A Limb Sundered, A Stallion Lamed
[cw for body horror, gore, and mentions of violence]
Your name is Equius Zahhak, and you have just botched your work in the most royal of ways. On the one side hangs an arm, limp and lifeless, connected by only a few half-severed tendons. The bone is shattered, you note, the nerves -- well, you sure as hell can't feel shit shoulder down -- severed and dead as well. Your coat hangs upon you in tatters and your face looks like it's been mauled by an ursal beast. Teal and blue coat virtually every surface. She'd been prepared. Smart woman -- saw you dogging her every single step, saw the exact moment when it was either fight or die. She fought, of course, and Serket's payout had better be something worth nearly dying for.
"Blood and ashes," you mumble to yourself, outlining your next moves within your head, "blood and bloody ashes." The scene was far too soiled with the grime of conflict to be cleaned in due time, even if you had both your arms to work with. That would mean you'd have about a week, two, if you were lucky, until authorities showed up at your doorstep. Equius Zahhak is a dead troll walking, you realized. There would be nothing left for you after this -- no more work, no more assassinations, no more of the relative safety your blood provided.
But first would be the matter of cleaning yourself up. Pyrope severed both arteries and veins -- and, though you could handle far more blood loss than she could, you were already feeling dizzy -- not to mention the danger of a vein allowing air into your bloodstream. The bleeding had to be stopped, and your arm needs to at least seem still-attached. Legislacerator has to be smart enough to have first aid kits at her residence. You moved quickly, ransacking any place that could hold one. It seemed an eternity later that you'd held a white box in the one hand that still worked, though it was only a minute, maybe two, after your first burst through her skull.
You couldn't afford to be careful, nor slow. First came the jarring feel of tendons and muscle ripping, severing dead from living. Then a searing pain spread through your shoulder as peroxide poured over the wound. More pain would follow with the white gauze hastily wound about the blue flesh -- but at least, you weren't going to die. Not tonight, and not of infection or blood loss. Your dead arm you'd place in the duffelbag you brought with you, expecting an easier set of conditions for cleaning whatever mess you'd have made. In any case, you'd need to look like you had two arms to get to the money Serket owed you -- and to whatever safehouse you could find. That would mean carpentry staples, gloves, and a coat that didn't look like shit.
But all that would come after you got back to your hive, after you'd scrounged up every caegar you'd possessed and after you've made sure that there was absolutely no possibility your movements would be hounded. All the fortunes of Alternia couldn't be worth the frying pan you'd found yourself in, nor the fire that would be soon to follow.