“BAD BLOOD”

it was the first thing she remembered in her dream, she couldn’t quite place how she had gotten in a fight, or why… she only knew she was fighting.

She was not in clothes she knew… it was like her older dreams where she felt she was someone else entirely. A long dress, cut to move in but unfamiliar, taller…
And one hand , she realized was made entirely of bones.

She could move it as normal, but it was a parody of a hand, draped in a long silk sleeve that was somewhere between renaissance and Asian.

Because she had used that hand, she thought there would be no effect at all.

She was horrified to hear she was wrong.

The Negaverser screamed, clutching at his eyes, screaming bloody murder that she had blinded him.
She wanted suddenly to apologize but knew she must not, she could not…they were killers. And she realized she knew him…. Just someone from one of the local schools, she’d seen him in one of the shops so often.

“Surely theirs another way… can’t we… can’t we FIX them? Can’t we undo….” She tried to protest and a voice from the meeting cut her short.

“If they were turned, they must DIE.” Just like that.

And she found herself attacking again, she cast the blood as before but the next person it struck, the blood ran down, and every drop that flowed forth cut like razors and they screamed, and screamed.

She was chilled to the bone but knew she could not stop, because even as she attacked she knew…KNEW the princess was waiting. Knew that she had to help the princesses old court, they had to win…had to fight…

And yet for every person she cut down, screaming and writing till she waded in their blood, she could have sworn all too well that she knew their faces… and that she could have saved at least a few.

She woke in a cold sweat and trembling, clutching her blankets to her chest and thinking of friends and loved ones…lost to the dark.