Her breath came in shallow bursts. The blade in her hands trembled, not from fear, but from exhaustion. There was a huge gash on her shoulders, courtesy of her sadistic opponent. And as the blood flowed out of her body, fatigue slowly crept into her bones, constricting her movements and clouding her quick mind. A towering brute loomed before her, grinning maniacally, still high from being the apparent victor of this match. As he walked toward her, he was dragging the executioner's sword that had fatally wounded her in their battle.
A whimper was heard behind her. Against her instincts as a former knight, she took her attention away from her opponent to glance back at the noise and found the source of that little voice, a girl she had grown accustomed to during her stay in town. Along with her were women, children and the elderly, all seeking shelter in the hut, hiding from the chaos outside.
They looked as though they had never expected a battle to erupt within their sanctuary, their faces frozen in a mix of horror and disbelief.
She had just led Death to their doorstep.
A punch to her gut, and her consciousness dimmed at the impact. She fell to the ground, still clutching the blade. As if knowing her next move, the broadsword pierced her hand to the floor.
She let out a guttural shriek of agony, the sound raw and animalistic. Her grip finally loosened, the sword slipping from her bloodied fingers. Desperately, her uninjured hand scrambled to free the other, trembling with pain and panic.
Assuming victory, her assailant crouched down to peer at her pitiful figure. His grin remained fixed, wide and wild, as amusement and triumph danced in his feverish eyes. Reaching over with a gentle hand, he brushed away the strands of hair that had fallen across her face.
"They claimed you bewitched men with your beauty, turning them into pawns for your every whim. Look at you," the assailant whispered, almost in awe. "Even at death's doorstep, your beauty still endures. Makes me wonder if the myth is true."
He pushed the blade deeper, and a scream tore from her throat.
"That the blood in your veins really is special, powerful and enchanting."
In a blink, he grabbed her free hand, bit down hard at her pulse. Ignoring her shrieks of pain, he began to suck the blood from the wound. With a mouthful of her blood on his tongue, he let her arm fall limply to the ground and turned to the villagers he had terrorized that night.
Stretching his arms like a god, he made a show of swallowing the blood. Whimpers and cries echoed from the group, yet he paid them no mind. With wild, crazed eyes, he began to address them.
"Look at me! I just defeated the witch who usurped the throne. The blood that was keeping her alive and immortal is now flowing in my very veins," he proclaimed, basking in the warmth of her blood and the thrill of victory. "I am a god."
As stealthily as he rose in victory, so cunningly did he fall to the ground.
The villagers watched in horror as the man spat up blood, dark and slick like poison. A little girl screamed as the man, their daily tormentor, collapsed to the ground, his veins bulging like thick, writhing roots beneath his skin.
It was a monstrous sight, as if something foul and unnatural were unraveling from the inside out, a creature dying in a body never meant to be human.
"It was never a secret in my empire," she whispered, her voice soft as an omen, "that my blood holds power."
She raised her arm as the wounds upon her skin sizzled and sealed shut. "A blood that heals, burns, cuts, anything inflicted upon me, undone in moments."
Then her eyes darkened. "But did you ever consider… that the same blood, once a balm and an antidote, could just as easily become a poison, if I will it?"
His eyes trembled, not with fear, but with awe, as he beheld the very one he had longed to see with his own eyes.
To her surprise, the man could still speak, even with poison coursing through his veins.
"B… beautiful…" he breathed. Then, with a faint, broken smile, he asked,
"And, do the grand princesses… have this blood, as well?"
It was a taunt.
An arrow aimed at her weakness.
The Empire's grand princesses, her daughters, as radiant and graceful as the flowers they were named after. Flowers she had cultivated with precision, yet everyone believed they had the entitlement to tear away their petals.
They were mistaken to believe the princesses were her weakness.
And they were fools to think the flowers they longed to pluck were not as poisoned and unforgiving as the hand that raised them.
And this man would learn of its truth.
Myrtle rose from the ground, her wounds sealing in a quiet hiss as she cast her shadow over the convulsing usurper.
"I am their bearer," she declared, her voice regal and resounding. "The poison may not run in their veins, but each of them carries a dose of it all their own."
As Myrtle stood over the usurper and watched him throw her a manic grin, five figures began to emerge from the smoke outside the hut.
They stepped through the haze like phantoms from a forgotten prophecy, each one distinct in stance and shadow, but all bound by the same blood. The air thickened with the weight of unspoken history, the ground itself seeming to hold its breath.
Myrtle did not turn to greet them but she meant to chastise them for their recklessness. Her gaze remained fixed on the man, her voice cold and clear, cutting through the smoke like a blade:
"I told you not to follow me."
Hiraya, the third Imperial Princess, answered, "We were growing weary of waiting, Mother."
Myrtle did not like the tone of her voice. She flashed her a glare, a warning to watch her tone when in the presence of other people, to which her daughter replied by rolling her eyes at her. At just fourteen years old, her third child was just as brazen as she was at that age.
As always, Amara stepped up to dissuade the tension with her sweetness. Her second daughter had never fared well when there were arguments. She has always been the mediator to her siblings when they fought over something.
Amara gifted her mother a sweet smile. She was such a beauty that Myrtle wonders how she could bring life to a beautiful thing and share it to this cruel world.
"You are hurt, Mother," she said with such a gentle voice that Myrtle felt her irritation ebb down.
"Perhaps, it was a mistake not to bring us on this mission."
And just as fast the irritation died down, that was also how it went up upon hearing her words. Of course, her eldest daughter will always have a say when it comes to pointing out mistakes.
Winona has always been critical to people who belittle her and she was particularly hypercritical to the person whose words matter to her the most. Her mother.
A bellow of laughter erupted from the ground. Myrtle glanced back at her assailant, laughing maniacally as blood spills from his mouth.
"Got your own poison, eh?" he taunted, as if he was not suffocating from the poison of her blood.
"You should have ki–"
His words were quickly silenced by a loud slam on his face. Myrtle swore she heard gasps of horror from the crowd behind her. Although the hammer had missed the vital organs needed for a person to live, the ending result of a hammer on the face was still grotesque. Myrtle's eyes traveled from his bloodied face to the war hammer that she gifted her youngest daughter and finally, met the heterochromatic eyes of the fifth princess.
There were splatters of blood on her face yet, Rosalia blinked innocently at her mother as if she had done nothing wrong.
Myrtle opened her mouth. "We need him alive, my love," she chastised with such a gentle tone.
"We can always stitch him back," Tatiana pointed out, staring at the disfigured face of the mastermind. She then turned her attention back to Myrtle and continued, "He is still alive. Rosalia managed to avoid the vital part of his brain. I'm sure I can stitch him back to life. Then, we can interrogate him after."
"Fine. Take the body."