Keela opened her eyes at the crack of dawn, a new day beginning. Light peeking through the slight opening between the curtains flashed down on the bed, showing the second figure curled up in it with her. Velka was under the covers, her knees bunched up under the pillow she was hugging, sleeping soundly still despite the incoming light. Her bunny ears slumped, one of them covering a part of her face. The sight made Keela smile but the day had to begin, so she got up and threw a shirt on, opening the curtains vehemently, flooding the room with light. Velka turned around with a groan, putting her pillow over her face. Pouncing back on the bed, Keela took the pillow off, staying on top of Velka, inches away from her face.

“Get up”, she said in an almost signing tone, acting like she had been up for more than five minutes.

The sheer annoyance emanating from Velka’s eyes showed she was more than ready to get up. A smug smile plastered on her face, Keela saunted out of bed, dressing hastily. In a few minutes, she was already at the usual table by the balcony where she had met so many and eaten much too many apples. Grabbing some breakfast, she looked off to the city pensively, grazing the skyline with her gaze, hazy details being omitted by her still tired brain. When she turned back around, sunlight having sufficiently warmed her retinas, Velka was sitting at the table, throwing grapes inside her mouth with the same annoyed look in her eyes and Saphielle was entering the room with a pile of documents. Luckily, Keela had remembered to grab her glasses. Putting them on her nose, she pushed them up as Saphielle arrived up to the table. Putting the documents down, she sat with the two of them and grabbed an orange. Confused, Velka and Keela looked at each other, looking back at Saphielle with confused eyes.

“Isn’t this the part where you tell us about the many things we have to do today?” asked Keela, rolling her shoulders.

“I was half expecting a monologue or a tirade for all the time she didn’t spend working yesterday”, said Velka, pointing to Keela with a slight mocking tinge to her intonation.

“What? No, no, you had a rough day yesterday, I already took care of most of the work”, replied Saphielle, looking away from her orange which she seemed oddly concentrated on.

Keela observed more attentively. Saphielle wasn’t someone she usually paid much attention to the looks of, but today did feel off. The hair looked hastily thrown together as opposed to the usual tight hairdo she had. Slight bags had shown up under her eyes; bags she had probably tried to mask the best she could. Her shirt was messily tucked compared to the usual perfectly straight and proper way she wore it.

“Saphielle… did… did you sleep?” asked Keela, leaning in closer to Saphielle who looked away, avoiding eye contact.

“Well, there was a lot of work to do…” replied Saphielle, avoiding the question.

“I appreciate how diligent you are, but I would rather have you sleep than trade it for being up to date on work.”

“But…”

“No buts. I appreciate you caring for my well-being, but you are also in the equation here. So I’m sending you off to bed as soon as I know what I have to do today.”

“Fine… All that’s on the list for today is those Ivory Razor prisoners. Finally finished rounding ‘em up in the dungeon.”

Keela paused, taking off her glasses slowly, putting them on the table.

“How many are we looking at?” asked Velka, sitting back straight from her laid back position.

“Twenty-three. I searched high and low and some of those traitorous fucks were hiding those scars really good. I’ve seen things…” said Saphielle, her professionalism slipping off a touch as she paused her orange peeling.

“Alright. Well, you take it easy, you’re clearly tired”, replied Keela, getting up and quickly ushering Velka to come with.

“I’ll be here if you need me”, said Saphielle, stretching unceremoniously.

Making their way to the dungeon quickly, Keela and Velka finally managed to arrive at the holding cells; after a few wrong turns and hiccups. The cells were in a dusty row of the castle, stacked on top of each other and connected with various catwalks. The area was heavily guarded, people immediately standing to attention as Keela passed through. After gathering the information she needed from the guards, Keela had all the prisoners brought together in a wide room, still cuffed and guarded.

“I trust you all know why you’re here”, said Keela pacing the room, absentmindedly reading the files for each prisoner, albeit with some difficulty as she had forgotten her glasses back on the table.

“You can’t hurt us or you’ll get hell. You know it damn--” started one of the prisoners.

Keela’s head whipped around to them, the papers she held dropping to the ground as she dashed to them, landing on their chest, knocking them to the ground. Without any waiting, she started punching them, aiming for the lower jaw to give as much pain as possible without knocking them out. With no force added to the punches, the bloodied mouth of the prisoner losing a few teeth as Keela went to town on them, bloodying her own knuckles in the process, showing no signs of slowing down. She deliberately simply punched over and over again, aiming to hurt, not kill. The only thing that stopped her was Velka who tapped her shoulder after noticing the prisoner’s mouth was starting to lack teeth. Getting back up and wiping her knuckles off with a rag handed to her by a guard, Keela addressed the prisoners again.

“I don’t remember saying I was going to show any leniency”, she said, her gaze as cold as the legends remembered it, her voice almost visibly dripping with disgust.

As the prisoners started to realize their immediate fate, some of them started to feel the weight of fear on their shoulders. An idea perking up in her head, Keela turned around and ripped spacetime, creating a rift to the void. As it got big enough to fit two people, she turned back towards the prisoners.

“This is the void. When you go in, time basically stops. You can’t die, you don’t get hungry. Someone from your cult once locked me in there for six years and I intend to do as much questioning as I need to do to figure out everything I need to know”, said Keela, making eye contact with as many as she could as she paced around the room, looking for the first.

As her gaze crossed a former guard’s, she grinned.

“Looks like some of you still need a demonstration”, she said, very much intending to make an example.

As far as she knew, half of torture was psychological. Grabbing the defiant prisoner by the throat, she dragged them through the rift, closing it behind her. A new rift formed right as the first one closed, Keela walking out with substantially more bloodstains on her clothes, dragging a coughing prisoner by the neck. Throwing them on the ground showed that most of their bones were broken and any non-vital function was impaired. As they looked up with empty vacant eyes at the rest of the prisoners, blood seeped into their lungs, causing them to drown in front of the rest. Silence fell on the room as Keela scanned around, looking for a hint of defiance in any of the gazes affixed on her.

“If any of you were in a higher position than this one, I promise I’ll be lenient on anyone who rats them out”, said Keela, offering a warm smile that lost all its charm with the blood splatters on her face.

Someone perked up, obviously interested by the bait Keela had thrown out. They nodded towards someone else in the group; a former kitchen staff member. Thanking them with a nod, Keela walked up to the informant and unapologetically put her hand on their forehead, outputting an immense quantity of electricity, effectively frying their insides in an instant.

“What the fuck?! I thought you said you’d be lenient!” yelled another prisoner, panicked at the scene.

“Immediate death is lenient”, replied Keela, her gaze showing no mercy, freezing any intent of showing any self respect in the prisoners.

Going immediately for the one that was gestured to, grabbing them by the throat, she opened a rift with only one hand this time, focusing the magic in a blade that cut in space time instead of ripping it. The rift closed behind her again, only for her to come back moments later, dragging only half a screaming body who died within seconds, its vital functions out of its body.

“Well, I have what I need, any guards who are against executions may leave, I can take care of it myself if you won’t”, said Keela, rolling her shoulders.

Guards looked among each other, confused. Keela sighed and started walking around with a dagger, slitting the throats of the prisoners. Some revolted, asking why she was doing this.

“You think I’d let spies live in my castle? Did you see how small this place is? I have to keep this running smoothly. And thus, we remove sand from the mechanism”, said Keela, casually staining the floor.

“You’re really like your mother”, said one of the prisoners, raising their tone.

Keela immediately stopped her hand, her head turning slowly towards them.

“Excuse me?” she said, looking directly at them.

Her face was calm but in her eyes was a raging fire. Pure seething rage for someone who dared to compare her to a less than alive wretch of a being.

“Could you say that again, I don’t think I heard you”, said Keela kneeling down to their level, staring straight in their eyes from a foot away.

“I- I said; you’re really l-like your mother”, said the prisoner, suddenly less confident.

Smiling, Keela stood back up, turning away from the prisoner before whipping back around and kicking them in the chest so hard they flew into the bars of a cell, their back producing an ominous crack as they slumped to the floor, crying. Keela stood next to them and rested the heel of her boot against their temple, completely crushing their head in one swift movement, causing everyone in the room to look away. Seeing this, Velka rushed to Keela and slapped her, bringing her back to her senses.

“You’re leaving, the guards can finish this”, she said, grabbing Keela and dragging her away.

Velka was the only person Keela would never raise a hand against and Velka knew this, which is why in that moment she took advantage of that fact. After passing through the room in which they had breakfast -- silently to avoid waking up Saphielle who was still asleep on a bench -- they made their way to Keela’s quarters. As Velka shut the door, she put Keela down in a sitting position and kneeled in front, looking at her worriedly.

“What was that? That wasn’t you”, she said, grabbing Keela’s shoulders to shake her to understand.

“What do you mean? I was in full control of myself”, replied Keela, staring blankly off into the distance.

“Bullshit! The Keela I knew came home crying cause she had to threaten someone with a dagger. What happened to her?”

“I…”

Keela never finished the sentence, words catching in her throat. The muddled bloodstains on her cheeks turned her involuntary tears red as they fell down her jawline and hit the floor after pearling off her chin.

‘Velka… What have I become…” said Keela, looking at her own bloodstained hands.

Not replying, Velka simply grabbed Keela tight into a hug and didn’t let her go.

“Welcome back…” said Velka, as Keela burst into tears on her shoulder.