Light of the Dragon's Eye

Chapter Twenty-Eight

She was five years old when she took her first life.

Those scary men carried her somewhere, to some other country. She vaguely remembered being poked and prodded, strange people in masks examining her. Exchanging coins with the man with the soft voice.

Then one day, she was pulled out of the dank little room she was kept in. The day she took her first life.

Someone else, in a strange, laughing mask that blurred in her memories, yanked her into another room. They were alone there, the only noise the sound of a flame in the fireplace crackling, a large iron implement being heated in it.

The person grabbed her chin and examined her face. She had healed from the kidnapping, but had died a little, on the inside. Nothing seemed real to her anymore. Her silvery eyes were open, but unfocused and dull, as though looking beyond, to a place where nothing could reach her.

Well, almost nothing.

The person threw her to the ground, and she felt the ragged dress she wore being torn up to expose her back. She didn't move, still.

Then the burning came.

She had felt pain before. Minor scrapes and bumps that every kid gets, from climbing trees and running around. She had tried to touch a fire once, and she remembered a vague sense of heat when she pulled away.

This time, she felt real pain.

Her skin baked and she let out screams of pure agony. A circle of fire burned on her back, burning, burning, BURNING...

heatcoldkindcruelhatelovelightdarkrainsuntakegivepainpleasurelaughcryhealhurtlife-

DEATH

She grabbed the rod that the person was pressing into her back, and yanked it away.

DEATH

She held the rod in her palm, eyeing the round circle at the end, that the person had been burning her with.

DEATH

Without hesitation, she rammed the burning circle into the horrible mask, knocking it off.

DEATH

Dimly aware of a screaming around her, she pressed the circle into the face of the person, blood roaring in her ears.

DEATH

Sensing that the iron had grown cold, she flipped around the rod, and slammed its point downward. Anything, ANYTHING, to make the mask stop laughing.

The screaming stopped, a bloody gurgle taking its place. The door to the room slammed open, but she ignored it. Turning towards the tiny window in the room, she broke the glass with the rod, then turned and threw the rod back at the person in the door.

Clambering out the window, she ran, without a destination.

Once, she stopped, and felt the spot on her back, where the heat had laughed at her...

...but there was nothing there. Only pale, cold skin, unmarked and unhurt.

She continued to run.

***

She met her new brother when she was five.

She had run and run, and lost track of how many days had gone by.

He was lying on the side of the road, facedown and half-dead. Thinking him an easy target, she crept towards him, and tried to search his pockets for food.