In the hour when no soul may be found... at the gloaming, as the sun surrendered to the horizon's edge, a darkness born of a slumbering homecoming crept forth. It was as if the final spark of the spirit were to be shattered. In that hour, men lay in a sleep so profound they mirrored the dead, yet their flesh remained unnervingly fresh. The echoes of the soul still drifted in a low, mournful cadence—vengeful, lingering wraiths beseeching that which had long departed, praying for these hell-beasts to treat them as naught but swine, to grant them a death no different from the agony they had endured.
At the settlement flanking the border of the Wine Lands and the High Cliff Kingdom.
The memories of the warrior woman flowed backward, recoiling from the madness. The feasting upon ichor, pus, and amniotic fluids vanished in the wake of chaos, leaving only the void and the voice of death. It pierced her small frame within the faceless coffin in agonizing throes. Spear-tips and axe-hafts thrust through the apertures of the wooden box, a ceaseless torrent of blood weeping from the wood—yet, hauntingly, there was not a single sound from those who struck. No grunt of exertion, no wet thud of steel meeting marrow. Not a single breath reached her ears.
"This rite demands absolute caution. The heart must be still, the spirit iron-clad, the mind devoid of dread… But look! You have let these women loose—prime specimens slipping from the laboratory crates!" A wooden staff, held by an unseen hand outside the cage they called a lab, struck with a violent crack. The first sound to follow that thunderous roar through the subterranean library was the sickening thud of wood, wrapped in rusted nails and barbed wire, smashing into a skull before the victim could utter a plea of innocence.
"Great Sage, we are even now extracting the essence. We pray you partake, to test the vintage," spoke one of those who pierced the coffin. Through the holes, she glimpsed a harrowing sight... scores of men tiered upon rows of scaffolding, amidst a clutter of wooden crates whose details remained shrouded. They were piled in grotesque clusters. A stench of rot so foul it burned the eyes and stung the nostrils hung heavy in the damp, stagnant air. Her skin was slick, coated in a viscous, cloying slime.
"So cold..." she thought, adrift in the gloom behind the holes where spears sought her flesh. Her body shuddered in a freezing rigor, a numbness so deep it felt as though she were submerged in dark waters—tens, perhaps hundreds of meters deep. She could not breathe. The scent of blood was sharper than a blade. Her form was mired in filth and waste so absolute she could no longer discern between gore, excrement, or the dregs of the womb. She did not retch, yet every fiber of her being absorbed the loathing of her surroundings. She writhed with sudden strength, and the spear that impaled her began to tremble, as if the one who held it were seized by shock.
"It... it is a success! Great Sage! It works! The hundreds of specimens we sacrificed were not in vain! It is finished!" The spear was yanked back, vanishing from the aperture. She remained adrift in a daze, her senses numbed from every flank. She opened her eyes slowly, closed them, and repeated the motion in a rhythmic trance. Her arms began to extend from her torso. The sound of heavy iron, aged wood, and the tip of a blade piercing the very center of her breast filled the air. She laughed. She wept. She beamed with a radiant joy, then fell into a hollow silence...
She thrashed in agony, as if her hair were being torn from its roots. A dozen blades sliced into her throat. She clutched at her neck, her talons lengthening until they were beyond measure. Her back convulsed, as if the flesh within rejected the very growth of hair.
"Hear me, one and all! Ye who strike now... we have collectively birthed a new dawn. Celebrate!" She understood not the hidden meaning behind those words. Her arms remained outstretched in the darkness, like the deepest, unreachable point of the world. She lowered them, clutching her chest. The sword, which had remained embedded until the torrent of blood ceased its flow, suddenly manifested within her grasp.
"Oh, Lady Justice! We have claimed you at last... how wondrously delightful, Hahaha!" The Sage smiled, his mirth breaking into a cackling dance. He pranced atop the failed crates that surrounded her—crates containing the remains of a hundred screaming women, some whose forms were so ravaged they were unrecognizable, others reduced to mere splinters of bone and scraps of skin that clung like dust to a shroud.
"Celebrate the specimen! From this day forth, we seekers of the Path of Blood and Filth have our prize! This woman, the Arbiter of the Bloodied Maidens... we have poured the blood of ten thousand foul beasts into every vein of her being. She is the one who shall transition the ages. We shall burn her, we shall hunt her, and let her stand as the icon of praise for the New Era!" The metallic reek from the hundreds of aligned crates seeped into her. She felt everything. She felt every ounce of pain a living thing could endure. Her body was numb as if cast into a sub-zero sea, yet burning as if lashed by a hundred thousand whips. Her frame jerked; her head fell away only to be pulled back by the very blood in her veins, anchoring her to her form. Her limbs were no different—falling away like pieces of armor, only to be forged anew by that sickening ichor.
"Hungry... am I truly this hungry?" Her eyes rolled back, revealing the truth behind the veil—thousands of crimson veins writhing like burrowing worms. And the final thing she sensed was the taste of iron-rich blood filling her maw.
"My Lady! For mercy's sake, find your senses!" A triangle... she saw it... a face flushed red from the searing heat of blood. A hundred rings formed of triangular teeth manifested within her mind. And now, the heavy footfalls of the knight who guarded the city and burned the restless dead—Thrax—carried her, fleeing from something unseen. There was nothing there, as if he ran from his own shadow, yet he spurred his legs with a desperation that threatened to shatter his bones.
"You... I never thought you would flee when that battlefield fell," she murmured, one hand swaying limp with his motion while the other rested against the knight's frame. Vionear, in this moment, was a shadow of her former self, weakened by memory or perhaps by a subconscious desire to forget.
"You are here. Cease your muttering, My Lady! You are here, wake up!" A slick of black oil snared Knight Thrax's leg, sending him crashing face-first into the earth. Her body was cast afar. The lingering aches of her ordeal flared anew; the pathetic agony of her physical form tore her further from reality.
"No one escapes..." she whispered repeatedly, her spirit plunging into a hollow terror. She shivered violently, her tears drying into crusts of blood.
"Escape or not... who gives a damn, My Lady?" Her senses were slow to return, unlike the archer who was numbed to such things. But by comparison, the thing embedded within her body was a torment far greater—like being crushed beneath a carriage, over and over, an eternal violation.
That which drew near made no sound of footsteps. It carried only the sound of death, of darkness, and a viscosity akin to crude oil. It flowed toward the gatekeeper's feet, but he would not let it take them. The surrounding woods bore no leaves; the trees stood skeletal and parched. There was only drought, mire, and the carcasses of amphibians—creatures that looked like apes with fish-fin arms and crocodile legs, elongated like the tail of a serpent. They possessed no webbing, but dozens of gills lined their forms from chest to loins.
The scent of raw fish, damp rot, and cloying stickiness hung heavy. Vionear sank slowly into the mire as she lay there. But the knight, his other hand driving his sword into the earth, anchored himself against the force that sought to drag him into the maw. In his eyes, it was the shadow of a pitch-black hound in hers, it appeared as a broken-winged bird, so black that the word 'darkness' failed to describe it.
"I once abandoned you all in the war, and I shall return once more. I will show you that I am, at the very least, still a warrior... no matter how I long to cast it aside, a warrior I am, and that cannot be changed."
He pulled her, struggling against the black oil with agonizing effort. He took her into his arms; the Silver-Blood Maiden was now far too frail. She was not mad, she was not ravenous, she could not even grasp a blade to stand and fight. Her body was slick with the crude oil of the past and the mire of a wretched land. Blood masked her face, which was as pale as winter snow. Her veins bulged in relief. She was in pain.
"I... will not leave you," he spoke, his voice ragged, his legs trembling from the strain of a flight that would not end. He collided with withered trees, his flesh torn by thorns; he suffered through the mud that sucked at him like hardening concrete.
"You will leave us again..." she whispered before closing her eyes in harrowing grief. Thrax continued to bear her frame with a single hand in a grace-filled stance, fleeing that which no man has ever outrun.