Lyra Cinder is cast out from the Fort, the largest remaining training settlement for human mages outside of the Alliance. Without a killer extinct and far too much use of her conscience, she is of no use to the mages who have refused peace with thei...
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Blood had such a distinct existence, the smell so pungent that he could taste it on his tongue without even opening his mouth. It spilled like rain as he cut through his enemies, yet the moment if left the body it turned to sludge. Each fight flew by in flashes of magnificent crimson yet ended with a sickening brown that fell to black as it mixed with the dirt. Below his feet, it pooled around humans who'd never had a chance of making it through the day.
With or without him showing up.
Blood was also as stubborn as Riff, refusing to let go of clothing when washed and finding every fissure in his skin to cling to even when he scrubbed it with a brush. That was why he had always worn black, even though most mages chose white. Men like Wren fought from a distance using chains, but Riff had always preferred to be in the face of his adversaries. It made it more real, the struggle for life, the fight against the monsters that slaughtered his people, the risk of loss, the triumph of victory.
Blood lingered, for days sometimes, a drop hiding on the insides of his cuffs, or the back of his shoulder that he'd missed when washing. Each time he found more of it, he brushed it away, but the remembrance of its origin did not fade so quickly. Riff was forced to relive the final gasps of his victims, remember the trembling of the limbs before they settled, and the last light of their eyes before the haze of death washed their souls from this world.
Such things had never bothered him when it had been the blood of dark creatures that he shed. They were monsters, then and now, creatures that preyed on humans and drank them to death. Each one he rid the world of made this world a better place. Killing Zero rebels hadn't been much different at first, at least the ones in charge who had instigated this bloody war. They were as devoid of conscience as the vampires, so it was more of the same.
It was the foot soldiers that pained him—humans that had taken up arms against an enemy they knew nothing about all so they could eat in the evening and sleep under the safety of four walls. Killing the first young man who had no more meat on his bones than a carcass ravaged by wolves had hit the hardest. It hadn't been so much his actual death, but that Riff's chains cut through him like paper. There was no resistance, no magic to protect him, just flesh too loose for the brittle bones beneath as Riff sliced his chains through the body. The man fell much like the rest, and Riff rarely had time to linger on his kills as he had to hit the Zero complexes and run, but the harrowing feeling remained.
Of the truly fragile nature of life in this plane.
Each subsequent loss of life he felt less and less, until there was so little left of him that he eagerly awaited the void each day he woke. Not yet. He told himself every day that he washed the ground with more innocent blood. Not until the world was safe. But would it ever be? If the Zero fell and they reconciled with vampires for a renewed world, how long would it last before they were at each other's throats again? Was this all worth it? Or would there never truly be peace in a world where men like Riff were born and cursed to lives of murder and violence.
