❛the ends justify the means.❜
( part two of deadwater kings )
The board is set and Shabina chose her side. The better world she dreamed of is finally within her grasp, but she struggles when the path to victory seems to be paved in blood. The long...
"They made you into a weapon and told you to find peace."
―s.z.
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Living without her sigils wasn't the jarring shift Lin feared it would be. It was strange, yes, but not wholly unbearable. She could take the cold, the discomfort, and the weakness with enough grace to not embarrass herself.
It was the loneliness that grated on her.
She peered through the scope of her rifle as hot bricks warmed through the her clothes and right into the frigid skin of her belly and chest. The sun beat down on her scalp. If she wasn't careful, she'd burn soon.
The island bustled beneath her, a thriving city of people. Even so far above them, she felt the undercurrent of fear lining their casual chatter. If she still had her sigils, she could have listened in on their conversations to pass the time and judged them for their shallow worries. As it was, her weak human ears skittered along the surface of a million words.
And she was alone with her own thoughts. Yes, that was the worst.
She shifted minutely to keep her legs awake. On the other end of her scope, she watched a trio of young men talking on the deck of their ship.
Their clothes were new and clean, newer and cleaner than their skin. They were young, too, around Lin's age. They didn't leave the deck, forcing the sailors to work around them as the other men carried cargo from the docks to the ship's hold. The scope warped her vision slightly without the sigils to compensate, so she couldn't quite make out the details of their faces or bodies, but she knew them intimately. She knew the slope of their shoulders and the angle of their heads, when they walked she could all but smell their swagger.
She'd been watching them for the past five days, making sure they were the only ones of their kind there. The only hunters.
Lin eyed the small blue flags hanging from the ships' rigging, trailing down to the leaves of rooftop gardens closer to her. The calculations didn't take long. She compensated manually, letting her sights drift a centimeter above and a hair and a half to the left of her target.
Her freshly-human heart sped up in anticipation, then again in irritation at herself.
One-two, her heartbeat said. She willed it to shut up. One and two.
The hammering of her pulse slowed with her breaths. One, two. One. Two.
One. And two.
She squeezed the trigger right before the quiet between beats. The rifle's recoil bruised into her skin, thrice as powerful as it had been when she had her sigils. The tallest hunter's head exploded as a bullet as long as a finger shattered his skull.
One. Two.
Her second target dropped, missing half his face. He stumbled but didn't fall, mouth wide open in pain and shock.
