Prologue - Verse of Vengeance

• Posted by Rodur Foremaw July 7, 2015 - 1,093 views

  Prologue - Verse of Vengeance

  From my grave to wander I am forced
  Still to seek vengeance long sever'd link,
  Still to hunt night’s shadow I have lost,
  And the lifeblood of his heart to drink.

  Ten Years Ago:

  The girl lay amidst the crumbling ruins of her home. Everything and everyone she had ever known were gone, and she was filled with fathomless pain… and hatred. Hatred for the shadowy creatures that had come crawling with the fall of night, hatred for their eyes which burned with pleasure as they slaughtered her family. But strongest, she hated the terrible curse that now flowed through her veins...

  Hate was all that compelled her.

  She saw again the smile on their faces, their pointy teeth, and their pale ghostly skin as he gave the command. Like demon-shadows they had slid across her home, three of them, killing her father before he could defend himself, molesting her mother in ways her mind dare not consider, and finally they had come for her.

  She moaned, as she lifted her arm to graze the bite-marks on her neck; blood trickled from the punctuations in her skin. Her flesh was going cold. And she could feel the coolness spreading through her body. She knew it was the end, but her mind refused to rest. She wanted nothing more than to thrust a dagger in his heart, and watch the life fade from his haunting eyes… but she knew she would never succeed unless she survived this night. She was dying, slowly, a pointless death - such a death would serve no purpose.

  She gathered her strength and forced her ruined body to a sitting position. She took a shuddering breath, the pain was near unbearable, but she seemed not to notice. The color of her skin was fading to a pale-white, the blood in her veins was losing its color. She closed her eyes, before slaving her body off the ground - she stood, swaying like a person on the brink of sleep. When she opened her eyes they were no longer the soft, light-blue of a clear summer sky, but a burning crimson-red. She was no longer her.

  Tumbling, she half walked, half staggered across the floor to the eastern wall where her father's dead body lay. She knelt beside him, reaching down for the knife which lay clutched in the dead man’s cold hand. She slowly uncoiled his fingers from the hilt and took the blade.

  She gathered a few items and made her way to the threshold. The door stood open, letting in the freezing midnight breeze. Beyond it, lit by the dim glow of a full moon, lay a vast world she forever more would look upon with disgust and loathing.

  Reaching up, the young girl pressed the cold steel of her dead father's blade against the palm of her pale hand.

  “I invoke thee, Queen of Shadows,” she said, her voice no more than a hoarse whisper “Come forth from your realm of darkness. Hear my plea. Let vengeance be taken”

  Slowly, she drove the blade down the length of her palm.

  “I bleed for revenge,” she said, raising her voice. Blood began to run.

  “I bleed for hatred,” she was now speaking in a clear high tone. Blood ran down her underarm and spilled onto the ground. The room had become markedly colder, or was she imagining that?

  “I bleed for the pain I will inflict upon the guilty!”. Her scream echoed across the vast emptiness of the moonlit night. Her gaze dropped, and she jolted in shock, the ancient spirit of deceit, conspiracy, treachery and sedition stood before her in the doorway. She staggered back, involuntarily gasping.
  Boethiah was clad in nothing but a dark shroud that covered her up to her naked shoulders. Her skin was pale, glowing with an ancient light colder than the grave. Dark mist rose from her body, diminishing the whole world to emptiness.

  The young girl stood stunned, gazing at the shadowy mistress to whom she had called. The curse had run its course, she was no longer a mortal, the vampire lord who had attacked her home and slaughtered her family, had accidentally bestowed his blood unto this young girl.

  With a furious hiss, the spectral figure began weaving her cloak of shadows into a weapon -a dagger-, and said with a voice both deep and light, hard and soft, cold and warm, “I hear you, I see you, and I bestow upon you this” She thrust the dagger to the ground at the young girl’s feet, “The Blade which shall pierce the heart of your nemesis”.

  Boethia watched on, her face impassive and her eyes burning with an unrelenting cold fury, as the girl picked up the dark blade and said, “I.. I pledge my heart and soul to vengeance” in a flat, cold voice. Boethia nodded once, her face impassive, then she melted away, like a shadow, into the night.
  The young vampire stood, clutching the blood soaked knife in her right hand, and the dark shadowy dagger in her left.

  Thus Irina took her first step toward revenge...