Protea and red spider lily, a gift to you for your grave,

But are you dead?

Don’t struggle. This is what you're made for.

It burned. It burned like frozen ice picks of cold steel metal were being shoved under their skin, under their scales, burned like the day they’d lost everything, lost their life, lost their home, lost their humanity.

Stop crying, weapons don’t weep. And you’re a weapon, aren’t you?

She was meant to be dead.

She was meant to be lifeless, limp, and unmoving stuck on that pike of rock that had torn through her body, from her stomach up into her upper back.

She was meant to be soaked in the blood, wheezing, and choking on the gold fluid that was her own, as the approaching coming of death consumed her. Her eyes were meant to be glazed and dull, her skin paling and sickly from the loss of blood. She would cry in her final moments, and it would be a torn emotion between gratefulness of the freedom from all the pain, and the enraged unfairness of how her life had been.

But she wasn’t.

Her fingers twitched as clarity came back. It was dark, hot, and wet in what she guessed was a prison through her thick delirious state. She was so, so unbearably tired, her wings limp and heavy, unable to open her eyes.

You’re tired? Weapons don’t get tired. Don’t make me convince you to be obedient, 103.

I want to be good, she tried to say, but she couldn’t even part her lips, let alone form the words.

Everything hurts.

Get up, 103. Don’t make me repeat myself.

I’m trying!

She tried to move, desperate. She just wanted the pain to stop, she wanted to be good, she didn’t want to be bad-

I gave my warning.

She thrashed with sudden energy, frantic to get away, away, away- and there was a crack, a sharp stinging sound that stunned her, twitching before she suddenly collapsed in on herself, the wet support flowing away.

Fotovolides shot up right, tossing her arms over her head, wings flaring frantically. Her eyes of blue bell and daisy ringed yellow flicked back, forth, back, forth, back, forth- her breathing panicked and tight and wheezed. She raggedly inhaled, and then choked, tears welling her eyes as she crumbled in on herself, wheezing at the acidic air and the way it burned her lungs and throat.

Fotovolides didn’t do well to change. She didn’t do well with new sudden things.

She was like a never-ending flow of gasoline, light her up and let her scorch all that she touched. It was a lovely way to burn, from the centre spark of a roaring flame.

They’ll know our name, Little Rifle. They’ll know, for the fear of the flame you cause, they’ll know, for you burn with a fire no one can touch, nor control.

“N-No,”

Only I can control you. Only I can keep you safe.

For this is what we are, a mere product of war. Aren’t you mad for the Beings that have harmed you? Don’t you wish for the ability to put them in their place?

“S-shut up-” Fotovolides choked, hands scrabbling at muck-wet hair to cover her ears.

Let me help you, little Rifle. Let me in. Let me show what we can be.

“SHUT UP!” Fotovolides shrieked, and then there was fire.

Their eyes crinkled, a weak pleating smile on their face. “You’re hiding, pup. You're losing touch with everything you are, everything you want to be. They don’t know how strong you really are.”

They shifted, sighing. “Come now, look at me. Tell me, pup, when has a dragon ever died from the poison of a snake?”

Fotovolides found herself staring at a rock wall.

It would have been normal if it wasn’t covered in blood. She blinked at it, before silently looking down at her hands. The only humane one she had left was warped and twisted into a Drakonic claw, with speckled scales and hooked talons. The other was metal, burnt into her arm via a cuff, starting just below her elbow.

Both were also covered in blood.

Why was she still alive?

She should be dead, hadn’t the rock pillar stabbed her through her Life-Force?

She guessed not.

The air still burned at her lungs, and Fotovolides turned around, away from the wall, ignoring the limp figure only a couple of steps away.

Fotovolides knew they wouldn’t be getting back up. She didn’t need to check.

The world was black, gritted rocky terrain, with twisted rock pillars that reached for the abyssal darkness of the ‘sky’. Some of the pillars held corpses, broken figures of failures of whom who’d tried to escape. Fotovolides could smell the putrid sour scent of death and decay from here.

Screams howled on the ashen wind, and Fotovolides realised why it was so hard to breathe- the atmosphere was filled with soot and ash.

Her hair hung in her face, small embers spluttering as she looked around, surveying her new surroundings. So this was Tartarus?

Fotovolides’s eyes dipped down to look at her body, silent at the tattered, dissolved clothes she wore, not very useful nor covenant. Through the tears and holes, she could see the dusty gold flat oval, just below her rib cage, where the rock had torn through her stomach and out in the high midpoint of her back.

Writhing hurt formed in her chest, and she ignored it. Another mark to her growing collection, another permanent mark in her skin of her training, of her torture, of her life-  

Dark wisps, eyes of icy cold blue, eyes of volcano orange…. The orange ones were always three, huge, massive, staring, watching, darker than the abyss coming to swallow her whole, the fuzziness of her head, how she would move without thought, without command, no- with command, but not her own. A slave, some would say. A warrior, others would say. 

Fotovolides quietly looked back at the limp body, head shattered against the rock, splattering red blood like flicked paint across a canvas.

She was an artist of death, she supposed, as it seems that everything she touched died.

But now, she had no master, did she not?

And that left Fotovolides with a single question.

How does a rifle function without the creature to use it?