My name is Tara Elmsford, and I do solemnly swear that the account that I am about to transcribe is factual, and has been transcribed according to the tenants and bylaws of the Order of Chronicles.
I ask myself now where to begin. The logical place is 'the beginning' but where do I decide that is. Well it would have to be with her wouldn't it? She was there from the very beginning. She was a whore. She never tried to deny that she had started off her working career as a dancer and a whore. She wasn't proud of it. But it had helped mold her into the woman she became. I have met a lot of people in my time as a Chronicler. But, Lexxara Kaine is by far one of the most unique. She was the Whore who saved the world, and she only denied saving the world.
I met her when she journeyed to the Free City of Halestrom, but that is not where this story will begin. No, it will begin with Lexx, because she began it all.
Lexxara was found on the edge of the Dragon Coast of the Kingdom of Oranna by Professor Monatague. It was wither luck or fate that landed her in his arms. Most people would have tossed the child back to the ocean that seemed to have spawned her, so odd was her appearance. But not the Professor, the Professor had a traveling freak show, and he saw the value of the child.
Lexxara was not disfigured in the sense of having spots, or fur, or a beard, or multiple joints. She was not misshapen nor was she incredibly fat. She did not have scales or a tail or cloven feet or anything that normal justified one as being odd or freakish. She had no tumors or wings and she was not incredibly ugly. No, Lexxara was without a doubt beautiful. Even at the still waddling age that she had been found at one could easily tell she was going to be lovely. Her skin was perfectly smooth, which was not unexpected in a child, her eyes were the perfect mirror of the blue sky over the ocean on a clear day. Her head sported a healthy patch of dark curling hair. She was perfectly shaped with no extra or abnormal limbs. No, the only thing that marred that picture perfect appearance was the Lexxara Kaine had horns even at the tender age of three. They were tiny, colored as a tusk might be, dark towards the root growing paler toward the tip. They were not smooth as ivory like the Oliphants of the great jungle lands to the south east, but rough and wicked looking.
Thinking that the child had been discarded by grieving parents who believed her to be of demonic origin, Professor Montague took the child in and raised her as a freak. Her early years, as she tells them, were fine enough. She traveled over the Continent of Oranna, mostly to villages and smaller towns. For a few coppers one could pay to enter the small tent that housed the Daemon child. She made a good act of scaring children and acting more feral that she really was. IN truth, Lexxara Kaine was even tempered till one messed with one of those people she called 'hers'. 'Her' people were the people she cared about in some fashion. There was Grula the dog faced man, and Esmar the serpant woman who she too as surogate parents in her earlier years.
Yes, her time with the traveling freak show had been a peaceful, if unconventional upbringing.
It was the town of Diamond Lake that changed that. Lexxara was entering her twelfth year by the time they stopped at the mining town in the hopes of entertaining for a week or two. It had not been expected to run into Zalamandra. Lexx had taken an instant dislike of the plump redheaded woman. She didn't begrudge the Professor for falling for her. She was a plump thing, but wore the weight well. Her dark red hair was piled on her head in the latest of elfish fashion. She always wore clothes that suited her rotund build and she had a voice that purred like a panthers might. No, Lexx didn't blame the Professor for falling for Zalamandra. But she blamed Zalamandra for using the simple professor to be the stitching of her own schemes.
Madame Zalamandra, or just Zal as many called her, owned a small card house with a dancing hall attached to one side. She was a shrewd business woman, and knew that of the ten buildings that lined the road through the town four of them proffered woman and cards. It wasn't surprising as the town was built around mining. She was smart enough to know that Zal's needed a little boost, a little extra flare to make her place stand out. She had seen this 'special something' when the freak show had showed up. She wooed the professor and manipulated him into combining the freak show with her vice den. Suddenly Zal's was the place to be. Lexx hadn't cared until suddenly she was boosted from freak show to bargirl. Zal had liked the look of her, said something about an 'exotic appearance' and made sure to start training the girl to handle men.
Lexx had hated Zal from that moment on. Lexx had no intention to be a bargirl, or later after the Professor mysteriously vanished, to become a dancer in the hall. She had been good at all of it, she'd taken to dancing like a natural, but she had hated it too.
By the time Lexx turned sixteen she'd become the center of attention at Zal's. Her long dark hair had gone from the curls of her youth to the waves of a woman. She had gained the curves to make a man turn his head and offer an approving stare or a few choice words. The horns that had originally Lexx knew it, and used it to her advantage. She had gone from being a sideshow freak with a family to match, to being a slave with papers proving that Zal owned her. Lexx didn't know when or how the papers had been made. She knew they were fake. But how did a slave, especially a whore slave, explain that she'd be found on the beach by a man who had disappeared, and that he hadn't sold her? You didn't. Instead you worked hard for tips, and bought your freedom like a gladiator.
On some late nights many many years later Lexx would admit a few things about this time when she was a whore and a dancer. She loved and hated the job. Loved it because of the power and attention she got when she was on stage of with a man. Hated it because she had no choice in the man or who got to see her dance. She admitted that she drank heavily in those days to get through some of the nights. She would scrub herself harshly every morning to get rid of the black finger marks that the miners left on her pale skin, but maintained that the smell of coal and metal never seemed to dissipate. Even when she scrubbed hard enough to make her skin crack and peel she could still smell them on her. She'd hated it.
But she would have stayed there forever if it had meant that HE hadn't been able to buy her. Perhaps it had been Lexx's fault, she certainly believed so…
She had been in the business almost six years by this time, making her an elegant twenty-four. She was still the headline at Zal's and it was no wonder. Lexx could dance well enough to make a rock shiver. She was in the middle of one of her shows when He walked in. Balabar Schmenk.Fat was to nice a term for him. He was a mine boss, and had heard some of his men talking about the Deamoness that stalked the stage over at Zal's place. He'd heard of her often enough that he'd decided to come out himself to see her. She was everything they had said. She stalked and slinked her way over the stage like a woman who knew how to show off. Ever gyration of her hips every snap of the whip in her hand said power and confidence. Sure, the confidence had been bought with ale and meade, but it was there none the less.
She looked like a succubus ought to. Her dark hair fell down to her hips in full lush waves, the black leather bodice clung to her hourglass shape like a second skin, pushing her breasts up like some sort of fleshy platter. The skirt she wore was more like strips of dark fabric that moved as she did to show off teasing bits of thigh. Rune shaped birthmarks, that hadn't been there since birth oddly enough, were visible on her left cheek, her right hip and between her shoulders. They weren't of any rune that the patrons of Zal's could read, but they added to her exotic appearance. She used the whip on the stage with amazing skill, managing to crack it without ever hitting anyone. "The key to putting on a good show," She had once admitted to me, "is that you give them the illusion of what they want without actually giving them what they want."
But Balabar Schmenk had decided then and there that he wanted her. He rounded up Mistress Zal, and paid to have Lexx for the night. Lexx never went into the details of exactly what happened that night. But she'd come out of the room with bruises according to others. He bought Lexxara for double her price. She'd never admitted that she'd nearly earned enough in tips to buy herself. I don't think she could handle the shame.