Taalia Giovanni

There was another of those wicked things lurking about within the house?! Taalia's eyes gawked at the sight of the lightly armored skeleton click-clacking its boney heels upon the floor in locomotion towards them, its deathless gaze a pitiless visage within which one would find no concept of mercy. Outside was the thunderstorm. The rain. The tapestries billowed gently against a breeze whose origins the girl couldn't even perceive should she look out the window, as if the house itself were conspiring with the newly arrived walking corpse.

Bringing her shoulder up and shouldering it, Taalia drew a bead on the things skull with her pistol, her finger about ready to squeeze the trigger - but the thing acted first, and in a way she had not anticipated. It surged past her as if she were not even there, it's deathly focus now revealed to be solely upon the menacing ghostly image of a man long gone who threatened Bella in mind and body, that sword it grasped swinging about. It looks like they had just met the individual responsible for the grave robbers death.

...and the ghost trying to avoid it.

Taalia narrowed her eyes. So it was afraid of things...it didn't bother avoiding her shots from earlier, but why now? That sword! The empty scabbared. Somehow, through the metaphysical barriers of life and death, that spirit possessed either a fear of, or vulnerability to, the sword that had once been its own in this mortal coil.

"Taalia..!" Bella's croaking voice broke the shepardess from her mystified stupor.

Acting as quick as she could, Taalia dashed over, consciously avoiding the two undead beings locked in apparent combat. She brought herself between Bella and the melee, bringing her shield up as a modicum of protection, for whatever good it would do, as she spoke over her shoulder, "stick behind me!"