For Koharu, watching what Zenos does to Sarhnai is even worse than going through what he’d done to Koharu herself.
She is shaking too hard to move, her battered body protesting even the slightest movement, but even so, at her heart she wants to push herself back up onto her feet, wants to do exactly what she did before and place herself between the crown prince and her soul-sister, wants to make a shield of her body if the ones she weaves with her magicks aren’t strong enough.
But she knows that she is too weak for that. That her body would offer even less protection than her shields do, that Zenos could simply smash her out of his way with one casual, backhanded blow. He is unstoppable, implacable.
She hates him.
She has never felt such a dark, strong emotion towards anyone. She has been angry, of course, and she has not faltered while facing down beings like Livia, Thordan, the Heavens’ Ward, and Lahabrea, determined to make certain that they can harm no one else with their cruel, careless actions, even if that means she has to get her hands dirty and wrest the life out of them ilm by ilm.
But what she feels for Zenos is beyond anything so simple and clear-cut as anger. She doesn’t simply want him dead to keep him from harming anyone else; she wants him to suffer as he dies. She wants him to be repaid for every hurt he’s inflicting on Sarhnai right now--repaid tenfold, no, a hundredfold, no, even that might not be enough. She wants to cause him pain. She wants to break every bone in his body then grind her heel down on each one until he’s choking on blood.
She has never felt like this before, never been awash in bloodlust so intense that she finds herself biting her lip so hard that the taste of copper floods her mouth again, fresh and hot.
She wonders if this is what Sarhnai feels like most of the time.
Sarhnai. It’s terrible to watch, the way the other Au Ra is beaten down relentlessly. Up until this point, Koharu had thought that Sarhnai was the unstoppable one, the greatest warrior in any land.
She doesn’t like seeing that disproved.
When Sarhnai charges forward again as best she can, Koharu tries again to cry out to her, to call her back--but in vain. Her throat aches with the effort, despite very little sound being produced, so instead she grits her teeth and forces herself to focus, throwing out a few more spells despite her lack of mana, one more, just one more, surely she can manage that...
She eventually can’t manage it, and while she doesn’t completely black out, her vision goes dim and she finds herself sprawled out on her bruised, throbbing back with no memory of telling herself to lie down again. The dark, smoke-filled sky overhead looks like it’s spinning ever so slightly, the ground beneath her feels as if it’s rising and falling, as if she were in a boat on the sea-
Then Sarhnai letting out a shout grounds Koharu in the present moment again. It takes everything in her simply to turn her head...and then her eyes go wide with unconcealed horror as Zenos lashes out to break another bone and her soul-sister crumples to the ground nearby, so close and yet so far. But even that isn’t enough to stop Sarhnai. Once again she gets back up and hurls herself at him, despite how obviously futile such a thing is, and keeps fighting, struggling and thrashing like a fish in a net, with about as much effect on Garlemald’s savage crown prince.
Within seconds, she’s been smashed down by another blow from one of those swords, and this time, she does not get up.
Koharu lies there, motionless but for her own shallow breathing, wanting more than anything to roll onto her side and crawl towards her soul-sister but knowing on an instinctive level that staying still is the smart play here. She is a rabbit and Zenos is a wolf, already glutted on fresh prey, and so long as she remains still, she can survive this; if she runs, he will give chase and tear out her throat simply on instinct.
It is a different sort of agony, to simply lie there as Sarhnai pushes herself far beyond what she should, clearly attempting not to attack, but to reach Koharu’s side; but only once Zenos has vanished back into the gloom, wreathed and then concealed by licking, snapping flames and thick, acrid smoke, does Koharu follow suit, pushing herself up into a sitting position despite how much her muscles object to it. Then she crawls across the rocky, uneven ground as quickly as she can (something in one of her arms protests this in a way the speaks of a sprain, and there’s a pain in her hip where she’d first hit the ground after being thrown that hampers her efforts to move at all, much less move quickly, and she won’t be surprised later when she learns that her leg is dislocated, the ball joint popped right out of its socket; but right now that pain is shunted aside as, dragging that leg, she finally makes it to Sarhnai’s side.
Koharu reaches out to gently turn her over, to give herself a better view of the many injuries--and she chokes on a sob as she takes in the ruin that is Sarhnai’s once-strong, healthy body. That sob doesn’t come out right--again, it comes out all but silent--but the blue-haired girl is too intent on the far more important matter of healing her soul-sister to notice or care that her voice, always quiet in the first place, isn’t working at all right now.
Settling in for what she knows will be a long job, Koharu carefully hauls the upper part of Sarhnai’s body into her lap, curling herself around the other Au Ra protectively as she gathers up the tattered shreds of her aether and begins to heal the unconscious warrior.
Her legs are already a mottled mass of bruises, and Koharu gives a low scoff of disgust that only a healer could make--how much worse did Sarhnai make her injuries by forcing herself back to her feet? How much longer will she have to simply sit in bed and recover? Koharu is careful in directing her healing magicks--the last thing she wants is for Sarhnai's femur to heal this way--twisted and broken, not at all lined up the way it should be. There’s nothing more she can do for those injuries out here; she needs a splint, and also a pulley system, to use to pull Sarhnai's leg straight and then keep it that way, to ensure that it heals properly. Even so, she can see to the other injuries--the one on her hand, the ragged slash across her upper chest, half a dozen (or is it an actual dozen?) others both internal and external.
It’s only once she’s mended as much as she can, enough to be certain that her soul-sister will live through the night, at least, that Koharu lets her weary head fall back against the ground, the soft glow of healing magicks fading as she thinks back to that last exchange. How Zenos’s blade had snapped after striking Sarhnai down. She can see the broken blade lying there out of the corner of her eye, and as she allows her eyes to drift closed, dozing lightly while waiting for an incoming rescue squad to help them to some sort of medical facilities, she decides that, once someone lifts Sarhnai off of her, she’s going to collect both pieces of that broken sword.
It could be fitting, perhaps even satisfying, to see it reforged. To make use of it, once it has been melted down, tempered, the metal folded countless times until it is stronger than ever it was. She knows of a man in Kugane who could do such a thing, a swordsmith who is an undisputed master of his craft. If she tells him who she truly is, and that she means to quench the blade with the blood of the Garlean crown prince, he might even agree to take the job.
Even if he doesn’t...perhaps it’s time she learned from another school of combat. She will never be able to best Zenos in sheer brute strength; but coupled with her shinobi training…that speed and a high-quality blade in her hands might get her somewhere.
Opening her eyes, Koharu looks down into Sarhnai’s face once again, noting how drawn and pained her expression is even while unconscious...and that hot anger, that seething hatred she’d felt towards Zenos before goes absolutely cold and solidifies, the usual warm, gentle rain in her heart freezing itself into sharp shards of hail.
Whether it gets her somewhere or not, she is most certainly going to try.
Prompt #27: Hail | ✧ Koharu Sumeragi (WoL) + Sarhnai Dotharl (WoL) ✧ | SB spoilers
She is shaking too hard to move, her battered body protesting even the slightest movement, but even so, at her heart she wants to push herself back up onto her feet, wants to do exactly what she did before and place herself between the crown prince and her soul-sister, wants to make a shield of her body if the ones she weaves with her magicks aren’t strong enough.
But she knows that she is too weak for that. That her body would offer even less protection than her shields do, that Zenos could simply smash her out of his way with one casual, backhanded blow. He is unstoppable, implacable.
She hates him.
She has never felt such a dark, strong emotion towards anyone. She has been angry, of course, and she has not faltered while facing down beings like Livia, Thordan, the Heavens’ Ward, and Lahabrea, determined to make certain that they can harm no one else with their cruel, careless actions, even if that means she has to get her hands dirty and wrest the life out of them ilm by ilm.
But what she feels for Zenos is beyond anything so simple and clear-cut as anger. She doesn’t simply want him dead to keep him from harming anyone else; she wants him to suffer as he dies. She wants him to be repaid for every hurt he’s inflicting on Sarhnai right now--repaid tenfold, no, a hundredfold, no, even that might not be enough. She wants to cause him pain. She wants to break every bone in his body then grind her heel down on each one until he’s choking on blood.
She has never felt like this before, never been awash in bloodlust so intense that she finds herself biting her lip so hard that the taste of copper floods her mouth again, fresh and hot.
She wonders if this is what Sarhnai feels like most of the time.
Sarhnai. It’s terrible to watch, the way the other Au Ra is beaten down relentlessly. Up until this point, Koharu had thought that Sarhnai was the unstoppable one, the greatest warrior in any land.
She doesn’t like seeing that disproved.
When Sarhnai charges forward again as best she can, Koharu tries again to cry out to her, to call her back--but in vain. Her throat aches with the effort, despite very little sound being produced, so instead she grits her teeth and forces herself to focus, throwing out a few more spells despite her lack of mana, one more, just one more, surely she can manage that...
She eventually can’t manage it, and while she doesn’t completely black out, her vision goes dim and she finds herself sprawled out on her bruised, throbbing back with no memory of telling herself to lie down again. The dark, smoke-filled sky overhead looks like it’s spinning ever so slightly, the ground beneath her feels as if it’s rising and falling, as if she were in a boat on the sea-
Then Sarhnai letting out a shout grounds Koharu in the present moment again. It takes everything in her simply to turn her head...and then her eyes go wide with unconcealed horror as Zenos lashes out to break another bone and her soul-sister crumples to the ground nearby, so close and yet so far. But even that isn’t enough to stop Sarhnai. Once again she gets back up and hurls herself at him, despite how obviously futile such a thing is, and keeps fighting, struggling and thrashing like a fish in a net, with about as much effect on Garlemald’s savage crown prince.
Within seconds, she’s been smashed down by another blow from one of those swords, and this time, she does not get up.
Koharu lies there, motionless but for her own shallow breathing, wanting more than anything to roll onto her side and crawl towards her soul-sister but knowing on an instinctive level that staying still is the smart play here. She is a rabbit and Zenos is a wolf, already glutted on fresh prey, and so long as she remains still, she can survive this; if she runs, he will give chase and tear out her throat simply on instinct.
It is a different sort of agony, to simply lie there as Sarhnai pushes herself far beyond what she should, clearly attempting not to attack, but to reach Koharu’s side; but only once Zenos has vanished back into the gloom, wreathed and then concealed by licking, snapping flames and thick, acrid smoke, does Koharu follow suit, pushing herself up into a sitting position despite how much her muscles object to it. Then she crawls across the rocky, uneven ground as quickly as she can (something in one of her arms protests this in a way the speaks of a sprain, and there’s a pain in her hip where she’d first hit the ground after being thrown that hampers her efforts to move at all, much less move quickly, and she won’t be surprised later when she learns that her leg is dislocated, the ball joint popped right out of its socket; but right now that pain is shunted aside as, dragging that leg, she finally makes it to Sarhnai’s side.
Koharu reaches out to gently turn her over, to give herself a better view of the many injuries--and she chokes on a sob as she takes in the ruin that is Sarhnai’s once-strong, healthy body. That sob doesn’t come out right--again, it comes out all but silent--but the blue-haired girl is too intent on the far more important matter of healing her soul-sister to notice or care that her voice, always quiet in the first place, isn’t working at all right now.
Settling in for what she knows will be a long job, Koharu carefully hauls the upper part of Sarhnai’s body into her lap, curling herself around the other Au Ra protectively as she gathers up the tattered shreds of her aether and begins to heal the unconscious warrior.
Her legs are already a mottled mass of bruises, and Koharu gives a low scoff of disgust that only a healer could make--how much worse did Sarhnai make her injuries by forcing herself back to her feet? How much longer will she have to simply sit in bed and recover? Koharu is careful in directing her healing magicks--the last thing she wants is for Sarhnai's femur to heal this way--twisted and broken, not at all lined up the way it should be. There’s nothing more she can do for those injuries out here; she needs a splint, and also a pulley system, to use to pull Sarhnai's leg straight and then keep it that way, to ensure that it heals properly. Even so, she can see to the other injuries--the one on her hand, the ragged slash across her upper chest, half a dozen (or is it an actual dozen?) others both internal and external.
It’s only once she’s mended as much as she can, enough to be certain that her soul-sister will live through the night, at least, that Koharu lets her weary head fall back against the ground, the soft glow of healing magicks fading as she thinks back to that last exchange. How Zenos’s blade had snapped after striking Sarhnai down. She can see the broken blade lying there out of the corner of her eye, and as she allows her eyes to drift closed, dozing lightly while waiting for an incoming rescue squad to help them to some sort of medical facilities, she decides that, once someone lifts Sarhnai off of her, she’s going to collect both pieces of that broken sword.
It could be fitting, perhaps even satisfying, to see it reforged. To make use of it, once it has been melted down, tempered, the metal folded countless times until it is stronger than ever it was. She knows of a man in Kugane who could do such a thing, a swordsmith who is an undisputed master of his craft. If she tells him who she truly is, and that she means to quench the blade with the blood of the Garlean crown prince, he might even agree to take the job.
Even if he doesn’t...perhaps it’s time she learned from another school of combat. She will never be able to best Zenos in sheer brute strength; but coupled with her shinobi training…that speed and a high-quality blade in her hands might get her somewhere.
Opening her eyes, Koharu looks down into Sarhnai’s face once again, noting how drawn and pained her expression is even while unconscious...and that hot anger, that seething hatred she’d felt towards Zenos before goes absolutely cold and solidifies, the usual warm, gentle rain in her heart freezing itself into sharp shards of hail.
Whether it gets her somewhere or not, she is most certainly going to try.