MELITA
Melita didn’t like the notion of vulnerability: shied away from it even on her best days, when the pain flickered and the memories grew, bittersweet, callous, and the whispers of not enough scraped at her mind. She never liked to think of herself as powerless or susceptible, even though in some aspects she always would be; dragged down to the bottom of a lake, choked by the ghost of her mother, forced to swallow down the ash, the bile, the soot, the decay of her friends and family around her. Here and now – it was happening again, and she be damned if it snapped at her features, if it tugged and swept her away, back down into that tattered rubble and ruin. Annihilation might have bit and clawed at her soul, at her heart, at her lungs, but it’d have to haul her kicking and screaming straight down to the denizens of hell.
Her last strike was a blistering crescendo of malice, of menace, of so much bottled up hatred and vitriol she wasn’t truly surprised to see the canine registered unconscious; and she’d gladly do it again. Phoebe’s loud call forced her to swing back to her left, where another prowled, and even she hadn’t had the staff in her hands, she might’ve clapped at Phoebe’s audacity and might. The wolf launched and attempted to strike, but luck and some sense of self-preservation had Phoebe’s assault hit the edge of the predator’s jaw. Melita could hear the crackling ripple of bone and stone before the great, keening whine, the beast swinging its head from side to side to be rid of the pain, the anguish, retreating back. “Well done,” she uttered with her same, vicious grin, then went to her right, where one more had taken up the bait, growling at her side, hackles raised, threats laced and lanced into the air. “Not today,” she snickered, she smirked, she laughed, and her staff was an extension of her arm, a sweeping gesture entrenched in overwhelming savagery and ferocity, intending to make and mark her sinister impact on its skull, on its side, and anywhere in between.
See I've come to burn your kingdom down
