The ghosts of the Moschet Museum looked upon the scene before them, hungry for the desperation of the living, and perhaps for one of them to join their number. Tanya raised her knife to Zande's eye, but even through the rankling, skinless sensation of being a knife's breadth from throwing away her soul, Tanya noticed that something seemed horribly, intensely wrong. As she pulled her blade close to his eye, she noticed a glint that was even sharper than her Quill in his clouded, crazed gaze, the foreboding of a hurricane that had already broke the levys. Under her fingertips, she noticed the subtlety of the change, some sort of trick underneath Zande's skin, and raw survival instinct kicked her hard in the kidneys. She jumped back as the cannibal forced his way out of the magical binds, only able to stumble back a scant few feet before he would undoubtedly have pulled his axes to bear. Her only hope would be to stand her ground, fling her feathers forward in time to carve the monster's soul out of its body. Panic bubbled at the back of her throat; unable to drive the knife home, there was just this one ghost of a chance left to survive.

Her heart beating wildly in her chest, Tanya made the only counter she could. The axes flicked up at the speed of thought, and Zande rushed her with the fury of a sudden squall. Tanya's only move was to drop her Quill, feathers of innocence wrapped about the tiny blade, and press her left palm into the ground. She strained herself to create one more Binding Contract, wide and broad enough to catch the hunter unless he attempted to stomp her into the stones. It was forged in less than half a second to last less than one, enough time and effort and magic to stick one of the cannibal's thunderous boots to the floor. She hoped against hope it would be enough to create the opening she needed, and yet the determination to survive burned in her eyes. That glint. Perhaps Zande would see it, a challenge from a will that could match his insanity, potion or not.

Each of her tattoos was a story of survival. Her body was covered in them, and as her eyes narrowed at the cannibal, she was unshakably certain that she would add one more when she got out of this one alive. She too, was no fool-- for one, it be idiocy to commit her last spell to a move that she was well aware the cannibal could dodge. No, this Binding Contract wasn't a trap. It was bait.

Zande made a monstrous leap over the last spell Tanya had the strength to write into the world, and brought the axe down like a thunderbolt. With all the speed that Tanya had, the same burst of acceleration that had let her dodge Zande's ferocious kick, she dove low as he jumped high and stretched her fingers out to her dropped knife. She gripped the handle as the axe came down and focused her will to the blade, flinging the handful of feathers that stuck to it like shrapnel from underneath and behind the crazed cannibal. The Hot Steppa would probably bury itself next to her left shoulderblade at the same time her last feathers sliced through Zande's skin, but with the patterns of her wings still floating behind her, she prayed it wouldn't be fatal. This was one more desperate move-- the last she made before she felt the velvet of unconsciousness press at the edges of her vision.

Tanya was a tricky one, and had a level of foresight that would put most tacticians to shame. But there was a miscalculation, one that might have been easily overlooked in the heat of battle. Hot Steppa had a sibling which occupied Zande's other hand, and it wasn't just there for looks. Tanya would be within reach of her knife, but before she could grasp it or channel her magic into the weapon she may suddenly see what appeared to be a guillotine crash down and sever her arm at the elbow, the large blade cracking the tiles beneath. Jancro. It was a sudden potshot that Zande combined with the downwards momentum of his initial swing. Few mortals could keep up with the headhunter in speed when he was jacked-up, but even fewer could match his reflexes. Of course he had no idea that she could kill him in one hit, or that she could fire more razors from the knife. He'd have little idea that a split second could cost him his life. He had merely seen what he believed to be a last ditch effort to try and give him a spiteful stab. As for Hot Steppa, perhaps the wings could prevent it from cleaving through her shoulder blade and into the heart, along with how the sudden throwing of Jancro would have modestly reduced the amount of muscle Zande was able to put into the hit, but with the Wildman's entire weight behind the strike it might still very possibly go through the scapula and sever the subclavian artery, making her bleed out as she fainted. A bullet to the shoulder in the movies was nonlethal. In the real world it was just as deadly as a shot to the carotid.

(Edit: Just to make it clear, he threw Jancro)

A cross of wills, and a moment of decision. Tanya dove down against the icy cobblestones, black ink chasing white clouds of breath as she grasped for her chance at survival. She grasped at the hilt of her knife, channeling the last of her energy, the last scraps of her fear into the feathers she'd left behind, when a slab of cold metal slammed into her vision with a clang. That was the last sound she heard. The reflection of moonlight, a silhouette of combat stained across the metal the last thing she saw. Blindly she flung out the last Feathers of Innocence, her magic burying itself in Zande's back to rip his soul from his body. The cannibal had taken her arm just below the elbow, somehow mustering the presence of mind to react to her guile. She neither knew nor cared. Fate is cruel, and demons even more so, as Zande would soon learn from the Rules Snake that was already feasting on his life.

Edit, posted in the wrong part. Meant for ooc section.

Double post.