Trigger warning - Physical violence and blood.
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Belladonna couldn't fight to save her life.
Her bleeding face was a prove of that.
The tiny pieces of glass that had dug into her skin, when she had been thrown against the glass shelf behind her and it had crashed on impact, was a prove of that.
Combat just wasn't something she was any good at and even in her dreams she wasn't any better.
A hand around her neck yanked her up so she could stare at the rage filled eyes that burnt down at hers.
That could never be her Eli.
She tapped her hand against the firm grip that held her neck, as she gasped for air. Her eyes widening as she struggled, not minding that the glass pricked into her skin even more with the frantic movement.
"Let's t-talk about this." Her voice came out muffled from how deeply cut and painfully busted her lips were, she could taste her blood drip down her tongue and despite her repulsion to spit it out, swallowing it just seemed more effortless.
"Who sent you?" The scaly man roared into her face, lessening his grip so she would speak if she had any words to say.
That was the only reason she was still alive, because he believed someone had sent her to kill the witch. He wanted to kill her but not before discovering who the mastermind of all this was.
He was right, there was a mastermind, an invisible one!
The thought of the Bride Thief always filled her with rage but not as much rage as the thoughts of how stupid she had been to allow herself into this dream in the first place.
Now, she was stuck.
"Tell me!"
Figuring out what her life line was right from the start of the fight, Belladonna had played along with it, believing that along the line, she would find a way to get herself out of the situation. After all, as long as she stayed alive, there was hope. But a couple of punches to the face, a shove to the glass and a couple of kicks later, she still hadn't come up with any saving grace.
She might as well die in this game.
"Who?!"
She could tell him that she wouldn't tell, just like she had been doing before, but her mouth felt too heavy to repeat those three words again.
With her pinky, she beckoned him to move closer. He squinted his eyes at her in confusion before yanking her forward instead, to hear whatever she had to whisper.
He didn't hear it though.
He felt it.
Teeth snapped shut around his ear with a death grip.
He groaned in pain, tactfully freeing himself from her as quickly as possible, causing him to lose some skin and blood along with what he had already lost.
Belladonna spat that out in a hurry, feeling the flesh that had been caught in-between her teeth.
She definitely wasn't thinking her actions through at the moment, she was too desperate to be logical.
The scaly man stood up, grunting some words underneath his breath, before his gaze landed on the witch and he went still. Then he went to her and fell on one knee, a hand upon his bleeding ear and the other yanking out the gem that Belladonna had stuffed into her mouth, before tossing it to the floor.
The other end of the gem, which was sharp, glimmered with the blood on it.
Despite the fact that the gem was now out, the witch's mouth was still wide open, making it an even more horrifying sight.
The he turned to her sharply before she even had the chance to scurry away. With his hand that was already now messed up with blood, he wiped his tears away and pulled out his dagger.
"You will pay with your life for this, stranger."
He charged towards her, falling almost instantly as he tripped over one of the gems that had fallen out of the crashed shelf, his dagger flinging some distance away from him.
He groaned from the glass that pricked his face, but he hardly seemed affected by it as he was attempting to stand up almost immediately.
Yeah, right, not on Belladonna's watch!
He was like a cockroach with wings, always better on its back. Just that he wasn't on his back and he didn't have wings.
It didn't matter, the point was that he had fallen.
He was a cockroach!
Belladonna's hand dashed towards the nearest gem, It was as big as her palm and as heavy as a rock. She threw it as him so that he stayed down from the forceful impact. She continued throwing gems, while she crawled to him as quickly as possible, kicking away his dagger as her wobbly legs could allow.
It would be of no use to her anyways.
Her hands rose in the air, with an intent to slam the heavy gem against the back of his head, but they froze in a moment of realization.
Like it was all coming down on her at that moment.
She had killed someone... and she was about to kill another, with enthusiasm too?
What was going on with her?
Her mind whispered to her that it was all a dream and they were mere illusions. The scaly man beneath, moved, raising slowly to his elbow.
Her eyebrows furrowed with conflict but she seemed to have frozen to a spot and couldn't move her aching arms in any direction, despite how her enemy seemed to be recovering.
"Kill that cockroach!" A voice commanded and it was all she needed.
Bam!
Bam!
Bam!
She didn't stop until the same voice whispered to her.
"He is dead, Nightshade."
The gem dropped from her hands, not rolling so far away and she staggered up to her feet, now feeling the pain from every cut on her skin, and the overwhelming feeling that crossed through her veins.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she took in the sight of what she had done, her lips quivered, her body as shaky as her heavy breaths.
She had killed them.
Both of them.
"You did well."
Her lips sealed with anger at his words.
"You sick bastard!" She grunted, her shaky hands moving over her skin as she tried to pull out the glass that she were buried into it. "You left me all alone with your crazy creatures."
"I was trying to find a way to get you out of here."
Belladonna felt angry for many reasons, felt angry for everything that had happened to her so far and pissed at the fact that she didn't have a face to yell at. All she could see whenever she looked in the direction of his voice was air and the chaos of the room in the background.
"And you thought I would die."
"Yes."
She pulled out a glass with anger at that, the blood splashing on the floor while she moved to the table, to stay clear of the broken shelf and the bodies.
"Why? Are you scared to watch another death on your account?"
"I---" there was silence for a moment, and the next time he spoke, he sounded too close. "Stay still."
"Don't move close to me!"
"I was trying to help you with the glass but I can't hold it."
He sounded sad about that but she would rather have her head cut off then feel an ounce of sympathy towards him.
Belladonna wondered why she wasn't feeling as much pain from the glass on her skin. It must be the shock, numbing it. She hoped she would stay in shock for a while, the fear of the torture that would come after, made her terrified.
Something like this had happened to her before, having several glasses in her skin. She just couldn't remember when.
"We are in a memory hole." He sounded more far away now.
She appreciated the distance.
Although she was a mess right now, metallic red liquid all over her skin, her hair a tangled bird nest, her face swollen, and the close encounters they had in the past was nothing like this - encounters he had claimed weren't even real, Belladonna still didn't feel comfortable having him too close to her.
Once she made it out of this dream, she would never come back.
She had learnt her lesson.
"How do we get out of it, the memory hole?"
"Memory holes come from memory loss, and here, only two of our memories are involved. I'm trying to figure out if this is my memory hole or yours."
"Yours, definitely. Everything happening is your fault. Get me out of he--"
"Or it could be yours. Ever think that they might be doing something to you in that your so called protective castle."
When Belladonna pulled out the glass this time, it was much more painful.
"The only person doing something to me is you and I regret---"
The growl that echoed all around them brought her words to a halt, the floors vibrating next.
"Hell no, the dragon."