Silk

Devils Rising

          I HAD NEVER BEEN SO CLOSE, as to hear steel strike air. It was like the breath of a typhoon. I found myself stumbling backwards. Her eyes were pale, her teeth yellowing like her skin, and her hair bore the signs of a once-dark and full head, yet it was wisping away now. She was once beautiful, I thought blindly. Turning the blade about in her callused hands she danced towards the man with the flame sigil on his left breast.

          The flame-sigil man swung his blade. It was a thin, Falchion sword that would struggle to kill a man with one strike, let alone a woman with ire such as she. Her sword was long and upright-fashioned from royal steel, she'd plucked it from the knight resting by the door, his intestines glistening in a mound by the remnants of his armor. His visor was ajar, and each time I glanced there I noticed his sapphire eyes staring blankly at the last place he had seen her. The metals clashed and each sword scratched against the other. But a Falchion blade holds little stamina against a Longsword. His arms were weakening. He deflected and the woman fell to the left, but she was quicker than the flame-sigil man could have guessed. She swung her hip like a dancer, her sword swinging closely behind, trailing the path of her arms. She had missed his dodging neck, but the steel ripped through his chest before he could distance himself.

          Everything fell with him. The color of his eyes fell, from a quiet gray-green color to a faded white. His breaths were heavy, but they were fading to the hardwood with him. Even still, I heard the clang of his sword falling against the ground before his body met the same fate.

"What have you done?!" I said.

She watched his blood pooling in colors more black than red, ever-flourishing like the ponds of Narave. Though this was no fruit of nature. Yes, it was bitter like the lime, ugly like the pitaya, but it bore the marks of an unkempt force which had spiraled out of control.

The woman was grinning now.

"You don't remember me," She said, eyeing her sword.

She palmed the blood along its sleek spine and flung it at me.

"Has blood bleared your eyes, Cassian? Why are you afraid? Don't move away from me. We were once quite familiar with one another, weren't we?" She grinned violently.

"I have no relation to you," I answered hastily, stumbling over the gutted knight's carcass.

"Even if you will not come to me, my love-I shan't fear coming to you."

"God save me," I breathed and drew a dagger from the knight's belt.

A stricken expression crossed her face.

"To raise arms against your wife?" Her tongue wagged in her mouth as she laughed.

Though I tried not to betray any emotion, I felt my face twitch.

"Why would you ever-" I began.

But I had already started to see it then. The shape of her face, the same. The color of the hair if not the remnants of volume coiling on her head. Even the way she stood when she was still, leaning on her better hip by habit.

"That feeling in your gut, as if you've seen a ghost-do you know it now?"

She rushed to me and I swung my dagger blindly.

"Do you know it now?" She asked, as blood pooled from her neck.

          "Devil!" Cassian threw the sheets from his body with haste.

He covered his face with his palms. The dreams were worsening. He turned to the window: Morning had not yet struck. He had perspired heavily throughout the night and his pillow held the dazy dark colors of his sweat. For this and other more obvious reasons, he was reluctant to return to sleep.