What was I doing here, to be taken completely and utterly by surprise? Her plated fingers held the back of my head, my neck exposed to the blade that seemed so out of place amidst the darkness in the room. Truth be told, she was as quiet as the shadow in the corner in which I had taken to for the evening, even the scraps of armor she wore couldn’t be heard as the initial assault began.
I will confess that I have been in such a situation before, and I have always either been able to speak my way out of it enough to behead the one that had threatened me, or countered them easily, able to read their movements-their facial features giving way to the plot in which they would execute. She came at me, as if she’d arrived out of the nothingness, her light shining brighter with more fury to fuel the fist that met the side of my temple.
As I fell, she gave me no quarter, my initial instinct to elbow the face of the one that would tackle meeting nothing but air, as if -she- had anticipated such an attack. Instead, she swooped to the side, burying her blade so far into the crease of my armor, I was sure she’d studied it for years. Even then, she anticipated my fist rounding, hitting hard against her shoulder, but the spikes decorating it did naught but bloody my fingertips. I had aimed for her face…
The moment the blunt of the blade hit the back of my head, nothing but darkness welcomed me.
I had to have been out for at least two hours. The water splashing against my body was enough to get a rise from my person, the woman staring back at me forcing whatever words I would have said to crawl back within my mouth, even going so far as to hide in my throat.
Red hair that marked the name, a scar across the side of her face, enough to signify that she had done her time within the Thalassian military. She was asking me things, things I couldn’t possibly know, although perhaps the shit eating grin I had when she queried over the daughter that supposedly lived was a touch too far. I paid for it dearly, of course, her wrath one of legend. More and more, she gained whatever it was that she had sought, only because she had taken the necessary steps to obtain them.
Even now, part of me cannot help but admire how much she has grown from that whining little whelp that followed after a lover. I wouldn’t mind the blade that would soon tear across my throat to her, but I had to wonder just how she walked and breathed. Surely, this was naught but some joke. The last I had known, the last I had -seen-, she was a corpse. But she was standing before me. Alive.
“We all have embodiments of darkness, do we not?"
Her answer prompted a snarl to escape my person, and it gave her little more reason to allow me to move anymore.
The sound of her blade cutting into my neck settled the score of so long ago, and yet, she bore no mark of such a thing as she turned me to look me in the eyes as finished the deed.
So strange were those eyes as I stared at them.
It was her, but it wasn’t…
My blood spilled from the tear in my jugular, and as I fell to the ground, she took one arm within her grasp to only break it. She did the same with the other. There was nothing to do now, save for wait for the death that I could not avoid now–She had made certain not even the greatest of menders could help me. Blood caught in my esophagus, and as I coughed and heaved, I stared up at the ceiling.
My focus seemed to fade in and out, and I swore I saw an image of my wife standing over me. Had she come to greet me? No…I would never be allowed such a boon. Instead, that red haired woman stared down at me, awaiting those final moments to pass.
Silence. Not even my daughter could do much were she here. Surely, she would have fought for me…Were it to benefit her.
Pain. Pleasure. It was all the same, wasn’t it…?
Slivers of red was the last thing I saw….
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