So this was it then?
It felt like vomit was being held within her. Cinder could not even feel the ground beneath her broken bones. The sharp sand firing against her cheek barely resonated with her. Broken, physically and magically. On the floor, she knelt, the maiden powers already ebbing.
Up till this point, it had all been so easy. Atlas, the Relics, all of it. But now…
The tiny grains permeated her dress, it blowing hard in the wind. It had all come to this. Because, of course, it just had to. Life would never, and had never been easy. She crawled, bit, snarled, and scrounge for everything she had.
Everyone. They had all turned on Cinder. Emerald was the first. That foot kissing ingrate had finally grown a spine, just when she had thought it impossible. As had Mercury, her once loyal and profoundly silent lapdog, now the head amongst the traitors. All stood in a neat and perfect little row beside Ruby and her merry band.
But what Cinder would have never had expected was her. It would have taken her a million years to think up the possibility—those very beautiful eyes beside the devilish silver.
"I loved you, dammit!" Cinder barked, her voice brought with it flames that charred the air. The blades she could hardly feel tightened in her hands. The fire splattered from her mouth, catching sand in the wind. "I would have died with you." Whispering to herself as a smattering of tears spilled. Cinder's scorching eye spat its ebbing flame. The gentle sound of clinking weapons moving about resounded through their pitiful party.
"I would have died with you," Cinder growled poignantly at the parasol, "and you brought them here?!" She belted, lurching forth. Driving her fist into the ground, the blade in her hand crumbling apart as she did so. Another crumpling of armour and weapons of shone the sand. The crushed stone of the broken rock beneath her cut deep into her beaten skin, though Cinder did not care.
Twelve combatants, all of their weapons, scorched, burned and maimed her. Her arms were broken and flaked. But her aura stood ready. She could push through it had she needed. But there was no will left in Cinder to goad this broken form onward.
It was a sorry sight, Cinder must have realized, cursed be that it had taken a combined team to merely beat her. But for their defeated opponent to come crumbling down without her aura even breaking? That was just depressing.
Neo, her faithful, her pocket ace, her dutiful bedmate, the person she had fallen for so long ago. Cursed be that it was so clearly her that had brought Salem's wrath down upon her. Neo was her weakness, and Cinder had tried to deal with it in these children's deranged idea of a portal. But just as she had failed to obtain the Winter Maiden powers, she had too failed with silencing that squandered bit of her heart. Just too as she was destined to fail this task of redemption for her master.
When no retribution came to her, Cinder let loose her scorn. "Well?!" The Fall Maiden tried to seethe, her Grim arm smoking violently as she roared. Though neither her spirit nor her limbs could rally beneath her. Her heels struggled to get her upright, teetering as she pushed upward.
Cinder spent her life fighting for this very moment.
And by the gods' light, she wasn't going to stop now.
A relit flame of yellow hate glared a light deadly toward Neo, the shorter woman's weapon drawn. Her heterochromatic eyes soft, tear-filled as she struggled to wield her parasol blade. Cinder's fire burned harder. This woman dared to what? Pity her? Her?
A shrieking cry broke from Cinder, the fire doubling in her heart as well as beneath her. The sand around her feet scorched hot to glass in a frenzy of heat. The Maiden used the rushing winds of the finely ground rock to hurl with a gust of wind to form a tunnel around the Mute. The sudden inferno fully blotted Neo from her allies as Cinder's heels exploded in the largest ball of Maiden imbued flame.
Broken and shattered hilts of her weapons doubled in heat to reform, sharded grips of matted flaming glass dug into Cinder's palms as she charged. The Mute's eyes growing wider, as did her mouth as Cinder's blade rushed poised against her lover's heart.
Cinder Fall would not be outdone by something as pitiful as love, as much as the tears which burned her face screamed at her to stop.