Twisted Features

Plummeting Strength

Blood pooled on the marble floor and trickled down the cracks like rivers of death. She lowered her sword, still dripping crimson and looked away from the body, from the still, pale face of the fallen. His final expression twisted his features- not fear, but sorrow.

"I thought you loved him," her accomplice said, sheathing her own sword.

"I did," she answered, her voice made detached and cold with expert control. Still, she could not conceal the pain in her eyes.

A hush engulfed the coarse air around the aged team, Aven's forehead gleamed with sweat.

"Then how- why did you-" Sorin's voice cracked from the pure pain she felt of her friend. Her friend that, in a moment, had lost the person she deemed the most precious of beings in their desolate lives. Sorin's eyes reflected Merone's lifeless ones, however, whilst his were frozen forever with undeniable anguish, hers threatened to spill the tears her partner neglected to shed.

"I had to," murmured dry lips as she knelt down chillingly to her once love. Her next action lapsed away her cold persona briefly as she tenderly closed his eyes.

Though Aven would not admit it then, staring into Merone's eyes for a breath longer was too much for her to bear.

A cold breeze blew through the silence that had followed and led Aven to walk away from the scene of ultimate destruction, her unsheathed sword dragged along the rocky path of the cliff edge. The sound of fire and screeching metal haunted her as she traipsed down the cliff back to a pointless war against an army with no leader.

Sorin looked on at her from her sagged position against an icy wall. Her gaze moved from her accomplice to Merone once more. Ragged breaths echoed on the cliff's edge but they only belonged to her.

A soundless corpse laid amongst a mixture of blood and dirt, with a single tear retreating down his face from the war and love he was doomed to lose.

With haste, Sorin pushed herself off of the stone, unsheathing her sword with a newfound emotion. Anger.

It erupted in her veins at the death of an ex-comrade and at the realisation of the plummeting strength of her living friend. The shared pain that had been lodged in their chests burnt away with the fuel of resentment, that, for a while at least, would replace grief.