The Hard Path
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The spear went through the woman’s stomach, she wouldn’t have much blood left to spare soon. Not with all these injuries.
“Stop… mercy.” she pleaded. Unfortunately for her, this came across as a rather sad and pathetically laughable sight to the one who would then twist the weapon. Out of malice, out of spite. The bladed end cut through the victim’s entrails as the digestive acids poured out and seared the inside of her flesh. The woman howled in pain, the agonized screams would’ve been hard to miss out here in the flatlands. If only they didn’t now sit empty due to the actions of these… victims. Nothing but death could be seen or found in this little camp now.
“Mercy? You ask me for mercy?” Lagura mocked with disbelief before she kicked the injured man that laid on the floor next to the half gutted woman. Both of them dogs to torment, and in her mind, rightly so.
“Your friend here wants mercy, think she’s gonna get it? You’re really daft if you think I have any to waste on you two miserable shits. Mercy. Let me show you what I think about your people’s mercy.” Lagura bitterly said before she tore the spear back out of the woman. She then tossed it away and impaled it to her side on the ground; she’d rather use a nearby rock for this. More personal.
Aurum and its citizens had much to atone for, after all.
Lagura picked up the stone that was a bit larger than her palm before she crouched down on top of the defeated woman. There was one last request for mercy but… it was fruitless. Few in this world would’ve been so kind as to care. And certainly not people like her.
Lagura slammed down the rock into the guilty woman’s face, the hard and rough edges made sure to cut her flesh as the force of impact crushed the bone.
Blood sprayed out onto the floor and even onto the man beside; the screaming continued but only while the tongue was still attached to the throat. Only the gargles of an animal could be heard after. The skull splintered into the brain, the teeth blew back into the mouth and the nose was ripped out of its socket.
And then the eyes, they tore open as the brow ridge was crushed. The lips were torn, the face receded in a bleeding mass before Lagura impaled that last bit of mercy she thought Aurum deserved into the woman’s now truly empty mind.
The man looked on silently in horror, he had seen quite a bit of violence in his life. Most of it was at his own hands but this… her… the rumors were all true; something he had perhaps not truly expected. You hear the stories, the tales of abominable deeds meant to frighten all those who would listen into submission. And subservience. But as cruel as the Triumvirate could be…
Everything was feared for a reason under the golden skies of Aurum. These southern warriors most of all.
The man himself would fare no better, but Lagura still needed answers. Answers she would get one way or the other. She tried another rock, this one on his limbs. She didn’t want him to pathetically try to crawl away, after all. When he still wouldn’t answer she then proceeded to remove anything he didn’t need to survive. Fingers, ears and everything else that she thought would’ve meant something to him.
These warriors were known for many things. Brutality, ruthlessness, cruelty but above all… those beautiful lights that emanated from their hands. Their hatred and their fury, their pride and especially their vengeance. Thunder could be heard as her hatred melted his flesh. The man lit up like that beautiful Aurum sky with only a touch, bright and golden… like lightning and death.
He spoke only one thing before his demise; the weakness of a coward got him at the end. Cowards. For that is how Lagura saw this man and this woman who had taken so much from her. Their attack had come as the night had begun to appear off in that vast distance that spread out as far as the eyes could see. The warriors expected the firearms, the needles and even their own mockery of the lightning; pitifully contained into those little shock pistols of theirs. But this time, the attackers had brought something new. Smoke, a gas… the toxin. Something the warriors had not expected, and for which Lagura’s clan had paid the price severely. Her slaves had died, but they would be avenged.
Of that Aurum could be sure.
Two final things could be heard out here in the plains as the sun began to set. The man confessed a name, Aura, before the woman called out for her most trusted companion in hopes that she at least would have been spared from this depravity.
“Missa!”
Though despite the threatening distance from the surface, the remains of the poison still seeped down into the rocks and water of the forgotten cavern down below. Missa’s legs had been spared, her head remained thankfully intact and her chest had not broken from the violent and sudden fall. But her left arm laid immobile as blood poured out from the wounds. She had been shot.
The water around her rose up to her ears as she laid flat on the floor, the sounds of gunfire still freshly rang in her ears as the toxins slithered down in search of their latest prey. One of many during this somber dusk for the warriors.
“Lagura...” she tried to cry out but was instead bottle-necked by her own pain and shock.
“Lagura...” she hoarsely and near silently spoke out into the empty chamber around her. She longed for help, for support, from her master and her friend. Missa feared she had met the same fate as all the others. Her companions, so viciously struck down by the cowards who hide behind their blinding lights and weapons of a weak man’s fire. Aurum would pay for this insult, the thunder and the blood would demand it; now all but inevitable.
“La… gu-” Missa tried to speak one more time before coughing up in pain. The smells in her nose were nothing but putrid death. Her vision blurred and her blood flowed freely, but she still had to move. She did not have forever to wait down in this pit of despair nor would she want to. In a way she had been the fortunate one to have been taken aback by the sudden explosion; the third to be suffered by her companions within the span of one minute. She saw them freeze and fall where they stood. Their limbs would not move, their mouths could not speak and their flesh broke as the bullets struck them down. The attackers fought with their own vicious intent, such was this conflict.
The third explosion had caused the ground to collapse beneath Missa; the rest of her clan were all swallowed up by the smoke and fire above. Missa was the lucky one, though she did not and could not feel like it.
With a subdued yet pained howl and through the burning of her broken limb, Missa twisted and pulled herself up from the ground. Her sight became level to the floor as she forced her body to sit; any other day and she’d consider stopping her rough movement before she injured herself further and beyond repair. But she did not have the luxury of precaution at this time.
Missa continued to cough, she could start to sense the gas as it reached her and flooded the chamber. What a terrible fate, if she had landed on her face the paralysis might’ve drowned her in the little pond beneath her. A mockery of a death for a woman like her. A proud warrior who would not bow before the cowardly weapons of Aurum.
With the strength she had left, Missa finally pushed herself back onto her feet. She’d have stopped to cough yet again but instead wisely decided there was no reason she could not do so while moving.
“Lagura!” she tried to call out once more as she headed towards an opening in the wall across from her. It seems this chamber might’ve been a smaller part of a larger set of tunnels. There was no guarantee of another path out but she’d have rather gotten lost in a labyrinth for a while instead of succumbing to an execution like the rest of her clan. She could’ve only hoped her master had remained safe.
Missa continued limping towards the opening before covering her mouth and nose with her free hand, the familiar scent of death followed her in more ways than one. Screams and curses were loudly and recently heard though they had all now stopped. An ill omen, for she feared it was unlikely the outcome of the sudden battle would have ended in her clan’s favor. She did not know where her master was, Missa could only hope they would survive as she had.
A long rock tunnel stretched out before her that seemed to vary with its width and height. The deeper she went, the thicker the dark atmosphere became as the walls seemed to close in on her. The tunnel got narrower and even the ceiling seemed to be getting lower as the trail of blood poured out from Missa’s arm. If discovered, she could have been followed into this dark little road and into this miserable little dead end.
“Urgh… fuck.” Missa coughed as she felt nothing but a stone wall in front of her. She could barely see this deep in but after walking for about a minute it seemed she had reached the end of her path. As her temper swelled, despair overcame her usually relaxed demeanor. Would she really be reduced to dying down here, in a corner like an animal and so far from the ones she respected and admired? Is this all she was worth, was that the end of her power and dignity?
Her veins swelled as her fist tightened with the blood of the skies running through it. She lashed out in agony at the wall before her. The flash in her palm, this true strong light, was all that was needed to reignite the thunder in her eyes. She could not sit here and give in, nor would she.
She saw the ledge up above, previously hidden out of sight by the darkness and now revealed by the lightning’s sparks. It was nestled at the edge of another small tunnel over the wall in front of her. Perhaps it was another false hope but she truly did not intend to die here this day.
With the blood of thunder coursing through her veins, Missa lunged up to reach the stone ledge before dangling from it by her one unhindered arm. Her muscles stretched and her bones shuddered as she pulled herself up with all her might. But where an injured person’s strength was not enough, the small protrusions on the stone allowed the use of her feet as an added support. But even then, this was a taxing exertion which only seemed to worsen the flow from her injury. Missa felt as if she would’ve broken her power as a warrior had she shed a tear from the pain running through her body.
“Lagu...ra...” Missa grumbled as she finally climbed onto the ledge above. Both her hands had now been rendered raw in their own way and her vision worsened as she peered down into the second tunnel ahead. The good light shone in the distance signaling an exit out into the world and out to her longed for revenge against those who had hurt her master’s clan.
She stretched out her arm as the soft flow of her anguish illuminated the harsh rock all around her. She’d have to crawl towards safety and then in fact attempted to do so promptly. Her thunder, her will and body would be tested by the pain, the dark and the poison trying to get a hold of her broken self.
With each step she got closer to that light up ahead, though it grew dimmer with every moment that passed. She struggled, she cursed, she did not dare give into her death so soon in life. One last time she called out into the emptiness around her.
“Lagura!”
Perhaps her cry had been heard, perhaps her master had survived. She would not dare to think otherwise, for the pain would’ve been worse than the humiliation she felt from collapsing only halfway towards the exit.
A true warrior would’ve made it. She had failed her master. Those were her last, pained and somber thoughts before her vision distorted into nothingness. Grounded, she fainted on the hard, dry floor of the tunnel. Perhaps she would be found later. But it was doubtful that would’ve ended her suffering. For the hard path of the Stormkrah is not meant for the weak.