TW AHEAD; INCLUDING: vague mentions of sexual assault, character death, gore, violence. Suicidal thoughts and actions to a degree; not very explicit, but present.
Silence remained - deafening in the fog-carpeted cavern. A distant dripping sound, discordant in its timing, was the only thing beside Zora's breathing to fill her ears.
Gladiator.Zora barked, imperious, giving her chin a snooty tilt upward to try to avoid the creeping sense of unease coiling in her gut.
She didn't want to be here. She didn't know how the hell green mists and a faint moonlight glow were both present in this cave, when she couldn't even find the entrance again.
Claws clicked on stone, the odd dripping sound growing louder. Zora fixed her face into a scowl, expecting her Mercer to round the corner and intending to admonish her, or at least play up her annoyance.
It was not Gladiator.
Scarlet, viscous lifeblood dripped from his stained maw, glistening with moisture in the faint, eerie glow of the cave. He blinked at her, and smiled.
No.Zora said. Any facial expression beyond frozen-pond, lake-deep horror was wiped so clean from her face, it was as if a sultry smile or cruel sneer had never even thought about gracing her features.
No.
It's been a while.He sighed.
What? You thought you were the only ones to end up here?
As if, Zora thought, for no good thing in her life had ever stayed hers.
Zora couldn't feel her limbs or her nose or her soul. She was a hollow shell, the outside of her made of fragile, aching porcelain and nothing left inside but a breath of stale and dead air.
Where...She rasped, the words dying in her throat even as she forced them out, forced life into them to cross the far-too-small space between herself and him.
A pink tongue slid from his jaws, smearing at the gore splashed across his features. Yes, Zora already knew where at least part of Dia was.
She had no tears to cry, not for this man - he'd only enjoy her grief if she dared to wear it. She felt nothing, but it wasn't nothing, just her mind trying desperately to convince itself all that she was feeling wasn't real, was distant and delirious...To face it all head-on would, she was sure, reopen scars on her psyche that ran deep, ran festering when opened, and had only just begun to sew themselves together once again.
If this life she was condemned to live was a never-ending nightmare, then why should she try to wake up? Better to tap out of this round - She would not let this creature sate himself without consequence, and survival was not something she was interested in with the stink of viscera staining the scent of her lover on the air.
Her one regret was dying, this time, without Gladiator by her side. No golden and blue eyes to look into this time, no sweet face to etch into her memory even as she spilled into nothing, slow and cold.
No feathery-soft ears to whisper truths that should have been said long ago into, with her very last shuddering gurgles.
Zora's killer stepped forward, almost laughably tentative with a slight tilt to his head, as though confused by her reaction. Zora's expression contorted into despair, disgust, and visceral terror.
It was such a....it was such a Dia movement, and the idea he would go as far, even incidentally, to taint even her lover's movements within Zora's memory - that finally ignited her latent grief and fear into fury.
Sick bastard. Fuck you.
Zora lunged.
