Ruby Ruins

the wall. Footsteps banged up the stairs. Avena cried out; her words were muffled by the hot blood pounding through Ōbhin’s ears.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Creg throwing himself off the bed. The man drew his backsword, a single-edged straight blade favored in Lothon. The bandit howled and rushed at Ōbhin, raising his weapon high to deliver a powerful strike.
“Ōbhin!” Avena’s words were clearer.
His black-gloved hand gripped the leather-wrapped handle of his resonance blade, the emerald shining bright. He wrenched it free of the wall and turned around to see slicing death coming for him.
“I’m coming!” shouted Avena as Ōbhin slashed his sword before him.
It was an instinctive swing, and a bad one. Ōbhin’s training recognized it as his blade cut through the end of Creg’s sword. Momentum didn’t stop. It was conserved. He severed through half the sword; the top half now tumbled in a deadly arc at him.
He was trained to fight with a resonance blade. He knew his opponent’s weapon was still lethal after being severed. So his feet were already dancing beneath him, his body twisting sideways out of instincts drilled into him on the dueling sands. The severed end of the sword flashed past him even as he flowed into his next attack.
A disabling slice to Creg’s leg.
Avena gave a frightful shriek behind him. A bone-crunching blow echoed followed by the thudding of a body hitting the floor. Ōbhin’s heart clenched as he finished his cut, severing through Creg’s right leg above the knee.
Ōbhin whirled around as the bandit howled in pain. Creg fell with a painful thud on the ground. The coppery scent of blood filled the air. It spurted from the stump of the bandit’s leg, splashing Ōbhin’s boots.
Ōbhin finished his turn. His heart stopped.
The end of Creg’s sword had tumbled through the open doorway and slammed into Avena’s head. A half-cubit of blade had punched through her temple above her left eye. Blood oozed around the steel while her body twitched and spasmed on the floor.
Horror punched Ōbhin in the guts. His hand holding his sword trembled as he stared in dumbfounded shock.
“Avena?” he croaked.
 

Chapter Three
“You cut off my Black-damned leg!” howled Creg. Something struck Ōbhin in the back, rustling his chainmail. The lower half of the backsword clattered at his feet.
Ōbhin stared at Avena as an avalanche of guilt engulfed him. The crushing horror swept about him like the rush of snow spilling down a mountain slope. It choked him. He didn’t remember turning off his resonance blade and sheathing it. He didn’t hear Creg’s curses while the blood pumped from the stump of his leg.
“Avena?” croaked from Ōbhin’s lips, a sound of boyish fright.
I heard her coming, lashed through his mind. She was racing up the stairs to help me. I stepped aside and let this happen. It wouldn’t have penetrated my armor. I could have taken it on my shoulder and been fine.
He knelt over her, staring in horror at her twitching body. Her eyes danced beneath her eyelids. He could see a bit of spittle bubbling at the corner of her mouth. He ripped off his black glove, not caring that he exposed his hand before a woman, and held it over her mouth and nose.
He felt the warmth of her breath on his hand.
“Aliiva’s motherly love,” he gasped, crying out to the Tone of Mothers whose touch soothed. Topazes were the gem that resonated with Aliiva’s harmony. The jewels that healed.
Dualayn!
His employer’s name crashed through the heavy snows of guilt smothering Ōbhin. If she survived long enough, Dualayn was the only man in the world with the skill to save her. His topaz healers and knowledge of anatomy might be enough.
Had to be enough.
A mad hope seized Ōbhin. He scooped up Avena in his arms with care, wincing as her head lolled. The end of the backsword thrusting out of her skull quivered. Her entire body convulsed in his arms for a moment.
“Just hold on, Avena,” he snarled, not realizing he spoke Qothian, his native tongue. A language she couldn’t understand. “Aliiva, let your loving Tone sustain her and, Vatsim, let your music sing strength through my limbs.”
He left Creg howling obscenities. Nothing else mattered to Ōbhin. He raced with single-minded madness. He crashed down the stairs and leaped over the groaning, bound bodies of the Green-Faced Boys. He burst onto the street, passersby gasping in shock. A woman screamed. A man shouted.
Their words spilled like rainwater over oilcloth.
He ran.
His legs stretched out before him, chainmail armor rattling as he raced through the slums. He held something more precious than his life in his arms. He glanced down at her face, more blood trickling out around the sword. It spilled over her eye. She wept a crimson tear.
His boots thudded on worn cobblestones. The summer sun glinted off the piece of the backsword, dazzling his eyes at times. He raced along the Greenwine and its sludgy waters. It flowed towards the Ustern, the mighty river bisecting Kash in half. People parted out of his way like waves before the prow of a sailing ship, fleeing the murderous intensity in his gaze.
Fear lashed at him to go faster.
Legs burned. He sucked in lungfuls of air. Drilling his guards, forcing them to run every day, had given him the endurance to push past the protesting muscles. He ignored the coppery taste building at the back of his throat.
Sustain her life, Aliiva. Please!
Avena had been the bright ray that led him out of his darkness. She hadn’t let him sink back into a simpler life of drifting through misery. She had convinced him to stay on the harder path. Together, they would polish the guilt and filth off their souls, to let their diamonds shine