All the Symmetrical Things (Soul Eater fic) Soul Eater Watty Awards 2014 Winner

All the Symmetrical Things (Soul Eater)

All the Symmetrical Things; by Hannah (Snow) Stanley

Prologue

    It was dark, and Raini was confused. She couldn't see anything, and she felt ropes tied firmly around her wrists. She didn't know what to do; there was a rag tied around her mouth, and nobody seemed to be around.

    With a muffled cry, she began to inch forward, pushing herself along like a worm in the black. She couldn't see, she could barely move, and she couldn't remember anything.

    Anything but that one flashback.

    It was years ago, when she was eleven. Her mother, Medusa, had come home, carrying a small bundle, a baby, with a shaggy mess of pink hair upon its head.

    Medusa had been gone for a year, and it had seemed like Raini was free. But here she was, returning like it was no problem. Raini had come to the conclusion that the baby must also be Medusa's, and would have to go through the same pain and torture as she herself did when growing up in the Gorgon house.

    Bless her fragile soul, which Raini could see clearly.

    The little girl was obviously what Medusa called a failure of a child, for Raini herself was one. Neither of the girls were witches, both human and innocent. Medusa was working on a way to fix that.

    But now Crona didn't matter, Crona was gone, Crona had succeeded, the black blood coursing successfully through her weak veins. It was Raini that was the problem.

    As she struggled, a beam of light pierced the darkness.

    "Lord Death, Raini, you're twenty-four. Why do you live?" It was Medusa, her snake-like eyes burning into Raini's skin. She didn't answer, because Medusa did before the young woman had the chance. "You live because I haven't experimented on you yet. You haven't thrived and killed yet."

    Medusa slithered forward, there was an explosion on the side of Raini's head, and everything went dark.

    She woke up in a daze, using her left arm to support her, and her right to hold a throbbing knot on her forehead. Her eyesight was blurred, so everything in the room melted together. It seemed like forever until she could see.

    In front of her was a large mirror, and in that mirror was a horrible reflection. Raini could see herself, and almost cried at her image.

   

Her eyes were no longer amber, but were glowing evergreen, the pupils black slits in the center of the gleaming irises. Running across her face and her shoulders were stitches, also some on her stomach, which was exposed because of the little amounts of clothing she was wearing. The stitches seemed to be so deeply set into her skin that removing them was impossible. Her auburn bangs had been chopped off, were short and ragged. When she opened her mouth she revealed a pair of long, glistening fangs and a forked tongue.

In shock, Raini startled, shaking slightly.

   

While she was shaking, something upon her head glistened in the light that shone from a crack in the ceiling. She lifted her gaze in the mirror, and found a pair of large, triumphant antlers attached to her crown. She touched her finger to them, feeling the base.

   

Medusa had connected them to her skull.