All I felt was burning rage. Rage against every living being. Scanning around the room, I took note of my enemies. I heard their frantic breathing. Dozens of heartbeats beating out of sync. The smell of blood was everywhere. I was excited. It didn't take too long to discover a screeching 'Dried Cedar'. With an inhumane dash, I closed the distance between us in an instant. In the next instance, I used my bare hand to stab into her fragile body.

She didn't even have the time to grasp what has happened. Bones cracked. I felt my fingers gently embrace something pulsating. With a firm grip, I ripped it right out, spraying blood all over me. It was exhilarating. That face that would be forever locked in terror. But I wanted more. So I attacked the person next to her. I didn't care who it was. I wanted to destroy. This person did put up a fight though. Waves of magic came crashing at me, yet it didn't matter. Every time they sent me flying to the ground, I simply got up again. There was no pain, no other emotion save the satisfaction of seeing everything painted in red. In the end, more people joined the battle against me, but I persevered.

I had been aimlessly thrashing around like a wild animal for a while. My entire body was drenched in the blood of my enemies. But a tiny body like mine had its limits. Every blow I took began to hurt. Every step towards the next victim became more arduous. The fury that I was once felt was slowly subsiding.

As if Violet had anticipated this, she quietly crept up behind me. Placing her hand on my eyes and her other hand on my shoulder, she was able to prevent me from going on. I struggled, but the all too familiar scent of her and the soothing emotions crawling into my mind made me lose any resistance. As I began drifting into unconsciousness, I felt her attention shift to the remaining people who were alive, as if she was telling them what to do ...

Throbbing pain was what made me come back to the world of the living. I felt it everywhere. Some places hurt so badly, I couldn't move. I opened my eyes, but I was surrounded by complete darkness. Panic suddenly came over me, when I felt the cold hand of somebody familiar next to me. Another hand held something against my lips, urging me to drink. I took a sip. As I suspected, this was the strange water I had been always drinking together with Violet. The one gulp felt rejuvenating. I eagerly drank the contents of the entire jar. The pain slowly subsided, the wounds closed. But, naturally, it would take some time until they fully healed. At least, for now, I was able to raise my upper body and reach out to her.

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Instead of reaching back out to me, I felt her hand move away to pat my head. I think she wanted to praise me. Just as I was wondering what to do now, she carefully swooped me into her arms, carrying me like a princess. I didn't care, I was just happy she was there. I latched onto her rags, slowly drifting in and out of sleep.

She walked for a while through the darkness until we reached the scene of the massacre. The stench of blood and guts immediately woke me up. I looked around to see organs lying around, their former owners far away. I saw the bodies of my friends, including Lilly. Confronted by this, I felt sickness come upon me. Violet let me quickly down so I could vomit painfully near the stream.

"I- I didn't want this", my pitiful self coughed in between, tears streaming down from my face. Yet, instead of comforting me, Violet silently stood next to me. There were short bouts of emotions coming from her, letting me damn well know that it was me who gave in to rage and that it was me alone who had killed all the adults.

When I was done vomiting, I continued to cry. It was true that attacking and killing them felt bizarrely good, but right now, all I felt was guilt. They say killing somebody for the first time is a difficult challenge, not many overcome. For me, it wasn’t a problem at all. But the aftermath, the realization of what I had done, these feelings of remorse and guilt buried me under a large pile of rubble. And Violet was not kind enough to absolve me from my crime. No, she made damn well sure that day I understood what it meant to give in to bloodlust. Only after I had cried my heart out did she gently pick me up again and hold me close to her chest. I hugged her tightly, rubbing my bloody body against her. She then picked up two blades left by the dead practitioners and slowly walked out of the cave.

It was the first time for her to see the outside world after so many centuries. After squinting for a moment to adapt to the light, she carefully looked around. On the horizon, dawn was breaking. I peered down and saw a horse carriage disappearing into the distance. I surmised it was the remaining survivors and the children. From what I saw, only two black guards had fallen victim to my rampage.

I felt the goddess ask me what I wanted to do. “Burn.” Was all I was able to say. She firmly held me in one hand while she wandered about the now empty place. While walking, she grabbed whatever edible thing she could find. In the room of the practitioners, she also found a set of grey robes. Then she took a torch from one of the walls and lit each building up. When she was done, she calmly walked down the stone steps to the bottom of the mountain. We both watched from afar as the wooden structures lit up the pink sky. There was a sense of satisfaction upon seeing this, and this feeling was shared.

Before Violet could even imply any other question, I had already said, “home”.