Just five little words. Harsh and horrible little things. They scratched at her brain like a little gremlin, rearing its ugly head, and clawing its way into every thought and decision she made.

Honna sneered at the gremlin for reminding her of the words now, at the most inconvenient of times.

“Well, you’re not the prettiest…”

Nothing more than a seemingly harmless, mis-directed joke spoken at the wrong time. The words weren't even in his voice anymore. The gremlin had twisted them into a cruel weapon, oozing them through it’s jagged teeth and filling them with malice.

A blast of energy shot past her head, through the air. She smiled at the demon’s feeble attempt. Soft golden strands of hair whipped around her face as she flipped her body around and held her hands in a magical sign, in one swift motion, whispering the final words to detonate the bombs.

She winked back to the truly hideous creatures. This time, she finally had the confidence to say what she should’ve told that nasty gremlin all along. “Go to Hell!”

Fear and realization spread across their rotting faces. Honna enjoyed watching the true shock of it all seep down into their very souls—if they even had those. What little skin they did have melted away as they clawed at their eyes and throats. If she hadn’t known how badly each and every one of them deserved this, she might have felt a little pity for them. But she couldn’t help the proud smile that pulled at the edge of her lips. They could never hurt anyone ever again.

Noise filled the air. The shrieking screams of the demons and sounds of buildings shattering to pieces overhead, grew so loud she could no longer hear anything at all. The sky around her turned a beautiful light-blue hue.

She wished she could tell the old her that those words didn’t matter in the slightest. Show her everything that she was truly capable of. But, then she never would’ve been set on this path. And there would’ve been no world left to protect.

Honna’s consciousness began to fade and swirl. It was a little surprising, that dying felt so much like entering a portal, just on a much more intense scale. She wondered, for a brief moment, if the afterlife would always have that beautiful blue-hue. The same blue she came to find so much comfort in.

Her friends chanted just outside the rift, on one of the larger ledges of the mountain. They were obviously trying to stop her from feeling the pain as her body was torn to shreds, even though she had told them not to. She tried to raise an arm to wave goodbye, but if she still had one, it was no longer responding to commands. She hoped they didn't waste too much of their energy on her. They’d need their strength. They still had a lot of work to do.

Warmth filled her mind, almost engulfing it completely. All that was left was the small tinge of curiosity at where she would have been going if she had never gotten her heart broken that day. The day that led her to become a warrior of the gods.