Fear
"Speak." Lexa commanded
The prisoner stood still. He didn't utter a word.
"For the last time, speak."
The man didn't move a muscle.
"Fine" Lexa drew her sword and stabbed him in the stomach. He might not tell her what she needed to know, but his death would be painful. And slow.
After stabbing him several times, he left him on the ground to bleed out and walked to the other prisoner. She repeated the exact same question.
"Where are my people?"
This time, she got a response. The grounder smiled before spitting at her face. She didn't ask him again before breaking his neck.
Lexa cleaned her face, disgusted
"Heda, this one might've spoken"
"None of them have, Indra." She started walking towards a metal door in an alley, Indra closely following her.
They entered the room, making sure no one had followed them, and silently closed the door behind them. It was cold and humid, and the air reeked of sweat and blood.
Titus was standing next to a single chair in the middle of the room. He held a small dagger in his right hand and a red hot iron in the other one, which he was approaching dangerously to the woman tied to the chair. Her flesh sizzled when it touched her, but she barely grunted, eyes fixated on Titus' as she didn't say a word.
"Titus." Lexa didn't have to ask the question, they'd done it for way too many times.
He shook his head
"They know our ways, Heda. They're grounders."
"End her."
The woman smiled one last time before Titus put the dagger through her heart.
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A war council had been made a few weeks after Clarke had disappeared. She had only been the first one, but in the four months she'd been missing, over a hundred more warriors had been kidnapped by the Shadow Army, the Neindropa, the impostors.
The council consisted of Lexa's blood raiders, as well as Indra, Titus, Octavia and Raven. Those were the only people she trusted and needed.
"Lexa, we aren't getting any answers, from any of them. If you'd only hear Raven's plan, I'm sure..."
Lexa glared at Octavia, causing her to shut up without need of her speaking.
"Lexa" Raven didn't usually speak in those meetings, Octavia did so for her, but she felt like it was needed "we can't kill them one by one. And we aren't getting any answers. Im not saying my plan is perfect, but we need one."
Indra nodded "We should attack their camp, burn it at night, and before they know what's happening, attack them with all we've got."
"No, we should go at midday, they won't expect that, the light will partially blind them, and we'll have that in our favour"
"A frontal assault would be best. Given the size of our army..."
"SILENCE" Lexa looked as if she was going to kill any of them some time soon. Or all of them. "In case you've forgotten, I'm Heda. I'm the one who makes the decisions around here. We can't attack at night, because they've got watchers that can spot anyone who is less than ten miles away. That's why so many of our scouts have been killed, or wounded" she looked at Octavia's arm, which was still healing from an arrow that'd hit her "We can't know how many people they've got, so we don't know what kind of attack we need. And the light" she scoffed "like that would stop them. What we need to do, like it or not, is to annihilate them. Once and for all. But we won't need a good plan. We'll need a perfect one."
Raven's eyes lit with hope
"You'll explain it to us in the morning, Raven. It's late. Get some sleep. If it's good, we'll attack tomorrow. If not, well, we'll have to keep torturing the rest of our prisoners." No one saw her smile as she left the room.