Venomous Gaze - Chapter 6 (rewrite) - Turnabout (Patreon)

“Oh, you’re going to release our mongrel cousin on me? So what? I’m wearing a mask just like you; do your… ack!” 

I didn’t wait for Dimitri to finish; he never said anything important anyway. Instead, I flicked a switch on the side of my hatchet’s handle, causing several of the braces sitting just behind the axe head to retract, wound up, and threw the weapon as hard as I could.  

It connected with the side of Dimitri’s ladder with enough force to shear and shatter the flimsy wood before continuing through to embed itself into the wall behind him. 

With the ladder in splinters, my idiot cousin came tumbling down from his perch like the fool he was. Despite the several foot fall he managed to scramble back to his feet almost as soon as he hit the floor, which meant that he somehow managed to avoid breaking anything. Pity.

“What are you idiots doing? Shoot her!” he snarled at the men scattered around him. 

He apparently hadn’t noticed that the two men closest to him had already collapsed, and the third really wasn’t doing that well. The bald, muscle bound thug somehow managed to stay on his feet just long enough to turn towards me, only to get a right hook straight to the jaw. He crumpled to the ground and didn’t get up again.

“You useless…” Dimitri hissed as he backpedaled as fast as he could, trying desperately to stay just out of my reach. It wasn’t a big room, and Dimitri and his goons had been near the back when we came in, so it didn’t take long for him to run out of places to go. “You can’t kill or maim me, the family wouldn’t stand for it!” he whined as I stepped up to him. Even though he was several inches taller than me, between his cowering and cowardly attitude I felt like I was looming over the sniveling moron.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I snarled, trying to ignore the rapidly growing feeling of flaming razors being dragged across the back of my eyeballs. 

“Oh, well good…” he started.

“However, as you correctly determined, there are ways to torture someone that don’t involve bodily harm,” I finished, before grabbing his flimsy mask and ripping it off his face. 

I enjoyed his momentary look of shock before his legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor. Once he was down, I reached over and attempted to pull my hatchet from the wall, only for it to resist me. It was almost like it was trying to spring back to the wall. 

“Don’t forget to re-engage the supports, otherwise you might damage the deployment mechanism,” Kathrine called as she slowly sauntered across the room.

“I know, I know,” I muttered, flicking the switch back into place before yanking the weapon again. This time it pulled loose. 

Flipping the weapon around I quickly checked to make sure I hadn’t damaged the mechanism. It was ingenious really, whenever the switch was disengaged the weapon felt completely solid; I could go one on one with pretty much any weapon and it would feel like the hatchet head was a single piece, but once the switch was disengaged, and the supports retracted, the hatchet head had a bit of give and if enough pressure was applied, it would slam back and cause a thick needle like protrusion attached to the back of the blade to slam into the hollow section of the hatchet head. 

It was about as useful as a slug in a saltmine during a typical fight, but if that hollow space happened to have a vial of aerolized toxin, and if I threw the weapon at something solid, like a wooden wall… well then, that was an entirely different matter.

Flipping the brace open I fished the broken vial out of the hatchet head and dropped it onto Dimitri’s near comatose body.

“What should we do with them?” Kathrine asked, before crouching down next to her brother and poking him with the hilt of her dagger. “I’d hate to get blamed if the idiot choked on his own tongue or something.”

“Roll him onto his side, and shove him against the wall, that should keep him alive long enough to recover,” I replied, slipping my hatchet back into my belt. “We should probably also write a note, and pin it to the door, to prevent anyone else from wandering in and getting a mouth full of the toxin.”

“How long will it take him to recover?” she asked.

“Physically? He’ll probably be back on his feet by tonight. Mentally? I don’t know. He’s never been what I’d call a ‘strong willed’ individual, and Lacertatoxin is known to create extremely vivid, and terrifying hallucinations, so… who knows? With a little luck he’ll be so scared by the experience he’ll never mess with us again,” I said.

“We’d never be that lucky,” Kathrine muttered. 

I nodded slightly before reaching up and rubbing my brow. Normally, the pain subsided within a minute or two of being exposed to a dangerous substance, but the pain just seemed to be growing worse and worse. 

It probably didn’t help that I walked directly to the epicentre of the toxin cloud and stood there for a minute. 

“I need to get out of here and get some fresh air,” I muttered

“Toadspit! Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Kathrine hissed, shooting to her feet. “Your eyes are flashing like an aether light on the fritz,” she said, putting an arm around my shoulder. “Lets get you out of here before it gets worse.”

“Right,” I grumbled as she pulled me back towards the hidden passage. 

All it took was for me to take a couple steps, and get out of the thickest concentration of toxin, and the pain began to fade. By the time we arrived back at the secret passage it was more of a dull scratching feeling, rather than a molten stabbing pain.

“I’m feeling a little better already. Thanks,” I muttered, suppressing the urge to spit out the horrible acidic taste which had developed in my mouth.

“Don’t thank me, I should have realized sooner, without you having to tell me,” Kathrine replied quietly. “I guess I just got a little distracted when I saw that bloody idiot get what was coming to him.”

“It’s fine, I’m the one that volunteered to come in here without a mask,” I said. “Like I said, the pain’s already fading.”

“Good,” Kathrine replied, rubbing my back. “We should probably still clear the room. Let those idiots suffer here alone.”

I nodded, and stepped towards the broken bookcase, but before I could step through there was a firm rap on the door. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Lady Kathrine and Lady Dahlia. Are they present?”

As soon as she heard the footman’s voice Kathrine sprinted across the room, skidded into the door, and then cracked it to look at the attendant on the other side. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“The madam has finished her meeting, and has asked you to join her in her office,” the voice said.

“She has the worst timing,” Kathrine muttered to herself, before addressing the footman again. “Tell her that we’ll be there shortly.”

“Very good,” he replied. He probably attempted to leave at that point, because Kathrine lunged through the door.

“Wait! I also need you to let the rest of the staff know that no one should enter this room until tomorrow morning. It’s been contaminated,” she declared.

“Of course my lady, as soon as I report to your mother,” he said.

“Thank you,” Kathrine replied, before slipping back inside and closing the door.

“You know, no matter how many times it happens, I always find it unsettling how easily the staff accepts that rooms may need to be quarantined due to unforeseen contamination,” I muttered.

“Just an average day at Salvenum manor,” Kathrine replied bitterly as she walked back to me. “Come on, we should get our stuff. My mother isn’t known for her patience.”

“Don’t I know it,” I grumbled. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”