The crimson liquid poured out of the woman’s throat as her head was sliced clean off. Her body hit the ground in slow motion. The enemy chucked her head into a pile of mud-making the woman’s soul appear as unworthy as the dirt she now lay in. The attacker displayed no signs of regret and quickly moved onto the next victim.
My people were being slaughtered before my eyes, and there was almost nothing I could do about it. I knew what I needed to do, but my body was frozen in place. The ringing in my ears was so prominent that the screams in the background were nullified. I could see Ares’ lips shifting, but my mind was far too distraught to understand the words escaping them. He was running towards me when a two soldiers yanked him back. Ares was my go to man, he was a part of our army and helped me make important decisions. Seeing him collapse before my eyes was painful. I tried to look away and turned to my left, except in doing so my eyes met Erin-one of our top rank fighters-who appeared to be struggling almost as much as Ares. His body was slammed against a nearby building, smashed, beaten, and splattered like an ant beneath my foot. I saw one of the enemy fighters approach a small child, and was instantly snapped out of my trance. I grabbed my mace and charged into battle. The woman that headed towards the child wore a red and gold mask that resembled a Phoenix. Her eyes could not be seen through the mask, and her hair was extremely short, dark, and unevenly cut. She had a scar that ran across her entire stomach that was not fully healed. The wound was so fresh that the stitches holding her together had not yet been removed.

When I approached, her and I danced around each other studying each other's movements
as the small child scurried away. I felt relieved that I could now fight without risk of harming him and let out a breath that I did not know I had been holding. The enemy then looked at my mace before lifting her long sleeves to reveal a gold claw-like weapon. She had on multiple rings with blades attached to them. Each blade was different and some were smooth while some were jagged and contained multiple smaller blades. I was still studying her interesting weapon when she leapt towards me. I managed to swiftly dodge her and attempted to swiftly strike her back, but she was faster than a bullet blasting out of a rifle. Our weapons clanked together and a horrible screeching sound emerged as my metallic mace embraced her golden claws.

“My master has said that I am not to kill you, but that does not mean that we can not have a little fun.” The woman had a raspy voice and sounded all too smug for my liking.

“I hope you burn like a weak campfire in the afterlife.” I pushed her off of me and dug my mace into her rough skin. She let out a scream of pain as her hand fell to the ground. I was about to go for the other when she clawed at my wrist. I flinched as the blood dripped down my arm and lost my grip on her. She then stood up quickly and wrapped her sleeve around the bleeding arm.

“You’ll pay for that!” She said running towards me.

I gripped my mace tighter and prepared myself for her attack, nothing happened.

The woman ran right past me and hit something else, someone else.

I heard an all too familiar voice and my heart sank. No.

NO. This CAN’T be happening. He didn't even scream. He instead let out a small cry of pain, gasped for air, then fell to the ground. I rushed over to him and put his small head on my lap. I wanted to kill the woman who had done this, but she had already ran away and right now saying goodbye to my baby brother, Adan, was more important. My revenge could wait.

“Naila, you need to keep fighting. Our village is dying. Azarel has been training for months and playing with extreme forces, we never stood a chance. But, you should run. Save yourself, and know that I love you.”

“I’ll be fine, I'll run. I love you too.” He smiled and squeezed my hand one final time before his eyes rolled to the back of his head.

Part of me wanted to listen to him, wanted to run, but I could not. I would rather perish with my people then be a coward-that was something that Adan never understood, so I lied to him and said I'd run to please him one final time before he summoned his last breath. Azarel and I loved the battle, the power, and the glory, but Adan did not. He was not built for royalty and I hope that he is granted a simplistic afterlife.

I bowed my head to him and was about to turn around when suddenly a cloud of smoke wrapped itself around me. I didn't even have to turn around to know who was behind me.