Sunday Pilot - Ariana (Patreon)

This is not a return of the Sunday Pilot format in general. I simply wrote this yesterday and thought I might as well share this under that old tag I have.

Full disclosure: I have recently played Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The game’s story disappointed me so much that I have decided to take the story beats that disappointed me, along with the general character types that were done injustice and write it competently (or at least try to). Since politics, fantasy and trauma are like… all right in my ballpark, writing a story like this is to my liking anyway.

If I ever continue on this, it would be a romance and revenge story. Harem elements unlikely, but not completely out of the question.

Anyway, here’s the Prologue.

Ariana.

The iron was cold.

Wrapped around her wrists and ankles, it confined her in place. She had been bound by it for days now. It had never heat up. It had only sapped the warmth from her. In this damp, lightless dungeon, the only thing what was warm were the rats. They weren’t there to keep her company. They were there to wait for the day she died and her corpse would make a feast.

In more desperate times, they might have started gnawing at her already. As it was, there were many other bodies to consume. They were smart pests, going for the flesh that would rot soon first and ignoring that which even they could no longer salvage. There was so much offered in that carelessly piled mountain of bloodless bodies that so much went to waste.

She averted her gaze from the corpses – from what had been her siblings. Their screams still echoed in her mind. There was nothing else that could echo there. For years now, they were all that she heard. Their screams, her parents begging for mercy and the mumbles of those that kept her there.

She was alone now. For the first time in years, completely alone in silence. Not for any mercy of those that slithered through the dark halls of this place. They were simply all dead now. Every last one of her siblings, younger and older, all bled dry and dead. What had happened to her mother, her father, and his other concubines, that she did not now. Could not know.

Her heart beat hot.

She could feel it. It was the only thing that she could really feel about her own body anymore. The way that muscle in her chest relaxed, drew in fresh blood, then contracted, sending it rushing through her body.

What kept her heart beating? Determination? Yes, something like that. Blood still pumped through her veins, keeping her cold body alive. To what end she could not yet truly discern. Thinking was difficult at the best of time, impossible at most. She had been someone before this. She could remember who, if she was only given enough time. There were many hazy memories that needed to be sorted again.

There was a dazzling ballroom. Her hands getting pricked by a needle during sewing practice. A laughing boy that she played tag with. Were those connected? Were those connected to today? Why had she been in a ballroom? What had she sewn? What did the boy’s face look like?

She didn’t attempt to grasp the answer to these questions, she had more immediate concerns. Her chest rose slowly. She was sure that, if she could have still felt the pain, her every struggling breath would have hurt her. There were so many wounds in all stages of healing that were strained by this simple gesture.

The door creaked.

Her eyes travelled up from the cobblestone floor, covered in viscous layer of disgusting fluids. The creaking of the door always announced the continuation of her torture. A person stepped in, or perhaps a thing was more accurate. It was probably a human, but she couldn’t think of it as such.

Its entire body was covered under some sort of clothing. Leather, sewn tightly together, formed a bodysuit that hang off it like a saggy, second layer of skin. A grotesque mask, whose red paint glowed in the darkness, covered the face. Only its hands were visible. They had the colour of grey ash.

It held a syringe filled with a crimson liquid. Judging by the colour, it was blood, but yet it must have been more than that. It just didn’t feel like it was simply blood. Today it was an injection day, it seemed. Those were more pleasant.

The syringe was placed on the vein on the inside of her elbow. She didn’t feel the liquid enter her bloodstream. Too numb were her senses. Too weak was she to resist whatever they were doing. The rats watched and squeaked with interest. They were used to fresh meat, whenever it came.

Her heart beat cold.

A singular beat. Less a pulse and more of a collapse of her heart into itself. It felt disgusting, dangerous, wrong. So wrong. It stayed like a rock made of fibre into her chest. Her entire body convulsed in a panic with energy she didn’t knew she had anymore. She couldn’t draw breathe, stars and white lightning seared her field of view and her ears couldn’t even perceive the quiet anymore.

Her numb limbs struggled against the chains. This hadn’t happened. Her siblings had gone insane or lifeless or just died, but none of them had ever gone through this sort of fit. The thing pulled the needle out of her and watched. Perhaps it was interest, but she could make no guess. The cold heartbeats collapse flowed through her veins like ice, left her as numb as before.

Before she knew why, the contents of her stomach were already staining the floor in front of her, adding yet another disgusting layer to the grime. Three terrible seconds passed and then, suddenly, her heart relaxed, expanded to its regular size. A single breath, fresh air entered her lungs. A useless heartbeat, then a normal one. Her convulsions stopped and she hung from the chains like she always had, fighting for every breath.

The iron was hot.

The sharp dagger slammed into her chest before her eyes had recovered. The pain, it was the only heat she had known for years and it was unbearable. The tip of the sharp blade penetrated her heart. The end, however, did not come. She fell to the floor, weapon buried inside her and somehow caught herself on all fours.

Rats teemed to her position, anticipating her end. Even if there was an abundance of available flesh, as long as her lifeless body was warmer than the corpses, they would prioritize her. Their eyes were terrifyingly innocent. They just wanted a meal, that was all she was to those grey, filthy creatures. They didn’t have the thoughts to know more than today. Yes, she feared those rats.

The thing, that she hated. It knew, terrible knowledge it had gained and likely normal knowledge it had always possessed. It wasn’t like a rat, it knew better. It slaughtered for what? The determination swelled inside her.

The things. The warriors. The maintainers. Those three manifestations of corruption suddenly flashed before her eyes, although she had forgotten that by which they called their rotten gatherings. She would recall.

“Minor success,” the thing before her suddenly spoke. “Subject isn’t dead yet. She must have awoken some Emblem.” Moment of silence. If she could have vomited in panic again, she would have. Her stomach and throat tightened as if she would, but against those reflexes she still forced air into her lungs. Her heart did not beat, but she wasn’t dead. Not yet. She could feel the cold approach. It was only a question of time. “I obey, Shabhermic.”

The thing bowed down to her and grabbed her head, pulled her up by her hair. What colour was it again? She recalled black.

Disappointed, the rats backed off, feeling that they would not be granted a fresh corpse. It inspected her eyes, reached for her arm and felt her pulse.

“I hit the heart, but her blood flows, Shabhermic,” the thing said. “She appears to be a medium success. The quality of the material may have been more important than we thought.”

The things. The warrior. The maintainers. She would recall what they were called, she would know everything about them, more than they themselves knew and she would crush them. Crush them all. She wasn’t afraid of the thing, no amount of screams or torment could ever make her afraid of something that had a will to act. The darkness was scary. The rats were scary. Death was scary. The thing was a person with a purpose. A purpose to be crushed.

The end of her life was nigh and the thing reached for the dagger it had plunged into her chest. She was faster. She was faster than she could have ever been, in her situation or in general. Before the thing could react, she had ripped the weapon out of her own flesh and plunged it into his. The weapon was sharp, but the raw power of the strike made it sink through the thick leather as it was nothing.

There was a rush, an ache, all over her numb skin. She ignored it, too distracted by her hate as the thing began to laugh. She drew the dagger back and stabbed him again and again. The bloody knife trailed through the air, inefficient motions. Powerful motions. The thing was thrown on its back and she descended on him.

Again and again and again, far beyond anything reasonable, she slammed the dagger down to the hilt into his chest. She broke ribs with some strikes, struck organs with others. The thing just laughed and laughed, even as it spat blood out from behind the scarlet glowing mask. Her skin ached more with every strike, then ached no longer.

Her heart beat with rapid intensity, every breath she took was taken freely. Any mucus that had clogged up her throat was gone, and muscle atrophy she had suffered alleviated. It only served to make every following stab that much more potent.

Yet the thing just kept laughing. As the fear of death subsided and the clearness of hate took hold of her, she realized how to fix that endlessly offending noise.

“Major… success…” the thing let its last two words ring, underlined by the gargling of its own blood.

Then the last strike splintered the mask into a thousand pieces.