The Chronicles of Briar Petrichor: Thaumorrhage

I met Pyroclast on the Battlefield. She never forgot what she fought for. But I... I can't remember a time before the fight. I've always thought that everyone had their limit to endurance of agony before they are crumbled by it. But if that's so, no limit has been found which could break her.
I woke from the Battle in beauty, and in pain. Curling, woody, thorned bushes shaded me. The roses surrounding me, deeper than wine-red, faced their darkness to the sunlight. Buzzing the full scent into the air, gentle bees flitted between golden pearls at the flowers' centers. I watched the black diamonds on their fuzzy backs.
Every breath pained me.
I tilted my head, and each throb through my body became individual torture. Nevertheless, I gazed down my arm outstretched in the grass, staring at the rivulet of crimson draining across its length. My eyes gripped; I only tried to swallow back the pain! But it choked me, and bubbled from the corners of my sputtering lips.
To fight for so long...
To not be sure that what I needed even existed...
The idea of finding a way to stand back up in this pain...
The strain of returning to the Battlefield in exhaustion...
After all the fights I'd survived...
After I'd truthfully done more than enough...
Maybe I should let this one end me.
My lungs ached with fluid; I couldn't scream in pain because of it.
"Skyrunner."
I scrambled back from her voice just above me, from the knight herself leaning over me. My dead weight pushed on my elbow. The steel of the trembling dagger in my hand felt hot compared to how cold I'd become.
My heart quaked against my eardrums and I couldn't force a breath.
I stared up at the Arcane Knight. Her cloak draped over her shoulders like a thunderstorm over a mountain. Crimson fire of arcane magic danced across her armor. Though streaked with black mud, flecks of spent magic, and splashes of drying blood, she seemed more resplendent than if she had been riding in triumph. Lips cracked, she looked as if she'd fought until her body suffered. Loose strands of curls wound their way from beneath her helmet, clinging to her face as wildly as the briars. Dire, green eyes took me in with neither kindness nor cruelty, only curiosity.
I saw my reflection in the eyes of Arcane Knight Pyroclast Dragonlord.
"Sky, over here." She said it to some companion, but her grave gaze never left mine.
Pyroclast reached to me, and I drew back. Her fingers only touched the glistening oil on the shaking dagger. She tried to smell it, but gaining nothing there, she neared her fingertip to her lips.
A pale hand smacked the knight's gauntleted wrist.
"You don't need to taste it to know it's poison."
The Arcane Knight gradually lifted her gaze to a woman tressed with streams of unicorn-white curls. "I need to taste it to know what kind," the knight patronized.
"Don't." This second woman wore a star-blue dress and bare feet to the Battlefield. Her platinum hair fell in curling rivulets down to her hips. She looked at me, and the briars. They were growing. "What is this?"
"I've seen it before." The Arcane Knight reached for me.
I didn't even realize how badly I'd been gasping until she gently guided the dagger to the ground and said to me, "Just try to breathe."
The girl whom the knight had called Sky, knelt in the shade with me, her kind eyes melting her expression into mourning. I think that was the moment I broke.
The sharp pain that twisted inside me suddenly sobbed out. Every breath struck me like a wave and wracked back out of my chest in a crimson mist. It both gasped from my mouth like hot breath in winter and also poured from between my grit teeth in streams. The fluid appeared glass-clear, but mahogany-red. I felt a hand at the back of my neck, supporting my head as I choked on screams of pain.
"That's not blood," I heard the knight beside me say.
"It's cold! He's cold!" Sky allowed herself to be drenched by it. It ran down my neck, it ran down my arm, and it soaked into the ground where the thorns and roses grew ever larger.
The Arcane Knight ignored the twisting vines reaching for her, and her deep voice struck the truth. "He's thaumorrhaging."
Suffering, my hand gripped into the soil. The wet dirt felt warmer than my fingertips.
The knight touched my shoulder. "He's hemorrhaging magic down the length of his arm," she pointed, "and from his throat."
"Hemorrhaging magic?" Sky repeated, disbelieving.
The Arcane Knight drew a careful breath, and I thought I heard pity within it. "Magic, spirit, life-force, qi. Whatever it is that gives us Strength. I learned it as thaum. This much?" she judged, "The soul reservoir in his throat must be torn."
I strained to lift myself up and failed. Pain lashed through my ribs with the movement, and my screams drowned in bleeding thaum.
"And that's why he's hemorrhag--thaumorrhaging?" Sky shook.
Pyroclast stared at me evenly, her voice only nearly quaking. "It's a horrifically painful thing," she affirmed, "to have your voice torn from you."
Sky rolled my cheek against her shoulder and wrapped her arm under mine. She lifted me and held me against her. I gasped and clutched at the back of her dress, my hands slicked with crimson thaum. I knew this torture would last for days. My thaum would bleed away, but unfortunately my body would live. Without Strength, I would become nothing but a husk without a soul.
She hugged me. Her arms tight around me, her cheek to my head, and my eyes to her slender neck...
I clutched her. Even my tears ran cold.
I had met Arcane Knight Pyroclast on the Battlefield. She had to have recognized me, because hers had been the blade that felled me.
My heart beat like shards of glass. I gripped Sky to bear the torment until she gasped. I realized my nails had drawn blood from her skin.
"Hush," she soothed, but excruciation encapsulated me.
I swallowed it down.
The strain of the words tightened my whole body. Fists clenched until the bones ached, "End... this...!"
Breath fought against thaum for space in my lungs causing sudden heaves to wrack my body.
"It's alright! Let it out." She stroked my hair unraveling from its braid as my body violently convulsed into bitter coughs. I heaved until mulberry-red thaum spilled from my mouth and down her shoulder. Cold, and slick, it smelled of dead flowers.
I shook and I collapsed against her, but I could breathe. And with that breath, I begged.
"...End! ...This!!"
Sky met the Arcane Knight's gaze. I already felt my lungs filling back up with thaum.
Sky looked up. "Put an end to this, Py."
I shielded my eyes in the crook of her neck, my tears trickling down her collar. A gentle hand stroked the back of my head.
"Between his shoulders," the Arcane Knight said.
"Through to his heart," Sky agreed.
I felt exposed.
"Only if he's lucky." In one motion, the Arcane Knight ended it. My head fell back with a gasp, my eyes burned wide with shock, and my hands gripped Sky.
Pyroclast's palm rested between my shoulders, but with it she held no blade nor weapon.
Like a drop of ink in water, an ebbing of the pain curled through me. I gasped breath after full breath. My grip loosened and my hands fell to my sides. Exhaustion pulled my eyes into my lids, and my head tilted further and further back. The torment evaporated from me, leaving me alive.
I felt two sets of hands catch me as the world began to fall. The Arcane Knight's voice spoke deeply beside my ear. "I placed a powerful healing thaum in between your shoulders. I put it there specifically so that you will forever remember to keep them straight and back. Always stand squared when looking Shades of Hell in the eye."
I remember them laying me back into the soft grass. Grass grown from my own bleeding soul. Sleep cascaded over me.