Are wands even enough anymore?!

Just This Once

Chaos.

The whole field was a dance of colored smoke and translucent deadly curses, a sea of absolute confusion and kaleidoscopic pastel magic. Magic smelled sweet. Blood smelled sweeter still.

Throwing herself to the ground in order to barely dodge a necrotic curse thrown her way, she rolled back to her knees and coutercursed with a Diffindo, slicing the jugular of her attacker immediately. The woman raised a hand to her throat, eyes wide in disbelief as she choked on her own pulsing blood, raining down in a radius of about two meters. Staining her pretty face with the warmth of doom.

'Well... negotiations are out the window then.' Viktoria thought, her face as neutral as ever as she rose back to her feet. It's been quite a while since she last saw a person die right in front of her eyes. The feeling wrapped around her whole body like the embrace of a long lost friend, but it lasted no more than a blink of an eye as the adrenaline washed over her whole body like a sea of cold ice.

In the chaos of it all, it was hard to differentiate friend from foe. They all looked the same. Beasts.

A hand grabbed her shoulder, and she whipped out her knife and into the stomach of its owner without a second thought, slicing through intestine as she did. Bits of his liver danced out as she yanked on the knife, spinning just enough in order to sink it in the cheeks of another as his mouth was still open. And it was open enough for her to see her own blade caressing his tongue.

Would he taste the metal, before he died?

The question was left unanswered as she quickly took the blade out and stabbed it deep under his chin. Before the body fell, the sublingual artery severed clean, she let instinct and years of training take over as she sprinted a few steps, taking out her other twin knife, and slid down, cutting the Aquille's tendon of two other guards. Their hesitation was enough for the hyenas to finish them at once just before she got to her feet anew, running the back of her fist over her eyes. It was incredibly hard to see when blood coated your eyes.

Sensing it before she saw it... the blade at the back of her nape threatened to slice it clean off. Quickly she muttered a Protego charm that made the attacker's sword bounce off it like a rubber ball. When she went to stab through his sternum, however, her blade met metal armour.

Oh... so this one's tougher . Without a second thought, she dodged the slice of his sword that would have taken her head and directed her wand at him. Immediately, his armour started to melt, fusing with the skin of his flesh, causing him to scream in agony before she cut his vocal cords. She couldn't see nor sense anything else beside her targets. Now everything else was just background noise, never even worthy of a second thought.

An electric shock on her spine made her turn around just in time in order to dodge a longsword, her chest armor preventing her sternum from getting sliced open as it tore apart instead.

A long sword against daggers... if she could just move closer it'd be game over for the other, but otherwise he had the advantage. Whipping out her wand, she cast a curse that was immediately deflected. Then another. Then another. It was as if the whole sea of colors were feeding on her lost magic, pulling her closer and closer into an embrace of death.

War could not be won with magic alone... for magic was a limited source... and so their blades met. Using both her daggers to block the devastating crush of his metal. And it was enough to keep her flesh still cleanly attached to her bones as another hyena tackled her opponent instead.

Viktoria couldn't even properly see in the sea of colors that now composed the scenery before her very eyes, the grey of her irises reflecting more kaleidoscopic colors that were ever meant to be seen by the human eye.