Chapter 15

With the swift advancement of technology across the ages, poisoning techniques and methods have also advanced. In the higher social circles, there are dozens of methods of identifying poisons and methods of countermeasures. Because of these commonly used measures, magical poisons are almost never used because of how easily they can be found and countered. The development of new poisons and poison detection methods has led to an arms race between assassins and their opponents in the legal light.

I woke the next day feeling like a shambling corpse from among the Restless Dead. That night, I had been forced through a nightmare that comprised of Thallos chasing me down with a terrifying ritual dagger. To make matters worse, in the nightmare, Rose, the Tiger Primal that I had developed feelings for, was off in the distance, mocking me for how slowly I was moving.

With a massive exertion of effort, I dragged myself out of bed and away from the fresh reminder of Thallos and Rose’s betrayal. My body was lead-heavy, like I had run eight miles nonstop, with no shoes and carrying a duffle bag full of rocks. So, in a bitter mood, I dressed with heavy limbs and curdled thoughts.

In a t-shirt, lounge pants, and socks, I dragged myself from my room to the kitchen. When I stepped into the kitchen, I found Nel already there, preparing to leave. She was dressed in jean shorts, purple sneakers, and a yellow tank top printed with cherry blossoms. She was just slipping on her second shoe, a piece of toast with a fried egg in her right hand, and a large white purse over her left shoulder.

“Nel?” I asked as I rubbed one eye with the back of my hand.

“Oh! Hey, Ives’.” Nel greeted before taking a bite from her toast. “I’m about to head out for my job.” Her words were slightly muffled by the food as she continued. “I’m supposed to report to the local district sanitation department. Master Navor says I’m assigned to large rodent extermination in the local alleys.”

“Large rodent?” I grumbled. “How large are we talking?”

Nel took a heavy swallow before she replied. “Oh, only about as big as a medium-sized dog. Don’t worry. It won’t be an issue.” Nennel sounded chipper and excited about this, but I couldn’t help but feel nervous for her.

I was just gathering my thoughts when Nennel rushed out the door with a hurried “Have some of the coffee Ferris made. Bye!”

I shook my head to clear the grogginess. “Ferris made coffee?” I asked Master Navor as I shuffled to the kitchen cabinets. Navor was already sitting at the table, reading the newspaper and sipping at a mug of tea. She gave a noncommital shrug as she said, “It was already brewing when I woke.” Before she took another sip of her tea.

I was a little surprised. Ferris hadn’t woken up before me for as long as I had known him. But maybe he hadn’t slept and needed the get-up-and-go worse than I did. I shuffled over to the brewer to check to coffee level. The marks on the pot read that it contained eight cups’ worth of divine coffee.

The pot was on a heating plate, so I knew the coffee wouldn’t get cold. Because of this, I took my time preparing to make myself an omelet. I cracked a pair of eggs and readied the garlic and onion powder seasonings and a filling of ham, cheese, and bacon. While I cooked, filled, and folded my breakfast, the others woke up and shambled in on their own.

First came Kharmor, who only replied to anything directed toward him with monosyllabic grunts. He directly made for the coffee. He found the largest possible mug in the cabinet in only moments before filling it to near-slipping. While Kharmor doctored his coffee with cream and sugar, Zynna wandered in. She prepared herself a bowl of cereal with milk after she made her own coffee. Zynna refused to acknowledge anyone as she made her way to the kitchen table to spoon food into her mouth like a zombie on command. Not long after Zynna sat down, Demierra dragged herself into the kitchen with thundering steps. She made herself a coffee with plenty of cream and two sugars before preparing a pan of bacon and sausage. As the female Dracose pulled the packages of meat from the fridge, Kharmor made a request for bacon and sausage. The pan was filled to capacity before Demierra put the pan on medium heat. Next came Ozwald, rubbing his eyes even as he made his way to the coffee pot. I was dimly aware of him muttering something about only having a half mug of coffee, even as Ferris shambled in. The Elf made himself a mug of coffee before preparing a bowl of instant oatmeal.

“Hey.” I said to Ferris as he leaned his head against the microwave door while his oatmeal cooked. “Thanks for making the coffee. That was a lifesaver.”

“Yeah?” Ferris mumbled, but it sounded like a question instead of a reply.

I dismissed the strange response as I plated up my omelet, and Demierra asked for me to make her two omelets like my own. I made a half-hearted complaint even as I cracked the eggs, though I didn’t think of it as much of an issue. It was around then that Ferris made himself a second mug of the coffee. While I cooked the two omelets for Demierra, I drank my coffee and ate my omelets on the countertop using my free hand.

Not long after I finished eating my omelet, Zynna slapped a hand over her mouth as she rushed to the bathroom, where sounds of violent vomiting were clearly heard. I shot a confused glance in that general direction. She hadn't had any of the meat or an omelet, so it wasn’t caused by bad food. My concern escalated when Ferris dropped his mug to shatter on the ground. Before the mug even hit the floor, Ferris was sprinting for the front door. Just outside the door, I could hear Ferris puking with frightening force.

Things only got worse when my stomach heaved and churned. It felt like a fist was clutching my guts and forcing everything upward. I made a mad dash for the bathroom connected to my bedroom. I almost didn’t make it in time. I reached the toilet, sliding into place on my knees as freshly eaten food was launched from my mouth with eye-watering force.

Every scrap of food I had just eaten was forced out in a matter of moments. The feeling was awful, and it only got worse when I started dry heaving. My body convulsed with violent flexes as my guts desperately tried to evacuate what wasn’t there. Even as my whole body flexed and strained, I tried to figure out what was happening. I forced myself to fight through the dry heaving as I thought things through.

What was one thing Zynna, Ferris, and I had in common? I was the first to wake up, other than Navor and Nennel. That meant whatever had caused this to me would have affected Nel and Navor if it was gas-based and released in the kitchen or through the front door. The thought of Nel suffering the same symptoms gave me a spike of panic before I remembered that her cybernetic body was designed to filter out any toxins. Additionally, Nel would have spotted something injecting poison gas when she left through the front door. If it were released through a window, then it would have affected Navor within seconds of Zynna being affected.

The only reason I could keep as calm as I was at that moment was because it wasn’t my first time suffering from poison. Thallos had subjected me to dozens of poisons and venoms, both lethal and not. I had to look at everything rationally and think fast if the toxin was lethal.

Zynna was the first to be affected, but she didn’t have any meat. Ferris was second, but he didn’t have the cereal or milk like Zynna. Then it hit me. The coffee. All the trainees had fixed themselves mugs of coffee. Navor had been drinking tea, so that was why she was unaffected. I was about to pin the poisoning on her, but I couldn’t think of a good reason for her to poison almost all of her students. If she had just poisoned me, it could have been a lesson to always check food before eating it. But all the trainees had fixed themselves at least one mug of coffee. Riding on the coattails of that thought was the memory of Ferris having two mugs of coffee. I cursed silently as I started to panic. Even if the poison wasn’t toxic in a single dose, Ferris had two doses in his system, which could be lethal.

I was dimly aware that the conclusion meant that Ozwald, Kharmor, and Demierra would be suffering from the same side effects, if not at that moment, then soon. But Ferris was the priority. I focused hard on the memory of drinking the coffee. It had a strange, bitter tang that I originally thought was simply a burnt flavor. I forced myself to concentrate on that bitter tang the drink had been tainted with. It was a slight chemical taste and a slight taste of lavender and cloves. With the toxin’s flavors at the forefront of my mind, I focused on the symptoms I felt at that moment. Projectile vomiting, nausea, clammy skin, tingling in the toes and cheeks, and slight shaking of the hands that had nothing to do with the heaving of my guts.

Between the unique flavor and the symptoms I was suffering, that told me I had been poisoned with Tathressin Thorn. That was a poison from the local part of the continent that could be added to hot beverages without breaking down. The coffee had been a good cover for the taste. The only reason I had caught it was because I had drunk plenty of burnt coffee in my short life.

With that knowledge, I crawled to my dresser, guts heaving the entire way and my mouth thick with strands of bile and saliva. I dragged open my bottom drawer and shakily pulled free my belt of vials with a silent string of curses.

Strangely enough, it was harder for me to count my antidote vials while heaving than figure out the poison and where I had gotten it from. With a massive effort, I reached vial number twenty-two. I pulled free the glass tube full of gray-purple dust with thick black-brown seeds.

Tathressin Thorn was a scarlet and white flowered plant whose ground stems could be used as an insecticide. The antidote was a cousin to the Tathressin called Belline’s Kiss. I wasn’t sure how potent of a dose I had taken of the poison, but given my symptoms, I gave myself a double dose of Belline’s Kiss. Because my stomach was still heaving, I opted to take the quicker and more painful route of snorting four teaspoons of the grainy dust.

I resisted the near-uncontrollable urge to sneeze as I breathed deeply. The nostril I had taken the powder up burned and stung like I had just sniffed a line of powdered chili. But I put up with it as I dragged myself to my feet by the dresser. I was careful not to spill any of the antidotes as I made my way out of the room. My strides were uneven, shambling, and disjointed as my body still heaved under the effort to empty an already void stomach.

Using the walls as a crutch, I staggered up the stairs, my shirt wet with strings of saliva and bile, some of which were still hung from my gasping mouth. Breathing through my nose was nightmarish, and I wasn’t willing to suffer any more than absolutely necessary. I traded walls as I passed the hall, where I could still hear Zynna still retching.

I passed by the entrance into the kitchen, where I found Demierra heaving over the skin. The fact that she could still stand was a good sign. Beside her was Kharmor, who looked panicked and uncertain about how to help. I took note of the fact that he wasn’t sick but pressed into the kitchen. With all the grace of a drunk ape, I tore open drawers and cabinets until I found what I was looking for—a baster.

For those of you who are totally ignorant in the kitchen, a baster is a hollow, rubber or flexible plastic ball attached to the end of a rigid plastic or metal tube that tapers at the end. 

With the baster clutched in one hand and the antidote grasped in the other, both with white-knuckle grips, I moved the front door. Just past the front door, Ferris was on his hands and knees, puking into the grass. Beside him was Ozwald, who was clutching a planter as he ralphed into it. I gave the Human a cursory check, but it was hard to tell how bad he had it with how dark his skin was. Trust me, I know that sounds terrible and biased, but at that time, I had little experience with anyone of any species with darker skin tones.

Because I knew that Ferris was going to have it worse than anyone else, to my knowledge, I gave him priority. I got down beside him and rubbed his back, my own heaving only just then starting to subside. When I noticed an obvious pause, I flipped him over onto his back with harsh force. I rested my hand holding the baster on his chest as I said, “We need to hurry to get you the antidote. Don’t panic. Don’t fight. When I tell you to, breathe deep through your nose. Got that?”

Wordlessly, he gave a rapid nod even as his eyes shown with panic. I tapped out three standard doses of the powder into the palm of my hand before slowly drawing it into the metal tube of the baster. I lodged the end of the device up Ferris’s nose, ignoring his grimace and gasp of discomfort. I gave him a slow countdown from three. The moment I finished saying “one,” I squeezed the rubber head of the baster with as much force as I could muster. At the same time as my squeeze, Ferris breathed in deep through his nose. The moment the full dosage was out of the baster, I clamped his nose shut with one hand and told him to breathe slowly.

After Ferris had received his antidote and I was sure he was not about to have a negative reaction, I moved on to perform the same act with Zynna, Demierra, and Ozwald. While everyone was recovering, I pulled out the pot of coffee, which still had a cup and a half worth of coffee. I set the coffee aside but said nothing about it. Instead, I stepped up to Navor, who was still calmly reading her paper.

“Was this a test?” I demanded, offense clear in my tone.

She gave me a long look before returning to her paper and turning a page. “Call it a test of opportunity. I was not the culprit, but did nothing to stop the act.” Her response was calm, collected, and totally unphased. It was obvious that she had been expecting the confrontation from me.

I was about to snap at her about the danger that everyone had been put through before I had a thought. Instead, I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back on a heel. Ferris and Zynna sat at the table across from Navor, both looking worse for wear. Zynna had her head nestled in the cradle of her folded arms atop the table before her. Ferris leaned back in the chair beside her, his arms and head limp as they hung back. It was plain to see that Ferris focused on his breathing, long and slow. Kharmor leaned against the back wall of the kitchen, his own arms crossed and a pensive look on his broad face. Ozwald was lying down on the couch in the room across the hall, but he promised he would still be listening.

Demierra stood over the sink, her clawed hands braced to either side of the metal tub as she gave slow, shuddering breaths. Because of the Dracose’s sheer mass, the poison took longer to affect her and had less of an effect overall. But her size also meant that the antidote would take longer to fully take hold. It was also a little-known fact that Demierra was highly sensitive to poisons that affected the stomach. Even after I had told her what I would do to give her the antidote, when I blew the powder up her snout, things almost went horribly wrong. She had gripped my neck with enough force to pop vertebrae out of place if she had only pushed just a little harder. Only later did I learn that Dracose don’t have a sense of smell through what I thought to be their nostrils. What others normally thought of as nostrils were actually organs that could sense the heat and myst in a close area to the Dracose. It turned out that we got lucky. Those orifices were just as able to absorb chemical compounds as the sinuses of other species. I was much less lucky that it turned out those same orifices were much more sensitive than the sinuses of other species.

In case Demierra ever reads this book, I’ll glance over what happened after I blew the powder up her snout. Suffice it to say that afterward, I had several nasty bruises. The Dracose girl was recovering, all be it, with a swollen eye and a grudging respect for my tenacity.  

I scoured my gaze across everyone in the room. After everyone had been cured and was in a reasonably stable state, Navor tasked me with figuring out who had done the poisoning. I eyed each person in the room for a long moment before turning back to the Master. “I’m guessing you won’t tell me flat out who did this. Do you at least have any hints?”

Navor took her time folding her newspaper and picking up her second mug of tea she had set steeping while I was curing everyone. She raised the mug to her lips with a knowing smirk. “What hints can you find?” was all she said before taking a sip and saying nothing more.

I chewed on my thumbnail as I thought over all the facts. The house was almost a fortress, so breaking in would’ve been near-impossible without drawing the attention of at least Master Navor. So outside forces were out of the question. That meant it had to have been a student that was living within the walls. The fact that Navor didn’t intervene meant that she knew the poisoning was non-lethal, or at least supposed to be. It wasn’t so much that I was putting faith in the Master but more of an estimation that the Order would punish her harshly if any of her students died on her watch. But the dosage of the poison was on the heavier side, if not lethal, given how quickly and violently everyone was affected.

If I was just looking at the poisoning victims, that included all the trainees aside from Nennel and Kharmor. I eyed the Half-Dwarf with a long, contemplating stare that he caught within moments. “What?”

“Everyone had at least one mug of coffee, but you were the only trainee that was totally unaffected by the poison. Why is that? Were you too scared of poisoning yourself, so you took an antidote beforehand?” I tried not to sound accusing, but my words still held a tint of blame.

“Wow.” Kharmor scoffed. “Jump straight to blaming the one person in the room with partial poison resistance. That seems a bit shallow.”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Don’t get upset at the obvious conclusion, Halfling.” I snapped back, with particular emphasis on the label. “It’s common knowledge that Dwarves have a naturally high tolerance for poisons and intoxicants. That’s why Dwarven liquor is so potent that it’s considered a poison to other species with more fragile fortitude. But I’ve done my fair share of studying history. I know that Dwarves, and even Half-Dwarves, poisoning enemies from the same bottle they drank from is a common assassination strategy. I also know which poison was used, and I’m reasonably certain that your half-resistance wouldn’t have been enough to stop the effects.”

“First, please refrain from genetic slurs. You’re a Halfling just as much as I am, and you don’t see me calling you a Fiend Fucker. Second, you are correct. My Dwarven lineage would not have been enough to stop the poison. But if you really need to know, I have a synthetic liver. My mother made me get one installed after an attack on my life not long before joining the Academy.”

“That doesn’t exactly rule you out.” I pointed out.

“If you want to sling glass at someone with synth-orgs, why not point that finger at the Borg girl Nennel? She’s more likely than any of us to have made the pot before she ‘left for work’ as an excuse not to be a suspect.”

“Don’t you accuse Nel!” I snarled at Kharmor in hostile defense.

“Yeah.” Ferris piped up in half-hearted agreement with a raised and loose right hand. He raised his head only barely from the back of the chair before dropping it back down with a dull thud.

“Don’t anyone go trying to pin this on me.” Demierra growled from the sink. “I don’t know nothing about poisons. It’s a coward’s weapon.”

I threw a dismissive wave toward the Dracose. “You weren’t even a suspect. I know Dezzar have strong feelings about pride as a warrior. Besides, you’re part of Crimson Blade and Blackened Crown. Unless you went actively looking for information on poison, you wouldn’t have found it. Plus, I doubt you have any way of finding poisons.”

Demierra heaved a weighty sigh before she said, “I’m not sure if I should be happy you don’t think me capable of this, or offended that you think me that stupid.”

It was at this point that Ozwald stepped up to the doorway to the kitchen and leaned against the frame. His legs seemed unstable from his stance. “We just need to narrow down the possible suspects, right? Then we can rule out the Dracose easily. Only someone who is part of the Sightless Eye or Silent Heart sects would likely be a suspect. That only leaves… well, everyone else save for the Master, Mr. Gaibhigh, and the Darkling.”

I gave Ozwald a wary look. He was speaking in my defense. He had to have been up to something. Was he the poisoner? Or was he just taking this as an opportunity for something deeper?

Ozwald continued in his explanation, and his tone was weak but confident. “So the suspects are, Mz. Miermor,“ Zynna raised her head with an accusing expression. “Mr. Stillwind,” Ferris let out a disgruntled groan. “Mz. Darrdane or myself.”

“What are you getting at?” I nervously asked.

“Well, the first possibility is that Mz. Darrdane made the pot and poisoned it before she left. But, Mr. Maverick here,” Ozwald gestured to me with an open hand. “Has voiced her innocence. The second and third options are that either Mr. Stillwind or Mz. Miermor woke up before everyone else made and poisoned the pot. If either of these is the case, then they must have snuck back to bed and played innocent and poisoned themself to keep their cover.”

I noticed that Ozwald omitted himself from any possible crime. It was then that I knew that he was the one to make the coffee and poison it. But he was playing at a larger game, so I kept quiet and played along.

“Well, I can vouge for Nennel.” I said. “While she is part of Sightless Eye, she wants to make a good impression with everyone here. She’s more than a little embarrassed by her body, and she wants friends that are willing to back her when things get hard.” I fibbed. Nel really was self-conscious about her cybernetic body, but that girl had enough spine to hold up two adult Orcs. While she was stubborn, I wasn’t about to make Nel an easy target and make her life harder.

Ozwald took a pensive stance as he leaned against the doorframe. “Well, if it wasn’t Mz. Darrdane, did she see who made the pot?”

I was aware that he knew the answer, but if I lied, he would use that as ammunition against me. It looked like he would pin the initial blame on Nel or Ferris. I would need to protect them.

“Well, she said that Ferris made the pot.” I could see Ozwald moving to blame the Elf even as Ferris gave me a wounded look. So before Ozwald could make his next move, I pressed on. “But if Ferris had poisoned the pot,” I started, tapping a finger against my chin. “Then why did he take a double dose? I recognized the poison, and with the dose he took, it could have landed him in critical condition. Would you really think him so ignorant as to dose himself twice with his own poison?”

I watched with satisfaction as the Human expressed an annoyed grimace. “Well, no. I doubt him to be that stupid. But did you just mention that you recognized the poison? You did have the cure on hand and gave it to everyone before things got worse. If I didn’t know better, I would say that you had gotten your hands on the poison and antidote from one of your underhanded friends and poisoned everyone only to cure them, so you looked like the hero.”

The word ‘hero’ echoed in my mind with a sour-sweet note. I was stunned for a moment at the thought of being seen as a hero. When I came back to the present, I found everyone looking at me. Demierra, Zynna, and Ozwald glared at me with accusations in their eyes. Ferris looked at me with worry. Kharmor’s gaze only held curiosity and annoyance. Navor only looked at me with patient amusement.

To help sell the story, I made a bit of a show. My shoulders slumped, and my head hung low as I looked at my bare feet. I clutched the vial of Belline’s Kiss in a hand that obviously quacked before I evenly strolled to the island countertop, where I set down the glass container with a firm hand. I held two fingers against the container for a few moments longer. “You all have heard rumors about my last Master. Thallos, the traitor.” I slipped my hand from the vial and used it to pull off my t-shirt. “The bastard gave me all of these scars that you see here and more… Much more.” After a few moments of letting the others see my scars, I slipped the shirt back on to cover most of my shame. “He also made it a habit to poison me.”

I slipped from the room with a hand signal for the others to hold for a moment. I hurried down the hall, down the stairs, and into my room. First, I slipped into a pair of actual pants, a gray and black pair of cargo pants. I reached down to pick up the belt of antidotes where I had left it on the floor. I was going to toss it onto my bed and then pull on a  fresh shirt before taking the belt to show everyone in proof of innocence. 

I had just plucked the belt from the floor when I heard Ozwald’s voice shouting from my doorway. His voice was projected up to the kitchen. “Hey! Everyone! Take a look at this!” His tone was panicked and accusing.

I turned around to find Ozwald standing just inside my room, holding a packet of gray-blue powder. I identified it instantly as powdered Tathressin Thorn. Only later did I realize that the name of the poison was written across the packet. I shifted my gaze from the plastic baggy to lock eyes with the Human who was looking at me with mock shock. Despite the fact that I was still recovering from my poisoning, a fire lit in my gut and smoldered in my eyes. I dropped the belt in my hand and stormed forward even as I heard several sets of feet pounding down the stairs.

Moments before I struck, I enjoyed the look on his face shift from mock shock to total panic as I pulled back a fist. I decked the guy in the cheek hard enough to send him staggering out of my room. I trailed right behind him, planting a push kick from my bare foot into the small of his back to send him sprawling across the floor. I stormed over to loom over the prick, ready to give him a beating that made the one I gave the day before look like a light jog through a park.

The next thing I knew, I was lifted off the ground and locked into a Nelson hold. Demierra held me with ease. Her arms slipped under my shoulders, locking my arms harmlessly to either side, both of her hands resting against the back of my head. I thrashed and lurched in an ineffective attempt to break free. Kharmor and Zynna helped Ozwald to a sitting position. His face was already beginning to swell.

“What in the Hells was that about?!” Zynna demanded of me even as I thrashed. Ozwald answered by pointing to the packet of powder he had dropped when I kicked him to the floor.

“I found, that, on his, work table.” Ozwald huffed out between wheezing breaths.

“That’s a damned lie, you snake, and you know it!” I spat.

“He poisoned, the coffee. Zynna, can vouch. The symptoms match the poison in that baggy.” Ozwald was exaggerating the damage I had caused him. No doubt he was aiming to garner sympathy from the others. Later, I would realize that Ozwald was planning on provoking me.

Zynna stepped away from Ozwald to pick up the baggy. As she examined it, I shouted my innocence. “You planted that, you bastard! Ozwald poisoned the coffee! You have to believe me!” As I shouted and accused, I was dimly aware that I hadn’t taken my medication that morning. The medication from the day before must have worn off by that point. That explained why I was acting so erratic and impulsively.

“Yep. Ozwald’s got it on the nose.” Zynna said, her right eye glowing with the use of a therra. “I just searched the symptoms of this stuff. Tathressin Thorn. It all matches up.”

“So, Iver,” Kharmor started in an accusing tone. “If you didn’t poison the party, why did you just so happen to have the antidote?”

I had to be very careful with my explanation. I couldn’t even hint at the existence of the Sect of the Dark Hunter. But I needed a valid reason to have the belt of antidotes that was in plain sight on the floor of my room.

I struggled to find purchase on Demierra with my bare feet as I spoke. “If you check in my room, there’s a belt of various antidotes on the floor. My uncle, the traitor you’ve all heard about, was prone to poisoning me to, prepare me for the real world, as he put it.”

“He’s telling the truth.” Ferris spoke up in my defense from his position beside the stairs. He obviously hadn’t fully recovered from the Tathressin Thorn.

As Zynna stepped around Demierra and me, I got a blip on my therra. It was a message from Nennel. She could speak in my defense. She must’ve seen Ozwald tampering with the coffee before he told her that Ferris had made the pot. Desperately, I opened the message, almost not reading it in my haste to type out a reply with retinal tracking. But when I saw the message, I stopped dead. I stopped struggling. I stopped, holding myself up in Demierra’s grip.

The message simply read ‘sos. trouble. help.’

This was a serious situation. Nennel would never send anything like that message if it was anything short of serious danger. Nothing else mattered. Everyone else could think that I poisoned them for all I cared at that moment.

I sunk my teeth into my lip till I drew blood without hesitation. I pulled as much blood as I could from the wound as I used it for Body Myst. I boosted my strength and speed with a Tier 1 Enhancement. A Tier 1 Physical Enhancement wasn’t a big boost, but it would be enough.

I could feel Demierra’s grip loosen by the slightest degree, and I took my chance. As fast as I could, I pulled my knees to my chest and thrust both feet back in a hard twin kick from that position. I launched from the Dracose like a shot, flying head-first across the room. In mid-flight, I tucked and rolled before I even hit the ground. I struck the opposite wall with enough force to make my eyes giggle, my feet in the air flanking my head, which lay on the floor. With a quick tumble to the side, I landed on my feet and dashed for the stairs. As I crossed the room and passed Ferris, I shouted to him. “Nel’s in serious trouble! I’ll call you on my way!”

I fled from the house, barefoot and shirtless, wearing only a pair of cargo pants.