Chapter I – Broken Chains
Her surroundings were a spinning, dizzy whirl of colours, repeatedly gaining focus for a moment before her vision exploded with intense pain and strange blurry images. Her temples throbbed like the thrust of a knife as she struggled to escape the torturous semi-consciousness.
"Whe...where am I?" She painstakingly tried to stare through the haze and a cracked, moss-covered tombstone slowly coalesced into her vision.
WHAAAM!
Sudden excruciating pain at the core of her cranium snapped her head back and slammed it into the damp, muddy ground. The strange images continued pierced her haze of pain.
A torn and mouldy fluttering tapestry bearing a sightless eye within a dark and ancient building... Lithe and slender human forms writhing in throes of death under a cloud of deadly poison... She was bound, unable to break the invisible bonds with all her might... helpless as four gleaming, dripping scorpion-like stings slowly snaked down towards her throat.
"AAARGGG! PLEASE STOP!" But the images were relentless and continued to flood out from within her mind and consciousness.
Night had fallen... several rogues stood vigilantly on watch upon the monastery walls...one with whom she was very familiar with...Marienna, a close comrade and fellow captain. Marienna stood out prominently from the others with a muscular figure, constant alertness, and a feline grace which exuded in her walk and the effortless bearing of hertwelve-foot spear. In the gloom of a rooftop archway of the monastery, an arrow shaft glimmered as a bow aimed at Marienna was drawn taut... Her friend's alertness would never have anticipated an attack from within the monastery... She tried to scream to warn Marienna, but there was only the whistling of the night breeze...What sorcery is this! In silent horror, she watched the bow loose the arrow which flew unerringly towards Marienna... Her friend instinctively flinched and tried to dodge a split moment before the arrow pierced her throat, splattering the cobblestones with blood. Realisation warped into terror as she comprehended that she was the wielder of the bow firing the fatal shot...Demonic voices rose in unison in her mind, gripping her body, arms and legs like the strings upon a puppet...She tried to scream... instead she began to laugh, a sinister and malevolent laugh chorused by the guttural laughter of her possessors...She was helpless and imprisoned within her own body...Her hand was raised and waved forward...a flurry of dark forms rushed past her towards the rogues upon watch...The dark forms were once rogues, but now frothed from their mouths in eternal demonic rage, their bodies shuddered with inhuman malice and blood-thirst which urged them to slaughter even as it consumed them...There was nothing she could do but be forced to watch the destruction of her beloved Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye in horrible tormenting silence...