End of the Line

Author's note: This chapter and the upcoming one will be violent. Viewers discretion is advised.

((Please, if you haven’t listened to it, check out the Lacuna Coil song “Our Truth”. The chapter is somewhat synced to it.))

A soft shamisen guitar bleeds in

A small village in Mermouthia, not far from the Allied Kingdoms, right across the border. The afternoon sun shines down mercilessly from the relentlessly blue sky. A mixture of brick buildings and earth and wood covered hovels dot the landscape.

Picture – the village center. A small fountain that has long since stopped working, is filled with broken pottery shards and trash. Well-armed men patrol the perimeter of the town, silently cursing the gods for the burning afternoon heat intermingled with jungle humidity. No children play merrily across the old village square. The town was dead, some would say, killed off after an invasion from the Demon Lord a few years back. When the Watchers moved in for good. Nobody cared.

An unlucky few travelers from New World vanished without a trace in these parts. Usually found in some godforsaken hole in the ground or disregarded in the forest after their usefulness ran out - their carcasses rotting away.

The shamisen guitar dies… and a rising synthesizer beat with mesmerizing alto vocals kicks in

Explosion.

An idle Watcher carriage, sitting off to the side of the square, suddenly is in the air.

A man, sitting on one of the benches, has time to open his eyes in disbelief, the carriage surreal against the blue, blue sky before it thunders down to earth, crushing him instantly.

CUT TO

A woman.

Encased in a tribal warrior outfit, red war paint down her face, giving her the appearance of a demon from a faraway land… glowing red eyes, green skin glistening. She walks with a purpose, unmindful of the swarms of rebels shook up from their torpor, looking out the windows, running at her down the main street.

Clock is ticking while I'm killing time

She walks to the center of the square, and there, unnoticed during the carriage’s dramatic transformation into a pile of rubble, lay an injured rebel swordsman, his armor cracked and spitting blood beneath his helmet. He doesn’t appear to see the woman coming for it.

Spinning all around nothing else they can do to turn it back

The green woman reaches down, roughly, without elegance, tearing off the helmet of the rebel’s armor, flinging it over her head. Looking down, there is a bloody mask of what once was a man’s face, caked with gore. It spits out a bloody bubble, trying to speak, but the green woman’s hand flashes out, impacting messily, caving in the rebel’s face, bone giving away all too easily, a sickening crunch, grey matter oozing out of the man’s ears.

Breaking partnership in this crime

As the green woman pulls her fist back, her head snaps to the side. A squad of rebel troops, armed with bows and arrows, run up to a fortified wall, training their bows at the intruder. The take aim, firing off arrows. Behind them, a rebel mounting a cannon fires off a canon ball, but with the way they had the cannon hurriedly mounted, the accuracy was reduced, relying the rebel’s grip to keep it steady - the recoil of the 8,000 pound metal cannon firing a simple canon was too much. It tore through the air, punching a massive hole in the flimsy hovel behind the green woman, while the kinetic **** kicked up dirt at her feet.

Ripping up the past… condescending smile

Diving forward, the green woman engages the three rebels. She leaps onto one, her inhumanly strong fingers punching into the man’s throat, making his neck a red ruin, tearing out the larynx. As the man falls backwards, trying to scream, the green woman falls on him, her legs pistoning down, then up, pulling the rebel’s bow away with her.

Time to forget

Before the others can realign their aim, the green woman is in the air, silhouetted against the blue sky, the stolen bow held by the lower limb, swinging down and connecting with another rebel, the hard wood body shifting the second rebel’s face six inches to the right of where it should be. A spray of blood and teeth fall onto the ground shortly before the rebel does.

The falling of my truth

Landing, the green woman twirls the bow in her grasp, pointing it at the last rebel, who fires an arrow over the green woman’s shoulder. The green woman pulls the string back, letting loose a volley of arrows into the rebel’s belly. The bodkin arrow tore through the flimsy 4 ring chainmail, the rebel having neglected to put in the heavier 8 rings that could have saved his life. The rebel drops, screaming.

Time to forget… Our ways of our truth

The green woman stands, surveying the situation. A rebel soldier, dead, his face caved in lying back against the ground. His pals, dead, one shot in the chest with an arrow, the other his throat tore out. One rebel, his face a gory mess after a bow smashed against his features. ****, but still alive. But soon, reinforcements would come. She draws out her sword, ready for the inevitable.

Come and tease me

She leaps out of the fortified wall, clinging to the side of a building. Pirouetting in the air until she clears the street, wary of secluded archers.

Landing on the dirty road, she spots the inevitable reinforcements arriving. A mass of rebel swordsmen evacuating the dirty, beat-up buildings ready at the drawl.

The green woman considers the situation. Engage and eliminate the rebels here, or simply continue on to their HQ? If she engaged them here, it would be even more of a clusterfuck than this mission already was, making a spectacle of what was supposed to be a simple rescue mission. If she went straightaway to the rebel HQ, she would have to deal with reinforcements piling into the corridors. Either way, the alarm has been raised.

Then again… she was an ogre. Hated and despised by the Allied Kingdoms, even without a human husband. Fight here, she thought. Kill them all. Make the rebels think twice before snatching a poor, helpless human-monster couple ever again.