***
Keira had been fighting forever. She was born fighting the grey gangly demons, and would die thus. She knew nothing else, except the glow of Mercius' eyes that she kept with her at all times. She stabbed and slashed and killed with ease, using her curved knife to disembowel and rend the writhing demon flesh before her. The knife in her hand was like an extension of her own arm, flowing from one kill to the next, seeming to sing in her grasp.
Not once did she lose sight of the eyes in her head; Mercius' eyes. They were a constant reminder of her resolve and purpose; they kept the great and ugly fear from overwhelming and overpowering her. She fought and killed for those burning eyes that she believed could somehow see her. She fought and killed for love. Her face was set in a rictus of hate and determination, but love flowed through her veins, sharing space with the rage that consumed her and drove her onward.
Keira was drenched in black blood, and the more-natural-looking red blood that flowed from her various gashes dripped steadily down her body. She felt no pain, though, only love and rage and determination. She knew not to what end she was doing battle. Would she have to kill these thousands of unrelenting demons in order to find Mercius? Would she have to fight to the center of them and then fight her way out? She knew not, and cared less. She would fight for Mercius until her soul crumbled and her flesh rotted from her bones.
Keira fought on, heedless of consequence to her person, and not caring how far she had to take this murder. On she fought, with love in her heart and rage in her veins.
Then, coming to her clearly like the tolling of a bell, she heard a single word in her head: “Remember.”
It was sweet and somehow glorious, containing within its three syllables all the love that she had known and felt since she had met Mercius. Still slashing and stabbing, she focused her mind upon the voice in her head, but there was nothing there but the resonance of that single word. Remember. On she fought, but now there was a thread in her mind of listening and waiting that she hadn’t known previously. She waited for more, but no more came. And so she fought.
Then, suddenly, realization came to her. Remember. That was all she had heard, but it rang a bell deep within her. It forced her mind to focus not only on the eyes of her love, but on his face. She remembered his features. Soft and hard at once, conveying the utmost love along with the purest determination and hate. The eyes were burning windows into his loving soul, yes, but the face was the beautiful frame in which the picture was set; the bed of jewels in which the diamonds were found.
Then, still slashing and hacking with her physical body, Keira focused her mind on Mercius' face. She saw the hard, ruggedly handsome features, hovering over her, covered in sweat. She smelled the green again, and the earth. Heard once more the soft breeze through the whispering leaves. She felt the fleshy pads of his fingertips, callused from swordplay, rubbing softly up and down the skin of her back; felt the firm grasp of his strong hands on her waist.
She was lost in this mental nostalgia even as her body sweated and bled and killed. And in the midst of her remembrance, she heard, deep within the confines of her soul, the voice again: Hurry, Mercius.
It was a shout this time, instead of a whisper, but it carried anxiety and pain and love in equal proportion. Then, her man. Oh how lovely it was to hear his voice echo inside her head. How glorious, even if it was just an illusion, to feel the strength that he carried with him, and the rage that he could send forth at need. NO! It was a single word she heard, but it carried with it the epitome of maddened rage and hate interspersed with the deepest passion that she had ever heard. Her heart rejoiced and she lashed out at her attackers with renewed violence and energy. She would slay them all, if she must, in order to hear one word, one syllable, uttered from her Mercius' lips.
She would die, willingly, to hear his voice one more time.