One Word Prompts

Mindless - A Demon's Birth

Her sword tore through sinew and bone. Rotting flesh fell to the ground in chunks, splashing blood around her ankles. Around her mindless beasts swarmed her, each pushing forward with no concern for the ones before it. None phased in the slightest by their predecessor, sliced down in a single strike. Each, madly rushing for her beating heart.

When had she arrived in this hell? She didn't ask that question anymore.

A man shaped creature shuffled before her. One leg was twisted. An arm trailed behind it, the tissue connecting it to its socket hung in tattered, stretched strands, ripping further with each jerking movement. What rotting flesh remained was discolored, alternating between putrid green and burned black. Malice and magic alone kept the thing on its feet.

A swift horizontal strike put an end to that. Its torso fell one way, its mangled legs fell the other. A howling female form lurched into the suddenly vacant space, tripping over the fallen legs.

She stabbed down into the fallen creature's head, twisting the blade as it went. It fell still in time for a burning hound to leap from the back lines of the fray.

The hound collided with her, knocking her from her feet, pulling her hand from her great sword's handle.

The two rolled in the muck. It wrestled to bite its ebony teeth into her neck, she clenched top and bottom of its gaping maw, shoving it open and back. The beast's flaming skin scorched her armor and burned her face.

But she'd been here before.

She rolled so she was onto of it, shoving one armored arm down the beast's throat, bearing the rising heat of its flaming body. With her free hand she pulled her dagger from her belt and stabbed directly into the nearest crimson eye. Again and again until it stopped writhing.

Until a clumsy hand grabbed at her hair and clawed at her armored back.

She spun to her feet, kicking back the monster at her heals. A flick of her wrist and she embedded the dagger between another's eyes.

She pulled her sword from its last victim and made a great sweeping strike, again buying herself a bloody circle of deathly peace.

When had she learned how to fight these things? She couldn't remember now.

She cut down another and another.

Where had she been before? Vaguely it seemed to her she'd been somewhere else before.

Another.

Why had she come here?

Three more fell to a diagonal strike, slicing through burning flesh and shattering bone.

Had she been looking for something once?

She spun, knocking those around her from their feet with her extended blade.

Someone maybe?

A head rolled from its shoulders.

She had these thoughts occasionally. A nagging feeling more than thought really. A sense that there had once been more to surviving than slaying these creatures.

Two more.

Was there something more than surviving?

Limbs fell to the ground separate from their bodies.

Screaming joined the howl of beasts and growl of monsters.

She cut another in half, head to toe.

No, maybe not screaming? There was another word for this noise.

Flaming bats shot toward her face. She side stepped them, cutting one down as it flew past her, tossing her dagger after the other.