She herself had acted as much as a cataclysm as the world had deteriorated into around her. Devastatingly beautiful in its demise, crumbling beneath her steady footfalls. She’d watched him fall, had heard him cry beneath her touch. It had been nothing but thirsty, nothing short of vicious. Her need for his soul, a deepened hunger in which she’d yet to experience. Skin is bloodstained, where it is hers and theirs she is not sure. Caked beneath her fingernails are remnants of his skin, how tragic it was that she’d once longed to touch, to only now long to destroy. To rip a man to shreds, tear his flesh inside out and watch him writhe across marble floor begging for mercy, was to feel power. Nehelenia, denied of such a thing all the while standing beside a monster, a man who’d moulded her into much the same it had seemed.
Get out of my way. Her vocals hoarse, a cry through thickened air as sharp as the blades they’d wielded. Yet, their steel was no match for her teeth, for her rage. A mother’s love swathed in violence, drenched in blood thirst. The men had stood there in the wake of devastation, had alongside her watched as Aleksander murdered their child. She, in turn, had taken theirs.
It’s slowly in which she stumbles, hands gripping at brick clad walls. Every step had been a battle, silken fabrics now ripped, shreds of black and gold trailing behind her in waves. For others to thrive. It’s Aleksander’s voice that rings through her ears, a whisper even as it feels as sharp as thorns imbedded within her skin. For others to thrive. One had to slaughter, to pray on the weak so a dream, a new home, could be made. Stained palm rests against wall, free hand finding a path towards her throat as a sob remains stuck, shackled within her. She longs to release it, to bring reason to the warm salted tears that find their way streaking her skin. Yet, it does not come. There is no comfort for the wicked, no solace for murderers.
Another breath, another step. His blood on her hands, their blood adorning her furs, tangled within her ravenous locks. She hears it once more, their screams, and distinct chill crawls down her spine, causes a rigidness within her bones as she rounds the corner. The air around her remains stale, and for a moment the silence swallows her whole as Nehelenia swears the echo of her own beating heart is the only thing that could be heard for miles. Perhaps, she muses, it is.
Ahead, seemingly within her grasp, lies the ornate design. Hand carved throne, a beautiful structure build from the legacy of Kova’s founders, of its once thriving leaders. Now, however, there was only her. A battered and beaten remnant of a woman. Feet as heavy as the stone that lay beneath her, as the mountains themselves even. Yet, when her lithe digits brush against throne, when she slides her slender bodice into its grip, smaller than she’d ever been before, Nehelenia feels an emptiness. Absorbing the loneliness in which the room beholds, breathing in the nothingness in which she’s caused. She, a bloodthirsty beast. They, the murdered men who’d cried for mercy, who begged for forgiveness as she watched every inkling of purity, of liveliness, escape their bodies.
It needn’t take moments, only hours. Hours of silence, alone within her thoughts as her striking gaze stares into the hall as if awaiting her demise, as if anticipating the fires filled with fury to swallow the fortress whole. Yet all that comes is the night. For, there are no stars that shine upon her home, no seeping sight of the moon to leak unto her skin. The gods have left her, and for the first time in her existence, she finds herself alone.
