The squid and the crow.

Eva was on the Beach at night, laying down like she was making a sand angel and staring up at the dark sky. There were so many stars out here... Well, out there. Above her, all the lights from the tourist traps and beachfront property were blinding them out, but beyond the ocean, they were there. The moon seemed to hold them to it jealously, lest they go dark too. She sighed and settled deeper into her thick, baggy black hoodie and tried not to feel so darned homesick.

 She'd never been away from her family this long, even when they were sent out to work. She missed her own bed, her own room, not having to eat vending machine treats every day and get crows to keep watch over her building. She'd planned on Ethelstane finding her eventually- they were related closely, and he knew her too well- but he was right. What was she doing here? Chasing some probably-real, maybe-imaginary cup so she could wave it in all their faces? It was just another trinket, when she got right down to it, like the bike-locks and pocket knives and necklaces and other bits of shiny trash she collected and hoarded-

Eva shuddered on the beach, and looked up at the stars a lot more plaintively. She felt lost, and so small. She didn't even hear the sound of something emerging offshore and bobbing with the surf as it watched her.

Scylla had lurked near the shoreline, staying close to an overhang nearby in deeper waters during the day and eating new species of fish, things she'd never seen before, and keeping away from the light circle in the ocean above this one. When it turned off at night, she returned to the beach and hunted the shallows, and a few times, she'd gone all the way into the next layer, where the water was so weightless-had so little pressure- so little presence- it was like it wasn't there at all. The ocean behind her broke on the sand, and she'd investigated a few things, her lights off, her too-big eyes wide and flashing around.

The white towers were made of the same kind of bone as the whales closer in to the shore had been; except... She could see some of them just sitting there in the distance, not moving at all. No sound, nothing at all. She'd gotten daring, closed in and bit one, but it wasn't flesh- just bone. It made her teeth hurt. But they weren't alive, not like her, not anymore. Neither were the tongues some of the surface-dwellers had been sitting on- she'd found them left behind on the beach, and they were like braided seaweed, not muscle. That alone had made her much less afraid to surface now and again.

She'd only met two humans while she went about her routes in the dark- a little one who'd lost his fake foot, until she gave it back to him. The other was an old one who'd first been scared before being deeply confused by being talked at by a brightly-lit squid girl in halting German. He'd been nice, he'd given her some teeny red shiny thing on a stick to eat and told her about Berlin.

Now she surged up from the surf, walking onto the beach, her tentacles trailing in the water behind her. She looked down at Eva from afar, her lights dim and murky as she studied her. Scylla didn't see herself often, since she had only a few hard-water pieces in her former home that had reflected what was in front of them, but she knew that look. It was something she could fix.

Eva was deep in thought, feeling lost and lonely before out of nowhere some weird things was leaning over her. It was all mouth and eyes, and tentacles hung from it's sides.

"CAW?!" She yelled out of reflex and surprise, jerking upright.

"Gute Nacht." Eva's eyes snapped to the girl wearing the thing like a hat, before she did a double take. Her hand fluttered away from the pocket of her jacket and her sword's hilt.

"Was ist los mit dir? Bist du hungrig?"

Eva blinked. It must've been some weird ocean-people dialect... She could almost understand the squid girl. She probably didn't speak Bird. She studied her cautiously before replying.

"Nothing. I am just taking it all in, thinking about such stuff and... And things. I am not hungry, only tired..."

Scylla blinked rapidly and tilted her head. It must've been some weird dirt-people dialect...She could kind of understand the other girl, but not that much was coming through.

"Oh... Wie shade. Ich bin." She said, before her stomach gurgled. She'd met a sea turtle today and hadn't gotten around to getting food before the Sharks came out... Sharks were bullies. They didn't like to let her eat when they were around.

"You are?" Eva asked, before she stood up and smiled confidently. "I have some rations at my room- Em and Ems, with peanuts! Fish from Sweden, one or to popped tarts... I'll gladly share! Do you dwell around here? Maybe you can help me..."

"Sie haben Fleisch?" Scylla chirped.

"Sure, most likely! Come on, I'll take you there-"

Scylla took a step back from Eva's outstretched hand and looked at her doubtfully, turning around to gaze at the ocean.

"Oh, no, all is well! I promise, I am of good heart and intentions. Here- I'll tell you my name for trust! My real name, not some fake or any tricks. I'm Eva, Eva Corvus! What's your name?

"Name? Scylla!" She said, excited from Eva's excitement, lighting up. Literally, into a pale blue.

"It's an honor to meet you, miss, now let's be off- however am I going to sneak you in? Maybe you can be my granddaughter... Does your, eh, squid helm thing come off?"

"Nope!" Scylla said, following after Eva and glancing up happily at the moon. Maybe this meant things would start going right.

Blackbird

She'd paid cash for a cheap room, and moved in under cover of darkness. It hadn't taken her that long to get here, since she flew as a crow overland (stopping to snack on crackers and to pick up shiny stuff) and traveled light in any case. She'd stayed up when she'd arrived and scouted this place out, but it seemed like any other way station. People stayed and left, taking their problems and plans with them.

She'd disguised and made herself up as a tiny, frail old lady for the discount, and now she sat surrounded by her notes, books, and plans, scattered around her in a loose leaf circle. The mattress creaked as she wrote down what she'd already learned- the two truckers from Tampa were carrying frozen food and freight for Target, respectively, and a family here had snuck their dog into their room. A person on the third floor had a pound of white go-powder shrink-wrapped inside their suitcase. One of the pool-cleaners had spit in it when he was done skimming- that wasn't important, just gross and relevant.

The only real problem was that Florida sucked like a whirlpool. It reminded her of Poseidon's armpit- humid, moist, and smelly. It seemed to rain every day, and the food was somehow hot enough to burn but cold enough to be nasty at the same time. She'd have to invest in lighter clothing and more hats... And some more crackers.

She put down a rough pen sketch of a tall girl and a taller sword, covering the map of the state she'd drawn a giant mantis on before having crossed it out in frustration. There just wasn't time, she was working against a constantly clicking clock. Getting to the Islands in time for to start laying blinds and finding out secrets before the Kobbers began to show up was important. Moving in the open would be harder, even if her intentions were mostly good, but to set up shadows and holes she could fall in ready-made would take work.

Eva knew two things for sure, two things that had pulled her here like the dark before a storm; She belonged in the Kobber's blind sides, and something big was going to happen out there in the surf and sand. Well, that went without saying, but something in particular.

The Unholy Grail was out there, somewhere, and she wouldn't rest until it was hers. She glanced down at some of her books, one of them the legend of the object. It granted wishes... No strings attached. That was it. And when she had it in her clutches, not a one of the other Crows would be able to mutter about her and snicker anymore-

Her room phone rang.

She jerked away from it, before steeling herself and picking it up.

"Yyyes?" She warbled.

"It's a Ethanstang callin' for ya."

She hung up, her eyes widening before she hurriedly began gathering all her materials to pack away as quick as she could- but there was a rapping on her window already. Without looking, she held out her hand and made an upward gesture, continuing to jealousy horde her treasure as the Raven hopped into her room and croaked up at her.

"No, I don't wish to talk to him-"

"Oh? Well, I'd like to talk to you." The Crow said to her back. She closed her eyes and pursed her mouth before slowly turning around and blinking in confusion at the three foot tall white crow staring at her calmly.

"....Ethelstane, where-er, is the rest of you?"

"The rubberized lines of power, likely. Palm trees were not kind to our feet." Said the white crow. For his species, Ethelstane's voice was windy, sometimes lingering on vowels, sometimes trilling consonants.

"Speaking to only your head turns mine funny. I am taken aback to you here and now- why are you earthbound?"

"You can't guess? Eva, why are you here? There's no reason for you to be on Earth, much less somewhere like this. I preferred Georgia. The peaches were a welcome gift."

"I've my reasons, Uncle. My own reasons, as it were. I know what I'm doing, and I'll thank you to leave it at my wayside, not yours." She said seriously, crossing her arms and staring back at him before dumping the last of her notes into her satchel.

"Eva..." He said reproachfully. Ethelstane hopped closer before flapping his way up onto her bed. She sighed and looked over at him, her hands folded. She looked tired and guilty.

"I'm sorry, Uncle. I only... Do you remember Iskander?"

"Ah, yes. That wasn't a good day at all."

"They all laughed at me." She muttered, her shoulders slumping. I was always the last and the weakest. It was awful. Some of the children were greater at Magic than I, and The Other One started joking that they'd have to have the hatchlings protect me. Then I tumbled over tha chair, and they made me walk behind everyone else... And when it was over, I didn't get any of the treasure. None at all. It went to the mistake fund."

"They made sport of me, to my face. How was I supposed to keep up with spirits? I can't call thunderstorms from nowhere, or kill a dozen men with one blow. I'm only sneaky, and even then...  It was a humiliation in slow motion." She said sadly. "I had to leave... Besides, I've graduated school and all that. Surely it was time I went out and saw the great wide beyond?"

"You're still my favorite, Eva... We still must talk. First-"

"HEY! Shut up over there!" Someone yelled, pounding on the thin walls, Eva looked back over to Ethalstane, who'd closed his beak and began to whisper directly to her. She wasn't surprised most of it was family gossip.

Original OS

She'd always survived, and that was what made her special. A God in their heaven or a rat in their gutter, all things acted on their own nature, and hers was to never stop fighting. She'd slain countless targets, even if all she could remember of most of them was the final impact of her sword meeting flesh and leaving cooling blood and sinew where something living had formerly been. The red gouts of blood, shattered bones and twisted muscles open to the air. The whip-burn of new scars on her body, and the rage singing in her veins.

She'd always been strong, like all her ilk. She'd always been short, too, even before her handlers had told her smoking was stunting her growth. After her master had tried to Liquidate her- a fancy way they'd put trying to kill her- and she'd lost a leg escaping, she didn't have any plans to grow any taller.

Now she stood Off to the side of the arena that was her home (by dint of she killed things and they let her sleep in a pen), leaning on her sword and inhaling on the cigarette in her hands. She wasn't watching the cheering, booming crowd, or the sands around her- she was lost in thought.

Today was PORKCHOP day. All she had to do was kill until the sun started to set, and she'd get to eat a whole lot of them. If she did this quick, she could get back to her pen and take them from the cook instead of picking them off the floor. Her mouth was already watering, part with expectation of violence, part with hunger.

"We've got a real exciting match for you today, citizens!" Boomed the magically augmented voice of one of the commentators. She thought his name was Wilks. She'd met all the announcers at one point or another, but once she knew they weren't going to fight her and she wasn't supposed to kill them, her brain didn't consider the information important.

"In the sands now- You know her, you love her! All the way from the Stone Plains, winner of the last eight blood games, your champion! The maiden of massacres, the daughter of death, our little slaughter-stork, VOTH-7!"

She glanced up at the crowd when they screamed and cheered, taking a deep pull on her cigarette and blowing it out her nose. They hollered her serial number and stamped their feet, while children waved blunt tin swords built like hers from the stands. She didn't know any of them, so as always, she felt vaguely confused and uneasy. How did they always know her serial number...?

The crowd loved her because of the violence she brought with her. At first, the Arena staff had tried to keep her from standing out in the sands before her fights. It had only taken ten dead a show for them to realize she didn't want to charge her competition before they were ready or to showboat- she just liked being in the sunlight.

"And now, for her opponent, something special!" The disembodied voice boomed as the doors to her far, far left opens. Something big shuffled forward. "All they way from the Pendulum marsh, seized from it's cave- It's Mosstooth, the Troll Duke!"

The enormous Boulder-like monster stomped out of the gate; it's head nearly scraped the very top of the ceiling. It was all warty skin and muscle, rough wiry hair scraping from it's joints. It scratched underneath it's blanket-sized lion cloth before it burped and glowered at her.

She took a final hard drag on the cigarette before dropping it and lowering herself, popping up and tearing her blade out of the ground. "Designation; Vee dash zero dash tee dash five dash seven dash-"

"As usual, our little bloody cherub is introducing herself!" The voice boomed over hers, as she continued to list off her serial number. The Troll took a lumbering step towards her, confused and growing angry at the lack of violence. She could commiserate, but her programming made her do things a certain way. "-dash eight. Target accepted."

Her aura erupted around them; a ten feet space around her, and then her crackling willpower in a ring around that. She bounced on her heel and flourished her sword in a circle.

"Eliminate tar--target." She said, in her cracked and dry voice. 

She moved when the troll did, a full on leap that turned into a roll on the ground. Her sword was still upright, and she made sure to grip it tight. Things had been easier when it was chained to her... As she came up, she slashed the surprised troll as a part of the movement. Her blade dug deep, and it roared before it swung back at her. The fist was the size of a wagon wheel, and it was only by once again springing and rolling that she avoided it. She came up in a crouch, her sword's hilt above her head, it's tip dragging in the sand.

Clouds of brown flew in her wake, as she spun herself with her remaining leg in a pirouette that moved her, her sword quickly striking the creature's leg as it turned seized her in it's grip. The troll roared in rage before it hurled back and threw her to the ground. She impacted hard before she wriggled and took a few steadying hops; the scars and wounds that weren't fully healed on her were bleeding now, hot and sizzling even in the arena's heat.

She was fast, and strong; if she'd been whole, she would have been unstoppable. As it was, actual  movement and her attacks were crippled with only one leg. To compensate, her reactions were impeccable- when Mosstooth tried to punch her into the ground, she swung at the same time, and her blade ripped hard into it's knuckles. The troll jerked it's arm back, but she hung onto her wedged in blade.

Close up, she balanced on one foot before her shorn limb pointed outward, keeping her steady, and she began to throw strikes into the meat of her foe. With a whoosh, her aura caught fire al around them, the flames burning a dark, arterial red. With a quick two swings, she cut off one of it's arms; Her sword was on the ground, and her back was to her enemy in a crouch.

She lifted as hard as she could, driving with her heel and her back in a vicious rising strike; blood, guts, and innards spilled out of the Troll's stomach like change from a cut coin purse. Voth sprang at it with her sword in an underhand grip, her yellow eye narrowed with effort before the sword plunged into the Troll's own from beneath. 

It fell into her aura and died messily, the flames spreading quickly and black smoke pooling over the sands like early night. In front of the corpse and unseen in the smoke, Voth was breathing hard. She used her sword like a tripod, inching her way forward until she could pull a cigarette out and light it off the corpse.

"Target eliminiminated." She stuttered to herself, thinking about porkchops.

1408

She could admit when she'd had a bad idea.

Pestilence sighed and stood up, putting the paintbrush down on her easel and examining the picture she'd been painting with a flat, unsatisfied eye. Her empty room was dim as always, silent except for her own movements and activity. The canvas in front of her was covered in a swaying green, the long grass from the first place she could remember. Rocks so black they were purple jutted out of the landscape, and the sky was a stormy gray.

She'd planned to paint four girls in a half-circle, to match the four generations... But she couldn't picture herself as an old woman, and had been forced to consider the matter. Unlike the first of the Elementals, she hadn't been made through an arcane force of spirit taking will and form, but in the dark of a laboratory. Her armor creaked as she inclined her head and studied herself as a child.

That had during the end of a medieval period of time, and the beginning of an industrial boom; as a little girl, once she could walk, she'd been given a sword and armor to train with. The cabal of scientists who gene-forged her for the wars ahead needed her, she'd realized after so many mock-sword fights and sessions of infection.

It was hard for her to remember all of her childhood- much of her mind was still too human, not built to last as long as it had. The War model had been designed to kill wizards and eat magic; she was built to control battlefields and take territory. Durability over refinement. Her body was almost as brutally simple as she was.

She remembered being young and eager, burning with fever and bloodlust. She also remembered being weird and lonely, the only people she saw her masters and their support staff. There'd been a maid with wooden hands who had been kind, and once, a short War Elemental with one eye and a sword twice as big as she was. She'd had one eye, like all their kind, and Pestilence had been allowed to have Tea with her before she completed her own mission.

Pestilence smiled softly, her tired eyes warming up a little. She turned and considered herself as she'd been a few decades ago, in her 170's. A young adult. The world had boomed in the wake of technology's burn, and resources had been consumed faster than a feudal system could garnish them. War had followed not soon after, and her life had truly begun.

The war had never ended, not really. She'd come a long way from the miles of trenches and killing fields, but it had been out there she'd finally realized what she was. Her touch rotted through metal, through stone, through flesh; armor bubbled in her wake, and her sword left red mud everywhere she went. One cut was enough to spring an infection that would drop even the strongest enemies.

Her aura was her greatest weapon; she had three lungs, two that powered the third, and her body was a temple of disease. She'd acquired simple ailments from confused villagers brought to her, seized from their homes, and exotic ailments that had been neutralized and left on ice, all within herself. Her aura was when she altered them and unleashed them against her foes. It took time, and while she was immune to her own rot, she suffered the effects during the incubation. But...

She'd been sent out to pacify bandits, and they'd come out in force. The forest had been filled with their arrows and their hollering. She could hear it now, almost two centuries later, and her sharp metal fingers lingered on her sword's hilt. They'd killed her guard, and then they'd encircled her. She'd exhaled the whole time she'd fought, her new grey armor slick with her oil-blood, one arm limp and dead from the arrows in it.

Her eyes hadn't been half-lidded; she hadn't felt tired and weary then, her heart had gurgled like a drain from purpose, the joy of a tool in use of it's craft boiling in her veins. The bandits had kept coming into her glade, smiling at her even while she clashed her blade against theirs and forced them away from her. She finally closed her mouth, taking a normal breath before grinning disjointed back at them. It looked like a scream.

"Don't be afraid, girl."

"Why would I be? You're already dead." She replied, watching with sick joy as they began to bleed from their noses and their eyes, their ears and their mouths. They'd been infected once they'd come close enough, and now, a greatly-accelerated form of Bloodspill was thundering through their veins. Most of them were sinking to their knees, coughing wetly as their innards tore themselves into a mist- and she inhaled this time, the red ghosts in the woods suffusing her with a green glow. Her skeleton shone through her body, and her skull grinned under her face.

She raised her sword and charged the ones still alive-

And then, it had never ended.

States Came together and disbanded, men climbed to power and fell to their deaths. Through it all, she fought. The third generation- the Conquest- came to be. She fought beside some and killed others. It all ran together, after awhile. Victory, and defeat. War and Peace. Being awake and dreamig, asleep for years. She'd come to terms with her slow degeneration- when she couldn't remember a name, she improvised, and she held herself together with stubborn will.

But where did that leave her? Adrift in a time she didn't belong, doomed to grow senile? The worst part about circular thoughts was that they also never ended. As she considered the empty part of the picture, she had a new thought, a distinctly unpleasant one. It made her grimace.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. She was still lonely and lost. Ironically, the only person she thought to speak to about these matters couldn't speak at all. Pestilence picked up the picture and crumpled it in her gauntlets, putting it in the waste bin next to her bed. She folded the easel and slid it under her mattress, before sitting down and tapping her knees with her fingers.

There were, officially, no such things as Death Elementals. No agency or group had ever succeeded in creating one.

If any of her new compatriots would understand being lost, it would be a generation one. That was, if the silent Death chose to accept her invitation.

Breach

She must've taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Scylla swam slower and looked around the sandy bottom, her tracks the only thing visibly different- well, different since she'd first seen the roof of the ocean. It was beautiful, she'd never seen anything that shimmered like it did as it slowly moved above her. Sometimes light burned from it, and she couldn't look up for a few hours, but otherwise it had stopped her in her tracks when she'd realized what it was.

She'd met new animals- fish she'd never seen before, a big one with pointed teeth that called itself a shark, and two whales who didn't have pointy teeth at all. The closer she got to the surface world, the weirder things were getting... As the coral had bloomed more and more into color, and she'd found a few whales made of a light bone on the bottom, she'd begun to feel out of her depth. There was a great deal more life around, and the higher up she'd gone, the lighter and more disjointed she'd started to become. Everything was so light, like she couldn't feel her limbs.

She'd crawled, panting, into a cave, tentacles fluttering in her wake, trying to sleep. Eventually her swim bladder had fully adjusted her internal pressure- here the water couldn't suffuse her equally from all sides, and it had gone from eight tons of force to less than two- and when she'd woken up, she'd felt better. Better still after hunting down and devouring a big Grouper.

Now she'd ended up here, closer to the ceiling then she'd ever come before. It roiled and waved above her, painfully bright. Up here light was total sometimes, and her eyes hurt. Hiding helped when the light was out, like now. Something was wrong with the horizon- behind her was ocean and water, but in front of her the ground rose like a ramp. At it's edge, something was happening to the water- it was shattering and reforming, shattering and reforming for a line miles and miles long.

She rose from the depths, higher and higher off the ground, still shielding her eyes with her arms while her tentacles pushed her up. She had to see the edge of the world better, maybe there was something around here-

Her head broke the surface.

She knew the water had felt lighter; above and around her, it looked so light that it wasn't there. Instead there was another ocean above her, with big, fluffy white rocks floating on it's surface. A moment later she hissed and regretted looking up; there was an explosion happening up there, a big fiery ball that seared her eyes with white and red spikes. That explained why the light stopped sometimes...

Her eyes and limbs flashed yellow in alarm as she looked to where the Ocean was shattering into pieces, seeing the bone towers and the tongues spread out along the sand of the Surface. Things were sitting in them, pink and brown and red things. They looked like her, but not like her. They were shouting and yelling and coughing with their mouths while smiling. The spawnlings dug holes in the sand and threw water at each other, and as she bobbed in the wake of the waves, her tentacles twitched. Surface dwellers looked alien and unnatural, they didn't even have tentacles. The sounds and the still-present light were making her keep looking around, to see everything around her at once.

Something roared by her, and she shrieked in alarm, dropping down and releasing her cloud of ink. Scylla didn't quite see what it was- a squat, growling thing with a surface worlder on it's back, shooting a trail of water behind it- but she knew a predator when she saw one. Light stroked wildly in the cloud, almost at random as she swam and scrabbled quickly away through the blue.

A fair distance away, she watched whales swim up on top of the surface, sending out sounds from their heads. She knew they were looking for something, and it might've been her. She wondered, horrified, what the people up there ate. Even speaking the same language, she hadn't thought about what she'd do to bring her own food back- only that she had to.

Scylla hugged herself and sadly watched the waves from the bottom, waiting forlornly for the dark to come so she could hunt.

Corva

It taken awhile to set this up, but after working at the pieces, they'd fallen into her lap.

When she was waitressing at the Denny's off the highway, she was Grace Holberry. It wasn't hard to get into the role- Grace was a short, skinny blonde with blue eyes who always seemed to be vaguely smiling and cheery. She did her job well, and didn't keep to herself. Making up a life wasn't hard when you had information. Information like that the escaped felon in her corner booth loved the eggs here. That hauling him in alive would net her enough money to-

Well, keep watching. Hidden in plain sight. No one suspected she wasn't who she said she was, and everyone said more than they thought they did when she refilled coffee or dropped off a check. Who was working, who was unemployed, who was drunk and who never touched the stuff. Information and gewgaws, she collected them both. Value was secondary to presentation.

Here in this Podunk town, things were boring, but from what she'd discovered, in a few months things on Earth were going to get very interesting. She'd need to move on soon, to secure a front row seat in the Kobber's shadows. The things they knew... The junk that fell like dandruff in their wake...

That was the future. As she dropped off the man's change and thanked him, she walked to the back and took her apron off. As she passed the schedules on the wall, she trailed a finger along in.

"David? I'm leaving, I'll see you tomorrow." She said to the manager in his office. He checked her schedule, and it said she was off. It must've been a mistake, could she- but she was already gone, only pausing to scoop up her dollar tip on her way out.

In the back by the dumpsters, she first took off the wig and clenched her hand; it rolled up like a tap measure and disappeared in her grip. When that was done, she removed her false face. It wafted away like mist as she blinked. Her real hair was a black pixie cut, short and a little spiky, and her eyes were green. Quickly lunging inside the dumpster, she slipped on the extra-large black hoodie she'd buried in a box. From in here, she could see the street, and a bus was pulling up-

When her target got off the bus, she followed him in the air. A crow flying this late at night would've been odd, if he could've seen her, but instead she watched him walk to his trailer and close the door. She landed behind a tree and looked out from behind it before she turned back into a girl.

Eva the Crow put the hood of her jacket up and smirked; she reached into it's pocket and drew a sword from somewhere inside, the blade dull in the dark. Whispering some fancy words, she trailed her fingers along it's length; three crows hopped off it's point and looked up at her expectantly.

"Good night. I'm going to snatch the man in that home- please keep the watch?"

One the crows warbled, like a grumble.

"Of course! As many cheetah toes as you want when it's done and said." She supplied, putting her hands on her hips and looking frankly down at the bird. The three bobbed and then fluttered softly to trees and power lines, as she crept closer. She almost wanted to kick in the door, but she knew she'd just hurt her foot.

So instead, she silently opened the bathroom window and rubbed her hands together; she made no sound at all as she jumped and wriggled up into the tiny shower. She held her hand outside as her sword leapt up to her grip, and she got ready to open the door. This would be an almost surgical strike, over in a moment and easy to mess up. Her blade shook a little before she open the door and leaned out. Her bounty was sitting and watching Tv...

She poked her hand out and wiggled her fingers before the lights turned out; When he stood up in surprise, she ran over and wapped him hard in the back of the head with the flat of her sword.

"OW! What the fuck-"

"There's more! More where that started, Villian! Rogue! Jerk! Get on the floor!" She said happily, before whacking him again. "The floor! The floor! Quick and now!" WHAP. "Whaaha-haw-haa-"

"Alright, alright! Just stop hitting me, Jesus..."

After hurriedly securing her next paycheck, she sheathed her sword and shimmied in satisfaction. It looked like she was one step closer to Kobberhari island, and now she got to move to a whole new town and do this all over again!

She couldn't wait to get started.

Under the Sea

She walked and swam alone in the ocean wasteland, only pausing to sleep every day and a half or so. She was very hungry, but it didn't stop her silent journey. She passed glowing magma vents and tube worms clustered like flowers, ancient metal whales that had died Above before sinking to their final rest, and rock formations that loomed cliff-like above her. She was dimly excited- she'd never been this far south before- but watchful and almost on pins and needles in her quick pace.

She'd named herself Scylla, after one of the books(?) she'd found inside 396, her metal whale. Some of the guts and brains had still worked and glowed, enough that she'd picked up surface common from their stored knowledge, over time. Part of the draw had been all the treasure it had swallowed- big, cone-headed fish made of metal that exploded of they hit something, flat pieces of water that reflected everything in front of them, a little bone that had other bones on it's ends. One was a knife, one was a saw, and she'd been delighted to find out one let her take screws out of things. The Above was weird, but fascinating.

The water here, for example. She felt lighter, like she was floating on her feet, and it had another quality, like the glow of 396's bones. She could also see further and better through the water than she ever had before, for some reason. Good enough to see movement further off. She crouched down and moved slowly, her tentacles trailing out lazily behind her. It looked like a group of fish, maybe a school of Tuna.

And they were singing.

"The seeweed is always greener, in someone else's lake-"

She crept closer, her lights dimmed and ghostly. It was a stalk, and she gripped her metal stick tightly as she flowed closer to her prey.

"You dream about going up there, but that is a big mistake-"

She just needed to be able to spring-

"Just look at the world around you, right here on the ocean floor- hey, wait, what's that? Frank, you see that?!"

"It's a squid! It's a squid! Let's get outta here!"

"Verdammt!" She burbled, before the tentacles over her head surged, and hard. She shot forward with a cloud of silt in her wake, the mass of fish twisting away from her before she hit their edge. The maw over her head opened wide as black ink poured out of it, diffusing through the water in moments
in a solid cloud. Tuna were scattering, and she surged forward again. She could see in the dark, but the other fish weren't able to, only panicking.

Her own mouth split open, fanged and alien as she gulped down all the fish she could, from direct passes to grabbing them and swallowing them whole. Her throat was ringed with teeth, to prevent their escape and to actually chew her food, and she gorged herself now. It had been a long time since she'd had anything to eat...

Some of the fish broke for a corner of the dark, before lights began glimmering there, in the shape of her tentacles. They changed direction- right into her waiting jaws. The lights were an illusion, something she knew how to do almost instinctively. They broke apart and bobbed upward, shifting from purple to blue to purple to yellow as made herself float downward, back to the ground.

"Das war sehr gut!" She chirped.

The cloud of ink was beginning to disappear, but she was content. She patted her bulging stomach and sighed happily in a brief pop of bubbles, taking a second to look around at the grey and brown coral flocks. If the rocks were alive, she had to be going the right way. When she started her trek again, she wasn't as nervous or hesitant, not after she'd finally gotten to snack.

Unburied?

The ZFS had sat in the junkyard for awhile now, and it was a much different vessel then the one that had been lain to rest here. Pieces and parts were missing wholesale, and entire sections of the skeleton were open to bare air. Eventually, all the power had gone out, and the dark wreck creaked every now and then in the wind. Deep, deep inside the ship, in a room that smelled like old apples, the closet door banged open and a woman tumbled out.

She landed on her face and just breathed for a solid minute, flopping over and looking up at the ceiling. Her white hair was still in a simple long bob cut, and the loose black clothes she wore were ripped and torn. Her knuckles and shins were bleeding and skinned.

"I can't believe I'm alive." Draugr said to the empty silence, sitting up and groaning as she cracked her back. The last thing she'd known, the door to Aevar's dungeon had been splintering under axe blows, and the Graveknight had picked her up and thrown her into a closet- -except she'd gone through it, and flown in the empty blackness for hours. Maybe days. She'd finally emerged here, but she had no idea where here was. Only that it looked familiar.

"...No, this could not be..." Her eyes widened as it clicked, before she shakily got to her feet. After opening the door with a creak, the evil monk set off quietly and nervously, in case she wasn't the only thing roaming the halls. She'd guessed the ship was dead in Space, and punching through the walls certainly wasn't an option. After wandering for awhile, she reached a break room and stared in silence at the desert outside, before noticing the bottom of the glass cracked and missing. When she found a way out, at least she'd be able to breath.

The First Rider.

As the covered wagon trundled away from her home, she turned around to look at it one last time. It didn't really hit her until she saw soe of her siblings crying and waving, before her stomach sank and she realized she'd never return to the collection of shabby houses off to the side of the road, bordered by fields. She bit her lip and watched it disappear into the distance.

Turning back around, she glanced back at the man who'd bought her. He'd said it wasn't that, for the war effort, a valuable resource for the state, so forth and so on... But her parent's had three years of wages in their pockets, and she was leaving to a new city. A bigger city, made of stone. She'd heard the houses had two levels, that the streets were made or red brick and filled with different and exciting characters. For his part, the wizard kept reading his book, every now and then quietly turning a page. He'd called himself Guildstern, and had drained the fields of fallow water sitting in the post-harvest rains free of charge. It had taken him moments before the small lake had bubbled and evaporated into nothing, people gasping and hitting the ground on their knees, stunned.

She smiled at him; he glanced up and smiled back. His short beard was greying.

Some time later, she thought back to that trip. He'd been nice, and explained that she had powers similar to his. She'd never noticed, because she hadn't used them. But the Evian bloc had need of her, and they'd sent him to find her and train her. Whatever it took.

Laying on the operating table after yet another surgery, surrounded by white-robes in masks, her own blood, and pain, she wondered if it had been easy for him to take her here. Some castle... She'd been unconcious and it had been dark. For two years afterward, her training had been in their military, and her almost-holy fire had burned scores of men to ash. She wasn't bad with her sword, either... Damned artillery. She'd felt her shattered legs after the barrage had cratered the earth and passed out on the battlefield, blood leaking out of her blown eardrums.

When she'd woken up some time ago- she'd stopped bothering to keep count- they'd started operating on her, with scalpels and magic. No one would respond to any of her questions. As soon as she was whole again, they'd begun doing... other things. They'd strapped her to a stretcher and put her inside some machine, some great white empty thing that burned her. It was so loud it was almost silent in there, and all she could see was white. She'd screamed at first, but she couldn't hear that in the defeaning quiet. When they let her out, she usually vomited before they injected her with something and dragged her back to her room.

She was turning white... And her hair was purple now. The cycle repeated over and over. When she was awake, sometimes she punched her walls. More and more, they cracked under her bleeding stony skin. Even then, her escape attempts didn't work...

They'd cut into her and measure the cuts, charting the growth of her outer shell, spending extra attention on her back. It hurt badly every time, but eventually the pain was like the sound and sight of the machine- something that was in the background. She never forgot the first time she saw the wings.

Once, she saw Guildstern again. She broke her restraints and killed three men in the ensuing scrabble, one dead wing flopping across her back, her arms covered in red up to the elbow. As doors banged open and the operating theater began to fill, she knelt down in the pile of gore, staring right up at his neutral face and starting to laugh.

She laughed and laughed hard, up to the ceiling as she was surrounded and took down. She didn't resist, just continued to laugh, because it didn't matter. The damage had been done, there wasn't anything she could do to warn that little peasant girl about what happened to people like her in cities like this; horrible things. Things that broke you as a person, not from horror, but banality. When what you couldn't fix or stop just became the white that painted the walls.

Guildstern didn't care. She could see how little her suffering meant to him.

When it was said and done, she'd been given to a Cardinal, an Ivory angel wreathed in fire. Guildstern had been Amioch's friend from a time long before, and wanted his tithe to be a little excessive. She'd strode in with her sword at her side and looked down at the owl-like robed man, her eyes dull.

She'd annihilated a village soon, in short order. A test run. She'd been excessive. It was the first time since her reforging that she'd been free to fight and destroy. The houses burned around her with white flames in the night as she slammed her sword tip into the ground and knelt, her wings gathering up around her. She was wreathed in blood and viscera, and pools of red glinted like molten metal in the firelight as she picked up the doll. Just a small, straw-headed little girl's toy, like the one she'd had, once, so long ago, except this one was dripping with blood like most everything else. Ash blew around her in the dead wind.

It hurt to be human now. Her hand shook as she realized she wasn't anything like who she'd once been. That now, she was something else, given the power to Destroy. She clenched her teeth and bowed her head, tears cleaning trails down her face as she let it go and accepted it. Her humanity was no more, and it had to be given leave to die. Behind her, her Aura slowly burned back into life, the circle of fire connecting over her head and lighting the devastated marketplace around her.

When she'd looked back up, her eyes were hard as stone, and she determinedly got back to her feet. Even with all the wreckage around her, pieces of everything not burning scattered throughout the dirt field, all she could see was the white.

Midnight Zone.

Silence and darkness had always been her constant companions.

She'd lived here at the bottom of the ocean, on the silt and organic slurry that made up the bottom as long as she could remember. It was very solitary; once she could feed herself, her parents had moved on and left her to her own devices and territory. There wasn't much bigger than her down here, and she was an apex predator in the ridiculous jumble that was this ecosystem's food chain.

It was a simple life; hunt and feed and sleep and hunt and feed and sleep. Time didn't exist down here, only an endless night. She'd never seen the sun; her own bioluminescence was as bright as it ever got under the sea. She would've been content to exist free like this forever, but things were changing. The feeling it brought on was new, like her hunger. Almost like when a bigger predator was around, the sense of unease and something-was-wrong gnawed at her.

The prey was gone.

Anglerfish, Tuna, Mackerel, Eels and viperfish, Rays and even the sea cucumbers that ate the slurry of the bottom layer- they'd all disappeared without a trace. It had been many, many sleeps since she'd eaten anything at all, and while hunting was always opportunistic, there were no more opportunities. The lack of food had happened before, but never this bleak...

So after gathering herself, she'd gone to the dead metal whale that was her home, opening the rusty door and gathering up the few things she wanted to keep. A tortoise-shell mirror, a bag of doubloons,   a fork, and the metal stick that had come off one day in her grip.

She closed the door on the dark interior and lingered, her hand on the bar that served to open it. The metal whale hadn't always been here; she could follow it's trail through the deep, scraping the bottomo of the sea until it had gotten wedged here. She put her hand under the U-396 near it's head and patted it before she gathered herself, blinked, and left on her journey without a look back. Her kind didn't form permanent homes, but her time in it's orderly steel stomach had been calm and good. If she could have, she would have stayed there, but she had to move on.

So far below the surface that the water pressure was close to seven tons per square inch, she sat on top of the shelf she'd hiked to and blinked. Her eyes were very sensitive, and she could still see her footprints breaking up the monotony of the bottom landscape. Her own lights flickered and softly shone around her, as she grappled with the melancholy and pensive feelings she'd never had before.

Eventually she got back to her feet and set off once more, heading higher and higher, closer to the surface world without knowing it.

Realities.

Even for Vegas, the girl was weird.

It was almost four in the morning, and the city was still busy. People flowed around her, going to work, going to gamble, to drink, to see what the city held inside it's neon glow. They avoided her, which she didn't pick up on. If she had, she would've been happy- someone might've stopped her from rummaging through the trash can if they'd wanted to. She'd taken off the top and moved aside the papers and cigarette butts and empty cans-

Her one eye widened with surprise and sudden joy as she jerked up and held the half-eaten Chickadactyl up to the light, examining it and ignoring her rumbling stomach. Clash had known she'd find food in one of these boxes! Her smile grew until it was a grin, and her teeth caught the light. They'd been filed into sharpened points.

She brought it close and looked around her a little distrustfully. She was as tall as she was thin, like a wicker scarecrow, and she expected somebody to yank her prize out of her hands. A few people glanced at her, but kept moving, and she relaxed.

Hefting up the sword leaning on the brick wall next to her- the weapon was black and menacing, but so big as to be ridiculous. Clash looked too thin and malnourished to carry it for a whole block, much less actually swing it- she tucked it under her arm and wound the chains leashing it to her around her shoulders so she could scuttle quickly down a dark alleyway, away from all the hustle and bustle and into a quietly menacing underpart of Vegas.

The lights here didn't flash, they just hummed and burned out. Parts of the sidewalk were missing or shattered, and weeds grew in chainlink fences around little plots of trashland to her left. She walked briskly- no one else was out in this part of the city, but she felt she was being watched.

Quickly darting into another alley off the street, she gingerly stepped through an abandoned cell phone store's shattered glass door and walked into the back stockroom. She paused and shut the door behind her, immediately perking up and smiling happily as she leaned her sword against the wall and went to the bed of boxes, newspaper, and a fuzzy blanket she'd found in a dumpster her third day on earth.

She sat down and ate the Chickadactyl in a couple hungry bites, licking her fingers clean when she was done. She usually ate at least once a day now, but she couldn't actually remember a time her stomach didn't feel empty. At least she'd stopped fainting- that had happened on a bus, and when she'd jerked back awake the can of soup she'd found had been gone. She'd had to walk fifteen miles back here, and it had taken all night...

Clash settled into the nest of newspaper and wrapped her blanket around her; There was a hole in the roof above her head, so she looked up at the black-blue night sky. She blinked and once again, a big sunny smile warmed her face.

"I can't wait 'till the Kobbers get here!" She said hopefully, to the silence and dust of the room.

The Grey

A storm was coming.

The sky above the camp was foreboding, clouds as grey and ominous as the walls of a fortress. Rumbles of thunder and the howling of the wind had driven the sun away hours ago, and it was already near dark in the middle of the afternoon. The encampment in the wooded clearing had been tied and hunkered down, the soldiers readying themselves to deal with whichever storm came first.

She sat on a stump outside her tent, sharpening her sword with a whetstone. The young knight was completely focused on honing the blade, not even looking up at the first crackle and roar of lightning across the sky. She'd been trained well, too well to let anything distract her from what would be keeping her breathing in the immediate future.

Sonon was a world ruled by kings and petty nobles, with authority going to whomever could hold it the longest. Her king had taken the vacant throne over his brother, which had angered the Lundites of the neighboring east. Since their tiny country had no real hope of regicide, they'd chosen to despoil his homeland while his power was still concentrated on securing itself. And so the knights and yeomen of Arman had ridden to this border forest, to harry and oppose the raiders and buy time for a larger response.

In her heart, she had been happy to go and secure peace with her sword. Not for the king, whom was only one man that she'd never met; but because it was the right thing to do. No one but the common folk and some forts had yet been attacked, but the battles had been massacres. She had no illusions about protecting all of the innocent on her lonesome, but knew she'd fight until she dropped and died to stop the wolves that looked like men from burning out another village of people who had no idea why they were being slaughtered. The priests of Vasa said all life was precious, and she'd kill any bastard who tried to keep her from protecting it.

She laughed a little to herself, before wiping the blade clean with a rag and sheathing it back into her scabbard. The red-haired girl stood up and tossed her whetstone gently onto the bedroll in her tent, turning and heading deeper into the camp. Her stomach was rumbling, and she was hoping to get in line in time for squirrel soup instead of hardtack and yams.

For the most part she was unnoticed, but every now and then a soldier would nod to her, or smile, or pass a few friendly words. She'd been fighting by their side for a few years now, and been wielding a sword since she could walk. Her father was a soldier, and she was squire to a paladin, so it had been inevitable she'd follow the way of the shield. If things had gone according to plan, she wouldn't have needed hers ready, but there had been... complications.

The town had seemed quiet enough, with some pastoral name like Stonebrook or Sunbrook or something like that. The men had remained camped on it's borders while she'd examined the marketplace for signs of sedition, instead only finding a crown of flowers and a ten-gold for a little beggar girl. Her liege, Lucas of the Iron Hand had also found nothing to bring him to suspicion...

Because the Lundites had been waiting in the woods outside of town, waiting for night to fall. When it had, they'd struck like a sledge to an anvil. During the retreat, she'd been able to see the village burning to the ground no matter how far they rode away. It had lit up the night like a mocking sun... They'd fought hard, but lost too many of their number to win through the day. Now they fled like rats before terriers, hurrying back to safe ground and reinforcements. If they'd been on foot they would still be running, but their horses were too valuable to run to death en masse.

Lucas was where she knew he'd be; sitting next to a pot of boiling potatoes, picking them out of the water one by one, and then eating them. His left hand had been hacked off by some rogue knight a long while ago, and the iron one he had in place let him grip the vegetables tightly enough to tear into. He looked up and nodded to her as she knelt down and looked around.

"...The men are afraid, lord." She said in a low voice. She took a knee and glanced around.

"And you're not?" He asked, with a small frown. Lucas looked like a brick of iron with scars and hair; His hard, square face and dark eyes gave the impression that punching him would just lead to a broken hand. It had taken her a long time to realize when he was joking and when he was serious, but serving a paladin known for never giving up and never compromising had been a reward all it's own.

"No! I'm ready to fight, not to run again." She said, still looking around for the stew pot.

"You're always a poor liar." He said, taking a roll of bread off a nearby plate and biting into it. There was a crackling sound as he winced and stared at the small indentation his teeth had left in the roll. "There's no shame in fear, only in what comes after. We're a stone's throw away from our own country, we'll make it. I've been in worse spots than this before." He continued, drawing a dagger and trying to leverage the rock-hard bread's crust open.

"There's no more soup, so quit looking so hopeful. Here, have a potato."

"I'd rather not-" She began, and before the first scream sounded she knew something was wrong. It was a change in the air, a new scent that hadn't been there before. One of fire. Lucas surged to his feet and she whipped around, her eyes widening at the sight of burning tents and men streaming out of the woods, their axes rising and falling...

She drew her sword, before Lucas turned her around with his good hand. "Go and form the rearguard! Muster as much of our armor and crossbows as you can, and lead them back here!" He yelled, pulling the heavy granite hammer off his belt and holding it to his side.

"But-"

"NOW!" He ordered, shoving her before striding towards the enemies pouring from the treeline and butchering his men. He slung his shield onto his metal hand and smashed his hammer to it, loping into a run and yelling orders to the mustering Armanites. She ran to do his bidding, already seeing how they would sweep from the direction of their own troops and the side to take the enemy unawares...

That had been five hours ago.

It may as well have been a lifetime.

It was a much different force that rode the King's road toward their borders, a ragged and chewed group that were as close to death and panic as anyone could be pushed and still function. Fifteen men were all that were left, and Lucas had been one of them. His shield had been splintered, and there was a thick gash in his leg that didn't seem to want to stop bleeding. As for her, she was unhurt- Scared and scarred and bruised and battered, but nothing that would not heal. Lucas had thrown his shield in front of her to keep her head from being hacked off her neck, and the fact that she was responsible for it's loss gnawed at her. The things she'd seen gnawed at her.

Lightning and thunder split the sky more frequently now, and the smell of rain was in the night air. She couldn't see the moon, but since it couldn't help her she didn't care that it was up there. She knew she was being fatalistic, but that was part of steeling herself to die. The horses were tired, and they were too few to stop another Lundite patrol, much less the group hunting after them in the shadows of the trees. It wasn't how she wanted to go- she'd always hoped for a heroic death Bards and Minstrels would put to story, something about fighting evil or saving many people, not being chased down a road in the woods like a winded, bloody fox at the end of a hunt. But no man or woman knew their hour. She would just have to make the most of it.

Lucas raised his real hand, and they halted. She was confused, and turned her horse closer to his, right up until she saw the scroll in his hand. Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned with real anger.

"Don't look at me like that, girl. Someone has to see these forest skulkers dealt with, and it won't be us." Lucas said tiredly. "Someone has to ride to your father and Lord Gunn, or the scum are going to cross our borders and occupy our lands from under us. I'm dead already, and these lot-"

"I want to fight! I don't... Please don't make me turn my back on you. On all of you." She pleaded. She hated how grateful she felt, how it twisted in her guts like an eel. She didn't want to die, but she didn't want to do something so cowardly as flee with her life either. She'd squired at Lucas's side for years- it couldn't end like this.

"It's not an issue of abandoning us; You're the only way we can keep the wolves at bay. If our forces don't stomp them out now, it will be too damned late for Arman, and too damned late for the people in it. Now quit bellyaching and do what I tell you!" He snapped, thrusting the scroll into her hand.

The clouds split, and slowly at first, it began to rain. She clenched the paper tight in her fist, before Lucas met her eyes one last time. He looked sad, but prepared to do what he needed to do.

"We last few will hold off their outriders and buy you the time you'll need. Remember all those things I told you about heroics? They all come down to one thing; Sacrifice. You can never give up. You're a fine knight, and you'll make a first-rate paladin on your own right. Here and now, I release you from my service."

"...Please don't make me go." Her voice didn't shake, but it was hard for her to keep it steady. "Please don't make me leave you."

"This is how it has to be; The gods ask nothing of us we can't give. There's no such thing as justice without the will to fight for it. Now go, we've wasted enough time talking. Go with my blessing, Alocyn."

She watched them ride away in the rain, none of them looking back, before she turned her horse on the road and galloped to her home.She gripped the reins until her fingers were white, and tried to to keep her focus on the road ahead. The rain kept getting in her face, kept making her wipe her eyes. The cold was what made her shoulders shake..

She forced herself not to look back either.