Once there was a girl.
A girl who was just frightened. A girl who made a mistake.
A mistake that cost thousands of lives...
MAEVE: Ash fluttered past my eyes tangling in my hair, only black dust and glowing embers. Red-gold and burning brighter every second I waste here watching the endless plains and ravines of darkness that thread on forever. Rivers of fire cascade off tall shadows of mountains in the distance, a ribbon of light and ever-changing crimson and amber and auburn. Flat sooty canyons that run into the horizon. Mountains and volcanoes crowned in smoke and fire merge with the clouds of ink, staining the sky with tendrils of darkness. And through it all, massive rips on the charred, blackened land. Dark and unyielding. Darkness incarnate. I curl up my nose, wrinkling the skin as I smell them. They stink of death and blood - a tangy coppery scent that assaults my nose. I snort quietly in disgust and pull out the obsidian stone I had hastily stuffed into the waistband of my loose dove leggings. My pewter skin-tight top is tucked in and fastened with a black velvet belt. A necklace of black diamonds hangs from my neck and the midnight hair courtesy of my mother is twisted into an elegant by utilitarian ponytail.
There was once a scholar who tried to map those rips in time. He died for it.
Travelling the Otherworlds and recording his findings. He was faced with the full power of whatever had clawed those mighty breaks in our world and slowly, slowly he broke until one day he just jumped into the largest opening and was never seen again. I stare at the insidious tear in time again, wondering what could have possessed the scholar to leap into something that praised death more than my father. I brush a stray strand of hair out of my eye watching the embers dancing in the raven sky. The tiny pinpricks of light dancing on a current of breeze sending them tumbling and twirling over the hard, cracked rock, black as soot. Falling and twirling. I think what it would be to be an ember no rules or overbearing father. Free to fly with the wind.
I study them some more putting off the meeting. It doesn't matter anyway. I can choose who I like. It's not as though this decision was final. My father can't have a say in this I wont let him. This is mine.
The rips are a nightmarish ebony. Like black beyond colour. Black enough that it devours the night sky. I watch, mildly interested, as the colours weave and thrum in tune with my own heartbeat. The rips smell of otherworlds. A scent that no matter how hard I try I cannot remember until I am faced with it once more. Perhaps that was why I always stopped here. Without the barrage of escorts my father insisted I have. I used my power to cloak myself. "Honestly, I'm surprised they fell for it. Father should employ new guards." I mutter this out loud, studying my fingernails.
"What?" I whirl around retort on my lips, but the words never leave my lips.
He is hideous. A jagged scar runs across his face, pulling his thick lips into an ugly grimace that make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. One eyeball is a milky blue and bloodshot. I gasp.
My feet scramble backwards as I stumble away from this monster. This...this abomination. Heart caught in my throat.
"What...what do you want" I breathe feet slipping on the edge of the cliff and for a heartbeat all I can hear is the pounding as the dislodged pebbles bounce down into the ravine...then silence as they drop through a small tear. The boy only smiles a sick twisted smile.
I am not worried: a swipe of power will knock him off the face of the earth. I send a tendrils of black testing him for shields...then he pounces, vicious claws gripping my mind. Gouging deep enough that it hurts. My mind is slowly being squashed like a grape. I gasp again slightly breathless. I breathe. Again and again cooling the fear that clutches around my heart in an icy embrace. I can't do anything but watch, paralysed, as he pulls out a long curved sword, etched with glowing runes and finished with a sapphire in the hilt. He releases the pressure on my mind and I sigh.
"Please...please," I breathe, thunderous heartbeat pounding in my ears. Fear is painted across all my features. I can feel my skin heating. All my life ahead. All those plans set. Gone. Gone unless I could somehow persuade this boy to leave me be. Perhaps...perhaps there was a way. A way that can stop him split my body open with the wicked, wicked sword in his hands.
I almost sag with relief when a look of consideration flickers across he ruined face.
"Please..."
Then he says one word that rips my future apart like wolves to a fresh kill.
"No."
And my heart plummets.