Speaking of which, I feel inclined to share with you a small snippet of what I've been working of in Tailslide. So, without further ado, here's a sneak peak at Tailslide:
My foot landed
squarely in his face with a loud and satisfying crack. Blood began
to gush from his nose, spilling all down his shirt. He doubled over,
screaming and cursing and howling in pain. Without hesitation I
snatched my dagger out from his belt and dodged toward the pile of
crates. Above the crates was a zip line. The plan had barely started
to formulate before I realized just how much this was going to hurt.
But, it wasn't like I had many other choices.
With one great
bound the zip line handle was in my left hand, but I wasn't free yet.
Swinging my leg as hard as I could, I managed to clear a large stack
of crates to my left, but not without sending my body careening
sideways. The burning in my shoulder and wrist bit deep into the
muscle and refused to release, but I couldn't let go, not just yet.
The ground was still too far away and I was still recovering from my
last great leap.
Legs swinging and
flailing every which way, arm cramping, and knife held overhead, I
sped toward the bottom of the line where a rather intimidating man
waited, arms outstretched. My options flipped in front of me like a
possessed Rolodex. One in particular stuck out and I went with it. It
all started with swinging my back leg forward. The man below laughed
at this. He wouldn't be laughing for long.
A split second
before landing, tucked in my extended leg, forcing the excess energy
into extending my other leg into a kick which landed smack in his
xiphoid complex. The resulting crunch was not a pleasant one. No
sooner did my foot make contact than I let go of the zip line
bringing me hammering down on his already crushed sternum. As if that
wasn't enough, I rammed my knife into his neck.
There was a time
that I would have cared that I'd just taken a life, when the blood
spilling across the deck would have troubled me to sickness, but that
time had long since passed. These people weren't human. They
kidnapped, experimented, treated my kind as animals all for the sake
of aether. If us nightlings had to die for them to get their fill of
aether, then by all means, I'd kill them first.
“Two down,” I
muttered, pulling my knife from the man's jugular with a putrid spray
of dark blood. “Who's next?”
