His fine-tuned body was moving. His legs giving out from under the sudden weight, he was falling. Curling into himself, he rolled and kicked the thing that had just jumped onto his back. Years of bare-knuckle fighting had sharpened his instincts perhaps even more than it had hardened his body. But Emilian's brain was in a sort of clumsy overdrive, floundering about as he tried to make sense of the situation.
'What could have...?'
The woman. To his horror, it was the same female he'd knocked to the ground just moments before. She had caught up to him, and somehow jumped down upon him from the branches overhead.
Feeling his heart beat faster in his chest, Emilian knew that she was more than just an ordinary woman. His trembling green eyes stole sporadic glances at her form. The woman could actually be considered quite beautiful. Her hair was impossibly dark, falling in strands across her face. That face. Pale and feminine without so much as a blemish. She looked as if she had just stepped out from an oil painting. It wasn't until she spoke that he knew fear.
"So what's your name, kid?"
Her teeth. No...not teeth. They were sharp. Pointed like an animal's. Razors that shone pearl in the moonlight. Her dark lips still stained with blood were now upturned in an unsettling smirk.
'Not seeing this...'
Emilian suddenly became aware of his body. At some point he had dropped the bag of loot from the castle, replacing it with the dagger he kept at his belt. It was held tightly in a reverse grip, more defensively than anything.
It was then that he'd finally processed her words.
'My name?'
She looked at him like a toy. Her golden eyes passed over him with a curious belittlement that sent a shiver through his core. She wanted to know his name? She'd just pounced on him from wherever and she wanted to know his name!?
"You gotta be kidding me!"
With that, he scooped up the bag, the contents inside rattling together, and ran again - this time straight for her. Knife out in front of him, he hoped to startle her to backing off, allowing for him to escape. To escape from this wretched forest, this awful town, and this impossible woman.