Intervention

--Lia's Perspective--

"I was wondering how you were doing after all this time. Lily has been too." Ellen told me. I stood confidently away from Ellen, wondering what her plan was.

"So, you have contact with Lily, so she's with Orion again?" I asked her. Ellen smiled and swung the mace back and forth, closing the door behind her.

"I think that's a good way of lightly putting it. She's a pawn, waiting to be used in order to get you back to Orion, with, or without your arms. She came back to grant you freedom, but such foolish ways of thinking have been put to an end, luckily." Ellen told me with a devious smile.

I rose my daggers out of their sheathes and readied them in case of anything, scanning her body language for any incoming attacks.

"So, what? You just came here to tell me that before you cut off my arms and ship me back to Orion's hellhole?!" I yelled out to her.

Ellen nodded, holding her old position. She hadn't moved a single inch this entire time. No trembling, no loud exhales nothing.

"You talk about foolish ways of thinking when all you do is let other people think for you. Isn't that hypocritical? Wouldn't Ellie be upset with you?" I asked her, and she finally started to walk toward me.

Ellen finally took steps towards me.

"That's why I'll always be smarter than you… I don't think about tough things, more of my brain can be focused on extracting blood from the defiant. Orion does the thinking; I do the killing. That's how it's been since the day I was recruited, and that's how it will always be Failure." She told me.

With no hesitation, Ellen ran at me with a wide stance, the mace getting ready to sling back and hit me in the chest. My daggers instinctively rose to meet the metallic handle of her weapon, and a loud screech came from her handle.

I was barely able to hold her back as the force behind her strike pushed me to my knees. The spiky tip of her mace got closer and closer to my face.

"Weak, malnourished people can't possibly fight against the healthy! You amount to nothing, just like you always have, and always will!" She screamed at me. Ellen punched me in the stomach and the mace nicked my shoulder, pushing blood through the small holes put into my shirt.

As I hit the ground and rolled off of it, I felt that constant state of despair slowly consuming the intelligence left in my brain. The more and more I bled fighting Orion's soldiers, or his words, the more and more I realized that I'm nothing but a pawn in his game that will die.

People like me have no use in this world, and never will.

Until I remembered Talion. The man who believed in me, the one who wants me to live above all else. Even if it's only one man on this Isle who wants me alive, it's all I need!

I dodged her next swing downwards and saw her expression change from a sadistically satisfied, to an irritated worry as the point of my dagger slid up her face and through her right cheek.

The small wad of flesh splattered on the floor as I slung it from the tip of my dagger, while blood dripped on the floor with it.

"God… I'm going to make this so painful for you." Ellen told me.

She threw her mace in my direction, with terrifying accuracy, and pulled another weapon from her back. Coated in chains dyed red with dried blood and sharp razors to compliment them, I was even more afraid of her now. That weapon would wreak havoc on me if I was hit with it.

"Your Dad was quite the fighter before I killed him with this weapon, I guess your family has a habit of forcing me to pull out this weapon, don't they?" She asked me.

I tightened the grip on my daggers as much as I could as the weapon started to swing straight for my head.

During times like these, when time had slowed down completely, I realized she was completely blowing off Orion's orders. That was swinging at my head, which would kill me instantly.

Isn't that... refusing Orion's orders? That obedient dog would never do that.

No... she won't hit me in the head. And I won't react to her swinging.

She hesitated for a moment and I saw her left hand reach for a sword hanging off of her hip, which I meant by sticking my dagger into her arm and then slashing again at her face while the chain was pushed back in her hands.

Surely enough, that's exactly what she planned to do. Her look of shock satiated the irritation I had been feeling, and I was even able to land another slash on her chest.

The fight took a dreadful turn when Ellen began to use the chain-whip and her flips to give it more momentum when colliding with my daggers. Her body elegantly turned as if every move was calculated as she swung it down upon my body.

The whip caught my right arm and violently tore the skin still attached, and with her sword, she barely missed me by hitting an empty part of my baggy shirt by my stomach. Sorry, Talion! Your clothing is ruined!

She kicked me back into the flimsy wall behind us and I rolled backward, laying my weakened body out of the sturdier wooden platform underneath my body. The adrenaline started to leave my body, and the wound on my right arm started to pulse with pain.

I let out a faint whimper as Ellen walked closer to me, flicking the blood off of her hands after tracing the wounds I put on her.

"Failures shouldn't get to live. It's a shame I don't have the order to kill you." She told me while putting her hand under my chin and looking at me.

This was it... I was going to lose one of my arms!

I just shut my eyes and accepted my fate... I shouldn't have done this, I should've just complied, maybe I would've been able to keep them.

My hero... I just wish I had a hero to save me... now... of all times...

Then, I heard a sound like a metal pipe banging onto another one and opened my eyes out of fear.

Her whip was stopped by a sword that looked familiar to me... and a body that appeared even more familiar to me.

Tavian was struggling against Ellen to hold her back, away from injuring me.

He was injured, severely... but he was still holding her back, for me...?

"There's no time like the present, Lia! Somebody needs your help... your chance is here! I'll handle Ellen, go, help Sky!" Tavian told me.

I don't know what got into me, but I was up on my feet before he even finished his sentence.

I've wronged you... I've done nothing right to you... but I will change things... I promise, Sky! I'm coming!