Are wands even enough anymore?!

Just This Once

It was with her senses drunk, the feeling of havoc making her very flesh twitch and her eyes dilating to near complete darkness when Viktoria realized she didn't even have to think about the movements she was now executing. Dodging, slashing, throwing herself to the ground among barely killed corpses and injured alike in order to curse those around her with the wave of her wand... every movement was based on instinct alone and nothing more. A will to survive. A desire to escape death's clutch, despite chasing it for so many years before. Of years and years of dueling the darkest of wizards for power and wealth, for honour and glory. For respect. For ambition.

Not feeling her arm aching, nor her body screaming, she found herself in a completely different kind of chaos. Only this time, it was peaceful. It was a sick kind of peace, like the one allowing your mind to relax when one would paint a canvas with a pretty muse in front of them. Only instead of brushing her paintbrush on a virgin canvas, she was slicing through meat like a butcher.

Fighting was like a dance, after all... only instead of dancing with a partner for an audience of admirers you were dancing with them on the very blade separating honor and shame. Life and death.

She suffered blows too... a slice of a sword on her back... a few wounds near her femoral artery, so very close to death she could feel it crawling out of whatever hole it was squeezed through during her stay in Twisted Wonderland. Only she didn't feel pain. Not yet.

Once the adrenaline would wear off... the pain was about to be an absolute bitch to handle. For now, at the moment, she allowed her limbs to keep her alive while her mind could only function with half lucidity.

Someone yanked her by the braid, forcing her to expose her neck as it stretched backward. The moment his blade touched her skin another hyena beastmen launched himself on the attacker, tackling him to the ground and leaving her carotid intact, only a scratch left for proof of the edge's lick. It all happened in a second, but it would have taken a second more for her head to fall.

The hyena beastmen were really protecting her! She thought they'd be too afraid to even go near her persona after the theatrical display she used in order to exit their caves, but now they were all on the same battlefield and actively trying to keep her alive, all ferocity previously displayed forgotten.

The two struggled for a moment below before Viktoria rushed in and stepped on the lion's face, her sharp heel going straight through his eye with a sickening crack and instantly killing him. Even if Abara was a fucking snake, she had to thank her for what she did... there was no way she would have been able to do that if her body was left starving for aesthetics.

It took a second too long for her to liberate that heel before another lion rushed for her and tackled her to the ground, slamming her whole body against the dry dirt and knocking the air out of her lungs. The dust that was kicked in the air mixed with the ocean of colors above, and if she didn't know any better, she'd have said she was in Hell itself.

"I'll slice the meat clean from your bones and feed you to the hounds, you fucking traitor!" Snarled the man who now had both knees on either side of her pelvis, effectively pinning her down as he raised his one jagged, rusty dagger in the air. Without thinking, she dug her heels in the ground, spreading her legs and quickly elevated her hips with such force he was pushed forward with the sudden lever movement. Catching himself with one arm near her head, he next found himself screaming as she sunk her teeth in his wrist, immobilizing his dagger hand with her own fist before flipping them over, all within the span of a few seconds. His warm blood pooled inside her now dry mouth, spilling from either side as if she were some sort of sick, sloppy vampire.

After flipping them over she didn't even hear his screams as she quickly immobilized his armed hand with a knee on the wrist, the other one firmly pressed on his chest. And when her dagger fell and he stopped squirming, his skin was still stuck between her teeth.