I tear off my shirt, revealing my slightly hairy chest beneath my blue blood-stained shirt, absorbing the rain. I whistle faintly, the blood daggers at shoulder height obeying me. I step right, then left. Slowly. My shoes glide through the increasingly dense mud. The sky darkens, thunder rumbling in the distance, illuminating the horizon. I prowl through the mud like a predator, my green-orange eyes fixed on the ogre. I spread my fingers like a tiger’s paw. Veins bulge, thick as noodles. Blood boils within me. I feel warm. Warm in the cold of this dark day of war.
The battlefield is young. Only three days since the march began, yet already an Orange to contend with. I grin crookedly as the Orange charges at me. My vision is painted in shades of green, orange, and brown. My heart pounds wildly. His fist is before my front teeth, and at the last moment, I duck. The raindrops freeze, and I whistle, the blood daggers piercing through the Orange’s knees. He screams and kneels, as do I, but I prepare to strike. My veins follow my movement, and I channel my orange blood into my right fist.
I hit, the blow louder than a revolver.
Orange blood splashes into my mouth as I laugh, pummeling the ogre.
He dodges. Stops my fist with sheer strength. I look at him, surprised. He pushes me away, and I slide several meters over
This time, he hits me.
If I hadn’t moved into the strike, my neck would be twisted backwards by now. I laugh, even as a spray of green blood bursts from my mouth in mid-air. Whistling sharply, I call another dagger to spin through the downpour around me before it buries itself into the orange brute’s shoulder. Three decades of fighting with my flying blood, and I still don’t strike quite where I intend.
My body is slow today. My left hand—a stiff, unfeeling prosthetic—braces against the soaked earth. I reach into the writhing mass of maggots spilling from a blueblood’s torso. Perhaps false blood. Perhaps too much blood. Greed. The root of all this madness.
I twist, flipping with a fluid motion born from muscle memory alone, and once again dodge the orange ogre’s wild blow. His mouth is foaming orange blood now as he bellows war cries—primitive, guttural sounds that suit his kind’s brutal form of combat. A wall of power. That’s what he is. Every strike from him bends my bones. Every fifth to eighth blow, and something cracks.
Sweat runs down my face, mixing with the golden piss of the gods that rains from the sky. I’ve used too much blood. I can’t heal much longer. I won’t last when Nigil’s next wave arrives.
Retreating, I glance past the ogre’s broad, scarred shoulder. The silhouettes of cowardly blues bloom in the thunder ahead. They gather. Channeling power. Sacrificing reds to fuel their distant rituals. Cowards, I think bitterly. No one remains at my side. They’ve all fled. Lucky for me, it’s only one orange left. One... half of me.
His glowing amber like eyes meet mine. They burn like molten rock beneath the earth. My breath grows heavy. I run my fingers across the rough stubble of my jaw. No more backing away. The rain stops. My legs tense—and I charge.
Faster than he expects. His eyes widen. I summon the orange blood in my left arm, let it surge and swell inside me. My veins scream. My muscles ignite. It feels like fire licking up from the inside—as if the golden piss fuels the blaze instead of quenching it.
His massive fist comes at me, a hook aimed at my temple. I duck low, leap beneath it, drive my fist upward into his gut—faster than he can blink.
I feel it. The wet pop of something vital tearing. His blood rains into my hair. He reels back, clutches his stomach—but remains standing. Impressive. His intestines should be spilling out. And yet, he stands.
I look past him. The blues again. A few greens too, far behind them. They’re running, but not fast enough. I still have time. His body is damaged—his belly a crater—but he lurches forward like a mad dog, swinging at me with wild strength. Stronger than any green. Faster than most of us.
But not faster than me.
I plant my feet and drive my fist into him one final time. His body crumples into the thick, wet earth.
"Good for you," I mutter, staring down at him, "that I don’t like killing."
My lips still curve upward, mocking the gods above who piss on us in their apathy—Apollo, Augustus, all those gleaming fools. I walk away, letting the ogre’s people stitch him back together.
My body trembles from the cold, my orange-soaked fist hanging limp. But I relish this feeling—the rawness, the freedom, the high. Standing at death’s edge. Grinning at the Reaper, only to send him away again.
His voice rasps from the mud behind me.
"Bastard of disloyal blood."
And my smile vanishes.
I turn, whistling once more. I stab my prosthetic hand with a short blade, letting my blood mix and reform—a longer weapon now, forged from orange and the remnants of the blades still within his flesh. I step toward him. Wait.
"I hope your parents were hanged."
No smile now. Only a cold, flat expression that blues are known for. I stand over him, blade held high above his skull. He laughs—some inhuman, grotesque sound that curdles the air.
I drive the blade down.
His orange blood explodes across my dark trousers.
I am soaked in every primary hue of this damned continent—red, blue, green, and orange.
"I don’t like killing. And yet—I do."
My voice drowns beneath the growing roar of the rain. I rub my blood-slick hands beneath the downpour, willing them to heal, forcing the green blood through my limbs—but nothing mends. Not today.
I groan beneath the divine piss, staring into the horizon that now begins to brighten. The blues are coming. Cowards, outlined in the storm, their attacks fully charged. They’re weak. Physically. But with their rituals, their chants to the gods, only the whites rival them in power.
I stare at them. At the blues in the distance. The greens who once rushed to my side now approach with caution. My dark brown hair clings to my skin, falling over eyes that grow paler by the minute.
"Time to go," I murmur.
I walk back to the motionless orange. Reach into the gaping wound at the back of his skull. Lift his head. Cut out his tongue. His eyes. In Zentria, they demand both.