Not from her.
She was born in the darkness. To her, their bodies are luminous—as if lit by the torches they must’ve extinguished when they laid their little trap.
The Other feeds on the squishy sounds their hearts make, digesting their near-silent whispers:
“Think I’ll get in trouble if I piss over the edge?”
“I wouldn’t do it. Not unless you wanna risk gettin’ your balls fried.”
The Other scowls at their crude language, wondering if possible mates of their own fae species find that sort of thing attractive. She most certainly does not.
“It’s been a while. I think nobody’s comin’.” A brief pause, then, “Perhaps the Ath bitch was the one he already stabbed? Was his informant certain she had black hair?”
“Long, black, and straight, skin like snow. Heard it with my own ears. She’ll come, I can feel it in my bones.”
The Other drops into a low crouch and leans forward, claiming a clearer view.
“What if she doesn’t bring reinforcements and this was all a waste of time for a single rebel? We shoulda just found a way to storm her dwelling, then I wouldn’t be standin’ here ready to piss myself.”
“Nobody in their right mind would come down here alone. But if she does, at least she’ll be easy to dispose of. I’d like to be home before the rise. I’m fuckin’ starved.”
The Other decides these fae deserve the grisly end that’s coming for them, though she regrets not having more time to draw it out.
Make them weep.
She scours every one of the soldiers while pulling deep whiffs of the hot, humid air, seeking the one who stamped his scent on the blade, frowning.
This Rekk is smarter than the ones waiting in such obvious places. No matter. He, too, will be lured out by blood.
She cracks a smile.
Lots of it.
Silently skulking farther along the bridge, The Other tucks the dagger away, pausing atop the group of heavily armored males at the northern end. She rips the iron ring off her finger, opening herself to the Creators. To songs she’s studied from below the crust of her icy lake whenever they howl, squeal, or shriek down from above.
She does not cower from the clamor against her eardrums. She wears pain like a safety net—one with the terrible tunes penetrating her small, too-delicate ears and violent mind.
She leaps.
Falls.
Lands in a crouch before a group of unassuming males—hands clawed, a savage sort of glee spread across her face.
She sings Clode’s strangling tune before the beaded soldiers get a chance to speak a single word.
It’s not a gentle song. The Other does not leave room for mercy. There are no sips of breath for gasped begging. Instead, she minces their lungs in an instant, reveling in their horrified agony.
Blood erupts from the soldiers’ mouths, their bulging eyes leaking ruddy tears as they claw at their throats, some falling where they stand. Others try to escape, staggering into walls or off the bridge, dead long before they hit the ground.
The Other rips twin daggers free of her bandolier, spinning. Flicking them through the air. The blades slice toward the far side of the bridge, into the eyes of two soldiers just beyond the reach of her strangling tune before they have a chance to wield their own words.
They crumble where they stand.
Another soldier trips on the corpses, tumbling over the edge. The sound of his body breaking against a lower bridge thumps through the chaos.
A ruthless smile spreads across The Other’s face—no longer reminiscent of her fiercely beautiful host. Now sharp and savage.
Monstrous.
More blades whizz through the air, The Other’s deadly sky-borne blows finding home in flesh and bone, slotting into the frail slits between sturdy plates of armor.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Soldiers fall in a clatter of metal and meat while The Other sings the air into nothingness, stripping the oxygen and nulling the soldiers’ ability to sing. Making the atmosphere inhospitable for the flames her opponents need to see what she’s doing. Where her blades are being aimed.
They thought the darkness was their ally, but it was their ruin. As it so often is for many who underestimate the shroud of a sunless sky.
A storm of unforeseen reserve troops spill from the southern tunnel, screaming.
Charging.
One orders the bridge to split before The Other can pulverize his lungs, and cracks weave through the stone.
The bridge jerks.
She falters, hissing through bared teeth, catching her footing with a fist firmly planted on the rock. “Glei te ah no veirie nahh,” she screams, whipping up her head. “Glei te ah no veirie!”
Clode churns into a squealing dance of snipped breaths and collapsing airways, barging into soldiers’ chests in gusty shoves, tossing them off the crumbling bridge with a spray of stone.
Many try to retreat, though only a few make it back into the tunnel.
The Other laughs, pushing to a stand, hunting the clutch of deserters, her swift steps gaining ground until she’s close enough to sink iron daggers into the back of their necks with a flick of her wrist. She leaps, pouring upon another like a seething wave, ripping his head back and slashing his throat.
Blood sprays, coating her hands and face.
She charges the remaining two, salivating for the taste of their blood on her lips. She draws closer.
Closer.
The tunnel opens, and she passes into a small circular cavern lit by so many flaming sconces she’s forced to squint, her sooty eyes not attuned to the harsh glare.
The hairs on the back of her neck lift—
A loud clanking has her whipping around to see a door of metal bars now blocking the exit. Locking her in.
She hisses, spinning in a churn of black hair, blood, and spitting rage, appraising the many soldiers lining the cavern’s wall—arm to arm, red helmets hiding their faces and swords braced at their hips.
A trap.
A fight ring.
Some of them sing spitting, hissing tunes, flames whipping from elemental containment wealds and lit sconces.
Spearing straight for her.
With a lashing sneer, The Other sings Clode’s suffocating tune. “Glei te ah no veirie. Ata nei del te nahh. Mele, Clode. Mele!”
The ribboning flames sputter into oblivion, as with most of the lit sconces dotted around the walls, filling the cavern with a blissful gloom.
Many soldiers drop to their knees, clawing at their throats.
The Other descends on one of the two who beat her here, slashing a blade through the gap in his armor. His intestines bulge from the gory hack, and she’s on the next in an instant, wrapping her limbs around his head and lashing it to the side. His neck snaps with a satisfying crack, and he falls to the ground in a floppy heap at her feet.
Surveying her remaining opponents, she releases a deep, bellowing word that gouges a path up her throat. Like she just heaved a sharp stone from the pit of her gut.
“Vobanth!”
The cavern shakes with Bulder’s answer—a jagged cleft prying the ground apart, yawning like the crooked maw of some great beast.
Soldiers scream, hands whipping out to steady themselves against the rough-hewn wall, some falling into the grinding abyss, crushed by the shifting stone to the tune of breaking bones and popping skulls.
Blood and brain matter spray from the rumbling sever as it chews.
The soldiers stagger, looking between each other, the stench of urine wafting through the air as they appear to realize they’ve trapped themselves inside a cage with a monster. A fierce, powerful monster who should have two beads hanging from her lobe rather than the null clip in the tip of her tapered ear.
If they were aware she only knew how to correctly pronounce a few of Bulder’s words, perhaps they wouldn’t be so scared. Even so, The Other preens at the fear in their eyes, a sharp smile splitting her blood-splattered face into something charmed from the depths of a gory terror.
Such paltry opponents.