Penumbris

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The head landed in the river with a sickening splash, but I barely noticed as I struggled through the thigh-high water. The blood pounded in my ears and poured out of a deep gash in my side. Another shirt ruined.

Further thought ceased as the first crackle of the Quickening lanced out from the headless corpse, and raced through my body, a feeling as always as if my blood had turned to fire and was burning me from the inside out. The bolts of electricity exploded out all around me as the energy became too strong to contain. It sparked across the surface of the water and hit the branches of overhanging trees, blackening them and evicted the resident birds, which took to the skies with terrified squawks.

Finally, the electric shocks shuddering through me died down, leaving me aching and exhausted. I staggered to the bank, wet clothes dragging me down, but stopped when I saw something silver and shining in the sunlight floating towards me. I looked down to see that yes, I had managed to keep hold of my katana, and it definitely wasn’t the axe that my opponent had used. The object bumped in to my leg and I looked more closely and saw it was a fish, a salmon to more precise. A dead salmon, floating on its side. Puzzled, I picked it out of the water, it seemed a very healthy fish, apart from the obvious, no signs of illness or that something had tried to eat it. I looked upriver, and there were half a dozen or so fish floating towards me in the same state as the first.

For some reason that seemed hilarious, and I collapsed of the ground still clutching the fish, as the other, obviously electrocuted fish floated towards me. Belatedly remembering the barely healed wound in my side and curled up in pain. When I’d recovered I saw that two of the fish had been washed up on the riverbank while the rest had drifted downstream somewhere.

Oh well at, least I know what’s for dinner tonight.