Prompt: Treasure
She wrapped her claws around the bandaged handle and lifted it from the old treasure chest. The weapon thrummed in her hand. The shortsword felt light, as if holding a cloud. She swung the weapon, and the blade howled with a haunting shriek as air whistled through the three holes on its blunt side, accelerating the weapon's speed mid-swing.
This is Phantom, the Night Terror.
The enchantment itself spoke in a ghastly echo, playing out in Rem's mind as she glided her thumb along her new weapon's flat. Reacting to Rem's affinity, thick purple mist engulfed the weapon. The magic coalesced over the blade's edge, ensuring its eternal sharpness.
"A beauty that be," Delalia conceded as she peeked at the weapon from over Rem's shoulder. Her lips pressed together in an impressed grin.
Rem spun Phantom's handle, inverting the blade to grip it like an ice pick. As it spun, it was like the blade itself was hollowed, the balance shifting toward the tip to amplify its slashing power. "She looks and feels gorgeous."
Delalia raised her flintlock toward the skeleton sprinting toward the duo. Pulling the trigger, the firearm's hammer ground metal-on-metal down the frizzen, smashing sparks into the gunpowder resting in the firing pan. The weapon hissed, and a steel ball exploded out of the barrel. The projectile punched through right between the skeleton's eyes, and it clattered to the floor in a heap of useless bones. The san'layn bared her teeth as more bony footsteps neared the two. She could see the skeletal shadows just around the corner.
"We got more incomin'. I don't know about ye, but ye may want to test it out on our attackers before, we, ye know, might get killed?" Delalia flicked open her powder horn and poured more gunpowder into her gun's pan. "Just a suggestion, ye know, boss?" She dropped another steel ball down the gun's barrel and cocked back the hammer.
"Let's try her out then." Rem grinned as she turned toward the incoming skeletons. "First ta, uh, let's say five pays fer the next round when we get back?"
BOOM! Another skeleton scattered across the floor. Delalia grinned as she blew the smoke from her barrel. "Deal, and that's one fer me!"
The newly-armed forsaken swooped across the chamber. She disappeared just short of entering the torch light illuminating this underground vault. Rem emerged from a shadow on the far wall. She christened the weapon with three deft slashes, and three more skeletons collapsed into bone piles at her feet. "Looks like yer -two- slow, Captain Jaggedteeth."
"Pfft." Delalia's cutlass rasped as she drew it from its scabbard. That pun was terrible, but she couldn't help but cackle. She bared her fangs in a competitive grin. But Delalia didn't cut an enemy. Her pale skin dripped red as she drew the edge across her palm. Three globules of her blood rotated around the san'layn's flintlock.
Squeezing the trigger, blood splashed over the steel ball exiting the barrel, forming a crimson spike. The projectile staked through three more skeletons, impaling the last through the sternum into the brick and mortar of this secret tunnel. "That be four!"
Rem flung Phantom at another fast-approaching skeleton. The blade buried itself into its forehead. She stepped through to the shadow behind her target. She grabbed the handle and yanked out the blade. With it, she slashed hard across the spine, severing it from the rest of the lower body. Rem snatched the falling upper half by the neck and held it up like a grim trophy to Delalia. "All tied up now, Captain."
The theatrics earned another laugh from Delalia. One skeleton remained, the only thing separating the duo from venturing back to the surface out of this forgotten crypt. Blade versus Bullet, typically bullet would win. But this time?
BOOM!
The skeleton's skull exploded as both projectiles flew. Phantom embedded itself into the wall behind it, and Delalia's second blood spike plunged in right beside it. Both Rem and Delalia raised an eyebrow.
"What the fuck?"
"What the fuck?"
Leontine peeked around the corner to the two. "Miss Thornbolt! Captain Jaggedteeth!"
The naive tidesage emerged out of the corner, holding a double-barreled shotgun whose muzzles smoked from the blast. "Are you all right? I managed to figure out this thing!" She hefted the shotgun up. As she held it aloft with pride, both barrels drooped down, flaccid.
Rem slapped her palm over her face. Delalia fell to her knees. Why, world?!
There wasn’t free booze. It was a draw. Blame Leontine.