Their steps drum faster, faster against frost covered ground, kicking up little flakes and fractals of ice on their way. It's a wonder Ripley hasn't slipped— isn't used to this kind of weather. Or any weather, really, having been borne to a Lunar colony.
The air chills to a knife's edge as they near her. Black birds, frenzied by the supernatural raucous, flap wildly upward.
And there she is; a hideosity dressed in rags, whose corpse face— cracked by ice or sorrow or maybe both— gapes open in a low, rasping moan. Ellen winces at the sight of her, grips her axe tight and rears it back— don't miss don't miss don't miss—
Shhhhnk!
Crack-
Ripley opens her eyes— hadn't realized she'd closed them— to find her axe's edge embedded down the center of the old crier's face. Pieces fall away like cracked porcelain, her arms waving limply through the air in its attempt to reach for her.
She tries to wrench her blade away. It does not move.
no subject
The air chills to a knife's edge as they near her. Black birds, frenzied by the supernatural raucous, flap wildly upward.
And there she is; a hideosity dressed in rags, whose corpse face— cracked by ice or sorrow or maybe both— gapes open in a low, rasping moan. Ellen winces at the sight of her, grips her axe tight and rears it back— don't miss don't miss don't miss—
Shhhhnk!
Crack-
Ripley opens her eyes— hadn't realized she'd closed them— to find her axe's edge embedded down the center of the old crier's face. Pieces fall away like cracked porcelain, her arms waving limply through the air in its attempt to reach for her.
She tries to wrench her blade away. It does not move.
Ice climbs slowly up the head, down the handle...
"Fuck."