Author's note: This contains graphic material of the gruesome kind. I warned you. Happy holidays! Thanks for your support and don't forget to vote and comment!
Chapter 18
It was a cool night without a single chance of rain. There wasn't even a breeze to be heard of when the battle began. The moon was full giving me plenty of light to see them by and I watched as the fighters ran towards me. A sudden peace fell over my mind and I glanced down at my swords. They were covered with my tattoos and they were twirling with excitement. I couldn't blame them. It was a live or die situation. I felt the first shiver when the enemy was only a few yards away, a shiver of anticipation and, for some unknown reason, lust. I didn't have time to think about why I felt lust on a battlefield because the first solider swung his sword at me with a vengeance. I expected that he wanted to bring me down with it but instead I brought him down. He hadn't paid very close attention to what he was doing because he left his entire bottom half open. I promptly separated the exposed part from his body. I didn't see how long it took for him to die because the moment that I looked up again, they were on me. When one man went down another took his place and it went on and on until I thought I would fall over from the stress of keeping them away but I noticed that none of them were going inside and for that I was grateful.
I don't know when I got completely bathed in blood but I do know that by the time it was nearly half over, I was covered in it. My tattoos were slicing and dicing just as fast as my swords were and I started to dance. I had never done the sword dance against many opponents even though that was its initial use. The Selenium used to hold contests to see who had the best dance and would teach that new one to the adolescents every year. My people died down however and I was left with the only one I knew. The one I had gotten from my pain. The amazement I saw on my attackers faces never went away after they perished. I was surrounded by a giant moat of dead bodies before I could blink and I had to move to be able to kill more. That was when I got hurt. It wasn't even a very big scratch but it was just enough to rile me. I hacked away at them with a fierceness that I had never felt before. As I danced with the last man of the army, I couldn't help but play with him a bit before I decapitated him. It was just too much for me to handle finishing the dance without much of an ending and I looked around me.
Hundreds of bodies littered the ground like grass with a dark red tinge. Body parts were scattered here and there without so much as a care in the world. The bodies split in half had their insides handing out like balloon strings and I found myself wondering who could have killed so many people. It's a very strange feeling knowing that you killed people and didn't know anything about them. I shifted through the bodies looking for someone I knew when I saw the kitchen boy laying in the grass not too far from where I was standing. I went over to him and knelt down at his side. A feeling of regret welled up in me and I left a few tears on his coat. I straightened him up to look as presentable as a dead body with a pair of legs could and I went to find the missing appendages. I found them next to a pile of bodies that had been trampled and brought them back to the dead boy. There wasn't any reason why I shouldn't. He hadn't done anything wrong except to be loyal to the wrong person. I put them as if they were on his body and examined my work. If not for the scared look on his face, he might look like he was sleeping.
A foot came down on the poor kitchen boy's head with a crunch and he lost his face. I stared up at who ruined my work and I found myself face to face with another Selenium. Another shiver ran up my spine and he noticed it with a laugh.
"Feel it do you? The air of the battlefield and the lust of killing all the humans who have trashed and rotted our earth to the core with their filth! They don't deserve to be here. They have squabbles over every small thing and we're the ones to get mixed up in it all. I even had to rape a little girl once and she was of my own kind. She looked a little like you in fact," Yarrow Feldman informed me and I continued staring at him for a long moment before it finally got through my system.
"You...raped me?" I whispered and another shiver ran up my back, the lust was back and it was for his blood but I controlled myself to see what he would answer.
"I suppose I did. You danced beautifully by the way. How about we desert this palace and the humans and repopulate the Selenium race? I'll make sure you have a good time," he winked at me and I didn't move. The rage was building higher and higher in my mind and I couldn't stop how fast it was travelling through my body. I wanted to rip him apart with my swords and hang his parts on the scaffold to warn anyone hat came near me.
"You were the one that raped me. You were one of the slavers," I muttered trying to get my head around it and he reached forward with his tattoos to tap me on the shoulder.
"Are you okay?" he asked uncertainly and I lost it. I started the one dance that he wouldn't know, the death dance. It was certain to kill the enemy while killing yourself as well but I couldn't stop. The kitchen boy's face appeared in my mind and then my prince's. Lawrence and Linessa made their debuts next and I grinned at my rapist.
"You can't hurt me anymore," I breathed and he stared at me wildly trying to block all of my attacks.
"Can't we talk about this?" he pleaded and I laughed into the blades.
"Talk? You want to talk? Fine then talk with your swords!" I challenged and his face grew dark. I felt a muscle tear and then a bone break in my torso but I couldn't stop. My mind was set on killing this man even if it killed me. I wasn't going to go through life without my revenge. It would be too bitter. I swung my last move at his head and it landed with a thud on the ground. His tattoos rolled off of him and into the dirt as his body followed suit. I watched the draining markings slowly sizzle on the ground and fade away. One less Selenium in the world and one less man I had to worry about. I didn't notice when I passed out. I just saw the ground one moment and the stars the next. The only thing I could think was how disappointed I would be not to see my friends' faces again. My muscles had been torn during that battle and most of the bones in my body where broken. My nose wasn't even on straight and I felt a pain that exceeded even the beatings I took from the slavers.
"So this is what it's like to die," I muttered into the link that had appeared at the back of my mind and I felt shock appear on the other end.
Only a few seconds later did I see Lawrence standing over me looking at all the damage my body had taken.
"How did all of this happen?" He asked me looking at the wounds and I tried to smile at him. It didn't seem to register to him that it was an action that I was trying to portray.
"The death dance," I murmured finally into the link and he looked at me oddly.
"I thought Selenium your age wouldn't be able to do that. It's against their agenda," he frowned and I let out a hiss of air as he picked me up again.
"Sorry but I can't let you die. Aiden and Linessa would have my ass on a silver platter if they even saw that I was awake right now. You killed so many people..." he drifted off.
"They were a threat," was my simple reply.
