Nodah Listig
Desdemona reached out, and caught the blade. It spliced across her palm, and Nodah heard the snake hiss in lent pain, winding its way up its mistress to tend to the injury. And in that moment, Nodah realised he could very well die.
They were not very far apart. When the snake lashed its tail, it unleashed jagged slashes of electricity. Nodah watched as they headed for him, with single-minded purpose. His thoughts raced in his head, as swift as the bolts of lightning crackling over the ground. It is near time for the duel to end. The snake - the Devil incarnate - was coiled almost lovingly around Desdemona's arm. Docile as a pet. Desdemona wishes to win in the worst way. Pettiness is known to thrive where bitterness breeds. Travelling lightning scorched the once-pristine floor, marks of devastation blooming in its wake.
Nodah did not desire death.
But he had thought too long, spent the precious scant seconds he'd had. The lightning reached him, and Nodah's heart dropped as he felt heat wrap itself too familiarly around him, burning close and burrowing to get under his skin. Light encased him; it was all he could see. Through the smothering blanket of blinding light, and incomparable heat, Nodah realised this ordeal should not have lasted more than milliseconds. Lightning strikes were not long-lasting - but was this within the realm of the ordinary? His shirt burst, and Nodah winced, wondering if into flames. Flashover effect, he thought numbly, as heat began to concentrate near his collarbone. Curious, Nodah thought in that detached way one often adopts when thinking in the present, of reality, was only insanity. The phenomenon that could very well spare him had been made more likely with his protective barrier, but why did the back of his neck still burn?
Metal, Nodah thought, slow panic driving a hammer into his heart, accelerating as the heat and pain began to grow. I'm wearing the student identification. A clipped anguished cry tore itself from his lips as his palms spread open beside him, an instinctive movement. A heartbeat after, Nodah felt himself smack against the ceiling as the pulse that had been delivered without thought, but with a primal need to survive, flung him upwards with giant's strength as easily as a limp rag doll. His forehead and knee ached from slamming into the roof, but he no longer felt the crawling sensation of electricity plying at the protective barrier, seeking to slither through some hairline crack or across a metal bridge and roast his flesh. With a shred of renewed relief, Nodah squinted into the fluorescent bulbs that suddenly seemed so dim, the ceiling rushing further and further away from him.
His tailbone struck the floor, before the back of his head. Lifeless and winded, he lay against the cold unforgiving floor in a shirt and trousers that had become ragged strips of singed blackened cloth draped on his person. His heart was aflame, but with a blind scrabble at his chest, his fingers found his scalding pendant, toasted and heated by the lightning's charge. He wrenched the heated necklace, and felt the clasp behind his neck give at his weakened tug. Its burning golden links slipped between his loose fingers to the floor. He could almost vow wisps of steam were rising from it into the cool air. Any energy but a myth, Nodah closed his eyes and let his head drop back to the floor.
Musoka
