They had emerged from the crossway behind, sneaking along the guardrail of El’inssring without notice. Engaged as they were in their battle, the Ouellets had no time to notice a suspicious band of foreigners clad in sullen attires, and Lillian only afforded a glance over her shoulder when she heard the sound of a cocking flintlock. What she first saw was the silver tip of a firearm shining under the lamplight, then the man that was aiming it into the melee; but just as she had seen him, so had he seen her. Before the girl could alert the others, he adjusted his aim and pulled the trigger.
The roar of thunder boomed across a cloudless night. The ground shifted beneath her feet, or so she thought until the she saw the vast canvas of the sky stretch before her eyes like a silken veil over a dying sunset. Something hard struck the back of her skull, coarse and cold and smelling of industrial grime. Her vision jolted then, splitting and blurring from the raw shock to her head, but the real pain came from someplace else. There was ravenous fire burning in her chest, and an agony that radiated through her ribs like chain lightning. When she pressed a quavering hand over the sore point, she felt something warm and wet. “Did… I…”
Before she could finish, the siblings saw the light leave her eyes as they closed. Her body slumped and her hand dropped to the side, the inside of her palm stained with fresh blood. They screamed her name then, knowing full well that she could not hear them call. “Who in hell are you people?” Vespasian snarled as he turned to the seven humans, all of which were now aiming their own weapons at the three. Only one subtle sign from Esme had stayed their hands. “Why did you shoot her?”
His parents met the strangers halfway across the vacant road, hiding their own anger under frigid eyes. “Was that really necessary?” Alix asked, though it was clear from the authority of her tone that it was more of a reproach. “She was… harmless.”
“Doesn’t matter, does it?” answered one of the cloaked gunslingers. “She was going to alert these three stooges. Seemed like a good enough reason, you know, at the time,” he continued, referring to Esme’s previous request of sparing the three, which had saved them from being gunned down without a second thought. “Who’re they, anyway?”
“Just kids who wanted to pick a fight,” Alix said lowly, looking away from her children in dismissal.
Maelle scowled at that, but she said nothing. She was at Lillian’s side now, hands hovering above the dark wound in her chest in hesitation. Even after seeing that bloodied spot, she could not accept what she saw as truth: her face was so peaceful, it only looked as if she were sleeping. Seeing this, Ludivine grunted angrily and shoved her sister aside, steady hands clutching the neckline of the girl’s dress. She tore at the hem to get a clearer view of the damage done, hoping with all her might that the bullet had either been stopped by the sternum, glanced off her ribs or missed her vital organs by some miraculous stroke of luck. What she saw, however, was a darkening puncture above the left bosom, right where the heart would be. “Damn it.”
“What is that?” Maelle asked out of the blue, the uncharacteristic curiosity shocking even Ludivine’s sensibilities, as she felt this was a most inappropriate time to notice skin abnormalities of any sort. “No, I mean it. There’s… there’s something stuck in there.”
Upon hearing that, Ludivine hurriedly swung her head back, the dark locks of her hair whipping about in counterpoint. Her jades eyes scanned the wound again, and she could not believe she had missed something so obvious. “It’s barely bleeding… something must-”
The two cried out in terror as Lillian gasped awake like the living dead. The girl coughed madly, hacking a few drops of blood while she tightly gripped her chest, almost as if to stop it from exploding. Tears streamed out as she cried in agony. Vespasian rushed to see what was happening, but Maelle bade him to stop – the girl’s chest was partially bare, after all. The two sisters were baffled by this, but they helped nonetheless, removing the backpack that had broken her fall and supporting the girl’s back to relieve whatever pressure she was putting on her ribcage. “Lillian, you’re… you’re alive?” Maelle said, ending what had begun as an exclamation of joy and relief by a query of utter disbelief.
“Questionably,” the girl tried to quip, but the tears flowed out midway and she crumpled over like a leaf. “I th- ugh!” she groaned, kicking her legs in spasm by mistake, which only aggravated her state. She breathed deeply, hoping to calm her nerves. “I think... my ribs are broken…”
Ludivine hissed at that: “You’re lucky you don’t have a punctured heart, so suck it up.” Lillian immediately complied, too frightened to question whether that was relief or annoyance she was hearing in the assassin’s voice. “But… how?”
“I… when I fought your mother,” she whispered wanly, her words inaudible to the foreigners. “I was afraid she’d try to stab me in the heart, so…” Lillian paused, one shaking hand reaching for the wound. She tugged at the corners of the skin, wincing terribly, until she drew out a thick black net of webs. Caught within was the flattened bullet, which dropped with a ‘plink’ to the cobbles of the street. The moment it was removed, the sisters saw black mist seethe from the wound, and were wide-eyed as they watched the flesh begin to mend. “I weaved some webs under my skin and... and over my ribcage. Spread the impact... which explains the fractures.”
Just as her wits recovered, Lillian remembered what had caused her injury in the first place. She looked frantically from side to side, until she noticed the man that had shot her stare as if he had just seen the ghost of victims past. He drew his flintlock shakily, trying to aim; Lillian recoiled, bringing her arms up as a feeble form of defense. Yet, there had been no detonation. Alix had her hand on the man’s arm, which had been pushed aside to avoid any nervous misfire.
“Arrête”, the woman murmured in a language she had never heard before. “Tu ne vois pas que tu gaspilles tes balles?”
Seeing the man’s hesitance, Esme supported his wife by stepping in. “Ça ira, ces vauriens ne nous embêteront plus.”
Lillian wondered what they were saying, but the language itself was a greater mystery to her. One look at the three siblings, however, revealed something unforeseen. “Have you… heard this before?”
Out of Character:
Alix: “Stop. Don’t you see you’re wasting your bullets?”
Esme: “It's alright, those brats won’t bother us anymore.”
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