She still remembers how big his hand felt clutched about the back of her neck like a vice, dark fingers applying just enough pressure to her carotid arteries to make her head feel light and flimsy. But she was still alert and keenly aware of the mess she'd made. The trouble she was in. The looming threat of oblivion creeping in out of the corners of her vision, an abrubt and unceremonious end to a short and miserable story. Only appropriate, Eluthéria supposed—that she would find her end in the clutches of the man she was born to live and die for.
Commander Adam hoisted her Petite frame off of the shiftless cadaver upon which the dimunative soldier had perched like a peckish kerstrel. She heard him click his tongue through the thumping heartbeat in her ears, but she couldn't see him. He made sure to angle her head far away from his person, tapered talons digging deep trenches into the base of her skull. She struggled to find her footing. Skinny arms rose to cross themselves over her naked chest—the motion exacerbated the cat-o-nine-tail's latest object of vicious art stretching astride her pale back. A fresh, abstract portrait in the museum of suffering that is her frangible body.
"Drop it."
She'd only ever heard his voice booming from the Carmine pride skies on the eve of new years, the thunder which heralds the great annual slaughter of the wicked and damned. It didn't sound half as imposing inside this cramped stone chamber, but she would not make him tell her twice. Wouldn't dare—not inclined to make her suicide any more torturous than it needed to be. Spindly fingers uncurled from about the circumference of the spear-head she'd illicitly nabbed from the arms depot. Blessed. Deadly.
It clattered to the ground at her feet. The pool of ichor dampening the sound of metal meeting with stone but she flinched anyway. That made him laugh. It's was soft but pointedly derisive sound.
"Woof! Feisty little thing. A bit on the scrawny side. Are they skimping on your rations? For shame. C'mere. Let me look at you."
With that, his big hand slid Up along the meager curve of her neck, his fingers, thick and coarse, bunched her ratty bird's nest up into the hollow of his palm, which promptly balled into a tight fist, flush against her scalp. Adam turned her head on the axis of her spine so that she would face him, vis-á-vis, his gilded lightning against her ruby flames.
She remembers thinking that he had beautiful eyes. An odd thought to dedicate to somebody so vicious, maybe, but she always had a way with finding beauty in the macabre.
Those eyes roved her tremulous form, clad only in a threadbare pair of boxer type shorts.
She'd never felt so naked. Not because his gaze was overtly lascivious in nature but because it pierced and bored through her, like he was looking right into the core of her being. For a moment she wondered if he might be able to read her mind, but she banished the notion quickly. If he could see the playback of the events which had transpired inside this chamber, now tomb, he would not be so soft. This was his subordinate, after all, a trusted comerade in arms, and she had not been kind in her ministrations. She made him suffer, the same way he had made her suffer.
And she enjoyed every second of it.
If the commander had not barged in, she would've liked to spend more time with his body, looking at his insides, picking them apart, watching as every sign that this thing had ever been alive slowly evaporates, and chiseling it all into the deepest niches of her mind so that these precious moments might continue to bring her joy for the rest of her life—however short it might be.
But when does she ever get the things that she wants?
"You know, ordinarily, this type'a stunt might have left me a touch, hmmm, irked. But hell, i gotta tip my proverbial hat to you, pretty bird. Impressive work! Really! The cards weren't exactly stacked in your favor—I mean, obviously...look at you! Shrimpy little cherub looking ass! Hah! And yet here you are, alive and kicking. I dare say we might be looking at an act of divine intervention. What a world!Allelujah, amen and all that good shit!"
Swaying on her feet, Eluthéria looked up at this man, who was easily twice her size, with all the bewilderment of a toddler hearing a foreign language spoken at her for the first time in her life. She saw his lips move, heard the sounds but she couldn't by any means process what exactly he was trying to tell her. Adrenaline. Exhaustion. Fear. It all bore down on her like a big stack of cinderblocks, threatened to crush her frangible faculties under it's enormous heft.
Tears. First one. Then two. She blinked, and all at oncethe floodgates ruptured. This took him off guard.
"Oho, no, no! None of this sniffling nonsense! You don't perform a top grade kill like that and then cry about it! Come on, girl, suck it up."
Adam swiped a calloused hand somewhat brutishly across her porcelain countenance, whisking away the brunt of the tears and the blood and the sweat. She didn't object. she wanted to, make no mistake. The touch of his skin against hers felt like needles in her brain, an absolutely vile sensation, she wanted nothing more than to be rid of it, but she hadn't the verve to make a fuss.
He shrugged his intricately embroidery cloak off his shoulders and draped it around hers.
Warm.
"Alright, come on, let's see if you've got any more fancy tricks up your sleeve, eh?"
His grip on her stark white locks slackened, and he ushered her towards the steel doors.
She remembers thinking that this was the day she was going to die.
In many ways, she supposes that wasn't an entirely inaccurate assumption.
