SLAM!
The books fell to the floor as Hero's Fang had already been unsheathed.
The princess was directly behind him, still gripping the handle of the dagger that had ripped through Chase's thin flesh.
'Could have killed me...'
He thought, as he felt her shaky breath hit the skin of his neck.
'Damnit all, this makes things such a pain.'
Either she wasn't trying to kill him or she was just really bad at killing people, and he was going to go with the former.
Chase pulled his shoulder away ripping it free of the dagger's blade.
He groaned in pain, as he backed away from the princess, tightening his grip on his cobalt sword with both hands.
Sure enough, she looked extremely pale, and her hands were trembling as she looked down at her blood stained dagger.
If he were to retaliate and kill the step-daughter of the grand paladin, he would most likely be hanged for treason or something along those lines.
So, he did the next best thing.
He attacked her.
Obviously, he didn't plan on hurting her, and most likely wouldn't.
Hopefully.
He delivered a slow horizontal slash of his blade, causing her to quickly back away.
'She can fight.'
Chase noted mentally, after he seen her quick reaction, considering the fact that she wasn't even looking at him when he swung his blade.
Her eyes widened as she looked up at him, her foot seemed to catch the edge of one of the steps.
She caught herself, before she fell down the stairs like an idiot.
Chase had never fought a human before, and he didn't really feel like fighting one now, even if said human gave him a terrible dagger wound.
In fact, he would just forgive her if she decided to run away.
The pain wasn't nearly as bad as he first thought it was, in fact it was oddly warm.
'Oh no, something is definitely wrong with me.'
That wasn't to say that it didn't hurt at all. No, it hurt like hell, but when compared to the gruesome leg injury he received in the Hollow's cave, it was nothing more then a papercut.
Originally, Chase had almost panicked, because of where she stabbed him, because he thought that she had poisoned him; however, considering that she was trembling like someone seeing blood for the first time, he quickly crossed that possibility off in his mind.
She lifted the ebony dagger in front of her, in a defensive position.
So, he brought his blade down on her.
She easily deflected the bastard sword with the flat side of her dagger. Chase recoiled from the vibration of the blades meeting, and to his surprise, so did she.
CLANG!
The dagger hit the ground, and she brought her hands to her chest, wincing in pain.
Chase just sighed, and threw his sword down.
"What the hell are you doing?"
He said, now audible anger escaping into his words.
She tilted her head, and frowned.
"What does it look like? I'm supposed to kill you."
Chase threw his uninjured arm into the air, and yelled.
"Well, your doing a pretty poor job!"
She sighed, and looked at the ground.
"The dagger is poisoned, you were supposed to die the moment it entered your bloodstream, at least thats what I was told."
A sense of dread radiated through Chase's very being, as his eyes slowly widened.
"Ah."
His expression turned somber.
The two of them waited silently, until she broke said silence after a minute or two.
"Your not dead yet?"
He stared at the princess with a blank expression.
The two of them continued to look at each other, both extremely confused.
Eventually Chase just turned around and picked up his things. Luckily, no blood got on his newly acquired books, so he decided to just make his way up the stairs.
To his surprise, the princess followed him, leaving her dagger behind.
"What are you doing?"
He asked, stopping in his tracks.
"They told me I had to kill you. So, I am making sure the poison kills you."
He palmed his face with his free hand.
"If you couldn't tell I'm not dead, and I feel fine, just go home already."
Chase said, slowly looking at her, over his wounded shoulder.
"Your not mad?"
She blinked.
'What in the hell is wrong with this girl.'
He thought to himself, thinking of a normal response.
"No, just leave me be please."
That was the truth, he wasn't mad at her, at least not as mad as he should've been. She just said that she was ordered to kill him, and she obviously didn't want to kill him. So, why should he be mad at her?
If anything, he was more pissed off about the fact, that she couldn't kill him, because now he has to live with the fact that people were going to try to kill him no matter what his status was.
Her face suddenly turned a light shade of pink and she quickly turned around, facing the descending stairway.
"I'm sorry, don't tell anyone about this please, or I'll aim for your heart next time."
With that she quickly ran down the stairs.
Waiting until she had disappeared from sight, he remained still.
He looked up at the endless amount of stairs above him, palmed his face, and screamed at the top of his lungs.
"I wish I was still in that gods-forsaken forest!"