#rg:doa

the operation was relatively easy when their opponent was just another ship.

they were spotted quickly, but all too late: cain already had a wave crashing against them, bigger than them, bigger than anything, blocking out the light of the full moon for a moment before trickling into the brig, into the hold, and freezing at his command. the weapons were worthless. it was easier, then, to kill suryans locked in ice.

“kill them all.” cain’s voice was unforgiving. the suryans struggled as the enemy crew boarded their ship, but all worthless squirming. these bits of scum, flotsam and jetsam all in one disgusting heap tainting the elvan seas — 

“and make sure they’re dead. twice.”

ice melted where he walked, and cain walked with purpose, the door to the bridge frozen enough so that he could kick it open.

“don’t,” he began, arms and hands already in the air, the blood in the captain’s veins held captive by invisible strings, “try.”

cain paused in mock thought as he continued forward, forced the other male’s wrists onto the floor. “or do. please do.” so i can hurt you more. so i can hear you s c r e a m. “do you know what you’ve taken from me?”

the other male only glowered at him. perfect. now cain could twist his legs. and his arms. the bones cracked along with the steady rocking of the ship atop the ocean. how horribly foolish, to infuriate him in his domain. his hands dropped; so did the captain onto the floor, neck exposed and ready for cain to step on.

“you took her from me.” the other male writhed, attempted to lift his arms but could not. “and i’m going to make you suffer.”

in a ship, rope was easy to find. and infuriated, cain was a much more formidable opponent. people often thought the sea beautiful; cain had a temper that could rival the deep blues, had a storm already brewing in his chest, spitting thunder and lightning with every rough handling of the man who could barely use his limbs.

the crew said nothing of the bound prisoner.

another is a dead mother cradling a living child.

it’s not the mother’s face he pays attention to. the child is empty, he knows; dead too soon, living too much. she’s clinging onto a small rag doll, small enough for the soft arm to be held between stubby little fingers.

“she’s just asleep, isn’t she?”

cero recognises that voice because it had once been his own. he crouches down, unable to detect the fresh scent of death because of the mask over his face. but he’s able to see and hear grief and death, and that is enough.

“let her rest,” he tells the child, voice muted and surprisingly calm. he’s left people behind and he has killed them and he will live with them; it’s easier to let children believe that death cannot touch love. brown eyes, warm still from the fires of war, can see through the lie. but she gets up, and leaves the dead, and cero carries her to safety — or as safe as the travel to due can be.

later, when they’re about to leave, a messenger tells them that the general has been found dead; the lie that streams out of cero’s mouth is airtight. his jaw is locked in deception, and they all believe the excuse. it isn’t one of us, they believe, the suryans have many enemies.

She understands then what thoughts were going through their heads when she turns her head and finds a child, perhaps not more than seven or eight in age, curled up in pain with ghastly wounds decorating both his arms. She realizes then, quite painfully, that the cause of the child’s misery is her. The child’s pain and tears exist because of her. She could not blame it on anyone else this time, not the soldiers who ran after her or the horse that got spooked, no, this time, it is obviously all her fault. 

“M-mother....” The child calls out and her heart constricts painfully in her chest. 

One by one, the men dismount their horses and begin to enclose around her and the child. No scholar is needed to figure out what they intended to do. There is no use in trying to talk them out of it, all sense of morality and conscience had surely been erased by her father’s charismatic delivery of lies. Now, they are nothing but killing machines-- she cannot consider them human for only it is only death in their minds. 

“Keep away.” Her tone is laced with warning even as she remains seated on the ground from where she had fallen off her horse. Every fiber of her being tingles with adrenaline; her senses all on full alert even as they heed her words and pause. “Turn back and mount your horses.” She orders them again though she does the opposite and inches closer to the child who now lay half unconscious. 

They begin to enclose around her and the child once more. “You know we cannot do that, your highness. We have our orders.” That answer, of course, does nothing to ease the tension. She expects nothing less of them especially when the desire to kill is obvious on all their faces. Behind her, the child’s only signs of life are the pained moans he lets out from what she realizes are severely broken bones from where the horse had trampled over him. 

“Get back, I said!” The authority in her voice is almost unrecognizable for she was never used to asserting her own power but the situation calls for nothing less from her. As expected, the men no longer give a care for any of her orders as they close in on them with flames blooming from their palms. She stands up now, walking the remaining feet between them and meeting them halfway. “I will not let you hurt this child!” 

They only sneer in response to her and continue their onward march. In sheer anger at their disobedience, she marches forward, palms outstretched, and pushes the soldier who stood walked directly in her path. “I said get back!!” She repeats again but her force is only met with resistance as he grabs hold of her wrists and tries to lock her arms into submission. His strong grip on her wrists tells her that he could easily snap them but he is holding back because she is still of royal descent. 

The obvious degradation only deepens her anger and she struggles and thrashes wildly in his hold. “Let go of me, you insolent prick!!” Her own flames begin to dance at her palms but by then, it seems as though it was too late. When she is finally freed from her captor, who now lay in pain on the ground from the burns, she turns her head and realizes with horror that the other men had already formed a circle around the vulnerable child and were having their fun kicking him. 

Everything around her becomes red then; her emotions, seeing no bounds,  became the fuel that lit the flames of her ultimate wrath. The familiar feeling of her chi zinging in her veins is the only thing that made sense to her and soon flames danced around her arms and the cracking sound of lightning filled the air. 

“I SAID GET AWAY FROM HIM!!!!” 

The ribbons of fire that her wrath created succeed in burning everything in its wake but it is only when the smoke clears does she realize the magnitude of what she has just done. In a sick and cruel alteration of fate, she finds the soldiers curled up in a far off corner alive and still breathing and when she turns her gaze to look for the child, she finds only the same pool of blood with burn marks around it but no child in sight. 

The truth of what had just occurred comes to her then but even as she repeatedly blinks through her tears to clear her vision, the child-- not even he’s corpse -- is to be found. She falls to her knees then as the painful realization of her sin renders everything else incomprehensible. 

they were names, numbers, positions, carefully marked on a map. and cero was masked with the same darkness that brought this war, that they shoved down his throat. it was easy enough, he thought, to skirt around the perimeter. suryans looked up, or straight ahead, and only ever looked down to crush the worms underneath their feet.

first: five soldiers.

quick little thing, cero was, this monster with the little knives in his boot lodged in the back of running necks and hands snapping lives shut and a single blade out of a pair stained with the blood that stems from a neck. the bodies were disposed of, placed into indiscernible graves.

second: two more.

one, at the entrance of the room his target was residing in. could have been more, if cero hadn’t been careful, if he hadn’t taken his sweet time watching from the ground. the soldier was dragged inside — quietly.

and finally, this: the pig who was dressed (or, apparently, undressed) for war, who would have alerted everyone of his presence had it not been for the knife thrown at his outstretched fist.

cero didn’t have long to enjoy the latter. the face was familiar, belonged to one who had once patted his head and called him a good lad, who shook hands with his father. now these eyes looked at him in the darkness, burning fear as a candle was lit by the bedside by fire shooting out of cero’s finger as he sat on the fat man’s chest.

“how’s dúrcel?” asked the masked man, the deep curves of a devil’s face dancing in soft light. nothing like the sun, no. a blade, too, was resting against the whore with him, ready to attack if need be: that would make eight. pity -- cero was two people short of a good murder.

silence, then: “who are you? duuri assassin?”

cero shrugged. the knife in the other man’s knuckles was taken out. blood never did show on black clothes. the flat side, tainted now, was wiped on the general’s bare chest. “or i just want to kill you. how about that? how about that, huh? anyway, i’m on top — i’m in the position to ask questions.” and the tip, against a fat chin. “how’s dúrcel?”

“…mikhail?”

finally — there — cero smiled, under the cloth over his nose, under the mask over his face.

“i think your head would be a wonderful present to my father.”

the smaller blade was buried in the general’s open mouth, cavernous; the larger, resting against the whore’s mouth. to her, cero smiled again, although he supposed the expression was lost now. he shook his head at her instead, clicked his tongue a little as the male choked on his own blood, his own tongue pinned to the back of his mouth. and the liquid flowed, too, upon the pillow, sinking into the sheets.

“now…” cero moved off of him, crawled over the female. it would’ve been romantic, really, if there wasn’t so much blood, and if she wasn’t sobbing at the blade nudging her mouth open, allowing him to take her tongue between his finger and his thumb. “terribly sorry about this, but i don’t think you’ll be able to suck anyone’s cock for a while. doing you a favour, really.”

off the muscle came; so did the soundless scream. and it fell silent as the bigger blade buried itself between her eyes, right into her skull. when it came off, cero peeked in out of curiosity. brains were so interesting, seen inside where they should be, and not splayed upon the ground.

cero was casual about the way he walked to the other side of the bed again, grabbed the dead man’s head, lobbed off that fat neck and separated it from his shoulders. out came the oil-soaked rope; his hands would smell odd later from it, and the blood, too. to be fair, the oesophagus was cut clean; so was the spine.

“what a wonderful day,” cero laughed softly, hanging the decapitated head by the open door after gathering his things. a hole in the ground opened before him; he had to be quick about setting the rope on fire, had to be quick about the way it spread quickly, before the earth closed over his head.

The repulsive scent of burning flesh greets the second princess once the door to her carriage is pulled open by the coachman. The orange and red hues of flames that cover almost every patch of land available could almost rival the fire display of Suryan festivities. But she remembers then that this is a Suryan festivity; the king had succeeded in brainwashing his men into thinking that the purge on the unfortunates are events worth great celebrations. 

“Princess Hikari.” The coachman scurries back to his post at the sight of the approaching man and leaves her in his presence. He greets her with a ninety degree bow and a disgustingly smug sneer on his lips. “Welcome! We are very pleased that you could join us here, your highness. Your men have been waiting for you.” 

She needs not to turn her head to face the new arrival to know who he is; only one person could find such happiness given the present circumstances, she thinks to herself. “Thank you for the welcome, Minister. I trust....that everyone has been doing well.” The words make her sick to her stomach but she has to stand firm-- everyone’s eyes are on her and if she makes the mistake of falling into the preconceived notions that have set for her, she would be handing them their victory with her own hands. 

“Of course, your highness, and we have been eagerly and patiently waiting for you to join us.” His voice is smug and grates on her nerves. “Six of our best Suryan soldiers will accompany you to the sight were the unfortunates were last sighted. I am sure your father has given you his own instructions so I will take my leave now for I have my own area to take care of.”

“Alright.” 

“Have fun then, princess.” Hikari watches the old man mount his horse before speeding off into the darkness and leaving her alone with soldiers. 

One of them, then, approaches her with a horse in hand and without saying anything, she mounts the horse and gestures for them to lead the way. They ride into the darkness and flank her on both sides; whether it is to keep her safe or to ensure that she does not go anywhere, she isn’t sure. She is only certain of the fact that if she wishes to escape them, the only option would be to run away from them and hope that they do not catch up with her. 

The opportunity for her to flee presents itself when they stop at a waterhole near a foliage for the horses. She leads her horse first into the water and while it drinks, she turns her attention to her companions whom she finds engrossed in caring for their own animals and chatting amongst themselves. 

Throwing complete caution to the wind, she silently leads the horse to the trees. When the horse finally enters through the canopy of trees, she kicks its side and holds onto the reigns as it began to run at top speed. A silent prayer is on her lips as she asks the heavens to grant her this escape but in mere seconds, the stomping hooves of army horses echo behind her and she knows that they will catch up to her in no time at all. 

Her heart thuds so loudly against her rib cage that she isn’t sure if the pounding she hears are sounds from the animal or if it is her own heart. Goosebumps break out on her skin as they close in on her; her horse pants loudly beneath her but to give up now would be waste of her efforts so she pushes it forward-- pushes it even more. 

it is the gentle breeze that wakes her up for good. it brings clarity to the thoughts of a body that doesn’t rest peacefully in duur’s castle. such clarity that makes you wonder whether it is a blessing or her own doom. the innocence that sheltered her was left in every bandage and in every tear stained face and in every underweight body. the most innocent thing she had was now the child that rested on her arms. she had the peaceful expression of someone that knows that their parents are resting within the stars. her tired body seemed to grow cold by the minute inside the princess’ arms and it brings a frown to the eldest child face, a wrinkle to her forehead. 

ahreum tries to call for the girl and she shakes her gently in her embrace. her breath is frantic and fear makes her fingers cold. she feels like she is detached from her body for her mind was relentlessly denying that moment. there was no breathing disturbing the girl’s chest and there was no beating of heart against ahreum’s sweaty palms. and then it hits her, sinks deep into her soul. and a sound of agony leaves her lips together with her tears because this was never what she expected. her whole body shakes and she watches as her guards come to take the girl away. she watches her own hands, pale and shivering and it comes to her that she had that girl’s last breath in her arms. the princess put her to a sleep that she would never wake up from.