Universe: Shut Hell
Story Title: Cradle Robber
Chapter Rating: T for strong language, gore, blood, war, death.
Summary: A drabble about little sparrow's descent into demonhood.
They say she was a Tangut woman, a part of a nation of proud people who loved their scholarly culture of knowledge and writing.
She was the Little Sparrow, called fondly so by her comrades because somehow she had become a soldier against all odds despite her delicate stature. They patrolled together. Ate together. Shat in the same chamberpots. Swapped stories about home together. Fell asleep in the same barracks together at night.
The small unit persevered as one. Their names would be all but remembered in the wake of the great nation they served. Theirs was a simple time.
Pity that this was the era of the Mongols.
The wolves descended upon the aging nation. They encroached little by little on her motherland until one day they landed right on the doorstep of her fort. A company led by Mongol general Harabal, the one known as the God's Arrow, defeated them in overwhelming strength and the survivor Tangut were lined up against the fort walls.
They were to be shot in a cruel but effective destruction by the Mongols and their corpses left to dry in the sun by arrows. Her comrades.
The woman was miraculously alive and spared the same fate in the confusing scramble of battle. When she awoke, she would never again be the same. Whether this was the gods' blessing or a curse in disguise would be hard to distinguish for anybody. They say she was left to fend for herself in wake of the massacre.
There were many days of anguish and nights defending the stiffened bodies from the packs of hungering wolves that awaited her fatigue. She spoke with the souls of the departed at times, the bodies littering the fort. Staggering guilt ballooned within her. This brother had told her about his wife back home. That one taught her how to write a name in the Tangut script.
Only sunken cheeks and pallor skin remained now. How can she have left her comrades? How?
Her brothers.
She growled at the ravens that tried to peck at at eyes that could not close, fought tooth and nail against scavenging animals, fury sharpening her senses to fierce heights. Days and nights of sleepless violence; a struggle against the nature of things.
The story of the Little Sparrow was lost. The ordeal brutalized her already shattered mental state into pieces and she left her humanity behind. Growing to lethal heights, strong and swift, the woman radicalized into a demon. Shut Hell, the fearful named the demon, for the bump in the night that hunted them without fail.
Akuryou - The Evil One.
Meanwhile, in one fell sweep, the Great Khan brought the Tangut nation down to its knees and assimilated it within his own empire. His eyes only looked to the far west. This great wolf would never once stop to think about the trampled sparrow that lay in his belly.
But the people would whisper in low voices of the appearance of the Evil One, the one who left nothing but a faint memory of a whirlwind of fierce red hair and the fresh metallic tang of the blood. They recant the way they narrowly missed her bloody warpath, knowing that her great fangs had kissed the virgin necks of Mongols and Tanguts alike. If they did not know her yet, the ignorant surely know then, when sickled hammer slammed into their skulls.
This demon too, would fade into the flows of time. Back into the midst of lost history.
First posted 2019/01/27
Author's Notes: Was actually supposed to be a character profile page for my rp tumblr before it spilled out of control and quickly became 500 words of work.