(Sophia: celestriakle. deviantart .com/art/Sophia-245037257
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"Get up."
Weakly, Sophia groaned in answer. She did not move.
"Get up!" the voice shouted, and Sophia cried out as its boot crashed into her abdomen.
She shuddered, holding back sobs, and begged, desperate and in pain, "Please! Enough! Enough... Please, Reala, let me go..."
The Nightmaren General snarled. "And you wanted to be an Army Major. You are weak! Garbage! A waste of flesh," he spat venomously. With his boot, he nudged her onto her back, and she gazed up blearily up at him. "But worst of all? You're soft! You might look like a maren, but given the way you act, you may as well be a pian." He paused a moment, thoughtful, then grinned. "Although, I suppose that's not entirely true. You broke the heart of your very best friend with hardly a second thought, didn't you?"
"No!" she cried out suddenly, interrupting. "I—" Her words drowned in a scream; pain blossomed anew in her right shoulder as Reala dug his foot into her newly broken collarbone.
"Did I say you could speak?" he hissed, but his gloating smirk returned as he continued on with his little monologue. "I bet you did it for the sex, just like your worm of a father. You could have ended that relationship at any time, but you just kept stringing her along... You used her. You never cared about her."
"You're wrong!" she protested, against her better judgment, and paid the consequences: Reala's claws ripped up from her bellybutton to the bottom of her shirt, and at last, her screams became muted as she began to sob.
"Silence, trash!" he roared, and she managed to reduce her sobs to hiccups as he began speaking again. "I know you're trying to repair your relationship with her, but it's not going to work. With all of her heart, she's going to hate you for what you've done. Eva probably will too. Even if she doesn't, she has a mate and family now; she has no time for friends. Face it, Sophia: You have no friends and no family. You are alone, and you always will be." Seeing the agony in her eyes reach a new high, he grinned, satisfied, as he stepped off of her. "You may as well just kill yourself now." He laughed as he left, and the sound rang clearly in her head for hours, rising high above the sobs that escaped anew from her broken body.
She remembered that laugh with vivid clarity.
Blinking a few times, Sophia returned to reality. She stood in Reala's crypt, looking up at the empty urn in front of her. Her hand gently rubbed the bump on her collarbone, a scar from the fracture he had incurred during that particular 'session'. She had proved him wrong: She was not weak or soft; she had proved herself strong, useful, and wrenched from him the title of Major. She had proved him wrong on every count, except one: Aeries did hate her—she felt sure; they hadn't seen each other in years—and yes, she was still alone. In fact, more people hated her now than they ever did back then.
With a sudden fury, she drew her hook from her back and swung it at the urn, but—of course—it just bounced off. It was guarded with a barrier. Even in death, she still couldn't touch him. Furious, she shoved her hook into back into its sheath and turned, storming out of the crypt.
She hated him so much, for so many reasons.
But most of all, she hated him for making her just like him.