The air stank of blood. Stale blood, new blood: Morlia's head span with it, the rock under her feet seeped with it.
And her friends lay in it.
Her fingers, caked with grime and mud, shook violently; her legs felt weak beneath her; the roar that was ripped from her throat made the orcs feel fear for the first and only time in their lives.
She had no time to think, no time for mourning; she slashed and crushed and swung and clashed and the blood spat and gurgled and splattered from the orcs necks and onto her face as the bloody onslaught drenched the metal that she clenched in her fist.
She whipped her head around; another friend dead, and another and another. She did not feel, and neither did she want to feel.
Her helmet crunched against the brutish iron of her opponent. She ripped it from her head and hollered out as she cracked it against another's skull, splicing it in half, her bloodied hair striking out across her blackened face.
A crack sounded as a blow rammed into her shoulder and she clasped it tightly as she sliced the orcs' head clean off, seething in agonising pain.
Her head lulled to the side as she caught her breath. And she stilled; and stared; she dare not breathe.
Frerin.
Her lungs refused to work and she gulped for breath as she stumbled, eyes sweeping across his mangled body. Useless. Helpless.
Breathing is hard.
When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard.
The sun kept on with its slipping away, and she thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible.
Morlia opened her eyes.
And it was morning.