Zack/TheUnnamedDaughterofBeautificSilenceStory

The girl that used to be Rapture of Serenity walked slowly through the streets of her once-home, Nexus. She moved silently and slowly, as if in a dream. The people thronging the street around her seemed like ghosts, unreal and intangible. Their faces were deathmasks, their robes tattered and drenched with the earthy scent of a crypt. She had glanced behind her once, and had paused when she saw walking dead trailing her like a queen's entourage. She hadn't looked back since. All around her, the living ghosts were a macabre parade, and she imagined that she could see how they would eventually die. That little girl, there, with a knife buried in her maggot-infested belly, and that half-decayed man, rotten and stinking with plague. She turned down a side street, moving away from the pressing, stinking crowds, and after only a few steps, found herself caught from behind, the tip of a knife pressed to her solar plexus. The clammy palm pressed over her mouth tasted of sweat and piss and who knows what else.

"Move," a voice growled in her ear. "Now."

Obeying woodenly, she felt something stiff pressing against her back, short and warm. How pathetic. The dispassionate thought passed through her mind without anger or fear or even disgust. All she felt now for these people was pity. This one, however, would soon be free of his weak, watery prison.

He stopped, pushing her face-first against a rough wooden wall. She hardly noticed the scrape on her cheek, instead focusing her energy as he leaned closer to her. This one would scream, she knew, and in the fallen city of Nexus, no one would notice. She pressed her hands docilely against the wall, closing her eyes for a moment. Shadows seemed to swirl around the edges of her vision, and she felt her blood start to sing as she called on them to help her focus. The man behind her laughed roughly, his blade pricking her skin and leaving a shallow cut. He didn't seem to notice as he leaned closer, reaching around her to raise her skirt.

"A pretty girl like you should know better in this city than to go out all alone." His breath stank of dead animals and fermented plants. She cringed, eliciting another laugh from him. "Oh, now you're scared." He pressed close and rubbed lewdly against her. And then his life ended. Messily.

She remembered, then, the last time she'd been in her home city, the remembered feelings of despair and utter hopelessness now failing to have even the slightest effect on her. She's come a long way since then. She'd been a runner, taking messages from one shop to another, criss-crossing the town myriad times every day, passing countless missives back and forth. She'd been skilled at dodging and weaving through the crowded streets, and she'd known what side alleys to avoid and which were generally safe. It had been during one of her routes that she'd found them. Her love, the keeper of her heart, was there. He was tucked in one of the pubs off the beaten path, with a woman of twice her age and four times her figure, his hand tucked neatly up her dress while she, the whore, threw her head back with a glassy-eyed gaze. The girl's lover had been conversing almost casually, and the others at the table seemed to be betting on something, watching the pig-faced harlot intently. The girl had stood there, the message that had been floating behind her eyes forgotten entirely as her feet rooted themselves to the spot. I should go, she had thought to herself. I shouldn't let him see me. I should deliver my message. I should run, far away from here, and come back once he's done with her. I should not be here. But she couldn't move, standing stock still as her world came crashing down around her. And then, he'd seen her.

His eyes had found hers, and the surprise in them had given way to malicious amusement. He'd turned his head and kissed the woman, then licked his lips exagerratedly while she watched. The girl had known that he'd never reciprocated her feelings, and that he'd been using her for what little she was worth. She'd known that, and yet had still loved him with all her heart and soul and mind. She'd trailed doggedly at his heels, carrying out his every bidding, hoping that someday he'd take her to his home, and his bed, and possibly even into his family. All these things, she knew, were just about impossible. She knew his amusement at her quiet pursuit of him, and she'd borne his sharp barbs and mean-spirited jokes with a smile and a good-natured laugh. She'd never realised that he would cast her aside so heartlessly for some bitch whose flesh happened to be more plentiful. The girl's trance broke with a start, and she'd turned and run. She'd fled the sight, hastening back to her own small home, but the image of him seemed burned on the surface of her eyes, and on the backs of her eyelids. She saw it with her eyes open and her eyes closed. It hadn't been the girl. It had been his dismissal of her. It had been the casual way he'd torn her heart out and pulverized it with his bare hand. Agony seared her soul, and her gaze fell on the vat of steaming lye she'd been intending to clean her ragged garments in. Fine! Her tormented thought pierced her mind like the finest of spears. If his love be for flesh, then let all mine melt and feed the earth I'm buried in! Her hands closed around the basin and she raised it with only a little difficulty; her rage made her strong. The enraged litany had continued in her mind as she hefted the roiling liquid.

Let his hands forever grasp for softness that runs through them! Let him slake his lust on rats and beetles, and let no woman ever look on him with favour again! Let his fingers pass through the willing flesh he seeks, and let his skin be seared by the repulsed body he yearns for! Tears scalded her cheeks as she turned her rage to the woman, as well. Let her breasts rot from her body and may worms always infest her loins! Let no man come near her without shying away from the stench, and let her barren body cause her nothing but strife!

The girl let the lye wash over her, searing her skin and stinging her eyes. It washed through her mouth and stung her throat, splashing in her eyes. She tried to close her eyes, but was blind after only a matter of moments. Her screams lasted much longer, wracking cries of agony tearing themselves from her ruined throat and only stopping once she'd been burned badly enough to be unable to make any sound at all. She dropped to the floor, the air seeming to get oppressive and thick with presence around her. Her sightless eyes went around the room, searching out the sense of someone else. The voice, when it came, was sweet and soft. It whispered to her of her pain and her treacherous almost-lover, and it seemed to understand her pain.

You cannot move, it pointed out, and she found that she couldn't. You cannot speak, nor can you see. She would have nodded agreement, had she been able to. The pain was becoming unbearable, and she began to wonder if this was truly wise. Then again, she'd thought that death would have come quicker, and without hallucinations. Hallucinations that whispered to her so temptingly. You don't want to die. Again she agreed. She had been rather hasty, and regretted it now, through the haze of blistering pain. I can help you live. You don't have to die. She would have blinked, if she could.

I thought I was dead?

Oh, no. Not yet. You still lie on the floor, broken and bleeding. And the girl suddenly could see herself, as if she were standing in her doorway and looking down at her frothing, ruined body.

No! She would have felt nauseous, had she not been overwhelmed by the searing, blazing pain.

Swear to me. Your soul calls to me, and I wish it for my service. Swear yourself to me, and I'll save you.

Anything! I don't want to die!

The deafening roar of bird's wings filled her ears then, and her Mistress pulled the girl to her bosom and vanquished her pain, sending it away. Her Mistress, her Lady, the Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers.

Her mind coming back to the present, the girl smiles with the memory, even as her skin begins to ripple and distend with the energy suffusing her limbs. A quiet, sickening crunch sounds through her body, and the would-be rapist pauses for only a moment before his flesh is rent, along with hers, by the shards of bone that erupt through her skin. He screams, and she grabs his wrists, her movements more quick than the adder's strike, pulling his arms about her in what might, in another circumstance, be an intimate embrace. As the tips of bone expand and start to form hard plates over her body, they only slice him more, his wounds growing more severe as the living armour engulfs her. Finally, his blade clatters to the ground, the clang nearly unheard under his screams. She turns, once the transformation is complete, and looks down at him with something resembling pity, but only for a moment. Clad now in the armour of her own bone glistening with the blood of a foolish boy, the deathknight made her way through the rest of Nexus, though now the people gave her a wide berth no matter how crowded the streets were.

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"Watch it!"

Silence hissed in pain as the sword bit into her side, silently groaning. She raised her own sword again and swiped viciously at the spectre in front of her. He dodged easily and swung at her again, but this time, she brought her sword forward to block his, escaping another brutal slash. She backs away from the lock and glances toward her mentor, questioningly.

"Use the power She gave you, girl!" His angry voice grated on her ears, and she hastily brought her sword up to block another blow. She grit her teeth in frustration, making small, short attempts at calling up the swirling mass of essence inside her. She knew it was there, but figuring out how to use it...

"Just use it!" With a shudder, she felt the sudden snap inside herself, and before she knew it, the ghost had swung at her again and she'd buried her blade in his arm. Her partner backed up, laughing and nodding. Her mentor steps forward, approval in his dead eyes. Silence felt something dripping down her forehead and frowned, reaching up to touch her forehead. Pulling her hand away, she examines the blood on her fingers in puzzlement, though her mentor explains a minute later. "You sank a little more than you had to, that time. But you did it."

"Show me more." Her whisper was barely audible, but still the two spirits moved to obey her as if the command had been loud as a trumpet. Her mentor, a former Chosen in life, moved away again and continued to instruct her in the use of her new gifts. He hadn't liked the idea when they'd first met, but his deathlord's emissary had commanded him, and he'd had no choice but to obey. Besides, it broke the monotony of being dead for him.

Meditating on her new place several weeks later, the Unnamed Daughter of Beautific Silence opened her eyes, looking around. Something had roused her, and she looked around in puzzlement, wondering what it was. And then the call came again.

Daughter. Come to me.

The girl rose fluidly, immediately weaving her way through the darkened halls toward her Mistress. Once there, she knelt at the feet of the Princess, waiting. The Princess did not disappoint her.

You've learned well. The Princess never spoke aloud, instead preferring to simply converse directly with her deathknight's mind. I have some things for you. The deathknight looked up at her leige, curiosity in her eyes. The Princess produced a pair of short daiklaves, offering them to the girl. These are very special. And now they're yours. The girl took them, looking them over, and her eyes grew wide as she recognised the faces swirling in the forged metal of the blade. She caresses the face of her former lover for a moment, and then a cold smile spreads across her lips. She looks up.

"Thank you," she says, her soft voice almost inaudible. The deathlord in front of her said nothing, simply smiling. She gestures for the girl to stand once more, then takes a small ring from a jewel box nearby. The girl blinks at her, but says nothing.

Don't move.

The girl glanced at her Mistress inquisitively, watching as the Lady moved her clothing aside and laid the ring lightly on her right hipbone. That'll do nicely. The girl opened her mouth with a silent cry as pain suddenly exploded through her, and it was only through a massive effort and much strength of will that she didn't pull away as the ring pierced her flesh, fusing itself to her bone and knitting her skin around it. And then her Mistress removed her hand and examined the new setting. Very pretty, she pronounced, before dismissing the Unnamed Daughter, admonishing her to be sure to practice with her new weapons. And the Unnamed Daughter left, wandering through the halls back to her own room, examining the new ring set in her flesh.

"Hmph. That's new." The voice of her mentor and the second in command of her followers came from beside her, and she looked up, somewhat embarrassed to have been walking around with the gi she wore askew, peering at her own hip. He laughed at the look on her face, shaking his head. "I don't care about skin, Daughter. I lost interest in it a long time ago."

"I know," she answered in her soft whisper. "You lost the ability to blush along with it, though, so it's not fair."

"Fair never entered into it, and neither is it supposed to." He grinned at her, his face a grotesque mask with half the skin missing. He'd been killed by a sword strike that took a good chunk of his head clean off, and he wore the look rather proudly.

She shrugged. "True enough." She looked at him, knowing well that he wasn't here just to joke. He never found her for simple chats.

He didn't disappoint her. "There's a mortal we're after. Him and his family."

The Unnamed Daughter nodded and paused at her room only long enough to add another sheath to her belt before accompanying the ghost out to where the rest of her assassins waited. They were already ready to go, and she climbed atop her dark horse and led them to the nearest Shadowland. The 50 horses moved quickly, their hoofbeats nearly silent in the strange, dead realm of the Underworld. Once they emerged from the Shadowlands, they turned to the west and rode, making good time since the ghosts needed no sleep and she required very little. They snuck into the mortal's house at night...

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In her Manse, the Unnamed Daughter dreamed...

The air had tasted wrong... When she woke up that morning, Silence could sense something off, something not right. She'd left her rooms, donning the black armour she'd worn just about every day since her Exaltation was formalised. She went down the hall toward her Lady's chambers, intending to see if she's all right. Far off in the distance, she heard a loud clanking, and a terrifying figure stepped into view. She froze, her eyes riveted on him, staring at the armour-plated form while fear such as she'd never felt before coursed ice cold through her veins.

Go!

With her Mistress's voice ringing in her head, she turned and fled, her feet carrying her swiftly through the maze of familiar halls. She heard a loud tread behind her, as the figure came after her, then a terrible screech of metal. Silence didn't stop, nor did she glance behind her. She simply ran, and when she reached where her horse was kept, she threw the reins over its head and leapt onto its bare back, her heels digging into its sides cruelly. The horse ran flat out through the Underworld, toward the nearest Shadowland. She drove the beast until it could run no longer, then slowed it down to a walk, pushing it onward still. Some time later - days, perhaps weeks - she reached the Shadowland and made her way through it, stepping into Creation again during the day for the first time in a little over a year...

With a soundless cry, Silence sat bolt upright, slowly coming out of the nightmare. She remembered the searing sun and the painful brilliance clearly, and needed no dream to remind her of the miserable non-existance that mortals lead in Creation. She climbed out of her bed and crossed the red-lit main chamber of her manse, staring out over the lake of molten lava several hundred feet below the edge of the platform. The Manse had also been a dream, or rather, a series of them, and when she'd seen the mountain in her wanderings, she'd known it was hers. She'd gone inside, her feet nimbly following the paths she'd known were relatively safe, bypassing traps and pitfalls to finally find the central chamber, the one she now resided in. She'd found the gleaming ruby stone shining like a beacon in the centre of it the day after she'd arrived here, and had removed the grey stone from her hip, replacing it with the new gem. It had made her feel much better, and now she felt almost back to normal, replacing her black armour with clothing she'd found in her new home and altering it a bit.

After a few moments of contemplation, Silence decided that it was far, far too dangerous to remain here for much longer, no matter how much she'd like to stay in her current residence. Rubbing her eyes tiredly, she moves again, collecting her things and setting them at the ready. Still tired, she curls up in her bed to finish the night's sleep, ready to leave the place as soon as she wakes. She's not entirely sure what she'll find out in the cold, glaring world of Creation, but until her Mistress calls for her again, here she'll hide.