if i die tomorrow - permanent hiatus

splinter

     Almost immediately things started going wrong.

     The combat felt strange, the longblade itself and the hand wielding it. Messed up in all the wrong places, consequently messing me up, the formation, the stance, the balance. My left hand felt too clumsy, too slow, fumbling for a blow that would have been second nature to my dominant hand.

     Yet, I wasn't chosen as the best swordsman of this age for nothing.

     I carved my way through the Yiga closest to me, blood flying as I slashed savagely, the reach wider than I was used to. I recovered gracelessly and ground my teeth as another wave of enemies charged at me. 

     How many were there? If I was fumbling this badly, then how was Sadie doing?

     Where was Macheena? Her right hand? 

     I plowed through the confusion of the horde battle, my eyes darting all over the room. Where were they? I had to attack at the heart before this battle got out of hand. 

     A swish of a torn skirt. Before I was conscious of what I was doing, I was sprinting, shoving through bodies, almost slipping on a puddle of blood. My stolen blade flashed in my hands as all those who stood on my way fell.

     I was seeing her again, again, again and I couldn't stop. Zelda. Her dress muddy and smeared with my blood. Zelda. Blood. Her eyes. The sickly pink light that had washed over her skin. 

     Zelda, dead because I couldn't protect her. Sadie, hurt because I wasn't there to help her. 

     I would not let it happen again. I would not have another name on the bloodstained list.

     Then I could see her, and I had to stop dead and stare for a moment, a breath caught.

     Her face was ghostly pale, her sharp hazel eyes and the trail of blood running down her cheek stark against the white of her skin. She was holding her weapon with both hands, swinging it wildly like a baseball bat. 

     I fought my laughter. However awkward her fighting was, I had to admit that she was holding her own fine. She was still alive. Fiercely alive.

     She turned, spotted me, and then we were back to back, holding out our blades against the world, the glow of crimson as the blood moon clawed itself up on the way to the zenith. 

     "How're the ribs?" I muttered, and with a flick of my wrist, another Yiga fell. 

     "How's the arm?" She shot back.

     A moment of silence, then we both laughed, a short, rough note, and plunged back into the battle.

     It took us an eternity and a breath to empty the room that was to be our grave. Body after body clad in torn red fabric piled up, streams of blood slowly leaking onto the dusty floorboards. Masks littered the battlefield like a sprinkle of salt on a wooden table.

     Sadie looked on the verge of collapse as she warily surveyed the wreckage, one hand on her ribs. 

     Then her eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head slightly to the side just as a throwing blade flew past her ear. 

     Her hair stirred in the slight breeze as the knife sailed, slicing through the air, to land with a thunk on the wall by her face.

     Our eyes snapped simultaniously to the person who had thrown it -- Macheena, and the man who had been in the cell with Sadie.

     "Well, well, well..." Macheena sauntered closer, the hulking mass of muscles of a man trailing behind her. "Looks like I underestimated you, girl. Learned something from this disgrace here?"