Heroine

- Sethra Rain -

A lonely girl by the name of Sethra awoke from yet another haunting nightmare, a dream of the night her life ended. Her short hair stuck to her face from the cold sweat as she prepared to wash up, the memories still vivid in her mind, replaying a scene she never should have lived to remember, in a series of vivid stills.

—

The first was of a girl sitting on a small seat. She had long white hair that touched the floor, wrapped around her small face, and almost covered her beautiful sapphire eyes. She looked maybe six, but she was ten. She was wearing a short white dress with several flowers on it. The pink and gold flowers were part of the dress's design. There were also white and blue flowers that the girl had painted on to match her hair and eyes, and a big green rose was in the girl's hair. In the next picture she was on the same chair playing a happy melody on her piano and smiling from the bottom of her heart. The next image showed her family...her mother, father, and her grandmother were all smiling to the happy melody as well. No one but the girl was a clear image and the others didn't seem to have faces. Her mother had brown hair though, and her father had red, which had always confused her, since no one in her family had the same hair as she did. In fact, they looked nothing like her.... In the next one, her mother and father were dancing. That had been the final image that was happy.

In the next few images, the girl felt an uncomfortable presence and stopped playing the piano. She sat up tall and looked over the piano out the window, only to see a man coming to her house. She didn't know he was an assassin sent by the King to make sure no one important knew that the army was coming through and raise a rebellion. She pointed at him, confused, and her parents hid her high up in a cabinet that had had all the shelves taken out for the purpose of hiding her. As she waited she thought of the man. She had noticed his sword first. It looked like it was stained with blood. Then she had noticed his red hair. She noticed that it was the same color as the blood on his sword. She had noticed his eyes next. They were not bloodstained, but they were pink, a very unusual color. The last things she had noticed were his clothes. He wore a red-orange shirt with a dark brown jacket over it and blue denim pants.

It wasn't long before she fell asleep.

—

When she awoke, all was silent, so she opened the cabinet and jumped down, landing perfectly on her feet...and realized as she felt the still warm, thick fluid on her bare feet and wiggled her toes in it for just a moment before looking down that she had landed in someone's blood. She looked around and saw the most horrific sight she had seen to date.

She screamed, warm anguish flowing from her eyes. She looked around to see everyone, everyone she had ever held close to her heart, in an eternal, dreamless sleep.

The walls were painted with dark crimson blood. The entire room was decorated with blood red flowers, vases, chairs, couches, and even the dark mahogany piano was now blood red. Her mother, father, uncle, and even her grandmother were wearing crimson clothing and each lying in their own crimson pools of their own crimson fluids. The blood was everywhere, their bodies were mutilated beyond recognition, that sight...was something that would have been a likely cause for trauma-induced blindness to many children her age, but instead, it simply froze her heart for years to come.

—

Five years after the...incident, she became a bounty hunter, a mercenary, an assassin. Whatever you may call it. The war had never actually made it through her town; it had narrowly avoided the army. Of course, had it come through, she would have lost her life trying to fight off the King's men. Her small town of Renia was just inside the border of his kingdom, and he was constantly trying to expand, so the army was always in the area, and the soldiers always did as they pleased. Of course, her town was against the King (who wasn't?), and so there was a price on the heads of any number of the King's men. She could only hope that someday she would see the likeness of the man who ended her life, and thoroughly end his in kind.

—

It had been four years since then. And now, as she walked out of her small home, she saw a small crowd of people around the community board, where bounties and news would be posted. She quickly pulled on her long, midnight green overcoat and ran out the door to the crowd.

As soon as the people noticed her, they gave her soft smiles of praise as she made her way to the board to see what the commotion was about. Once she reached it, she herself smiled, and turned back to the people she had grown to love, the people who had taken care of her for these past almost ten years.

She looked at all of them, and they all looked at her. No words were said, no words were needed.

She ran quickly back inside her home, after snagging the paper off the board of course, and packed a few supplies. She walked into her common room and walked to the fireplace. Over the hearth rest her falchion. It had been her father's, and she inherited it after his death. She slowly removed it from its place, sheathed it, and slung it into position at her hip.

She left the house, turned to face the door, put both of her hands over the hilt of her sword, and bowed to the door, a tradition in the village. It was supposed to bring good luck and fortune in travels. Of course, the only fortune she was hoping for would be running into the man...and killing him, once and for all.

She set off on her journey, armed with naught but her father's blade, a handful of throwing knives, and her favorite poison. She brought with her materials for starting and keeping a fire, and some dried out food. If it turned out to be a long campaign, she'd have to hunt.

—-

She'd been out for only two days when she spotted him in the woods on the Kingdom's border, just outside of her village. It wasn't hard to spot his bright, blood red hair through the green.

She pursued him through the forest through the night of the second day, and on the dawn of the third, finally ran him out of the forest to the plains just outside the kingdom's border. He ran over the first hill out, but stopped in the dip of the valley, his back turned to Sethra as she picked her way down the hill, short hair sticking to her face, sword arm outstretched as she went.

She came to the base of the hill and stopped, a few feet away from the man, holding up the warrant.

"Jaron...Valley...Roon," she began, her voice low, menacing, but solid as a rock; the voice of a leader, "Someone has decided you no longer need to be around the rest of us who are living. Today, my friend," she smiled bitterly, "is the day I avenge my family. Today, my friend is the day you die!" She yelled the last few words, charging towards him.

He sleepily drew his sword out and just barely managed to bring it up in time to block, his eyes going wide late, his reaction time, everything about him, slow and lethargic. The girl thought nothing of it as she continued her assault, striking low before he made his next move. He fell to one knee, and opened his mouth in a howl of pain that never quite came out.

She brought her blade back up one final time, and brought it crashing down on his skull.

And as she did, she never knew of the man on the next hill. Never knew as he watched. Never knew as he notched his arrow. Never knew as he drew back the bowstring. Never knew as he loosed his arrow.

She only knew as she felt the white-hot piercing through her chest, and as she watched the blood flow, bringing up her hand around the arrowhead poking out to try and stem the bleeding, only for it to seep through, hot and wet, she collapsed.