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“Let us end this for him.” The finish grimly, narrowing your eyes at the beaten boy - this foreign demon. He has been reduced to something pitiful, too weak to survive without help. He will not have yours. There is a mercy in death though, a dignity to it when done cleanly. “I shall do it.”
Unsheathing your sword, you find it oddly difficult to take the next step forward, your leg remaining frozen. Ahriman steps aside, motioning to the boy with a hand. With a shaking hand and unsteady feet, you finally take a few steps toward the boy - <span class="mu-i">Birch</span>, a strange name but still a person’s - and kneel beside him, pressing the hair cuttingly sharp edge of your blade to the flesh of his throat. The weight of the blade alone draws a thin line of red, but you hesitate again.
“Not like that,” Ahriman corrects you, pointing with one finger to the side, “Off to the left a finger’s width, and higher. Cut as deep as you can or it won’t be clean.”
“...P-please, don’t,” The words whisper out desperately from Birch’s bloodied mouth, barely understandable through his heavy accent. It is not too late to spare him. “D-don’t, I don’t want to die, please, <span class="mu-i">mother</span>...”
Your hand stays a moment longer, heart beating faster, the shaking of your hand working the blade a hair’s width deeper, drawing more blood. <span class="mu-i">What are you doing?</span> He is far too weak to fight, one hand grasping against your leg but without enough strength to attempt a real struggle. Terrified eyes look up at you, one blackened and half closed from a strike by Ahriman’s gauntleted fist, but the other alive and bright with life - life that fears its end.
Fear.
<span class="mu-i">”The prince is dead.”</span> The red of the boy’s blood mocks you. The curse’s grip tightens.
You press down hard, pulling the length of steel through Birch’s throat.
Crimson blood sprays out across your face and arms and robes - there is warmth in it, quickly lost to the desert’s greater heat, and a taste of iron. Birch’s eyes widen in shock and pain, fully aware, his hand grasping and slapping against your leg, words gargling and drowning in his throat. Stumbling back, pulling away from the spraying wound in horror, you look on at what is <span class="mu-i">not</span> a quick end. Birch’s small hands find his throat, soaking red as he tries vainly to stem the flow, all the time gasping and drowning and shaking. You tighten your grip on the sword and hurry back, desperate to end this - it is too much! Crawling back on your knees, you bring the blade down - A stab to the boy’s chest, and another, and another, and another, but it does not end it, and the pain only grows.
