First Drafts - An Ensemble

| 5 | Beati Bellicosi.

Nightfall was almost upon her and still, Grace sat scrubbing the blood off her daggers.

Her back was against the bark of a tree, and nearby gurgled a stream of water, starlight reflecting off the uneven, rocky surfaces it flowed over. Though her eyes were focused on the dried crimson splatters that stubbornly stained her precious blades, her ears were alert, listening for any sounds in the forest that weren't her own or the stream's.

To anybody else however, her relaxed posture, the almost lazy actions would have been mistaken for nonchalance. To anybody else, the activity she had chosen to busy herself with would have seemed like it were nothing more than a leisurely pastime of hers. Like this was something she did every day. And they would not have been wrong.

Such were the thoughts that filled the brunette's head, making her lower her guard for a little while, making her chuckle hollowly to herself as she held the dagger up to inspect it in the moonlight for the hundredth time that evening.

The weapon was a thing of beauty, she had to admit. Forged by her mother, it had been the woman's parting gift to her only daughter, given away as a symbol of protection, with the hope that one day, Grace would return unharmed. A long, serrated leaf ran down the length of the hilt, which was now carefully wrapped in thick leather strings. There were letters too, intricately carved along one of the edges of the silver blade. "Beati bellicosi," she murmured out aloud, dragging a finger across the sharpened surface thoughtlessly. Her mind was elsewhere, for even when the tip pierced her skin, even when a few drops of her blood slowly trickled down the side of the metal, she never noticed.

'Blessed are the warriors.'

Wasn't that what the words meant?

It sounded like the beginning of a cruel, cruel joke, Grace mused, as she turned the dagger over in her hand. The dripping metal shone faintly in the dark, reminding her of the very first time she had taken a life with it.

It had been over an year ago, but the memory, the horror of it all, was still fresh in her mind. He had belonged to her own kingdom— the General's apprentice. His screams had rung clear in the night that had been as cold, as silent as this one was— made worse by the fact that she had known the boy. She had admired his way of thinking, even. Only, the Emperor hadn't.

Oh, how she had wept afterwards— on her knees by the shrubbery behind her house. Trembling, retching, until it physically hurt. Eventually, she had been forced into accepting it— one reminder from the Emperor had been enough. What other choice could she have had, especially when she could very well see the man’s words hanging over the heads of her family like a groomed guillotine ready to fall? The stench of death, the awful sounds, the sight of the mangled body on the forest floor… they had all clung to her brain, and like its ever-so-loyal mates, had not left ever since. Yet, that had been the last time Grace had cried.

The apprentice had only been one— the first name on what had become a nightmarish, never-ending list to her. And the others? Oh, all those shrieks, those cries of men and women alike, ones she hadn't even known begging for clemency when she had taken her time with the blades like she had been instructed to, haunted her still. They returned back to her every night as she slept, morphing themselves into terrors Grace herself couldn't begin to describe.

She had learnt quickly to conceal her thoughts, mask her expressions from people, of course. Grace had come far, for she no longer felt any remorse towards those whose lives she ended. Why, by now, murder came to her as easily as breathing did. It terrified her at times, but it was hard to have a heart when she had stopped so many others'. Grace had gone from a girl who had not known how to kill, to one stripped away of her innocence within days. To one who now knew how to make dying hurt.

Yet, her mother had named her a warrior when she had left.

But warriors did not wear killer smiles and icy stares like masks- painted onto their faces like a curse. They had no reason to be afraid to fall asleep at night. They had no reason to think— and sometimes hope— that someday, they would destroy themselves.

Her jaw hardened again when Grace finally did bring her attention back to cleaning her blood off the dagger. Soon enough, she was slipping the weapon into its sheath, and getting to her feet to leave. If anything, as she looked over her shoulder and at the gently flowing stream one last time, one thought was firm in her mind:

If blessed were the warriors, then perhaps Grace wasn't one at all.