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Things happened fast. His words sounded faster, a comic cavalier slicing through the tension.

[b]“Tastes like caramel.”[/b] He held out one of the candle flames to her, for just a soft second. [b]“Give it a try!”[/b]

[b]“Of course it’s hot, dumbass.”[/b] A pause, just brief enough to recognize that the flames stopped raining, if only due to the hag’s windshield. [b]“Kekeke, looks like the old bat disagrees with your ‘effectiveness’ though.”[/b]

[b]“And sword-bud, if you have two, share it! Gonna be funny as fuck i-”[/b]

It arrived.

A gargantuan mass of feathers and flesh, dripping with an alabaster fluid. Three eyes, a grotesque structure, and the fearless ability to dive headfirst into the windshield without thought for self-preservation. The impact was like thunder; the hag’s sorceries held still.

He let out a low whistle. [b]“This is another of the Scaled One’s things?”[/b]

Someone else responded in the affirmative.

A pebble was sifted out of the dirt, hurled out without resistance from the windshield. It bounced off the feathers of the Three-Eyed though, hardly effective. A spear, one of three buried within his head, poked out from the fluorescent flames; with the lightest touch, he flung it out, the tip of it burning with the flames he had pilfered. It didn’t reach. Repelled by the same raging wind that forced back the bird, the flaming spear struck the ground, staked once more. Fists and timber, hm? Against a creature like this, easily larger than a grown man?

His skeletal jaw opened up.

Of the three eyes that it possessed, one had found his own upon the monster’s descent.

And now, whatever smell it gave off was beginning to pull him away from his thoughts, beginning to peel away at what [i]he[/i] was. The allure of a strong drink. Of a drunk man’s taint. Of addiction and nostalgia, founded in the alleyways of the rotted mind. He drew in another breath, feeling it scrape against his insides, a lover spurned but unrepentantly pursuing despite the pain. A cough, then another. No more room for experimentation when it was joy and pain enough just to [i]breathe[/i].

His one eye turned to the side, seeing the greater-cursed girl lost in the throes of this same compulsion, her mouth wide open as if to catch those droplets of white rain.

Hah.

With neither fist nor timber, there was only one thing he ought to do.

Stumble over, each step echoed with a hacking cough and a sensuous wheeze, before half-tackling, half-falling-into her, forcing her open mouth to eat some burnt dirt instead.

[b]“Well?”[/b]

There was always room for witticisms.

[b]“Did that taste good?”[/b]