The fight raged on around me as my heart stopped dead. I had spotted her. Elise, the love of my life, the only thing I had left to live for. I looked into her eyes, wishing I could see a glimpse of the woman that I loved, but I knew what would greet me. Her beautiful green eyes, glassed over. This wasn’t her. This wasn’t my Elise. When they had taken her away from me I knew what they would turn her into. They would turn her into a puppet. Just like I had once been, like I had been forced to be. She needed to wake up, to break free from the chains on her mind. Then those eyes turned to me. Although I knew that the moster in front of me ruthlessly killing my people was not the girl I knew, my heart ached at what they had turned her into. Gone were the days of love and laughter. The echos of our life haunting the corners of my mind. Her kind face smiling up at me as we spent hours strolling the city. That same face that now, cold and distant, looked at me, her new target. My soul ached as she charged for me, ready for the kill. All whispers of the girl I loved gone as I readied myself for battle.

She flew at me, sword raised, perfect form, leaving no room for error. I braced myself as she drew nearer, ready for the attack. Our swords met, the loud jolting sound snapping me out of the bittersweet memories of us training together back in Paxilion. Those days of training for fun, stealing kisses behind the backs of our mentors. My mind went numb as every hit of our sords sent a jolt down my arm from the force of her wrath. I was not fighting to kill, only fighting to buy some time. To keep her at bay, keep her occupied as my mind raced for answers. I couldn’t hurt her, I couldn’t bring myself to think that way. Rage coarsed through my blood as I thought of the Bellator. How they found me after I escaped. How instead of captuing me they took the one good thin left in my life and broken her. I couldn’t let them win in their sick games.

Elise didn’t back down. She couldn’t. She swung her sword again and again and again. Tears streamed down my face as I fought. Fought for my life, for her life, for the lives of my people, for the lives lost at the hand of the Bellator, for every puppet in their game of control. I looked at Elise’s face. A face I knew so well, now looked so wrong. Her face, once only full of happieness and light, twisted into a face of rage and hate. I did not recognise this girl. She couldn’t be gone, not like this. I knew what they were doing, they had planned this, for me to be the one to kill her. I silently begged for her release, to stop this. If I didn’t kill her she was going to kill me. Maybe that would be better, easier. But I couldn’t leave the fate of my people to these murderers who stole my love, who turned her into something she fought her whole life to escape. I needed to free her, needed to get her back. Attack after attack, I couldn’t hold her off, couldn’t stop her, couldn’t wear her down. The realisation dawned on me. The truth I’d known since I’d come home to find our room torn apart. The truth was, there was no way to free her. I knew first had what this type of control was like, I knew that she was a prisoner in her own mind and there was nothing either of us could do about it. No matter how hard she fought to free herself or I fought to save her, these people, these fucking cowards had her mind in their hands. Her body a vessle to what they wanted. There was only one way to free her. To stop her pain. I knew what i had to do, and my heart shattered.

The world went quiet as my sword found its way into her heart. She fell to the ground, dropping her own weapons and I fell with her, catching her in my arms. Tears blinded me and fell onto her cheeks as I blinked them away. I had to see her face. Had to say goodbye.

I held her in my arms as she looked up at me, the fog gone from her eyes. A hand lifting to my face, wiping my tears away.

‘It’s okay Galen’

Her voice was no more than a whisper. A sob escaped my throat as the woman I loved the most was returned to me for her final moments,

‘You saved me.’

Those eyes, once so full of life and love and warmth, went cold and her hand dropped. She was gone.