(AFK WORM) CHAPTER TWELVE
Their determination was all for nought.
The man with the rusted pipe lunged first, shouting as though noise alone might restore the confidence he had lost moments earlier and turn the fight back in his favor. The pipe was held with some degree of experience, but his footsteps were still hesitant, and the pipe dragged slightly to one side because his grip was not as strong as he believed.
When he swung down, she did not meet the attack head-on. Instead, she stepped into it at an angle, enough that she could feel the air move against her sleeve. Then, her hand caught his arm just when his balance tipped too far forward, and with a small turn of her body, she guided that imbalance rather than resisting it.
His own momentum betrayed him.
She hooked her foot behind his ankle as he was carried past the point of recovery, and the man stumbled as the ground seemed to vanish from beneath him. A startled grunt left his throat just before he struck the pavement, the rusted pipe clattering free from his grasp as he hit hard enough to drive the air from his lungs in a harsh wheeze. For a moment he lay there stunned, chest heaving as he struggled to draw breath, body sprawled awkwardly and clearly in no condition to continue.
That left only one.
The anger that had driven the man with the crowbar forward moments ago had faded into something closer to dawning realization, the kind that came when a person finally understood just how far out of control a situation really was. His grip on the crowbar tightened reflexively, though the motion held more uncertainty than confidence.
It did not matter anymore.
Shemira moved before he could decide whether to attack or retreat, closing the distance between them with a lightness that almost caught her off-guard. The motion carried a strange rhythm, almost playful in its ease, a skip and a quick step that brought her within reach before he fully registered what was happening.
Her hand closed around the crowbar near its midpoint, and with a firm pull she tore it free from his grasp. The metal scraped briefly against his palm as it came free, and she flung it aside without looking, the weapon spinning away into the darkness of the street where it struck something unseen with a dull metallic clang.
In the same motion, her other hand rose and closed around his throat.
A moment later, she drove him backward.
His back hit the ground with a jarring thud, the breath leaving him in a rough exhale as the world likely spun behind his eyes. She remained crouched over him for a second, watching the dazed confusion settle across his expression as he struggled to understand how the confrontation had ended so quickly.
As the silence between them stretched, Shemira found herself smiling. She wasn't closer to understanding her magic, but the test had definitely confirmed that the body she was inhabiting was different from hers and even Annette’s. It was a body forged for combat.
She began to rise, intending to step away and finally allow the tension of the moment to fade, when a sensation came over her.
It came like a subtle pull that brushed against her awareness, drawing her attention immediately to the man beneath her. It was not the same overwhelming sensation she had felt when death had taken the man in the alley days earlier, yet it carried a familiar echo of that moment.
This time, however, the man was still alive.
Instinct urged her to remain where she was instead of stepping away, and as she focused, she became aware of an energy that pulsed with the fragile yet beautiful persistence of life rather than the final silence of death.
Curiosity overcame hesitation.
Slowly, almost without realizing the exact moment when intention turned into action, she reached toward that energy with her awareness rather than her hands. The connection formed in an instant, as though it had been waiting patiently for her to notice it.
And then something began to flow.
The sensation was gentle, almost warm, moving from him into her with an intensity that should have been painful yet wasn't. She felt it enter her chest like a deep breath taken after a long pause, spreading outward through her body in a slow wave that brought with it a renewed vitality she had not known she lacked.
Her eyes widened slightly as the feeling deepened, especially since at the same time, her arm began to tingle.
Her attention dropped instinctively to where the crowbar had struck earlier, where ache and swelling should have lingered as a reminder of the blow she had taken while distracted by her own thoughts. Instead, she watched as the soreness eased away and the tightness in the muscle relaxed, the faint discoloration fading until it was as though the injury had never existed at all.
Within seconds, there was nothing left of it.
The skin looked smooth and unbroken, free of bruising or tenderness, leaving no mark behind to prove that the strike had ever landed.