The image above is sabre, which is wider than a sword. And yes, i got it from the MDZS/the grandmaster of demonic cultivation/the untamed man hwa. Guess which character?

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I couldn't get caught.

They were fast. The thundering presence behind me trailed my quick footsteps. 

I dipped into the next shadow, and then the next. I was nothing but a wisp of a dark smoke drifting through the backstreet alleys. Undetectable.

It was impressive that they'd been able to track me this far. Good for them, especially since that one behind me was as huge and loud as a cow. Send a less agile person please. Still, i was bored of a challenge.

Focus. 

Questions raced through my mind, pumping my legs to go faster. Why wasn't Lucas poisoned, and why wasn't anyone drugged out? And who was the man lying in bed? That was the right room. Definitely. Definitely? Was he one of Lucas's men? No, surely if he was, i wouldn't have escaped that smoothly. And if the guards had avoided being drugged, that means they knew about this. But their security wasn't anything different to the usual. 

I slipped through the streets, slithering in and out of houses and buildings left abandoned by the celebrating people tonight. I was nothing more than a whisper of smoke.

The sound of heavy feet hitting the ground behind me receded; i had to be more on my guard. I wasn't safe yet. I need to make sure they're not behind me.

A house, with the window propped open in hot festive air. Perfect. With one move i swung silently into the kitchen, the only sound the soft padding of my shoes landing on the wooden floorboards. My ears pricked up to survey the house. Empty. There was no one in the living room before me, nor in the small dining room to the right of the kitchen. On the left wall of the kitchen before me wrapped a straight staircase reaching into the second floor.

I pressed myself into the wall, still weary of anyone possibly in the house and glided up the staircase and then into a room overlooking the street below. There was really no one here, everyone must have been at the festival. Easy. Crouching at the window, i poked a hole through the parchment and surveyed the street below me. 

Lucas had just glided into a halt below the window and had gone completely still. Quiet. Shoulders tense. Eyes darting around.

He was closer on my heels that i'd thought.

But why was he alone? There was another one. The loud one. It was too quiet.

Too quiet, i realised, all of a sudden.

My skin pricked up.

I turned to leave the room, but as i flipped my head around, my pupils dilated at the stalking presence inches from my face. Within the span of a heartbeat, I flicked a dagger out from my thigh and lodged it right into the pulsing vein of his throat. His mouth opened in a gasp that was stifled under my palm as I lowered him quietly to the ground. The only sound that could be heard was the soft gurgling of a dead man's voice.

I needed to get out of here now. 

I can't go back the same way i came. Are there more?

I moved to the sliding doors out the room when a cloud of white dust flittered into view and a dark hulking figure appeared right behind it.

The dust stuck to my skin and seeped into my pores, burning up every place it made contact with. Tears pricked my eyes as i tried blinking it away. But I'd fought blindfolded before. This was nothing. The darkness behind my eyelids made my hearing more sensitive.

"Who are you?" grunted a rusty voice in front of me. Ah, so it was Noah.

I wonder if he had the same weak left spot.

I feinted right. Then before he could blink, a dagger his left rib. "Bitch!" he exclaimed.

No you're the bitch. Be fucking quiet.

Yes, he still has the same weak spot. I smiled.

Before he could react, i delivered a quick strike to his neck and he was out cold. I lay him quietly on the ground like a flower on a grave.

Colours began spotting and glowing behind my lids. Powder laced with poison. The world began to spin. 

Run. 

Out the door, out the house, survey the surroundings, and then into the woods behind the house. 

A flash of dark and he was in front of me again in a second. The poison must have weakened my blow. That's ok, i'll make it stronger this time. But I heard the metallic ring in the air before the sluggishness of the poison allowed my chest to feel the coldness of his blade, followed by dark blood staining the blackness of my shirt . The icy pain shocked me awake for long enough to clear my mind. 

Still not drawing my sword to maintain the silence, i kicked dirt up into his face and simultaneously shot another dagger into his left side, then another, then another, all so fast it was as if i did it all at once.

I won't kill him, but i won't let him kill me either.

This was child's play to my usual self, but the powder seemed to have already spread quickly through my system, slowly paralysing me. I needed to get out. Fast. 

He crouched in pain on the ground and grunted out loud.

So fucking loud Noah.

I dashed into the woods, gritting my teeth through the sharpness tearing my chest in two. It was like having your skin peeled off your back with a whip until it was a bloody mess of pulpy flesh. The pain rose up and assaulted me anew, but i stuffed it back down into the crevices of my mind. Not. Now.

Focus. Hotel. Poison detox. Left foot, right foot. Tree branch, duck. Hotel. Poison detox. Inhale. Exhale.

I grit my teeth. I could barely see. I whipped by tree after tree until they all blurred into each other and the sound of my crunching footsteps merged with the background noises of the forest. 

Hotel. Poison detox. I began to wheeze and my footsteps slowed. The woods seemed so infinite all of a sudden. Was i moving in circles? All these trees looked the same.

My footsteps slowed to a stagger. No, i had to keep going. I'm going to live. I'm going to live. I'm going to live and take my revenge. I'm not dying here.

My inky hair had long come free of my bun and thrashed across my vision as the wind assaulted me. My legs felt like wood stiffly clunking through the muddy floors of the forest.

I will not die here.

I will live. I will live. I will live.

I just kept repeating to myself the phrase over and over until finally i saw the faint speck of darkness in the opening in the woods.

I pushed the pain searing my ribcage deeper down, aware that my wound was tearing apart the flesh on my chest like raw chicken breast being pulled apart. If i pass out here, they will catch me, and they will torture me.

I forced my eyes open through the pain and flashing colours, squinting into the distance. Hotel. Poison detox.

I tumbled through the forest, tripping over outgrown roots and almost falling over several times before i reached the edge of the village.

Darkness clawed its way into my mind as i stumbled to the back of the hotel and pulled myself in through the window of my room, careful to not catch any leering gazes from the pedestrians. Blood splattered the wooden floorboards as soon as my body thumped across the shadowed floor. A pressure at my eyes kept pushing my lids closed, and the poison made my innards feel like they were being shredded. 

The poison. Which one is it?

I scrambled to my stash of herbs in the small cupboard against the wall.

Tasteless. White. Powdery form. Onset: immediate. Painful. Causes vision to distort with colours. 

Noah's blade could have killed me if it was any deeper. They wanted me alive.

The poison was to tranquilise, not kill. 

Palitinium Oxidate.

Half wheezing, I crawled towards the small cupboard on my forearms, pushing back the pain deeper into my mind.

I pulled at the drawers but i'd reached for the wrong one. My. Arm. Wasn't. Fucking. Moving. Properly.

Another drawer, and another and another and another.

And with no time to boil them, I swallowed the herbs dry and went to the teapot atop the cupboards to wash them down. The delicate ceramics around the pots crashed to the ground, which was now a mess of blood, messed up herbs and upturned drawers. 

2 hours. They would take effect in 2 hours. A sighed a little, then winced at the sharp pain still lancing across my open chest. Too many stitches. Too little time. Noah had cut open my chest from the left all the way down to the right. I'd cauterise it. Just like i'd burnt he hotel.

The hotel would be burned down in these 2 hours and everyone in it would die, including the assassin that escaped Lucas.

They'd never find me. They'd just find the prepared corpse under my bed.

The one that was now burning in front of me.

Reaching around for my sword, i held it in the fire lapping up the burning body until it was aglow with red and then pushed it onto the bleeding wound across my chest, without warning. A jarring blast of lightning shot through my chest as the metal sang with my flesh and an ear-piercing scream threatened to break through my teeth. Ugly noises ground out of my mouth as i bit down on my lip, drawing blood, the pungent smell of burning flesh spread through the smoke. Both mine and the girls'.

Just this one done and i can leave in peace. And i'll get him another day. I will have my revenge.

Flames lept around the room, bathing the hot air in orange light, and in one fierce motion, I ripped the metal tong from my ribs, screaming at the feel of my flesh being mutilated.

At least this way, they wouldn't be able to prove i was the assassin. The assassin they had, had a sabre wound, and I had a burn wound.

Just as people began shouting outside, the door to my room crashed open with a bang, and the last thing i saw before I fell into an ocean of darkness were boots as white as snow.

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A/N:

What do you think's going to happen?

What do you want to happen?

Why did Lucas come alone?

Do you like the characters, or not?