As I mentioned in the news post, this is a twofer. I made the first image, decided it wasn’t bloody enough, and then made the second version. It’s basically the same moment, only about a second apart: the initial thrust, and then…

There was a moment—a single instant, frozen forever and yet over as soon as it began.

Tetsuo saw the tip of the blade, in this moment. There was no confusion. She knew she had died. She suspected her killer was one of the shadowy operators of the Svenska Krypskytt unit. Only one of those highly-trained assassins could have approached in such silence, and slipped the blade between Tetsuo’s second and third vertebrae so precisely she barely felt the steel grind against the bone.

She knew what would happen next. Her decapitation was utterly complete, internally—only mere muscle and skin still connected her to the body that shuddering in orgasm on her lover’s tongue. She knew what the fingers that had knotted in her hair just a sliver before her death meant. She knew the hand that had thrust the blade was tensing to rip it sideways. She knew the last sight that would greet her dimming eyes would be the open desert falling away as her killer raised her head aloft like a trophy. She knew the blood would drain from her brain almost instantly, drawing consciousness along with it into death.

She knew the degradations that would be inflicted on her corpse, and felt sick horror. The fine warrior’s body she had spent her life building was no longer a lethal instrument, only an object of contemptuous lust. Once filled with her honed skill and fierce spirit, soon to be filled with cooling seed. Her body would leak stains into whatever grave it was afforded.

She knew her lover would receive no better. She knew Dojo would most likely die completely unaware of the danger, her smiling mouth still kissing hungrily between Tetsuo’s thighs. She wondered if Dojo’s corpse would be violated alongside her own, or in some separate place. She wondered if they would be buried together. She wondered if they would be buried at all.

And she knew, despite how it felt, that this moment could not last as long as it seemed to. She knew that in death, her mind was racing, reaching for more time, trying to hold onto itself and clinging desperately to life. She knew she couldn’t—

The blade ripped. The desert began to fall away. Her awareness flickered, and