His green and fanged face arranged itself from brooding curiosity to outright alarm. He could [i]see[//i] the blue bumpy flesh advancing millimeter by millimeter around her hand, a thick webbing edging out from between her fingers to connect them. More worrying was that her nails was turning the same black-brown color as the claw! 

Clinically, Jötz realized why the townsfolk hadn't drained this swamp for their own use; anyone who tried got converted into one of the blue toad creatures that had attacked them. It was a great idea for a defensive army, he approved mentally; attackers would be forced to come to them, their wounded quickly turning against them as they joined the toads. No need for recruiting, no need to build clanks. And judging about how easily the toads had died, keeping the force the right size probably hadn't been too much of a concern. No, the real concern would be what would happen of the defending monsters started attacking allies... not to mention, the people they were supposed to be defending! Which... was probably what happened. The toads were wildfire weapons, wonderfully designed but improperly applied.

Emotionally, all of these acute and detailed observations were shunted to the back of Jötz's mind as he stared at the creeping blue flesh with horror. There was no time for rational explanations. The girl he had just saved, twice now, was in danger again and [i]she didn't seem to realize it![/i] Was she that sheltered?? Or had the Madness taken her so completely as to be unaware of anything but the scientific splendor of it all?? This young woman was going to bear watching, he realized, before she got into real trouble! Better still... she might cause some real trouble that he could at least take part in later on! And that was when it dawned on him that while Ivy was not a Heterodyne, she acted enough like one to fill a small aching part of his twisted soul.

He did not ask permission. His ape-like hand with its impossibly long fingers reached out to grab her wrist and pin it tightly to the stone floor at their feet. The other hand drew the heavy scramaseax knife with its one chopping edge, the blade kissing her skiing just below the elbow. A thin trickle of blood, bright and red instead of blue and dark, appeared. Jötz breathed a slight sigh of relief. The infection or whatever it was had not traveled far, although he did not doubt that it would take too much longer. Looking up into her eyes, he gritted his teeth.

"Dis is gonna hurt, Miss Ivy."

The knife flashed so quickly that for several seconds there was no blood or pain as it several her arm below the elbow.