The crunch sound wasn’t lost on Creed. However, he was too mad to tell if that was either the vertebrae in her neck fusing together, or if the pressure from his iron grip made some portion of her skull fracture and crack. But he wanted to hear it again, and this time, make it loud enough so that all the other guards could hear it too.
Just a bit…more…force…
Suddenly, an arrow struck him in the elbow. A shot so precise, it cut the exact nerve needed to paralyze the limb. Creed glanced down at his arm no longer able to hold the woman in place - now dangling limp at his side – with utter disbelief. When he tried to reach for the arrow, things became dangerously grim.
Rage met with panic; the urge to survive suddenly took precedent over slaughter. Something repeatedly stabbed him in the neck! Breathing became next to impossible; anytime he tried, he drank his own blood in shocking excess. Gasps for air escalated into fearful wheezing when he looked down and saw three long arrow shafts – identical to the fourth lodged in his elbow – sticking into his windpipe!
The brute bunched the three of them in the only good hand he had left. He stumbled and struggled to stay standing. Then, something else graced his shoulder – which Creed believed to be another arrow – but before he could see the decrying bird, another arrow was flying for his eye… and stopped before it could blind him!
He didn’t question how or why, but he knew he had a few seconds to make a desperate decision to a question he thought he'd never ask himself: Am I ready to die ?
Sabretooth whispered a wail; it made him resemble a wraith fleeing the gates of hell. Every muscle in his body swelled as he brutally yanked all three arrows out from his neck at one time! The gaping self-inflicted wound was nearly the width of a tennis ball, making it impossible not to be seen by the guards. Amber eyes that arrows couldn’t pluck out rolled backwards, and the brute’s big body tumbled onto the ground on its side like an ancient oak cut down in the forest. Blood and consciousness hastily fled from his body, the former left a messy ooze down between pectorals and pooled onto the floor. Bulky muscles shaking from the spasm shook less and less…
Then, Victor Creed stopped moving.
Only the magpie could possibly hear the small, subtle crackles of breath Creed had left. This close, only it could see the magic of human mutation at work: muscles weaving and welding tissue to repair the damage done. Epidermis waiting its turn in the triage to grow around the wreckage the arrows left behind.
One could wonder who would be bold enough to defy the magpie perched atop the dying feral. Which Asgardian would be bold enough to bring justice to the feral that killed more than any mortal had ever done before?