She pulled a hunk of it farther over one knee. She hated the stuff. It was sticky with grease and stank. But it did serve a useful purpose. No one bothered to look and see what was underneath it, which suited her just fine. Of all the surviving halfbloods, only she, Dust and baby Thorn had inherited the lithe and slender bodies of their Go mothers. And she had no intention of ever being used like the dull eyed and drugged dragon women that occupied the inner harem. The low, simmering resentment that seethed in her soul boiled to the surface for a moment.

When she had been a Little One and Obba much saner, he would sometimes tell them the most wonderful stories to lull them to sleep. Stories about the Go Clan. The mighty Dragons of Heaven, the ones who fought for the captive and oppressed. She had clung to those images he had painted with his words and had harbored a secret dream. A dream that the Dragons of Heaven would some day swoop down and take her away to some place clean and full of light. Harbored it until the first time she had seen those women in the harem. She had asked Obba about them and her dreams had been shattered by his answer.

They were Go women, abandoned to the Gyushu. Obba said that the Dragon King had sacrificed a few for the good of many. She wondered if that King knew just exactly what he had sentenced those 'few' to. If he knew what happened to most of the misshapen horrors that those Go women spawned. She shuddered a little, glad that she wouldn't have to worry about that for a while. Her body hadn't yet started to take the shape of an adult female. If she was lucky, it never would. But just to be safe, since the Gyushu found the Go women such a special treat, she kept herself hunched up and small and went to great extremes to make herself as unattractive and unnoticeable as possible.

She pulled her attention back to the Torturer. She had been watching him for almost an hour now. He was a true artist and the Gyushu underling that he was using as his canvas was one of his better efforts so far. Their Gyushu Masters had a very nasty habit of killing the bearers of bad news. Blood thought it was a silly and wasteful policy, though she had learned much from watching this Gyushu at his work. She observed the Torturer's long, over-articulated fingers carefully as they danced lightly over the damaged body before him, examining his work. She tried to guess what part of the underling the Torturer would concentrate on next as she had the thought once again that the Torturer must have been the sire of the Spiders.

The twins had the same graceful fingers and toes and the thin, over-extended limbs that hinged strangely so they tended to scuttle around like the long-legged spiders that lived in the kitchen. And like the Torturer, the Spiders didn't have any eyes, just slight, skin-covered hollows where eyes should have been. The similarities ended there, though. Blood thought the Spiders very beautiful, whereas the Torturer was just grotesque.

She smiled to herself as the Torturer proved her right and chose the area she had suspected. The underlings low moan flared up into high pitched keens. A pale scurry of movements hurried her way and her eyes narrowed with annoyance as she sighed to herself. Her lesson was over for the day. She kept her focus on the Torturer as Two crouched beside her. She wondered what had upset the Spider so much as the long fingers trembled as they flitted along the mat of her hair and touched her arms and hands.

"Dust. Trouble. Come!" Two lisped in her soft whisper as she plucked and pulled at Blood's fingers.

Blood uncoiled, her stomach tightening with dread as she hurried after Two. The Spider led her to one of the narrow niches that served as a window for the bottom rooms of the Fortress. One was perched upside down over the niche, her splayed fingers and toes anchoring her. Her eyeless head turned upward and her thin nostrils flared as she detected the soft pad of her twin and Blood.

"Oh! Oh! Dust!" One hissed at them, her voice choked with tears she could not create.

Blood heard a muffled cry of pain as she took a running jump and grabbed the bottom of the niche. Two simply continued her run up onto the wall and moved to position herself at a right angle to her sister while Blood hoisted herself up enough to peer over the edge. All she could see was the bottoms of Dust's feet and the broad back and naked furry rear of one of the Master's. For a moment she thought this Gyushu was really stupid if he didn't know a male from a female. Then Dust moaned once again and a dark tinged stillness came over her mind and body. No one hurt Dust. No one. Even brainless Grunt had learned that.

She hiked herself up enough to get one knee onto the edge of the niche as her eyes raked the room, hunting for hiding places and escape routes. Her gaze stopped and focused on the belt hanging over a chair and the sheathed dagger in it.

"What? What?" The Spiders whispered in unison as they detected her movement.

"No one hurts Dust," Blood answered in a soft snarl as she got her other leg into the niche.

"NO! NO!" the Spiders cried out as they grabbed her.

"Shut up!" Blood hissed back at them as she froze, her eyes on the Master.

He didn't react. His grunts must have covered those sounds. It took a few hard slaps and sharp nips before she managed to wiggle and worm herself free of the Spider's restraining hands. Dust's whimpers covered the sound of her slide down the steep angle of the niche and the soft thump of her crouched landing. Two fast steps took her to the dagger. Her hand went with a strange slowness towards the hilt. Touching a weapon was instant death for a slave. Then it was done. She was committed now. The knife came smoothly out of the sheath without even a whisper of sound.

Well used, a part of her decided as the sharp edge emerged with a sparkling glimmer in the dim light from the niche. She tested the weight of it as she advanced on the Master. She knew from watching the Torturer what to do and how to do it so that the Gyushu would die without a sound.

Her free hand grabbed the Master's bound hair from behind as she slashed across the Gyushu's throat, severing windpipe and jugulars. Once she had cleared the throat, she turned her hand and the dagger over and stabbed sideways into the back of the Master's neck, severing the spinal cord from underneath. She didn't do it with anywhere near the finesse of the Torturer though. She frowned, annoyed that the blade got bound in the vertebrae and was pulled out of her hand as the Master flopped forwards onto Dust.

Then she started to pull frantically at the twitching carcass as her mind screamed at her that she had been stupid. She had forgotten to pull backwards on that last strike so that the Master would have fallen away from Dust. Now he was pinned under the massive weight of the dead body and had stopped whimpering, had stopped moving. Two more sets of hands joined her efforts. The Spiders had followed her into the room, and even though they appeared very fragile and delicate, they were very strong.

She got out of their way as they lifted the body and dropped to her knees beside Dust as he curled up into a tight tuck. She knew from the way he pressed his hands against his chest and his uneven gasps for air that he was having one of his spells. She put her hand on his back and whispered, "Be strong!".

Those were the first words a Halfblood heard. Obba would croon them over and over as he tended the half-breed babes that were thrown into his dark cell to care for. For the children, those words became a thing of comfort. It was, along with her touch, her reassurance that she was there. It was the only comfort she knew how to offer.

The Spiders were murmuring unhappily as their long fingers discovered what she had done. They scurried over to her and One held up her hand, showing the darkening fluid on her fingers.

"Bad! Blood kill! Master's find. Blood die! Dust die! Maybe!"

Blood scowled at them, even though she knew it wouldn't have any effect. She was well aware of that fact. It didn't matter though, because she wasn't going to be here when the Master's found her handiwork. She knew a way out of the Dark Fortress. A risky, dangerous way, but a way none the less. There was a delicate cough and Dust's quiet voice joined in.

"You killed him?"

"Of course I killed him," Blood snapped back. "I promised that I wouldn't let anybody hurt you, didn't I?"

Dust uncurled enough so that he could roll onto his back. He favored her with a sad smile.

"You shouldn't have. I told you that when you did it."

Blood scowled at him and growled when it didn't seem to have any effect either. She changed the subject.

"Are you hurt? Can you move?"

Dust closed his eyes. "It doesn't matter."

She barely resisted her urge to slap him.

"It better. Because I am not planning on dying anytime soon and I'm not going to let you die either. We are going to get out of here. Spiders, get the Master onto the bed."

"Out? How?" Dust asked and pushed himself up to sit as she yanked the sheet off of the bed right before the Spiders unceremoniously dropped the dead hulk of the Gyushu onto it.

She set to work toweling the Master's blood off of Dust as she explained.

"The midden chute. It's narrow, but we should fit through it without any problems."