The spiked gauntlet came down on her face and before her eyes and everywhere was a crimson spinning redness that took her sight as her consciousness, and she did not wake until after they had murdered him.
Aishiteru wa, senshi watashi no. Sarevok, I promised first in the wooden eaves of a western cottage where the two of us sought shelter from a storm that I loved you, my beautiful boy...
The red-haired betrayer broke her promise. It was not a fair thing to say; Sarevok would have tried to slay her with all his might. The red-haired falsehood-teller had concealed the truth from her; and that was also not fair to say, for in her place Tamoko should have done much the same.
Your sisters, my beloved, saw you dead and hating me.
At his empty, crumbling armour seen through the blood across her eyes she had dared hope for an instant that the man was not within; but the son of Bhaal was dead beyond any hope for resurrection. She knew healing rituals that could return a soul to a body not long dead. She had dreamed of bringing him away, no matter how he hated her, teaching him to be human.
Her skull was fractured; she could see out of only one eye and that patterned through crimson blood; she could have prayed to heal herself but they had taken her in chains to a cell where that was barred her. Her holy symbol of that undisciplined and pathetic god lay cold and quiescent by her skin, and that was exactly as she wanted it. She needed nothing from the Mad Lord.
It is death I serve, Sarevok, and death is where you have come. You will shape no competition for the Lord of Strife.
She had heard the guards outside her cell speaking vaguely of an end to Sarevok's war, of the girl and the betraying goddess and the end of all. Uragirimono: a traitor to their own. She had seen that in the face of the pitiful Red Wizard, Angelo Dosan, Cythandria Swandon; and if she looked into a mirror she should have seen it in her own.
The cell was damp, and in a corner of it lay a puddle of water dripping from a cracked pottery jug left for her. For a moment Tamoko bent over it, seeing her damaged, scarred face, one-eyed. She bled still, red droplets spreading one by one across the stone like a faint shower of rain.
Ronin, Tamoko, traitor in your homeland and to your beloved.
Tamoko flexed her warrior's hands, as strong as ever, chained in front of her by a weighted length of iron. She was cold. Her arms and armour had been stripped from her and she wore only thin cotton. There was nothing left; a honourable death would have been the stab to the stomach by wakizashi, then her head cut off when she could no longer bear the pain without shaming herself. She would not shame herself.
Three things are strength. Fear of death is strength. Love is strength. Family is strength.
She wrapped the chain twice about her neck, and held her wide, thick hands ready. Her strength would last for this, human, alone. There was none living to whom she owed anything. Saioji Tamoko brought her hands together. Chains and flesh pulled her windpipe close and she willed her grip to hold.
Death is strength.
She felt the collapse of windpipe and lungs and the loosening of bowels in all of the indignities of death, and to the end she gripped the chain about her throat.
As her vision burst red beyond endurance Tamoko thought that she saw a tall broad figure standing before her in the prison cell, the shape as if her lover greeted her in the afterworld; and then she saw instead a tall blue-skinned woman with yellow wings and glowing eyes, watching her without expression as she died.
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