HOW TO LIVE AGAIN (girlxgirlxgirl)

Eleven; Crossroads

"We meet at the intersection"
37

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⚠️ death, murder, blood, violence, censored swearing, mentions of suicide, mentions of murder and death and fighting, weapons, illegal behavior, mentions of assassination, exhaustion ⚠️

It's been a long f*cking week.

Blood drips down her forehead, all the way down her face and to her mouth. Thyra savors the taste of her victory before spitting it out. That's disgusting. Victory should really taste better.

She leans against her sword, panting. For the first time in a long while, she is actually exhausted after a fight. She hasn't felt like this since meeting Andra and Fei. Back when she worked as an assassin, those days were always exhausting and deadly. But working under Andra feels like a breeze. She doesn't have to put herself in danger at all times, only prevent it from happening. But now, well now she's back at it again. The "putting her life on the line" kind of work.

Thyra doesn't feel like Andra put her here on purpose though. Not only did she suggest it herself, by telling the empress that she should go. But also neither of them knew what was really going on here.

Thyra has spent the last week trying to get close to the red gold intersection. It's a very important traveling point between the boarders of the red and golden clan far up northeast. The thing is, she hasn't gotten anywhere close. Days of trying and trying have all gone to waste. There are people, strange people dressed in all black clothing everywhere you go. Every road that leads there, every village on the way is crawling with them. And they do whatever they can to stop a person like Thyra, a person of higher standing, to get anywhere near the intersection.

It's guarded, heavily so, and for miles and miles, without the empresses permission. Without the red clans permission. The careful little hunch that they got about trouble here turned out to be much more than she could ever have expected. Guards of the empire don't have any power here, these people dressed in black are in complete control. This isn't just a small act of defiance or some illegal business, this is a huge threat. A whole area is controlled by an unconfirmed person, and that person is not the empress.

Thyra is the best assassin around. She is a master at sneaking into places that shouldn't be sneaked into. After all, she managed to penetrate the impenetrable imperial palace just a few months ago.

So it's crazy that she has only gotten this far. In a village closest to the red and gold intersection, a half a days trip from her destination. A week of trying, and this is the result. Every village that she has visited she has tried to kill and fight off those black dressed men, and every time she does there are more on the way. They try to find her but she always manages to hide away or kill the ones coming for her. But once again, there are always more. More and more and more. Thyra is beginning to get terrified.

She visits a village on the way, kills all enemies in that village during the evening and then wakes up in the morning to find that the men have doubled in size. It's crazy. Despite their strong efforts to stop her, placing dozens of men along the roads and in the villages, she has managed to get closer and closer. Now there is only half a day left. Still, she should've been there by now. As a higher servant of her empress not a single person should've stood in her way, and she would've been there about three days ago. Still, she is here.

Thyra isn't a politician, nor a scholar or an advisor. She's not an empress either. She might be high up in the clans military right now but out here, she is only the empresses servant, her spy. And as her spy she will try to do her job as told. The thing is, standing here on the dusty gravel of the village, blood running down her head and arms and legs, while dead bodies rot around her... Thyra isn't sure if she can make it in and out alive anymore. She has tried three times, and each time she has had to retreat. They aren't letting her come close to the intersection, she can't figure out what is going on. And whenever she tries to question one of the men they either kill themselves or wait for her to do it.