{ d e m o n s } take hold//drake harvest's end (py)

At the term monster, she thought of Celia. Trained in the art of senseless mutilation whilst the world around her crumbled. Her sins had been enough to capture an entire country’s attention, and now Hyacinth was forced to sprint in her shadow. To become this type of monster was not her intention – she wanted to break herself apart from expectation, but there was a point in time at which deliberation lost itself in the void of violence. She swung her axe without a second thought, without weighing the consequences of who perished and how. It was after a moment like this that reality dawned on her; there were different breeds of monsters, and she was pretty sure she was among the toxic.

She paused to catch her breath, inhaling iron-stained air particles. This stony bridge already tasted of death and destruction, and although she hadn’t killed anybody yet, there was an unmistakable pattern in her attempts to stray away from Celia’s reputation. Scoring an eleven, conquering the Bloodbath instead of escaping it, severing a leg with one clean swing of an axe – she had not thought herself capable of these things. It should be somewhat frightening, but it didn’t scare her. How did that paint her then? As a survivor, a monster? A girl stranded between two evils, or perhaps a concoction of both.

At least if she was a monster, she was her own monster. Celia’s ghost would not make a comeback today.

There were four bodies, two struck down by Mordecai. She counted them – one, two, three…

”Hey Hyacinth, are you there?”

Four.

She turned around and recognized the aftermath; an amputated calf, and the gaping wound on the side of his head. Mordecai’s finishing blow.

I didn’t know it was you. She didn’t say it out loud.

He spent his first dying breaths apologizing. Wasted on someone like Hyacinth, the criminal prostitute who tried to offer her hand five days ago, only to pull it away and backstab the very idea of friendship. Now she had to do what Celia never would – suffer the consequences.

”I didn’t lie,” she said, thinking there was an illusion painted on his face, but there wasn’t. He was grinning. A dying boy could grin while she hadn’t cracked a real smile in months. She envied the purity of it.

”You can keep your bones.”