World of Warcraft®

((This is a story for Cri, but also features elements that are open in-game as well. Since the in-game is active & open for anyone to participate in, this is a way to provide everyone who wants to get involved some details about what happened. If you have questions, feel free to message me in game when I'm on Cri or Dolingen or Izby.

Note: does get graphic.))

The stone under knee hurt.

Blood trickled out from the lacerations to her knees. The young girl gritted her teeth to keep herself from crying out as the taste of iron flooded her mouth. Tears formed in her eyes and she squeezed them tight, fighting to prevent them from escaping to no avail. Their soft pitter-patter against the cobblestone drowned out by the cruel jackal-like laughter that exploded in her ears with bombastic aplomb. The jeering, the snickering, the contemptuous cackle of the boys.

“Girls can't play ball with us. They aren't strong enough.”

“Yeah, look at how fragile you are. You are staining the plaza with your blood.”

“Fragile little doll.”

“Tempestuous little witch. Crying because she fell.”

“She's going to go crying home to her mommy now.”

The insults began to blur with the sound of the laughter as she ran through the plaza past the shops and the inns. The wind kicked up under her hair, blowing it back behind her in an arc of red ribbons contrasting with the pearl and gold walls of the city. Her heart thumped in her chest, faster and faster. The tears hung in the wind. A memory led to the emotional gallows.

She tripped. Ankle snapped. The scream reverberated off the walls. The sound of bone grinding against stone and blood curdling. The taunting echoes of laughter fluttered across the cobblestone as the tears poured.

Her mother’s lullaby pierced her hollow agony first and she choked on her tears as the words danced through the pain and spread warmth throughout her body. She felt love and a warming fire deep at her core. That same warmth washed over her ankle and she felt it knitting itself back into place as her mother smiled down at her. The words spoken softly as the lullaby and work ended, her tears dried to her cheeks.

“Hold your chin high, Kyah. Things will improve. The storm may bellow and blow, but it never rains forever.”

Rain splattered across the stained glass window; pat-pat-pattering, as the moonlight splayed across her face and bore under her eyelids like glowing beetles to force her awake. She shuffled under the covers with the same difficulty she often experienced when it had been too long since she had last worked. The right arm laying limply, unresponsive to her requests for it to move. Dead, but very much alive.

The chemical smell of boiling herbs and bubbling concoctions permeated the small room. A closet, she thought, even though she knew it was previously a side chamber for the church officials to pray in quiet before performing services for the public. They had been generous to provide her the space at night with a straw mattress and a small table to work on healing tonics and other alchemical transmutations. She shifted the table so that it butted up against a large wooden bookshelf to increase the amount of space she had to work and decorated her closet discarded robes and balls of fragrances. Each ball, handcrafted of twigs of cedar and sprigs of holly, leaves of silver and thistle of blood, hung from the ceiling joists in a strategic arrangement easily mistaken for zen positioning to the casual or even knowing observer, but to others in her craft, they would notice the balls positioned as scent barriers.

Sitting still for several protracted breaths, Cri felt secure in her study of the room, its scent and its shadows, that nothing had changed. She leaned her pale cheek against the cool glass and sighed heavily. The feelings of the memory washed over her and she let other memories join the fray of battle for her attention.

The door to the room creaked and Cri lifted her head from the stained glass window. Father Farris stood before her with a warm smile and fully entered the room, closing the door behind himself.

“I saw lights flickering under your door. Came to see if you were alright.”

“I cannot sleep. The storm is raising the ghosts of the past and they are fighting for my attention when all I want to do is sleep.”

The Father crossed the room and Cri watched his gait, wondering why he had come fully into the room. He sat at the far end of the bed and pat the space beside him, beckoning her to come to sit beside him and speak with him.

“Tell me of your troubles. Perhaps talking will help quiet their turmoil so you can rest.”

“Can you turn away and allow me a moment to get a robe on first Father.”

The man turned to face her with a lecherous leer, but calm demeanor.

“Oh, I do not think that will be necessary, Kyah dear.”

Cri’s eyes grew wide as she recognized the look on the other side of the man’s eyes. A face that resembled her own, but with longer hair. She dove for her dagger under her pillow when she felt the man’s hands on her legs pulling her towards the end of the bed, away from her pillow, away from her swift salvation.

“You will not need steel for what I have planned for you, Kyah.”

***

Standing before her commanding officer as the Ranger General passed by doing inspections. The commanding officer speaking separately with the woman as she nodded at the suggestion. Her name being called out amongst several others who were then taken to train to be a different type of personnel. Elite some would say. Captive, she thought to herself now, but oh she was so proud of being one of the distinguished. One of the few with a desirable aptitude for the mental magicks to be sought after.

The smell of leather and fresh urine filled her nostrils as she thrashed about on the steel table, bound. Her commanding officer smiling with an evil gleam as he approached her and shoved a syringe into her arm before she could enter his mind to prevent such a transgression. Her body felt heavy, then dead. His smile shown teeth and his second entered the room with a small jar inside of which was a small mindbender ramming its body into the glass, trying to get to her. Sweat poured from her brow, but she could not move. The pop of the top from the jar reverberated through her ears, drowning out the other screams of her chosen companions. She attempted to struggle against her bonds as the first tentacle touched her skin, but the drug from the syringe deadened her reaction. She tried to cast out for the mind of others in the room and felt her abilities retarded. The drug. Instead, the feeling of birds kawing and flapping their wings at her periphery began to overwhelm her senses. Screams tore from her lungs as the creature crawled into her mouth, suction cups against her tongue and throat. The world went black to the smell of sweaty leather and even fresher urine.

Trees. She ran through trees. Their wet bark sliming under her hand as she pushed off one from the next. Exhausted. She couldn’t fight anymore. Branches broke behind her. Less than 1000 feet. She tried to climb the tree. The bark tore and she fell backwards into the mud. Splashing boots. 500 feet. She felt at her waist for her dagger. It wasn’t there. 300 feet. Shuffling in the mud and puddles, she scrambled, feeling for her blade in the blackest night. 100 feet. Panic splayed her nerves open as the bender started to assert control over her body, seeking to protect its own survival. The boots stopped. Her fingers grasped steel. It felt like someone stabbed her in the back of her skull as she leapt from her knees onto the man’s chest and clawed as his face with dagger and hand, attempting to dig out his mind. She didn’t stop when the smell of sulfur hit her nostrils as she heard the second man wretch. His weapon splashed into the water and he screamed as she tore through his mind; a demon beast of shadow unleashed to feed. When she finished, she noticed her face, but with longer hair staring back at her and the bodies of several other men around her dead. “It never rains forever, Kyah.”

***

Cri spun around in the man’s grip and leapt up towards him. Her sudden shift into the direction of Father Farris’ force sent him toppling backwards and she rode his chest to the floor. The bed screeched as it slid across the stone wall away from the flailing bodies. Cri growled and shoved her thumbs into the father’s eyes and he screamed a blood curdling scream of two voices. A raspy rotted feminine voice and Farris’s. She felt pricks of pain and the father’s fist connected with her kidney, but she kept pressing her thumbs downward. Soon, the scream was followed by a popping suction as liquid splashed up onto her hands. She scooped the man’s eyes out of their sockets and lifted his skull to slam it into the floor. She repeated the bashing until the noises stopped and the body fell limp.

When she moved to pull herself towards the bed and only then did she realize that the Father had scratched deep groves into her flesh and bruised her kidneys. Her body ached. But now there was work to do. The cathedral was no longer safe.

She stood over the body contemplating every action she would need to take and made a list. Training kicking in and automating her actions before paralysis kicked in. The purpose of training was never to prevent shock or paralysis, but to get the body moving before it set in. It was a delaying tactic and at this moment, one she was thankful for.

Carve the body into smaller parts so it was easier to transport.
Find a homeless person.
Give them money for permission.
Enter their mind.
Take a tincture potion.
Transport the body to the lake while controlling the homeless body.
Offer the homeless person’s more money to carry a message to Red Ridge.
Scrub the room clean.
Send a letter to Feloria.
Go to Red Ridge herself.

If she started now, she could finish everything before the sun rose. The fear, training, and adrenaline carrying through the work of the night. Her life was forfeit and yet at the same time she would live.

"It never rains forever."

***

The city smelled of rot. She walked through it, looking at the bodies of her fallen companions. She held a tissue over her face as she passed among the ruins and corpses. Then she saw her own face staring back up at her. Except with longer hair and a spear pierced jaw. She bent over the corpse and wept. The closest thing in this group of soldiers she had to a friend was a twisted wreck of a body. Her sister, in a sense, was dead. She pulled the dagger from her sleeve and cut the woman’s hair to mimic her own. Then she swapped out their designations. She picked up a stone and crushed the woman’s ankle with it before dropping the stone nearby and taking the woman’s poisoned dagger and shoving it into her own leg. The poison chewed on her with fervor. Green blood pooled and spilled from the wound, hissing as the air touched it. She grit her teeth and pulled the blade from her leg before taking an antidote and covering the wound in dressings. Finished, she pushed herself into the air and floated through the ruins. Stoic and still. Tasting new life. A life worth having.