Whoever her unseen rescuer was he saved her life a dozen times over the course of the next five minutes. She head the heavy thuds as bolt after bolt dropped the assassins around her. She didn't have a lot of time to wonder about his identity however. For the moment the fact that she was still standing, while many of those who were trying to kill her were not, was enough.
Ducking and weaving she threaded herself through the attackers, slicing at throats and sliding around outstretched hands to bury her blades between their owner's shoulder blades. It was oddly exhilarating, the rush of adrenaline that only combat could bring. She'd forgotten what that bitter edge of fear mixed with a finely honed fighting style could do. Of course she wasn't always in the right place at the right time, one of the Dwarf's blades bit deeply into her right arm and a few seconds later, distracted by the man in front of her with the giant ax she almost missed the throwing knife aimed straight at her head. She managed to duck, but only just and the blade opened the skin just above her eyebrow. But despite these setbacks, and thanks in no small part to her still unseen helper, at last she could straighten and relax her grip on her weapons.
Breathing hard Sereda turned to face the last dwarf standing. His face was twisted with rage, but his broken kneecap kept him on the ground at her feet. She had every intention of letting him go. Letting him craw back to Bhelen to report his failure. But as she stood there, staring down at him, blood dripping into her stinging left eye, she changed her mind. It wasn't how close he and his men had come to killing her, it wasn't even the slurs and barbed words he'd tossed at her during the fight trying to throw her off. It was the expression in his eyes. It was the same look she remembered on her little brother's face the last time she'd seen it. That hate so pure it burned, that smug assurance that he had seen into the depth of her being and proven to himself that there was nothing of value there. In that moment the snarling man on the ground before became Bhelen and she acted without thought. He had taken everything, EVERYTHING from her. She would give nothing back.
Reaching down she caught the Dwarf by his collar and yanked his face up to meet her own.
"I was going to tell you to tell my brother I'd see him in hell," He spit in her face, blood and saliva spattering her cheek. She smiled sweetly at him. "But really, I'd rather tell him myself." In one swift movement she brought the blade in her free hand across his throat and dropped him as his blood boiled out over her hand. Turning on legs that shook with rage she found that she wasn't quite alone after all. A new Dwarf stood there, and if the giant crossbow he had casually leveled at her was any indication he was the one who'd helped her dispatch so many of the bodies around her.
He was handsome, lithe and trim in that way that she'd come to recognize in the Surfacers, those who hadn't spent years pounding iron or breaking stone, but his face was arranged with careful practice and his eyes hard behind his casual comment about beauty pageants.
"No." She said, her voice coming out more thorny that she normally would have liked. "I don't expect I am." They stood there for a moment, each unwilling to back off first.
"I'm grateful for your help Ser." She said at last, adjusting her grip on her daggers, "But I trust you wont make the mistake of thinking my gratitude in any way impairs my ability to protect myself."