Vixin peeked around the corner and studied the chairs. Only five of them.
She wiped her stinging eyes, drew her long knives, and sprinted through the doorway, plunging her blade straight through the nearest man’s back. Vixin yanked it out and lunged at the man to his right, slitting his throat in one swift movement.
She eyed the others and tugged at her magic. Nothing. Vixin growled and tugged again, but it felt as though an invisible wall had blocked it off. Just like before.
Something collided with the back of her head and stars shot across her vision as she hit the floor. One of her knives slid across the room, but she kept the other clutched in one hand. Vixin swung wildly, cutting nothing but thin air as she stumbled to her feet and backed against the wall.
She pulled at the magic again, but that invisible wall stood firm, blocking her from the very things that were going to tear this place down.
Dizzy, but raging, Vixin took a quick head count. Three stood in quiet concentration while four others edged away from the corner of the room.
One’s mouth gaped. “It’s a girl.”
“I’m not blind you moron.”
“But if this girl is the one using earth magic, then we didn’t get the one responsible for—”
“Shut up,” another voice boomed. “Girl or no, she stole from us and we can’t allow that.” He stomped toward her and leaned forward. “You’re not the only one who can play with magic. Where I come from, thieves are punished. Severely.”
She didn’t speak, couldn’t, with the rage bubbling beneath the surface. They had her magic pinned, so what? She’d trained for years without it.
He smiled as if she still didn’t have a blade in one hand and just as he tried to speak again, Vixin yanked the knife from her boot and launched it into his throat.
He spluttered, grasping at the blade. The wall restraining her magic wavered and Vixin dove through a tiny crack, grasping a vine before ripping it from the ground. It wrapped around one of the men lost in concentration and the poisonous thorns pierced his arm.
He winced, took a few steps back, and cursed. The invisible wall thickened again.
A hulking man in the corner drew a small knife and greenery that didn’t belong to her ripped from the floorboard. The vines engulfed her body, tying it down. Vixin fought, screamed, and kicked, but the vines forced her to drop her weapon and fall to her knees.
“I apologize, but it has to be done.” He took several steps closer, confident she couldn’t lash out at him again. He knelt before her and Vixin lunged, sinking her teeth into his neck.
He screeched and the knife in his hand plunged into her side, withdrew, and plunged in again. Tears stung the corners of her eyes, but something in the barrier faltered again and Vixin dove for it. She grabbed the seedlings she’d planted and shattered the rest of the wooden floor.
They scrambled, desperate, and Vixin breathed in their fear. Fed from it. The greenery caught each individual one by one and squeezed the life from their bodies.
She took a step, but blinding pain lanced through her side. Vixin pressed a hand to the wounds and it came away bloody. She cursed, kicked the dead body nearest to her and climbed the stairs.
Vines stretched out on all sides, slithering beneath doors for those who would wake, only to step on her deadly thorns. She almost wished she could be there to witness each and every death.
Vixin stormed through an empty room and climbed out the window. Pain tore through her side as she lifted herself onto the roof, but the pain in her heart cut deeper.
There were already people below, running to sound the alarm. Good, let them be scared.
Vixin planted her feet and fed her magic through the ground. She summoned all the seeds and plants she’d shifted into place then let the world erupt.
Those at the gates recoiled, many jumping inside the safety of the walls as plants crawled over, under and around. They engulfed the buildings, tearing through structures one by one. People screamed, running from the terror, but they couldn’t escape her poisonous barbs.
Guards rushed out, shouting orders that would never be obeyed. They ran, many cutting through her plants with magic of their own. But their bodies turned sluggish and their magic flickered out as they grasped at their throats and choked in their own blood.
She wouldn’t give them the mercy of a swift death.
The cries of alarm slowly faded as more and more people fell into a painful slumber. And when crickets and the sounds of the night were the only things left, Vixin finally let her magic fade.
She collapsed on the rooftop and another wave of pain that had nothing to do with the wounds in her side assaulted her body. Tears rolled down her face as she gazed out onto the green carnage. She hadn’t let anyone out. Didn’t care who they were, only that her friends were avenged.
Despite her body’s protest, Vixin used her magic to lift herself from rooftop to rooftop, careful of the poison she’d left behind.
She set herself outside the gate and leaned against the nearest tree, letting grief take its toll.
~~~
Vixin’s eyes fluttered open with the first rays of dawn. She shifted and hissed at the pain in her side. The blood had stopped, which meant her wounds probably weren’t that serious. She half laughed to herself. Lucky or cursed, she wasn’t sure.
Maybe she’d been allowed to live because she still had someone to hunt down. This Atilla. She glanced toward the camp. Eventually, someone would come along and see what she’d done. They’d report back to him and
