Blood. There was blood everywhere. It was all she could see, taste, smell.
The blood of warriors, of their enemies.
Natalya looked no older than five as she daintily stepped over and around the lifeless bodies of knights and over the twitching form of their leader.
She took care not to let her boots knock into Raivis's head when she had to move over him, feeling no real enmity towards the boy she knew would hardly have a chance to change past now.
She wasn't incapable of feeling pity for the constantly defeated.
She had nothing to worry about. Nothing. So she kept walking, slowly covering more ground as her legs lengthened into something a bit more familiar, a bit more useful than the childish stubs she'd been tottering around on.
The blood didn't change, though it seemed a bit more familiar.
The knights changed only superficially, their god the same and eternally useless to her, and Gilbert wouldn't be getting back up this time, she knew. Toris had made sure of that.
Made sure that anyone who challenged him could hardly dare to do so again. Made sure that nobody could hurt the little girl who taught him how to read, even if it was only in her own language.
Where he was, she didn't know. Could only trust that moving forward, splashing through the pools of blood, tiptoeing past the bodies, would lead her to him.
She was faster now, taller again, and the bodies she saw were different.
Not knights, not men of God, but the foreigners, the men from the east who'd claimed to own her land, who'd ruled her brother, even if she hadn't truly known him then.
Natalya made no effort to keep from crunching the bones of the corpses and the wheezing men alike into new, distorted shapes with her boots, didn't bother trying not to let her toes meet with trunks and heads.
Soon, she could walk properly, if still without grace, and the blood was again streaming from knights.
The Teutons had returned, the faces of the men, she supposed, would be different, if she could see them, and their commander himself had changed.
He was merely older, though Natalya could scarcely help from thinking he looked a bit stupid, his jaw slack and his eyes blown as his body worked on bringing itself back from the dead.
"You smell terrible," she told him, nose high and voice thick and whiny in the way children could never overcome, and she took a moment to revel in the wet snap of the bone in his throat breaking under her heel as she moved on.
She'd never been a dull girl, and she knew the time for even petty pleasures would be over soon when her stride opened and the bodies started to bear an uncanny resemblance to her own people. And to his.
The smell was unpleasant now, the coppery taste in her mouth starting to sour.
These belonged to her brother.
To Toris.
How was she to feel, seeing men she loved, however foolishly, however briefly - was that reallythe baker from Vilnius that liked to ferret fresh rolls out of his stock to give to her with his ribcage split open like that? honestly, who'd even heard of such barbarism against a faceless warrior in battle, and no, she was absolutely not going to cry for him; humans died, she didn't care about them - laid out like this? Knowing that they'd brought this tragedy upon each other?
She turned her head from the baker, turned her head fast enough that her hair moved from behind her ear to cover her eyes, and hurried along, eager to leave the carnage behind.
Then the blood was flowing freely and quickly around her, under her feet, slipping her up, and she wanted to stop before she gagged from the smell, wanted to double over, hold her nose, turn back, but her legs were traitorous, and she was moving, moving, heading forward, onward, growing, and the bodies were everywhere, and they were watching her.
They all looked the same, and they were all different, and she knew each one of them, and she wanted her protector, her hero, she wanted not to be afraid of this, but there he was, and he was dying.
Dying. Bleeding, everywhere. Gasping, and oh, she wished she couldn't hear him, but she needed to, and his voice, she needed to hear his voice, but there was no way even Toris could speak with those cuts and his ribs, and oh, God, but it was something, and she could see that he was alive.
He was alive. Until her brother came. And then she started screaming.
It was eternity, she felt, even if her own changes belied the passage of mere centuries, and she watched him split apart, pulled together, shredded, rolled into one, burned down, washed clean, and cut and burned and slashed and she was screaming and screaming and there was no air anymore she had nothing but fear and fear and it was her entire fault and why wasn't she doing anything why was she so weak and useless.
And it stopped, and she'd run out of air, run out of hope, stopped crying, stopped screaming and just bled and bled and it was everywhere, everywhere, and nobody could see it, she couldn't let them.
No scars, no cuts, no wounds on her, just sharp edges and hate and pain and blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.
And he pulled himself back together, knitted himself together again, and she could see the scars, they were shining on him as he reached out, and she could have him back, and she could be something this time, she could help, she wasn't a baby anymore, she didn't need a hero even though she needed Toris, needed needed him, always would, and she knew and everything in her was screeching and breaking and how could she trust someone who'd been so broken? How could she need something so fragile without being weak and she refused, she died, and she hurt him this time, it was her, and the blood she drew, that was hers, too.