The Blood Trials

Nothing - Part One

They are afraid. What is written by blood cannot be scourged. It will stain the soil forever. And blood binds us all.

It began with the will of the earth, guided by the hand above. The whispers of the winds carried rumors with them to each village, daring to speak of the impossible. The unbelievable. The unseen, even before it had been confirmed.

I was just a girl, and yet the world unfurled itself before me, humming with the song that still beats along beneath my skin. The Lord Above, had willed it Himself, and His judgement could not be outspoken.

Kingswood had always been mundane, the only intermittence between whining horses and the dull pounding of iron against steel was the brief passings of the Blood Brothers, to whom everyone laid aside all of their worth and knelt before the grassy plains on which they travelled, hair nearly intertwining with the strands that grew from beneath. I was to be a soldier, they told me. I would have my own skin of iron wrapping around preternaturally frail bones that somehow could never break, even after I had fallen from atop the roof of the local tavern, the Tavern Royale. It was said that by the grace of His High Holiness that I was spared, but I had not emerged unscathed. That night, that one I had alone with Baron, shattered my heart to crystal shards that tore through my ribs, slashed open my lungs, and sliced my throat, leaving me gasping, panting for the air we had shared, once. He hurled himself onto a balcony jutting from the level below, and hurried off into the night without casting a parting glance, a pattern I should have recognized earlier. But all of what was promised to me never lasted.

Beyond the wooden ramparts, which loomed useless around our village, for the times of war were over, the animals called to me. They sang a song of power, whispers of what I could coax from their veins, the power that coursed through their slender figures until they would find themselves leaking their essence upon the surface of the earthen soil, to stain their departure.

Carving through the plains wound a narrow path of dust and dirt, ground underneath the heels of those who came before it, stamping along to the beat of blood. I had not walked ten paces yet when the earth itself moved. Stricken with tremors, groaning as though my weight itself bore too heavily upon such a thin surface, the ground beneath shook, vibrating with a rhythm in tune with the pounding in my ears, the pulsing beneath my skin.

The song of the Lord Above.

The point between my two feet, bare of leather-stitched shoes the cobbler had given to me, gave way, until small cracks wound their way through the earth, spreading like blood through veins, crawling through the dirty skin and encircling the spot where I still stood until it sunk down as a cresting wave, and emblazoned with the fiery mark of the Lord.

I felt the wind itself urging me downward, the land beneath coaxing me into earthen hands that would swathe my body in its mystic pattern. The lids of my eye drooped heavily, shuddering underneath the tendrils of sleep which had buried themselves already within the depths between my ears, and I slipped back into the darkness.

It was the radiance of the Lord's servant, the Keeper of Light, which woke me. The whole village had gathered to see my body, which now was clearly outlined by the bloody markings in the ground. I could not move, not until the Lord pronounced me.

We had all heard of what happened from the Blood Brothers themselves, but the earthen servants, grounded by the constraints of that feeble substance within them that granted them ephemeral existence, had never before welcomed one of my own. Never before had someone with dainty, inlaid eyes, and braided hair, and those lumps which had begun to arise underneath the surface of my chest, been claimed by His High Holiness.

I was the first Blood Sister.

Beneath me had formed a shimmering rune, burned into the soil by blessed blood, on which would soon be erected a House of the Lord, which I myself would charge. But the villagers before me soon grew concerned, be it of the unprecedented conditions of my Declaration, or what lay sprawled beneath my own body. The glyph seemed to glow intensely, and soon its radiance dimmed to lambency.

My body felt strange, tingling with a warmth that had touched me from above. I rose with grace, swift and quick like the currents of the wind flourishing around my ankles. I turned.

The inset shape in the ground burned into my eyes. Though the villagers of Kingswood have always been compliant with the High Faith, the Lord's Creed, there were always the murky depths of the unknown. Underneath the Lord Above presided Veritasia, servant of truth and justice, patron of integrity; Lucia, the Keeper of Light, bestower of wisdom, Mother of virtue and goodness, and guardian of the night; Fidelia, follower of devotion, redeemer of loyalty; and Sangra, the collector of Lifeblood. The Lord Above employs servants under each of his own, spare for Sangra. Servants of His High Holiness of certainly revered, but in accordance with Veritasia, the villagers have come to fear their powers, granted by the grace of the Lord Above.

My glyph read nothing.

Nothing at all.

It was unknown, just like the followers of Sangra

Undefined. I was to be tested, then.

Under Sangra.