vicious [d.m]

one: fangs & dark magic

The war kills Khione long before she realises.

She remembers little of the early days — but what she does remember returns with a brutal vengeance every night. Her birthday — at the end of the year the war started. It hadn't reached Norway, hadn't yet pierced the utopic little bubble her family lived in. 

But that night, Khione encountered evil for the first time, right at her doorstep. Their mother had screamed at them to hide — and the stab of fear that ran through the twins at the panic in their mother's voice was enough to jolt them into action.

But no one had come for them — and Khione only followed Cal out of their hiding place in the cellar hours later. Her scream as she fell to her knees beside her mother's body still echoes in her ears at night, raw and full of rage — like the sound could turn time and bring her mother back.

Khione sobbed and clawed at her mother as Cal stood back and watched, silent tears trickling down his cheeks. That had been the night everything had changed.

After their mother's death, Cal grew quiet and Khione grew fangs.

———

She stares down at her hands, dripping in blood, down to her elbows.

This is what she's become, she thinks, mindless of the body in front of her. A weapon, created and honed by the war. She doesn't even remember what she wanted to be before.

She doesn't care about who's right, doesn't care about who's doing what on what side of the war. Khione is out for revenge — and she'll be damned if she doesn't get it.

A red droplet falls from her hands and stains the pristine white snow beneath her.

———

"Of course you're covered in blood."

Cal's voice is soft as Khione trudges into their tent, ripping her tattered hoodie over her head, revealing her t-shirt underneath.

"Hey, Cal," she murmurs under her breath, tossing her wand onto the table and reaching down to unlace her boots.

"Are you hurt?" He pushes off the small bed he was sitting on the edge of as she walked in. "Is any of it yours?"

"A little," she says back, kicking off her boots and wincing at the pain that laces up her left leg. "Just a Slicing Hex, I think. Nicked the back of my knee."

Her twin sighs, descending the two steps from the platform where their beds are. "Show me."

It takes him six minutes to heal it, his brow furrowed in concentration, hair falling over his eyes as he works. When he's done, he sits back, pocketing his wand and Khione rolls over on the bed, sitting up and busying herself with cleaning the blood off her skin.

The silence between the twins stretches on as it has for several years now. Khione can't pinpoint when they stopped talking to each other — but she knows it's her fault. She also knows Cal's never tried to close the ever-growing canyon between them.

"Who did we lose today?" He's so quiet when he speaks — and he doesn't speak to anyone else but her.

"Juniper," she says, not looking up from where she's washing her hands in the basin that she'd conjured water into. "Isaiah. Trinity. I don't know who else."

He still says nothing, watching her from his own bed opposite hers.

"Not Mina, if that's what you're wondering."

Cal flushes and looks away, towards the entrance to the tent.

Khione can't help the way the corner of her lips turns up — but she says nothing, drying off her arms with a towel, ignoring the new gash that's opened up on her bicep. It's minor — she'll fix it later. Right now, she has something to look up in the archives.