6 Chapter 5: A Foolish Life

She was a wretch, with red hair and fair skin—the very description of a sloane. Born alone, in the back alleys with the shades of murderers to keep her company, she was one of thousands of rats in the city, and one of hundreds of human ones. Her mother was likely a whore, her father some passing noble with money enough to buy a night with some friends who had gotten too drunk. She herself had no friends, no family that she knew of, save for one—she had an older sister, a caring, kind spirit who was maybe ten-and-six.

Where her sister was beautiful, the sloane was hideous—black lines scarred her face from a birth in a fire, or so her sister had said. Her sister had told the girl during dark nights that she had been born in a flaming house, that it was the fire that had painted her hair red. She said that fire was the messenger of the gods, that they had blessed her during her birth.

It was ironic how far that stood from the truth.

Her sister was a kind person, a rare gem in these slums, who always had a smile on her face. No matter how hungry she was after a day without food, no matter how tired she was after a day of running, no matter how terrified she was after a day spent worrying about when she'd find her own back with a knife buried in it, her sister was always smiling.

The sloane could not help but notice that smile disappeared the day that her sister was raped by five men and then dismembered in front of her own widened eyes.

She had been forced to watch as they had their way with her, forced to watch as they ripped off her arms and stabbed her stomach over and over. Blood trickled out of ragged lacerations, the cuts lining her body. That gentle face was covered in tears, her mouth gagged, her hair pulled back viciously. When they had enough fun, they crushed her face into the brick, giving it a couple of kicks just to make sure.

The rain might have had washed away the stains on the brick, but the girl still remembered. Remembered how her sister had shouted for her to run. Remembered the look on her face as they held her down and slashed her and fucked her bloody until the street was covered in crimson red. Remembered that beautiful, kind face bruised and cut, tears streaming as she wailed in pain and hopeless desperation. Remembered the steady stream of passersby that ignored her screams and pleas, that had spit at her and called her a filthy whore. Remembered how that scream from her bloody lips had been cut brutally short. Remembered the savage crunch of bone against the uncaring brick. Remembered how the men at turned after to look at her.

The girl had ran that day. She was not proud, not proud of how she had fled. She was not proud of how she had hid. She was not proud of the fear that froze her limbs when her beloved sister had needed her, was not proud of the heart that whispered for her to forget.

She had never forgotten that day. She could not.

After her sister died, the girl grew up a thief. A good-for-nothing, a burden. She was useless, and life took every liberty to remind her. She had no family anymore, but life was kind enough to give her a new one. Now she was sister to Misfortune and Despair, daughter of Strife and Agony. Life was kind enough to starve her and whip her and beat her until she had begged to be dead. When life laughed at her desperation, she learned that heeding what life wanted was useless. She learned that she had to spit in the face of life, to laugh at its pain and spite its demands. The day she realized that was the first time she had killed a man.

So she refused to die, refused to kneel over kindly and offer her neck. She was a thief, a pickpocket, and no one was better than her at it. She was faster with daggers than any knight with a sword, faster with a shard of glass than any archer with a bow, and faster with someone else's lunch than any mongrel with scraps.

Rat's Dam was a city for the dead, halfway between the Outlands and the Capital. There was no humanity in a place like that, none of the shining gold that gleamed so brightly in the Capital. The people there were beasts, and she was one of them. They called her Red when she was born. They called her Rat when she grew up. They called her Flea when she stole their food, and Dead when she took their gold. They called her nothing when she opened their stomachs, and that was how she liked it best. She lived alone, on the roof above some ratty alley that looked like those that made half the city, filled with trash and bits of meat that no one questioned. She slept with two knives buckled to the inside of her leg and one foot over the edge, ready to jump. For four years after her sister had died, that was her life.

Then came the day when she was ten and she burned a man with nothing but a word.

Murder someone with a blade in Rat's Dam and no one even glances twice. Murder someone with magic in Rat's Dam and even an armless man could count on his hand how many days he had left to live. She learned that she had not been chosen by the gods—she was marked by the devil, and the black lines covering her face were proof of her magic and heresy.

Suddenly the city of sinners became filled with saints as the pious and pure plotted to kill her, for she was the witch—the temptress and cultist that would bring doom upon the world. For the sake all that was holy, they had to kill her, and if she happened to make them succumb to their baser instincts of lust while doing so, none could blame them, for she was a seductress and the devil's own personal whore. For the former girl-now-witch, nowhere was safe anymore. She had nothing in Rat's Dam but pain and regret, and she felt nothing of the sort when she fled from it.

The city of Telavir was three days march away, but she covered it in one through a quick deal with a trader that involved a horse for his life. It had taken her hardly a day to discover that a sloane in Rat's Dam was a sloane anywhere else, and not even two hours after she arrived in Telavir was she arrested for the murder of some man. She was offended of course—it was a horribly sloppy job; if she had done it they never would have found her, yet for some reason they did not find her skill at murder to be proof of her innocence. Fleeing from the guards did not help her case, and burning them with magic did little either. A public execution in front of a bloodthirsty mob was what awaited her, until an elderly professor offered her asylum, which she graciously accepted. After all, it was a simple deal: all she had to do was be his servant and student, and he would save her life.

He had seen the Maes that covered her face; he had them too, inky black lines wreathing a wizened old face. Later, he told her that they were both brothers and sisters in magic, both children of the devil. If they did not help each other the city would eat them both alive. Four years he had tutored her, shown her all the warmth of family that she had lost the day her sister had died.

The girl from the slums repaid the old man for his kindness four years later with a knife across the throat.

There was no evidence of her role in the death, but the people ruled her a witch regardless. She would have to be removed, no matter the cost, lest she would bring destruction to the city. She could not help but remark that their insults were losing originality, but they did not seem to find her silver tongue amusing. It seemed that they preferred her sharp wit in the shape of a blade through her heart, but her opposition to her own death led the city to call for her body paraded on a stake. She did not mind their threats—she just had to kill all who came near her. It was a simple matter. Four years had done nothing to make her call Telavir home; she would just as soon wreath it in flame as she would swat at a fly.

They sent knights after her, but she burned them in their armor until the metal smoldered red and their flesh dribbled out of the cracks. They sent assassins in the night, but she torched their beloved darkness with scorching flame until all that was left was their naked body before purging fire. They sent cutthroats in the day, but she gutted them from stomach to collar like a fish and cut their throats with their own blades. Blood stained and soaked her clothes, rotting corpses piled on the streets outside her door. They sent men and more men to have her head delivered to them, but all they got back was the ashes of the slaughtered floating on the wind.

No one could ever beat her. She was the strongest; she could never lose. Arcane prowess spooled out of her fingertips, summoning pillars of fire and raging infernos with the merest flicker of a thought. Infinite power coursed through her veins, more potent than any drink. She was drunk on the madness of strength and magic, but her delusions ended when five inches of silver and steel buried itself in her stomach.

Witch Hunters came for her, hoping to cut out her heart and drain her blood to sell. Her eyes would be torn from their sockets and made into charms. Her hair would be torn and braided into rope, her teeth carved from the bone and threaded into a necklace. Nails would be ripped from the flesh and ground into powder. Her body would be ripped apart and sold like chattel. It was with a queer irony that she noted how the common folk fawned over the remains of a witch as charms of good luck when they damned the very water she drank as poison.

The raging city would to rip off her fingers and cite them proof of her barbarity. They would call her a monster only to tear off her arms and rape what was left, then slit her throat when they were done. They would burn her alive in a blazing pyre that billowed to the heavens, then look at her skull and mutter at how strange the shape was, at how unnaturally yellow the bones and how the thick stench of charred flesh clung to her remains like the spirit of the Devil that she had taken for a lover. She hated their irrational hypocrisy, their feigned purity and virtue as they devolved into feral beasts of blackened malice and vice. Her spirit spat and cursed at them with every waking moment.

And so the girl ran. Not for the first time in her life, she fled. Not for the first time in her life, she felt fear. But this was not the fear she had known for so long. It was not the fear of starvation or the fear of death. It was not the fear of the cold or the fear of a blade. There was no meaning to it, no reason. It was irrational. It was baseless. It was meaningless. It was utterly terrifying. It was fear.

It sent her heart pumping with a possessed madness, made her muscles tighten and cramp until every breath hurt with the despair of being her last. It filled her body like burning lead that seared through her veins and bit into her unflagging spirit like a cobra. And so she ran.

She ran until the world became a blur around her and the day blended into the night. She stumbled until her lungs burned fire and her legs refused to move. She staggered until her feet bled rivers and she was forced to crawl. Then still, she crawled until her fingers were ragged and torn with bits of rock. She struggled until every breath felt like it was made with the weight of mountains on her back, until every beat of her accursed heart spanned an eternity.

She did not know how far she had fled. She only noticed dimly that the sky was a covered with a green haze, that the stars shone red at night. Red as her hair, chosen by the heavens and the hells alike. Red as her blood. The very ground was cracked with thirst for rain and the animals were weary and thin. She had ran until the Shadows came alive to feast on the frail and strong alike. The filthy sloane remembered a whisper in her ear from a lifetime ago, from a beautiful girl that had shown her kindness—from a beautiful girl that she had watched die.

They say that the shadows creep in the darkness and that the nights hold horrors untold. They say that the very bloodsoaked ground calls out with the sundering voices of the thousand damned and forgotten who howl at night for vengeance.

It was a cold shiver of raw terror that told her where she was, where she had come. She had ran into the Outlands.