“Juna.”
She kept forcing the dagger into the long-dead banespawn’s flesh ignoring him entirely. Her entire world revolved around this repetitious motion of her hand causing blood to gush out all over the wooden floor.
Kiran approached her from behind. “I’m fairly certain they’re dead. There’s no further need for this.”
Her arm went up and backward like before, except this time around, she forced the dagger into their body more harshly driving it deep into their eviscerated chest. She kept the dagger implanted in them whilst tightly gripping it with all of her strength.
Kiran felt disturbed witnessing her like this. Rather than confront her disturbing behavior, he focused on trying to get them to safety first. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I heard you from all the way out there so there’s a good chance I wasn’t the only one.”
She yanked the dagger out and began to stand up. She still kept her back facing him. She looked down at the banespawn that sat there against the back room’s wall covered in their own blood from her dozens, if not hundreds of stabbing motions.
Suddenly she turned and briskly walked past him without even bothering to look him in the eye.
He tried to catch up with her as she exited the building. What’s gotten into her? Is she incapable of even saying a single word to me?
“You’re making this really difficult,” he said quietly from behind. He tried grabbing her wrist, but she smoothly freed it instantly. He tried a little harder this time only for her to pull around and thrust her dagger to his throat as he tightly grasped her other free wrist.
Madness dwelled in her eyes. Though it was hard to see them, the sight enhancement potion revealed enough to him to see this truth.
The whites of her eyes revealed themselves prominently. She grit her teeth while maintaining the position of the dagger against the bare flesh of his neck. With one quick motion, he would lie there on the ground in a pool of his own blood. Would she then do to him what he caught her doing to the banespawn? With behavior and maddening eyes like this, anything was possible.
It was like this wasn’t Juna at all. This person looked like her, but her entire way of being was twisted and morphed. If he hadn’t seen Noreko die, he might’ve thought he had taken on her appearance, but he couldn’t reasonably think that. Without a shadow of a doubt, Noreko was dead. This was definitely her. It was just not a side of her he had ever encountered until now.
She kept grimacing painfully as she tightly clenched her jaw that looked about ready to break apart. Her dagger remained an inch away from his neck’s skin as he finally let go of one of her other wrist. “Just…just go away.”
She pulled her dagger away and stormed off in the same direction. He kept up not feeling eager to just let her go off on her own even if she had just made that threatening maneuver towards him.
“I don’t know what exactly has gotten into you, but we should probably figure this all out in a safer location than here.”
“You can do as you please without me.”
What has gotten into you? A part of him wanted to lash out at her uncaring behavior. He could easily yell at her or berate her, but he held that part of himself back. “So I’m supposed to just leave you out here all alone? I didn’t come out here only to find you and then walk off leaving you to the wolves.”
They made a left down a street that headed off in the opposite direction he ideally wanted to head towards. She would prefer to head down further into the lower sector, than afford them an opportunity to find safety behind the guarded walls.
“Listen, let’s just slow down a little. We can talk things through anywhere else but out here.”
She stopped walking and turned back around. “And what then?” she said loudly. “I’m not done out here. I haven’t yet gotten what I came out here for.” She looked around to the nearby slanted rooftops. Amidst the brief silence shared between the two of them, a slight stirring of noise erupted. “You hear it too, don’t you?” She smiled in the darkness with smears of blood covering areas of her face. “It’s best you leave Kiran. Otherwise you’ll end up facing them too.”
“Is that why you’re out here? You just want to carelessly kill whatever remnants of them that there are all by yourself?” He began to sigh feeling so frustrated with her.
There was a right way to go about things. This way of hers was entirely irresponsible and suicidal. Perhaps that’s the point.
She ultimately chose to ignore his question. She simply closed her eyes and snapped them back open several seconds later. “They’re almost here. Run off now or you’re going to have to fight.”
“You should know me quite well by now. The last thing I’m going to do is just run away.”
“Fine then,” she said plainly, “suit yourself!”
A banespawn lunged from the rooftop to fall over on top of her. She dodged them as they came hurdling at her from above. She immediately drove both of her daggers into their back.
The lanky banespawn with wolf like ears and black fur covering most of its body let out a pained cry. She stabbed them straight through their neck causing them to fall over and die.
Another banespawn followed up coming straight for Kiran rather than her. They looked similar to the other banespawn. There were so many types it was hard to keep count of how many varieties of them there were.
This one chose to fight with its claws, but Kiran found them to struggle. He forced their back to go up against a wooden post. He sent his sword straight through them killing them without too much difficulty.
“Are you happy now?” he said only to find her walking off once more. He didn’t hear anything that suggested more banespawn were nearby, but that could quickly change so he remained immensely aware as he dealt with Juna at the same time.
He eventually managed to run up to her while catching his breath. “If you want to kill them so badly, join one of the groups Felmir’s been sending out to secure different parts of this sector.”
With a heavy sigh, she had the two of them pause for a moment whilst they occupied an area with a lot of destroyed buildings all around them. “You really don’t get it, do you? How much more obvious do I have to be to drive the point home to you? I don’t want your help. I don’t want your pity or your concern. I don’t want anything from you or from anyone else for that matter. I just want to be alone.” Her voice became softer and her eyes regretful. “Can you at least do that for me?”
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“No.”
She looked about ready to punch him in the face. If she felt a need to do it, his face was ready for it. A direct blow from her never came however. She simply stood there infuriated at him instead.
“I don’t know why you’ve suddenly become so careless but there’s one thing I do know. Friends do whatever it is that they can to help each other and you’re clearly in need of help right now.”
“If you really want to help me, then just let me be.” Her anger wavered a little. It instead morphed into something more apathetic. She knew at this point, someone as stubborn as Kiran wouldn’t just walk off. He was there to stay and she knew this.
She had told him what she wanted. She had even thrust a dagger to his neck. And yet still, he stood there unwilling to just let her go off on her own. Maybe this truly was what she wanted, but he owed it to someone like her to have her back, even when she didn’t want it.
“Tell me the real reason you’re out here.” He gave her a moment to answer but she didn’t appear at all interested. “Tell me Juna.”
“Have many lives do you think have been lost since we came here?” she said ignoring his direct question. “You can’t answer can you?” She tightened one of her fists. “It doesn’t matter where we go. Death inevitably follows. Just look around. It’s everywhere.”
Beneath the rubble, were bodies of people unable to escape with the rest of the inhabitants. They were people who struggled to survive, but survived nonetheless only to get caught up in a conflict they had nothing to do with it.
“I can’t get it out of my mind,” Juna continued to say, “that we’re the ones responsible for this”.” Her shoulders relaxed a little as she began to face a collapsed structure with limp and lifeless bodies trapped beneath the rubble. “All of my memories and thoughts are filled with these sights. It gnaws at me constantly whether I’m awake or asleep. I can’t recall the last time I’ve had a good night’s sleep due to all of the nightmares I regularly experience.”
She relaxed her hand that kept wielding a dagger. “I’ve grown so incredibly tired of all of this. No matter where we go or where we end up, this is what inevitably comes. It happened in Liall, it’s now happened in Valak too. And despite us knowing what a danger he was, we brought Noreko here knowing there was a good chance he was hiding amongst us. I struggle to not conclude that we caused all of these people to die along with all of those people in Liall.”
“We are not responsible,” he stated firmly. “He caused this. Not us.”
“Do you really believe that? Tell me truthfully Kiran. Are we not at all at fault? I already know the answer, but I want to know what yours is.”
Deep down he knew the answer. He knew he and others had some responsibility for these conditions. Still, he didn’t want to take all the blame despite that. “We are not the ones ultimately responsible.”
A half-hearted grin ran across her face for a split second. “I want to believe that. I really do. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told myself that. But the more I whisper it into my ears, it only ever sounds more and more hollow. I think deep down, that our minds or even our very souls know the truth of this matter. We can’t put all of the blame on one person or monster like him. We must take some kind of responsibility for our actions. And there is a whole lot of it either being ignored or not accepted in any capacity. Even the Red Serpent himself doesn’t seem justifiably angry enough at us for endangering his city. He appears more than willing to ignore our carelessness.”
“He’s the one who invited us here.”
“He didn’t know what danger we would pose to him. If he had, I doubt he would’ve let us enter through his gates. No, there’s no way he would. If he knew this would be the end result of helping us, he would’ve never come to our aid. He should’ve let us remain on our own leaving us to die in that depraved tower.”
He began to hear Lar’s voice in his mind. “Need any help out there?”
“No,” he responded telepathically. “I’m a little busy here. I found Juna so we’ll hopefully make it back soon.”
“Don’t take too long.”
“Kiran,” Juna said looking directly into his eyes. “Am I wrong about anything I just said?”
“I agree with some of it but disagree with some as well.”
“What do you disagree with particularly?”
“That we should’ve all been left to die in that tower.” He took a few steps towards her only to stop. “I realize now that you want to bear some of the sins of our actions, and I even somewhat get it, but there are plenty of people who are traveling with us who have nothing to do with any of this. They don’t deserve to die, and we don’t either. Frankly speaking, it just sounds like to me that you’ve been beating yourself up for a while now and you’re trying to justify these emotions you’re currently experiencing.”
“These are my emotions, are they not? Or do you not get to speak for how I ought to feel?”
“You can feel however you want. But I’m a rather honest person Juna. You’re being irrational right now. It’s fine to feel regret and even take responsibility for the things we’ve done wrong. In fact, that’s quite a good thing. It means you’re human. But coming out here to wallow in misery and carry out this death wish of yours is irresponsible. You clearly care a lot about other people. I know that because otherwise you wouldn’t be feeling this way. At the same time, you seem to be blind to how coming out here all alone puts other people at risk like myself when we go out of our way to try to find you in a rather hostile environment.” She had also put a dagger to his throat, but he didn’t feel like mentioning that right now.
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re entirely right. I am incredibly irresponsible. I’ve been that way my entire miserable life.”
Sometimes it didn’t matter what he said or did. He ended up struggling to get through to the other person. Juna was an absolute mess and he needed to try to pull her out of this but he was beginning to feel like he was losing her. And partially because he wasn’t choosing the best way to speak to her currently at least in his mind.
“Can we at least go to a—shall we say—a more ideal location than this? I’d like us to continue this conversation, but this isn’t the sort of place meant for such a discussion.”
She began to laugh a little but not in a genuine kind of way. “You’re a wiser person than most Kiran. But you’ve still got a thick skull in that head of yours.”
“Illuminate things for me then, just not so brightly enough that it alerts any nearby banespawn to our exact positions who I imagine are sure to be hearing this lively conversation of ours from afar as they eagerly rush to kill us.”
“I didn’t come out here,” she carried on saying, “to go anywhere else. I suppose to answer the question you asked me earlier, that my true intent is to die out here.” She said it so casually, he was almost taken aback by her. “The only reason I’m not dead already is that those fiends aren’t very good at killing me. I’m sure they’ll get me eventually though. I’ve already grown quite worn and ragged from killing several of them.”
So she really does have a death wish. It didn’t come as a surprise, but he was glad she finally spoke of her intentions more clearly. At first she didn’t want to say a single word to him, but now he was having her speak her true mind. All he had to do was convince her to take things in a different direction. Which admittedly speaking, wasn’t going to be an easy task. It wasn’t ever easy to convince someone of strongly held beliefs, especially emotionally driven ones like this.
“Juna, just come with me, and let’s go deal with this elsewhere together.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I’ll be staying right here. I’ve explained to you as plainly as I can, that I don’t have any interest in living any longer. I just want it all to end. Can’t you at least give me that?”
“I can’t do that. And I would hope that if I ever spoke this way, that you’d have my back as well and talk me out of it.” He began to approach her once more.
She lifted the dagger pointing it at him. “Don’t try anything.”
Whilst his sword was sheathed, he put his hands in the air. “You’re not going to use that against me.”
He kept walking to her as she walked backwards down the cobbled street. “Just stop!” Some of her blonde hairs stuck to her chin due to the blood. Beneath that bloodied and dirty face of hers, was a woman in dire need of help.
But she wanted none of it.
“Fine,” she said. “If you won’t let me be, then I’ll take things into my own hands.” Without any hesitation, she directed one of her daggers to her own throat.
Kiran stopped dead in his tracks feeling a sense of hopelessness knowing that at any moment, she could go through with it ending her life right in front of him.