MELITA
She should’ve been better. She should’ve had more control over her anger, over the contempt, over the mercurial loathing piercing her veins. But she didn’t. The honeybee youth, once so golden and halcyon and still vividly wild, coiled into those manifestations of rage and infernos. She allowed them to consume her. She permitted them to fester, wither, and decay. She offered her venom, her vitriol, to her muscles and limbs, to the pulsing wrath curling its way over her mind – red and red, blood and blood, ichor and ichor, a rampant force clinging to her heart.All Kiada received was a head nod in confirmation before the girl came at her.
Do your worst.
Oh, she would.
It might’ve been chilling, to witness the impact abhorrence had on the girl: with her sunny smiles, with her warm, radiant disposition. It was gone now, the flames fanned, a quick, swift pace, her staff extended out of her right hand, remembering precision, remembering poise, remembering the hundreds of directions Wessex had divulged, had invested in her training. This was not life or death – but the result of so much hostility, acrimony, and revulsion anchored to her soul, the murky waters of a world long since gone (but not in her head). She grounded herself as she moved, like a snake, like an asp, charging, swinging her staff upwards, intending to crack it down over Kiada’s hands, make her drop the weapon, make her cry, make her bleed, make her sob.
Pain for pain, her mind echoed and chiseled. It was a sense of justice, an outcry of revenge, a pervading storm nestled in her roots and her nightmares; tempestuous and awful, a terrible, treacherous little thing in the dark. She wanted to ask Kiada about her regrets again, if she’d turned over a new leaf, or if she conspired to have some new paragon, some new falsehood, some new, stupefied, greedy saint put upon a pedestal, avaricious hands clawing for foretold masters, begging and pleading for the world to die and fizzle and decay again.
See I've come to burn your kingdom down
