Phobia ☤ Alexios

sixteen: fire and flames

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THE NEXT TWO days pass in a blur. Irene isn't sure how she'd found herself fighting rogues in a burning warehouse with Alexios and a Spartan after chasing Phoibe through the streets, but the flames lick at her skin and fire rages in her blood. She ducks beneath the swing of a two-handed axe and lurches forward, cutting deep into the man's thigh. The howls of pain are silenced when Alexios drags the point of his kopis across the man's throat in a tight slash.

She rises with blood spattered across her face -chest heaving, eyes wrought with harsh obduracy. Alexios' gaze lingers on the princess for just a second too long and he doesn't notice the assailant approaching him from behind -sword raised. Irene darts forward, uses the dead man's body as leverage, launching herself into the air over the Eagle Bearer's shoulder. She bears down upon the man with the broken spear, driving it through his neck. Lidless eyes reflect the glow of the inferno.

Something slams into her side before she can rise -sending her backward into a burning post. Scrambling to her hands and knees, Irene sees a discarded shield and rolls toward it. Bones rattle at the impact of a heavy sword against the metal. She drives her attacker back and regains her footing -wielding both sword and shield.

The second blow to the shield reverberates through her arm. She sweeps the shield wide, opening her foe's defenses and plunges her sword deep into the man's belly, wrenching it free in a spray of blood. She snarls, kicking the collapsing corpse away and tossing the shield aside. It only slowed her down.

Smoke begins to burn her eyes and scratch her throat. Through the flames, she sees the Spartan -fending off two men. He doesn't see the third. Irene recovers her broken spear from a corpse and throws it with all her might. As the Spartan turns to face the man, he is already falling backward -the hilt of a broken spear rising from his eye.

The Spartan gives her a curt nod, before turning his focus to the last rogue. Alexios already as his attention on the same man. The princess retrieves the spear. It comes free from the corpse's skull with a soft squelch and pulls his burst eye out of socket, too. Planks creak above, it won't be much longer before the half-rotten wood collapses and the roof caves in on them.

Night air floods the warehouse. It is cool by comparison -but only for a moment before it makes the flames grow larger and hotter. Irene returns to one of the civilians that'd been too weak to leave of his own volition. He drapes his arm over her shoulders and tries his best to push forward as she pulls him from the burning warehouse.

Alexios and the Spartan are dispatching the rogues that'd been waiting outside the flames. Irene eases the elderly man to the ground against a stack of crates. His gaze is empty and unfocused -eyes fogged over. He raises a withered hand, trembling, and reaches toward the princess. The tips of his fingers brush her bloodied cheek. "The gods will bless you," he cries and it almost sounds prophetic.

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IRENE SHAKES THE water from her hands and looks up at the Eagle Bearer. There's a fresh cut above his left eye that hadn't been there when she'd last looked at him in the flames. "Why are you bleeding?" The question doesn't come out the way she'd intended, but a mix of what happened and you're bleeding.

Alexios lowers himself onto the dock after sheathing his sword with a dry chuckle. "Misstep on my part," he says, brushing two fingers over the cut above his brow. Blood trickles down his face in a rivulet and comes away on his fingertips, but he isn't concerned. It's minor -a scratch compared to injuries he's had in the past.

The Spartan, Brasidas, has already left to return to his camp. Much like Anthousa, he has plans for the Monger too, though they differ from the hetaeras. Brasidas wishes to lure the brute into the sacred cave and do away him without spectacle to spare civilians from the anarchy that could follow a public execution.