That does not mean, however, that she is bad at it.
As much as it chafes what shreds of honor and dignity that she has left to hide her proper form beneath the glamor of a woman with two legs, to skulk in the shadows and watch the movements of Achamite guards to memorize their patrols, to reconnoissance instead of fight… She cannot show her hand yet, not if she wants to honor the promises she has made, the debts she needs to repay.
But then she sees one. A face she had memorized not only from the Regent’s spirit courtroom, but from a Firebrand melding of the minds, a show of who’d had a hand either directly or not in a Estinien’s “death”… The face of a man who had smirked at her, across the shadows and the miles that separated them. A man who had all but dared her to release her rage on him.
She shouldn’t act yet. She should bite her tongue and swallow her pride and let him go…
Instead, Hayame’s blood boils in both of her her hearts and her pulses pound in her ears as she watches him walk across the Veneran streets seemingly without care of concern. And why not? This city was full of weaklings, already held with the Regent’s heel on its neck. Why shouldn’t these Kenoma who served him feel confident in this place? Why should they not smirk?
The fletching of her arrow is at her cheek before she knows it.
The shot is long, nearly two hundred yards distant, but she is a jinba and her bow is made for her strength, for the musculature of a woman who might look partly human but wasn’t. Her eyes are sharper than a human’s, her draw is cleaner, her strength far greater.
Her aim is better.
With no warning, no sound, no shouts from Venerans still too shocked by the sight to open their mouths before she shoots-
Wildcard
That does not mean, however, that she is bad at it.
As much as it chafes what shreds of honor and dignity that she has left to hide her proper form beneath the glamor of a woman with two legs, to skulk in the shadows and watch the movements of Achamite guards to memorize their patrols, to reconnoissance instead of fight… She cannot show her hand yet, not if she wants to honor the promises she has made, the debts she needs to repay.
But then she sees one. A face she had memorized not only from the Regent’s spirit courtroom, but from a Firebrand melding of the minds, a show of who’d had a hand either directly or not in a Estinien’s “death”… The face of a man who had smirked at her, across the shadows and the miles that separated them. A man who had all but dared her to release her rage on him.
She shouldn’t act yet. She should bite her tongue and swallow her pride and let him go…
Instead, Hayame’s blood boils in both of her her hearts and her pulses pound in her ears as she watches him walk across the Veneran streets seemingly without care of concern. And why not? This city was full of weaklings, already held with the Regent’s heel on its neck. Why shouldn’t these Kenoma who served him feel confident in this place? Why should they not smirk?
The fletching of her arrow is at her cheek before she knows it.
The shot is long, nearly two hundred yards distant, but she is a jinba and her bow is made for her strength, for the musculature of a woman who might look partly human but wasn’t. Her eyes are sharper than a human’s, her draw is cleaner, her strength far greater.
Her aim is better.
With no warning, no sound, no shouts from Venerans still too shocked by the sight to open their mouths before she shoots-
An arrow flies directly at a man.]