The two figures that appeared were clearly more wary of something else than me, the way the looked around was like that of someone waiting for trouble to appear. Meanwhile the pain from the bolt, still planted in my side, started becoming unbearable. Also the fact that I was only able to wheeze didn't promise a good development.

The taller one was also the bulkiest, he had a big sword strapped to his side and wore a thick leather armour. His mean looking face was adorned by a big scar on his right cheek. The strangest thing, of all of his attire, were the scale-mail gauntlet with sharp looking claws.

Then, while still struggling to breathe, I realized they weren't gauntlet, not in the literal meaning of it. They were flesh and blood, he had the hands of a reptile but with opposing thumbs. I could've been far more shocked, if I didn't see before the strange rabbit- like feet of the corpse laid next to me.

The other man was even more disquieting, even without the crossbow that he pointed at me. Built leaner than his companion, he was also shorter. He wore the same kind of leather armour with the addition of a fur quiver on his side. When he stopped looking around, and stared at me, I noticed that his eyes were disproportionate for the rest of his face. Also the plumage mixed in his hair, especially around his ears, completed the ensemble.

After a while the two visibly relaxed, and started talking between themselves.

- So there isn't really someone else. Better this way I suppose.

- I told you he was alone. Like an idiot... To think he was able to arrive before us...

- Well now he sure is regretting his decision. Let's see what we have here.

The bigger of the two gripped, with his claws, my breastplate and lifted me with only one arm. That told much about his sheer strength. When my feet leaved the ground and I started hitting his arm with my right, my left was too painful to even lift, I felt like hitting a bucket of golf's ball. The scales where not only for show, they were like metal.

Ignoring my feeble attempts to free myself, he studied me like a cat with a mouse. After some time a frown started to form on his face, and it deepened the more time he passed examining me. In the end he even gripped my hair to forcibly move my head around.

I think I never saw a person change expression so fast like he did in a slit of second. From the smug one at he beginning, then frowning and finally a shocked one, with wide open eyes and paled skin. What he did next was even more absurd.

He opened his grip on my armour just as fast as if the metal was red hot, and I fell like a dead weight on the ground, causing a new wave of pain from the wound to course through my body. What was surprising was the speed with which he turned around and tried gripping his shorter friend.

I say tried because, even if to me his fluid motion already seemed a blur, his companion evaded and took some distance from him.

- Why you didn't tell me he was an imperial @#%&£! And don't tell me you weren't able to see him well! @#%& you know what they say about them, "where there is one there is a legion nearby"!

- Calm down, we can still salvage this...

- And how we are supposed to tell the chief... @#%& I knew you hated the @#£$%& purist for what they did, but to kill one here...

- Calm down, we will tell the old rabbit panicked and did a number on him stabbing the imperial to death, then we had to shot him down.

- You planned this from the start, don't you?... Fine we will do it your way... But you will have to do it yourself.

As soon as the scaled one stopped talking the crossbowman grinned and came closer to me. He took the dagger from the old man's corpse and grinned even more. What followed make me shudder even now.

He first put a feet an my chest and pulled out, with a sharp tug, the bolt that sprouted from my left side. That was already plenty painful to make me stop wheezing, but he followed up by repeatedly stabbing the open wound with the dagger. At that moment I think I passed out from the sheer maddening sensation.

When I regained consciousness I heard more voices, someone was shouting but the sound felt different from before, just like we were in an open space.