some rebellion au

1. Empathy (The earth's Carrion)

The sky is veiled with clouds overhead, shrouding the earth in a curtain of darkness. Ensi feels her boots sink into the dirt, hears them squelch in the mix of mud, blood, and human innards.

Soldiers cry as they fall around her, painted red with the colors of war. Iron scrapes against iron, and she sees the sparks fly on the periphery of her vision. She's danced this dance before, sung this song, played this game— she knows it like the heartlines carved against her palms.

What are you waiting for? The Empress' voice echoes in her skull, a howl in the raging abyss between her ears. Hew their carcasses for my altar, Hound.

"General!"

A whistle pierces through the chaos and a body hits the ground, rendered static. She turns too late; an arrow is driven through his jugular, the fletching colored purple in the colors of disobedience.

She recognizes him, just barely through the shit and blood— a freshly promoted officer. Dead, for your self-indulgence. Ensi bites down on the rage rising in her stomach, redirecting it into the glare she pins on the enemy forces.

Her grip tightens on her polearm, and she unstraps it from her back. Mercy, as her Majesty had so lovingly called it, when she had first placed it in her calloused palms. It is yours to deliver.

Out of the corner of her eye, movement. A man leaps for her with a knife in hand, and before she knows it, Mercy powers through his helmet and splits him into two.

The next thirteen or so men she kills all die in a similar fashion— bodies falling apart with blood frothing from their mouths, slipping down their chins like red waterfalls. Limbs are sliced clean, bones shatter under the weight of her blade, and heads are lopped off with a practiced ease.

She's just finished polishing off her fourteenth when she spins around, just in time for her blade to scrape against another, crying tears of liquid fire as it redirects into the soil.

"Loyalty," the new face snarls, clad in iron plating, "They'll bury you in this field today."

Her eyes flicker to the purple headband tied around his helmet, and the roaring lion pressed into the badge on his chest. Must be the commander of this ragtag bunch. His blade is flimsy, drunk and unruly after tasting the blood of so many of her men— Ensi can tell. The cockiness of this overgrown coot oozes off of him in rancid waves.

She knows her sneer is hideous. Mercy's tip lifts up and out from where it has sunken in the earth; she points it to the sun, one hand gripping the staff, the other resting dormant at her hip.

"How does it feel," she taunts as her blade snakes between her fingers, "knowing that when you fail to kill me, you will be responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands?"

The man's face twists in anger, then frustration as he parries her sudden blow, grimacing under her weight.

"Your arrogance precedes your reputation, General," he hisses, adjusting his grip on his sword, "considering that you will never be anything more than a filthy dog of the Regenta."

She twirls her blade in her palms, letting his sword rebound off the haft, returning it with a swing twice the speed and thrice the fury. He blocks it hastily, clumsily, stepping backwards, open—

A shadow flickers in the corner of her vision just as she's about to follow through, and she ducks just in time for a lance to come swiping inches over her head. Ensi scoffs as she kicks out blindly, and her boot finds a set of ribs behind her; they buckle under her weight, shattering. Lucky hit. Someone collapses behind her, and her polearm comes up, blocking the commander's sword from above.