Disclaimer: Square-Enix probably doesn't even WANT to think this has anything to do with the characters they own. Let's leave it that way.
Author's Note and Warning in Case You Missed the "M" Rating: The idea for this came from Lise's single line when she is telling her story as a second or third character, and she says, "I thought I was the only one left alive." This story involves violence, including sexual violence, murder, torture, lies, betrayal, and anything else evil I can think of. In short, it's the most effed up thing I've posted yet. Oh yeah, and I wanted the chance to write a properly erotic sex scene.
I'm dedicating this one to "weighed and measured". Happy birthmas.
The Amazon Princess poked morosely at the ashes of her campfire.
It was another night for Lise, awake, alone, in the mountains she had once been able to call home. That was... before.
Evenings upon evenings had melded together, she having no calendar, no sense of how long she had been here, how long must she be out here before it was safe to go… somewhere else. How many days had it been since she had fled the scorched inferno the ninja of Navarre had made of her castle, the seat of her kingdom?
They had descended without warning, like some demons of the night, their forces pouring into the corridors. They were badly outnumbered, and she had not choice but to flee.
"This way," her best friend Eliza had told her, hustling her through the trapdoor that led into the secret escape passages. She wished to protest, but the other Amazons would hear nothing of royalty sacrificing itself.
"You are our only hope," she was told, but even as the passage closed behind her, those words were quickly overtaken by the screams of those being murdered echoing through the castle. Then the stone slab was shut, and silence became her only companion in the torch-lit passage.
She fumbled her way forward, the dark shadows of the corners seeming almost to swallow the light, and silence wrapped itself around her, un unwelcome companion. It gave her time to ruminate on the things she had seen, her father's death, her brother's abduction, the deathly ninja pouring into the castle. A hundred scenarios presented themselves to her primed brain, but none matched the truth when she finally discovered it.
Hours, it seemed, later, she emerged onto the hills beyond, turning to see her abandoned kingdom in the distance. It stood, crowning the hills, a testament to centuries of history and achievement. And it was burning.
She sat there, morbidly entranced, wanting to leave, wanting to return, but compelled to stay where she was. If time had drawn itself out before, now it lost its meaning completely as she watched the fire taking everything she had ever known, imagined cries of pain filling her ears as if she could feel every death. The flames flickered away as the first light of morning rose from the east, leaving Lise feeling completely, incredibly alone.
Stirring the dying embers, Lise thought the Goddess must have smiled on her that day. Or cursed her, the thought immediately followed, to leave her as the sole survivor of the once-mighty nation of Rolante. What Navarre had wrought had been absolute genocide, the likes of which the world had never seen before.
Every single Amazon had been brutally butchered. She knew. She had crept back into the castle some time later after the raiders had left, having plundered the castle for all its riches. The empty corridors haunted her, silence which had once been chased away by the sounds of life. She drew on every reserve of courage she had to reenter, and to keep from running out again at what she found.
It was a full day of dragging blankets to cover the bodies of her fallen sisters. Some had been raped before their deaths; others had been maimed, bruised, and otherwise brutalized, and she flinched every time she saw a face she had known and loved. They should be buried on the mountain, the way they deserve, she thought to herself, but there were just too many.
Tears welled up in her eyes still at the thought; it was one of the only things she was still able to cry for. They had destroyed her kingdom for one thing, and one thing only, and that was to release the control of the wind in order to reach the Mana Stone and its power. She had confronted the two raiders who had forced her brother to release the key. "Your brother will make a great sacrifice to our Mistress," one had told her, right before they disappeared with their kidnapped victim. A small part of her still hoped for Elliott's life, but deep down, she knew he was as dead as every other person she had ever loved.
She had crept down the mountain into Palo, the kingdom's port, but with the Amazon army decimated, the villagers had no defense as they were loaded onto slave ships to be worked in Navarre's Valley of Flames. The vermin that had conquered her kingdom were so thick there she could not have saved even one person, had she tried.
She was no longer the leader of a great kingdom; she was a simple, helpless, refugee, a woman alone. If she had not known this already, she realized it through and through late one night.
Lise was skirting the edges of Palo, mourning her inability to help her people, when three drunk rangers had set upon her late one night.
They were unfazed by her spear, which the burly men casually knocked out of her hand before pushing her to the ground. She struggled and writhed as their hands tugged on her clothes, wanting to force themselves on her. She tuned out their voices as they discussed in the most vulgar terms what they would do with her, and her mind drifted into the place it always went in confrontation, her body moving almost of its own free will.
It had been their mistake to underestimate Lise, even unarmed. Before they could make good on any of their wishes, the deceptively slender young woman had quickly taught them a lesson.
Too bad they would not be around to remember it.
"You've taken my kingdom," she said to the glazed eyes now staring up at the sky as she wiped her spear clean on the corpse's coat. "You will never have me." The flesh of his opened throat glistened faintly in the moonlight between his broken nose and crushed fingers, and she left the bodies for Needlebirds to pick out their eyes.
Lise knew she must be losing it if she was talking to the dead, but she didn't care. She allowed herself the first smile in what seemed like forever. Killing the men had felt… euphoric.
It steeled her for the next step. She had been wandering aimlessly before then, but now she knew where she was going. She returned up the path to the castle, veering left at the last fork to enter the caverns that housed the Mana Stone of Wind. It glimmered crazily, angrily as she entered, the seal removed by the Navarre raiders. It did not matter, for what she had to do here.
The stone had been there long before Rolante had been anyone's dream, and despite it all, it was here still. It pulsed slightly, seeming almost to calm at her approach, and the wind whistled outside the cavern as if the Stone wanted to speak.
She responded silently, placing one hand on the stone, taking a deep breath as it accommodated to her touch. The sensations coursed through her, rushing back and forth before finally settling into some sort of equilibrium, and it was then that she spoke one word.
"Dark".
The decision was simple. She did not think she would ever be able to follow the path of light again. As soon as the word left her lips, the power surged through her with a vengeance, and she found herself for the next few days working murderous justice on any monsters unfortunate enough to get in her way. She traveled west, following the setting sun, gleefully wreaking destruction to forget the things she would rather not think about.
She had lost track of time, but realized how far she had traveled when she found herself approaching the ruins of the ancient city of light that had once overlooked the valley beyond. Only one thing remained in the city, and she was suddenly drawn to it with an insufferable need, a need that filled her mind as she crossed the paving stones into the ruins.
It wasn't long to find the Mana Stone of Light. Lise reached out for the second time, and once again she whispered to the glowing crystal, "Dark."
She didn't know if it would accept her. She didn't know if she was ready. But it did, and her body suddenly felt as if on fire, and she fell to the ground, crying out in pain. But it faded, and she realized it did not matter. Two choices only was one was permitted to make, and it was done. She strode from the city now glowing in the final sunlight of the day.
Truly, she had no direction, yet she strode determinedly into the setting sun. Green eyes reflected those last rays with all the colors of fire.