Iionii had no time to ponder the meaning, or the significance, of this new development. The rayfins had finished devouring the hunk of root, but they had not yet finished with Iionii. The deadly fish, their simple brains ablaze with bloodlust, swarmed her. The first of the rayfins charged her, tried to force itself between the roots with her. Iionii recoiled. She lashed out with her diver's knife and felt it sink repeatedly into the rayfin's blunt nose.
Blinded with its own blood, the enraged fish abandoned its effort. Yet the other two eagerly took its place; one went high for Iionii's head, the other low for her legs.
It was the latter beast that got her. The smallest of the three, it managed to wedge itself between the protective roots. Iionii's gasp escaped her lips amid a burst of bubbles as the rayfin seized her by her left leg!
The rayfin tore her from her sanctuary and drug her out into the open water away from the root-covered stone. Iionii's knife escaped her once again and, this time, she was helpless to retrieve it. She flailed in the rayfin's grasp amid an expanding cloud of her own blood, which mingled with that of the root, and the fish she had injured just moments before, to form an impenetrable, crimson miasma.
She felt another of the rayfins brush against her; glimpsed the flash of white teeth of the third one as its jaws snapped shut just millimeters from her face.
Then something else entered the fray… several somethings to exact. They were everywhere. Unseen but sensed. Iionii could feel them darting through the blood-cloud, brushing by her; she could hear them slicing the water. More, she became aware of a change in the three rayfins. One had slammed against her, jarring her ribs with the impact, only to go limp and then seemingly to rise up and away.
The rayfin that had latched onto her leg held fast, for a moment, but its strength began to ebb, as evidenced by the lessening grip of its jaws upon her agonized leg until it finally let go to be seen no more. As for the third rayfin, the waters had fallen still, leaving Iionii the impression that it had simply fled the scene.
Unable to see through the red pall, Iionii's first thought was to swim clear of it. She was weaker than she had ever felt before. A bad sign. She knew that she had lost blood, probably too much. She had to get to shore. She clawed the water, but a searing pain in her leg surged up through her weakened body. She thought of Paul as she began to sink, lost to the gloom of the lake and the void of unconsciousness…
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Don't miss the full version of Crysalis: Iionii's Tale, coming soon!
About the author of Crysalis:Iionii's Tale
J. A. Johnson is the author of the epic American fantasy trilogy, The Wild, Wild Quest, now available in print and ebook at Amazon.