The feel of the sword is like nothing she'd ever experienced before. Its thin yet devastating tip ripping through her body like it was nothing but old tissue paper, blood spurting out like a broken water hose. Large drops of precious crimson fluid dribbled from the steel's edge, plopping onto the dirt and pooling into tiny rivulets of betrayal. Strong yet rapidly paling hands shook as they reached upward to grip the sharp weapon currently impaled in her chest. Her palms stung as the steel bit into her weakening fingers, creating lines of red to appear and produce small beads of blood that joined the flood below her.
Oh. It was a slow realization that she'd been stabbed. Almost as if her own mind had refused even the notion of the thought. But her body, of course, did not lie. It shivered and writhed and gasped and coughed until finally giving out and stumbling into a demented kneel where one knee touched the ground but most of her body weight was supported by the sword propping her up. The retraction of the weapon hurt more than the initial attack, as it pulled back sharply and out the way it entered into. Her hands were cut deeper than before, and her body was left to tumble (as it was no longer a matter of balance) to the ground face-first.
She weakly turned her head to the side, where rocks and weeds dug into the soft skin of her cheek, and gasped, "Only a true coward attacks from behind."
The murderer-to-be chuckled darkly and seemed to hold no reservations about his imminent crime. The sword tip roughly tapped her side mockingly, glistening sublimely with her own blood. A sudden cough erupted from her mouth, spilling even more of the vital fluid than she thought possible onto the crushed weeds. The ocean (as it was surely not a pool anymore) of blood beneath her crept out from her peripheral, a subtle reminder of her dwindling lifespan. Quickly, before she fell into the eternal darkness, the woman craned her neck upward to catch a fading glimpse of her killer.
The truth knocked the air out of her already winded lungs, and her eyes widened to the size of saucers. It couldn't be... Another cough pushed its way from her lips, "Wha-?"
Before she could even finish the sentence, her newly-realized killer brutally stomped on top of the prone body, unleashing a whole new torrent of pain. The foot remained as it mercilessly pushed more and more force onto the woman. She finally screamed in agony.
A forced breath, once, twice, and finally the light died behind emerald green eyes. The woman had breathed her last.
Had an outsider been watching the dramatic scene, they'd of likely dismissed it as a sad but common event. Many in the kingdom had fallen to the deadly hands of the richer populace, and it was commonplace to witness the murder of another. The well-dressed man holding the gilded sword would have been briefly examined as a richer, well-off man whom could not be charged for killing so callously in such a rough part of the kingdoms. It was only normal, after all.
The casual observer might have seen the bloody lips of the woman move quietly, whispering something that could only be shared between her and her killer. They might have glimpsed the murderous intent carefully masked beneath stony blue eyes as the well-dressed killer hatefully and maliciously kicked the already vacant body. They would never know that the two were friends of many years, and had a bond tempered with the flames of war and tragedy.
Nor would they ever know what the victim's last message to her killer was.
Only the traitor knew that.
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Twenty years later the hastily buried woman crawled up from the dirt and took a heaving breath.
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