It had been well over two weeks since she left Rhy Din, and Isuelt was feeling the blood course through her veins as if she were a woman reborn. The Scathachian had always been a wanderer at heart, always felt leery about setting down any roots. She was so much happier when she knew she had few responsibilities, even though that often meant less friends. The weightlessness of freedom was worth the absence of companions, as far as she was concerned. It was simply the way she was put together, Isuelt had always been something of a recluse.

She had been traveling west for the majority of the two weeks. Yet today as she watched the sun rise to her right, she realized her direction had shifted north. Isuelt still had no idea where she was going, but something about "north" made her smile. Somehow it was like soaring, or coming up for air.

The full meal in Isuelt's belly from the previous night at a wayward inn, allowed her to sink into a sleepy content as her body swayed in unison with the strides of her mare. It was far after midday by the time a grumbling roused her attention to the hoof beats keeping pace behind her. Turning her chin so that it paralleled her right shoulder, her dark eyes sought to seek the rider tailing her. It was then that the rider skipped to the left and began to pass her; his presence had been detected and he fought for a few moments more of ambiguity. Isuelt turned her head back to face front, she looked out of the corner of her eye and watched the rider quicken his gallop. Dressed in shades of black and gray, with only a touch of the darkest blue on his sleeves, the rider did not even give the Scathachian a second glance. He rode on ahead of her for some time, until he disappeared around the crook in the road.

When it came time for Isuelt to take that crook, she was really only mildly surprised to see the rider, reins in hand, standing in the middle of the road. "Please....help me," he urged. Isuelt, vacant of jubilant amounts of mercy, even on the best of days, pulled up on her reins and stopped her horse. Not necessarily to help, but to regard.

"Please," the rider continued. "I am hungry...anything, please."

"I have no food," saying nothing of any currency.

"I...I will pay you for food, my lady, please. I...I have carvings that I do," as he reached for the pack on his horse, Isuelt knew she should have charged at him and rode out of there. There was a tugging at the nape of her neck, that sent a small tingling down her back.

So once more, the Scathachian was left with little shock when she found a sturdy crossbow leveled at her heart.

Lifting her chin, the Scathachian defiantly watched the rider approach her. His eyes betrayed any hope of secrecy he might employ; it was very clear what he wanted from this lone female traveler. Defiance had always been a specialty of Isuelt, and as she stood still, waiting, she lured him into her web.

She sized him up, he was only a few inches taller than her. The rider finally closed the gap between them, keeping the crossbow as the third party in his sick coupling. "We'll get to know each other much better, indeed," he echoed himself as he reached out a hand to stroke Isuelt's shoulder. Still, the spider didn't move. His calloused, grubby fingers slowly trickled down her collarbone. Still, the spider didn't move. A gritty chuckle escaped his lips as he cheered on his fingers; they moved over the slope of her breast and swept down to push up against the Scathachian. Finally, the spider moved.

The slight creak of her leather bodice was the first sound to tinge the air. The second was a sharp crack as Isuelt's fist flew with piercing precision at the rider's nose. Her other hand swung up to grip the rider's wrist and force the fired bolt to go astray, embedding itself into a tree. The man's cry was soon silenced as the Scathachian called up her training and clutched his throat in her well-muscled hand. She saw his fist readying to fly at her, and she kicked out at his knee. Isuelt stepped back and watched as the man folded onto the ground, bleeding from his nose and gasping for air. His gasps only rented the air for a moment before they were silenced, a heavy boot was stamped on the rider's throat.

A spurt of blood sprayed desperately from his nose and mouth, the last of his air, as Isuelt's heel ground itself against his gullet. The slick, snapping sounds were strangely like music to her ears. Before he was aware of what had happened, before he was able to wrestle with her leg, Isuelt had procured the dagger from her bodice and nipped it to life. The blade sliced easily through his tunic at the elbow, puncturing the skin as well, and held his arm in place. A gurgle was all the wail that the boot on his throat would allow him.

The rider's eyes, now wild with panic looked to the tall Scathachian standing above him, balanced on his throat. Isuelt's expression of total malice unwaveringly met his pleading eyes. "You picked the wrong girl, little worm," her whiskey-stained voice whispered forth.

The man's free hand reached up to grip her calf, his nails impotently scraping at the leather of her boots. The lack of oxygen now ringed his eyes with a bluish hue, and veins on his temples bulged. Isuelt figured that he had suffered enough, plus, she was growing bored of his incessant gurgling and the sight of the red teardrops falling from his mouth. Her lips curled and she leaned forward on her boot, utterly crushing the man's windpipe.

She watched him as his eyes rolled back into his head, and stayed there. When she knew that his foul life was spent, she took her boot from his throat and kicked his body off the side of the road and into the thick underbrush. Drawing a cleansing breath, the Scathachian retrieved her blades and took hold of the rider's horse. It was now time to go searching for her mare, to see if she had survived her fate better than this highwayman.