(Jack's POV)
I couldn't decide what to think about Alice. I watched from the corner of the cell as she swung her arms around doing some magical or ritual or something. Trying to find something abnormal or inhuman about her I looked at every piece of her in turn. She had blonde hair that fell in matted clumps down to her shoulders, striking blue eyes that had very evidently seen more than they ever should have, surprisingly pale skin that resisted the very elements in it's nature. Nothing about her screamed "witch!" or "I will kill you without a moments hesitation." She looked by all accounts, a normal girl.
Which made her treatment of the captain so much stranger. In that instant I saw her for what she truly was, a child with no direction and too much power at their disposal. I didn't pretend to know her backstory, but the stories say that she just tore through the countryside murdering indiscriminately. Granted the stories about me say that I drank the blood from my victims so indiscriminate murder seems tame, but there seems to be some truth to their claims.
In our conversation before the Captain strutted in, I could almost believe that everything about her was simply a slander campaign by the Legion to get something that her family owned. In fact I was started to like her, we clicked more than anyone I had ever met before.
A jarring crash tore me from my thoughts. and dozens of armed guards flew into the cell. Alice jumped backwards, a look of complete terror evident upon her face, quickly replaced with a terrifying fury. Almost immediately every guard in our cell put their head between their hands screeching in agony, before crumpling to the ground to move no more. I turned to Alice who seemed no more disturbed by the bodies, than if she were simply going about her day. She looked to me and shot me a look which clearly said "Are you coming or what?" before leaping out of our cell.
With a tired resignation, I followed behind and stepped through the dusty remnants of our stone wall, to see a new battle raging. It seemed that the entire cities armed forces had come to see what fate had befallen their captain. Alice stood steadfast against the approaching armies, and showed no sign of apprehension when she started to wave her arms and bodies began falling.
She stood as a vengeful god tearing through scores of men with no regard for their position, rank, or even if they were advancing towards her. If they were living, then they died. Her complicated incantations soon devolved into glances. She would shoot a look at a soldier who would promptly grab their chest and die. All I could do was watch as scores became hundreds, hundreds became thousands, and those thousands met their fate.
How could any one person have that much power inside of them, and so little restraint? The witch's fury shone bright, and soon a visible aura of fire circled her warring body, and even the bravest of soldiers turned and ran. Rather than rejoice in her victory, she placed her hands upon the ground and closed her eyes. The ground began to shake violently and no time passed before the darkness swallowed me whole.
Drifting slowly into consciousness, my eyes fluttered a bit before the open night sky became visible and my memories flooded back to me. Images of terror and destruction scarred my thoughts far worse than any of the assassinations I witnessed. Assassination was murder for an end goal, Alice had committed a genocide.
Almost as if reading my thoughts, Alice leaned into my vision, and with the cheery look of a child on christmas she said "I got my stuff, ready to go?"
I pulled up to a sitting position, and the remnants of the battlefield nearly thrust me back into unconsciousness. Thousands of bodies surrounded me, each one appearing to be in a perfect state of health, as if they were simply sleeping. The stone walls that used to be my prison were scattered around in heaps of dust and rubble. I almost audibly gagged as I noticed that buried beneath each of the heaps, I could see collections of human limbs. In a state of absolute shock and disgust, I turned back to Alice who was happily humming absolutely oblivious to the death and devastation around her.
"Alice… did you do all of this?" I asked hoping that the answer would be different from what I expected.
"Yep. I didn't want to, but they made it necessary. They wanted to kill me, so I killed them. What's wrong with that?" She asked innocently.
"The ones that were running too? Did they deserve any mercy?"
"They wanted to kill me, and they were probably running to get reinforcements or something. They had to die."
"No I really don't think they did. What about the spell you used on the Captain that trapped him, why didn't you do something similar and we could've escaped?"
"I really didn't think about that. Anyway my solution solved any potential problems we could've had with that plan."
"You've killed thousands of people! Were their lives nothing to you?"
"What do they mean to me?"
"Well what about the thousands of families that won't have a father, son, or brother come home in the morning? Can you even begin to comprehend how much suffering this one act alone caused?"
"I really don't care. Their families would string me up from the square if they could." She asserted.
"And that is an excuse to tear their lives in half? None of them were a threat."
"They could've been."
"You know what? I have to go, I can't stand another second near you. Until you learn some empathy, good riddance." I declared.
"Oh that's rich" She said losing the innocent facade completely "A lesson in empathy from the assassin, you are full of bright ideas today cut-throat."
"I never killed anyone because they might be a threat! I killed to reach a goal, never because it was the easier choice!"
"Who said it was the easier choice!" She shouted.
"Well your nonchalant attitude about the thousands of people you've killed says it all. You think that just because you were born with magic, you're somehow better than the rest of us mortals. That our lives are insignificant compared to yours oh great highness." I snapped sarcastically.
"I never said that." She argued.
"Actions speak louder than words sweetheart."
"I don't have to take this from you." She raised her hand threateningly.
"Do it. Do it and you'll have finally lost that last pesky bit of humanity eating away at you right now. Do it, I dare you."
She lifted it up a few inches higher, but then turned on her heel and stormed off. I watched her stomp away, even pausing to kick a stray weapon that just happened to be in her way, before i turned away and stepped into the shadows.
Authors note- I LIED, I'M SORRY. I know that this chapter is far more gruesome than the first but, this was planting the seeds for Alice's soon-to-be murder intervention. This will also force Jack to reconsider his position as an assassin, and question the decency of everything that he's done. It is a terrible thing really, but works as a good inciting incident for both characters. Also the Alice you see in this story isn't the Alice in The Daughter Of The Sun. Whilst key parts of their situation may be similar, they are by no accounts the same person as I have hopefully proven by their treatment of human life.