With HH duty back on the roster it was only a matter of time before Taym found himself here. He'd found some way to phrase the question of why he wasn't being paired off with someone that didn't make him come across as too cowardly, but they'd seen through it and had only given him a withering look at the laddered trim of his coat and asked him exactly how many of the
the others he'd actually encountered.
He'd said one. It hadn't been strictly true, not in the sense that they'd been asking. And then he'd gone in.
The growing sensation that he was being tailed had reached a point of nearly unbearable tension by the time he'd found the door. He'd put his back to it, in the thought that whatever had slithered down the corridor with him had to catch up with him here and maybe he'd be in a corner but at least he could
face it, but nothing had arrived, and the horrible thought kept growing and growing that maybe something would
open the door. The thought became a suspicion and then a certainty, and finally, when he could no longer stand the idea, he turned and abruptly yanked it open himself, sure he'd find some horrible gaping maw on the other side.
What he found instead was an empty space, and across it, Vanya.
Fionnghal was a sudden flash of gold-white light in the room, a slender, elegant little blade that he was mentally comparing to the monster's claws, but he didn't move. He was rooted to the spot and it took several beats for him to realize what she was (or wasn't) wearing, and the realization that he'd been sizing up her claws instead made him realize exactly how terrified he was, how
unnatural she was, and how serious the situation was.
He flexed his fingers nervously along the hilt of the knife and said nothing, nor did he make a move to attack. He just stood there motionless and taut as a guitar string, humming with tension, with the open hallway at his back feeling suddenly full of things still worse than the thing he was looking at.
