The Bloodbath

You'll have to do better than that if –

She wasn’t aiming for his eyes, honest. Her little hand had trembled and her whole body had jumped from the turf to match his height. She arced her hand downward and she felt herself let out a guttural yell.

A shout that she could feel from deep within her lungs, expelling the air but more, too. The pain she’d seen on her mother’s face when she’d told her she needed to strip of her wedding dress, Uxue’s name being read aloud on the television. Her father’s protestations against the peacekeepers, his begging, the sound of a his body pressed back into the old wooden cupboard of china from long before the dark days, shattering two glasses and scattering more across the wood of the floor. Her sister wailing a she turned back to face them, and scream.

Somehow the pain has bred an anger she never knew existed, a strength that connects her backward and forward among Izars. Tía abuela Uxue? A green eyed man would tell his little child, hand through his curls. She was one of us.

A scream that carries through viscous fluid, exploding in a shower of death and watery liquid across Uxue’s face.

She holds there, hand on the end of the knife, metal deep into the boy’s eye, and she, still yelling. Screaming.

“No, no, no…” She screams out again, fingers twisted across the knife, blood oozing as she pulls the thing back and his carcass falls. She looks to the little girl at her side and the ones fighting off near them, mouth open, voice echoing out across the grass. But this was what she’d meant to do exactly, wasn’t it? Kill the one that threatened those that were weaker, unable to protect themselves.

And still she’ll never forgive herself for what she’s done. “Lo siento…” Her voice is strangled in her throat as she finds it hard to breathe. What about standing up for what was right? What about dealing judgement as though she were god? What about the family that he could’ve had waiting at home? She prays, "To the stars," a short and sweet prayer for one she's taken by her own hand.

There are no answers, only movement. The little blond boy’s blade sinks into the woman in the night gown with the big lips and pale skin, and Uxue knows that this is a mistake. Blood scatters across her chest, red, new. But here there’s a price to be paid for so much as existing. Another trails behind her, a boy clad only in his boxers, body heavy with muscle and one of the handsomest faces she’s ever seen.

“Mijo!” She cries out, voice hoarse and hand shaking. She moves to grasp another knife and takes aim at the woman that lunges. She had protected one from death; she prayed to the stars that they would keep this one safe, too. "HRRRRRH!"

[Uxue Izar attacks Scorpion Praxis d10f with a throwing knife 1/3]

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9037 -- Knife in Back -- 6.5 damage -- (Thrown Knife)

When he comes wandering closer, the boy hurls a blade at the little one and Uxue wants to scream at the child. Somehow not knowing his real name made it all the worst, as though it finally hit home that their whole dignity has been stripped bare, revealing all the moles, wrinkles, and scars from short lives. His blade skitters along the grass and she staggers, at last realizing she’d been holding her breath the whole time, as though that would do anything to have stopped the metal piercing through his white skin.

Bodies have started to pile. Are they half gone, or is she imagining the boys and girls that once crowded cells underneath the old stadium have been tossed about, like marionette dolls scattered across the green? She crosses herself and pulls another knife close. The first had landed in the skin of a woman that stood before them, gingerly moving to take both blades and wrench them from her skin with a squelch.

Her lips part and she licks the blood from the blade, and Uxue can only sputter at the display. The woman needed some holy water for the demons that surely lurked inside her.

“¿Qué mierda pasa?!” She finds the words at last, but the exclamation doesn’t halt the woman’s cut into her little ward’s arm. Uxue steadies, both hands on her knife as though she knew the first thing about what she was supposed to do. The most she’d ever done was slice vegetables alongside her mother and grandmother, and for as good as she was quartering potatoes, she didn’t imagine that was anywhere near the same.

Still, as the smoke wafted across the stadium and the two loomed large in front of them, Uxue pressed close to the little one. “You’re all right,” She whispers out to him, words of encouragement even until the last. She turned to her would be attackers and held the knife in front of her.

“How fast do you expect us to be?” Uxue snaps, her voice trembling. “Neither of us have much time as it is, you think we’re trying to waste it?”

Her forehead aches, blood now dried but some drainage still oozing. Some of her hair sticks along the side of her face, bits of dried blood below her ear.

She still sees the eye of the boy who she killed. She sees the girl who’s blade had been thrown to her, sour and sass but dead now. Uxue has paid the price for what she’s done, no matter what happens. She believes in a forgiving god but wonders then if the stories are true.

Would her star still shine up above, or would she disappear to the darkness for what she’s done?

She looks at the gold haired child, and aches in a loneliness that comes from knowing likely neither of them would see another sunrise.

And so she breathes. A soft and steady prayer at the back of her mind, repeated, that she could do what needed doing, even if she’d said she never would (hadn’t that changed moments ago?).

She swings, answering the woman’s call for a death.

“HRRRRRAH!”

[Uxue Izar attacks scorpion praxis d10f with her knife]

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2139 -- Shallow Cut on Cheek -- 3.5 damage -- (Knife)