WAR STORM (Red Queen 4// Alternate Version)

Chapter 33

Iris

It makes me want to cry. 

The death and destruction and screaming and blood.  

Father would reprimand me for my inner proneness after the hundreds of hours he spent tearing me down to build back up stronger. Turning a child's delicate mind into that of a killer's, immune to heartache and the value of life. Nothing, worthless, he said the people I'd slaughter were. 

But a child's mind takes years to develop. Maybe if Father were still here, I wouldn't hesitate so often, but kill for the sake of his pride in me, in worry that he was watching. There's nobody to watch me now, and that is a blessing and a curse. 

I cannot count the number of times I've narrowly dodged a blade aimed at my heart.

It could almost be a sunrise. Yet the golden ball of starlight rose hours ago. Noon, and it's placed itself high overhead, tinted gray in the haze that plagues this place. On the horizon, great plumes of smoke waft upward, coming from fires so big they could be monsters. They encamp this entire field, or at least the epicenter of where the battle is happening. They said the warriors could attack wherever they pleased as long inside the Choke, a damn thirty miles wide, but most of the fighting is compressed onto the southeast side this hell.

Right near one of the lakes, and I'm glad for it. Without water, I'm essentially a Red, carrying around a gun and acting as though I have a chance at living. 

I managed to lose my incessant guards a while ago, and Rosalyn might very well spank me for it. 

Despite its chill, I'm usually fond of the pale light winter brings without fail. But now, the bluish tone of the sky has been harshened and molded into a gray and black periwinkle, and any snow that dares to fall on this bitter earth is mixed with particles of ash. Gunfire echoes in my eardrums, and if I focus hard enough, I hear a beat, perhaps a drum to signify death. 

Our soldiers and our enemies are but moving silhouettes, always somewhere to be. There is no grass, and if there were...I would kill it, to put it out of its misery. The ground and the trenches are blackened, scorched clumps of earth. 

Maven's soldiers don no uniform, choosing to wear House colors instead. Splotches of blue here, orange there. I should've paid more heed to the Silver High Houses during my stint pretending to be the king's beloved, rather than seeing them as one idiotic unit. I can barely tell the difference between them and my allies dressed in Red, the colors of Piedmont, and the royal blue of the Lakelands that even the Arvens adopted. 

We're making it far too facile for them to win. 

I look just the same as those faceless Lakelanders my sister and I saluted this morning; in turn, I haven't attracted much trouble. With my hood, I'm just an untalented and lowly nymph. 

Who knew how wrong the fools could be. 

There was once a wall that shallowly divided the battle zone from the degraded water, but the cement has since crumbled. In a few areas there are hints that such a construction existed, but most has been bombed into the lake, sinking to the bottom along with a thousand corpses of ill-fated men. The coastline is ragged, extending much further into the water than others areas, but it doesn't matter, it's all the same. Water.

The water splashes and laps against the coast, which falls off like a cliff instead of gradually sloping into the water, as it should. But nobody ever said that the Choke follows the natural rules of the world. 

My breath hitches as the water pulls against my mind, the work of a fellow nymph. Though it only lasts for a moment before the resistance snaps, just like that. Dead, I'd guess.