I'm gonna be honest with yall. I feel like shit for making you all wait so long for the next chapter of Bricriu's chapter. So just to hopefully maybe explain myself, here's something I worked on for myself but am now uploading here for you all to read. So sorry guys, but I promise I am working on the chapter now...
Writing Prompt: This can be an internal monologue or something spoken: "They broke the wrong parts of me. They broke my wings and forgot I had claws." Happy writing!
The cell was dark, with the only light coming from the small window in the one door made of reinforced wood. The rest of the room was made of cold stone, a single bed in the darkest corner that was stained so much that the lone denizen of the cell couldn't bare to lay on it without being forced to by her captors. Shackles hung from the wall and the bedposts to keep her docile, so dirty with rust that it came off in flakes at the slightest movement, mixing with the dirt and gravel along the ground. They had stopped being used a year ago, no longer needed by now.
In the center of the room, on a small pillow that she had been allowed to keep for good behavior, sat a woman with black hair that flowed down to just past her ears. Despite her terrible living conditions and no clothes to speak of, her entire body was the picture of petite beauty, slightly Canthan in descent. Her lips were soft, her brown eyes showing no sign of the sleep deprivation that hounded her every day and night. When the light was ahead of her, her skin glowed a beautiful white. And her name was Caru Treisio.
She was broken. Completely, utterly, totally. She could not eat without vomiting, could not sleep without waking in a cold sweat and sometimes even screaming, could not think without sinking into a deep pool of murky depression. Two years trapped far away from home, with a hex that made her immobile when commanded to freeze branded into her face, had made her as docile as a frightened lamb, so far gone that she couldn't even feel her mother's warmth anymore.
She had learned her lesson. The monsters in human clothing that held her had made sure the first time she had tried anything that they were not to be toyed with when they held that brand's power over her at all times. Her face underneath her illusion still throbbed with a dull ache after all these months.
She couldn't remember any other day besides that, when they had found her collapsed on the ground, completely drained of power and near death outside of her cell, when her illusion had dropped and they had seen what she truly looked like. They had cursed her name, spat on her, destroyed her, and then when she finally awoke in a daze and had tried to explain, they had gagged her and chained her, and brought out the brand.
But she could still remember the days before, if she chose to. When she had dreamed of coming to Divinity's Reach ever since she was born, learning all she could about the world, and she dreamed of becoming an actor. Someone who everyone would look to and smile and laugh and cry with her as she regaled them with tales and plays that she had seen when she was still very very young. Those memories only brought despair now, and Caru did not wish to call them out before her anymore.
Instead she occupied her mind with thoughts of the bug currently crawling across her hand, watching the centipede as it scrambled in confused circles around her index finger. She envied it, the innocence held. The ignorance of the bigger picture, the lack of fear or sadness. Maybe its brain was just far too small for those emotions to process. It tickled as it made its way down to the back of her hand, little antenna swaying as it crawled around her wrist twice in a loop.
The slow approach of boots did not register in her ear, but the scraping of a key as it slid into the old hole on the other side of the door did. Caru looked slowly over her shoulder as the light filled the room, blinding her to the point where at first all she could see was the silhouette. Her hand with the centipede raised on instinct to cover her face, and the poor bug fell to the ground below. It moved around her bare feet and crawled to squeeze through a crack in the wall that led underground. Again, Caru envied the little creature, and wished she had the power to follow it, to live in its ignorance.
The man standing in the light cleared his throat, and Caru allowed her head to turn back to stare at him, her eyes having adjusted slowly to the light. A smirk was plastered on his face, but it faded as he saw the tail end of the centipede disappear. "Caru what is wrong with you, playing with a tiny insect like that." He visibly shuddered, scratching at his arms beneath his sleeves as he walked in and shut the door behind him. Only then did Caru recognize him, and if she had any care she would have felt a chill down her spine, instead of the nothing she felt now.
Jared had been the one who had seen her first play, when she was still nervous and cautious and innocent. He was the one who paid for her capture at the dirty hands of his goons, and it was his gang who she had been forced to spend the last two years with. Once, he had been a ministry guard, now he worked as one of the most powerful and yet least known bandit in all of Kryta. He pulled the strings of his goons so they always took the blame instead of him.
He managed to get over his momentary lapse of jitters and returned to his smugness. Walking over to her, he helped her to her feet, taking one hand under her arm and the other moving to cup her breast. "You want something to play with in your hand?" He whispers softly in her ear, having to lean his head down to reach due to her short stature. "I can certainly provide that. And we both know it's far bigger than an insect."
Caru only nods obediently, and steps her out of his grasp towards the wall. Placing her well-manicured, lady like hands against the rough stone, she arched her back and sighed at the sound of his belt buckle being undone, followed by his pants hitting the floor.
This must be what Nightmare felt like. This loss and hopelessness, this fear mingling with loss so deep that it consumed all other feeling. How the Court managed to live with this overwhelming dread and despair went far to explain their actions in Tyria. This pain, buried deep within her body, implanted by the cruelty of these monsters, made her feel so very numb to pain and so willing to be alone with nothing but insects for companion.
The ground rumbled as a massive roar broke the silence with such force that the chains on the wall shook. Jared was so startled that he leaped back away from his prisoner, tripping over his discarded clothes and falling right on his exposed backside. "What the hell was that?!" He shouts out, but gets no answer from Caru.
Caru has gone completely stiff in the position she was ordered into, her eyes rolled back into her skull. For her, the roar had been followed by vivid visions. Flashing images of a distant world of green and brown. A jungle, far far away from Divinity's Reach. And within was something calling to her.
She opened her eyes and found the sky directly above her. She was laying in grass, and above her looked very different. The treetops above were hidden behind a ceiling of thick fog of pure white. It reminded her of something she hadn't thought about in years. The Dream. Home. But this place looked nothing like the Grove. It was just an empty clearing, with jungle trees being the only thing ahead of her.
"My poor child." A male voice called to her, and she turned slowly to see a massive sylvari kneeling before her. Even while kneeling, he towered over her, and for the first time in so long she felt that familiar fear crawl up her entire body, locking up her limbs and keeping her from running as this stranger continued on in a soothing tone. "What have these mortals done to you?"
Her fear slowly faded as she registered the massive man's words. In a voice that hadn't been used for anything except begging, she managed to choke out through her fear one word. "What?"
"They force you to be like them, and then they betray you. Abuse you. Destroy you. This is not what I wanted for us." Slowly, his left hand reached out, easily large enough to crush her head in his grasp, and instead rubbed her cheek lightly with his massive thumb. Despite the obscene size, Caru found a soothing warmth and comfort within the hand, and instinctively stepped closer into it.
There was a pause, and then the man continued on in a voice that spoke volumes of wisdom. "They force you to hide your beauty behind this mask. They betray you by never coming to your rescue when you needed them most. They abuse and destroy you when you are your weakest." He brought his hand away and stared into her eyes.
Caru met them and her legs nearly buckled. Those swirling yellow vortexes were powerful, beautiful, and filled with rage that was not capable of a normal sylvari. "Mordremoth will make things right." He continues, bringing his other arm away from his side and holding them both out to her sides, cupping his hands on either side of her and scooping her off the ground. "They broke the wrong parts of you, my sweet child. They broke your wings, and forgot you had claws." As they broke through the fog above, Caru saw the sky was a deep purple, and marveled at its beauty, before the ground slipped out from under her and she found herself falling. A scream tore through her body as she fell, holding her arms out in vain as she hit the dirt below.
When the ground slammed into her body, she found it had returned to cold stone. She had collapsed to the ground during her vision of Mordremoth, and had been twitching there while Jared left to understand what exactly had happened. Having come to once again, Caru heard them talking of a possible mining related explosion nearby as the most probable reason. On shaky legs she stood up, and walked to the door to find it had locked automatically after being closed as it always had.
"They cannot hold my children." Caru heard in a soft whisper, just behind her ear, and without warning a surge of power raced through her body starting at her bare feet. Her eyes rolled back from it, the strength it gave her. Her legs stopped shaking, her hands balled into fists, and her mouth hung open.
She felt something on her sides. Gentle hands that went up and down her body, rubbing in lazy circles as Mordremoth continued to whisper in her ear. "Do not be ashamed. Show them who you Truly are." As he rubbed, Caru could feel her illusion falling away from her midsection, and closed her eyes as she held back her fear.
Her soft pale pink skin was rotten and festered from a lack of sunlight, and covered with dirt. Her legs were peeling in many places, and her feet were bruised and blistered. Her arms fared no better, the end of her fingertips cracked and bleeding, fingers bone thin. Her body, front and back and from head to two, with special attention to her backside, were cuts and bruises like rotten patches on a fruit from where they had whipped and cut her, hidden beneath her illusion.
Her face was last to be revealed, and for everything that made her illusion beautiful, her real face had been ruined by the actions of the humans. Wilting, rotting pieces of bark hung just below her eyes thanks to sleepless nights, her lips were chapped and her cheeks were gaunt. Leaves at the top of her head were dull like dead flowers, hanging and falling from her head. The right side of her face was dominated by a pair of roots that had lost much of their bark from her being slapped, leaving them smooth. On her other cheek was the brand, a simple mark similar to a tear droplet.
The burn of it was more prevalent now that she no longer had it hidden, and she brought a hand up to feel it for the first time since it had been applied, trailing her fingers slowly over its outline, and her eyes welled up with real tears as she recognized what it was.
Mordremoth began humming into her ear as the feeling of his hands reached up her body, gliding over her breasts. A soft tune was being hummed into her ear as he rubbed her cheeks, not deterred at all by her deformities or appearance. She felt safe in his hands, and so she leaned back against the strange feeling of his ethereal body behind her.
"Open your eyes, sweet child." Caru realized her eyes had been closed the whole time, and opened them as commanded.
Her purple eyes, which once were aglow with joy and excitement for a new life in Divinity's Reach, which had dulled with submission and depression, now glowed anew with the new power held within her body.
Footsteps came sounding down the hallway in a quick pace, and Caru looked up at the window of light. She knew what punishment would come if they saw her like this, and fear commanded her to take a step back, into the safe arms of Mordremoth.
Jared turned the corner and stared at her through the wood-framed window, eyes widening with shock before narrowing with rage. Screaming profanities at her, he threw open the door without a second thought and ordered her to freeze.
The brand began to burn her cheek like ice, and she brought her hands up to it, pressing down upon it while screaming in pain. But she did not freeze up. Her limbs did not go stiff and her blood did not go numb. Once again, Mordremoth's docile tone of speaking soothed her to the core as he whispered. "They cannot harm you anymore when I am with you." His fingers slid between hers, holding her gently. "Now let us have our revenge. Together, we shall shatter their world."
Jared stepped forward with an arm raised, hand balled in a fist to strike her down, but as the blow came Caru felt time slow around her. Looking up at his hand, the cause of so much pain and despair, the reason she was down here, kindled the fire within her that had been cold for so long. A gutteral, powerful screech of rage erupted from her mouth as she grasped his hand with both of hers, and flung it ackwards behind him.
He grunted in pain as his knuckles cracked against the stone wall, and moved quickly to tackle her. But she was faster, and she grasped both his wrists with either hand, holding them near his hips against the wall and glaring up at him.
Even like this, pinned against the wall, he towered over her, and he shouted out, "What do you think you're doing Caru? You belong to me! Freeze!" The brand burned once again, with such emphasis that Caru screamed out again, and Jared tried to use the opportunity to throw her off.
He succeeded, tossing her backwards and causing her to fall backwards over her own two feet, but as he reached for his sword and pistol, vines erupted from the wall he had been against, wrapping around his wrists and digging their thorns into his arms. Cursing fluently, he struggles against them. "What is this stuff? Caru! Caru let me go!"
Caru stands and stares as more vines slide out, wrapping up and up his arms and legs, coiling over and over, stabbing into his flesh with thorns as long as her fingers and three times as thick, causing him to scream out in more pain with blood beginning to run from his body in streams. "Help me Caru!" He wails, seeming to forget who he begs to as he babbles for help from the six gods, from his friends somewhere else in the building, from his very own mother.
Caru stared at him in shock. Here was a man who had done nothing but yell and shout and order her around, never showing anything but indifference or anger, and now he was balling like a child. It was so sickening, to think he could be broken so easily. Just like her.
"Not like you, my dear." Mordremoth whispered, and she shook her head to clear it of the shock. "He is weak. You are strong." Jared's eyes met her, and tears were there, flowing freely down his cheeks. Caru nodded her agreement. "Do not give him pity. He does not deserve it. Take his gun." With only slight shaking in her hand, she grasps the grip of his gun.
It burned her hand, and she pulled her hand away quickly. It was Soulbound to him. Useless to her.
"No. Not useless." Mordremoth purred. "Grasp it again." Caru reluctantly reached out once more, and took hold of the handle once more. She could feel Mordremoth's own hand atop hers, curling as her fingers did, squeezing her hand gently and changing it slowly using her own illusion magic.
When she pulled the gun from Jared's holster, she marveled at her new hand. The skin tone, the calluses on her fingers, the scars on her wrists. Every detail, even her fingerprints, matched Jared's own. And as she put her finger on the trigger, there was no burning, no repulsing. She had fooled a soulbind.
Mordremoth's hand left hers, and the illusion faded, yet the gun still did not react to her ruined hands. She looked up and met Jared's eyes again to see he was just as shocked as she was. It made her smile, uncaring of her crooked and missing teeth.
Caru's smile perturbed him farther, and Jared tried in vain to free himself, only able to succeed in cutting himself further on the thorns that held him. Blood filled the cracks in the stone beneath him and he went limp, giving up his struggle and simply whispering hoarsely, broken by coughs and hacking.
She approached him slowly and lifted his chin with the barrel of her gun, staring into his eyes. Tears still streamed down his face, and again Caru felt a small twinge of pity in her still reigniting heart. And again, Mordremoth was quick to soothe her. "He does not deserve pity. He does not deserve remorse. He deserves to die."
Caru nodded her agreement, but brought the pistol down. "Not like this." She whispered hoarsely, then brought the gun to his gut and fired it twice. Both bullets she infused with a powerful illusion of glass, and each one separated from its original path. Instead of going straight into the wall behind him, they twisted downwards, tearing past his intestines and straight between his legs before shattering just as they reached the skin. The pain he feels causes him to scream out, then slump over, unconscious.
Mordremoth was pleased, congratulating her as the vines withdrew from Jared's body and allowed it to fall into the growing pool of blood. "Now let's go. The rest deserve the same." Caru felt her head being turned towards the doorway that still swung open, and nodded her agreement, walking out of the cage that held her for nearly half her life.
Amazingly, no one stood to bar her. No one stopped her from simply walking out, up the cavern slope until she reached the outside. But as she moved one bare, blood covered foot toward the exit, she hesitated at the sound of uproar and laughter farther down into the caverns. Her grip tightened on the pistol, and fresh tears filled her eyes. Turning on a heel, she strode down into the caves with her fury rekindled.
These monsters were no better than Jared. They too had abused her, broken her whenever Jared was not around to use his favorite toy. Sometimes it was for revenge, sometimes just because they felt like it. Not one showed them kindness, not one showed her pity. So she would do the same.
As she walked into the large chamber where many of them stayed, laughing and drinking, many without weapons to speak of, she descended upon them like a demon, blinking behind each one and firing a bullet into each. For the ones she had never seen, the ones who were young or old, who had never decided to take time to torture her, she gave a clean death. To those who she knew well, whose tastes and feeling was burned into her body like a foul disease, she took her time to kill them, slowing time around them to savor it. All through her movements, she felt Mordremoth's presence over her shoulder like a shadow and a vulture, pointing her towards each next kill, helping her to remember the pain and the fear she had endured, and promising she would make it right.
When she walked out of the cave, none of the body's had yet hit the floor, and they collapsed behind her to either bleed out slowly from between their legs, or to leave for the Mists. Caru left them all behind her, gripping the smoking gun tighter in her hands until it caused the bark of her palms to come off in flakes.
As she approached the surface, feeling the breeze for the first time against her body, she sobbed and quickened her pace, scrambling up, up, up the dirt slope until she reached the soundproofed door at the end of her prison and flung it open to the sunshine filled day ahead of her.
It burned her eyes, her hair, her skin. She gasped from the pain and fell to the cobblestone sidewalk of Rurikton, covering her face and body in vain with her arms. The lack of sunlight had left her body ragged to its blinding light.
Passersby stopped and looked at her, gasping at her hideous, nude body. Soon, a incomplete circle began to form around her, and she sobbed and cried as she baked in the sun.
Mordremoth's hands on her shoulder were like ice to the fire that now was building inside her. "You need to get up, my child." He whispered in a hurried tone, unable to do anything but talk to her. "Get up and run. You must run."
"I can't, I can't. It burns, it burns." She cries and sobs to herself, looking to everyone like a madwoman. One man raised his arms and waved them above his head, flagging down a passing patrol of seraph guard and helping them to clear a way through the people.
"Run now, or they will cage you again." He ordered, his soothing tone now giving way to deeper, harsher orders. Caru quaked under him, whimpering and crying from the pain, but did not get up. She only kept weeping, sitting on the warm stone and covering for her head as her body sizzled.
A shirt was thrown over her body so suddenly that she screamed. People backed away in a small scramble as she screamed and screamed until her voice was gone completely, and then she mouthed her screams as she clutched the cloak in her crooked fingers and curled herself under it.
"Ma'am?" A voice said softly, the source moving to crouch in front of her. A guard in his early twenties sat with his knees bent directly in front of him. He was shirtless, and trying his best to force a smile. "We are here to help." He continued, still speaking softly, looking into her eyes with his own.
She kept her gaze up stare at him, at the baby blues of his eyes, his blond hair slightly tostled, and the handsomeness it held. His kindness had saved her from burning in the sunlight. And now another man, a citizen, held out a jug of water, which the young guard accepted with a small smile and held out to her.
"Look deeper, my child." That voice again, in both ears at the same time. Something drew her eyes from the man's face, drawn towards his wrist where there sat two scars. They did not look self inflicted. "Those are from his sister, when she struggled." Mordremoth purred softly. "She struggled so, as he held her to the bed, hands around her neck."
Caru's grip on the pistol tightened as she raised it to the guard. His face paled and he fell back from his crouching stance onto his back, jug of water falling to the ground. Her arm cooked once again in the exposed sunlight, and everybody froze around her. Desperate, he held his arm out towards her and pleaded for her to not shoot.
Caru glared with silent rage, her gaze going back to the man's wrist only to seem them bare and clean. She blinked in confusion, her vision blurred, and suddenly the cuts were there, on both arms. "He's a monster." Mordremoth growled, and Caru felt him point over her covered shoulder towards the guard. She looked, and what she saw made her pull the trigger.
Jared's leering face stared her down where the handsome boy once sat. She screamed out in fear, her finger curled, and the bullet tore through the outstretched hand now holding a middle finger. Jared laughed as he fell back, clutching his hand that now was missing two fingers, his ring and middle.
And then the laughter was overcome by screaming. Screams of fear and panic from the civilians around her, screams of other guards as they heard the gunshot and ran towards their comrade, and the screams of the innocent she had just shot. The poor man held his hand and wailed in fear as he laid on his back, begging her to not shoot him again.
The gun felt heavy in her hand as new tears sprung up. She could hear the guards running towards her. Swords being drawn, guns being loaded, arrows clutched "He's not a monster." She whispered softly, her voice returning slowly as she stares into the void.
"He IS a monster Caru!" Mordremoth snarls in her ears, so loud she gets a headache.
Slowly, Caru brings the gun and stares at it as Mordremoth repeats in her ear, in her head, over and over and over. "He's a monster, he's a monster, he's a monster." Her bottom lip trembles and tears roll down her cheeks, but she smiles and shakes her head slowly.
"He's not a monster." She repeats in response, before curling her hand up and placing the cold steel barrel against her burning, rotten chin. Closing her eyes tightly, she hears a resounding shout of "No!" from all around and inside her, the guards managing to grab the cloak off her body just before she shouts out. "I'm a monster!"
The bullet tears through her skull, and she collapses back in the street, hoping to sleep forever in the cool mists.
And waking in a warm, sticky pool of yellow, hanging above a world of green and brown far far away from Divinity's Reach, with deep chuckles rumbling in her head.
Author's note: This is a story of one of the voices in my head. The woman who considers Kaltain, Feyre, Harley Quinn, Corporal Betsy, and just about every other victim she has ever spoken to her brothers and sisters in arms. The one who thinks of Mor as her true love, who believes herself firmly to be a dreamer. Who marches happily with LGBT, cheers for the couples, and who is seductive till the end to hide her pain.
Whoever you are, she hopes you enjoyed her story. And now I can't wait to re-visit all my character's backstories to see what all I can improve for them.