Baal /2 cbd3 wip

"How did this happen?"

The shutters crash against the windows and the manor shakes.
Lightening bursts quick, red hot.

Makato still burns from it, a root system running from
the centre of her chest, outwards in hundreds upon hundreds upon
hundreds of little rivers, like a ribbon.

Ribbon rivers.

Hands on her chest, pushing down, then back up, down
she coughs. Reaching out across the floor, hand searching for Ei
but Ei not searching back, charred.

Burning, hot.

Gone.

"How did this happen?"

She shoves the hands away, she's fine, "Ei?"
she calls out, voice breaking, hot, throat burning hot.

"Ei?"

Nothing.

The heir to the Raiden house, her twin sister, older but
only by minutes but always caring, always fighting her battles,
Nothing now.

Gone.

"She can't be gone," her father's voice, breaking,
the vase, gold all through it. Kintsugi.

"No, Ei isn't dead, she isn't."

Makato wraps her hand around Ei's, still hot but empty now.

"It's Makato. Makato is dead, my warrior lives."

Okay.

She lives.