A/N Unedited spontaneity. I apologise if parts of this become unreadable as a result, but I will endeavor to go back and edit this only when it's finished because it'll impact my productivity severely otherwise.
Firenight
The raiders came in the thick of the night. The sails on their masts were red, and glowed faintly with the reflected light of the fire flickering off the boughs of trees. The night was strangely silent. Surely swords had been drawn, or if not swords, pitchforks, for the raiders had attacked a small village. Easy pickings, safe loot, enough to tide over the unprofitable winter until the seas and the seasons favoured richer grounds.
But the only sound in the darkness was the gentle crackle of burning wood as houses burned. The raiders departed as silently as they had came, leaving behind a charred ring to mark their passage over the razed village.
No one should have survived. From the upper coast to Unidale to the lower shores of Acnorage villages have simply vanished off the map – people, culture, buildings, history reduced to ash. The red sails, and the first fire tipped arrow grazing the bough of a tree, the sight of a swan-necked hull sweeping into the harbour: they became omens for annihilation. An absolute power commanded by invisible warriors who swept in the night and vanished with a village.
Yet, from the circle of ash and the burned remains of bones, a woman knelt on soot stained knees and wept. The skin of her hands were raw and peeling and sharp scratches marred her arms. The wounds were fresh.
Who are you? What are you?
The Devil that led them. She'd seen his face. A sharp face, shrewd, with a sly smirk on thin lips. Blond hair had framed his face like a mockery of a halo. The eyes she recalled with a vivid emotional whiplash of hate and raw, throbbing pain in her heart for all she had lost. Good humoured, intelligent eyes, the emerald irises flashing like a spot of vitality across the death and blood spilled. Those same eyes that watched dispassionately, a light of amusement flickering as her home burned.
Her hands clenched, the raw nubs where her nails had been stinging in the sooty air. She'd wanted to claw those taunting green eyes out, a last desperate lunge because she knew she was about to die. When she'd laid there, spread on the ground, her nails torn on the scales of his gauntlet, she'd looked at that beautiful face and her will was bent into loathing. A sense of triumph as she glimpsed the flash of red steel from the firelight descend. Mother, Suzuna... I can't live without you.
When the sword stopped it felt like betrayal. A desperate surge of energy prompted her to lunge and catch the edge of a thick leather coat. The returning look of pity stung her, disintegrated her pride.
"Woman, I will not disgrace myself by killing someone who is already dead," he stated. The blond man turned away, shook her off like some cur or beggar.
The raiders gathered silently in a circle about their leader and they left for the ships. She was left to embrace the dirt, broken, devoid of the life she had been living, the quaint weatherboard house she should have inherited. She wept for her friends, for Suzuna, for the life that was wiped away as surely as the village.
She knew that as the news spread – when relatives failed to turn up to a seasonal gathering, the concerned faimly would whisper to the postmen for news, who would deliver them faithfully to the paperboy. The paperboy would add a note or two inquiring after some missings persons, and when someone connected that all these people seemed to have originated from a specific geographic location, the cartographers would be called and the place would be struck off the map.
A red cross to mark the red raiders.
The government, affeared, would then issue new maps, so the crosses numbered only one or two on any one map. Not many were fooled. It would not serve a chief to be ignorant, the portly Master of their village would say while chewing the end of a wooden pipe. On clear days he would look worriedly at the accumulating crosses. His jaw worked faster, on those days. Recently he'd had to replace his pipe twice in the week.
He and his pipe were indistinguishable from each other now.
Who was she? Ayuzawa Misaki. A meaningless name. She'd grown up on the soil she was kneeling, raised by the people who were now ash. Even the tall poplar by which Suzuna and her had made their first childhood promise on the mystical properties of hooked pinkies had vanished, remnants of trunk buried beneath a mound of black.
Yes, he was right. I am dead. Ayuzawa Misaki is dead. I am Misa. Misa with no last name, because Misa has no history. Misa simply is.
Misa stood on shaky legs. She was on a charred patch of ground, her clothing was gritty and uncomfortable. Dimly, she could recall the remembered softness of freshly laundered fabric clinging to her skin. She shook her head and the sensation vanished.
She looked around herself, eyes wondering. The world seemed bleak. A dull ache throbbed with each rhythmic beat in her heart.
She was calm.
A single purpose drove the blood through her veins, worked the muscles that kept her upright. Revenge. She wanted it, wanted to tear those beautiful green eyes from their sockets. Cover the blond hair with the soot of her village. Her body trembled, but her legs were steady. They took her down an untouched path she thought she'd never use. That path where every few years, a person she knew well would vanish down, sometimes to reappear with lavish good and rarities from the corners of the world.
Revenge. She hefted an imaginary blade in her hand and smiled.