Private Finished Clipped Wings

When it was her turn, she heard the blade before she felt it. Mostly because she didn't really feel anything at all, just a dull sort of ache where he had driven in the blade. As she dropped to the floor his words, almost ironically, echoed around her head. It was true, she supposed. There were many things she regretted and for once did not stop herself from thinking about them, even though she knew she could. Her biggest regret was that she and Soren hadn't had nearly as much time as she wanted. At least, she thought, if there is something after this life then they would be there together.

As she watched the hooded man leave, she felt Soren pull her into his arms. With what was left of her strength, she gently held his hand, simply waiting for the end to come. It was only when he told her he loved her and pulled the other girl in too she knew what he was about to do. She didn't have the strength to speak, though her mind was desperately screaming at him not to do it. Elizabeth knew she couldn't go on living without Soren now, she needed him too much.

Almost seconds after feeling Soren's hands on her wounds, Liz could feel her strength come flooding back to her. Now she was holding him instead. She couldn't do anything but watch. Watch as he bled out onto the floor, onto her. She couldn't even cry anymore, the mind-shifting now firmly in place. All she could do was hold him, hold him and repeat that she loved him. Even if the words held no emotion any more, he had to know how she felt and how she always will feel.

It was fitting that the last emotion Yoka was going to feel before she died was fury.

It was as white hot and burned through her like the blade through her abdomen. The pain was on secondary to the rage that ignited. Fire danced behind Yoka's amber eyes.

This was how she, Yoka Sake, was going to die? This? At the hands of some unknown man with a knife and a weird babbling voice?

Yoka felt her soul start to slip out of her. Everything that bound her to her body snapped at once. Gone was her contract with Mephis, with Cat. So much for what Yoka had sold.

She was almost gone when her soul was wrenched back into her body, which was weak and bloodied and shaking, but alive...unlike the man whose wings had been cut off before them.

Yoka stood up on her unsteady feet. Her vision swayed. She looked down at the girl who was holding onto the wingless man and crying.

"You need to leave this place and don't look back," Yoka said. She felt her magic start to slide off of her as exhaustion set in. A ring of fire flashed and burst around her body, igniting any loose pieces of debris near her.

Yoka was a fox and it was a fox that burst out of the building and disappeared into the streets at night with one thought on her mind: Revenge.

And Murphy.