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I do not own Gravity or Ragnarok Online or its concept and bladeebla. Because I just don't.
This is a heavily modded Ragnarok Online world, with history, monsters, and characters tweaked and sometimes entirely changed by the author. Also, rated T and then M later because although there isn't much going on right now, it will get a bit grittier in the future.
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.prologue :: Death of a Stranger
The night the winds blew the sand in from the far deserts, trouble rode in on the grains. Morroc closed its doors and pressed wet cloths into the crevices of its houses, letting the sand pile against them. It was a miracle anyone saw her - still young, but not fresh, with eyes like dark gems and luminous black hair. A desert jewel, big with child, pushed in by the winds. She was practically in labor already and it was luck that allowed a young boy, an acolyte, to spot her through the flying sand.
She was quickly taken to shelter, but with the town's only midwife trapped in her own home by the storm, she had only the acolyte and two women of the house that took them. Neither was particularly skilled in such affairs, but one was a mother already and she had at the very least a vague idea of what needed to be done. They laid her on the bed, writhing and tearful.
"Quickly!" she hissed at the boy, "papoose root, in the cupboard! I said quickly!"
With shaking hands he ran to find the needed herb while the woman with the dark skin and beautiful eyes moaned in pain. "There now," the other woman whispered, "It will be alright- Althea, do we have any St. John's Wort? It will help with the afterbirth pains."
"No, Lya! It's too dangerous anyways- Ah, good!" The boy placed the tonic in her hands. But as she went to administer it, the woman spoke through her heaves and cries.
"I did not... I will not!" she almost screamed through her pain. "No valkyrie could tear me away from her now, with heart of wrath and- and-!"
"Babbling nonsense," Althea muttered with gritted teeth.
The storm roared outside, grabbing their dwelling and shaking it as though a beast had gotten hold of them. At times it seemed the storm threatened to take the house apart, but the women did not cower or leave her side, the boy used his meager skills from the Church to help the birth as well as he could, but at times could not watch. In the end the sweat-covered woman, still panting from pain held, close to her breast an anomaly - a child of white, wailing with new life.
"She is bleeding," Lya whispered. Althea furrowed her brow. "We need cayenne, and we have none."
All looked on the pale child, waiting for words that would either condemn her unnatural coloring or make her holy by it.
"She is beautiful," came the words of the new mother, kissing the child's face, her voice soft and weak. "She is my Fall."
The child quieted suddenly, eyes opening wide and white.
"And one day," whispered her mother, "she will ascend, my little Fall... my Fall..."
It was not long before she died and her daughter was pulled from her stiffening arms. The child did not wail any longer, cleaned and rocked to sleep by Lya as the boy recited his prayers over her mother's body. When he left for home in Prontera, he took the child with him.
