Heartless

Chapter 4: T is For Trauma

The whip wrapped around Brynhild's wrist with a crack. She fought against the pull, and held onto it with her free hand as she yanked, the owner stumbling before she used the momentum to grab onto him and hurl him over the railing of the second floor, listening to the satisfying thud that followed. Blood was splattered over her face but it wasn't her own.

Another down. As far as she lasted counted, there was likely one more left, but she couldn't see them. And that worried her. The one person she knew would be an actual problem was nowhere in sight.

Her hatchet was lodged in the throat of another Hunter on the floor of Eret's room after she tried to grab at him while he climbed out the window. The other had been flung onto the bottom floor but not before Brynhild had stuck it into the kneecap of another woman. 

Her prosthetic clinked as she made her way downstairs. Not for the first time, she was annoyed at how she still had yet to get used to moving with it. Of course, it was partially her own fault since recuperation had been long recommended when she first came back, but she had ignored them, still coming to grips with it all. It was a pain enough having the prosthetic connected to her nerves, and she still felt the pain some nights where her leg used to be, and the exertion of the current fight did not help. 

Once she reached the ground floor, her eyes searched the room as they took in every detail. He was here. He had to be.  

But all there was instead was silence.

Until she found herself paralyzed, not of her own will. A black cloud of smoke tinged with red swirled around her, coiling like a snake as it pinned her arms to her sides and kept her frozen in place. 

"Hey, Bryn," Alistair drawled in that voice he always used whenever he knew he had her right where he wanted her, appearing out of the room's shadows. A smirk played on his lips as he circled her. His eyes glowed the same shade as the crimson stone attached to the white cravat around his neck, dimming one second only to glow brighter the next. The totem was too far out of her reach that she couldn't try and snatch it if she wanted to. "You look good."

She lunged at him and didn't even make it an inch, but she was sure the gesture got the message through. "No thanks to you," she growled.

"Oh, come on, no hard feelings, right?" he said with that odd accent he'd always had that she once found fascinating. His tongue rolled with every syllable, the words themselves wobbling on his lips along with the laughter in his tone. "So you look a little different. It's been a few months; like the river, people are always changing and learning to move on." The glare she flashed him seemed able to set him on fire alone. 

Truth be told, he did look different now, just not as drastically different as she did. He was more confident, more sure of himself, less impacted by bloodshed and injustice. 

Ash-blond hair that she was so used to seeing in a braid that fell to his waist, was pulled back in a bun made of coiled braids like rope, revealing his face, his eyes, unlike his past style. His eyes, once like limpid pools of gold, that were now deep, dark red like blood.

His chalky lips were blue, and skin, once tanned and freckled from days spent in the sun training with her as they tried to one-up one another and win, was ashen enough to make him seem as if a spirit, black veins reaching out from his eyes like ink spilling onto paper. 

Odd to think now they'd once been on the same side, that they'd once been inseparable.

"So you're a Hunter now?" Brynhild snarled, now knowing who exactly ratted her family out. "Against your own kind? How could you?"

His cool composure broke as he whirled to face her. "How could you?!" His voice echoed off the walls. "You left. Everyone thinks you're so damn brave because you fought, but when we needed you, I needed you, you left! And for people you don't even know!?"