Champion.

It is whispered in a hiss inside the catacombs in her head. Champion, uttered in a demon's voice. She feels the word like a coarse tongue dragging against her skin, unwanted. Sandpaper scraping slowly across her skin, down her body, up her body, tearing away.

Champion.

She has never wanted to be a blank face, a meaningless face, more.

-x-

Assassin.

She used to be proud of it, her title. The best throat-slicer, quietest night-crawler, deadly, deadly. The best at murdering for money in a realm at war. She broke her own bones several times over to get it, but it was a black-tar title, choking and burning as it blinded you.

Assassin.

She wears the scars of it.

-x-

Slave.

Chattel, property, fancy words applied to torn flesh and blood. Her eyes are unfocused and there is something like howling in the outpouring of adrenaline.

There's not much thought to being a slave in the mines: darkness, the lamps, pale shivers of light on dirty skin. Arms, muscles clench, swing a pickaxe and flinch as dust flies into your eyes.

She watches through the corners of her eyes, a mask of false placidity. the guards wear armor of red-and-gold, keep their twitchy hands on the handles of their blades, and she waits. she waits, one pale viper hiding in coal dust.

Slave.

The word tastes of her own blood, and she swears by the copper on her lips she will burn.