poison

D covered his nose and mouth with a scarf at the very same time the first
rank of blood bubbles was bursting. A crimson fog
stained the air, but there was no figure in black within it. Not making a
sound, D ran through a world of red, where one blood bubble after another
exploded. Up ahead of him, he saw Ai-Ling frozen in her tracks as other
blood bubbles were flying straight for her.

“Hold your breath and hit the ground,” D shouted, coughing a split second
later. He’d been hit by the bloody mist from a bubble he’d shattered
overhead. The bright blood seemed to pry his lips apart as it spewed from
his mouth.

Though his own lifeblood streamed out behind him, D didn’t falter in his
pace. Grabbing the vulnerable Ai-Ling around the waist, he bolted for the
fence. When the blood bubbles zipped toward the leaping figure, a flash of
silver shot out for them. As if pushed away by the wind in his sword’s
wake, the blood bubbles receded. D slipped right through their midst.

Sprinting a good forty feet, he turned to look behind him. There didn’t seem
to be any way to escape the swarm of bubbles fiendishly closing in on them.
Just how much of their poisonous fog could he endure?

“It’s okay now,” D said, not seeming pained at all as he let Ai-Ling know it
was safe to breathe again.

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