quickly hopped down from the tree, jarring her ankles as she landed heavily, but she ignored the stabbing pain in her legs as she ran over to Yam and the stranger, wanting to make sure the Tabaxi didn’t kill her in her fury.
“Yam! Yam, no! Let go of her,” Rolf tried to intercept. Yam ignored her, adding one of her sickles, the already-bloody one, into the mix. She stopped slashing with her claws, but she held the tip of the sickle under the stranger’s chin, the cruel, curved, bloodstained blade ready to puncture her throat with just one deft flick of her paw. The stranger was forced to tilt her head back slightly, letting the blood from her wounds drip down her neck and onto the ground below her shoulders. Her gaze was burning with almost as much hatred as Yam’s, and the two locked eyes.
“Explain yourself,” Yam spat, venom in her voice. The stranger remained silent, only staring defiantly up at her. “Explain yourself, or I’ll slit your throat!” Yam lifted the sickle ever so slightly, piercing the stranger’s skin. A bead of bright red blood welled at the wound, and Rolf gasped, running forward, hands outstretched.
“Fine,” the stranger hissed through gritted teeth. Her face was scratched beyond recognition- not that anyone recognised her anyway. She tried to hoist herself up on her elbows, but Yam slammed her down again, knees on her shoulders to stop her from escaping. “My name is Riya,” she growled, a thin trail of blood leaking out of the corner of her mouth. Rolf paused, wondering who on earth Riya was. She racked her brain but came up empty- then she saw Yam’s eyes widen, the Tabaxi’s grip going slack, faltering.
“No,” Yam gasped, “no. It can’t be. You can’t be. Get- get out of here! DON’T YOU DARE EVER TOUCH BREAD AGAIN! IF YOU SO MUCH AS LAY A FINGER ON HIM, I’LL KILL YOU.” Rolf was used to Yam raising her voice, but she winced as the Tabaxi shouted, her voice a rough, ragged yowl.
Yam got to her feet, giving Riya a sharp kick in the side as she did, and held her bloodied sickle out with one outstretched paw. “Get out of here. I never want to see your face again. Get the hell out of here.”
Riya scrambled up, eyes burning with hatred, and stayed where she was, swaying slightly, blood dripping from her wounds onto her clothes, staining them red. “You thought,” she spat, her voice shaking as she stood unsteadily, “you thought you escaped me. But I’ll get you yet. I’ll get you and your little Bread. In fact, I think I already did.”
Yam didn’t respond- instead, she drew back the paw with the sickle in the same fashion as earlier, blood drops flying through the air in a grotesque rainbow. She held out her other paw in front of her for aim, her fingers split in an L-shape, her thumb at a right-angle to the rest of her paw. Right in the middle of the gap in between her fingers was Riya. More specifically, her heart.
Yam threw the sickle with such force that this time, it didn’t spin, but flew straight at her target, the bloody tip’s aim sharp and sure and true. Riya let out a blood-curdling scream as the sickle cut through the frosty air like a knife through butter, the weapon flying like an arrow at her heart.
There was a dull thunk as the sickle’s blade found a home in Riya’s left shoulder- she’d turned her body just fast enough, at just the right angle, to avoid a fatal piercing, but now blood was spilling down her arm and combining with her blood from earlier, pooling into a disgusting puddle at her feet. Her breaths shortened, becoming fast and shallow, and she ripped the sickle out of her flesh, tossing it to the ground. The weapon skidded a metre or two away from her and Yam rushed to pick it up.
“You think you’ve won this time?” Riya demanded, clutching her right hand to her arm, trying desperately to staunch the heavy flow of blood pouring from the wound. “You- you haven’t. I’ll get you. Don’t think I won’t come back. I deserve the fox’s pelt. I deserve everything you’ve stolen from me, cat. And I’ll take it back someday. You watch your back.”
“I’m quaking,” Yam replied coldly, her voice as frosty as the night air. “See how terrified I am? I’m trembling with fear.” She made a show of holding out her paws to both sides of her body and spun in a circle to make her point, eyebrows raised. Riya spat on the ground angrily, the whitish saliva tinged red with blood. She doubled over, clutching at the tear in her shoulder, and simply stood there for a few moments, her chest heaving as she panted. Her flowing silver curtain of hair swung over her face, hiding it from view, constantly rippling as if a light breeze was blowing through it.
“Fine,” she hissed, her voice seeming strangely disembodied, as if it were being carried on the wind itself. “Fine. I’ll go. But I’ll be back, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me from taking that fox’s fur, whether he’s dead or not.”
Yam’s eyes widened slightly as Riya straightened up, adjusting her clothes to cover the tear in her flesh. This was the first time she’d actually managed to get a clear look at Riya’s outfit- somewhat horrifyingly, she was wearing a black shawl that was fastened at her neck with a golden clasp. The outside of the shawl looked to be made of hundreds of tiny feathers stitched onto a singular piece of cloth, and when the wind picked up, blowing the shawl inside out, the inside material was revealed to be a fluffy, bright orange fabric, almost as bright orange as another fur Yam knew. Another fur she knew very well,
“B-bread?”
Riya blinked at her, apparently confused, before her mouth split into a wide grin, showing her pointed teeth glinting white in the moonlight.
“Of course,” she replied, somewhat quietly and yet still with an obnoxiously snarky air of arrogance. “Fox-crow fur is the softest out there. Very good for keeping warm, too.” She spun in a quick circle, showing off her shiny, knee-high black boots with silver buckles that threw off moonlight, reflecting the white beams onto the ground. Under her fox fur-and-crow feather shawl she wore a simple, light brown tunic, and on her legs were a pair of tight-fitting black leggings. To top it all off, strung around her neck was a thin, black leather cord, and hanging from it, as Yam saw when Riya stumbled back a step, dislodging the charm from under her shirt, was a thin, sharp, pointed silver object. It looked all too similar to one of Bread’s claws.
“Anyway, I must be going now,” Riya sneered, still grinning in that fur-raising way of hers. “Lovely to meet you, nice to catch up with Bread again, I’ll be back later for another… check-up. It might end with more than a simple sedation if you’re not cooperative.” She reached up to her face with a hand and swiped off the worst of the blood with the back of it. As she turned away, she tucked her bloodied dagger into her belt and glanced back over her shoulder. “Don’t think that the price of that fox- and his pelt- haven’t gone up in all these years. You can keep him for a while, it saves me having to buy him fo0d, but I’ll want him back eventually. There’s lots of bidders out there, Yam, who might want themselves a luxurious fur coat, too…”
With that, Riya raced off into the woods, disappearing into the night in seconds, her raven-black shawl helping to disguise her silhouette as it vanished into the shadows. Yam stayed where she was, panting, ears and tail low, staring at the spot where her enemy had vanished.
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