Ruby Ruins

the stock of Creg’s thrown crossbow clipping his temple as it tumbled past. A wet heat trickled down from the ache. Boots thudded on the landing on the second floor. Creg appeared again, another crossbow held in his hand. Ōbhin cursed, diving against the stairs’ wall.
TWANG!
The crossbow’s limbs snapped forward. The bolt blurred past him, the wind of its passage kissed across his cheek. It slammed into the wall below. Creg snarled and retreated down the hallway, his boots pounding on the hardwood. A door slammed shut.
Ōbhin’s heart pumped thundering fear through his veins. At close range, no amount of chain would protect him from a bodkin-tipped crossbow quarrel. He felt naked. Caution slowed his climb, his resonance blade out before him. He took each step with care while banging and shouts echoed below.
Avena had skill with her binder. She could tangle up the ruffians with the energy. She had come far from the riot last spring, spending every day drilling with his guards.
With that fake Smiles.
Ōbhin’s hackles raised. He wanted to learn more about the thing masquerading as Smiles, and what Ust’s men had done with Carstin’s body. Most of all, he burned to know where Dje’awsa lurked. The dark sorcerer who had unleashed the dead in the foggy streets of Kash and transformed Ust into a monster with blood magic and strangely cut gem utilizing the dark power of forbidden obsidian.
“You don’t want to fight me, Creg,” Ōbhin growled as he reached the second-floor landing. The hallway ran in several directions from here, doors lining them. He stared at the three through which Creg could have retreated. He advanced to his right. “You know you can’t beat me even without my resonance blade. You’re good with the backsword, but you’re not better than me.”
Fighting roared from below now as he crept down the hallway. The pounding of his own heart, pumping screaming blood through his ears, almost drowned out all other sounds. Beads of sweat worked down from his scalp to soak into his eyebrows. Some dribbled through, hot salt stinging his eyes.
Which door? If he chose wrong, Creg would pop out and put a bolt in his back.
A door creaked behind him.
*
The front door burst open. Avena acted.
Emerald light burned from the network of gems in her earthen gauntlets, mixing with the purple glowing from the bottom of her binder. She swung. Metal streaked and slammed into the shoulder of the first Green-Faced Boy who charged through the doorway.
His collarbone broke with an audible snap. He screamed in pain. Purple light flared about him, draping diagonally about his torso like a sash. It pinned his left arm to his side while his right spasmed, dropping the sap—a bag full of dense sand used to knock out a mugging victim—to his feet. He fell back into his friends.
“That Black-cursed quim broke my shoulder!” he howled as his friends shoved him to the side.
A scrawny youth with a rusty fish knife cleared the scramble. He thrust his blade at her chest. She retreated. Her binder flicked out and smashed into his arm. Bone snapped, twisting his arm the wrong way at the elbow. He screamed and dropped the fish knife. His friends boiled in behind him, knocking him to the side, the binding energy squeezing about his torso.
Two bigger youths swung heavy cudgels at her at the same time. She flowed into a guard stance as her feet danced. She blocked one with her binder. Purple energy burst across his weapon and snagged the nearest part of him: his head. It drove his own stave into his head, striking him hard and sending him reeling.
The other slammed his makeshift mace into her side. The gambeson’s padding absorbed some of the blow, but she grunted, staggering to the side. The bruise already swelled across her lower ribs, radiating throbbing pain up her left side.
Her exhilaration swallowed the sensation as she pivoted and slammed her binder into his upper thigh. He grunted as the purple energy engulfed both legs and yanked them together. Off-balance, he crashed to the floor, pounding a fist against it in a snarl of pain.
The others rushed at her, leaping over their fallen comrades. She danced back through the room, swinging her binder in vast arcs before her. She changed her fighting tactics with so many around her, seeking to hold them at bay as they struggled to surround her. Brass knuckles gleamed on fists punching towards her. Saps swung in viscous arcs at her head. Staves blurred in powerful swipes.
Her feet moved, a graceful jig that pulled her away from them while her binder cracked into limbs. She broke arms and legs, tangled up limbs in purple energy. They fell to the ground, tripping up their green-masked comrades.
“Get that pus-filled quim!” howled a tough on his back, clutching a shattered knee, his legs bound tight.
“Someone seize her from behind!”
“Tooth, break her skull in.”
“Stop being a Black-cursed coward and batter that wench down!”
She savored the power. Her earthen gauntlet let her inflict even more debilitating damage. So long as she didn’t hit heads, she wouldn’t kill any of them. She would leave them with broken bones, unable to thieve for months or longer.
Maybe they’d find an honest profession.
She smacked a boy, whose blond hair proclaimed Roidanese blood, in the side. Her brown braid danced behind her as she whirled to hit the tough coming up behind her from the fireplace. He didn’t have a weapon in his hand. Only a closed, dirty fist. She readied for his punch.
It didn’t come.
He threw thick soot into her face. Pain stung her eyes. The world went dark as she squeezed them shut. Grit abraded the sensitive surface of her eyes. Tears sprang from the corners. She squeaked out in shock, her footsteps faltering.
A hard blow slammed into her