[ AHHH this is LOVELY omg. I've been loving this thread but this in particular made me so excited! ]
The air is split by a sudden burst of heat and smoke and clever timing, bullet chasing from its starting-pen, bounding the short distance to Tristitia's gullet and—
and—
Bang!
A shattering of glass or flesh or of the thick ice wall that flanks them, Ripley cannot tell. The ghoul woman shatters as if in slow-motion. Her pieces don't merely fall away, they're sent flying. No longer human-esque but a projectile of cracked white wrinkles and the leftover traces of a scream. With no throat to execute the noise, it sizzles out in pitiful tandem with the bullet's cry.
A deafening split, like a femur cracked by force, as her axehead comes away from its wooden handle. It, too, is sent in a dozen flying pieces. One strikes a tree deeply. Another lacerates the sheet of ice in front of her.
And in her ears, a flat pulsing ring.
White, if it were a noise.
Ripley's head is drowned by it. Her nose trickles a thin scarlet line.
Ba-dum...Ba-dum...Ba-dum...
The shock of the noise stills her, but not for long. For Chris's hand closes around her arm, willing her with words she can't entirely make out. It takes one or two hard tugs to get poor Ellen moving, but she does, falling into an unsteady rhythm beside her companion.
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The air is split by a sudden burst of heat and smoke and clever timing, bullet chasing from its starting-pen, bounding the short distance to Tristitia's gullet and—
and—
Bang!
A shattering of glass or flesh or of the thick ice wall that flanks them, Ripley cannot tell. The ghoul woman shatters as if in slow-motion. Her pieces don't merely fall away, they're sent flying. No longer human-esque but a projectile of cracked white wrinkles and the leftover traces of a scream. With no throat to execute the noise, it sizzles out in pitiful tandem with the bullet's cry.
A deafening split, like a femur cracked by force, as her axehead comes away from its wooden handle. It, too, is sent in a dozen flying pieces. One strikes a tree deeply. Another lacerates the sheet of ice in front of her.
And in her ears, a flat pulsing ring.
White, if it were a noise.
Ripley's head is drowned by it. Her nose trickles a thin scarlet line.
Ba-dum...Ba-dum...Ba-dum...
The shock of the noise stills her, but not for long. For Chris's hand closes around her arm, willing her with words she can't entirely make out. It takes one or two hard tugs to get poor Ellen moving, but she does, falling into an unsteady rhythm beside her companion.