Jade Hara Kiri

JADE HARA KIRI

Edenia burned, the palace girl awoke in a field of ghostly reeds, as she peered out she watched the royal palace burn, thousands of screams mingled into the black pillars of smoke; women breaking, masked by the coming barks of hounds.

They came, chasing a lone warrior that moved with a grace of a panther.

A pure thing of instinct she fought and slew without pause, fought with all that is left in Edenia as if she was her people's last breath of life. With perfect deadliness her lance fought and slew like a ferocious prayer.

For a second the woman scanned the reeds, as if hoping it would be a perfect killing ground. Then, turned with instinct, she spotted the subtlest movement within. The girl looked up, their eyes met; green eyes, the color of spring, looked at her and she saw the woman's perfect lips streaking with copper blood. 

The woman's jaw dropped, the girl said nothing, the woman does not look like the same Jade that bathed her, the Jade who taught her dancing, taught her warmth, taught her faith. 

The woman before her was a gore- drenched killer, with Jade's face.

Warm monsoon rain poured down ignorant of their mutual history.

An explosion behind shook them both and the girl dove back, twenty, then forty foes appeared from the clearing with their hounds, forming a spear studded semi circle. Like a ghost, their prey turned.

Mighty strides, booming footstep heralded the entrance of their skull- faced lord.

The girl cannot tell if he was a God or a man, for he stood tall as an elephant, his red smoking eyes peered from his skull shaped helmet, he wielded a battle hammer a man's height, a dozen arrows pierced his hulking frame but he was utterly indifferent, discarding them as if plucking bandages. He smiled.

“You've failed.”

Shao Khan simply yawned as he tossed the head of Edenia's queen into the churning mud. The girl choked on her gasp as she eyed the face of the queen she's bowed to over a thousand times. A face once smiled with wisdom and favor now blue and blackened. Its white upturned eye balls rolled back fiercely into the bloody sockets, its amethyst mouth drooled, like spittle of a dog.  Lazy breeze carried its sweet ungodly stench. A face once perfumed with lilacs to make baby princesses sleep.

~

Jade's green eyes teared, they didn't think for they have failed.

“O how they spoil after they've been defiled.” Shao Khan clicked his fingers as a dozen of his hounds lounged at their gory prize, tearing cheek and lips. He clicked his fingers again and the hounds darted back to their piss stained spots, the queen's face seemed to have exploded. The cheeks rolled out like awkward butterfly wings and no expression remained on its whole, its sheathed teeth peered out beneath the shaven jaws, dog like. “She begged me not to burn her kingdom as I rode her death throes, woman, it's fitting she should look more like a dog.” One of his minions stabbed forward and pierced its blue neck folds, cracked the white haired skull as it came out, carried it flapping on a prod.

“She will be my war banner, and I will batter Earth's and Elder God's door with this as I hoist my reign high!”

The sky was bitter.

Jade stood, almost soulless. Beset by watchful dogs. Pain ate away half her body.

Her tethered limbs bound by the shackles of Shao Khan's consuming stare as he slowly drank taste of the raw emotions radiating from her.

Minutes stretched painfully, only the indifferent dripping from the head was heard.

“Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.” Shao Khan broke the silence. “You've always fought more like us, wild, free, and utterly unleashed on the edge of your emotions; perfect.”

For moments the girl thought the shadows of his trunks like thighs spawned demon- like shadows. His eyes roamed over the ample curves of Jade's tanned exposed flesh, up her long glistening legs and rigid torso to the torn Edenian top that did nothing to conceal her rippling magnificence. A body deemed fairest amongst the fairest breed of war.

Her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.

The man beside her died, then the man circling behind.

A fool charged forward, then met her lance. His face exploded, his body flew, ravaged by a battering ram. The ranks exploded forward, tense with war and curse. She carved their faces, stabbed their loins, and painted her face with their gore. Away from the reeds she led, the circle followed forth.

She killed there, she killed here, skewing rank by rank. Ten, then twenty claimed by her purple blur. A shredded limb, a pierced face fell in her raging path, indifferent to a mad soul of sword.

The one beside Shao Khan died, then the one before, and as she lunged Shao Khan alone stood. Her legs sprang, her soul flew, bringing Edenia's fury true.

She never had a chance. He caught her like an impatient child. With a twist he threw her ankle back, twice the fury she brewed. She flinched and kicked but it made no difference.  Her calves might as well have died.

He cracked her spear, then cracked her shoulder as he hums to her heat. Hugged her as his tight victim shook, one bleeding leg, still filled with strength and youth. He felt muscles flexing in it, dangerous pulsing nerves. He snapped it.

Then tossed her away beside the reeds.

She landed on her face but whipped her sash behind to cover her exposed flanks.

Fighting off a wave of dizziness, she pulled her blood-slicked fingers away from her shoulder and blindly explored down her body. Her legs were heavy, as if already asleep.

Death had dulled her eyes and froze her lips, her head seemed to spun in circles and she seemed to teeter above a whirlpool, she only listened to the distraught prayers of the girl behind the reeds.

Slowly, she limped forward as Shao Khan leaned in and admired his handiwork, watched leisurely as her limp mud strung arm still clung to her broken spear. Listened to the shrill pulse beneath her body. Her nails were torn and tattered, blood marred her tanned face with streaks of scarlet.

Hot winds snapped around them, kicking up more rain that lashed around the exposed part of Jade's wounds. His lust boiled in the breeze, flayed her like a rapist from Hell. A circle of his minion came forward, eager to claim a fatal blow or a frisky rape.

Wincing against the shooting agony, she worked her legs until they stood in an upright position. Folding the tattered remains of her uniform to clung to her hips. 

She counted her heart beats, counting down the seconds left. Her irises were thickening as she gaze up into the sky with a fragmented grace. Her throat burned as her glassy eyes wandered across the vast sea of gyrating bodies and pulsating heartbeats. The thoughts of ghostly hands haunting her untouched places saddened her beaten face. She cannot see nor capture their movements, she cannot see Shao Khan nor his eyes. She listened as they waded near the lapping shore, edging closer to the reeds.

She knew she could still do one more thing.

Her beautiful body trembled with dark masochistic anticipation.

Again her eyes narrowed. Stopping, she brought out her razor boomerang; a gliding blade of death that has claimed countless legions of Edenia's foes. A prize she wouldn't allow anyone to simply pry out of her cooling body: An old servant and companion that is still befitting for one final duty for its mistress.

The girl peered out from the reed stalks on tiptoe. A ring of Shao Khan's men braced, some blocked their master. He only watched.

Jade tensed her arm, then herself, and composed her features.

She only braced her weapon and twisted it in the night rain.

It blurred as it launched forward, sending up a shower of rain and reed stalks as it covered a hundred paces in a blinding second. The swarm of Shao Khan's men ducked and swayed.

Jade panted for a moment, then roused her head into attention.

She blinked, the fire light too bright as flames licked at her skin. Her eyes came into sharp focus of a glowing herald of a brutal purple arc. Blood dripped from its razor edges as it snapped toward her spurted with the blood of her old foes. She inhaled the burning palace and the hounds' bloody drool, then felt a hot ghostly strength returning down her body and her bolted legs.

With closed eyes, she listened as the top of the reeds sheared off

In a stunned second even the Elder Gods paused-

Then the blade came, shearing through her with the force of a charging dragon that sputtered the torches.

The head disappeared with a ripple of air being torn, severing her bulging neck as if it were a reed.

In that moment of her death. Jade spasmed, her back arched, her neck erupted into a dozen screaming shreds, igniting the metal trail with jets of screaming hiss, then the bubbling fires of her soul shot out sharply in a gory shower, arcing heavenward from her untamed body, her last prayer ebbed from her throat.

Jade's head crashed against the sands, her long black hair kicked up a small dust devil, white flashes of light swam across her vision, obscuring everything but her spraying body. 

Her voice felt disconnected, her essence, the very fibre of her being and consciousness broke beneath the pressure of the heat. Everything that made her was shattered and swept away in the wake of the perfect stroke. She tried to not concentrate on it, to avoid the incredible feeling of being broken and shattered. She tried to think about the orphan girl she saved, she raised, the love of her life, but her image just swam in her vision before fragmenting away.

Shao Khan clenched his fists as a raging vein snaked across his hypnotized expression. He only stepped away as Jade's full weight dance, then rested upright in a timeless kneel. 
Her entire body was tense, her parts quivered, confusedly writhed on the edge of the life and death, spraying toward heaven with itching jets.

The minions stood deathly still, spellbound in ignorance of the fearless, the miracle of such lunacy. Instinctively they know to disturb it's last performance would be a painful death.

Mindlessly her hips swayed, then slumped forward with a splash it crashed forward over the side of the sandbar. spraying blood across the muddy chasms.

With a few involuntary jerks, her body tensed.

Jade's face had lost all expression of pain, her mouth opened slightly as her jaw muscled relaxed, her tongue rolled out into the reeking sand. Her eyes lost focus as her pupils slowly dilated, for a moment the eyes continued to watch as her body shook.

Then finally she relaxed and all tension poured out of her.

She laid in a defeated, muddled pile on the ground. Steam sizzled around her sublime contour, only the barking of bloodhounds kept the minions company.

The battlefield grew dark and silent. Later, the final indignation of her muscles settled.

Shao Khan said nothing then waved to his captains, four men came and slung her broken body like a deer, back to their master's new burning palace. One by one they parted, disappearing back into the darkest nights toward the sounds of unfinished slaughter.

Like a black rein he lifted her head, twirling the blood clotted mop like a poet.

As he licked the blood off his mask, Shao Khan enjoyed the soiled sweetness of fear that still clung to her dying cheeks.

He looked into Jade's lovely lifeless eyes and smiled,  He would let her drain a few minutes.

 

She was truly Edenia's last breath.

~

When the palace girl fainted she was ready to die, ready to be destroyed. When she woke the world was black and cold. Her dress almost conspired to drown her as she waded through the blood-slicked mud. A ring of foes, then another, and another more.

There was nothing of Jade but a majesic streak of blood almost completely washed out by the monsoon rain. Her broken staff laid beside it, but that was all, not even shreds of her torn vest, not a single gristle. She would not be buried in a place for others to find, no poet, friend or lover to find. Death choked the girl, death that bred everywhere. She would talk to no one, and is indifferent to death, indifferent to all. But one thing stopped her.

“As long as we live, there is hope. We carried it, and carried it for others so it keeps going.”

Jades words resounded.

Yes, she had to get busy living, much she'll do like a ferocious prayer.

~

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