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𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑊𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔: 𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑉𝑖𝑜𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The storm turned the battlefield into a pit of shadows and blood, every flash of lightning tearing across the sky like an open wound. Lenore staggered forward, ribs screaming with each breath, her leg barely carrying her weight. Her knee had been shattered under Mikilah’s boot minutes prior, and every step brought searing agony to her leg. The fight had been raging between the two for an hour, Lenore clearly losing as she hobbled on one leg and tried to back away from the approaching woman.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Mikilah circled her like a wolf, her axe dripping red with Lenore’s blood, her mouth twisted in a grin. “You’re pathetic. Is this what he trained you for? I avenged my father because he taught me how. Yours taught you nothing but weakness.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Lenore tried to lift her sword, but her arms trembled. Blood slid down her spine from the gash Mikilah’s blade had carved, hot and sticky against the cold rain. She wanted to scream but her breath came out as a ragged wheeze, chest caving in on itself.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀“Do you remember his face?” Mikilah hissed, stepping closer. “The way he begged before I ran my blade through his skull? The way his eyes went dead? I watched the light leave him. You should’ve seen it.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀“Stop,” Lenore rasped, voice shredded and shrill, but Mikilah only laughed.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀“Did you know that he called your name before I killed him? He screamed for you, girl. You were too weak then. You’re too weak now.”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Something inside Lenore split—not her ribs, not her body, but something deeper, older, forged in grief that had warred within her for years. Her scream ripped out of her throat, raw and feral, and she launched herself forward. The pain was blinding—her knee cracked, her ribs felt like fire, blood pouring down her back—but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Mikilah swung down, but Lenore caught the axe’s haft on her ruined shoulder, letting it bite into flesh as she shoved her sword upward. The steel slid through Mikilah’s face, cutting off her laughter in a spray of blood. Lenore was too focused on their collapse to the ground to see the way Mikilah’s jaw gaped, blood spilling from an empty eye socket as her face split.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The two women collapsed together into the mud, Lenore’s sword still buried in Mikilah’s skull. Rain hissed against the blood, washing it into rivulets down Lenore’s hands. Her chest heaved in broken, shallow breaths, each one cutting her from the inside. She didn’t realize Mikilah was already gone. Didn’t care.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀With a scream that shredded what little was left of her throat, blood mixing with the wail, she wrenched her sword free and brought it down again. The blade hacked through bone with a wet crack, blood splattering across her face, mixing with the rain. She raised it again. And again.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Every strike echoed with Lucarius’s screams, every swing dragging her deeper into that night. She could still see him—bound, broken, his face beaten until it was no longer his. Until he wasn’t him anymore.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Her sword rose and fell, steel grinding against skull, splitting it further with each blow. Mikilah’s features, once mocking, once alive with cruel laughter, dissolved into pulp beneath her. The red hair so similar to her own that had haunted Lenore’s nightmares, tangled with gore until it was impossible to tell where the woman ended and the blood began.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Lenore’s sobs turned into raw animalistic howls, her arms trembling, her wounded knee giving out beneath her as she slouched onto her one good knee in the mud. Still, she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. She hacked until Mikilah’s face was no face at all—just ruin, just meat, just as Lucarius had been when they left him.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀When at last her strength failed her, she collapsed forward, her body sprawled across the ruin she had made. Her hands slipped in the blood, fingers twitching around the hilt that no longer had the strength to rise. She pressed her forehead into the gore and screamed one last time into the storm, the sound ragged, broken, unrecognizable even to herself.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Her sword slipped from her grasp, her fingers clawing uselessly at the mud as blood poured freely from her back, her knee twisted grotesquely beneath her. She didn’t try to stand, to rise, to live, to save herself. She only stayed there in the blood and gore and mud and cried until her eyes felt ready to burst.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀There was no triumph. No closure. Only emptiness, and the horror of what she had become.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀And in the rain and blood and filth, Lenore lay shaking, unable to tell whether the sobs tearing through her chest belonged to grief, rage, or the part of her that had died alongside Lucarius that night—finally dragging the rest of her down with it.
