Eros

Divine Execution - 24

She was enveloped in blood. Thick and warm. Alora tried to breath, and choked as a sudden flood filled her mouth, clogging her throat on its way down.

Feeling the liquid's sickening warmth within her chest, she forced herself to look up. They were all there, up where she left them. Their wounds shed the dark blood that pooled around her. She coughed violently, desperate to heave the blood she swallowed, but only more and more poured in.

Alora looked away, unable to contain the piercing stare of their dead eyes. The sanguinary pool tried to pull her in, and she flailed as hard as she could against its thickness. She swam towards the pool's edge. It seemed near, but drew farther the closer she got.

"Sister..." She knew the voice would come, but the sound of it shattered her still.

"You can't run from us..." Pathetic and agonized, her brother crawled towards her. The flames eating his flesh were the only light in the darkness. He reached out, clasped her ankle, and pulled her beneath the blood's surface.

"You belong here with us!"

Alora gasped for air. Cold sweat soaked the sheets and glistened on her skin. Tears welled in her eyes.

She got up from the bed, slid into her leather trousers, fastened her light boots to her feet and walked out of the stuffy room.

Downstairs, the inn was dark and empty. She went outside. The air was cool, raising a chill down her bare arms. Its scent was fresh and clean.

No cigarette stench. She thought. Ironically, Alora now found herself wishing for the company that came with its presence.

The town was practically dead. The moon loomed over the mountains, shining on their snowy peaks, and casting little light over the empty, dark streets. She wandered aimlessly, fighting the thoughts in her head.

If a bottle of rum was presented to her then, she would've drank it all, no matter how revolting it seemed. A bitter smile came to Alora's lips when her mind trailed back to what Kaido had told her the night before. I guess he was right after all.

Rough hands caught her by surprise, clasping her arms. A palm pressed against her mouth just in time to muffle a scream that might have come. They dragged her behind a nearby building and forced her chest against the wall.

Her senses spread out in a primal instinct, searching for any form of wilderness to tame to her will. She found only climbing vines across the alley's corner. They were weak, dry, and barely alive. Nothing she could use.

"I prepared an ambush because I thought you might flee at night, but I expected a fight. Who would have imagined you'd be such an easy target?"

She recognized the voice, and felt a tug at her boot as her hunting knife was drawn from its concealed sheath.

"Turn her around, and remove the hand from her mouth. She isn't the type of girl that'll scream." They did as instructed, each restraining an arm with a painful grip. She faced Jim as he tossed her knife away.

"What a pathetic coward you are." Alora sneered. Jim had expected her to be as hysteric as the women he manhandled in the past. It angered him that she was quite the opposite.

"Can't you beat an unarmed girl up if your goons aren't holding her? How can a weakling like you even claim to be a man?"

A grin crept to Jim's mouth. "The beating will only come afterwards."

Fear crept into Alora. What's happening now was nothing like her first encounter with the bandits. Sam had approached her then with a boyish sort of mischievousness. This man lusted to hurt her as badly as he possibly could. Her lips parted to speak, but he slapped a hand over her mouth.

Her eyes dilated in shock when his other hand grasped her breast. He made her wince in pain as he squeezed the tender flesh savagely.

She bit down on his hand, trapping one of his fingers between her teeth. He screamed and tried to pull his hand away, but she bit harder in reply.

"Let go bitch, let go!" He shouted at her, panicked. He removed his hand from her breast and started punching her head. Neither the bashing against her skull nor the ache at her teeth could loosen her clenching jaw.

She lost count of the punches by the time they stopped. In utter desperation, Jim clasped his own hand, and pulled it with all his might as he threw back his weight. Her teeth scraped against bone when he tore his finger out of her mouth.

Alora spat a bleeding chunk of flesh ripped from his finger at his feet.

"I am going to break your bones, rape you, kill you, and then rape you again you fucking-..." Concussed from the beating on her head, she heard him as if he was speaking from miles away rather than screaming in her ear. He hit her again, and as his palm cracked on her cheek and snapped her gaze aside, something cracked inside her. And power burst out.

It gushed inside her with her rage and her pain. A maelstrom of hurt and desire to hurt.

She thrust back her elbow, hitting the gut of the man who held it before tearing out of his grip. Free, her hand lashed into the air, and the climbing vines tore off the wall. They grew thick and strong in pulses of green glow. Alora's dexterous fingers coiled the vines together, and they fell on the second man's back like a giant whip.

The impact tossed him to the floor, and vines lunged after him. They wrapped around his neck then spread out and snaked up his head. With sinuous speed, and pointy ends, the vines defiled every opening. Pushing up his nostrils, writhing into his ear tunnels, digging into the corners of his eyes, and muffling his cries as they forced their way in his mouth. In moments, face became a horrid mask of entangling plants and dribbling blood.

While the other goon fled for his life, Jim remained frozen beneath her glare. Before, Alora's eyes were flickers of shimmering green in the darkness. Now they were orbs of a glow that blazed like flames. They bore no emotion, only sheer power.

Her hand moved in a curve upwards and her fingers curled, guiding a root that burst out of the ground like a torpedo. It came from beneath the foundations, a withered root of a tree that was long cut down. Her powers gave it life again, and forced it into

With a will of its own, her hand thrust back and forth, fingers drawing and lashing to the rhythm. The root jolted out of Jim's abdomen, pulled back for momentum then lurched back into his body. And again, and again, and again. Ricochets of blood sprayed into the air each time the root speared flesh.

Alora stopped. Jim laid in a sanguine pool, his stomach torn open and his insides mutilated into pulp. His eyes froze unblinking at the night skies. She stared at them until the hatred that consumed her slowly drained away. The root fell lifeless to the ground as the power left her.

Amongst dead bodies, Alora sunk to her knees and wept.