Wanna Hear A Funny Joke? Yeah, Me Too.

Absinth’s emerald eyes met Aresenn’s with a fire only he could fully know. The wilderness. The anger. The tension in her muscles was rigid, bunched up like a predator ready to pounce—and in many ways, she was. His words, sharp and full of blame, cut deep, but they brought about something savage in her that wouldn’t let her back down. Of course not.

“Failed?” The word came out like a snarl, but beneath the edge, her mind was already dissecting his grief, analyzing his posture, the tremor in his voice. Not that she would let him get away with it. She stepped closer, her breath hot with fury, her emeralds alight with provocation. “You think you’re the only one chewing on that guilt, Aresenn? We made him. We built strength into him with our own damn paws, thinking it’d be enough.” Her voice cracked, but she swallowed the weakness, her jaw tightening so hard it ached. She stared him down, acknowledging his grief while also unwilling to accept his ignorance of her own. She reached for him, gripping his shoulder to draw him in, pressing his skull against hers so he could feel the weight of her sorrow, her fury, and her understanding. They were one and the same, and even she, with all her hardened apathy, knew it.

“We didn’t fail him,” she snapped, eyes narrowing, daring him to argue. Her mind raced through the choices, every misstep they had taken, replaying like a broken record. “We screwed ourselves, believing strength would outmatch fate. Like our lives could be replicated without the same tests, without the same reality. We got cocky. We thought we could game the world.” Her claws gouged deep into the earth as she tried to anchor herself. Indica’s memory bit at her insides, but she buried it under layers of grit and anger, already calculating how they could ensure this never happened again.

“I failed him,” Aresenn’s voice, shredded with grief, made her hackles rise.

“No.” she spat, a tremor in her usually iron-clad voice, her sharp mind noting the slight shift in his gaze, the sag of his shoulders. She knew his pain, knew it down to the marrow, but she couldn’t let them both drown in it. “We’re the bastards who made him fight in a war we never believed in. We put him in the mouth of that beast. And he was not a warrior! I know! He loved his ravens, his stories—” Her gaze was hard, almost feral, daring him to say otherwise as she choked back her words, memories flashing behind her eyes. Indica was smart, but not brutal.

When he spoke of Abyssinca, Sericea, and Ludovic, she felt a growl bubble up, low and rough. Her mind, as sharp and unrelenting as her resolve, raced ahead—strategies, contingencies, what they could do differently. Those names were more than just their future; they were a goddamn reason to keep going, to fight dirtier, harder. She leaned into him, close enough to feel the shared torment thrumming between them.

“They’ll face what’s coming, and we’ll be there. But not like before. No more feeding them fairy tales of glory. No more playing by rules laid out by the Saxe scum. Even if we have to fix the fights.” Her voice was rough, laced with the bitterness of a promise forged in blood and loss.

The mention of Araxina and Dracun was a jab, a reminder that the wheel of this brutal cycle kept turning. Pride was nothing but an aftertaste now, buried under layers of grief.

“Aresenn,” she said, her voice dropping to a rasp. Her eyes, sharp and calculating, met his, searching for the flicker of understanding, the shared vow. The unity they'd always had. “We don’t win by sticking to their game. We tear the damn board apart.” The vow between them hardened, raw and jagged, like the grief that bound them together.




"Absinth Artemisia Inferos"